#312 AI-Enhanced CRM: Michael Hudlow's Blueprint for Overcoming Data Chaos

Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased joining me, Michael Hudlow. Michael, thank you very much for being with me on the show today. The way I love to do it on this podcast is I would love my [00:01:00] guests to introduce themselves, tell us a little bit about their journey and what they are up to.

Mehmet: So the floor is yours. 

Michael: Okay. So I'll do this in 53 parts over the next four hours. I'm joking. I, I'm, I'm, I'm Michael Hudlow. Um, I've been a, uh, in the CIO, CRM, uh, space, uh, for, wow, longer than I want to admit, but let's just say the better part of 20 years, maybe a little more actually. And, um, several years ago, um, I was, uh, eyeball deep in doing a lot of consultation and operational work, um, using, uh, large scale systems, mainly CRM systems.

Michael: Um, and I really started to see, uh, a lot of common mistakes happen that were not covered in, in, in normal, let's just say, textbooks. And, and what I decided to do is, [00:02:00] out of, uh, frustration, uh, I have mainly. Um, maybe for some therapeutical therapeutic, uh, work for myself. Um, I decided to write some, uh, a book and now it's turned into two books, uh, on that topic, and we can get into that later.

Michael: Um, but, but over the past 20 odd years, I've, I've worked for, uh, three of the infamous big four consulting firms, uh, both in heavily internal operations work for the companies themselves or in consultative work for their clients. So, thank you. 

Mehmet: Thank you for you Michael actually for being with me on the show today now Maybe it's kind of a classical question um, some people they claim that CRMs and you know all these kinds of systems are you know, kind of boring what have Inspired you and you know to to to well attracted you to today interesting 

Michael: question so [00:03:00] Here's my opinion on that.

Michael: I'm going to answer this in a roundabout way. Um, and I'm going to change your question just, oh, I'm going to add to your question, not change. Sure. I also hear the fact that we don't need a CRM or, or they're too expensive or, you know, we've got that covered kind of answer. And, and to, to, to your point, Um, maybe that makes them seem boring or, or, or not necessary.

Michael: And the way I answer that, and that's actually one of the reasons that CRM systems fail. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. Here's, here's what I answer to that. And I'm, I'm, I'm going to reenact a scenario that I have with executives, and I've had it more than once, more than twice, too, um, is this, you know, it's very common for someone to say, hey, [00:04:00] we don't need, you know, an expensive sales force or Microsoft Dynamics or Oracle or SAP or whatever it may be or sugar.

Michael: Um, we don't need 1 of those. We don't need a CRM. You know, what's its purpose? What's it all about? And my answer to that is very, very. Pretty straightforward and clear you whether you know it or not. Mr. Mrs. Executive you already have a crm It's just that your system is I was going to say sucks. I will it's just that your system sucks And what I mean by that is is that in the modern age people say they don't have a crm But they do because they're keeping their their Email addresses in their contacts in their, in their exchange server or in their Google driver or in a spreadsheet.

Michael: And then, you know, every time they have to do something, they're, you know, sending an email out to saying, hey, who [00:05:00] knows so and so, it's such and such company. And they're doing all these things manually and they're doing them so manually that they become second nature. And in reality, all those manual things that you're doing, all of these contacts stored all over the place and all the proposals stored and your intellectual property stored all over the place on shared drives and whatnot.

Michael: Well, guess what? That is your CRM system. The only thing that modern and I'll just, I lump all those big name CRMs and there's probably 40 more that can be lumped into the thing that modern CRM air quote systems do is pull all of that stuff into a, you know, a unified front and gives you the ability to use your best practices or industry best practices.

Michael: To manage and recall that information. So if you think CRMs are boring, then my answer to you is you [00:06:00] don't know what you're talking about because you're doing it all day long. What this just allows you or what these systems allow you to do is to do them much more efficiently. And, and, you know, uh, you know, you think about it, the, the output, the output of a CRM system is, you know, data and organized data.

Michael: Turn that into knowledge and actionable. Well, who wouldn't turn down the ability to make their data that they already have. Into actionable knowledge much faster, you know, your competition will certainly do it. So there's my answer to that 

Mehmet: So I I asked the question on purpose and exactly I like the way you turn it around I will come later to the challenges after we deploy the crm and so on but first, you know The and it's not about the crm by the way So usually when I speak to startups or [00:07:00] small medium businesses, you know, they ask me this question like Why, why we need the CRM in first place.

