In this episode of Supply Chain Now, Scott Luton and Marty Parker welcome back Wiley Jones, Co-Founder and CEO of Doss, to discuss the evolving world of demand planning and supply chain optimization. Wiley shares his journey, from designing toys in factories in Asia to leading hardware projects in Silicon Valley, and how his diverse experiences shaped his mission to increase the agility of the global value chain.

They talk about the timeless truths in demand planning, such as the importance of aligning business inputs and outputs, and the transformative role of data integration in modern demand forecasting. Wiley also delves into the impact of AI and machine learning in enhancing decision-making processes, helping organizations plan more effectively in an unpredictable market.

Jump into the conversation:

(00:00) Intro

(03:30) From toys to hardware projects

(06:00) How Wiley shaped his supply chain agility approach

(09:15) The importance of demand planning

(12:40) Timeless truths in demand planning

(16:00) How AI and machine learning change demand planning

(19:20) The role of data integration in demand planning

(22:30) The challenges of forecasting in an unpredictable market

(25:00) Innovating and embracing change in supply chain management

(28:15) The impact of new technology on demand planning models

(31:40) How Doss is modernizing supply chain operations

(34:00) Fostering innovation within supply chain teams

(37:15) The future of demand planning

(40:00) Embracing disruption and leveraging technology for growth

Additional Links & Resources:

• Connect with Wiley Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wileycwjones/
• Learn more about Doss: https://www.doss.com/
• WEBINAR: E2E Demand Planning – Tactics for Driving Value at Scale: https://supplychainnow.com/e2e-demand-planning-tactics-driving-value-scale-webinar/
• Learn more about Supply Chain Now: https://supplychainnow.com
• Watch and listen to more Supply Chain Now episodes here: https://supplychainnow.com/program/supply-chain-now
• Subscribe to Supply Chain Now on your favorite platform: https://supplychainnow.com/join
• Work with us! Download Supply Chain Now’s NEW Media Kit: https://bit.ly/3XH6OVk
• WEBINAR- Unpacking the Latest Tariff Updates, Best Practices & What to Expect Next: https://bit.ly/4ikvdcS
• WEBINAR- Lessons Learned from the Trenches: How AI Will Impact the Future of Work: https://bit.ly/3DUnROx
• WEBINAR- Adapting to Volatility: Navigating Trade Wars, Supply Chain Disruptions & AI: https://bit.ly/4kqSv2D
• WEBINAR- Altium 365: Integrated Supply Chain Management Across the Product: https://bit.ly/4bWSLma

This episode was hosted by Scott Luton and Marty Parker and produced by Amanda Luton, Trisha Cordes, and Joshua Miranda. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: https://supplychainnow.com/4-ways-end-end-demand-planning-has-hasnt-changed-1410

There's no software that can come and save you if you don't have the courage to go in and change your business.

Welcome to Supply Chain Now the number one voice of Supply Chain. Join us as we share critical news, key insights and real Supply Chain leadership from across the globe. One conversation at a time.

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you may be. Scott Luton and Marty Parker with you here on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today's show. Hey Marty, how you doing today?

I'm doing great, Scott. Beautiful weather outside, just having a wonderful day.

I'm with you. Early spring I'll call it. Even though we'll probably have a couple of cold snaps between now and in April. But it is gorgeous in Atlanta, so hopefully, hopefully it's nice wherever our audience is tuned in around the globe. But folks, we have got another great show here today. We're diving into one of our favorite topics, Demand planning. Be talking with one of our faves about what hasn't changed when it comes to how we optimize demand Planning outcomes and what has changed quite dramatically. It's a different time.

And better yet, how are some of the most successful organizations conducting their planning processes? All of that and a whole bunch more. Marty. Should be a great show, huh?

Yeah, I'm looking forward to learning a lot myself.

Me too. I'm ready. I'm ready for a new certification. So folks, stay tuned for an informative, enlightening and entertaining conversation. With all of that said, Marty, I'm going to welcome in back by Popular man, our outstanding guest here today. I'll tell you, he's had one heck of a fascinating journey already. Right already. From designing toys and factories in Asia to leading hardware projects for medical devices in Silicon Valley, to his current mission of increasing the agility of the global value chain.

He is also helping to powerfully change how Supply Chain is done these days. That's my favorite part about it all. So join me in welcoming Wiley Jones, co founder and CEO of Doss Wiley. How you doing today?

Awesome, Scott. Marty, great to be back. It's always fun being able to jump into the green room with you guys.

It is, Marty. Now, we were having a little fun because this is, I think this is our fourth conversation with Wiley going back probably on the last six, eight months. And so we're deeming this one Rocky IV. Okay. One of the best fourth sequels of all time. Would you agree, Marty?

Definitely. It brings back some memories from a long time ago.

Oh, I'm with you. The opening with James Brown, you know, living in America, that is one of the best show tunes of any movie ever. But anyway, I digress. Wiley, kind of. In a related note, you know, we love starting with a fun warm up question. And with your previous appearances, we've talked about your passion for skiing. We even had some pictures of you kind of in action. We've talked about your passion for the Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois and especially the basketball team there.

And today we're going to get to know you a little more about your passion for reading, especially one of your favorite recent biographies. So tell us more about that.

