Jeff Frye: [00:00:03] Companies need to have a contingency. Know they need to, you know, to me, like the light of the pandemic really requires a disaster recovery type plan or contingency planning for continuation. [00:00:15][11.7]

Tom Raftery: [00:00:18] Good morning, good afternoon or good evening wherever you are in the world. This is the Digital Supply-Chain podcast. The number one podcast focussing on the digitisation of supply chain. And I'm your host, Global vice president of SAP. Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Digital Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP. And my special guest on the show today is Jeff. Jeff, would you like to introduce yourself? [00:00:42][24.4]

Jeff Frye: [00:00:43] Sure. Tom, thanks. My name is Jeff Frye. I'm the CEO and founder of Linx-AS, we're a strategic partner with Linx-AS or I'm sorry, with SAP focussed on the Environmental Health and Safety Domain in SAP. We've been a partner with SAP since probably I believe it's been two thousand since the inception of the company. Prior to that, I worked for Cyber and also Deloitte Consulting, where I also had the opportunity to first dip my toes into the EH&S world back in 1996 97. But prior to that, I worked for a division of Cabot safety for manufacturing and was able to get experience with SAP all the way back to the R2 days. I've been in the S&P world for quite a while. [00:01:27][43.8]

Tom Raftery: [00:01:29] Oh dear, commiserations, Jeff. We have you on the show because you're part of the EHS and Product Compliance event that SAP are running next week. Now, next week is the 6th and 7th of October. And you're part of that. So do you want to tell me a little bit about your participation in the event. [00:01:51][22.6]

Jeff Frye: [00:01:52] Yes. Linx-AS has participated in that event for multiple years. We're actually one of the partners that sponsor the event. Last year we we presented in person. So is it really exciting to show IoT capabilities and and utilising SAP from a more broad standpoint than what most people are used to seeing it, unfortunately, this year. It's a virtual event, but nonetheless, it's still important to us because it's our opportunity as a business and as a partner, to SAP to not only interface and integrate with the product owners and developers and and people in SAP that we need to work with, but also listen to customer feedback and understand some of the challenges that they're facing, as well as the challenges that they might even be facing with the software or even just in their business and the environment as we see it today. [00:02:41][48.4]

Tom Raftery: [00:02:42] OK. And for people who weren't there last year, you know, how can IoT help, particularly with respect to EHS? [00:02:50][7.9]

Jeff Frye: [00:02:51] With respect toEHS there's a number of ways that you can really look at IoT. You know, there's a lot of requirements out there for specific industries where you have to do area monitoring or even have to do emissions controls. So, you know, some of the areas where we play an IoT, where that safety is really helping companies take that that information that usually is collected on a weekly basis or a monthly basis or or, you know, a daily basis that, you know, essentially, if you're dealing with compliance, could put you out of compliance. We're able to streamline that and work with companies to get that into their control systems and actually manage it by the minute so that they can have an alert and an understanding that, hey, we might have an issue here before it actually happens, which is really the whole driver behind the EH&S business, within an organisation. Is is it to get ahead of that risk, not report on it after it happened? So that's the challenge is the company is really have to do is figure out how can we be proactive rather than reactive. And IoT is one of those areas that's on the edge. You know, some people are still scared of it, but there's early adopters that you can really, really get ahead of the curve and reduce costs and reduce cost of compliance by having real time information. [00:03:59][68.0]

Tom Raftery: [00:04:00] Superb and superb. What would you be presenting about this year, this year? [00:04:03][3.6]