Mehmet: And I try, you know, the same way you mentioned, like, you know, like having it in the email, you already have a kind of a CRM, which is not efficient. Um, or maybe you are putting your, let's call them opportunities in an Excel sheet or maybe Google sheet, whatever. This is a kind of a CRM, but you know, you need.

Mehmet: Yeah, you need to keep track of that. So this is why I like, you know, the way you approach that. Now, let's assume that, okay, the, the guys, they get convinced we need, we need the CRM system, but you just mentioned something very, uh, important here, Michael. So, What are, like, the most common, I would say, mistakes you have seen organizations do when they decided to have a CRM and they decide to implement the CRM system?[00:08:00] 

Mehmet: So, what are, like, these common mistakes they do and how they can avoid them? Well, 

Michael: firstly, I would say, selfishly, as you can see over my shoulder, I have a book exactly on that topic and another one coming out in the end of March in 2024. Um, of how to make the most common mistakes people make with now the integration of AI into CRM, but, uh, but no more shameless plug.

Michael: Um, here's the reality. There are a list of what I would call common mistakes, but if I had to sum them up at the highest, highest level, it's this, is that, and a lot of it, my books are not technical, by the way, they're on a technical topic, CRMs, which is what we're talking about, but they're not, They're not technical.

Michael: You don't have to be technical savvy to get them. If you are technically savvy, they're fine, but they're, they're, they're really, they're written, not really written, they're written in a very layman's term. Um, and here, here's the reality. [00:09:00] Many systems fail because the leader of the company, let's just say it's a CIO or the board of directors or whomever that person may be, or persons may be, they think that the hardest decision or the biggest decision they have to make with a CRM system is the decision to buy it.

Michael: Purchase one and pay for it. Um, and yes, the big step because these some of these systems are expensive Not all of them, but some of them are expensive and obviously that that that scales up based upon the size of your company But here's the reality. Here's the reality that may have been a difficult decision to to say Hey, we are going forward with microsoft dynamics or salesforce or whomever the reality is Is that is a small decision contributing point to the success of the system.

Michael: I will even go [00:10:00] as far to say is that if a leader or leaders, if that's the last thing they have to do, like, Hey, I bought it. We paid for it. Now you go do it. I will guarantee you the system will fail. It will. And that's where people call me. That's where maybe people call, you know, other consultants out there is where they say, you know, it's, you know, we've had the system for three years and we spend X amount of dollars on it or X amount of pounds on it.

Michael: And the system is sitting on the road on the ditch and how the hell do we get out of it? It's not it's not making money for us. It's not doing anything and very maybe the most frequent reason is because Leadership did not champion the effort. And when I say champion the effort, it's really, really simple to do.

Michael: They have to use it themselves. They have to stop getting information, wherever the, Oh, well, we got it. We tricked the balloons there on the, uh, on whatever app that was that did that. Um, [00:11:00] no, I think it's actually funny the first time I discovered that, but, but going back to what I was saying is, uh, one, they have to use it themselves.

Michael: And what I mean by that. Is that they, if they, um, and they have to sign out, what I was saying is they have to sunset whatever the old way. So if they used to get their, you know, weekly leader report or their monthly leader report via whatever PowerPoint or Excel or whatever it is, they've got to stop doing that.

Michael: They have to do it the new way, which ensures that the information is going in the new way. And, and, uh, and the last two things they have to do is they have to support training. On the system. Changing a process because processes have to change and that's not what a leader has to do. But just so you know, your processes have to change putting a crappy process into a new system just means you have a crappy process that works faster and then, and then, um, and then lastly, um, [00:12:00] they have to be open about.

Michael: All this stuff saying, I, we made this decision. This is what we're doing. This is what we expect of you. Um, you know, CRM system at their heart are a sharing platform. They don't play nice in a world where everybody hogs their information, right? No one shares. So there is a culture shift that has to happen.

Michael: And the leaders of the company, whoever, all the way down the hierarchy leaders have to be, uh, champions of that thing. And, and explain to people, yes, you have to share your information that used to maybe be quasi private to your team or even to yourself, but as a result, you're going to see much more information and it's going to benefit you.

Michael: And that's quite frankly, the way this company is going to work. And if those things, if you're not prepared as a leader to do those types of things, then I'll tell you right now to stop. You're going to be extremely upset at somebody a couple of years from now because of a [00:13:00] huge expenditure of cash and and you're going to be disappointed, but I would say it's worth the effort and you should do it.