Yeah, I'm a sucker for a good biography because I just find it so much funnier what ends up happening. You know, the truth is stranger than fiction, right?

Yes.

There's this really great book that was written, I think in the early 2000s, late 90s maybe about Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle. And yeah, it's a great biography because he actually had someone from the Economist shadow him for two years and they had basically unfettered access to his whole life and they wrote a book and his whole thing was he wanted to have creative control also. And so he has footnotes in the book that, where he's kind of answering back, disagreeing, saying, hey, you know, that's not actually what happened. So it's pretty funny. You can tell the guy really loves databases and he really loves yachts. That's the main, main takeaways.

All right, so I'll tell you, Marty, if someone shadowed me for two years, oh gosh, two days maybe, but two years, can you imagine? And then secondly, Marty, who knew you had something in common with Larry Ellison because you love databases and yach too. But Marty, what's been one of your favorite recent reads as well, so biography related?

I, I haven't read anything recently, but I just started a new podcast called People I Mostly Admire. He gets these great, really interesting people in different fields and asks a lot of questions about kind of their biography. It's got Steve Levitt, an economist that's on Freakonomics podcast, and he just. Did I forget her name. Bialik, the woman who was on the TV show with all the nerds. Right, the four nerds. And.

Is that where they had the catchphrase Bazinga?

Right?

Yes.

Big Bang Theory.

Yes, there we go. Big Bang Theory. There we go. I knew, I knew we'd get it collectively soon.

Yes.

And similarly, people know her as an actress, but she has her PhD in neuroscience and really has a lot of anxiety. And so you do these deep Dives on topics unrelated to what you thought you were going to be listening to. And so I think a biography like Wiley's describing really does that you learn all these other things. My daughter Rachel calls it people are more than one thing. And so we think of her on Big Bang Theory, but she's actually way more interesting than.

I love that phrase, people are more than one thing. And you got that from your daughter, Marty, is that right?

Yeah, it's my daughter Rachel. She's a social worker.

I love that. We all need to embrace that much, much more often. Good stuff there. And I would just add to the books. You know, I read a bunch of business books. Most of those behind me, that's as far as I'm a go with that. But I hadn't read a bunch of biographies. But way back in the day, when I was in the Air Force, I read Dutch by Edmund Morris about Ronald Reagan cover to cover.

And that was a really interesting background about, you know, one of the. The biggest political leaders, at least of my lifetime, Wiley. I must learn a lot more about Larry Ellison's journey. I'm gonna check that out. All right, let's talk about Wiley. I mean, gosh, you're like 22 years old, maybe 19 years old, and you've lived an incredible. And of course I'm kidding, but you've really lived in a really interesting journey already. And I kind of shared some of those bullet points from some of your previous stops.

So for our new audience members, I would love for you to share a little bit more about your technology and supply chain background.

I stumbled in accidentally or maybe fell into working into the, you know, into the global value chain and being a. Just a part of that. My first job was working on pet toys, and we were manufacturing them in China, and that meant solving a lot of hard problems with suppliers around the world. And it was everything from working with gearbox factories to battery manufacturers, to plastic injection molding to freight forwarders and getting things into and out of the US and Australia and the EU and just learning about that entire process at 22, and that was a really formative experience for me. It's just having to go do all that. And we were a small, 7, 8 person company, figured it all out on our own. And that was amazing. Just a massive accelerant for me and really just showing me the.

The bowels of the global value chain.

Oh, gosh, that's gonna be your book. At least maybe the first couple chapters of your book. And then I gotta ask one more quick question. Wiley when it comes to kind of how. We're gonna talk more about this towards the end of today's episode, but when it comes to changing the status quo and changing how supply chain or business is done. Supply chain is done. Is there one experience in your background that really kind of cemented the need to drive that change like you're all doing today?

Yeah, it was.

I think it was a.

Was it the scene in The Wizard of Oz, right where they pull the curtain back? It was kind of like that. I worked a factory that was quite large. They were a contract manufacturer and we were tucked away in the corner. We were a super small business that they worked with and they took a bet on us and they were wonderful letting us use their facilities and you as a great partner. But they still produce Roombas there. iRobot, the big factory, the big automated vacuum company. There was a period of time where we were running these material reports. We were doing demand planning, and I was sitting side by side with this, like, program manager from iRobot and we were having the same problems dealing with the factory's demand planning.

And I was sitting there, I'm like, they're making a million roombas a year. This is a seven person company. Why do we have the same problem? I was like, what are you doing here? I know what I'm doing here. I know why we have to stop.

Why do you have this stuff?

Right? That was a really big moment for me to run into. I was 24 and I was like, oh, I don't think these problems have all been solved yet. There's still a lot to cover here that we're just scratching the surface on what's possible.

W. That is such a wonderful anecdote. And by the way, side note, before I get Marty's take on what we just heard there, side note, I'm not picking on Wiley's age. I'm jealous of his genes, folks. That's what it is. Okay, but kidding aside, Marty, to have those experiences that Wiley's talking about at that early of an age so many other folks across supply chain may have in, you know, the 30s, 40s or beyond, or maybe never have, I can't imagine how, how that shaped his worldview and naturally his leadership view and his innovation view, I guess. But Marty, what'd you hear there?

