Build What’s Next: Digital Product Perspectives

Navigating Change: Biometrics, Data, and Customer Experience at Airports

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In this engaging episode, Jason Rome chats with Paul Puopolo, Head of Data Analytics and Innovation at DFW Airport, to explore the cutting-edge technologies shaping the future of air travel. They delve into the intricacies of biometrics, facial recognition, and the delicate balance between enhancing convenience and respecting data privacy.

Paul sheds light on the complexities of coordinating innovation across multiple entities, including airlines and the TSA, and how these interconnected brands impact the passenger experience. They discuss how innovation projects are managed within an operational environment and the importance of planning for the long term, not just the immediate future.

The conversation also covers AI/ML applications within the airport, the essential role of communication and change management in technology rollouts, and the kind of talent needed to drive successful innovation. They address the challenges of testing new technology in a public space and how to ensure that innovations truly benefit the customer experience.

Tune in to get an insider’s perspective on the forces driving transformation in the world of air travel!


Josh Lucas:

You are listening to Method's Build what's Next digital product perspectives presented by Global Logic. At Method, we aim to bridge the gap between technology and humanity for a more seamless digital future. Join us as we uncover insights, best practices and cutting-edge technologies with top industry leaders that can help you and your organization craft better digital products and experiences.

Jason Rome:

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Build what's Next? Jason Rome here. I'm here with Paul Popolo today, who is the head of data analytics and innovation at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. First, on biometrics since you also own data, you own analytics and innovation. I think there's an interest confluence here. One of the things with digital transformation that I've always believed is that content, communication and change management are the three forgotten heroes of any transformation.

Jason Rome:

They're generally not the fun part Rolling out biometrics, data privacy who owns what data? You know there's different regulations. You know whether you're in Dallas or California or Europe. I'm curious just the change of rolling out biometrics. Have people generally accepted it? Has there been any kind of backlash that you've seen where people were uncomfortable with the facial recognition at all?

Paul Puopolo:

You know, I think there's always going to be people who aren't comfortable with it. So, for example, when it's open to the public, when it's a public-facing technology, we have to have multiple options. So, yes, there's the facial technology. If you want to go quickly through TSA PreCheck and if you don't want to share, you know, use your face with the TSA, then you can go through another line and then you can do the typical boarding pass, you know, show them your ID kind of process. So we have to have we do have to have multiple ways because you have to have, people have to be comfortable sharing what they want to share. But when you look at facial recognition, as far as employees go, that's a whole different story because there's background checks that have already been done. We know you're working there, we have this information from you already because you're working at the airport. So that's a little bit different with employees, a little bit easier for us to leverage because you've already gone through the process.

Jason Rome:

Yeah, and it's interesting too, even biometrics on mobile apps is almost a must-have these days, right, and I've heard in some places where people find web experiences inconvenient because of multi you know, multi-factor authentication, of having to get a text or your you know OTP and like go in versus like mobile, and so, you know, it does seem like one of those things where you know and and you know I feel like we have as a society, like data and data privacy is it's a very individual thing, like we don't have a good grasp around like what data privacy means sometimes, but very individual thing, like we don't have a good grasp around like what data privacy means sometimes.

Jason Rome:

But you know, we all love convenience over time, and one of the one of my favorite things I ever read about CX is that there's capital P preference and lowercase P preference and a lot of people think you know, oh, some people prefer the phone or they prefer digital, as people prefer what's fast, what's going to get them the best deal, what's going to get them the best deal, what's the lowest risk, and that's the cattle preference is their perceived preference for ease, and so like something with biometric, like if I don't have to get my wallet out.

Jason Rome:

Is that really going to overcome some sensitivity about you taking a picture of my face as I go through the airport? It is an interesting CX thing, though, because I flew international here recently and I was behind a family with a young child and you know them trying with all their bags, moms carrying a kid, and you know, trying to get the camera to take the picture, and it keeps taking the kid's picture and it's like not recognizing the kid and they can't move the kid's face out of the way to like get all the pictures taken. So it is a fun CX challenge and every five seconds the camera's like please step up, step back, step back. Just some of how the technology works. Then you put it in a busy place full of faces and let it run wild.

Jason Rome:

I can imagine some of the challenges on that.