Mehmet: Michael, you mentioned something about processes. I like this now. There is a. Believe that mainly when it comes to filling the information and feeding the information in the crm You know, it has to come from the sales team, right? So mainly uh salespeople Pushing, you know a lot of the updates, you know a lot of things and usually People they don't like to fill manual things a lot.

Mehmet: Like this is the feedback i've seen in companies I work with Uh simply salespeople and even you know Technical consultant, they don't love to fill fields. Now, have there been any evolution, I would say, integrating maybe some kind of [00:14:00] automation, some kind of, now we are in the age of AI. So how leadership can leverage, you know, these technologies so they can make Whoever going to utilize the CRM system, love to use it actually, instead of saying, Oh my God, this is a lot of manual and office work that I hate to do.

Mehmet: So how we can adjust this? 

Michael: There's an answer to that. And, and it's, it's, it's, I use the description in my CRM, um, about imagining a, uh, a pie chart. Yeah. And whether you're talking about salespeople or professional service people or whomever, um, you, you have to imagine that salespeople, and I'm just gonna use the word salespeople, but it doesn't have to be salespeople, people allocate a certain percentage of time in their head to what [00:15:00] they call administrative tasks, you know, to use your words, filling out forms.

Michael: And let's just say for math's sake and keep it simple, um, let's just say that's 10 percent of their If you are deploying a CRM system, and I will get to the AI part about it in a second, if you are deploying a CRM system and you're the project manager or the program manager, you know, or whomever, if you cannot articulate that their 10 percent of manual tasks is going to go to 9 percent or 8 percent or whatever, if you can't reduce it, Take a giant step back and see what you're doing now, keeping it at 10 percent meaning.

Michael: Hey, you're not going to do X, but now you're going to do Y, but it's still going to take you the same amount of time. That's the worst that you can do and [00:16:00] hope for success because when that happens, you're going to have to push even harder. The fact when I say push, like, from a PR standpoint, you're going to have to push even harder to those individuals.

Michael: That they are going to get better information out the other side with the same amount of effort and maybe you can make that pitch But if you make that Input time go from 10 percent to 11 or 12%, meaning you increase it. This is your, your project is going to fail because of all the things you just had mentioned on it, it's, it's really, really bad.

Michael: So you really have to focus on streamlining the effort. And then, yes, you have to say you used to do X. Now we're telling you this other thing. It's not going to take you any more time or actually the forms have been easier because they're auto populated and you still have to send the information in.

Michael: Then, then you are going down the right path. Now, the [00:17:00] other fallacy, which is embedded in your question or the answer is the fallacy is that, well, I'm a salesperson. I'm just going to send in. My scribble notes to some administrative person, and they are going to put the information in for me. Now, does that technically work?

Michael: Yes. Does it theoretically work? Not really. And here's the reason why is because when you, the salesperson put information into a smart system as such as an advanced CRM system, or even better, an AI powered CRM system, then when you put in this new nugget of information that you're whatever you're putting in, That screen is going to pop out information as you're putting it in that you probably didn't know about that company, you know, about that contact, that company, other things in that industry, that intellectual property that your company does around that.

Michael: Now, if you let an admin [00:18:00] put that information in for you, well, if you remember, I said CRM systems are a sharing platform. Well, guess what? All you're going to do is put information in, you're not going to see the knowledge that is available to you coming out. You're going to get upset and therefore the system once again is going to fail.

Michael: So that's why you go back to the training side is you don't pawn it off to an admin because the professional, the salesperson that is an expert in their world is not going to see the immediate outputs as a result of their initial. 

Mehmet: Gotcha, Michael. Now I want to ask a little bit about the book. First couple of things.

Mehmet: The title, why you choose this title. And you also mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, like it's, it's, you know, it's a technical topic, but not for technical people as well. So give us like a little bit, some more insights about the book. And I'm interested to know, you know, about what readers could [00:19:00] expect, uh, as outcomes.

Mehmet: Sure, 

Michael: sure. Thank you. Um, okay. So why the title? Sure. Because, as I mentioned earlier, the book was written somewhat out of frustration. Um, I can remember when I started it. Um, I remember coming back into my office after, uh, you know, one of those days. And of hearing the same silly, when I say silly problem, it's not that the problem itself is silly.

Michael: It was so silly to remedy and could have saved, you know, tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours. If, if something very small was done differently, and you know, I've already alluded to, you know, the realms that those answers lie in. So the reason I wrote that book is because when I first down, when I, when I first, when I sat down after that day, I sat down and I said, you know what?

