The Full Desk Experience

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
The technology really shouldn't be that thing. It's enabling your people so to do their jobs better, more efficiently. And so I think making sure that they're along in the journey is really, really important.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, staffing and recruiting industry principal at Crelate. This is the Full Desk Experiences: Industry Spotlight series. Where we are talking with the top leaders and influencers who are shaping the talent industry. In this series, we'll be shining a light on popular trends, the latest news, and the stories that lead the groundwork for their success.

Today's episode, we're going to be talking with Holly Cohoon. Holly is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in staffing and professional services. As the founder and managing partner of Regents Consulting, Holly brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the table. Prior to starting her own firm, Holly held various leadership roles in recruiting business operations and IT for full service and clinical research focused staffing firms. She's managed large scale ERP solution implementations and is well versed in front and middle office solutions. Holly Certifications as a PMP Salesforce administrator and professional and Human Resources highlights her commitment to professional development and her ability to deliver results. At Regents, Holly leads the IT management consulting practice in providing program and project management expertise to help clients adopt tools, methodologies, and best practices that accelerate delivery of business value for technology projects. We're excited to hear from Holly and learn more about her experience in the staffing industry and beyond. Holly, thank you so much for joining us. We're so excited to have you.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here and talking to you today.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Okay, Holly. I know I've gotten a chance to talk to you a little bit. Got to see you at SIA Executive Forum. So for our audience and our listeners, tell us a little bit about you and your company. Let our audience know more about Regents Consulting.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Sure, absolutely. For me personally, I have been in the industry for the majority of my career. I kind of fell into it, for lack of a better word. Interestingly, I had just graduated from college, was working in retail, not happy doing that. And my mother, who actually spent her career in HR and had used staffing services said, "Why don't you go see if there's a staffing agency that might be able to help you find something?" And so walked in the door, filled out what, at the time, was paper, literally paperwork. And did an interview and they said, "Well, what about working for us? Would you be interested in working for us?" And that kind of started me on the journey in staffing and I have not looked back since.

So I've done any number of roles. From being a recruiter, running a, managing a recruiting team. I've done dabbled a little bit in sales operations and training for sure. But my passion, as it's developed over the years, has been really around technology and specifically, technology for the staffing and professional services industries. And that really has been the impetus for Regents as well. Regents has been in business now for going on 12 years. And we are founded by a group of individuals that have been in the industry for our entire career. Some of them like myself on the business side of things. Others having serviced the industry their entire career. But all of us with a passion for bringing technology and digital transformation to the staffing industry and to our customers and clients. So we're a full service systems integrator and happy to announce that we are also now a product company. We're launching a new product called Monarch Middle Office. So we now have both staffing services and products.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Wow, how exciting. Not only you have the team to walk a mile in the shoes, now you have the product to go with that. And I believe you launched that at Executive Forum, correct?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yes, we did. We had our big launch party.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
How very exciting. Very cool. Now as we listen to, I love hearing this conversation. Obviously digital transformation is a buzzword, we've not only heard this year but previous years, and it just seems to continue to be morphing. So how does someone in our industry stop and say, "You know what, Holly, I need your help." Some people are like, "I don't know what I don't know," or, "I don't know when to pull the trigger." Is there an ideal client size once they hit a certain growth in revenue, number of technologies, maybe there's too many to count. Where do you find is the point that the hand goes up to say, "Holly, I need your guidance and Regents' guidance for my next steps?"

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Next steps? That's a great question. I mean, I think in general our clients are driven and our customers are less kind of size oriented, and more kind of where they are in their journey. And we are a full end-to-end SI. So we have our customers engaged with us all the way from, "Hey, I know I have a problem I need to solve. But I don't know exactly how to solve that." All the way to, "I've selected a product. I know what I'm doing. I need to implement that." And everywhere in between.

