People Heroes Rising: Expanding Through the The Raw Power of Analytics with Tom McKeown Product Owner for Predictive People Analytics Solutions at isolved

Does your organization take advantage of all its data? In this episode of People Heroes Rising podcast, William Tincup learns about leveraging analytical data from Tom McKeown, Product Owner for Predictive People Analytics Solutions at isolved.

Live at the isolved Connect roadshow in Palm Springs, Tom talks about his journey from a homegrown product owner to becoming full blown part of isolved after his company was purchased. McKeown gives insight into the company's new initiative of embedding analytics throughout the platform, making analytics easier and more accessible for users. McKeen also talks about future plans for integrating AI technologies into the platform, primarily natural language processing. 

Improvement through leveraging data, customer feedback, and planning for the future is an important mindset if you want to keep everyone happy.  If there's aspects of your organization that are not performing well, you could just be one data set away from actionable insights. Listen in to learn more.

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Transcript

William Tincup: 0:06

Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup and you are listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast. We're here with Tom at isolved connect in Palm Desert, Palm Springs. This is my second connect and last year we were in Nashville and it was fantastic. This year. Better than fantastic. It's crazy. Yeah. Uh, so Tom, do us a favor and introduce yourself. Tell us a

Tom McKeown: 0:27

little bit about you. Okay. So I'm Tom McKeen. I'm, uh, currently the product owner at isol for the predictive people Analytics solution. Um, my company was actually acquired by Isol back in, uh, June of, uh, 2021. Yep. Um, and uh, this is my third connect. I went to the first one, uh, Miami. Yeah. Missed Miami. Miami. Missed Miami. Miami. Yeah. That was, dang it. Yeah. Was I was just outta the gate as an Isol employee. But, um, uh, just the, um... You know, they've all been great, and each one better than the other. The life of the customer base and the enthusiasm, both of them and the employees, it's created an electric atmosphere. It's

William Tincup: 1:03

crazy. First of all, I think the acquisition was really, really smart of them. Really really smart. Because you were doing great work. And, uh, you were I think, a partner with them, uh, before

Tom McKeown: 1:13

Well, we were actually pursuing a partnership. You were? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I knew there

William Tincup: 1:17

was, there was, I knew there was a, there was something there. Mm-Hmm. And they're, and they're like, you know what? We like this so much. But, uh, they also, they also

Tom McKeown: 1:24

liked you. Yeah. That was, it was, that was it. It was a chemistry between the. The, uh, people running here and myself, and it really worked out well. Well,

William Tincup: 1:33

I've known you forever. Yeah. We won't say years, Tom. Yeah, exactly. Because at a certain point in life, we just don't say years. Yeah, for a while. I think we were chasing around dinosaurs

Tom McKeown: 1:41

at I always, I always make the joke that, uh, you know, we're both from Dallas, but I see you more times outside of Dallas. 100%.

William Tincup: 1:48

I, I, that's true of a lot of my friends. They're like, you know what? I have to see you in Vegas. Yeah. To actually sit down with you, I'm like, I know, I know. Um, so I've talked to people. Ryan and I got to sit down with a bunch of customers yesterday. And we went through kind of a litany of just kind of what's going on, what do you like, what could you change, this, that, the other. Analytics came up. A lot of what they'd like to do. You know, like, they've got a little nibble, they've got a little taste, and they're like, they want to do more. And, and, I didn't get the feeling that they were terrified. I got the feeling like this is exciting

Tom McKeown: 2:23

for them. No, and, uh, one of the initiatives that, uh, we're rolling out, uh, this year in one of our, I think, four pillars is analytics everywhere. So, you know, we sell PPA, Predictive People Analytics as a separate application and it aggregates data from all the different, uh, uh, solutions, but we're starting now to like embed parts of it within the isolved core product. Oh, smart. Yeah. Yeah.

William Tincup: 2:46

And is that just given, that's just a part of

Tom McKeown: 2:48

what that is? Yeah, just a part of it, a part of it in, um, an, um, an ROI dashboard and, um, um, a, Um, an executive dashboard, and then down the line, uh, we're going to be, uh, putting in a, uh, a benchmark dashboard. I love that. Yeah, because, uh, we've, uh, one of our newest offerings in PPA, and it's not by any means going to be limited in PPA, is the, uh, Benchmark Insights, uh, product. So, um, yeah. Like me, type

William Tincup: 3:11

stuff, if they're a grocery or a franchisee

Tom McKeown: 3:15

or whatever. You can give them benchmark salaries, tenure, turnover rates. Oh, I love all of it. Yeah. Well,

William Tincup: 3:19

first of all, you're making, you're making analytics. You're lowering the threshold or the barrier to entry. It can be, not for you, because you've been doing this for a while, but for the average practitioner, it can be intimidating. They might not trust their data, they might not trust their own skill set, etc. And so you've made it kind of easy for them to just hit a button. It's the

Tom McKeown: 3:39

easy button. You know, it's funny, when I first started out doing this, I used to always be astounded at One of the answers I get, why people wouldn't want to do it, they say it's too advanced for us. Right. Yeah. And it's like, we're trying to make it easy. And that has really kind of faded away. And a big part of it has been, um, partly working with a group here that knows how to make things easy and familiar. Um, you know, of course you want to talk about the stuff that are unique and, you know, future facing. But you, you know, you got to bring it home so people can use it and are not intimidated by it.