Michael: I'm writing a book and I've never written a business. I've written a couple chi kill children's books, but, but never wrote a business book. [00:20:00] And I literally sat down and I, my first sentence was, this is a book from the trenches. You know, it's Perilla tactics. It's not written. From, uh, you know, quoting facts from, you know, the big, uh, uh, research firms around the globe.

Michael: This is written from my experiences and, and I have a lot of them and I did and I, and, you know, my book, I intended it to be 150 pages when I went after that 1st sentence or 2. and I said, you know what? Maybe I can eat out 150 pages on that. Um, it ended up being like 530 pages. Um, and, uh, and it just, it went very, very easily for me.

Michael: Um, You know, what I would say is why the title? Well, of course, the title is somewhat intended to help it jump off the bookshelf just because, you know, there's no other books out there, you know, I got sick of reading the books. Like, here are the 10 things you have to do. And this is the best way to install this.

Michael: I'm like, no, I don't want that I want. I'm frustrated. [00:21:00] Other people are frustrated. Other people have problems and when they see how not to F up something and learning from other people's mistakes, I'm like, yeah, that's that's the way I, I learned to, um, and, and quite frankly, you know, when you're sitting in your office or your, you know, cubicle or wherever you work.

Michael: You know, that's kind of the terminology that flies through your head when things go wrong. You know, when you see your phone ring with another problem from another person, you're like, oh, man. And that's kind of the attitude I was in when I wrote it. And I thought that people that would buy it and then that's who are buying or people kind of sort of like, like us.

Michael: Um, and as far as a non technical book on a technical topic, what I mean by that is, you know, going back to what I was just saying that that there are many books that say. You know, here's how to add a form and then they, you know, here, here's where you place the fields. And this is the script. I don't do any of those things.

Michael: That's that's for another technical person and that's [00:22:00] for, uh, you know, uh, another another potential audience. Um, my book is much more about now those same audience, you know, your system administrators would still get just as much value out of this book, but it's not about the technical workings. It's about the why's the house, what to be concerned with my book when I wrote it was not intended ever intended to read from cover to cover.

Michael: It's meant to either pick up and just jump into the middle of something because they're not, they're not linear. Uh, it's all really about, you know, I don't know how many case studies there are, you know, but, you know, let's just say 20 case studies, maybe more, um, about, you know, the setup of the scene. Like, you know, this is, this is about a group of 10 people at a company sitting in a conference room and they had to solve X, Y, Z problem and then their decisions, what happened as a result of their decisions.

Michael: And, you know, lessons learned, how could that be avoided? And then after that, that case study, [00:23:00] I do throw in my own terminology and, and organizational facts that are relevant to that, that realm. Um, but, but, you know, if you were, if you knew nothing about CRMs and. You know, you're on a board of director, uh, you're on a board or you're a CEO and you don't want to know any more about these systems, but you still want to know why people mess up.

Michael: So maybe you can ask a more knowledgeable question to your CIO or CMO or whomever. This book is definitely for you because you can say, Hey, how are we going to do X? And you know, you at least be intelligent about, or informed about what kind of answer is acceptable, or if you get a certain answer. What do you still have to look out so you don't.

Michael: You know drive your crm system into a ditch 

Mehmet: great michael now Maybe from the book Or something that you have [00:24:00] worked on I started to figure out that when I ask this kind of questions the audience like it as well So if you can give us like a you don't have to mention any customer name. You don't have to give which I never 

Michael: do Yeah, but yeah, go ahead.

Mehmet: Yeah, but if like Kind of an example, what was the situation and where it went. So, you know, because I love, you know, what you mentioned, Michael, about, you know, from business perspective, thinking about this, going from, from something which is not working, something which is messed up to something that can help the business.

Mehmet: So if you can share a use case, maybe, or a client that you work with and describe, you know, shortly, What were, you know, the main problems that they were facing and how, by shifting things, they, they went to something better. 

Michael: Sure, I, I, I, I can, I can give you two just off the top of my, I mean, I have more off the top of my head, but I'm filtering through them right now.

Michael: But I'll do you one, I'll give you one about setting expectations [00:25:00] and this is an extreme case, um, true story, believe it or not. So, um, it was, uh, in the 11th hour of a, uh, this happened to be a sales force for a while. It was in, I don't know, probably month nine of, of, of a nine month deployment. And, um, the leader of the, the deployment, uh, we left, uh, and, um, I was called in to literally see it through.