In terms of guidance, I would say it's never too early to engage with a firm or with someone that can help support you. I think there's kind of a misnomer in this space that you can't afford external support or external services until you reach a certain size. And I think that the really important aspect of that I would say is find a partner or a vendor that can right size really what you are trying, based on what you're trying to accomplish, the level of support that you need to help guide you through the journey, whatever that digital transformation journey is.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
What I heard you just say is you may not have a technology picked out, you can just say, "Hey, I know I need to move a direction." And you can help them move through that process even before picking.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yes, absolutely. And honestly, I think that's maybe one of the best ways to uncomplicate this idea of digital transformation. It really should fundamentally come back to your business and solving business problems. So in that business owners know very well who are they today, what are they trying to become, and then what tools do I need to enable me on that journey to get there.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
And there are a lot of people right now that are working through their technology roadmaps as we have all these AI, all these additional pieces that are coming into our industry itself. So I can only imagine that there are more and more people coming to people like you to say I need-

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Absolutely. And it can be. One of the great things about our industry now is there's so much new technology. There was a time, and certainly I was in the industry at that time where there just weren't that many choices. There wasn't that much investment in tech. And that landscape has completely changed over the last decade. And that's the great news. The flip side of that is just how to make sense of it all.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
And that's a challenge in itself. So in your experience, this is one of my favorite questions at this point, what your experience is. What are some common mistakes that companies make when they integrate technology solutions? I'm sure there's a lessons learned. You probably have a book about this, but what are the top three that you've kind of come across that are just the common mistakes?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Great question and a good way for companies to ground themselves as they start on their journey. The first one I would say is just a lack of clarity about the journey. And understanding the journey that you're embarking on requires you to know two things. You need to know where you are today and really have a good understanding of that. An honest assessment of where are we? Who are we today? And where are we going? Who do we want to become? If you don't have clarity around those things, you miss out on the opportunity to really be thoughtful and intentional in what technologies you're selecting, and how you're implementing those technologies in order to help you on that journey. The technology really should be an enabler. It shouldn't be the thing. It's the thing that helps you achieve your outcomes in your objective. So I would say number one would be just a lack of clarity about what is it I'm trying to achieve? What is it I'm trying to accomplish?

I think the other big thing that I see the next two probably have to do with change management. And so not necessarily about the tech itself. But one is not having those business champions inside of your organization who are willing, ready, able to lead that change. And change is hard. It's a misnomer to think that technology is a snap your fingers kind of thing, and I'm in a better place. It's still change and change is still hard. So having folks that are willing and able to do that. Some people are and some aren't. So having folks in your organization that are comfortable with taking risks, that are willing to sort of challenge the status quo just because we're doing it today, is that really the way we should be doing it tomorrow? And that willingness to embrace the uncertainty that goes along with change.

So I think having those internal to your organization is key to the success because they will drive the adoption within the organization. And then the last thing I would say probably is the expectation that technology's going to fix your problems. It's easy to think it's not, it is not. In fact, and I'm sure I'm telling you something that you already know. In fact, I think we may have talked about this before. A lot of times these technology implementations and technology will actually shine a light on where you have challenges within your organization that you need to overcome. So I think having a realistic expectation up front about what technology can and cannot do within your organization is key in order to have a successful implementation.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
I love it. And you really talked about something that we always talk about in our show, is really the foundational processes. It really comes down to, yeah, where do you want to go? But do you know where you are today? Do you know what processes get you there? Do you know what drives the metrics that you are seeing in your systems? Do you know all the ins and the outs, and the root causes behind all of these things? Change management was something that we actually covered just a few episodes ago too. And I've personally seen so many offices that are like, "Yeah, we're going to make this change." And people hate surprises. I mean it's like, "Oh, we're doing this for the better. You've got to understand this is where we're going. This is good." But some of our teams don't understand the why behind it. They just see a change, they see a pivot, they don't understand the nuance behind the push of where we're going.

