Gamification of Process Mining Adoption in Škoda Auto with Václav Šlapka and Martin Kobosil

Mining your business podcast is back with another episode about process mining data science and advanced business analytics. Now, Jakob, why might you be looking forward to this episode? Well, one of the things is that it's a check company. And guess where I'm from? Ooh, I could hardly tell. So, bots love Slubka and Martin Copacil join us on the podcast to talk about adoption and gamification of process mining at Scoto. Let's get into it. I'm not sure whether you're ever noticed based on my English pronunciation, but I'm not English. I'm actually from Czech Republic. Such are today's guests Vat Slubka and Martin Copacil from Škoda Auto. The largest Czech car manufacturer. Let me tell you right away that working on a Czech customer was very strange for me. Imagine that you, that all of your business vocabulary is one language in my case English. And then you're asked to do a presentation in a language where you have no idea how things are called. How would you translate like process mining or invoice or conformance checking or even a happy path in Czech? It's just ridiculous. And I mean, I don't think I've ever been as nervous as I was with the Škoda project when it came to actual workshop in in my native language. And maybe a question for you, Patrick. Do you ever have these problems with English and German in terms like the business and technical talks? Do you feel like you are more confident in one than the other? Oh, yeah, it's horrific. I will start a sentence in German and end it in English. Oh, wow. Yeah, for me, it's like if you were reading this children book where you start the sentence in one language and then you have like a picture of something and you say that in the other language. Like, this is how I feel in talking about process mining in Czech. Anyhow, unlike with our other episodes and guests when we had a duo, we have decided for this episode to even though we have two guests to have them one by one. And therefore we will first hear from the project owner and the data analytics coordinator Vatslav Šopka and then from the project manager of the project Martin Kobaszil. So Vatslav, welcome to mining your business podcast. So we are excited to have you here. Hi, I thank you very much for the invitation. I'm really excited actually as well to participate in such a podcast. Actually, I'm really big fan. I'm really big fan of Jakubov of one of the Czechs podcast. And I'm also first experience for me. Thanks for the invitation. I hope I will not screw up. I'm sure you won Vatslav because knowing you from the project, you will always steer the discussion very well. And that's why we, one of the reasons why we are so excited to have you here is that we just really want you to go all full process mining both today. That said, could you maybe tell us a bit more about what was your exact role in the project and how did you come in touch with process mining the first time? You know, it's quite a long history. During the project, before or at the point it started in Škoda or we started to talk in Škoda, I was in completely different position than I am right now. You could say, basically, the department I'm leading right now was created thanks to the process mining technology and using tillness in Škoda, general procurement. Because when we started to talk about the process mining, I was assistant of ahead of general procurement. At that time, it was a position for everything. So every new thing which came, assistant was usually responsible for that. I've taken over this competence with me to the new department, but thanks to the innovation department in Škoda, we were introduced to tillness and process mining. Because this quite works well in Škoda, innovation management and innovation, that's what driving Škoda. So, they told us here is something cool, which could help you, because you are really based on the processes. So this is what you can help you and that's how we started. We have contacted tillness. We did a few workshops in Škoda. Then there was quite a long time for approval process. The ones who are the listeners who are from big corporations, I'm pretty sure they are aware of that. Everything needs to be approved from a lot of people. So once we did, it was just the start of Corona. Everyone was sitting on the cash that time. So it was quite hard to get approval, such a fancy thing from the point of view of the approvers. We tried to. So having this experience of our love, is there something that you would maybe give as a recommendation to maybe people who are in these roles in other organizations that would love to jump on the train, get the process mining going, but this pushback from approval processes and just from general slowliness of the organization, they just can't get it done. Is there something that you would maybe give them as a recommendation being in this position yourself or, I think, a couple of years, actually. When you summarize it, it took us maybe one year of the approval process, some part of Škoda and most part of it on a group level. The recommendation from my point of view is just to hold on. It's just because it's really worth it, for me personally, when I was seeing all the processes, all the Grammiums, all the approval process that everyone needs to put the finger thumbs up on it, then it was motivation for me because that's the potential of process mining then. You could analyze that too and find out what's why it's so slow and make faster. So that was also the motivation for me to go further and hold on. So in your opinion, what was the main thing holding it back for that whole year? What was the thing where it was stuck? How do you mean that? What was the thing? Well, if you say you