Michael: It's like 2 weeks before deployment and then and then go on after that, whatever was required. So I had no, I had no accountability for decisions already made. I just had to get it across the finish line in the state that it was in and quite frankly, there's no changes. I could have made. They just, I was more of a figurehead if nothing else on this particular goal.[00:26:00] 

Michael: And so the very 1st day. So, you know, the system went live on midnight of whatever date it was. The very next day, I was walking in the hallway and the rollout went fine because, you know, with the systems like Salesforce, it's, they go live very beautifully. So it went live, no problems. And, um, the leader of the firm was maybe 40, 50 feet away from me down the hallway.

Michael: And he said, Hudlow, my last name. He goes, Hudlow, no one's effing, but he used the word. He said, no one's effing high fiving me. And this is like eight o'clock in the morning and I'm like, you know, my coffee is still in my hand and I haven't even taken a sip. I'm like, what? And he repeats the same thing. Why aren't they effing high five in me?

Michael: I'm like, what are you talking about? And he, you know, called into the corner office [00:27:00] as it were. And he said, I just spent X million dollars on this system. And all my other leaders around the world, they didn't call me and thank me. And I go, it's eight o'clock in the morning. Um, what did you think was going to happen?

Michael: And long story short, his expectations, which were set up for 10, 10 and a half months were so out of whack that he literally thought, you know, these systems were going to fix every ill that they had. In the, in this realm of, of, in this case, it was all, you know, basically they surrounded around business development activities, which I guess everybody does, but this was much more about the back end working than.

Michael: You know, selling stuff and so I know. You're probably saying Was this executive an idiot? Well, I gotta tell you [00:28:00] this type of problem while this is an extreme case this type of problem happens I don't even know 50 of the time where executives have their expectations So far off of reality, which is going back to the very first point I made about Frequently, executives think the worst thing or the hardest thing you have to do is pay for the system and then kind of walk away.

Michael: This isn't an account. CRMs are not accounting systems, right? They're not time reporting systems. They just don't happen and people happen to use them. These things are changing a lot of, usually, very bad processes and making it something that people used to covet, you know, in their little black secret address book and contacts.

Michael: And exposing all that and are potentially exposing so no one's going to high five you [00:29:00] day 1 week 1 month 1, maybe not even near 1. Because everything is like, ripping the scab off a wound. It's painful for a lot of people because they're scared. They're paranoid. So. Setting expectations, uh, of the leader, um, if if that leader would have understood.

Michael: And if the previous teams had put out a lot of promotional material. If that leader, you know, a week after I said this to him or two weeks after that, they were still getting all of the reports the old way, all of their analysis the old way. So what did that really mean? That means that their reports and their reports reports.

Michael: Had to do twice the amount of work because now they had to do it the old way And the new way so that one silly thing about setting expectations to say hey, listen This is what you can expect in week one week two months, you know, whatever You know, this is this is once we go [00:30:00] live then we can put in, you know, the new processes We're going to stumble and fall a few times, but that's okay And and this is this is how we need you to adapt to this that was missed And for years That company had a failing to extremely subpar system because initial mistake in day 1 was made.

Michael: And, and as a result, you know, once that executive said, you know, think about it mentally, how, you know, how, how frail our brains work is, you know, that, that executive who happened to be the leader of this company. They they got an initial hit in their head that said this system sucks and it took forever to get that Idea back out of that person's head and that all happened before coffee on day one And that is absolutely true and i've seen it.

Michael: This is this was an actual story, [00:31:00] but I see it all the time Okay, so there's the first the other one I see happen A lot is also about championship and I'll give you a real world example on. I kind of just alluded to it. So I'm just going to tell you that because it happens so much is that a divisional leader, you know, so a couple, you know, a person who is a few runs down, but still very high up in an organization, um, knew that the highest level leader was doing things.

Michael: They were only taking information in through the CRM system. This happens to be dynamic. You know, they were doing it through the, the, the new way and they, that is how they are taking it. And they, you know, also with the CRM systems, you know, you have to take the, the, the thought that if it's not in, if it's not in the official system, the CRM system in this case, then it doesn't exist.

Michael: Uh, and that's a, [00:32:00] that's a huge 1 that I would honestly, I tell companies to print it out and put it over. You know, the printers or wherever people hang out when they're in the office, obviously, um, because you don't want to have the duplicity of manual effort. So, in this particular case, um, this, this divisional leader was kind of on the hook to give all the information to their boss and their boss's boss through the CRM system, but they were still indifferent.

Michael: So they required all of their staff, as I mentioned earlier, to do it the old way, which was a passing around the spreadsheet, you know, on Thursdays for Friday meetings, that kind of thing, um, which is a real pain in the ass. And then at the same time, some administrative person would take the information off that manual report and then put it into the CRM and, you know, have to ask people about things and all that.