Jeff Frye: [00:04:04] Well, we're really going to focus on as one of the key strategic initiatives that we put a lot of time into, and that's really around risk management. So when you think a risk management, you know, a lot of times when they go into a proposal or we're talking with a customer, when we get into risk management, we're either talking with companies about doing a risk assessment, which is actually looking at various areas of their business, whether it's a specific job or whether it's a health risk, which we're experiencing now with Covid as an example or just in general overall risk within the company on how they manage that, how they identify the risk, how they mitigated, what engineering controls that they put in place, what processes for a review do they have in place. And on the flip side, what we have is the incidence side where they want to manage their incidents. But really what we look at as a company as, and then this is what's important at risk managers is how do we help our companies and our customers be richer in knowledge them? And when I say richer knowledge. It's easy to say, OK, I want to manage an incident. But in the day an incident has already happened. And when you look at incidents, you you have an average of about 3000 incidents or 300 incidents that are reportable or reportable. Before that, you have about 3000 near misses that in some cases don't even go reported. And below that, you have about hundred thousand situations that are either observations ever made that were just poor decisions by people to do things such as climb up the ladder without tying it off, even though nothing happened. Those things happen on a daily basis. And what companies aren't doing is necessarily looking at the ability to really drive risk management as a culture in their organisation. So what we do is we really try to look at the fact of how we should work with these companies, incorporate elements of, let's say, digital digital transformation into the EH&S side so that we can employ the ranks of everyone in the company. Be safety conscious and employ them to be part of that. That safety culture, not just the management reporting it. Basically safety has to come from every single person that comes into the company. [00:06:10][126.6]

Tom Raftery: [00:06:11] OK. OK. I mean, sounds like a bit of an organisational change process. People often say that it's easy to change technology. It's a lot harder to change people. Is that kind of your mantra as well? [00:06:26][15.2]

Jeff Frye: [00:06:27] That's absolutely true. And one of the challenges that we have is in a lot of these cases, you know, particularly as we talk about digital transformation, the EH&S side of the house for many companies hasn't necessarily received the same emphasis. The digital transformation as, let's say, the supply chain, you know, the nuts and bolts of how we operate. And when you look at that situation, really what's happened is, you know, Cummings has gone to point solutions or where they develop things. But at the end of the day, what a lot of these companies are looking for is a fast way and a basically a box they can put in. That creates that process for them. But at the end of the day, combination of people, process and technology and technology will only do so much if, again, like you said, the change management is in place for companies to really be able to incorporate that. And what we do with risk management is we've helped companies look at it a little bit differently. Don't just look at SAP as necessarily an open box, but we look at our self as like a content provider. So we come in with solutions. We come in with a strategy to say, OK, you want to do risk management, we'll look at em that let's look at all these other things that potentially lead up to that situation that you want to work with. And what we're able to do is, is look at from what we call WorkSafe. That's one of our coined approaches that we is really looking at the company as a WorkSafe approach. So from a WorkSafe risk management, you know, we look at how can we take everybody in there in the organisation and get the information to them, get it mobilised, bring it down to the shop floor, take it back up to the executives in real time analytics and really drive that that process that lets you monitor, lets you detect, and lets you protect the organisation and I think protect the organisation. You know, we're not only looking at the physical assets when I look at the product, but we're also looking at the people. So, yes, it's a change management, but, you know, it's one. In light of our environment, it's probably really necessary. [00:08:24][117.6]

Tom Raftery: [00:08:25] OK. And speaking of in light of our environment, we're in a very different environment now than we were, you know, eight months ago. How has that impacted your organisation? [00:08:34][8.7]