needed approval for a year. What was the biggest predicament in getting this and going? You know, that time we didn't have any kind of onboarding of cellonies on a group. So that was the major issue. There always needs to be agreement or partnership done between such a company and Volkswagen group. So that time we didn't have anything like that. And to be honest, the price was not also helping. But to that, it was not a really big issue. I can imagine that how it would went right now, it would be even harder. The days after the pandemic and with such issues on the market, which is not really predictable or not even or maybe less predictable than it was in 2019. So it was really tough, but I would say right now it would be tougher. Maybe an next question would be, so you knew that you wanted to analyze processes. You knew you wanted to do the process mining approach and take the technology that provides you with this. How did you choose about the process you would start with? Because interestingly, I'm just working with an organization where they chose. I would say very difficult process to start with and they are having a lot of travelers there. I know that you actually started with procurement. Was there someone telling you okay, let's start with something easier? Or was there some actual preference to start with procurement? Because you knew that this is the pain point for you. Yeah, that's really good question. The main reason why we have selected purchase to pay process was that we were owners of the process. And usually as it starts, you are at the beginning, you want to do something just for yourself. And that was the reason why we started on purchase to pay. That was point number one and the second point was that so on this was already quite keen in the process. And so the ordering part of the purchase to pay process and also the invoices are based on SAP. So on is that many experiences with that they basically never not. It was not necessary to explain every single column of the data to them. Just hand over the historical data for the proof of concept and in four days. That was it. And so we got it. So that was also one of the reasons why I have selected purchase to pay process. But to be really honest, we just wanted to have something for us. Was there something specific that you were trying to see in the process? Because there are different approaches you can take with process money. You can go into like get the clear picture, get the view into end to end process. But you can also go in a way that you are actually trying to solve a very specific problem that you are aware of. Which approach did you actually take in Scoda? One of the approaches in this was because all the project was leading bottom up. We wanted to focus on really details to go deep deep inside of our process deep inside the data. But on the other hand, we had we had the great support from the management. So we also wanted to have this sorry for the buzzword the helicopter view on the on the process. So we needed to all both I would say and from my point of view, the helicopter view is I would say much better for such overview. Because you know you are aware that there are deviations in the process, but you don't know where exactly. And this is where we were heading. This is what we were, what were our expectations from it. Then so you and I know that when we first started actually working together, you already had some defined cases, defined use cases with some value proposition in them. How did you even go about deciding on what you want to measure and is this something, was there some exercise before that going into it. Because I know that you just said that you wanted to get this helicopter view, but you also went into some very specifics that you were trying to optimize. And I assume that this was like from the, let's say that you had some goals as an organization or the procurement that you tried to reach them. That was inserted the process mining technology into this overall like a structure. Yeah, it was there was actually a lot of effort behind it to before we get in touch. There was many many workshops behind where we were trying to find the potential using process mining. I think we went through quite development process because at the very beginning we decided, OK, our process are perfect. There is no issue in doubt. And OK, let's try. Let's try what is going to bring us once we see it. Then we were like the meme with surprise Pikachu sitting there and OK, that cannot be true. And the realization phase was really interesting because you could see the motivation of everyone. You could see that we are seeing we are seeing the potentials. We are seeing the deviations that the process is not really good as we expected. And there are plenty of rooms for improvement and this phase was from my point of view, one of the most interesting one. And there we organized several workshops with Telenis, also with Collish from internal consulting companies which helped us to mine the potential even more. And that was the whole preparation phase. Actually, it was really necessary to do so because as in the process of approval such a project in Škoda is based on that you firstly need to identify everything. And then you can go ask for money so that that was the bit with the goal to mine everything which is inside just based on the history. So that that was quite a nice process of personal development of everyone involved. I'm assuming so I mean I always find it so interesting that when people come in looking at process money for the first time they always have an idea of what is super inefficient in a process and what works super well. But oftentimes they look at the solution and they look at the process graph and all of a sudden those things are