Paul Puopolo:

Yeah, and I think you mentioned that there's got to be value.

Josh Lucas:

If.

Paul Puopolo:

I'm getting value out of it, then I'm willing to share something if I think it's worth it to me, if I'm going to get value from it. So that's why you have to make sure you meet everybody where they are. The other point is certain aspects of that process are not controlled by the airport. So, for example, the TSA checkpoint is the federal government's checkpoint, so their rules and what they do when you get on an international flight, that's customs and border patrol. They're the ones who say that they need a facial validation of you before you get on the plane.

Paul Puopolo:

The rest of it is more of the airport. So you might have a relationship with the airline where you shared something with the airline app, but only the airline knows that you shared that with them. That was your relationship with the airline. We don't get that information when you get to the airport. So that's the good and the bad of the process is that there's little pieces of the process and there's different people who are managing that process, and there's good reasons why it's separate and it's really just to protect you as the customer, where your information is and who you're having that relationship with during any piece of that journey.

Jason Rome:

So I'm curious with this with all the research you guys have done, you have all these intersecting brands right and so you know, for you guys as the airport, do you guys get the blame of like hey, we don't control that, that was your airline Like, and you know, do you guys get like oh, you know I hate the airport because of a bad experience with the airline or with customs.

Jason Rome:

Or is it more like you guys are able to like skate by and people take stuff that's actually you and they blame it on the airline instead, like where does that like brand halo kind of end up sitting? I'm really curious about that, you know it.

Paul Puopolo:

That's funny, I think you know, look, we're all in it together. Yeah, we're all in it together. We're all trying to make the, the passenger experience the best it can be. I think people are pretty realistic. I think they realize that if the flight's delayed, you know, or in late, that the airline was on that. Dirty bathrooms though, that's us. If you don't like the bathroom, that's probably us. If the security wait time is long, then there's probably a lot of reasons behind that.

Paul Puopolo:

But that's where we can say well, how can we help TSA manage that line? And that's where the IoT comes in and us working with them on predictive models so that we can staff differently. So there are ways at the airport and the airlines and our government partners. We can all work together to make it better. But I think most people know where to draw the line. They don't necessarily blame the airport if their bag gets lost, but we now have to help that passenger adjust. So it's our job and it's probably our people that we're out there. Okay, what can we do? How can we help you? You know, let's help you. Try to navigate the process.

Jason Rome:

Yeah Well, and it's interesting too because you know it's not like people have a ton of choices. You know the choice for me is you know, I go to the Charlotte airport, I drive all the way to Greensboro or Raleigh or Greenville and I'm going to have to take two hops to get anywhere, kind of thing. So it is one of those interesting relationship things. Since we opened the door, actually I wanted to hit again there on kind of partnering with the federal government, and so you know you have a risk averse airport. I assume that the federal government and TSA is fairly risk-averse.

Paul Puopolo:

I'm probably fair to say, pretty much Probably fair. That's a fair statement.

Jason Rome:

And then you know, I think airlines, you know also, you know, aren't necessarily they're not taking a lot of risk either. And so you know, when you have multiple risk-averse groups trying to innovate, like what's the the rhythm of business of, like, how often are you talking to the TSA? You know you mentioned, hey, they're bringing innovations, and you're like, hey, you know we want to be first on the list, but just like, what does that cadence look like between between those two groups? And you know you mentioned communication is really important. Like, take me a step further of, is it every month, is it a quarterly? Is it a year? Like what are? But every month, is it a quarter? Is it a year? What do those conversations look like? Open the door to that.

Paul Puopolo:

Yeah, operationally, there's meetings all the time, right. So operationally, we meet with the airlines and the operations team or whoever. Every two weeks there's a meeting with the airline. On the innovation side, we meet with our peers, let's say, for example, the American Airlines. Every month we have a one-hour meeting just to catch up. What are they doing? What are they looking at? Is there anything that we can do together? Are we tackling something?

