Julian Harris: 0:04

The big stick for them is legislation, yeah? I mean, if you're, if you're a big corporate at the C-suite sitting there looking at what you're going to fund in terms of technology or projects for the year, number one is legislation, yeah? Number one is what do I need to do to to make sure i'm compliant? Number two is usually how do I increase my sales and number three is usually how do I reduce my costs?

Tom Raftery: 0:32

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 38 of of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And I'm excited to be here with you today sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain sustainability. Before we kick off today's show. I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcast's amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in my keeping this podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about sustainability and supply chains. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in helping me keep this show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this, or any episode, our visit tiny url.com/s S C pod. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking to Julian Harris from Robobai and in upcoming episodes I'll be talking to Spencer Malcolm from Forsyth, Karl McDermott from Delta track, we'll be talking about cold chain. Joanne Flinn from the ESG Institute, and Ganesh from Conversesight. So all of those look forward to in the coming weeks. But back to today's show. And as I said, I'm talking to Julian. Julian, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Julian Harris: 2:21

Sure thing. Thanks very much, Tom. Thanks audience for having me here today. I'm Julian. I've built quite a few different tech companies over the years. Mainly in Europe, but now in Asia where I live in Sydney. I'm the founder or co founder and CEO of Robobai, which is an supply chain analytics platform. Our slogan is know more, buy better. And the vision of the company from day one was really to use data analytics to understand people's buying patterns and to actually improve their behavior, not just from a how to save money, but also on how to, how to do the right thing, how to actually be sustainable. So great to be on the podcast.

Tom Raftery: 3:09

Great. Super. Thank you. And explain no more by better to me. What does that mean?

Julian Harris: 3:15

Well, if you don't know what you're buying from whom it's hard for you to change your behavior. So it's all about understanding who your supply base is, how much you're spending with them, where they're based, what category of product or service you're buying from them, and then being able to Adjust your spend based on based on whichever priorities you've got whether it's lowering your carbon or more spend to minority groups, etc, etc

Tom Raftery: 3:46

Okay. And who are your customers typically?

Julian Harris: 3:52

So our customers tend to be the biggest of the big organizations. They're people like Coca Cola in the, in the US, MasterCard in the US, Telstra in, in Australia, JB Hi Fi, one of the biggest, retailers, a couple of big state governments. So they tend to be companies or, or government agencies with, multi billions of spend you know, some of them 50 billion of spend a year. And thousands of suppliers. Again, one of our biggest clients has got like 100,000 suppliers globally. So we tend to be working at the top end of town. We do also work with what Americans call the mid tier, but they tend to still be multi billion dollar businesses.

Tom Raftery: 4:40

Right. And what problems are you solving for them?

Julian Harris: 4:44

The problems we're solving is, is visibility in what is a very complex environment. So, if you go into very large corporate there's a likelihood that they could have multiple ERP solutions. I think the biggest one we've had to date is one of our local clients I won't mention the name, but when we went to do our analytics for those, they had 16 different ERP systems. I didn't actually realize they were that many, but they had 16 which sounds a lot, but of course, a lot of these companies are very acquisitive. So, by the time the CIO gets everything on to SAP or Oracle, the M& A guys have gone and bought five different companies, and they might be on Dynamics 365, you know, whatever else, basically. So, these environments are complex. So, if you think about our product it's very much like an intelligent middleware in many ways, like a pane of glass across all of your ERP systems. So we pull data from each of those ERP systems. We use AI to clean and classify the data to a standard taxonomy. So there's a common language across all of your data. And then we visualize. dashboards which effectively tell you where there are potential savings opportunities or payment efficiencies or risk and ESG issues or opportunities. So, so we're working with big companies with very complex environments.

Tom Raftery: 6:17

Okay, okay. And tell me a little bit about your origin story. I mean, you mentioned that you've gone through, you've founded a couple of companies before Robobai. Yeah. was your kind of Damascene moment that you woke up one morning and said, I know, I need to start Robobai and, you know, tell me, tell me how that happened.