switched. All the things they thought were going really well are actually not going that well and all the things that they thought were a problem are just a tiny little bit of a problem. Was that something that your team went through? Did you have your your inklinks confirmed? Did you confirm your suspicions? I think some things were going badly. And the example you said Patrick exactly what happened to us too. There were really parts of the process where we were sure that okay this is happening we for example new there is there is. And there are some of our requesters are doing we are calling that salami tactic and they are splitting the request into small one so it's going faster and we were aware that that's happening but that was just a piece of the iceberg we did find out that there is much more below which where we are not aware of at all. So exactly what you said that happened to us too. One of the most entertaining things for me was actually the and you mentioned in about love yourself and that was the overall motivation and excitement of the users. How did you do that? How the hell did you do that? Actually I've asked this question to myself many times. I'm one of I'm not really sure I would say maybe it was chance the coincidence that the right people were in the right time in the right place. And one of the reasons I would say the the core one was that the whole project was really bottom up that somebody from from the employee side. Find it that there is something like process mining and said okay it is cool it's cool let's try it. It's something which could be beneficial not for only me as a as an employee but also for the management and we were pushing that from the very beginning until the end from from the bottom. You know it's completely different approach and from the top down which is usual in the such a corporation like Skoda and Volkswagen. Maybe a next question that's going to be a little switch of gears here so but also interest me we interestingly we recorded the episode with Martin before we did the one with you although you will be the first in the recording. Regardless we will talk with Martin about the overall project management and how it went. And what I want to actually ask you is how is Salon is currently being consumed by by you know the customers which in this case are the business users the employees and how are you incorporating it into your daily routines. That's that's something we are proud of I believe Martin already shared shared information about that so on this game as we are calling it. So I will not go to the details because I believe you did but actually once we were once we were implementing so on is in 2021. And we were ready in October after three or four months with you and everything was ready everything was a top so we could go live. I was really afraid that because I have that experience from the group that when you implement such a cool tool. Everyone is in so inside their operative job so so inside the daily business they will not have time and they will not have the motivation to to get something new so usually and I have the experience from the bounce that you implement really cool tool but nobody's using it I was really afraid of it because you know we spent a lot of time a lot of time and invested a lot of energy. To implement such a tool but I was also afraid that we will spend the money and on the licenses and nobody will be using it so I wanted to make sure that we will we will introduce it in different way and we were thinking about it I would say for three or four weeks. And then the result was the Sony's game that was actually huge sport from Sony's self in that and I believe once we once we introduce them what we are planning to do they say hey that school can use that with another customers too and I'm actually I'm really proud that we came with this on this game and I believe that is one of the one of the drivers. What I would say in addition there is always but right with everything there is always but in life I think that one in one of your episodes you said that the data are created by users they are created by people and at the end it always ends up with the people so you can have a really amazing data and process mining to like tellness but when you don't have the people the executors at the end. Then it also doesn't bring you much right so for this after six months of using it I believe their establishment of users is really good and right now we got to think about the execution part with our with our users and that's also going to be part of the game too. So what are you also doing you started with implementation procurement and soon thereafter another department actually jumped on I was your accounting team. What I'm probably going to ask you is how do you now manage the overall usage and one of the future episodes that we will be releasing is going to be about central excellence how are you going to manage this sudden influx of people new users. And also generally the whole environment because obviously it's a lot of work there are different processes what are the plans with that now. Yeah, the center of excellence you mentioned is the the key factor there and from my point of view it's really necessary when you have a more I would say departments or more processes involved. There must be some someone centralized who's going to steer that in our team Martin is responsible for we are calling it procurement for steam as a fancy name for center of excellence but that's the platform that's the platform we have established for everyone not only from our department but from any other department to come and say hey I have an idea of optimizing this or changing this in your systems what you are doing. And there go the goal of the platform goal of the