I like the entrepreneurial nature of it. A lot of entrepreneurs I meet like Wiley have been in situations, allowed to be in situations where you can fail. You know, you can try things out, you can see the problems that exist, and then Ultimately go back and say, hey, I want to go back and fix that. My story is similar. I had an employee accidentally order $30,000 of green marble and marble supposed to be white. And what in the world are we going to do with a warehouse full of green marbles? And if you look back at the root cause, folks wanted to blame him. But you look back at the pieces of paper and spreadsheets and all the manual things that Wiley saw as well, it wasn't his fault. He did the best he could with the terrible systems he was given.

So I love that Wiley learned from that. Of course, I learned from it as well.

I love that it's so often, as you illustrate, Marty, it is about the systems and the processes that we as management or leaders or departments, whatever it is, put in place, and how unfortunately, sometimes they put our people in position to fail. And so I love that example. In the next podcast, we're going to find out what Marty did with $30,000 worth of green marble. Stay tuned, folks. One more thing. We're gonna see how many movie references we can work in. We've already talked about Rocky IV. Wiley just mentioned The Wizard of Oz and pulling the curtain back.

We're gonna see how many others we can maybe work in here. All right, so our central theme here today, right, central theme, four ways that end to end demand planning has and hasn't changed. Okay, so, Wiley, we're going to start with those timeless truths first. So what tell us, in your view, what's a couple of things that hasn't changed when it comes to how organizations find success with demand planning? Let's start with the first one.

Yeah, so the first point I really like to drive home with our customers and really just anyone I talk to about these problems is when it comes to demand planning, you're thinking about the inputs to your business and the outputs of your business to your end customer. And you first have to decide whether or not demand planning should be important to you. And it is a decision because there are reasons to care about demand planning which have to do with being sensitive to selling out on a product or being sensitive to holding too much inventory. If you're a company that's in the takeoff period and you're trying to rapidly grow and you want to make high conviction bets about, let's say, a new product line or something, you can't demand plan for that. In the same way that a business who has been around for 35 years and has a 80% mix of evergreen SKUs that they sell to the Same retailers who bought it the same way, the same amounts 10 years ago. You just can't functionally make the same types of demand planning decisions and draw insights from historical data or, you know, whatever it is. So you have to first assess does it actually matter for us to demand plan accurately because we are either operating off of historical information or what we think is going to happen in the future. And what level of certainty can we assign to those things? A great example is like businesses today that are being impacted by tariffs.

If you're demand planning based on historicals in a pre tariff world, that's probably not going to be accurate right now. So demand planning is probably going to be much more about your conviction in what's happening in the future as opposed to relying on past historical data, at least from a big picture. So that's where we always start is like let's just assess on the ground what actually matters to your business today, what has happened in the past and where are you trying to go? What level of conviction do you have about those things? Where does demand planning fit into it?

W what a great call out. And that's really whether we're talking about demand planning or many other things because we can't prioritize everything. Marty, what'd you hear there in this first thing that hasn't changed in all the years?

No, Wiley's exactly right. I like thinking about strategy for companies in three buckets. They're cost leaders or they are customer centric being responsive with customization, or they are innovators with new products and services. And so how you use demand planning and where and how it matters, it varies wild between those three different types of companies. I think Michael Porter came up with that model and so he's exactly right. We can't expect plus or minus 1% forecast accuracy and use historical data with an innovator that's maybe even a startup like Wiley described. So knowing what matters and how it matters is really critical first step.

Excellent point. Would it really matter if Henry Ford had measured all the horses and buggies that had been sold when he came out with the Model T? Of course not. It's a whole different ballgame. Right. And of course it's not as simple as that. Of course. But I think that is a nice anecdote, especially related to that quote that Henry said something like what'd he say? If I'd asked customers what they wanted, I'm paraphrasing, then I would have just developed a faster horse and buggy or something like that. Of course they Changed the game, Wiley.

With this second one, though, we're going to the French Connection. Yes. The late, great Gene Hackman, man.

So, yes.

What do I mean by that? I hope I'm saying this right. Wiley and Marty, missing place. So Wiley was educating me on a French term, culinary term. So, Wiley, why is that remotely relevant here in the second thing. That hasn't changed.

Yeah.

So the "mise en place", putting all the pieces and setting up the data. This is our second thing. That will always be true. And maybe I'll work in another example in a minute about ratatouille, if you guys are. That's a fan favorite in our household. The framing of this for us is. Let's say that we come to the conclusion of the first part. Demand planning is important.

Okay, cool. Now what? In order to plan for future demand, we have to merge together a few concepts. And those concepts all come from different parts of the business's data. It's what products are we selling? What services are we selling? What is our catalog of offerings? What historical order sales data do we have to draw from? What future projections can we merge in based on. Let's say we're a business that we do half of our volume through like big retail channels, and then we do half of our volume through like some kind of direct sales. Well, we're going to run a bunch of big trade promotions with Costco, and we need to go in and project that in and say we're going to drop prices with Costco. Therefore, we need to fold that data in and be able to recognize that we'll have a big increase in volume of these specific SKUs that we're running through with this trade partner. So when you put all that together, it's about thinking through how do we have individual pieces of data that make up the comprehensive picture of demand and the comprehensive picture of supply and being able to understand all of those in a real time and continuous manner.