Julian Harris: 6:38

Yeah, not sure how that happened, and my wife's still not sure how that happened. I actually sold a business in the UK in 2006 and came to Australia to retire, but that didn't last very well. I think it's one of these typical startup stories. I was a dad at my kid's school and one of the other dads sidled up to me and he was a chief procurement officer and had worked for a lot of big companies. And he said, the problem he had was that every time he went into a large corporate his CFO would say Hey, can you strip 50 million out of our, out of our spend? And he'd say, well, great. And how do I do that? And they'd say, well, there's the ERP in one corner. There's our analyst and and excel in the other corner go for your life. And quite frankly he could never get true visibility on his spend and it's the old asage, you know If you can't see it, you can't measure it. You can't manage it. So we did a little bit of research and talked to a few other big companies and this seemed to be a common problem. As I mean, I know you've worked for SAP in the past, and these, these products are awesome products, both SAP and Oracle for, you know, providing the backbone for manufacturing companies for the whole sort of process, but they, they better at putting data in than getting data out. I still think those tools generally are not as good at deep analytics, which is why companies like us sit on top of those, pulling data out of various different systems and providing, as I said, that single pane of glass where you can see across all of your spend. So sometimes it's just a big company with a single SAP instance, or more likely it's a company that's got three or four different ERPs and perhaps a different contract management system. A different payment system. You know an expense system. It's not just ERPs. There might be a bunch of other systems that you want to take data from

Tom Raftery: 8:43

Okay. And this is obviously the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. So can you talk to me a little bit about how AI driven solutions like yours help businesses achieve their sustainability goals, particularly in, reducing waste and improving resource efficiency, et cetera.

Julian Harris: 9:04

Yeah, sure. So the first thing for us is to grab grab all the data from your ERP systems and understand what you're actually spending with whom. And as I said the AI classifies that data by reading all the text on every line of every invoice and purchase order and reclassifies the spend based on a common taxonomy because quite often the spend is, is put into the ERP in the wrong category. Okay. So once you've got that, you sort of understand what your spend is, but that's obviously just very much an internal piece. What we then do is we, we act very much as a data aggregator. We'll pull in third party data from any number of data feeds, depending on the problem that the corporate wants to solve. So we'll pull in like out of the box we, we API into people like Dow Jones, Equifax, EcoVadis, a bunch of smaller specialist players. And then out of the box what we can do is monitor your suppliers and your spend against modern slavery, sanctions. We can, we can produce real time media alerts. So if one of your suppliers is in the press for doing something good or bad, you'll get an alert. Cyber security we'll, look at various cyber measures on, on your supply base. I'm sure there's a few people that wish they'd done that with CrowdStrike recently. I think, I think, I think, I think it was Delta was one of the ones that said just, just for that outage, their loss was circa half a billion dollars.

Tom Raftery: 10:48

And Southwest were delighted with themselves for not moving off a DOS based system.

Julian Harris: 10:52

Yeah, indeed. There's always going to be a winner in one of those, isn't there? So yeah, so we will look at all those things. We look at modern slavery, sanctions, financial resilience, media alerts, cyber we also look at proactive spend. So, particularly in minorities. So in Australia, there's a big push for spending on indigenous suppliers. In the US we work with some companies that want to know what they call minority spend, and that might be veteran led businesses, women led businesses. You know, there's a whole host of things basically. And once you've got the data cleaned and classified in your data lake. Pulling in those third party data feeds and matching it up, that's what we do, is relatively straightforward then to be quite frank. Scope three is the other one we're looking at as well though we've had less companies sort of pushing us for scope three I

Tom Raftery: 11:53

right.

Julian Harris: 11:54

as you know, there's been a little bit of pull back at the moment with scope three in the states and things but but those will all those will all come back for sure. So And I think that what companies are probably grappling with is this whole area is now becoming totally complex. You know, from one side, you've got top down legislation that's coming out every every other day. Whether it's PTRS or prompt payment code in the UK telling you, you have to pay your small suppliers within 30 days, or whether it's in Australia's CPS230, which is a new risk protocol that's talking about material risk in your supply chain. These things come out to the CFO, like sort of, ghosts on a, ghost ride, basically. You know, they're coming out at you every six months. And then bottom up, you've got all of your staff and your, and your customers really wanting their brand to be sustainable. So, you've got your CFO, your CPO or your chief risk officer all in the middle trying to solve this. And the one thing we the approach we've tried to take is this. We're going to be a data aggregator So once we've sorted out your internal spend we'll pull in data from any third party. So what we're trying to do is give you a lens on all of the risks that you want to look at or all the sustainability indicators in one place because the other problem you've got this is a ton of specialists out there so that you've got of a specialist that just does scope three which is fine and that's their business and they probably go deeper than we do just in scope three but the problem for let's say the procurement people is if they're looking at the supplier, they want to see all five or six risks against that supplier, not have to log into ten different systems to see, okay, this is the, this is the system I use for water usage. This is the one I use for waste. This is the one I use for modern slavery. This is the one I use for scope three. So that, that isn't very usable. So what we've decided to do is, is take that aggregator view. And, and also because none of us know what legislation is coming next. All we do know is there will be more of this stuff coming down the line.