And it's really something when you get your teams involved, the buy-in changes drastically from where you are and what your mission is, to the success of those outcomes whenever you involve your team. So I've seen a lot of those things go really well by including leaders of teams, or peer mentorship programs, or other things to really ensure that technology implementation goes well.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more on that, Kortney. I think that's really critical to the success of any project. And you mentioned kind of them understanding the why of the change. Ideally, you've engaged them early enough that they're a part of defining the why. And so it's not something that's happening to them or something that's happening for them. It's something that they are helping to define and articulate in terms of what the outcome is that they want to achieve.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Yeah, those are the people that are using your systems day in and day out. You want to make sure that they can express their feelings behind that because they're just going to get a better end result.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Absolutely.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
We talked about the common mistakes. So think about when selecting technology solutions for a company. What do you consider to be the most important factors?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Also a great one. I think again, not losing sight of what problem it is you're trying to solve or what outcome it is you're trying to achieve is really important. We all, as human beings, have a tendency to have the shiny object syndrome. Something new, something exciting, something that there's a lot of buzz about. But if we don't stop and pause to ask ourselves why we are doing this or how we are actually going to use this technology, what problem it is we're trying to solve, it's going to be difficult to understand, or quantify, or measure whether or not we've been successful in achieving it. So I would say a big part of the technology selection really, again, doesn't have to do necessarily with the technology, but understanding clearly what problem you're trying to solve. One of the other things I would think is an easy pitfall that we see folks fall into is, it's easy to focus on the features. But I would say it's very important in selecting a technology to focus on the capabilities as well, which are not the same things.

It's the capabilities are what allows you really to grow scale, be with that technology solution over the long term. The features and functions are the bells, and the whistles, and the fancy stuff that's been enabled by the product company. And it tends to be the sexy stuff. It's the stuff that everybody gets excited about. But foundationally, your technology solution really needs to work for your business and enable you and empower you, the end user, to be able to have that technology be flexible enough, configurable enough for you to be able to change those features and functions as you grow as an organization. So I would say don't forget about that. It's like buying a car and not looking under the hood at the engine or the transmission. That's not the sexy stuff. It's all the lights and displays in front of you when you sit in the driver's seat.

But that stuff is really, really important in your technology selection. And then I would say as well, make sure the vendor fits within your organization. I've talked about this a little bit when we were talking at SIA about what to automate and when. I think that it's easy to forget that you are forming a relationship with a vendor when you select a product. And you need to make sure that vendor fits within your values, within where you're headed as a company. Does their roadmap align to you? Do you know that if you pick up the phone and call them for support that they're going to be there? So paying attention to, I think, the vendor in addition to the technology.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
That's great advice. And I love the car analogy because you're right, we all want the bells and whistles. The bells and whistles are what got us sold by some snappy commercial or some ringing tune, that we're going to listen to. But it's the point that so many of our technologies that we have, we don't even use to the full capabilities. Or we're adding something else when in reality we might have something right in front of us that already does one of those features. And instead of spending more, we can be more efficient, have better analytics in our organization. So I love the car analogy. So thank you for sharing that with us. It's an ever-changing landscape where we are today. How do you stay up to date on the latest trends and developments in technology? I feel like every day it's like Lauren Jones does her technology Tuesdays. There's so much out there. And I think it's sorting through like what's good, what's bad? How do you stay [inaudible 00:14:47]?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
That's a great question too. I love Lauren. She's one of my good friends. And she's certainly one of the avenues folks like her that really love the technology and have the ability, she has a gift to be able to translate that to be the interpreter of that. So having access to resources that will help you understand the technology, folks like Lauren, and people like that are great. I am a big reader, so I tend to get consume a lot of information by reading books, reading articles. It's kind of the way that I learn. But I find that it gives me a little bit more of a focused view on a particular subject. A lot of what we see coming at us now is in sound bites, and it makes it a little hard to consume and digest. So I find sometimes that reading gives me the perspective to be able to just focus on a particular problem I'm trying to solve or technology solution I'm trying to understand.