Michael: And it was just [00:33:00] duplicative work. And as a result, not only do you get duplication of effort, but that you also get. Extreme chance for data misalignment and data fit so that when someone does finally say, okay, I'll go into the CRM system and I'll, I'll request the report or analysis or a forecast or whatever, whatever it is.

Michael: Well, more times than not, that report is not right because it doesn't have all the information. So what happens? Their first impression wins and then they talk to their friends how it sucks. And then their friends talk to their friends and it never ends. So These little decisions about championship, these little decisions about setting expectations, these little, these little things about we're doing it, you know, come whatever, June the 1st, we're only doing it the new way and not the old way.

Michael: Little decisions like that have exponentially horrific outcomes, if not done. [00:34:00] 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And I think Michael, you'd agree with me. This would apply to any Project we we do from technology perspective if we put the wrong expectations we do the wrong planning uh And yeah, I've heard a lot of similar stories where people hey like we're spending millions on on this solution And we are not seeing the results that we were promised The only the only 

Michael: and you're correct and you know, it's funny when I when I when I started writing the book.

Michael: I I was also With the first book I was coming to the same conclusions You The only difference. Well, there's 2 differences. 1, I was obviously in a CRM mindset at the time when I wrote it, but additionally, CRM's haven't You know, they're still new and, and, you know, when people think about big systems at a firm, they think of, you know, email or their file servers or, [00:35:00] you know, or like I said, you know, their accounting system or something like that.

Michael: And all of those things have been digital for a very long time and connected for a very long time. Whereas CRM is basically saying, you know, like I said, it's a sharing platform. I am going to look at your information. You're going to look at my information and then I'm going to give you. And everyone else, the best answer possible to move things through quickly.

Michael: And, you know, if it's done correctly, you know, access to intellectual properties, so you can get the best information about our products and all that kind of stuff. And systems like that are new enough that there's a huge amount of suspicion behind them. And, and also since they are so interconnected, since a CRM has it.

Michael: And if you look at any system, look at Salesforce. They right now have, you know, they're, they're, you know, they're, um, what they call their clouds, but let's just say they're objects. They've got them for every industry [00:36:00] and every function at a firm. Now, you know, there's a marketing and an HR, you know, HR, and they're, they're just everywhere.

Michael: So, so this one system, You know, if you do something wrong in it and it's connected to all these other things, it can really mess up, you know, and if it's, if it's considered the book of record, then, then you really can't mess up those processes and, and, and that's what happens. Whereas, you know, look, if you don't like the time reporting system and you put your time in wrong, that individual gets the time report back and says, Hey, man, change this.

Michael: You know, we can't get billing out because of this, and then it's fixed. Whereas in this system, the culprit can be covered and, and, and masked of what happened. And, and why didn't you put it in? And why is this this way? And it takes, you know, I've done a lot of forensic work, um, uh, legally, uh, actually in Europe for, uh, CRM systems where like [00:37:00] discovery type of work.

Michael: Finding out where, where the information is or why something happened is extremely complex because now you've got detailed workflows that tie into many different systems and many different repositories and the flow of the information is not as straightforward as, you know, following an email, you know, and, and there's also now a human factor of, you know, Why did you do it this way versus that way?

Michael: And then the resulting decisions. So that's why I think it's a little more, um, has a little more gravity. Uh behind it with crm, but you were right if if I could go through my book and take out the word crm and just say technical system and Most of everything would hold water. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely um michael where Crm systems are heading with all You know the emerging [00:38:00] technology that is around us.

Mehmet: So where are you seeing things heading? 

Michael: Well, uh, to the point of my book coming out in, in, let's just call it early April 2024. Um, I, I basically rewrote my first book and I did actually making it 150 pages, but it's all about the integration of AI into CRM and, and, and, and. The same, the same concept. Where are the mistakes happening?

Michael: Um, and first off, uh, you know, no pun intended, but these, you know, cloud based CRM, it's becoming a very murky, cloudy situation because. You know, I'm sure you're like me and you read up on AI and we all get news feeds about AI and we see it on YouTube and TikTok and everywhere in the world we see AI this AI that there are so many AI platforms and there are so many that plug into CRM.[00:39:00] 

Michael: Um, so where, you know, there's a, there, there is a. A newness issue that is popping up is like, which one do I use and why do I use it? So, so here's where it gets murky. All of the big vendors that I mentioned earlier, every one of them has an AI engine that they've been introducing reintroducing for three years now.