Tom Raftery: 14:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you mentioned, you used the word proactive at one point there. So, I'm curious, does that mean that if I am a large purchaser, 50 billion a year spend, something like that, and I am looking to acquire more Indigenous, women of colour, veteran led businesses into my supply base, that you would suggest alternate suppliers? Is that what you meant by proactive?

Julian Harris: 14:56

Absolutely. So what you've got is, I mean, once we've classified all of their spend, obviously the suppliers will be assigned or the spend will be assigned categories. Yeah. And there are databases out there whether like in Australia you've got databases of all the government approved indigenous suppliers. So we can actually run that list. Again, it's just another data aggregator. We'll pull in that database. It's from a group called Supply Nation, which is the government agency that manages that list. We'll pull the data in and say, Hey, in this category, you've got the option to use these three indigenous providers. You're currently not. You might want to assign some of your spend in this category, whatever category it is to these indigenous. And it's the same in the US when we did the same work for a couple of big US clients, they were particularly interested in veteran led and women led businesses. And, and there's, again, there's a database out there for that. What, what amazes me actually is how much data there is out there. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people now providing really useful data sets like this. So sourcing them really isn't the problem. The problem is if I source that data, how do I make it relevant to my business and my spend? So, you know, the, the bit we're doing is matching it up for the clients so they can say, okay, these suppliers I'm using, either there's a problem with them or they might be in this category of spend. They might be an opportunity to use a minority company.

Tom Raftery: 16:34

Okay. And does that proactive approach also apply in the emissions space? So, again, if I am this large purchaser with this big budget and I want to reduce my emissions, can you then look across the different categories and go, you're in this particular category, these particular suppliers are lower carbon than the ones you're currently using.

Julian Harris: 16:58

Yes, for sure. So let's take travel, which is an easy one. So you can look, I mean, the, the way a lot of people look at it is they'll look at flights and say, okay. How much of those flights do I need to make? So certainly since COVID, a lot of people meet now like this, don't they? A lot of work is, is, is remote. I mean, a lot of our clients, we never meet now. So, you know, perhaps you look at your spend and say, okay, we shouldn't be doing half of this. And then for the stuff that you decide that you have to do, you then perhaps get a choice of 10 different airlines and they'll, publicise you know, the level to which they're using green aviation fuel. And you can make your choices based on that basically. So, you know, these are tools once, once you can see the information, they're tools that you can act on pretty quickly.

Tom Raftery: 17:55

Okay. Very good. And of course, sustainability is no longer a nice to have, but it's a, now it's a business imperative, I think What, what trends are you seeing in the market around sustainable supply chain management?

Julian Harris: 18:11

As a, as I said earlier, I think there's, there's two big drivers that the big brands, and we've worked with some of the big brands that I think they see it very much that it's all about brand protection. If, if they're not on board with sustainable practices throughout their business, not just supply chain first of all, their customers will go to an alternative and they'll probably struggle to attract and retain staff. Yeah. So I think a lot of the big players just have to do it. But also, I mean, the big stick for them is legislation. Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you're a big corporate at the C-suite sitting there looking at what you're going to fund in terms of technology or projects for the year, number one is legislation. Yeah, number one is what do I need to do to to make sure i'm compliant? Number two is usually how do I increase my sales and number three is usually how do I reduce my costs? but that Legislation is number one and as we keep saying the legislation is coming thick and fast and not only is it coming thick and fast it's starting to get teeth

Tom Raftery: 19:24

Yeah.

Julian Harris: 19:24

You see some of the legislation is a suggestion in the first year it's rolled out, and then by year three it usually starts having significant penalties. So I don't think, I don't think the big corporates, you know, there's no way people can decide not to do this as if you're a, you know, a serious listed company and a company with a big brand.