Paul Puopolo:

Let's say together, tsa, there's obviously operational meetings that they work with the terminal folks all the time. There's constant communication. But there's also quarterly updates, let's say with the TSA's innovation group that we attend. We attend those meetings. Those are broad, all-airport TSA meetings and that's where we learn what they're trying to do. And then there's always a follow-up, right. So then it's like, oh great, they might say, hey, we're going to test this new technology out and we're exploring this. Then we would try to call up and say, hey, can we get involved in that pilot or that test? So there's formal meetings that happen regularly and then there's the follow-ups that happen based on a very specific project.

Jason Rome:

Yeah, and kind of with that, with with all these partners you know you mentioned earlier.

Jason Rome:

You know you guys are the function of innovation, which I really like the way you put that in innovations everyone's job but you know it is a back and forth sometimes is like you know where, sometimes, when innovations everyone's job, it can become no one's job sometimes. And, and you know, formalizing the function you guys have all these partners, you know that's a lot of communication, that's a lot of orchestration. Like how often are you guys seeing like two or three different groups trying to solve the same problem? You know, have you guys been able to iron a lot of that out? And like you know when, when there is or or if there was friction before, like you know what were kind of the lessons learned that people could take away, where, if you have a lot of groups that are, they've got a lot of innovation, energy and like like kind of dividing that up and like building it into a streamlined process, which it seems like you guys have. Like what are the lessons learned from that?

Paul Puopolo:

yeah, I think it's it's. It's definitely a lot of like I already said, a lot of communication, um. But that's where you have to have really good relationships. Let's say with it um, because they can see projects across the enterprise and, look, we don't fault the business. Everybody wants to solve their problems. Everybody wants to go out and solve what they have to solve and sometimes they're not thinking enterprise-wide. So that's why I'm a big believer in innovation groups, dedicated innovation groups. I don't care if you call it research and development, you can call it product development, you can call it strategy, or I don't care if you call it research and development, you can call it product development, you can call it strategy.

Paul Puopolo:

Whatever group is assigned to a company, somebody has to look across the organization, because business tends to want to solve their problem, because that's what they're getting measured on and that's where their pain point is. Whether that is good for everybody, or whether that applies across, or whether we should scale it, that's sometimes not their immediate concern. So that's why I always think it's valuable to have other people who can look across and can say wait a second, there's two or three things going on here. Hey, we can make this better, we can figure out how to scale this. We can add a little bit more to that to make it a little bit more applicable and turn it into a platform versus just a single application. That's where I think that comes in and that's why I'm a big fan of that, but I don't fault the business for wanting to solve their stuff.

Paul Puopolo:

To your point about who yeah, everybody should participate in innovation. Everybody can do innovation in their own way, but somebody has to be accountable for it. And that's where we always have those debates about what is innovation and what does the innovation group do and why do you need a separate innovation group. Well, my argument after 17 years of doing this is that the business is fantastic, but they're looking at the next 12 to 18 months, if that, if that Sometimes they're not looking at two or three years down the road. So who?

Jason Rome:

is going to do that right.

Paul Puopolo:

And it could be your strategy group. It could be your VC group. Just depends on how your company is organized or what your culture is. We don't have a VC group because at the airport we don't VC, so we have an innovation group.

Paul Puopolo:

But it could very much easy be an R&D group at some other company, but somebody's got to be held accountable to look two, three or four years down the road, not from a strategy standpoint, but just to think about how do I use that, where's that tech going to be, how can I solve that problem? And we need to start testing it now, because in the airport business if you're going to do any kind of construction or any kind of build, that's a two or three year, four year process.

Jason Rome:

Yeah, and I think that's true of a lot of things that can be very underestimated, and I think that might open the door back into the AI conversation in a moment here. But that's a lot that your team's doing. How big is the team that you guys have?

Paul Puopolo:

Including me 12.

Jason Rome:

12,. Okay, so that's not a it's not small, that's not a huge team.

Paul Puopolo:

But it's not huge.

Jason Rome:

How do you Are people, is it multiple people on your team per project? Or do you kind of have a portfolio owner of someone owning multiple portfolios? Like, how do you end up kind of dividing and conquering, because that's 12 people to manage multiple airlines, to manage TSA, to manage large building projects, to, you know, manage 12 month long projects, like that's? You're running a pretty lean team there.

Paul Puopolo:

We are and so we kind are.