Michael: And just like any other mega company out there, they all are acquiring. New AI that plug into their system. On top of that, there's an enormous layer of third party AIs that clip into all of these systems. Um, and so you can get and I'll warn CEOs about this right now or board directors. It is very [00:40:00] easy as myself, you know, I'm guilty of this in my career as well.

Michael: We all as technologists can get sometimes blinded by the amazing capability of the technology. You know, there are things out there right now that you're just like, what is that doing? And they're amazing. And it's very easy for a technologist, including technology leaders, to extrapolate The use of a technical tool to improve quality of, you know, corporate life or business product.

Michael: But what I would say, and what I would urge any leader, including the technology leaders, is just take a giant step back and first don't go look at a tool. And once again, you can apply this. I know you're about to say, I was, I'm assuming you're about to say you can apply this to other worlds, but it is extremely easy in this ever changing world to apply a tool.

Michael: Apply a tool and find a problem, as opposed to, and this is [00:41:00] what I would first say to anybody in the CRM space, you've already spent a ton of money on CRM. One, are you getting the value out of your core tool before you start spending money on other widgets? There's my first question. All right. Um, our first point.

Michael: Second point, I would say, and I'm not putting up my two fingers, but I want more balloons shooting up behind my head here. But, but, um, the other thing is. You have to maximize the ROI of any AI tool, right? It is a key point, and you look at a problem in your industry, in your world, in your, not your industry, in your company itself, and say, what is the problem?

Michael: And if I could fix it, that would save me X amount of pounds, then you take a look at what your core CRM tool can do. Maybe you can already do it. And then finally. [00:42:00] You have a trusted advisor, external, internal, start taking a look at the AI capability. Now, let's just say hypothetically you have a problem and you want to fix it and there's AI stuff out there.

Michael: Well, let me tell you about what the big things are. The easy, Uh, filling of those manual forms that we were just talking a little bit ago about MUMMIT, those forms. Now we're getting very close to the part where via a chat type window, a salesperson can literally pick up the phone, say, create a record X, Y, Z company starting on this date.

Michael: That's easier than picking up the phone and calling, even their admin that we, you know, what has been historically done or doing it themselves. Um, or, you know, so the addition of [00:43:00] new information is becoming far easier, but wow, the reporting side is like all of the big systems are already fantastic at doing analytics and giving analytics back to new decision makers.

Michael: But now that same decision maker can. In a, you know, in natural language, put in a request about where do we see this client coming up in the next three months? And who's my best salesperson for the job? And this thing literally just ripping out that answer based upon AI of your contained CRM system, which is probably also has access to your intellectual property.

Michael: The information that is coming back now is phenomenal. So I would, if, if, if you're not a technical person listening to this, I would say, imagine that. Right now, you know, you can ask chat GPT to, to do something, give it some crazy question, and it'll give you a crazy, [00:44:00] really cool answer back. And it's looking at everywhere on the planet.

Michael: What these AI tools are doing are doing the same thing, but they're not looking everywhere on the planet. They're looking everywhere in your company and they're going to find the most skilled person and they're going to, you know, so if you create an opportunity at a large company and it's in your system.

Michael: It could start recommending people based upon, you know, whatever things you don't even know about, you know, language they speak or whatever, it's going to find those people before you even think about those questions. And that's where the power is coming in. The big mistakes happening right now is kind of like this mentality of, um, you know, let's just do this thing, throw it against the wall and see if people use it.

Michael: Complete waste of time. Don't do that. And there's a, there's a reason for that. These systems are very smart. You know, in Europe you have things like GDPR. Right? In the states we have, you [00:45:00] know, some states have their own version of, you know, privacy things like, like similar to GDPR. And that goes around all the world.

Michael: Brazil has a lot as well. Well, AI, and people forget this, AI is only as smart as the information you give it access to. Right? So, you know. If you give it access to information that is not clean data, going back to what we were talking earlier, you know, book of record, you know, all having all the information in your system, make sure it's right.

Michael: That's why those initial decisions about being a champion are so important. Well, AI can very easily give you. A bad answer. It could very easily do something that violates, you know, regulation or, or corporate policy. It can, so if you don't do it right, and look, it's not hard to do it right, but you've gotta, [00:46:00] you gotta have somebody that understands these issues, right?

Michael: It's not some, it's, look, just like on your iPhone, Just once again, for people, the non-technical people, all of these big systems we're talking about have app stores and it is extremely easy for a technologist to click on behind the scenes, add this AI to our world. Um, it could be done with literally in, in, in five minutes.