Tom Raftery: 19:48

And is the, I mean, it's got to be tricky for companies that are multinational because the legislation is different in different regions. So how do companies have to approach that?

Julian Harris: 20:03

Yeah, well, as you know, mostly a lot of the legislation is probably led in Europe. So a lot of these big multinationals, most of them take the approach that if they've got to do it for Europe, that is the bar, so they'll do it for Europe and therefore roll it out elsewhere as well, because they've sort of done the work. Companies that are in regions for instance, the US with scope three now unless you're in California, which is a bit more advanced you know, the chances are people are going to drag their feet on that unless they think, again, it's going to be a big issue from a brand perspective.

Tom Raftery: 21:13

Hmm. I mean, California has legislation that will require companies to report out to Scope 3 starting in 27, if I remember correctly.

Julian Harris: 21:23

Yeah, yeah. I think you're right.

Tom Raftery: 21:26

And so any company that in America that sells into California will have to be compliant with that. And given it's one of the largest markets in the US therefore that means any company in the US of any significant size will have to start reporting out to scope 3 by 27.

Julian Harris: 21:46

For sure. I think California is still the fifth largest economy in the world if it was a country, isn't it? It's enormous. It So, so yeah absolutely people need to do this. And I think, I think we're still in the phase where there's a lot of statements being made that are perhaps I use the word greenwashing, but statements are being made that, that, that are sort of, going to that, you know, brand piece without making as much effort perhaps as as I'd like to see. I mean, certainly there was without mention names again, I was listening to some podcast in the US and one of the airlines was, was saying that currently 1% of their aviation fuel is green and by 2030, they're hoping it's going to get up to 10%.

Tom Raftery: 22:38

Right.

Julian Harris: 22:38

I mean, where's the other 90%? I mean, you know, that's well beyond your and my lifetime. I don't know when they ever get to a significant number, but 10% by 2030, isn't a big thing

Tom Raftery: 22:52

Not hugely ambitious, but I, I think one of the biggest issue the airlines have in that scenario is sourcing sustainable aviation fuel. A, it's hard to come by and B, as a consequence, it's more expensive. So, I mean, they're, they're in, they're in a really tough spot and it's a really hard area to decarbonize. But you're right, their ambitions are Could do better would be on the report card, I suppose.

Julian Harris: 23:16

But

Tom Raftery: 23:17

If they were still in school.

Julian Harris: 23:19

That's right. But I think this is what we're going through as a, as a civilization. We. We're all, we're all for decarbonizing the planet, but whenever you look at anything in detail, it's just complicated. So, you know, you look at nuclear fuel and say, let's all go nuclear because it's a clean energy, but the carbon, the, the sunk carbon and the amount of concrete you, you use to build the thing in the first place it, you know, you probably don't recover that for a very long time, you know, so everything you look at is complicated. That's the problem. And a lot of the people in these, corporates weren't really trained in this stuff. It's all, it's all pretty new for a lot of people, I think.

Tom Raftery: 24:02

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And for, for your customers, what kind of, metrics or KPIs are they focusing on to measure the success of their sustainability initiatives in supply chain? And, you know, how can they ensure continuous improvement?

Julian Harris: 24:20

So, most of them have, have KPIs. It and they'll, those will be around well, obviously carbon scope one and two at the moment. There's legislation around modern slavery. So that, that'd be on the scorecard. Spending on indigenous, as I said, that again is legislated in Australia. So it depends on the region, but, but they've all got, they've all got their scorecards to, to decarbonize plus you know, support other initiatives, basically. You know, one of the big initiatives I said, which in Australia legislation came out called PTRS which is the same as the prompt payment code in the UK, which is all around paying small suppliers as early as you can. And that became a big thing during COVID. A lot of our suppliers It's quite funny to see the behavior and it's good on them, it worked well, but a lot of our big companies that might have had some small suppliers on 60, 90 day terms during COVID, and a lot of this was pressure from the government, are suddenly trying to pay them immediately. And that, and that, yeah, but that's again, like we said with complexity, that that's easier said than done. Because again, all their processes were around paying them a lot later than that.

Tom Raftery: 25:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it, it's obviously a good thing for these smaller suppliers for whom prompt payment is significantly more important than for larger suppliers.