Paul Puopolo:

We try to stay in our lane. But the way the team is organized and there's different ways to do it. Some companies will do it one way, but I found the way we do it is we have a front-end team that does more of the ideation, the concept development, the business case, business proposals, the landscape analysis, kind of vetting the problem statement, the hypotheses, and then we have the project manager side who actually then, okay, we want to go to test with this, this is what we want to prove out, and we hand that over to more of the project managers and the project coordinators to go implement the test and measure that test against whatever the KPIs were. Because it's it's great If you can find somebody you can go from beginning to end, but typically it's people have a mindset for the front end which is fuzzy and gray and you're trying to figure things out and you're trying to do the analysis, and there are project managers who love just to get things done and execute and it's hard sometimes to find that person who can do both.

Paul Puopolo:

So it's easier for us to recruit people within those areas and then try to cross-train them. And to your point, sometimes we find someone who might be brilliant at or, like this is their niche. They've done three projects on, let's say, a particular technology. Well then we kind of keep going to them every time we see that technology come up, because they kind of know it and they've kind of done it at the airport. So there's a little bit of both. There's a front end team, there's the project management team with the implementation side, and then sometimes those folks become a little bit I don't want to say experts, but they become very familiar with something and so we kind of go back to them. So if you're working on AVs and we've done three tests with autonomous vehicles, you're probably going to get the fourth test for an autonomous vehicle because you've done it, you're familiar with the tech and you're familiar with what we did last time.

Jason Rome:

Yeah, and you kind of hit on this a little bit, but I was going to ask the ideal background for you guys because you know there's, you know, especially after COVID, right with digital and technology, it seems like for a minute the art of understanding physical space, physical experience, interaction, design, you know, went away a little bit. And so curious, like as you're looking for talent, how much is it like tech experts versus people that have worked in a industrial setting, have worked in physical space? Done physical space innovation, especially project managing a technology build and deployment of a mobile app, versus the installation of 5G where you're having to manage general contractors and work with that, I assume, is a pretty different skill set. So how have you built that talent versus found that talent?

Paul Puopolo:

Yeah, and when we do something as big of an implementation for 5G, we usually turn that over to our construction partners, who actually know how to install all that and our project manager would just maybe manage the particular pilot, but we don't do the physical installation.

Paul Puopolo:

Yeah, it's interesting. We tend to be tech-focused, because it's hard today not to be tech-focused or looking at digital solutions. So you're right, but we try to hire generalists. We're looking for people with the right attitude, with the right mindset, to be generalists around the innovation process, with a good knowledge of technology. And we have this debate every year like hey, do we really need somebody to be an be an expert in this tech? Well, it's hard to do because you don't really know if that tech is going to keep going. Or do we need to do that? So, having people who are flexible, adaptable, you know, sharp, um, willing to kind of be okay with the gray area, be okay to shift from one project to the next, those are the people we try to find, I know and and it's hard to do, but we find out that that's valuable. We have 1,900 airport experts in the airport, so you don't need 12 other airport experts, but our team learns a lot from the business.

Paul Puopolo:

But I'm not hiring airport experts. I'm hiring people who kind of get the process or understand technology, maybe with more of a consulting-type background, because they know how to deliver a pitch, that kind of stuff. It's been interesting. We actually had this debate with the executives about process improvement. Should the innovation team do more on the process improvement side versus the true innovation side? So we constantly have those discussions on how we can best leverage the team.

Jason Rome:

Yeah, we have a kind of unspoken value that my team talks a lot about, which is leaning into ambiguity, like the ability to just start breaking it into smaller pieces. And you know the range is a book I love that talks about you know, kind of the concept that specialists when in their 20s, generalists when in their 30s and beyond because they can kind of bring those different things together and and you know I've found that kind of what you described, you talked about learning is like the nice thing about a generalist especially a generalist who's got really strong systems thinking, critical thinking is they can generally always figure it out, no matter what it is. To be good enough to know where they're going to stop and be able to work with a specialist at that point is like the richness of that generalist. Now it's a tough hire. It sounds like you and I might compete for talent at some point, and so you know we'll have to agree not to do that.