And I think certainly organizations within the industry, there are numerous organizations who are here really to provide those services to the industry and avail yourself of those tools. SIA, ASA, there's tons of organizations out that are there that are really designed to help provide those kinds of services to the industries and be available to you. So avail yourself of those opportunities wherever you can.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
That is so true. They have amazing resources that provide information. I love obviously, other networking like Lauren and those people that they're there to break it down for you in a way that you need to hear it. Sometimes as you're running your staffing business or your recruiting business, you're not the IT person. You're not hearing the same lingo or saying, "How does that apply to my business?" So being able to lean on the people that do that the best is probably the smartest way to go about that.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yeah.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
What advice would you give to companies looking to adopt a new technology solution?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Again, I would say that setting realistic expectations is probably one of the biggest pieces of advice that I would say. I mentioned this a little bit earlier when we were chatting. But digital transformation is a buzzword, as you said. It's big in this space now. But transformation is change on steroids. And no change is something that's seamless and you go through it without any kind of bumps along the way. So I would say setting realistic expectations on what the process is going to look like. And I think there's a direct correlation and understanding the organization, I think well enough to know at what rate can you consume that change? Can I sustain a full big bang implementation of a product? Or is that too much for my organization to consume? I think that's probably important in adoption as well.

And then I'd say seeking outside perspectives. I think that's a really important component of making your way through any kind of change. The vendors that you select have interesting perspectives to share with you. They have been inside of multiple customers. They can give you a different perspective on how other people within your space are doing the same things, are tackling these challenges and these problems. And they can challenge you to think a little bit differently in the process as well, that I think can help you from an adoption perspective to not sort of recreate your current state when you're trying to transform.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
And honestly, you said something that I hear a lot of offices talk about. We've had some people come over to Crelate and then talking with them. It's like, well, I would've never been able to do this last year because last year was so busy. So with the market shift, we've been able to slow down. We've been able to train our people for the adoption that they need for the technology and use it the right way, because otherwise we wouldn't have had the resources to do it prior to. We wouldn't have had the speed in order to make sure our teams are even using it the right way. And we may have been in the same predicament we were in just a year or three years ago.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yeah, absolutely. Very, very true.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
How do you ensure that technology implementations are aligned with a company's business goals? You talked about that, where they are, where they want to go. I guess that's not necessarily something I think that people stop to think is it even important? But how do you ensure that those are aligned?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Again, I think this sounds pretty basic and it sounds self-explanatory. But really know your goals, and be able to articulate those and be specific about them. Everybody's got a goal to grow.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
And scale.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Right. Grow and scale. Be more specific. Be as specific as you can and make sure that knowledge around what your goals are is really shared throughout your organization so that everybody understands that and understands and is driving the bus in the same direction. Being conscious and intentional, I think that enables you to be conscious and intentional throughout the process. If you have that, that's sort of your North Star. And if you're constantly coming back to that in the process, I think that will help you to ensure that you're successful and it's aligned to your goals. And then to the extent that you can, I would say for sure, this is kind of where you are and where you want to go. Understand how you're measuring that today, and then understand how you are going to measure success from an outcomes perspective once you achieve where you're headed. So being able to document that, being able to have metrics, clear metrics behind that so you can actually see, did I actually accomplish it?

Kortney Harmon, Host:
You actually pulled me right into my next question. I was going to say something, but I want to go right into that. People look at something and say, okay, was this successful? How do you measure success of a technology implementation project?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. And you asked me earlier about common mistakes. I think that that's maybe one of those as well, is that people skip over that, how are we going to measure success? And so then you get to the end of the project and you're sort of going, "Well, were we successful? I don't know." I think you hit on one of them with the previous question, which is, does it achieve my objectives? And knowing those is very important and measuring those is very important. And there's various ways you measure that. There are KPIs that are things like, have I reduced my time to fill? Those kinds of very specific things where you're looking at how long did it take me to do X? How long does it take me to produce a paycheck or to enter a time card or all of those things.

There's also questions of adoption that are important to be asking yourself and measuring as part of this process. Are the users using it? We've implemented X, Y, and Z, and there are ways to measure that. And your vendors should be able to help you with that. How do I measure? How often are they logging in? What pages are they accessing? Are we actually using what we've implemented? And I think a big thing that we hear about today, and certainly AI plays a role in this as well and will in the future, is what is the user experience? Are we creating a better experience? So yes, they may be using it, but are they having a good experience in that process? And you want that experience to be as frictionless as possible, and you want to take advantage of every opportunity to improve that. So I would say looking at specific KPIs, what is your adoption, and then what is the experience of the people who are interacting with it?