procurement force team and goal of the Martin and other colleagues in team is to validate that idea to make sure that okay this is going to bring something it's going to save some time or bring us some money. So the center of excellence as it's called in general that's the key and to without it I would I believe that we were not be able to connect processes in general procurement and accounting even though it's one process purchase to pay but completely different databases and that would be hard to connect without it. Absolutely I was wondering now with this center of excellence and the seeming success of your users really using the tool I was wondering how does you the management or the upper upper levels feel about the introduction of this tool have they learned something from it as well and do they see plans of using it further not just in the procurement part but also in other aspects in other departments. Thanks for that question thanks for that question really because that was the second thing I was afraid of my colleagues the coordinators and the managers inside the general procurement you know they are really responsible people and I was quite I was not sure how they are going to react of process planning when they are going to see the reality of what's happening because they are basically responsible for for optimizing things like that. So we have established out a regular regular meeting we are calling the digital fitness like you go to to the fitness for your body then you go for fitness for your data analytic skills and we did that for them to actually they have their own coordinator league. So they are they are doing participating the son is game 2 and there is always a winner every month which you can go for lunch with the head of the department is just for fun it's really it's really you could see that there are several ones which are really into it and they see big potential and there are other ones which are still need some time. So this is also difficult because these managers have you know full calendar and they don't really have a time for doing the data analytics and that was one of the point of the digital fitness because we don't expect the users we don't expect the managers and the buyers to do really deep dives inside data to use the tone is for long time during their day we have the platform for it. And I'm really glad that the managers in general increment in schona really are really right now I have a feeling they are on board it they see the potential and right now they are looking on the institution. That's what would be your if you could define the next steps for scoda yourself where would you go now like with in terms of cell and it's what would you want to do. Wow if money was no problem okay okay that's really good good part of the question then if money would not be the problem and I would be the only one responsible for such a decision then I think that or you know my opinion about the data I think it's one of our last competitive advantages which is not mind in 100% because in automotive industry. You know the industry is quite classical the competitors we know each other to the bone everyone knows everyone knows the technology even the new players for example like Tesla. We already know everything what they have in car how they are building it and what is inside so it's really open it's really transparent so there will be really hard to find competitive advantage. But with the data with the processes inside from my point of view every single process not the procurement one but also in finance department also in IT also in production. Everyone everything ends with the price of the car which is for the production so what is going to cost us to produce one car everything ends every single process ends in this price and once we will be able to optimize all the processes we will be able to produce the costs on the production. So that means we will make more money because of course we are not make offer the cars cheaper in the market and just really open open open sentence because who do that but that's that's the point that's where I think where the process and data mining can help us this is one of the last competitive advantages we have. Wow very interesting thinking of how to like introduce your bottlenecks in data into the final price of the product really really cool. I would just like to say thank you again for accepting the invitation has been a real pleasure we will now jump on to the second part of the interview with Martin but before we let you go what I also need to congratulate you on your new addition to the family so yeah thanks a lot thanks a lot I would say thanks a lot firstly for the congratulations I know it's really a nice feeling to be a father for the second time. And also thinking thank you for invitation it's pleasure I'm really looking forward and I'm really honest I'm looking forward to hear the episode and my car because I usually listen that when I'm driving somewhere and I'm really looking forward for directions of my family to it. So thanks thanks for the invitation again it was it was pleasure I could it was Patrick pleasure to meet you and looking forward. Well that's love I can tell you right away that you will hate your voice because people always do hate their own voices but it is what it is so you get a cope with it. No already around that thanks thanks a lot thanks a lot take care yeah. All right thank you then let's go into the second round with Martin Kapasil bye bye. As we said already at the very beginning we have not one but two guests today in our show and we thought it would be an entertaining change of pace for you dear listeners to do the recording separately this time. So not having the guests speaking at the same time but you know do one by