William Tincup: 4:15

I think that, I think the, uh, the, the idea of Analytics Anywhere is genius. Yeah. Because then you meet them where they are. If they're in recruiting, if they're in performance, if they're in whatever, at one point, they might need some inside the four walls of that thing. Exactly, yeah. They might need some analytics. Boom, hit a button, be able to see what's going on, to be able to tell a story about it, etc.

Tom McKeown: 4:35

Like, I love that. Yeah, and the first place we, we did it was actually we, we, we rolled out our compensation planning product. And, uh, yeah, we put a really robust dashboard in there with, uh, comp ratios and all sorts of breakdown stuff. Yeah.

William Tincup: 4:50

Yeah. That's genius. Yeah. You know, I really love compensation and, um, the relationship that usually doesn't happen, but, but can happen between recruiting and talent acquisition and comp. Yeah. Because they both care on one level or another, they care about offer letters. Mm hmm. So, recruiters have to get them out, but they've also got to be right. They've got to be accurate, right? So, they can get them out, but if they're not accurate, now you've got a problem. You've created a problem for comp. So,

Tom McKeown: 5:19

bringing those two together... And that split second of messing up a letter could cost you a candidate. They took another offer. A hundred percent. Yeah.

William Tincup: 5:24

Especially, especially these days when candidates are, are really... Gauging people in speed and quality. It's like, okay, you've gotta know, or that for that, you know, let's say that data scientist that you want to hire Yeah. What they're worth, what they're, what they're going to get. Yeah. What internally, yeah. You, you're paying the other data scientists, et cetera. So I

Tom McKeown: 5:44

love, and in the time it takes to reprocess a letter, they usually have multiple offers on the table. A hundred percent.

William Tincup: 5:49

Yeah. Or have accepted a job somewhere else.

Tom McKeown: 5:51

Exactly. Yes. So

William Tincup: 5:53

what's 2024 look like for you? What do you see? What do you want to, uh. What do you want to do at 24? So

Tom McKeown: 5:59

a couple of things, um, uh, the, the, the analytics anywhere is kind of the, the first part of it. Right. Um, but, uh, you, you talked a little bit about people not being as intimidated by analytics. They're not as intimidated as, from the AI as much either. Right. So we're looking to do a lot more with, other than just kind of the machine learning bar of AI. Uh, we, we've dabbled a little bit with, um, natural language processing in our product, but uh, it's, it's, it's been more, you know, um, Picking out words from the phrase, so we're starting to work a little with ChatGBT, and we're hoping to put more integrated narratives in with the product. Oh, nice. It's like a, you know, you see a graph, this is a graph, what does the graph tell me? Press a button, there comes a nice dialogue. Right. Well, you can see

William Tincup: 6:41

that in performance. I mean, you can see kind of a natural, there's things that happen in performance, there's a bunch of what's not said. Yeah. What's said, or what's stated, okay, there's this form, or there's this thing, and okay, here's what's stated. What was the intent? What was meant by that?

Tom McKeown: 6:56

Yeah, what was, you know, gleaned from that, that is plain to one person, but maybe another person.

William Tincup: 7:01

So you, if you went, uh, you started with the analytics everywhere with one product. Where do you, you want to try and proliferate all throughout the platform?

Tom McKeown: 7:10

Yeah, absolutely. And kind of also in a manner of like, you know, giving them the taste where they still eventually come back. But it's more of a, where would it do the most good, you know? One very basic place we started out, we started with the org chart, putting an org chart in the product. We've come full circle.

William Tincup: 7:29

You and I have

Tom McKeown: 7:29

come full circle. That's right. We were back selling org charts in the late 2000s. Well,

William Tincup: 7:35

it was a genius plan then. I mean, it was genius then, it's genius now. Nothing's changed. Still gotta know where people are, and how to get to them, and how to get in touch with them.

Tom McKeown: 7:46

Exactly, and nothing tells you where, that, you know, like, people aren't reporting to anybody than seeing it. Right.

William Tincup: 7:52

Dotted line. Okay. No line.