Kortney Harmon, Host:
It's funny, in the talent industry, we always look what is our client's experience with the software? Whether it's your client portal, whatever they're experiencing the interactions with us, but what is your talent experiencing? But do we ever sit and look so frequently about our own internal teams? What is their experience using the software we have in place?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yes, absolutely. I completely agree with that. And that is a key stakeholder that I think gets missed sometimes in this process. And as you said then, has a domino effect from an adoption perspective, from a change management perspective. If you're not thinking about those people that are using the system every day and engaging with it.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
And long term, that can affect your retention too. Learning and development is obviously my passion. But as you get into that, it's employee engagement, it's retention, it's basics 101 whenever you think about those foundational operational-

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yeah, and I think you done a great thing there that we talked about earlier, which is the technology really shouldn't be that thing. It's enabling your people to do their jobs better, more efficiently. And so I think making sure that they're along in the journey is really, really important.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
You mentioned AI and we can't get through a conversation with without AI. Whenever you think of AI, what do you see the future of AI and automation being in the staffing industry?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yeah, that one's been an interesting one. Certainly was a buzzword at SIA, lots of talk about AI, ChatGPT, all of these new tools that are out there in the space. Near term where we're seeing companies utilize AI is in areas like engagement, being able to keep that connection where we may have drop off with candidates, and recruiting plot process, and things like that. So from an engagement perspective, I think seeding up time to fill and the recruitment life cycle is another area where we're seeing AI and automation, sourcing, and matching, and those kinds of things where we have opportunity to really accelerate the process. One of the areas as well as back office automation, it's one that doesn't tend to get as much focus. But it is an area where we are seeing the use of RPA and things like that to automate manual processes like entry of invoices, or time entry, or loading of time files from external sources. So those are all areas where we see that being used today.

And so near term, I think removing some of those lower value tasks, redundant repetitive tasks. And I think certainly things that help you accelerate your recruitment life cycle are all places where AI can be useful and beneficial to you as an organization. Long term, it's interesting to think about. It's a little bit like the matrix to me sometimes. When I think about it, I'm reading an interesting book right now that that is about AI and automation that talks about achieving hyper automation. And really what that is it's a combination, what the author says, it's a combination of conversational AI, what they call composable architecture and no code application architecture. So the composable architecture is really, if you think about it, it's like LinkedIn logs. An architecture that gives you the pieces, but allows you to arrange it in whatever way makes sense for you, using a common method of communication.

