Interview with Bobby Davidson

One of the challenges of scaling a large corporation is that the internal systems and structures get more and more complex over time, and the people working there loose the context of why those systems were set up in the way that they were.  Every new leader comes in and bolts on internal processes that are relevant for that period, but typically these can stultify and become unnecessary complexity that gets in the way of the real objective.

We all know this feeling, where an internal system is cumbersome and bloated but there is too much relying on it in order to make the necessary changes.  We stick with the Frankenstein-esque setup because we don’t have the confidence to re-engineer things when the stakes are so high.  We accept mediocre results because the downside risk is exaggerated in our minds.  We can’t fix something that we don’t understand.

This is the exact challenge that we spoke to Bobby Davison about when we interviewed him about his experiences with Cubewise EDU.

Bobby works at Primark in Ireland and is responsible for managing all of the TM1 systems within the company.  He’s been there for a number of years now and has seen a lot of change in his time at the company.  Primark had a rather unwieldy set of cubes that were holding the internal reporting together, but he started to see the performance and the usefulness decline over time – a worrying trend for anyone tasked with maintaining complex systems.  In an attempt to get things back on track, the company engaged with a technology vendor who took over the technical maintenance and a variety of other services that were crucial to how the system worked. 

This seemed like a good idea at the time because Bobby and his team could then focus on higher-value tasks, leaving the technical stuff to a highly specialized company.  They had the expertise and the resources to get the job done.  However, this brought with it another problem.  The company became reliant on the vendor failed to develop knowledge of the underlying systems and processes.  Instead of being in the driving seat, they were attempting to communicate their needs to a third party and hoping that things were being executed in the most efficient way possible.

It was only when a new manager joined who had used Cubewise EDU in their previous company, that Bobby realized there was another way.  Through utilizing a number of the Cubewise courses, Bobby upskilled himself on how TM1 functioned on a deep level and how it could be applied to a variety of different business use cases.  It was a revelation to finally see what was going on under the hood.

He used the opportunity to build a coherent picture of what was currently happening and how the system was delivering value to the various stakeholders.  He always had a sense as to how it worked, but to understand it deeply made things clearer than they’d ever been.

The training proved to be a very empowering experience, because for the first time – Primark was able to engage with their technology vendor with enough knowledge to make it a two-way conversation.  By having the requisite skillset on board, they could ask the right questions to challenge the thinking, optimize the build, and engineer a set of systems that worked much better than what was previously in place.

They say that knowledge is power, and that’s crystal clear in Bobby’s story.  The investment in internal knowledge meant that they didn’t have to settle for a bolt-on solution time and time again.  They were able to plan from first principles and identify the core pieces that were keeping everything going.  And additionally, they now had the confidence to cull those parts of the systems that were merely slowing things down.

Those are the results that we live for here at Cubewise EDU.  There’s nothing more fulfilling than seeing a client feel empowered and confident about their TM1 skills so that they can be instrumental in how the system works, rather than being completely reliant on someone else.  This makes for a much more efficient business when your users aren’t worried about breaking things but can instead apply their minds to make continual improvements over time.

Bobby’s story is a perfect example of this and it has changed Primark for the better.  Moving forward, the company is embarking on a project to re-assess all their cubes and re-engineer a system that is going to support them as the business evolves. 

Maybe you’re in a similar position?