Tom McKeown: 7:54

Um, maybe that's a bad thing. So these ten people have not had a manager for six months. Yeah. Or a review. Yeah,

William Tincup: 7:59

exactly. Or any, I don't know, guidance? Yes. I don't know, simple stuff like that. Well, what's your, what's your favorite part of this Connect? What's, what do you point to when you go home and talk to your friends, family, what not, or you're going to say, you know what, that was really cool?

Tom McKeown: 8:13

Uh, I've been joking about this with both my colleagues and clients. It's seeing people in 3D again, you know, we're just, we're just, uh, you know, I'm not teamsed out, but it's like, yeah, you just, um, there's just some, some things you don't glean from getting on one of those remote calls. And we, we, uh. We have such phenomenal customers that, uh, you know, that share, and we get them into rooms together, and they know each other too, and uh, someone's talking and says like, we could really use that. Oh, you know, here's how we do it this way, and it's like, uh, you know, they're helping each other. Um, I sat down at a table with two partners, partners yesterday, and one of them sold the other one another thing, just cause, yeah, that's cool, do you want a commission? No, no, this is why we do these things. Oh no, that's great news. Yeah,

William Tincup: 9:00

yeah. You know what's, Tom, we won't use names or any of that type of stuff, but again, we've been in the industry for a long time. This is the first time I can, I think that this is, like, you're part of a movement. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you know, there was momentum at other firms. Yeah, yeah. Got that. But,

Tom McKeown: 9:17

like, this is, this feels different. It does feel different, um, uh, particularly, I've, I wouldn't say I'm like a serial entrepreneur, really Trend Data was the only company I started. I was at a couple of mid sized companies that got bought, but the journey always kind of died after I got bought because the acquirer just didn't know how to do things. Here I just feel like it's like, you know, you're like a... Uh, a toddler, a preteen, a teenager, I just feel, like it's a company on this great, uh, journey and it's, it's, uh, doing special things and only more special things in front of it. Well, you, because

William Tincup: 9:52

you've been, uh, other places, the, again, they were with the road shows, you and I were in Dallas, um, ISOL doesn't run from their customers. No. Okay. So they don't run after customers. And so when the customer says, Hey, I got this question and this question, this question, this question, they're like, okay, cool. Yeah. Let's go through those, whereas other software companies, not just in our past, but other software companies that we know, man, they run. Yeah. They're waiting three months to the renewal, and then they'll call, and then they'll talk to them and kind of

Tom McKeown: 10:21

hammer through. Yeah. We had a few, you know, again, not to mention names, but, you know, we've talked about other vendors they've been with, and it's like, uh, you know, they feel like a number, and it's like... If that. Yeah. If

William Tincup: 10:30

that. That's a compliment if they're a number. No, here, they, they, they think, the customers think of isolved as an extension of their team. Yeah. Like they're family. Mm hmm. Okay, where that just doesn't happen. You know this doesn't happen. In software. No, no. We went to HR Tech. Yeah. There's not that many companies that are great at HR. Mm hmm. They're great at creating advocacy with their customers, and again, not afraid to put their customers together. Put them all in one room, and okay, what

Tom McKeown: 10:55

do we know about them? And I'll tell you, this is my first real exposure, even though we're doing this with a payroll company. And... There's always going to be problems with payroll, you've got to address them, you know, you can't run away. You're doing nobody a service by running. Exactly, and, uh, yeah, we take, they take them head on, and they talk to them, and, you know, the fix, fix is for everybody, and it's, uh, that's why they got the loyal base and everything.

William Tincup: 11:19

Well, I view, uh, the success of, of the acquisition, not just of buying the software, which I think was genius, but of keeping you. Be having the ability to keep you because you could do again. You could flip and do another deal You could go be CRO at name a company At their ability to then keep you engaged and keep you on the team because they've got a great team You're part of a great team, but the their ability to keep you engaged. I think is it speaks volumes of you know The CEO their his vision, but also the rest of the executive team.

Tom McKeown: 11:54

Yeah, and and not Not quanch, quashing like the entrepreneur because it's like they allow me to build right and you know, I Joke with people they say, you know, like, you know when I was running my company I was selling I was doing the books I was raising money. I was building the product and I said, what do you do with your time? I say throw it all into the product. Yeah, I'm still working full but there's so much more. Oh, yeah. Oh,

William Tincup: 12:16

yeah You get to actually be an entrepreneur in residence. That's

Tom McKeown: 12:19

well, well

William Tincup: 12:20

stated. Well, I think of you that way. Like, I think of you as that way. You're an entrepreneur in residence. Under a well funded startup. Exactly. Extremely, well, we won't say numbers. Extremely well funded startup. Brother, I could talk to you all day. Yeah, same, same.

Tom McKeown: 12:37

Thank

William Tincup: 12:38

you so much for coming on and being on the

Tom McKeown: 12:39

show. Yeah, always good, and like I say, we'll have lunch in Dallas someday. At some point.

William Tincup: 12:45

At some point we will, I promise. Thank