What the promise is of hyper automation is that ultimately, we can have a conversation with a computer and tell them what we want to do. And that can be translated in a matter of days or weeks into an output as opposed to months or years, which is the current cycle. Achieving that level of hyper automation is an interesting and exciting prospect. I think we're still ways away from that. I mean, there's lots of stories out there and news articles, as you know, about some of the pitfalls of the use of some of these tools. They're still in their infancy. But I think hyper automation to me kind of gives the promise of the end user really ultimately, having the potential to be the change instead of being impacted by the change. I, as the end user, might in the future be able to say, just in a conversation, not having to know code, not having to know how to translate something into a set of business requirements. This is what I want to accomplish, and have that translated into an output for me. That's a pretty neat prospect.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
It's amazing to think where we could be in three, five years from now. I mean, just even ChatGPT launching earlier last year to where it is today. Everybody has fun with it to write haikus, and raps, or whatever. But it's really truly amazing how quickly it's learning your language output and the change of that. Okay, so what's the name of the book?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Oh, yeah. It's called The Age of Invisible Machines.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Age of Invisible Machines.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
By Robb Wilson. It's an interesting read. I'm enjoying it so far. But it is a little bit sit back and prepare yourself for the matrix, because you do have to think way down the road in the future.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Very interesting, and I'm going to put it on my list to read. Thanks for that. And you're right, what we're seeing today, I think the stuff that is more real for us in our industry today is taking those mundane tasks. We always get that term AI and automation. Some offices, they're interchangeable. It's like, "Well, we're doing this." Well, in reality, it's replacing some mundane tasks to get your people on the phone more, to increase your time to fill, whatever that looks like. But in reality, it's doing a portion of tasks for you. So I love that,.and I think we're just going to continue to see more of that. But hopefully, I think as I see or in the industry, we can't lose that human element either, because that's where we continue to gain our key accounts or have those good relationships. So hopefully, that still stays a part of our equation.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
I agree. And I think that's where the work do around training is so, so important in this process. Because I agree with you, we've always been a people-centered industry. I don't see that ever completely going away. But helping bring people along in the journey to understand how their role may change, how their job may change, up-skilling them, helping them to understand what their job of the future might look like, and helping them to see the benefit of that is critical.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Yeah, ideally, we're not replacing anybody. We're helping people do things at scale and do things faster.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
And actually on the panel that I was on an SIA, they talked about that. They have a poll and they said, how many of you plan to use automation to reduce headcount? And the vast majority said they were not intending, they were not implementing automation for the purpose of reducing headcount. It was to improve efficiencies and to be able to, like you said, leverage their resources on more high value tasks.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
That's such good insight, and I think that's reassuring to a lot of people in our industry.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Absolutely.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
I think I only have two more questions for you, Holly. I think the first one I have is how do you manage stakeholder expectations during technology implementation projects?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Again, I will say some of this seems simple. But it is a step that often gets missed in really documenting it really thoughtfully thinking through it. One is making sure all of your stakeholders. Making sure you have the inventory. It sounds obvious, but I can tell you, I can't tell you how many times I've been on a project where we've had to revisit a decision because we didn't have the right people in the room when we were having the discussion. Really understanding all of your stakeholders. And like you said, make sure you're thinking of everybody. We have a tendency as a service people focused industry, to look externally and to look at our clients, to look at our candidates, to look at our vendors and their experience with us. But don't forget about the folks internally as well who are going to have to interface with the technology.

And then I'd say communication is regular and frequent communication. And I would say one of the key elements of this, there's a tendency to think of communication as one directional on a project, which is, "I'm going to share with you every once in a while. Here's where we are and here's going on." And that's important too. But I think providing a communication structure that has a feedback loop is really important. Where the stakeholders have the ability to provide feedback back to you is really important. Particularly when you're undergoing a change, everybody wants that helps the stakeholders to feel like they have some control over that change to be able to have input into it. So I think having that feedback cycle is really important.

And the other biggest thing I would say is having a decision making process that helps everybody to understand how that stakeholder input is ingested and how decisions are made based on that. Because oftentimes what you're dealing with is competing stakeholder expectations. "I want to do this. I want to do this." How do we reconcile those two and making sure you have a good process within your project to ensure that you are decisioning those things in a manner that manages those expectations, and then are communicating that back to your stakeholders as well.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
That's really interesting. That's something people don't often think about or even determine how those decisions are made. Sometimes we all get in a room and then it's like, "No, I like this. No, I like this." Are we at a standstill? Are we at a draw? Or who trumps who? It's really the ideas that... People have the best intentions whenever we get into change. But I love the communication, understanding the why, so you get more investment. And really giving that open feedback loop is something that probably is a guess that I don't think that probably happens as frequently as it should.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
I completely agree. I think there's a hesitance. What I've seen in our industry is there's a reticence to get the business. Recruiters and salespeople involved in the process too much because there's a perception that we're taking them away from revenue generating activities, and we don't want to do that. And there is a too much on that as well. But it's sort of, pay me now or pay me later. If you don't sort of take them into the process early, now you're going to pay for that on the back end. So I would say don't be afraid as well to engage with the people, the recruiters and the salespeople within your organization that are going to be fundamental to adopting the change. Make sure they're a part of that journey.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
That's great, great insights. All right. The last question I have for you, Holly, I just kind of threw this in as a bonus for the fact that you were talking about the SIA panel and executive forum. And you were on one of the conversations and it was what to automate and when. So for those who missed it, can you maybe give us your top three things to automate as oftentimes, we look at this big picture item to say, "Oh my gosh, I need to do all of these things." And in reality, we need to eat the elephant one bite at a time. We need to start small or we need to start with certain processes. Any insight from that panel that you were on or any of your own personal thoughts of where do they start in the automation?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
I think that's a great question, and I think it's less about a specific technology and more about where can you achieve the highest value, the fastest? Where can you really achieve your highest value and how can you do that quickly? In some cases, it's going to be automating a backend process. In some cases it's going to be automating something upfront. But it's based on where your organization sits today and what you can quickly achieve that will give you the highest value. I'd say that's definitely a priority in what to automate and when. I would also say making sure that you are considering your rate of change, how quickly you can consume the change. It should inform what you're automating. If you're looking at a massive ERP overhaul, that's a big bite of the elephant. Are you prepared to take that now? Or are there ways that you can do that in smaller chunks that get you there along that journey, but with smaller bites at the apple, so to speak.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
As we get into this and it's such this big picture, it's almost paralyzing to be like, what?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, don't forget the fundamentals. It's just like building a house. I mean, do I have a good solid ATS? Do I have a good timekeeping system? Do I have a good tool for getting customers their invoices on time and get paid on? I mean, it's make sure that those fundamentals, the foundation of your house is built. And then you can layer the other pieces on top of it as well.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
It's good to have your own roadmap internally for technologies to say, what do you want to adopt when, so you can stagger those changes. And as we talk about that, oftentimes we get to the point where we're like, "Okay, let's add this technology." Do you have any line of sight and advice for people to say, all right, how often do you revisit those to say, are they working out to my benefit? We talked about assessing those technologies to say was it successful? But oftentimes we check the box. It was successful in the beginning and then we just keep going with the horse of blinders. Do you ever have any advice to say, revisit these annually, quarterly? Or at least have line of sight? Do you have any suggestions for people that are had implemented something new and they haven't revisited it?