one. Interestingly we have first done the recording with Martin Kapasil although in the episode you do hear it as a second one so hopefully we did a good job and there will be many overlaps in our discussion Martin welcome to our show. Hello everybody and thank you for invitation to me to a podcast you bring a lot of inspiration to the data mining community and I'm honored to be part of it. Oh wow that's very very nice to hear Martin thank you thank you very much. I already mentioned it when talking with Watslav but what I find crazy about working with a Czech customer is how small Czech Republic actually is. And when we started working on the project together you and I Martin we quickly realized that we both play basketball and soon thereafter we also realized that not only we play basketball but we also played in the same league here in Prague against each other and yeah and then for our audience we you know we kicked Martin's team's butt twice this season. Unfortunately yeah we also won the league and we advanced to the higher competition. Unfortunately I couldn't attend any of those games because you know why it's a business meetings and everything that I just couldn't make it. Yeah and I'm not going to probably ask Martin to forge a comment on this because I know how humiliating this is for him. So let's just jump right into our field of expertise. Martin basketball aside unless of course you really won't comment on that. How did you end up working on a process mining project? Yeah a good story but it's really small but regarding this mining project I am the project manager at the Škoda Auto. General purchasing and I was hired as an external support to implement the Sony software at the purchasing department Škoda Auto. This is in itself generally it's a relatively unique position in the general purchasing because in a whole far away group there is no external staff to work in the purchasing. The purchasing process cannot be outsourced by any company but I don't need I don't deal with any business tenders my job is only to focus to the optimization projects especially to data mining in the procurement department. So is a process mining just like one of the projects that you work on or is it something that you solely focus on in all of your agenda. Yeah I have many projects about ten to care and I have three more project managers to divide these projects into them but definitely the time I think we would have said on this was my favorite one. That's very very good to hear and so let's talk a bit about your role in the project. So what were your tasks in this in this data mining or process mining project and what were your daily to do is there. Yeah I can start from the from the very beginning the project was unique at Škoda Auto for two reasons or the first reason was definitely the speed of the recession because you know the Škoda Auto is the largest industrial corporation in our country. Everything here takes off a long time but the implementation that salonist took there the three months only or even over the summer it was absolutely unprecedented and I don't think I will experience such a fast implementation of the project here anymore. And this is mainly due to the process end because you guys implement this because the process and implement the software for Škoda Auto and the implementation was divided into two parts. The first part was the preparation and the installation of the extractor server and data extraction and it was in compliance of our IT guys. But after this part the my role come and it's it's about another amount to create the basic cockpit and the first use cases we cooperate it together and at the end of the summer after three months we hand over the application into the QS stage to the key users. Then we had another two months of fine tuning the use cases and for signals with the key users and then we hand over the application to the full operation for all users. And the second reason why I think this project is unique in the in the level of the Škoda Auto is the due to the level of the auto zism from both sides from the sides of the Škoda Auto and also from sides of the salonist respective process end which support us very much. I think this level of end to zism is due to the fact that the whole project was originated from the button to top. Yeah, you understand the employees scam with the idea to use the salonist to use the term mining and it was not the strategic decision from the company headquarters and all key users joined to the project voluntary and there was a good mood all the time. Yeah, I might have to put some things on the context here. I really happy that you're saying that the implementation was fast and everything but I do remember when we first got in touch was like eight months before the project even started and already at that point of time there was already a year and a half discussion on let's do process mining in Škoda. So air was quite a pushback it took too long time to get from OK, let's do it until we can actually start doing it, but then I have to say I was also pleasantly surprised with how well it went. So also big big thumbs up for you guys. So so Martin, was were you involved in this process money or getting the this process money project. Like were you responsible for this right from the start like were you there to initiate this like one and a half years ago with however many months ago the Jacob was saying and were you experienced with process money before that or or how did you get in contact with process money in the first place. Great question. I was hired to this project so the discussion about this project star one half year before and this typical typical Škoda process and it comes from the left to the right from the groove to the bottom. But when we start