Julian Harris: 25:53

Oh Yeah, It's life or death for some of them, I mean particularly during covid. I mean a lot of these people as well have a lot of the big companies, obviously they'll have their own scorecards, but a lot of it is just coming from external. So we work with a lot of the big banks through all the payment analytics we do. And you know, some, a lot of the banks now, if they're offering things like supply chain finance, to large corporates, the rates that they pay will depend on how green they are. Yeah, and the bank will set a set of you know parameters. We're going to check you on this this this and this but If you're bad on our index, we might not give you a supply chain fund finance program at all. If you're in the middle, you're going to be paying 5%. If you're really good, you might be paying 1 or 2%. So like, I think like most things an economic trigger is what really works in the end. That's probably a sad reflection on humanity, but I think it's, it's, yeah.

Tom Raftery: 26:58

Yeah, I'm seeing, I'm seeing that as well, not just banks, but also insurance companies. They don't want high carbon projects or organizations on their books. And so they'll charge them higher rates for banks or for insurance companies that also charge them higher rates, or in some cases, they just won't insure them. I mean, We're starting to see that in the US. Insurance companies are pulling out of certain states. We've seen several insurance companies pull out of Florida and Texas and Louisiana, if I remember correctly, because don't want to be insuring, for example, homes in those states because of the risk of fire or flooding or whatever it is. And so when we talk about how climate change is going to make some places uninhabitable, it's not just that there'll be difficult places to live in. It's that people won't be able to afford to live there because they won't be able to pay insurance on their houses and they won't be able to sell their houses because they can't, they can't be insured by the next buyer.

Julian Harris: 27:57

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, what, what we're trying to do, because it's easy to take a very black and white view on this. I mean, it's the same with if you're looking at your supply base and you see somebody, let's say, has an issue with modern slavery. Let's, let's use that as part of the ESG stack. So, let, let's say modern slavery. Now, the easy thing to do is to say, right, let's turf that supplier out and get, and get an alternative, but a better approach is try and engage with that supplier and try and improve their behavior. Yeah, and and what I've seen with the banks with I use that supply chain finance example, most of them aren't trying to not have them as clients look like your insurance thing but actually to steer their behavior so to say if you do X, Y, and Z this that'll improve the coupon you're paying on your on your loan effectively

Tom Raftery: 28:58

Nice. Yeah.

Julian Harris: 29:00

Which I think is a bit more sophisticated than just booting somebody out if they've got a black mark.

Tom Raftery: 29:06

Sure. No. And it, it, it works to improve the whole system. So it's better for everybody. So that's, that's the better approach. Yep. No doubt. Left field question. If, if you could pick any character from pop culture, fictional or otherwise, who'd best represent your mission in driving sustainability in supply chains, who would it be and what attributes would make them a good fit?

Julian Harris: 29:32

Oh good lord a

Tom Raftery: 29:33

heh.

Julian Harris: 29:35

cartoon character that was

Tom Raftery: 29:37

Not necessarily cartoon, fictional or, or a real person. Living or dead.

Julian Harris: 29:43

real person living or dead I don't know robin hood Robin hood, we're not exactly stealing from the rich, but we are trying to redistribute spend, in a way that Perhaps increases the fortunes of perhaps some of the minority suppliers.

Tom Raftery: 30:11

Nice. Nice. I like it. I like it. Okay. Looking towards the future, where do you think the future of sustainable supply chains is going. How do you see also AI playing a role in transforming not just efficiency, but also the sustainability of global supply chains?

Julian Harris: 30:30

So I think I think the sustainability agenda will definitely be driven by legislation. As I, as I said earlier on, I think, you know, we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. This, there's nothing that suggests that governments aren't going to keep adding to this agenda, particularly as, you know, at the country level all of these countries have you know, net zero targets, basically.

Tom Raftery: 30:53

Yeah. Agreed. Yeah.

Julian Harris: 30:57

most of them are missing them, so they're going to be keeping on pushing corporates to do better. So I think we're going to just keep getting more and more legislation. AI, AI for sure is, I mean, a, you'll have seen in the latest sell off on the stock market, which I think it's just recovered, but I think you're seeing that over hype phase of AI, particularly the chat GPT, large language model version of, of AI you're seeing the overhype of that. And I think we probably will go into a little bit of a trough of despair on AI because every, every man and his dog says that they've built some AI. And some of it is real and some of it isn't real. But certainly over the long term better use of data, better use of AI to automate what are very complicated supply chains for large companies is, is the only way we're gonna really be able to manage a lot of this legislation. You know, the days of just getting somebody to do it on a spreadsheet are over. This. This is way too complex to try and figure this stuff out.