Michael: So, you know, I mentioned, you know, there's other issues, but I would think the overarch, like if, if, if I was a leader of a firm and they said, what do I need to do today? With AI here, I'm not, Oh, I almost put up my fingers again. Uh, uh, I have to figure out a new way to do, uh, two, two, two fingers. Um, first thing I would do is get a corporate policy out the door that says.

Michael: This firm, you know, whatever it is approved, doesn't approve. You know, if you're going to be using AI, you [00:47:00] need to tell your leader and then you have some kind of corporate policy, but you have to have a policy about the use of AI at your firm, right. By the individual or by the firm in mass. And here is, and the second thing is, is a realization.

Michael: There are many companies out there that say we haven't, we haven't used a, we haven't started to use AI yet as a company. Lots of them. And here's what I'm going to tell you if you're one of those companies saying we don't use AI yet. Yes, you do. You don't. Your staff, when you ask them to work, you know, the midnight hours to produce a PowerPoint deck for some presentation that has to be done tomorrow, or you ask them, you know, any kind of special request or do research on X or Y or Z.

Michael: If you think that that person or person is not using some type of AI in this day and age, you're nuts. And, [00:48:00] and you are. So here's the reality. You have to put out that policy like I mentioned. You have to say that this is tolerated or not tolerated, but just make a stance on it. And then, then, if people are using AI like I just said they are, um, either have your legal counsel or get special legal counsel to write up specific parameters around, hey, if we're going to use AI, this is how we document it, this is how we protect ourselves, this is how we check that it's right, um, you know, all of those things are extremely valuable And, you know, in this day and age of social media, a goof up of plagiarizing or stealing or copyright infringement or, uh, privacy misstep will get you on, you know, the front page of all the social media very quickly.

Michael: Um, so just tread, tread lightly. 

Mehmet: [00:49:00] You know great I would say final words of wisdom from you michael and you know You took also the questions out of me. So I'm, sorry No, that's fine Absolutely fine. So michael final question where people can find more about you and reach out to you 

Michael: Um, well my books are available on amazon.

Michael: If you just look up my name michael hudlow, you'll you'll find them um And, uh, you know, I think, I think they're well worth the value, especially if you do it by page. Um, and don't, don't be put off by the book is over 500 pages. Like I said, it's meant to be opened up, read 10 pages and put it back down.

Michael: You're not, you're not going to miss anything on, you know, that you don't need. Um, I can be found at my own, obviously on LinkedIn. Um, I'm always networking with new people. I, even if I'm nothing to sell you. So if you just want to reach out and chat, Reach out and I'll chat. Uh, and I mean that via video or, or, you know, through the [00:50:00] message.

Michael: Um, my website is bitxia, B I T X I A. CRM dot com and I I'll send you the links to that stuff. Maybe you can put it in the show notes. Um, and, and like I said, I'm always available. Um, I'm available for, like I said, free networking. I do public speaking and I obviously do advisory work on all the topics that we've discussed before.

Michael: I think, I think, you know, it's interesting, uh, in today's world, it seems like. Um, there's plenty of technologists that know how to, that, you know, get certifications in how to do an X, the individual steps, but I think the, the days of people that have been around the block, um, I think they're becoming less and less people like that that are full time hired.

Michael: So I'm, you know, contract work on, I'm just coming into strategic strike, you know, an issue. You know, that's kind of where I am right now. And, [00:51:00] and, and then we're going to start working on my third book once I figure out exactly what that's going to be. But I think I know. 

Mehmet: That's great, Michael. Really appreciate your time.

Mehmet: I appreciate you sharing your experience and your insights, um, about everything related, not only CRM, I would say, CRM technology, AI, uh, in organizations. Uh, again, thank you for all these, thank you. Thank you everybody. You know, this, you know, I would say thought provoking, uh, ideas also that, that they shared with us.

Mehmet: And, you know, uh, I would make sure that all the links you mentioned, they are available in the show notes so people, they don't have to reword back, rewind back and type character by character, so they can just click the links. And this is for the audience. If you just have discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by.

Mehmet: I hope you enjoyed, please subscribe. We're available on all podcasting platforms and on, on, on [00:52:00] YouTube. And don't forget also to share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are one of the loyal people who keeps coming and keep sending me their messages and recommendations, thank you very much for doing that.

Mehmet: I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for tuning in and we will be again very soon. Thank you. Yep. Great job. Thank you.