That is a. That is always going to be a problem. And that is what businesses in the world of demand planning and forecasting have been trying to solve for years and years and years and is still not well solved. And note.

Wow, excellent point. And Marty, where his perspective takes my mind is the maybe sixth grade, fifth grade, or sixth grade, whenever I was in algebra, wherever that's, I think, a sixth grade, they start word problems, right? And they're really long paragraphs, all kinds of numbers, and they teach you how to determine what's relevant and important and then push everything out of the way. That's all the noise is completely irrelevant to the problem you're trying to solve. I didn't think much of it at the time, but goodness gracious, that is one of the most important lessons I think I learned in sixth grade, thanks to Ms. Barbara Hokinson. But Marty, what'd you hear there? When it comes to. I'm, I'm. Try it again, miss.

And plus what you hear there from Wiley. Marty.

Yeah, so you're, you're getting organized so you can cook. And in, in that case, and what Wiley was describing is getting all your inputs within the company, your data within the company, your external data. What I can tell you, companies struggle just internally. They'll have dollar data in their CRM, they'll have units data in their ERP, they'll have different kinds of data in their plm, their product lifecycle management software. And it goes on and on and on in its different formats, and it's unorganized and it's not linked together. And so like Wiley said, you've got to figure out, does that data matter? And with tools like generative AI, why, yes, why not just give it the data and let it figure out whether or not it matters? But I think that's an absolute first step. And companies will just stick it in a business warehouse and hope that somebody does some analyst, analyst work on it. But it's so much more than that.

Yes, Marty, yes. Now, I'm disappointed you didn't mention your passion for all things culinary, Marty. And we're gonna have to get some images of you in action in the kitchen. I can see you now, you got the chef hat on, you've got your team, your family all involved in the prep. And we're gonna have to get an example of your, your ability to pull it all together. Good stuff there, Marty. All right, so, Wiley, we're going to shift gears, because as important as it is to acknowledge what hasn't changed, right? And there's timeless truths. You name two of them.

It's also not 1989 anymore, although many organizations, the way they operate, you might think it still is. So I'm going to ask you, when it comes to what has changed, what are some of the new innovative aspects to modern demand planning? Let's start with the first one.

To call back to our early intro discussion around that biography I read of Larry Ellison. He cares a lot about this stuff, having built the business Oracle. And he wrote in this book, he said, easy, simple, seamless systems integration is beyond the state of the art. And he said that in 1999.

Okay.

And a lot of people would say that's still true today. And I think for the first time in, you know, in our lifetimes, it's getting easier and easier, as Marty was saying, to use tools like generative AI to normalize and structure data and bring together all of the things that you actually need to make decisions as a business. And to do so not by having to excise human judgment, but letting machines actually be able to take judgments on things that are in data, which they're fantastic at doing nowadays. Language models and generative AI tools, they're able to take, like you said, data out of your CRM, data out of your ERP, data out of your plm, and put it into a normalized structure so that "mise en place" and all those setups so that you can go cook and build that forecast, all of that can come together in a way that is way more seamless than has ever been possible. And that. That excites us. We're working towards solving an evergreen problem in a novel and new way that technically wasn't possible even just a few years ago.

W. I love it. And, folks, we're going to expound more on some of the cool things Wiley and the Doss team are doing there to give you even more examples. But Marty, we don't need the team behind RoboCop these days to take advantage of all this innovative technology, right? Thanks to many things, but including the democratization of supply chain tech here in this golden era. What'd you hear there, Marty?

An example of what Wiley's talking about is when I went to China his first time, and they didn't have landlines, they just went all in on cell phone technology. And so here we would struggle to get coverage. At the time, there was no issue. They were going to the latest and greatest immediately. So I love the word greenfield. There are just so many companies that look at traditional ERPs and are like, I'm not spending millions of dollars and bankrupting my company potentially to do it. And so doing it in a greenfield way, you know, Wiley can figure out, okay, what is important, what does matter, and really help those companies have access to the latest and greatest technology. Don't go back to landlines.

Let's look forward to the new sort of cellular type technology.

Love it, Marty. Love it. I got to put our shades on because the future is bright and we got to lean into the future, right? Instead of looking to the past for answers, especially this on the new challenges we have as an industry. Okay, so quick sidebar. Account our movie counts at five, I believe. Five, I believe. Let's put that out there to Wiley and Marty. All right, so with this next one, in terms of the second way that demand planning had, the game has changed dramatically.

Wiley, I think we're going to be talking about more custom purpose built solutions. Tell us more.

This is now into the ratatouille reference, Right. When we think about taking all of the ingredients and all the pieces of data that represent demand supply, your product catalog, your understanding of your customers. We've now crossed over into a new era of technology where the semantics of what humans are amazing at understanding. You know, you go look at a message from a customer and you see, oh, they're not very happy about this. We stocked out on this and they couldn't order X, Y and Z. AI is allowing machines, computers to understand those things similarly. Well, what does that actually mean in practice? It's kind of like the rat Remy controlling the hair of the guy. Computers are actually able to go and cook now in the kitchen.

