How To Start a Total Rewards Function From Scratch

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In this episode of the HR Leaders podcast, join Xavier Meulemans, Former Total Rewards & HRIS Director at L’OCCITANE Group as he explores how to start a total rewards function from scratch.

Xavier addresses the complexities of pay transparency, how to navigate decentralized leadership and foster a data-driven culture aligned with business objectives, the art of executing HRIS system integration across multiple brands, and how to establish global HR standards encompassing living wage and benefits alignment.

Episode Highlights:

The challenge of pay transparency
Leading by influence in a decentralized organization
Creating a data driven culture and how it serves business goals
Implementing a new HRIS system across brands and business units
Forming Global HR standards: living wage and global benefits alignment.

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🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript

Xavier Meulemans 0:00

My first inclination would not to do workshops about blue sky thinking all we could have this, we could have that. Yeah, I would definitely start from the user first to say, Okay, what is it that is your biggest pain point? And how can we fix it quickly? And the second part is really start from the blueprints meeting. What is it that SAP success factor or the vendors to deliver from the shelf? And start with that, see, what is it that you need to add on? And what purpose is it really going to serve?

Chris Rainey 0:40

Welcome to the show. How are you? Very good. Nice to see you, are you. And before we jump into the podcast in more detail, tell everyone a little bit more about you personally, and your journey to the role you're in now. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 0:51

So originally, I'm from Brussels, Belgium. That's where I grew up, and why I started with my initial roles. Then I moved to Paris, France in 2006. And I've worked since then in a wide array of companies, I mean, mostly American multinationals. And eventually, I landed in the role that I'm currently having right now with Lux hidden, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Chris Rainey 1:21

I'm so happy you said that the company name because I was definitely gonna get that wrong. I mean, I mean, the pronunciation

Xavier Meulemans 1:29

you're not the onisrishrisly one.

Telephone little bit more about the business if they're not aware of the company,

Speaker 2 1:35

I guess, I mean, most of your listeners would know about Lexington, as a brand. So Lexington and Havasu in yellow, company wide visibility in the airports what most people don't know, it's actually looks at them as a group that has been growing by acquisition, and it's doing cosmetics. We have eight trends, which are at borjan Melvita throne, alchemist LMS, La Casita, Brazil, lux eaten on hormones, and are all active with, let's say, the mission of the group is that we want to be a force for good that we want to be a company. That's a regenerative company, which has a positive footprint on its ecosystem, on the environment. And on

Chris Rainey 2:24

its people. How long have you been with the company now?

Xavier Meulemans 2:27

A bit more than nine years actually, wow,

Speaker 2 2:29

that's, that's unusual in this day and age. Typically, it's like two to three years now what what would you say has kept you engaged so long in the business,

Speaker 1 2:38

the fact is that the company has been growing tremendously in the last years by acquisition by development internationally. And I mean, definitely him in my role as in the fact that changing from when I started, I was initially just in terms of rewards, and then gradually working into global mobility into HR information systems. And I would say, the second thing is really, I mean, the culture, the company is really strong about entrepreneurship, and really keeping people already empowered in the roles. And they really want to make sure that basically, you're always growing and doing new things. So I can safely say that wasn't any year that looked like the previous year. Because Okay, when I say going, keeping him busy and challenging me to different roles to do different things, different roles to explore how to go work

Speaker 2 3:35

role, your role work, then, you know, obviously, you're looking after global rewards and HR is is that across all of the companies is of course, one of the companies how does that work? If you see centralised, how does that work? Well,

Speaker 1 3:47

we work globally for the eight brands, okay, I mean, what is going to be different brand by brand and be you baby you is the speed at which we can progress. So it's never going to be one size fits all, it's never going to be like Big Bang kind of deployments, that is really to basically adjust our pace to the pace that the business can follow. I mean, just to take an example when we rolled out SuccessFactors, which is our Chaya system, I mean, we started with Loksatta non Provence, Bojan Makita, which were the ones that were the more integrated and then we have been doing a staggered rollout starting by the luxurious surgeries and then going to the smaller subsidiaries when we saw that we really had enough experience to be able to do something that wasn't requiring too much of the efforts. So the idea is really find Dwight windows of opportunity and right partners and at just the kind of solution that you're delivering to your internal clients. Because, of course I mean, you're never gonna talk to a brand leader, which is a fast growing company, but we've only trained employees, then what a larger brand, which is in all the different areas of the world when they need maybe the full suite of solution that you're proposing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:15