Paul Puopolo:

Well, you know it's tough to find the right people and we've been pretty lucky with the team and who we have. One of the things that we recognize is that, yeah, you can come up with or look at all kinds of interesting technology or they say, think out of the box. But the thing that we've always focused on is but you got to implement inside it. And that's why you need really good project managers who get and they're flexible and they can be adaptable, but they know how to get it done inside the company. They know who to talk to, they know how to work with IT. They can go talk to this person on planning to go execute on that. They have to know how that works or you'll never get anything implemented. So, yeah, you can be really creative, but if you can't deliver it inside, we don't. You know, we don't win.

Jason Rome:

I couldn't agree more. I felt, like you know, during this whole like waterfall to agile transition that companies have been on, like, for some reason, pmos got unfairly associated with waterfall. And you know, people focused on Scrum Masters and release train engineers and not saying that those skillsets are valuable. You know people focused on Scrum Masters and release train engineers and not saying that those skills are valuable. But, like you know, I think there's just like a undervaluing of really good project management and I think a lot of organizations have tried to put that on product managers, which is not really their skill, and so I couldn't agree with you more. Because I say you know there's this whole art of what I call complex coordination, which is anytime you have more than two teams that have to work together to accomplish a goal. That is a skill. And you know, like the product management discipline, a lot of time is focused within your product ecosystem. You are connecting the business to engineering to get something done, but you usually have your span of control. That doesn't force you to work with three, four or five teams, and project management is that is, the orchestration of multiple teams, and it does feel like it was a little bit of a lost art there for a minute and got just like undervalued. But I'm seeing it across all sorts of organizations. Project management, program management like coming back in full force. Change management right now is like the is the big.

Jason Rome:

Project management, program management like coming back in full force. Change management right now is like the is is the big. You know we're we're seeing a ton more demand for change type of stuff where people have all this great technology that's nobody's using, um, and you know they haven't kind of adopted that and and and. So maybe that, maybe that's a question. So you mentioned project management like change management right, where some of it's in your employees and so you own the carrot and the stick and you mentioned kind of the facial recognition. But talk to me about change in an airport and getting people to adopt new stuff, especially, where is it my relationship with the DFW? Is it my relationship with American or Delta? I'd be curious your your thoughts on that.

Paul Puopolo:

Yeah, it's a. It's a. It's a great topic Change management. You can't underestimate change management, um, and there are people who are very skilled at it and I agree, you need those people somewhere yeah, you need them somewhere in the company or who can make sure it works. That is a challenge when you're introducing new technology, having that conversation with the business and walking through what's going to change, what's going to be different and why and what that value is. That's a skill. I'm not saying project managers can't do that. There's probably really great project managers who can, but that's also a separate skill set on how to navigate that.

Paul Puopolo:

I think where we try to head that off is in the beginning, when we're actually setting up the solution or whatever it is, and we're talking with the business. We're thinking about the user. What is this going to work? What else do we have to do to make sure that the person on the other end is going to use it? And you can say that, whether it's a digital twin, whether it's IoT and sensors If you put a great IoT sensor in and it's tracking all this data and information, but nobody's looking at the dashboard or looking at the alerts while you failed, and so you have to figure out will the users find this valuable? Is this going to make their day easier or more efficient? Can they see the value in it? And that, to your point, is change management and we try to head that out in the beginning around what the success criteria is.

Paul Puopolo:

But there is a process, particularly if you're going to scale it broadly. There's a lot of communication. That's a full-time role for that particular project rollout, to make sure everybody understands what's going on, versus just a pilot and a test and we proved it out. Now you've got to go scale it. That's a different conversation, which I agree. Change management is important. One thing I'll say about the project managers that I think is on the innovation side. Project management can get a bad rap because it's very PMI focused, depending on what you're going to do and statuses and green lights and Gantt charts, which is all good. But our project managers on the innovation side, they're making changes as they go. So even though we handed the test to them to go execute, it's never going to go exactly the way it's planned. So they're going to have to make changes, they're going to have to adjust. They're going to have to adjust. They're going to have to adjust to KPI. They're going to have to figure out how to get it done, versus just reporting out on a very specific development lifecycle.

Josh Lucas:

So you have to be a little bit.

Paul Puopolo:

You have to be a good project manager, but you also have to be flexible to know okay, I've got to adjust.

Josh Lucas:

I've got to fix this flexible to know.