They're not just doing the mise en place, they're not just integrating data together. They're actually able to go and make decisions and suggest what we should go and do. So what does this look like in practice and demand planning? Well, there's actually a paper that came out recently as a part of a bunch of AI conferences. They have figured out that using language models, you're able to do seasonal forecasting better than any historical model has ever been able to do seasonal forecasting. Seasonal businesses and seasonal forecasting has always been really hard to characterize with mechanical, I would say deterministic models. But language models are able to understand. Well, I sell a bunch of these widgets. I'm a kind of business that sells more at Christmas time.

Here's what our lead times are. This is what we need to be producing because it takes that semantic context of the holidays and characterizes it against sales. That's not something that you could do with a simple regression. Back in Excel, language models are taking human semantics and they're merging and fusing them into hard bits, numbers that it truly just was impossible before. And so we could not be more excited about what the applications of this are. We're just starting to scratch the surface.

Oh, I'm with you. It is absolutely remarkable, Marty, whether it's in the kitchen or it's out in supply chains when it comes to custom purpose built solutions, approaches and just all that machines and AI and CPUs, you name it, can do and how that that boundary I'll call it has been, you know, largely moved your thoughts?

I always want to emphasize something that Wiley said. There's a guy named Casey Loball is a futurist at Deloitte that just. I just saw speak at the National Retail Federation, and he said there's already technology that can respond to people more empathetically than a typical doctor or nurse. So it's learning those language things, whether it's written or verbal. And I think it's this game changer in demand planning because up to now you had to sort of guess. An example of the guessing we used to drive me crazy being in a seasonal business, was trying to put a one of these exponential models on, and it's all guessing and iterative. I'm going to guess the factor that I need to get the curve right. And what about which model to use in the first place? What about, do these old models even work anymore? And so I think getting that empathy and that, that thing that we can do pretty easily as humans is a game changer.

And then having something like generative AI that can help select the best approach to the particular kind of data that we have, that's extremely difficult for humans, especially when they're leafing through 20 or 30 different kinds of printed reports or reports dumped into Excel, which is how most demand planners are having to operate today.

Well said, Wiley. I'm feeling a vibe that you want to add one more comment to what Marty is sharing there. Is that right?

I love it. It's just exactly what you said. We see precisely the scenarios where human judgment is not to say that we're getting replaced by the machines. It's not Terminator. Right. It's a very symbiotic relationship where the things that computers are fantastic at, we are now just augmenting with something that humans have traditionally been great at. And computers are great at crunching numbers now. They're good at merging in.

Like Marty said, the empathy, because that is what it truly is, is like, oh, you know, understanding what's happening in the real world. Computers are very bad at that, and now they're getting good at it and it's completely changed what's possible for us to go build.

Well said. All right, so I'm just going to leave this here and we can think about it and come back next time. But if humans are indeed learning empathy from our robot counterparts, I'm not sure whether or not to be more impressed with the robotic advancement or more unimpressed with human evolution. So we'll see. We'll answer that maybe like next time.

I think that could be a fun separate podcast that Wiley and I would absolutely love to do.

Oh, gosh, fascinating. All right. So much to keep score of. And by the way, man, you snuck in a few more there. Wiley, I like it. One more point. This came up in the webinar. Wiley, me and you and Marty really enjoyed and our audience, really.

I mean, gosh, I couldn't keep up with the comments last time you joined us on a great webinar. Maybe we can drop that in the show notes. But one of the things that we really hammered home that I think resonated with a bunch of folks is how high quality data is the foundation and how organizations, especially here in 2025 and beyond, have tremendous opportunities to automate that data collection. So we can remove the majority of all that just repetitive manual work that raise your hand if you like doing that. Not many people do. Wiley, if you could comment on that one more time, especially since how that perspective resonated last time.

Yeah, I think the, again, like the framing of this really comes down to what is quality for your business, you know, or what. What is high quality data for your business, even if you have a system in place? I've heard for every time I hear, oh, I'm so happy with how X, Y and Z, CRM or ERP works for us, I've also heard just as many that say, yeah, we don't even trust any of the stuff that's in there. And you have to go the. Was it Taichi Ono, right? The principles of lean manufacturing is go and see. You know, go and look at the data. I find that my number one piece of advice I'm giving to most of our customers is like, have you gone and instead of looking at the dashboards, have you gone and looked at the actual data itself? Go look at the source first and try to figure out what's actually in there. Because it could be mostly stuff that doesn't make sense to you and you can quickly gut check that. It's also great now that like we talked about earlier, this is something that humans don't have to be alone in.

I I heard recently something about how Walmart went in and cleaned up, I think some odd 800 million records in of their master data of one of their large systems. And they said that it was largely done through the mechanisms of, you know, language models and generative AI that was able to go in and be like reconciling individual pieces of data. It would have taken them 100 years I think they said, and they did it over a course of a few months using AI. So that's now, we're now crossing the frontier into those areas. And yeah, it's a great time to be going through and trying to clean up data.

So, Marnie, we got to take a page out of the great story of Ulysses, right? And go and see like Wiley is talking about. Marty, your quick comment.