How does that work? Then break it down for us a little bit. So when you acquired those companies, are you having to roll it out time and time again? So you have you had to roll out SuccessFactors, multiple times across multiple business units, etc. I

Speaker 1 5:28

mean, when we acquired the different brands, we're always getting to a dialogue with the business leader, the HR function is to say, Okay, why do we need to start and we have a catalogue, that basically we offer, we say, okay, we can do this, we can do that. And we can discuss and agree with them to say, well, we're going to start by the foundations of the house, which is like, the koi HRM, precentral, and success factor, we're going to do job grading, we're gonna do this, we're going to do that to have basically a joint approved map, where we can say, okay, in one year, in two years, in three years, we're going to be untracked for complete integration.

Speaker 2 6:06

And what part of the merger do you come in? Because I've always found that like, in my conversations in the past, normally happens too late, which leads to a lot of frustration and many challenges. When do you come into the picture? Yellow?

Speaker 1 6:20

I don't think there is such a thing as the right isn't the right way to come in. Because it's always, I guess, there is always a tension like, yes, we would like to be really evolved into, you know, the early discussions, but quite often timing is of the essence. And quite often, what we see is that really what's going to make the difference is the way we are able to position ourselves with the brands because most of the brands that we acquire, that are really fast growing brands that we call to dress in the same way than Lexington overalls, which is you know, a much more steady established trend, where they don't have the same type of issues. So it's really I would say the main challenge that I've seen, is really able, being able to build trust, and to come to connect truly to the business needs. And not to come like oh, we have a recipe that worked for Lexington and Provence, and we're going to try to make you adopt the same recipe. I think it's the reverse, it's us, really adapting to the needs and what really matters to them. First and foremost, what

Speaker 2 7:27

would you be your top top mate to say top three pieces of advice you'd give to someone who's having to implement hrs systems across multiple brands, and business unit,

Speaker 1 7:36

quite often what I see is being neglected is really the scoping of the project. And what I mean by that is really to have an honest discussion with the stakeholders around the around the table to really understand what is it that they already have, in terms of processes? And what is it that they want to either get from the shelf? Or that they want to really dis design in a bespoke way. Give me an example of that. Well, for instance, I mean, if we if you take for instance, like compensation, success factors are pretty robust module, which really manage your bonus payment, your salary increase some brands, I mean, say, Oh, we have something that is working quite well on Excel, we have a another piece of software that can do this. And that if you just come in saying, Oh, but we have to read this compensation module, which really is coming from the shelf, without really understanding, what is it that they have been using so far? What were the pain points? What were the benefits? What was the cost to the business, then it can become a challenging conversation, I would advise to really see stats, not from the solution, but start really from the processes and the business needs, and then go into the solution, having clarity of what is the outcome that you want to achieve by implementing that solution, defining what good looks like first before and didn't go in going into the technical issues seconds.

Speaker 2 9:09

Because I can imagine it can be it can be quite tempting to say, hey, we're cutting all of that cost, just use ours. Yeah. And then but you don't really understand the unintended consequences of that, which I'm sure you've made that mistake perhaps in the past and realised Oh, actually, this is the way we need to approach this. And speaking

Speaker 1 9:27

of mistake, I mean, I have to admit that something that we did I did definitely initially was asking our colleagues and what is it that you want?

Speaker 2 9:37

Oh, god, you're gonna get 1000 answers from every day.

Speaker 1 9:42

Exactly. And when you you're going to basically a collection of all we need this in this feature. I mean, the risk is really coming up with the kind of beam of, of information that no one will be using. What I found to be much more useful is to say is the baseline that we need is the minimum information that we need to make the module run? And what is it that you would need in addition to this, and what will be its purpose? Because at the end of the day, I mean, I think we are all guilty of the fact that we want to have like the latest sketch once you have the latest features, but most of the time, it is like when you use your phone, you always use like the five, same apps and even six, seven, and the other ones. I mean, why bother about them in the first place? And I think that's where we kind of flipped the approach to say, Well, again, let's not try to be Feature Driven, but really be really driven by what is the outcome that we want to achieve when people

Speaker 2 10:44

are going through this process? Who are the decision makers that have to be at that table? To make this really work?