is go very fast so I can about six months before the implementation start and it was my first experience with these that I'm mining to I just work with the databases and something like this and I. Ever can I mentioned how simple and how easy data mining can look like. Martin big chunk of your work what I felt like was not only getting in sync with the tool but also and most foreign foremost was to get involvement of the business users and I also think that you did a hell of a job there. But how was the initial reception of the tool and you first like gave it out to users understand yeah from this content implementation was easy but adopting the tool was a new challenge after this. So we wanted our expectation was we wanted to maintain the same level of autism which we find during the implementation so we offered our employees the Škoda auto employees that the adoption of the projects will be in the form of gamification and based on the Voluntariness so we introduced the tool to everyone like we have a great tool that. Now please come to our training and we can talk about it yeah this training work like a touch point for us with our buyers where we were there where we are unable for our employees and we showed them what salon is is skippable for the typical obstacles where. I find with cooperation the buyers was that they are afraid to click into the system is so it's not to break something and so on they thought that. They thought that when they receive a signal from the salon is they immediately did something wrong on something like that so the biggest hard was to getting our buyers. Convice that this is not a repressive tool but it's something well to definitely can help them in their everyday job so I think this this salon is thinking you know I think in this content that so this is also unique because a so this offer an amazing database tool but in very simple application that everyone will learn how to manage it how to control it. We never wanted our employees to do some sophisticated deep dive analysis but with only the few clicks in the salon is you can search the right purchasing process go through it or do some. Analyzes with the suppliers with the request department et cetera so. We want to set this might send to our bias and we are for them in our every week training. I really like the distinction that you made between the repressiveness of the tool and like the excitement and the the pure fact that you should go there get your answers get your get your questions answered. And I think establishing this from the very beginning of the project can make all the difference that you're not controlling them you're not trying to you know repress them but you're actually trying to help them. You want to mention couple of very interesting things like the gamification I really want to do dip into that before I do that however. Did the users eventually like did you see that they you know they started with this let's say a little fear little. I don't want to say resentment but they were like cautious and did you eventually see the adoption going up and that they were like okay now I really want to just work on this specific problem only in salon is and I don't want to go to the the old way. Yeah I can start with the adoption adoption start with something like a big bank because I I flew to the entire department with the flyers going hey come into the salon is let's play the salon is game it will be very fun. So we presented as a is a big deal is a big thing is something new I literally talk about the transformation of the purchasing department into the data driving department. And something are so everyone could. Every time it was based on the volunteer about everyone can come into our training never got the access into the application and they can start play the game and win the beautiful by so I think the expectation was that it's something new I want to I want to check it and to be presented like like a fan. What do you use the tool now for so there are some use cases and so on and are the users are now using it to support them on their daily work. Yeah good question because when we calculate the business case the business case was based on use cases yeah do use cases show some problem as this some strategy and the working on that but I think today. It's honest it's most used for the everyday analysis of the vendors everyday analysis of the process because it's really simply you can you can go through for example Ctmb team small orders get you go under under your radar under your radar to your commodity and something like this so we have implemented many use cases which we count the counting business case based on this use cases that I think the song is is mainly used for every day. Another day analysis the small analysis to to catch the context of of my commodity on something like this so it's perfect that we can we can manage it through the 60 buyers in our department. I had a question regarding the adoption so what we usually hear a lot of the time is that business users need a lot of time given to them right so they need time to be able to learn the tool they need time to be then also go into the operator and use the tool and kind of clear some of the schedule of of all the things they're already doing to be able to use this tool now was there the same type of feedback that you got and how did you deal with them. Yeah, this is the first part the adoption of the tool we want to present like a game with the gamification I can describe it because I like any good. This is something I'm looking forward to yeah because any good time the rules was definitely define it on the beginning the motivation was the beautiful price so buyers were able to add some points for the answer is activity. There was a free free basic