I love that idea that we are at this frontier and it's not a movie, but the TV show 1923 is phenomenal. And to get back to your horses and cars, people would see these cars and they're terrified now. Of course, cars back then were pretty daggone dangerous because they were on work roads and dodging horses and people didn't know what they were. But getting past that fear, allowing these tools like Wiley described to go in and do this work nobody wants to do anyway. You know, when I talk about, for example, a job that's going to be eliminated, I talk about counting inventory. Yeah, this is the worst job on earth. You have to do it during Christmas, you have to eat cold pizza, you miss your family. It's horrible.

Thank God. Drones that have cameras and generative AI built in are going to do all that for us. But it doesn't eliminate all of the people. And I think as our country is, you know, having fewer babies, we're doing this whole immigration thing which is going to lead to less labor. We have what, 8 million or so people leave because of COVID We need to embrace this and not think of it as I'm going to lose my job, but I'm going to have a better job if I embrace the kind of technologies like Doss is using. Wiley issues.

Marty, well said. I want to comment. I know I have given up at least one Saturday in my lifetime for good old cycle count. And talk about a wasted, wasted 10 hours. Goodness gracious. And secondly, Marty, on a lighter note, the way you describe automobiles, they're still scary here in metro Atlanta. So watch out for 285 folks. I'll tell you what.

All right, so Wiley, we've been promising some examples and we've been promising more about what Doss is doing. And that's where we want to go next. So I want to start with context. Wiley, for folks that may have missed, you know, your earlier appearances with us here, me and Marty and the gang tell us in a nutshell what Doss and what the organization does.

That's funny you say in a nutshell. I can give this example with one of our Customers that actually is a peanut butter business. They sell nut butters and peanut butters. We really focus on, I would say, building a system of record. You know, a lot of times people call these ERPs, but you can put whatever acronym you want in front of it. Really what we focus on is managing the flow of goods into and out of their business, the flow of dollars into and out of business, and all the data that connects that together so that they can really litigate the state of what was, what is and what will be about how they manage their goods and services and how they make their customers happy. With that example, that peanut butter company, they're doing everything from managing all the orders they get from their e commerce website, from their retail and wholesale trading partners, they sell to fitness studios, they're going and putting in orders for almonds with farms in Northern California, they're managing their trade promotions with influencers on TikTok. They do all kinds of stuff in our platform.

And so to Marty's actual original point or his last point, the most powerful thing that has emerged to me that I've realized about what's unique about what we do is that all of it comes down to human capital. At the end of the day, like you said, these are people who, their lives are spent either moving data around in spreadsheets or physically counting and moving things around in a warehouse. And when you give people mundane, boring and difficult work all the same time, you burn them out and you prevent them from going and doing high leverage things for the business. And so what we try to do is we try to take the mundane, boring and difficult parts out of the business and give power back to the individual operations professionals so they can do high leverage, revenue generating things. I think this peanut butter company in specific, you know, specifically they went out and closed a 500k deal with like a large retail partner. It was a one time big deal that kicked off a very large revenue driver for them as business because they got out of this doom loop of having to be reactive. And it all comes down to giving individual people more time to go and do high leverage things. So yeah, we always joke about this internally.

The team is that over the near term efficiency is about saving hours and over the long term, it's about saving people.

Ooh. All right, Marty, I'm not sure where there's so much there that that needs its own podcast series. I'm going to go to you first. What did you hear there from Wiley?

The idea of opportunity cost, where many businesses don't think about it and when their employees are wasting time scrubbing data and writing things on pieces of paper and reiterating, I mean spreadsheets and having meetings to discuss all of that stuff that they can't trust, they're not out meeting customers, they're not selling, they're not marketing, they're not developing new products, they're not making the business better, they're just doing transactional things that had no value. There are so many companies that don't think about opportunity cost. And so I think, I think Wiley really put it very succinctly in his example.

Agreed, Marty. And since Wiley mentioned Taiichi Ohno and what you both were addressing there big themes in your responses is value versus non value added work and what is mooding. And I'll tell you with how supply chain management and the day to day activities are changing. We can eliminate so much of what is previously valued by the inside the four wall organization but really isn't valued at the end of the day by the customer. And that equation is vastly changing. And I for one am sure am glad that it is. All right, so Wiley, I love the peanut butter example and it sounds like their bold leadership and their willingness to embrace new ways of management and supply chain success is leading some really big wins. I think you've got some other examples that not only are going to offer some similar anecdotes but also kind of illustrate how it can be applied across the most, a wide degree of a wide variety of sectors.

Right?

Yeah, that's one thing that has been surprising to us was we're very fortunate in that we get to partner with a lot of types of companies, different shapes, sizes and types of services and products that they, they deliver out into the world. And it's endlessly fascinating for us. We just get to be curious and you know, get to play along, get to be there for, along for the ride. There's a private equity firm we work with that bought a board game company and they're helping us take a 150-year-old board game company and modernize it while retaining that family owned and operated level of quality, keeping the, the operation and manufacturing in America. There's a company we work with, it's a demolition business and they're going out and managing, actually making sure that their business is compliant and safe as they're literally blowing up buildings in a way that is responsible and we're doing this all in one platform. And so that's, yeah, that's the most amazing thing to me is when you get this opportunity to kind of describe it as you get to squint at these businesses and recognize that they all have very similar qualities about them. You know, humans are all wonderful, unique snowflakes, but we're also 70% water. Everyone is right.