Speaker 1 10:50

That's, that's a very good question. I would say it's really, at least in my view, it's super important that you get, of course, I mean, each on the table that you get your IT people so that they can guide you in terms of you know, what is feasible, what is not feasible in terms of architecture, what can be supported, but I would say first and foremost, some people that will be the voice of the customer. For instance, when you want to implement a recruiting module, you need to have recruiters you need Jeff, people representing candidates, you need to have people managers, because they will be the one using performance management, compensation management. And that's also something that we have been a game changing. When we went to Agile transformation in team, we started with a typical kind of waterfall project management, and then we went with a scrum squad. And I've received the benefit of data really doing the voice of customer or the return of experience, to really understand, well, we deployed this feature, great, but do people really use it? And sometimes it's pretty surprising to say that some things that maybe you think are really non essential that people really value. And then on the other end, you deploy a new feature that you find amazing from an expertise point of view, no one uses that most managers have been,

Speaker 2 12:17

I was surprised, actually, that you mentioned line managers, but it makes so much sense. Like why would you not have the end users in the meeting, but I'm sure that's the mistake that many companies make, they assume that they know what what's going to be required and needed and miss and miss some of the probably the most important things that they're using day in day out, as well. So having those people in the conversation makes so much sense and anyone else that we've missed.

Speaker 1 12:42

I mean, at some stage, you should be good to have executive sponsorship as well to make sure like they understand why you are launching this initiative. And they can really see what the product is all about. Because one thing is doing a slide deck. The other thing is really seeing the the solution working. And that's also why you can sell to say, okay, these are the foundations, and quite often what you see in the foundations might not be super impressive, but you're also able to sell the vision. And what I mean by that concretely speaking is like before we had each is implemented, we didn't have a clear view of basic things like at current employee turnover. And now we have, of course, I mean, all these fundamentals in terms of, you know, being able to count how many people are in the company, but also making sense of employees and over of time to fill in recruitments and drilling down into the details of what are the root cause which are impacting positively or negatively each of the factors. And I think that's really the vision that you want to sell as an HR expert to say it's not only about reporting, of course, reporting compliance, it's important. But what is really of the essence is what is going to be a decision making system that can help you make decisions, not only based on gut feeling, that based on facts and figures based on evidence in terms

Speaker 2 14:08

of the team and a decision making. How do you find those people? Like how did you go about which people managers do I select? Which Which person do I go to for executive sponsorship? What's your thinking around that?

Speaker 1 14:21

I would say I mean, just coming and going in the field and talking to people might seem a bit simplistic, but yeah, I remember when we launched a recruiting module, we went after of humans, we taught different countries and we just went in different boutiques to talk with people that were candidates and no employees with hiring managers. And we discuss with them and say, Oh, what's your experience? What were the friction points? What went well? Not so well. And I would say it's, you know, sometimes a trap can be to really refer to anecdotes generally ask a few trusted people and the risk is that you might be having, you know, a Neko effect when people tell you what's one two air? Yeah, the great thing is that when you have a quite a wide sample in terms of different positions in the company geographies, it when you get a mix of people will say, really interesting things in the sense that they can give you specific feedback. Some of it is also critical. I think that's when you get like the golden nuggets, when you hear the things that you don't want to hear. That's where normally I start listening closely, because I'd say, Well, if start telling this is because it really matters to them, and they want to improve the product. Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:39

If anything you want to surround yourself with, you know, as many people as possible that sounds strange disagree to have different views, perspectives and insights, because you need that diversity of for your perspective, right? If you're only sitting in a room, listening to your team, they're just, you know, it's gonna be an echo, like you just said, and you'll make a huge mistake by going down that route. In terms of decision making, as well, I was wanting to understand, you know, one of the big again, big challenges for our listeners is, who do they choose? Right. So hrs is it? Is SAP SuccessFactors. Is it workday is, and there's a couple of new ones that are coming up all requests, of course, Oracle HCM Cloud, how did you make a decision? Why SAP SuccessFactors?

Speaker 1 16:18

I mean, today, there is a real wide array of solutions that you can buy from and I'm really convinced that the reason that one that is really like the golden nuggets, it's really what is good for you, in terms of like size of your company, the way your process are being designed to focus really on why is it that we chose success factor? I would say first, they were really quite flexible. In terms of the fact that you can buy modules, you don't need to buy the full suite and do a big boring deployment for and for us, because of decentralisation everything, you need to have flexibility. Yeah, we need that flexibility. And also without being too technical. The thing also is that they are quite happy to have the parallel system being the primary source of information, when other system ask that your HMIs would be the primary source. And we felt for a variety of reasons that it was in terms of change management much better, to really have the payroll as the master. And to have the secondary source of information being or HRF. system, I would say these were really the two main reasons that were driving the choice.