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yeah, I would for sure say revisit it as frequently as you can. I think again, the most important thing to me would be building. It's really this mindset of building into your culture, this mindset of continuous improvement. If you can build that into your organization, into your technology organization, and build processes around that, that will create that cycle of how are we doing? What do we need to change? How do we prioritize that change? How do we implement it? And then cycle through it again. How did we do? What did we learn? How do we do better? I think that incorporating that iterative life cycle into your processes and into your technology organization will help, I think, give you the structure to be revisiting those things consistently and making improvements along the way.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
It's a part of the culture. It's just like a learning culture. It's a change culture. It's whatever you need it to be, but consistency is key.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
Yes, absolutely. I mean, it sounds cliche, but the only thing constant is change. So having a process that enables you to lead the change, implement the change, and then learn from the change, and iterate on that is going to position you for success.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Holly, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you for your valuable insights on digital transformation technology integration with us today. I know some of these are high level, but at least it can hopefully give our audience a steering of where to go, what to keep in mind as they create their own technology.

Holly Cohoon, Guest:
I had a great time. Thank you very much for having me. Enjoyed the conversation as well. I love to talk about this stuff. So appreciate it.

Kortney Harmon, Host:
Thank you. And as for our audience, operation managers, leaders, and the staffing and recruiting industry, it's important to keep in mind the importance of a strong foundation as well as a well-defined process before implementing new technologies for increased efficiencies in scale. Holly highlighted some common mistakes to avoid, and key factors to consider when selecting technology solutions for your organization. It's also crucial to stay up-to-date on trends, and developments, and technologies to remain competitive in this evolving industry. Most importantly, don't forget to ensure long-term success. It's important to choose that purpose-built solution as the foundation of your technology stack to build off of.

So I hope this conversation with Holly has provided you insights, actionable items, and continued to lead your charge towards success in the upcoming year. Thank you so much for joining us today. Stay tuned. This month is a busy month for us. Keep an eye out for our next live event on April 11th as we talk about how to get yourself off the KPI hamster wheel. Also dropping another workshop on auditing your tech stack on April 13th. So lots of goodies to come this month. Be on the lookout. Thanks so much for listening to The Industry Spotlight.

I'm Kortney Harmon with Crelate. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Industry Spotlight. A new series from the Full Desk Experience. New episodes will be dropping monthly. Be sure you're subscribe to our podcast so you can catch the next Industry Spotlight episode. And all episodes of the Full Desk Experience here, or wherever you listen.