Tom Raftery: 32:10

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean the 2030 goals or commitments, I should say. They're not goals, they're commitments in Europe. Are that every, every country is mandated to reduce their emissions 55% off the 1990 baseline. And we're nowhere near that. And it's just over 5 years off. So, in the next 5 years, the legislation in Europe is going to get definitely stricter and stricter on organizations to try and make sure because if, if countries miss those goals, they'll have to pay massive fines. So I think we're in for a, a, a raft of sustainability led legislation to try and ensure that we make those targets.

Julian Harris: 33:03

Agree. I think, I think we've gone way past the sort of, you know, people doing it because they're good corporate citizens. I think this is all going to be. Well, as I said, top down and bottom up, but the biggest driver is top down. I mean, as you say, governments have got these goals themselves, and how are they going to achieve it, if all their large corporates are not achieving their goals?

Tom Raftery: 33:25

Yeah. And then one of the, one of the things, I mean, you talk about good corporate citizens, very often you'd see that the CSO, Chief Sustainability Officer, would be reporting into the CMO, the Chief Marketing Officer, and that kind of tells its own story right there. But I think with the shifting sands and the increasing legislation and the increasing rigor required from reporting, we'll start to see the CSO having to report into the CFO because the CFO is used to having to have a lot of rigor in their reporting and so, whereas the CMO, maybe not so much.

Julian Harris: 34:41

I agree. But I mean, they need serious budgets, don't they? I mean, I, I think the thing we can't get away from, everyone, everyone will say things like, oh yeah, it makes sense being sustainable, it pays for itself. Yeah. Well, yeah, it probably does in the long term, but the fact is that people are going to have to spend money to comply with this legislation. So net net from day one, you are going to spend more money and make less profit because you've got to comply with all this legislation. Now, arguably it makes you a, a stronger business, a more sustainable business, an ethical business, it's the right thing to do, but I think people can't avoid the fact that you're going to have to invest in this space in order to comply with the legislation.

Tom Raftery: 35:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And let's take a quick look back over your extensive career. What key lessons have you learned about the balance between profitability and sustainability in supply chains? Cause it is a tricky balance. And how has that influenced your approach to helping your customers achieve both?

Julian Harris: 35:54

I think in good times, so two or three years ago when the markets are crazy and money is cheap, everyone's very gung ho on sustainability. When the market gets tougher like it is now and inflation's high and interest rates are high, And people's cost of capital is high. I think they're less naturally obliged to, to chase the sustainability objectives. I think, you know, the fact is we live in a capitalist society and financial numbers and profit is the number one thing that drives every business. So without the legislation we talked about, I think I'm a bit of a cynic. I think a lot of corporations in this current economic climate would kick it into the long grass if it wasn't for the legislation they can't avoid.

Tom Raftery: 36:49

I agree. Yep. Yeah. So let's look a bit to the future by 2030, what would you like to see as the most significant achievement in supply chain management? And how do you think AI and yourselves will contribute to making that a reality?

Julian Harris: 37:05

By 2030, I would hope that that most organizations have actually done some work on their data. I think, I think lots of big, big corporates are behind the, the eight ball when it comes to getting their data in order. I was talking to somebody, I think it was from Gartner not so long ago that was saying less than 15 percent of corporates in the US have got you know, a comprehensive data map Or architectural diagram effectively of where all their data is. Now Well, yeah, I mean, we're talking specifically sustainable supply chains, but unless you understand where all your data is you're going to struggle with things like, you know, keeping catalogs in, you know, up to date like master data management large ERP transformations, you know, SAP that you used to work for now, all of those are moving into the cloud or even, question you just asked, if you're going to use you need your data to be data ready. You know, I've, I've used AI in this company and previous companies and most AI projects if anyone tells you that they're doing an AI project, they'll, they'll tell you that 80 percent of the work is usually data. It's finding the data, cleaning the data. Once you've got the data there in a nice clean data set, most people can pick the best algorithm to use. You know, that's, there's a lot of people out there that can do that. It's actually just getting your data in order. So I think there's going to be a lot of work needed, and perhaps this drive, for AI is going to push clients to take their data governance a bit more seriously. I think there's going to be a big drive to do that. I think that there's just a lot of people out there offering data sets, as I said. So it's a little bit disconnected. It'd be nice to get some sort of frameworks and policies and standards around this stuff, I think. I mean, even the definitions of how you work out scope three emissions, let's say, I mean, it's a bit like having 10 accountants in the room, you know, all have a different opinion, you know, everyone's got a slightly different slant on how, how they figure some of these things out. Because a lot of the legislation, isn't that prescriptive, they just sort of come up with fairly high level, you know, you need to measure this, this, and this not, not always give you a guaranteed way of this is how you calculate it.