Jason Rome:

Okay, I got to adjust, I got to fix this this isn't going the way I want, so I got to pivot it. Yeah, I heard the term. You're not looking for a project manager. That's going to be a weatherman, right? You don't want them just reporting on the weather, you want them on the street handing out umbrellas when it starts raining.

Josh Lucas:

That's kind of what you're looking for being in the work being a problem solver, not a problem reporter.

Jason Rome:

I couldn't agree more. And you hit on it with change. But you know thinking about change at the beginning. You know, even this week I'm talking to a client and we're planning a pretty big migration and a rollout strategy next May and you know September, when you and I are having this conversation I said, okay, when are we getting change management involved? I don't know how to roll it out. And so because I, okay, when are we getting change management involved? I don't know how to roll it out, because I don't want to get them involved in May.

Jason Rome:

I want them involved kind of now because so much of the experience design work we do and going out and talking to users, that's the same input a change manager needs as a designer or a product person needs. It's the same information you want to go talk to someone and find out like all right, what are they like, what are they not like, what's their preferences, what's their pains, how can I turn that story back to them? I think the same thing Change managers they have to test, they have to learn To your point around it being a skill I think people underestimate there is a certain amount of grinding you have to be willing to do as a change manager Writing emails, writing training documentation, curating that, going and sitting with people, watching people. It's a very detail-oriented role that I think it's underestimated the value of that.

Paul Puopolo:

And I think, whatever it is that you decide to roll out, nobody wants multiple apps on their phone. So if you're a frontline person and we just keep giving you apps, that's not a good experience for you. I can't give you 10 different dashboards to look at. Let's say so. Every time we do a solution, you have to think about, well, how is that going to be received by the frontline person who has to use it, and can I embed it in what they're already using? Can I build up like the platform idea? Can you build platforms that you can plug into? Because if I have to keep giving them separate widgets every time we come up with something, they're never going to go for it. It's going to be more problematic.

Jason Rome:

We're definitely intersecting your role as the head of analytics here With the head of innovation. We probably have a whole other podcast next time you're down on enterprise analytics. It's we probably have a whole nother podcast next time you're down on enterprise analytics, because it's something I've heard. You know a lot of data leaders I talk to. They're like we don't want to be the dashboard team anymore because we build dashboards and nobody looks at them ever again. No-transcript, that's just taken tickets and building dashboards and you look at them once and then you forget that we did this and it's not fun for that.

Jason Rome:

On data, we've flirted with it a couple of times. With AI, ml, I think we've touched on really interesting aspects because I think change is another key thing with AI and machine learning, making people feel comfortable with it. You and I talked a little bit earlier around who owns AI ML in an organization and kind of where it comes from, where it emerges from. With the innovation process and this teaming structure that you've described, I guess and I guess maybe it's easy, since you own data and AI and innovation so maybe you have a corner on the market here. But with the relationship with IT, like how have you had to change or not change the innovation process to allow for starting to do POCs and working with both kind of the analytical side of AI and machine learning, as well as gen AI, as that's kind of risen in popularity here on the most recent spike.

Paul Puopolo:

We'll say, yeah and look, we talk about it all the time and that's you know. Yeah, the benefit is I can see both sides. So I know what the data analytics team is doing and I know what the innovation team is doing. And the data analytics team and actually both teams have a very close relationship with IT, so you can kind of see what's happening. So it's easy to say, okay, don't do that, because this team has got that already and we're going to go explore it. So let's find out a different place to play.

Paul Puopolo:

I think the challenge is the use cases, and I think there's plenty of use cases out there where the data and analytics team can look at very specific tools AI tools to apply to a use case, but then the innovation team can look at a different use case and say, hey, we're seeing these AI tools, so let's go test these AI tools against this use case, because I don't think there's going to be one AI solution.

Paul Puopolo:

Let's say, whatever it might be that's going to be applied across the business. Using AI on security cameras is different than using AI on contracts, and so you're probably going to guessing. You're probably going to need different solutions to handle those. So there's plenty of use cases to test and, of course, it is right in the middle, because IT wants to make sure that we have the right security, the right cybersecurity, the right privacy all that stuff and that we're bringing stuff in that's going to be compatible with the rest of the systems that we have. So there's a lot of good things that can come together. You're right, there's definitely some coordination so that we don't duplicate, but there's plenty of things that we've got to figure out, particularly on the Gen AI side, and there's plenty of work that the data analytics team needs to do just so that you can use generative AI on our own data, and I think a lot of people forget how hard it is to do that.