categories for which they went to get the points the first activity was when they come to our training they just come inside they just participate the training is and they can earn some first points. They also get more points on this training when they presented their own success story so we want that the buyer presented to buyer their success their use with the tone is on some examples. And I also give them some various task from the tone is for example hey how many POs we have in this quarter and they also able to get some extra points on these trainings. So the second activity for which points could be obtained was the use of the application there are some there are some settings and I can manage how often they opened the cennonies how they locked into the cennonies and if they locked every week they receive some extra points for logging also for using the signals or etc. So the first activity for which the most points could be obtained where there are suggestions for improving for improving the environment of the tone is a chikoda for also for new use cases etc. So we tried to motivate them from the very beginning to think about how the application can be used in their common practice. So this was so and also as the buyers collected the points they move into the different areas and have some fancy names like a brother or cadet or a conqueror etc. It was fun and I think we go very smoothly through this adoption part of the acquisition sounds like a world worker to me. Exactly. Martian what level are you now? I am definitely conqueror. I got to say that I really really like this idea of gamification and it was actually the first time I saw it at anyhow any customer implemented and I already steal this idea and I'm trying or testing it out with another customer of mine. So thank you for that Martian I'll let you know how we went. So just to recap so this gamification the main goal was to ease the people into the tool right exactly. How did you so you basically are you were saying that they were collecting points for their activity and you try to get them points for basically anything related to sellness right. So did you also like notice then that there some you said that you had 60 buyers and I assume that you have way less licenses to use was there also one of the underlying ultimate goals to like distinguish who would be the super user and who would just stay out of the tool and did you also observe that some people got more motivated than others. Yeah, I am first of all I am very happy that all licenses were very distributed less than months from the start from the presentation. So then after that we start to solve the issue when another new buyers wants to use the sound is for example there are some teams like corner teams in our department which want all the buyers to start using that we can coordinate the work through the salon is and something like this. So as our head of the purchasing materials at the service it's not for all so there is a process when based on the login on the login strategy when you are for example free weeks not looking to do so this you can lose your licenses and new one get it instead of you. So then question why gamify this in the first place right and can we just have a simple road map where you stick the users into trainings mandatory trainings and then you stick them on the tool like like why gamify in the first place. So first we want to maintain the same level of autism because we really enjoy the implementation phase and we want to edit and distribute it to our buyers so I think this gamification was fun it was something new and we presented the tool like it's something for fun something that can help you it's not the common tool which lay on your computer I nobody use it. Did you do something like this already beforehand or is this your first time gamifying this type of roll out. It was our first try to try to use the gamification in the adoption of a phase of the project but I discuss it with some colleagues from the salon is which inspired me about this definition so we we we end the very beginning we get some points we want to reach and I think we reach them very well. Now looking back would you do the gamification differently would there be some aspects that you would change or think about like looking back would you change a few things. Understand but I think the this gamification is one of the highlight of the whole project so maybe there could be some some small changes but I like the idea and I am happy that I can experience this this strategy maybe last question regarding the gamification before we move on to the next topic how did the user how was the user reception of this of this idea how did they enjoy that. Yeah they really enjoyed it so I think we get the good point and they have some internal fights for the prices and because I presented it on the internal internal meetings and present the results and highlight the best one and also they highlight the last one and they you must you must hurry up because prices are missing so yeah it was it was fine. What was the price you keep telling it I want to win something Martin yeah the first price was thermo thermal battle for forty and it was. The second price was yoga yoga lying mad yoga mad also good for our our employees that they can get some practice the first price was headphones headphones with Mike Mike and last price was for the winner there was something like green cap. Which which which was connected with the Conqueror it was like a crown for the for the best one it sounds that sounds like a lot of fun and then like the ultimate winner just gets to go to two different which show you know code I suppose are all that I would think I would like to participate in this game. Anyhow Martin another topic which comes to