Speaker 2 17:36

And which of the modules are you using versus external technology? Today? We

Speaker 1 17:42

are we using the full suite with the exception of the learning and development module,

Unknown Speaker 17:46

what we're using for that like Cornerstone or something along those lines.

Speaker 1 17:49

We use cross knowledge. Knowledge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 17:52

Nice. Nice. And what did that implementation plan look like? Because that's always the thing, you know, is it buying the software is the easy part to implementation of that, and, of course, the cultural change and everything else along the way, what how long did it take you to deploy?

Speaker 1 18:09

I mean, that's a great question, because it was a bit of a bumpy road, if I'm really honest with you, because it never goes like he anticipated. We started implementing recruitment first. And then we have done Employees Insurance. So core HR. Second, the reason for that is that we wanted to deliver something that's going to deliver visible outcome directly, where core HR is not something that you can really see what are the immediate benefits. And then we have been doing performance, succession planning, and compensation management. And we have done this over the course of six years, which is quite a long time, I would say the benefit of doing this is that it wasn't a rushed exercise. And the adoption level that we see on all the modules are pretty high. When we look at, you know, the pre and post, in terms of, for instance, performance management, we had some buckets of the business where in any given year, we had like maximum 60% of employees having a review. No, we are in excess of 90 persons. Wow.

Speaker 2 19:19

So when you say bumpy road, just want to be clear, is it in terms of the way you implemented internally or something to do with the system? At least the things that people need to hear that they don't know about? I wouldn't

Speaker 1 19:28

say it was the system because the system, I would say offers much more than what we consume. I mean, it's like if you drive a Ferrari, I mean, you need to pass your driving test. But most Ferrari owners are not gonna, you know, drive it to the racetrack. And suddenly we the solution, the main challenge that we asked was really aligning the countries and what this could look like and similar process when you take for instance, like performance management Before we went into the system, every business units have their own timeline form with specific developments. Initially, what they said is, we want the same thing. And when we look at what would be the costs of doing five different forms, versus doing one form that we translate in different languages, or I mean, the gap, the gap was, you know, that and 1000s of euros. So we say, I mean, that's not happening, we need to basically put our thinking cap on, and to understand why is it that we think we need to have, as one company five different forms, he basically the outcome was that there wasn't really a very good reason why we need to have this. So it was also a great opportunity to relook at the way we're doing things and to say, where we need to have localization, the difficult part is really understanding that actually, most of the things that the business wants to continue to do is because it has always been done this way, and it can be changed, and it should be changed. Because when you survey your users, because that's always a driver. What they were saying is to say, I don't truly understand, I'm a global director, I've my team's split in all these different geographies. Why is it that they have five different forms? I don't get it. So we said, well, we're going to listen to you and just do one form, and that one pretty well. So

Speaker 2 21:29

the bumpy road really was in relation to the strategy internally, to make sure you were and of course, you're going to uncover these challenges along the way, right? You can't know all of this from the beginning. No, and I think that's a good lesson for everyone to listen, you can prepare, and you can create a plan, but you're gonna find these in visa nuances to your business, right? Like you just said earlier, like, he just every company's gonna have specific ways that they're set up and processes and requirements. Yeah, may as well, looking back, what would you have done differently to make this a smoother process,

Speaker 1 22:01

I would say something that it was I was kind of ignorant to because I grew up, which is a witness of my old age, in an environment where people were doing on premise system, where you can do a lot of customization. When you go in the clouds, basically, you need to be as standard as you can be. So I would say the my first inclination would not to do workshops about blue sky thinking all we could have this, we could have that. Yeah, I would definitely start from the user first, to say, Okay, what is it that is your biggest pain point? And how can we fix it quickly? And the second part is really start from the blueprints meeting, what is it that SAP success factor or the vendors to deliver from the shelf? And start with that, see, what is it that you need to add them? And what purpose is it really going to serve, because you're going to save your yourself a lot of trouble by really starting small and doing the basics. And then you can always add them further. But what I think is really key for the project not to suffocate is to be able to deliver quickly, and to get feedback from users. And then to improve to do a second version, a third verse and a fourth version. And because it's cloud based, I mean, you can activate these activate the Function quite easily. But what people really want to see quickly is your core services, because if you announce, oh, we have purchased something, and it takes it takes you months and months and months to deliver the first version, that's where you lose traction. Normally, yeah,

Speaker 2 23:41

you need those quick wins. What are your thoughts on Obviously, every company in the last couple of months in this space, have all launched their own AI? Right, you know, you've seen everyone do announcements, like based on what you know, what a product or whatever now, which ones? Can you see yourself actually benefiting from you in the team using practically I