Paul Puopolo:

You have to have good data to apply the Gen AI too, but we all agree that we want to turn that back over to business. But the business has to be able to trust that the data is clean, it's accurate and what they're getting is correct. So that's all the work that the data analytics team has to do.

Jason Rome:

It's really nice that you own both right, because, especially in the world of analytics right, where descriptive analytics versus diagnostic, versus prescriptive versus predictive If Power BI embeds a predictive analytic inside the tool, is it still really AIML?

Jason Rome:

Like you know, I guess so, but, like, the line between analytics, advanced analytics, machine learning, is pretty blurry and, again, a lot of that is being embedded in the platform already. And so you know, yeah, you can put AIML in front of it, but you know, yes, it's deploying with a tool, and so for you to be able to triage a use case and say, like no, I don't need a data scientist doing a POC on this, I can give it to my analytics team and it's. You know, it's not a crazy use case we need to spend a lot of money on. Because, you know, we do see that a lot, where someone's like you know, oh, I need an AI driven report, and I say, do you need an AI driven report or do you need a report? But let's parse that of like what's the question you're trying to answer? How dynamic is it? How can you?

Paul Puopolo:

do that and do you need this all the time. Is it every day that you need this? Is it every week that you need this?

Jason Rome:

well then, right now you're just talking about a report, and so it's cool that you're able to own that and I know we just teased that topic, which it's nice to talk. I feel like life's been probably very different for both of us recently on that topic.

Paul Puopolo:

Innovation's always a hot topic. These days, it is a hot topic. Some people still aren't embracing innovation, which is interesting.

Jason Rome:

No, I mean, I think you know it is interesting right, Because you know you talk about banking right, which had a huge wave of innovation and kind of the roles it played in the innovation labs and all that space, you know. And healthcare, obviously, which kind of goes up and down and doesn't necessarily have the same financials and, like, the people who have the ability to innovate in health care, is it the actual providers versus, is it kind of the technology ecosystem? It's an interesting space and so it's really cool hearing your perspective and how you've applied it and it sounds even kind of cleaner in some ways, like the way you guys are running it. And I love the long-term view you're able to take, Because even a lot of times for a lot of innovation teams, like 12 months is a pretty long-term view, and so for you guys to be able to think that far ahead and commit to that and be doing that three to four years, it sounds like an awesome setup.

Paul Puopolo:

It's great and again we've been fortunate but it's not like it's a constant monitoring. You have to keep the course and one thing that gets we call it our get out of jail free card is that we have a governance council for innovation which has the senior executives, including the CEO, on so that we can talk about these things, to say we are going to be looking at that. We all agree, we're going to look at that over the next three years. That's something that we want to go after. So we're pretty transparent about what we're doing and that keeps everybody clear on what we're delivering on an annual basis.

Paul Puopolo:

But it's not easy and I give my team a ton of credit because you've got to have a lot of perseverance to survive, because some of these projects aren't easy to execute on and they get frustrated. Frustrated and things don't happen on time and you got to move on to the next one, right. So that pipeline, it's got to keep going. So it takes look, I think it takes a special group of people who can do it, and everybody wants to say they can do innovation. Well, I can do finance.

Jason Rome:

But I'll never be a CFO. Let's put it that way, right? You and me both, yeah. So If my CFO is listening to this, respect, yeah, you don't want me running the numbers. Well, I think that's a great place to leave it, and I think we're leaving Josh with a tough decision whether to call this an innovation podcast or a communication podcast. You know, I think we hit a lot of things and it was really fun talking to you.

Paul Puopolo:

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me All right.

Josh Lucas:

Thank you for joining us on Build what's Next Digital Product Perspectives. If you would like to know more about how Method can partner with you and your organization, you can find more information at methodcom. Also, don't forget to follow us on social and be sure to check out our monthly tech talks. You can find those on our website. And finally, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. We'll see you next time.