Jeff Frye: [00:08:35] Well, it's quite interesting. What we've seen is, as I mentioned, digital transformation, not necessarily being on the forefront. You know, we as an organisation certainly started seeing within our customer base a larger emphasis on larger interest, on certain aspects of this. So we are looking at elements of incidents, we are looking at elements of risk assessments, but also case management, the medical survey, and return to work because in the light of Covid, Covid really brought a lot of things to, let's say, to bear that that weren't there before. So every year we do deal with the flu. There's four strands of flu and, you know, let's say 80 percent the time they get it right and they give you the right, right, vaccination. But at the end, the day, you know, everyone's hopeful that a vaccine or something is going to come along and and get things back to what we see as norm, but the norm is going to change. There's a heavier emphasis on on risk, and that means the way we operate has changed. You know what Covid has really done to the industry has not only disrupted our global supply chains, it's not the fact that there wasn't the availability of product. At the end of day, that wasn't the availability of safety for people to produce products because of the pandemic that was going on. So at the end of day it became a people's safety situation. At the end of the day this is the first time in the history of anything that we've ever seen and I am on my 50th year here, you are not at kind of age, but I think five decades of a life. And that's certainly seen, I'd say, at least 32 years of business. And in that time is the first time ever. That's something that that typically was was a health concern that had managed by, let's say, you know. State or federal type organisation has moved into an occupational issue. OK? We had to change the way that we work. We had to change the way that we interact. We have to change the way that we maintain our PPE and all these things and our organisation. So, you know, one of the things that we would do, we face we face a shortage of gloves. Who would ever think that there was gonna be a shortage of gloves in the U.S.? But that's a reality now. And that's the reality that we have to take into light as a foundation for other things to come. That makes sense. So when we look at Covid, you know, Covid has really changed the way that we we operate because it's the first time that we've had a highly infectious disease that's not only spread by contact and spread by air, but we have many jobs out there that are like tools, shared tools, shared common areas that take two people to do the work. And what the CDC is identifying with just using the CDC because they're here in the U.S. is prolonged exposure is 15 minutes, six feet. There's a lot of jobs out there that are 15 minutes to 60. So now we have a frequency issue here. So I think when we look at risk management, we look at what's happened in the environment. What's happened is Covid is really made a lot of companies think, you know a lot of companies hope it just goes away. But I don't think that's the reality. And I think we can live on. I think what we have to do is be proactive and realise that this is the first time ever that we've seen a pandemic like this. But it may not be the last one. And what we have to do is put safeguards in place and use our technology to protect our assets, protect our people going forward. And that really takes not only software, but it takes a change in your processes and a change in the way that you evaluate things that simulate data. What does that mean? I mean, do you need to assimilate data faster? OK. You need a platform for communication faster. You need a platform for for isolation faster. You need a platform that rewards faster. So all these things need to come in place. And no matter what it's going to force for the companies that are going to be the leaders going forward, it's going to force a change and that change management can take place. [00:12:28][232.5]

Tom Raftery: [00:12:28] Right. Is it just contact tracing that companies need roll out for their employees or other other things as well? [00:12:34][6.0]

Jeff Frye: [00:12:35] No, it's it's far beyond that. You know, I share a story with you, and I know we don't have a lot of time. And unfortunately, Tom you and I could probably do a series of podcasts and they say, I'm going to set up a little of my time and keep it short. [00:12:46][11.1]

Tom Raftery: [00:12:46] But no, no, no, no, no. I just. I just feel free to talk for as long as you want. I can always cut it down to 20 minutes afterwards. [00:12:52][5.7]