my mind I like is what happens after the user adoption and after the initial face of the project and we will soon have a guest who will talk a lot on this center of excellence basically establishing the system around it. So we will not go in too much into the depth here but I wanted to ask you like how do you in in scoda handle this this transition from let's say the support of consultants of us of process and to like a self help and being capable of handling things mostly on yourself because I think this is also a crucial part of every project. Yeah our situation in the general procurement to go out of a specific specific in that we have an excellent data analyst in our team also we have a huge support from our management so gradually after the work of the process and when the process and implemented ended we were able already able to take over the entire operation. In two hour ends and our data analysis now is able to respond to our customers or our employees suggestions and he can't reduce to the salon s h coda environment on their own but nevertheless we remind in contact with the company process and after implementation we set up a retired model here that here is one of the. Processing and every week for one day and they can solve the backlog of the requirements together but it's something like the maintenance it's we don't build much new new use cases but we want to maintain the current application and. And there is a backlog of requirements for for them every week and what I also noticed at some point that you were writing quite an extensive documentation and although I hate writing documentation I can totally see the upsides of having that. What did you document there what did you write yeah it's also what I discussed on the very beginning a lot of the school auto is the largest industrial corporate here and all projects need a lot of documentation but we go for this documentation with the support of the of the process and and there was no problem just just need to write it down and it start from the from the definition of the use cases what. Which money we expected that this solution will come and also there are some capitals regarding the support regarding the server extractor etcetera yeah it's it's just bureaucracy yeah yeah Martin maybe also do you recall of something that didn't go according to plan that was maybe not a success and that just you would probably done different this time in the process. And what would I do differently yeah generally it's a lot less so nice keep it. Capabilities exceed my expectation by 1000% so I had no idea before how easy and effective can the mining look like there are a number of of things what we have what we can do done differently. But on the other hand it was great beautiful rain learning process from the from the very beginning so maybe the only thing I would to do differently is have much higher expectation from the whole software and very beginning because if you really want if you really need to kick your business use that the mining to like and discover your process because after that there is only one way and this way is up. Oh boy I'm glad that you didn't have those expectations because I can tell you already that these new features are very hard to implement. So maybe then your experience with our consulting would be a little different than it was now. So Martin maybe last question before we let you go like where do you where would you like to be heading now so you have established I would say very strong base in procurement. There is also an initiative in accounts payable in your in your organization. Where do you want to take your team next. Yeah now yeah my ambitious is high definitely I want to transfer this purchasing department into the data drive on procurement and it is and we start with the salon is and it was an amazing experience. But the next steps will be the change these establish these p2p process which have now and it could be a very painful way because if you want to change purchases it's quite very difficult but thanks to the salon is we can do a lot of things now proactively because before this department works like non proactively. We just sit on our chairs and waiting what will come from our request or now we have to and we can do many things proactively but the process is not established for this because we also need the partner from the request department and we can we cannot start on our own base only on the database. So this changing the p2p established process will be the biggest the biggest painful way what we want to go now. I'm excited to you know had the opportunity to participate on the project I also want to thank you for for coming here and join us in this episode to actually be able to tell the story to other listeners who might find some some inspiration in this especially with the part that you will handle the adoption which again for me that was also a huge learning curve and as I said I'm using it now myself. Yeah so be crazy to you Martin thank you for that thank you and I want to to be part of your podcast thank you guys all right so thank you for coming Martin for you dear listeners thank you for joining and tuning into mining our business podcast we are very happy to have you. If you have any questions just write us on LinkedIn we are always there always active always posting some super fun the super duper posts on you know on our page. We are also very active commenting there so just reach out we are always happy to hear from you if you want you can also drop us an email on mining your business podcast at gmail dot com and you know tune in with the next episode thank you for sending Patrick Martin thank you for joining today and have a nice day bye bye. Thank you bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]