Speaker 1 23:59

would say my opinion, and it is quite split, I would say on one thing, it's kind of under estimated what the level of potential disruption, it's going to cause for the white colour. Because I think so far we have seen a lot of disruption happening, that we're impacting blue colours, like your different chains of like on delivery services, and so on. I think no, we are seeing something where I think it's quite clear that we have some clerical jobs, which will be highly at risk due to a GBD, for instance. So I think that's something where maybe we are not seeing yet that there is a massive investment to be done in terms of workforce upskilling if we don't want to end up with a huge unemployment issue, I think MIT them and the second part, I think sometimes it's a bit overplayed where I see a lot of vendors and I won't call it names, saying Oh, We do AI this way to AI that we do big data, this in big data that, for me, there is a bit of a shift. Because on one hand, yes, I mean, you see very large tech companies doing a lot of things. But I think that's a very small ecosystem. And I see a lot of large non tech companies, which are still doing everything on Excel spreadsheets. And if I have one thing to say, is, maybe before going into, like dreaming about AI, about big data, make sure that the foundations are really robust, and that your clients really understand what kind of problem you are solving for them. But because I think it's really easy to be seduced by every shiny object. But is it really for your own curiosity? Or is it really solving an issue for your clients? I think that's the main question, we need to ask ourselves. What's

Speaker 2 25:55

next for you? Now? What as you, because I think one of the things we spoke about when we last had our conversation was when how do you then take what you've done, but also then, at the same time, create a data driven culture that helps serve the business goals? How are you? What is your focus there? How are you creating a data driven culture,

Speaker 1 26:14

I'm really glad that we have been going to this whole journey of, you know, establishing the basics in terms of having employee central having the full suite, because now the thing is that we have quite sufficient history, depth and capabilities to be looking, you know, if I just take one example, employee turnover, I mean, most of our people out of 10,000, globally, we have 7000 employees, which are in the field, our beauty advisors working in our shops. And what we see is that in some geographies, our level of voluntary turnover, it's much higher than what we wish it would be. And really, by looking at different cohorts of employees to say, well, these people that we recruited in the last 12 months, what do we see is happening to them in terms of retention? And why is it that they are staying? And why is it that they are leaving? And what are the common patterns that we are finding in the people which are leaving and staying, and that's something which for us is completely new? Because in the past, it was very much like, we assumed that it was you had no turnover? You had no data? And we're coming from a place to say, Well, it's kind of happening to us. And I think the good thing about being really data driven, that it's, it's really helping you to say, well, of course, I mean, when there's been COVID, when there's been you know, different issues, you see that suddenly, you know, people didn't move, and they stopped moving. And so, yes, there is a part of reality, which you can't control, which is market driven, shutdown, a lot of things that you can influence that you should be influencing, to make sure that people are happy to stay with the company. And that's where, by having this data driven approach by really delving into like exit interviews in terms of time to fill in terms of hours or pay compared with the markets, I mean, by crossing all these kinds of verbals? I mean, we have seen in some areas? Well, you know, when we have done this, suddenly, voluntary turnover is dropping. So let's continue to do more of that.

Speaker 2 28:28

What are some been some of the biggest challenges that you've personally faced in terms of your own development and growth? As the technology evolves, you're becoming more data driven. Your role has changed and expanded, as you mentioned many times? What are some of the big challenges that you've personally overcome, overcome that perhaps our audience have probably hit that wall one day,

Speaker 1 28:50

the biggest challenge I've faced is, you know, thinking that people were on the same page I was or taking things for granted. One example I have is like, for me, as an HR professional, it's just obvious that there is a cost avoidance, sometimes it cost saving, but mostly because avoidance to reducing employee voluntary turnover. It's something which, when I was talking with partners in finance, from my management's for them, it wasn't obvious at all. Or add really, to say, Okay, let's look at a model. Let's look at what the literature don't take my word for it. But what this literature there have been people working in this doing studies looking at what what are the direct costs, but also the indirect costs that you will suffer as a business if you have too high of a turnover in each really being happy and eager to break it down and to speak the language that people that you're working with can hear and can understand and not to come? What's Some time, I think maybe the risk when you come from a place of expertise is that oh, yeah, we need to have this, we need to have this piece of software, we need to do that, and not really starting to say, what is the context? And more importantly, why is it that we need to do it, what's going to be the benefits for you of doing this before going to out, we need to implement this, we need to implement that because you take for granted that the other person comes from the same line of thinking that you do.