Jeff Frye: [00:12:53] Okay. So, you know, as an example, like, I experienced Covid in June. So not only was I going to do this, I personally I came down in June with Covid on a trip with my my senior in high school. And essentially what happened was, you know, not only were we going to the efforts of what did that mean for us as a company to locate in our headquarters in Pennsylvania for returning to work. But, you know, we're going through the same thing that everyone else is going through. How do we limit the exposure? How do we change our processes? How do we reconfigure our office spaces and how people are working? But suddenly I'm, you know, the leader of the company, the strategist and the innovator, you know, as far as where I spend my day to day work. And I'm I'm struggling with this Covid. And, you know, first the Covid wasn't bad. I was able you know, I was fortunate. I was one of the lucky ones. I had some cough. I had some fever. But there is residual effects that I think a lot of people don't understand. And I was lucky that I wasn't on a ventilator. But the stamina that I lost and the effort that it took to get that stamina back was so. It took so much time and now, you know, I also have a child in college who is a D1 athlete. And he was stricken with Covid two weeks ago, just released this past weekend, they started working him out. They had to shut him down. He couldn't breathe. And here's a kid that's healthier than they. He's not that. That branch of of, you know, critical risk area. But he can't breathe. He's done his D1 basic agility workout. And they had to stop and because of inhalation issues. So, you know, what was scary about this isn't you know, I don't want to create fear or anything. But what's scary about is when you look at at what Covid has done. You create a health and risk conscious culture to ensure that you're protecting your people. But what companies have put in place aren't effective. OK, now, you know, we've started putting up Plexiglas things, but I got it based on the CDC and Pennsylvania's disease control say they are down to 99 percent was an airflow in the Atlanta airport at a restaurant where I was sitting. Well, so basically with my mask off eating. The only time I had my mask of an all trip eating the airflow that I was sitting at was basically allowed the particles to get to me. And basically they're ninety nine percent convinced that's where I got it. So just think about that for a minute. Think about every organisation that we work with. OK. So you take something like Covid, for instance, and you're looking at that and you're looking at risk and safety standpoint. You have to worry about your highly concentrated areas of people, OK? That's going to be the areas where you have criteria. That's going to be your office. Administrative building in some cases will be manufacturing. But a lot of case manufacturing. You can separate put things in place. But without your airflow system. OK. You know, there's nothing they control how long these particles can be in the air. And, you know, that's the information that I actually received was, hey, Jeff, by the way, if your son had been sitting there instead of you, he probably had been the one with the Covid. And so when you look at how companies have to look at it and do they have to do more than just contact, I think know what they have to look at is for every job in their organisation and or every. Let's just say every action from the time that you come through that door to the time that you leave, what is a potential risk in any given environment? That's where we thought they should start working with other organisations to integrate things like Infra-Red technology so that, you know, there can be ongoing process of determining and understanding that over the course of day, maybe somebody doesn't walk in the door and have a fever. But guess what? Maybe 11:00. They do. OK. So how are you even going to find that out? Unless they're exhibiting, you know, sure tell signs or they tell you. A lot of cases people need their paycheques. You know, they don't want to go on medical leave. Right. They're going to be fearful to necessarily say, hey, I'm sick. And guess what? I have a fever. And oh, boy, guess what? Now I'm sufficient. Right now I'm suspicious. Contagious. They have to isolate me. And then we have to get me clear, which can take anywhere from three days to seven days, depending on how fast the task are. So when you look at this, it's a lot more than just contact tracing. It's really the whole lifecycle of any organisation. And you have to look at as an ecosystem, how do you manage that ecosystem. [00:17:26][272.9]

Tom Raftery: [00:17:26] Washrooms? Yes, staggering start times, all those kinds of things. [00:17:30][3.9]

Jeff Frye: [00:17:31] How do you disinfect? How do you disinfect once you determine somebody has that, right? And then, you know, you think about that. One of my fears and then I'll be honest with you, I was speaking with a friend of mine who works for a company that said, you know, they do they do blood intake. OK. And then they do a drug to stop all that. And he said, Jeff, you have the antibodies. Why don't you go give? And I said no way. He said, Why? I said, I've been to a number of doctors offices. I said I said, half of these doctors offices, their masks are off and they're saying, well, we're green now. We don't have to worry about that. People aren't necessarily. Although they put signs there, people are necessarily six feet apart. And when you're in a place I've given blood. Right. I believe in that. I think we have to do that just as a civil service. But right now, I don't want to be next to somebody that I don't know because there's no guarantee that I can't get it again. Right. So from that standpoint, maybe it's selfish, but I have to look at the welfare of those around me. What happens when I bring it home and my wife or my other children contract it, or my wife's parents contract it and then unfortunately, they have complications. I mean, unfortunately, these are things that we have to think about because it also is going to affect the brand of companies if they don't take it serious. And, you know, that's why it's changed the environment Tom. [00:18:41][70.2]

Tom Raftery: [00:18:43] Yeah it's a lot to think about, isn't it? I mean, my my wife's a school teacher. And just this morning in the middle class, one of the kids put her hand up and said, Miss, can I leave? And she said "Why?" And hesaid I want to go out and take some Ibuprofen I've got a splitting headache and my throat is sore. She was like, I think we're gonna go take your temperature and make sure that the Covid with point person for the school has a chat with you. There's a actually a whole protocol in place there that if the student is suspected, as it was in this case, they contact the local health authorities and they contact the parents, the parents have to bring the child home. And then the parents have an obligation to bring the child to be tested and the child won't be left back into the school until they have tested clear. So it's the whole we've been saying for months now, the whole world has changed. But the whole world has changed. [00:19:39][55.8]