And so that's what's amazing about working with these folks is that you recognize and see the commonality that binds together people who are entrepreneurial, people who build businesses, all the things that they would all rather be doing. They're all the same. It's like Marty said, going out and doing revenue generating activities, making your products and services better. They don't want to be going through and figuring out their compliance checklists and figuring out if exactly they paid all their invoices on time or making sure that they're collecting from their customers. They want to be running their business. They don't want to be inside their business and tinkering.

Ex. I got to go back to that board game example. There's nothing like Jumanji that's involved in that organization, is there? Wiley.

No, no, it's, it is a, it's a, a game I've never played, but it is apparently very popular. So it's pretty cool. Can make all of them. It's, it's a really awesome company.

Really. Okay, we're gonna have to get Paul Harvey's the Rest of the Story down the road a little bit about that one, Marty. I'm not sure and I'm not sure how many episodes. I think we're about 1400 episodes here at Supply Chain Now. And Marty Wiley is the first Supply Chain pro that has referenced improving the operations of a demolition specializing company. Breaking records here. What'd you hear there, Marty?

I heard Die Hard when he, when he said that. And I, and I pictured Bruce Willis jumping around. That's a supply chain professional right there.

That's right.

I've worked with a lot of startups as a fractional C suite executive and the progression is kind of always the same because traditional software generally doesn't match up to their business. And they're told you're going to have to customize your business to the software, which is a disaster. And so, you know, they start with something like QuickBooks Online and then they add a CRM and then they, they start adding all of these bolt ons and trying to get them to talk to each other. And why not just talk to somebody like Wiley? That'll customize the software to your business and let you focus in on that and map the processes out. Before we started, I was talking about a company yesterday that had, because of that problem had had to develop their own software from scratch. And I've seen that in lots of three PLs, third party logistics companies because there's no software that works well for three PLs that I've seen for all the different things three PLs do for customers that there's so much flexibility required. Wiley's describing something, but I just keep thinking about Bruce Willis and Die Hard, so I can't really say anymore.

Yippee ki. And I'm not going to finish that phrase from Die Hard, but what a great series of movies and hope Bruce Willis is doing well and his most recent fight. I'll tell you what. Okay, Wiley and Marty, I want to make one other comment and I love how you you snuck in Die Hard there, Marty. I think our count is at nine if I'm not mistaken. But Wiley, Marty was suggesting folks to stop doing what we've always done in supply chain, what we've always done in our organizations out there, and to reach out and get a conversation with Wiley and the Doss team. But before we make sure folks know how to make that connection, two things. First off, I got a note from Amanda, our fearless producer behind the scenes.

She hates when I get data wrong. As do I. We're at 1,405 podcasts here at Supply Chain Now over the last six years. How about that? And secondly, Wiley, more to the point here today, whether folks work with Doss or not, right? Share, if you would, a piece of final advice or two for supply chain leaders out there, especially as it relates to either demand planning or maybe even something broader when it comes to optimizing supply chain performance.

Oh man, this is. Maybe this one might give me a little trouble, but I think there's no, there's no replacement or there's no software that can come and save you if you don't have the courage to go in and change your business. And we talk to companies about this a lot, which is that we're only a good partner if you can have the courage to go in and do things inside of your company and the organization, top down, bottom up, whatever you want to call it. People in the company get bought into a better way of doing something. And that's not all. That's not every company and it doesn't need to be. But it's something that we put our. It's almost like being the armchair or, you know, the psychologist that sits there and it's like, how are you feeling? How are things going in the company? And really trying to assess are they ready to make some of these changes.

And yet there's no software that's going to come in and put the courage in your heart to go do stuff.

I'm with you, Wiley. I'm with you. And I'm trying, Marty. I'm trying to come up with the late great Robin Williams was in a movie where he portrayed a doctor that did business differently. And I cannot remember the name of that movie, but I don't want that. It'll come to me in a second. I don't want that to detract from one of my favorites. Yes, Patch Adams.

Thank you, Marty.

Thank you.

Amanda.

Saves day again. But I don't want all of that to take away from that brilliant point that Wiley just said that folks, you got to take away from this episode. Marty. He I'm a paraphrase here, but there's no software, there's no technology that can come in and save your organization if you're not willing to change how you do business. Right. And if you live in that fearful mode of being, you know, scared to change and take big risks. And that is, that is billion dollar advice by my book. Marty, what'd you hear though?

Yeah, that's the quote of the 1405 podcasts, in my opinion. Because for movie reference, it's not going to say Blockbuster if they don't change their business model. It's not going to say Sears and Pennies if they don't respond to Amazon. But you've got to embrace that disruption. The best case I teach around that is Kodak, who invented digital photography but just couldn't switch. Everybody fought. They were a film company inside the company and every all their investments were like that. So no amount of data is going to help you do that.

And so you've got to embrace these technologies. You embrace companies like Doss that are doing things differently so that you can take your business to the place it needs to be rather than where it is today.

Man 1 well, one part there, Marty, but I thought was amazing is when you brought that up also about Porter's innovators. Kodak couldn't have done demand planning on digital cameras. And if you get too locked into a thing where you say, oh well, we have this demand planning framework and we've gone through and done all the parts of getting our Misen plus and we have everything great where we're running the business so efficiently, you could also prevent yourself from innovating as well. And you need to be hyper aware of what could constrain you from making the optimal decisions for your business over the long run. Demand planning is also it fits into that as a framework well.