Tom Raftery: 39:41

Yeah. Yeah. No, agreed.

Julian Harris: 39:42

So, yeah,

Tom Raftery: 39:45

Go on. Yeah. Yeah,

Julian Harris: 39:47

no, so I was thinking you said what does it look like in 2030? I mean, that's only six years away. I think it'll, there'll be a lot more use of AI in this space. But I think there'll also be a lot more new legislation. I think people are just constantly playing catch up at the moment.

Tom Raftery: 40:02

Yeah, yeah definitely. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Is there any question that I didn't ask Julian that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Julian Harris: 40:21

Well, we just covered it a minute ago, but one of the questions you could have asked is what, what is the state of the nation in terms of corporate data, I guess, you know, how good or bad is corporate data? Whenever we go into a large corporate, I'm quite amazed just how poor the quality of data is. So a lot, a lot of corporates have got a lot of work to do to get their data into any sort of sensible format and quality that allows them to then get sensible insights of, off them. You know, they're either in the wrong place, in the wrong format, in a different taxonomy you know, and I, and I understand totally why a lot of these companies are big, complicated beasts where I said to you where, you know, you can find 16 different ERPs in one corporate with no central view across the lot. So it's, it's a really difficult issue. It's as old as the hills in tech, technology, you know, all these big companies have got history of lots of different versions of technology going back to assembly and assembler and COBOL and mainframes. You know, some of them are still running this sort of stuff. There's this big move to the cloud where they're pushing as much as they can to the cloud at the moment. But they've still got all these myriad of systems. That are in quite a lot of the time aren't connected. So I think it's hard for them to get one, one view of this, this piece.

Tom Raftery: 41:55

Sure. Sure.

Julian Harris: 41:56

And in the supply chain side, I mean, the other problem you've got is we, we've got a portal which allows us to ask the suppliers who their core suppliers are, but generally all you're really seeing is the first line of supplier. And if you're working for a big buyer, you're seeing what they're buying from a supplier. Yeah. Most of these supply chains could go 10 deep.

Tom Raftery: 42:20

Yeah.

Julian Harris: 42:21

we've got techniques to look through, look through the supply chain by category, let's say. So, so for instance, if we're worried about if we're looking at cobalt as an example we know that two thirds of cobalt is manufactured in the Congo, or mined in the Congo. And the Congo is rife with child slavery. So that's, that's one example. So whether you're buying your, your cobalt from a local distributor, the chances are that will end up back in the Congo. Now there's a few categories you can do that with, but trying to map your whole supply chain and certain people out there say they can do it. I don't believe it quite frankly because it's because it's hard if you think of the mathematical permutations of like the example I gave you we've got a hundred thousand first line suppliers. If those go 10 deep globally, that's that's a lot of suppliers. So, I think technology will help solve this but it's just a very very complicated thing to manage.

Tom Raftery: 43:30

A Gordian knot. Yep. Got you.

Julian Harris: 43:32

That's exactly right. Yeah,

Tom Raftery: 43:35

Cool. Great. Julian, that's been fascinating. If people would like to know more about yourself or any of the topics we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Julian Harris: 43:46

So our website is Robobai. com r o b o b a i dot com. We're on all of the usual socials linkedin, feel free to send me personally an invite on linkedin julian harris but yeah, you should find all the resources on our website LinkedIn we've got a newsletter that people can sign up to but yeah, please reach out if you want to know more

Tom Raftery: 44:13

Great. I'll put those links in the show notes as well, Julian, so that everyone has access to them. Cool. Julian, that's been really, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Julian Harris: 44:23

Oh pleasure Tom. Thank you for inviting me. It's been great

Tom Raftery: 44:26

Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.