Speaker 2 30:28

I think that's part of your evolution as well to become more of a strategic business partner, right, and advisor as opposed to taking on as opposed to the traditional HR function being an order taker. Does that make sense? Yes. So that's sort of your evolution, right to be, you've built that credibility, you've built the experience, and I should say, hey, you know, this is you know, and then you provide the research the insights, the experience you have, and that's also going to reflect on how they see you, and the function. And the team, right, as much more strategic advisors, as opposed to just order takers. So that's, that's great to hear. But that takes time as well. Right? And to do that, and that's also a cultural shift in depending on what company you're in as well moving to be Yeah. Should you be advisors, as opposed to just order takers? Yeah. And something

Speaker 1 31:16

that I like to say over and over to my colleagues and to my team is that we are all in the business of selling. And I've been working in different, you know, when you work in, in the industry, in production business, I mean, you're not like, really super attuned to sales. But when you're in to have been locked down, quite often, I take that as a metric, you know, how many tubes of entry do we need to sell to fund this? And, and at the end of the day, I mean, what we need to do is to sell and when you sell, I mean, one vision of this is that, oh, you try just to do revenue, I think the more long term strategy you have selling is solving problems for people, you see so many bad sales, people selling you have a solution. And the great salespeople, they always start by asking you, why you what are the main things and you understand their problem. And once you are being sold, that your problem is worth solving? You're ready to be anything to have that problem solved. Yeah. And I think that's really what keeps me going is really easy. What kind of big, airy problem can I solve for you? There's

Speaker 2 32:31

no easy way to do that, apart from genuinely building relationships, having conversations with each of those stakeholders, yes, we've got the overall business challenges, but understanding what the individual challenges for those stakeholders are, what's sort of their buttons, their hot buttons, as we call it in sales. And which, what and linking that back, then you're gonna get much more buy in results, and they're gonna feel they're gonna be engaged in the process, because they understand the outcomes gonna benefit them as well. Exactly. Before I let you go, parting piece of advice, you know, what, what was covered so much. But you know, when we're talking about going through, we've kind of really focus a lot on the sort of hrs implementation, the strategies piece, but if there was kind of, you know, one thing you want people to take away from it, that's, you know, most important going through that process, what would that be, and then we'll say goodbye. But,

Speaker 1 33:21

I mean, I'm gonna quote Stephen Covey base, saying, start with the end in mind, really, what is the outcome that you want to achieve, be clear about the outcome and rally your supporters to make sure they share the vision, because initially, it's always, you know, all art can be to do this. Once, once you go into implementation

Unknown Speaker 33:46

as you realised, as

Unknown Speaker 33:49

if I knew it would be so honoured with

Unknown Speaker 33:52

those say that you're gonna scare everyone away. But it's

Speaker 1 33:54

quite often I mean, the the way it works, I mean, to be honest, where you go, you go to like, you know, ups and downs during the process, buffing when you have this kind of shared vision that really helps to go to the low phases, because you know, why you I think do and I will say, in addition to that really define what's going to be the first goalpost that you want to hit. And to really be, I think, being in the that kind of iterative approach, even if that's sometimes can be challenging, because we are really always delivering delivering, testing, listening to your customers. I mean, I in terms of adoption, that's gonna help you much better than doing a typical waterfall project, where the risk is that you go into kind of tunnel effects, then you deliver and you say, Oh, the adoption is not there. What what happens? Yeah, and having this kind of iterative loop with your internal clients, is for me, I mean, the main thing, which you know, at the end of the day is Gotta be geloven saying, did my project succeeds? Or how many people are using it? I had a colleague who said, well, the easy way to know if your system is working, you unplug it for a week. And if no one is complaining about it, well, maybe your system isn't that useful for them.

Speaker 2 35:20

But listen, I appreciate you coming on the show. I'm glad we got into this topic. We don't kind of talk about this enough. On the podcast we try. We try to talk about all of the more sexier may, perhaps topics that people are talking about. But these fundamentals are the literally the foundation of everything else, right to your point and great practical advice that you shared. Obviously, it's a journey as well, right? This is an end. It's continuous even now, right? I'm sure you're continuing to improve things. It's a longer process as well. So listen, I appreciate you coming on the show.

Speaker 1 35:51

And thank you very much for the opportunity now.

Speaker 2 35:54

Yeah, we'll do it again soon. All the best until then, and have an amazing holiday.