So I think you know all those companies you mentioned there, Marty, from Blockbuster to of course Kodak to Pennies to Sears, I know we've talked about the value of looking forward. But as we all know here, looking back and charting the history of these business behemoths that in so many ways some of them kind of stuck to and I'm not picking anyone, but some of them stuck to a belief that customers wouldn't change, the markets wouldn't change, and stuck to sitting on some of their laurels and goodness gracious, we all know that, that that just doesn't happen. Things change whether we like it or not.

So one comment Scott Two great examples that did were Kroger and Home Depot. Home Depot really went in on E Comm and is really, really good at and really adapted their store model and what they do. And Kroger has been really people don't know this, but they're really leading edge in terms of technologies like IoT and their original rewards program and all of that. And think of the competition that those companies have. And so the other side of it, there are great examples of companies that have embraced new ways of doing business working with people like Wiley.

Marty I got to share this little note. We're very loyal Kroger customers here in the Luton household. Kroger and Costco, we're in there way too often. But Wiley and Marty, the Kroger out here where we live is from what I understand is one of those experimental marketplaces where they try new things regularly. And right now, as we sit here today, there is eight poker machines in front of the pharmacy at my local Kroger. They're experimenting with folks that want to pop in, get a gallon of milk or try to hit a full house. It's, it is fascinating. So we'll see how that plays out and we'll see how what they decide to scale that out across the whole footprint.

Okay, Wiley and Marty, what an outstanding conversation here today. Wiley I want to make sure folks first off, folks, if you want to check out, we've referenced this webinar a couple of times. You can go find that and get the on demand replay where Wiley really gives a, I think a really interesting and illustrative 12 minute or so. What would you call that? Wiley it was kind of a webinar within a webinar. Remember that? And it was such a great level setting kind of Sidebar. But whatever you call it, folks, go check out the great webinar. We'll try to include the easy link right there in the show notes. But Wiley, more importantly, I know you welcome conversations whether you want to compare notes.

Folks want to kick the tires on Doss and the team if they're fearless in terms of doing business differently. But how can folks connect with you? Wiley Jones?

Yeah, just I'm on LinkedIn. Wiley Jones on LinkedIn. Wileyoss.com-o s s.com you can just go to Dosss.com also and reach out to our team. We're all as responsive as we can be and yeah, we love to hear from everyone. You know, it's, as I said earlier, the best part of our jobs and what we get to do is getting to share and be along for the ride with just companies that are building things. So that's, that's the best part of my day, every day.

Love it. Breath of fresh air. That should be one of your nicknames. Wiley, I appreciate your perspective on not just global supply chain, but leadership in general. There's so many parallels, of course. Okay, Marty, you have, I'm going to ask you a very unfair question. What is one of your favorite takeaways from today's conversation?

Don't be Hans Krueger falling and dying from the building. Be the scrappy Bruce Willis that, that, that wins the day. And the way you can win the day is to embrace the changes that are happening in demand planning. I just was reading the Business of Forecasting, the journal of forecasting, business forecasting. And it was all about these new technologies. Wiley is one of the best at it. And so if you feel this is resonating with you and you want software that matches how you win in the marketplace as an innovator or customer centric company or cost leader, reach out to Riley and he'll help you figure out how to do that.

I'm with you, Marty. I'm with you. Folks. You got to find a Sherpa, right? And that's, that's as it relates to digital transformation, as it relates to demand planning, anything, right? We can't be masters of everything in terms of what we know and, and true expertise. So whether you find Wiley as your Sherpa or another trusted organization, just be sure you find one. And I want to, on that note, tell you, Marty, and Wiley folks can have lots of homework here today because there was a lot of actionable expertise and perspective exchanged. So Wiley Jones, co founder and CEO of Doss, thanks again for being with us here a fourth time, folks. Check out the webinars.

Good stuff. But Wiley, thanks for being here again.

Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Marty. This is always so fun.

It is, man. And Marty Parker with one of the lines other than Wiley's software ain't gonna save you. I love that. I really love that. I feel it my bones. And then Marty, of course, don't be Hans Krueger. I'd forgotten that guy's name.

Hans Gruber.

Yes, Hans Gruber.

Sorry. It happens at my age. Scott H. Don't be Hans Gruber. Alice, be the scrappy one that learns in the moment and takes advantage of all the greatest latest things available.

Hans grew be the Supply Chain hero. But big thanks to the one and only Marty Parker. Marty, thanks for being here as always.

Glad to be here. Enjoy it every time.

I do too, man. I got my 27 pages of notes today. All right, folks, as I mentioned, you do have homework. First off, you can learn more about Wiley and the Doss team as he shared at doss.com. Check it out. They got case studies there and a whole bunch more. But secondly, and equally as important, you got to take something that was shared here today and there's lots of stuff, right? Lots of stuff to choose from, and you got to put it into action, share it with your team, right? That's acting on good advice is how we can change how business is done. Deeds not words, folks.

So with all of that said, on behalf of the entire Supply Chain Now team, Scott Luton, challenging you do good, give forward, be the change that's needed. And we'll see you next time right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks, everybody.

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