Jeff Frye: [00:19:40] Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I don't want to dwell on Covid as the main topic. It just brought a lot of light to things that organisations are going to need to do to change because there's so many different effects. And at the end of the day, you know, we we really don't know. We don't know if there's going to be a second generation of this or third generation. Is there going to be more severe than the last warning? And and the cultures are different, right? I mean, you and I come from a different age than the young people of today, and they're a little bit. I don't want to characterise them, but they seem to be a little bit freer and less conscious of impact such that this could have just based on they still have social gatherings and they're just like, well, you know, we'll be fine. Well, you will be. That doesn't necessarily mean that those that you interact will be and not only create panic or fear, but when you look at it and you look at it from a risk management standpoint. Things have to change, right? Things have to change for the organisation because organisations have an obligation that, you know, that their employees are in a safe environment. That doesn't just mean an airborne pathogen. It also still means the general staff makes sure that they don't lose an arm or the general thing that comes in a typical manufacturing concerns. OK, all that is still a major part of it. But how do you pull it together? And one of the things that we've seen is taking the approach that we take with the WorkSafe approach is we see ourselves as a content provider, where we've created a package for our customers to put in 30 days or less that'll handle Covid. And put them on the streamline, which also gives them a baseline to start that whole risk management process. Is it the full, complete solution? No, it's an accelerated starting point that even gets them the most mobilisation and mobile technology so that, you know, the questionnaires are created, it is routed to the occupational health person. Okay. And basically, it goes through a thing where you go into case management, you know, all these things are enabled. OK. Because of the way that we approach it to really better the processes for our customers to help them really utilise our enterprise platform. [00:21:39][118.9]

Tom Raftery: [00:21:41] If you had to give a top three tips to a company, managers, supply chain managers, whatever to to get through the next 12, 18 months, whatever we're talking, what would those top three tips be? [00:21:54][13.9]

Jeff Frye: [00:21:55] I think the top three tests that the first half I would I would definitely put down as companies need to have a contingency. You know, they have to you know, to me, like this light of the pandemic really requires a disaster recovery type plan or contingency planning for continuation. A lot of companies didn't have a continuation plan in place. This wasn't something that was was on the forefront. So, you know, a continuation plan. There's many things that come into that. And when you look at a platform like SAP and I get I don't want to get into the technology of because I'm you know, I love the technology, but I'm I'm a strategist and I look at the pieces that companies have. OK. There's a lot of pieces there that need to come together. So, you know, one of the things of your continuation planning is basically you're resource pool. What are necessary employees? You know, one place can you can you get effective, you know, working remote or limiting how much time they have exposure within the organisation? Aside from that, what safeguards do you need in place? What PPE? OK. And you know, all that comes together. What changes do you need as an organisation? Put together projects and add elements that really put out a little bit more stringent auditing on your safety and and health and safety processes to ensure that your software is moving in the direction that the rest of your enterprise is. Because this right now is a critical piece not only for, like I said, the safety and continuation, but also the well-being of one of your most important assets in your organisation that doesn't go on your on your asset sheet, and that is your employees. So, you know, the health and safety piece of it and really looking at your risk management, how you approach that is also critical. But then the third piece that I would really look at is, is in light of what's happened, anticipate that there may be something else and how are you going to react and what is your plan for the next 18 months? Because you know, one of the things I don't like to do is get caught in today because there's still tomorrow and you have to balance today into tomorrow. And you know what? Those things that come to light, you know, with that is in the US and I'm sure there's going to be follow a, you know, following orders by the US. There is one state now that has mandated legislation. To basically adhere to to Covid requirement. And that's Virginia. So Virginia has a law in place now, at least for 12 months. And, you know, we both know that legislation never comes in at 12:00. So it doesn't last longer than twelve months. But I'm sure of this pandemic continues and it starts showing light of other things. There's going to be other states that follow in the U.S., not to mention what might happen in the in the global countries that, you know, support the global economy. What are they going to put in place? Because obviously everyone's been vulnerable. So I would look ahead and I would look and understand not only where my business is going, but how my business can be impacted by those coming regulations that make. So, you know, those would be the three elements that I would really look at companies. [00:24:54][178.6]

Tom Raftery: [00:24:55] Superb, superb. Jeff, we were past the 20 minute mark. Is there anything that we've not talked about that you think is important for people to be aware of? Any kind of questions I haven't asked that you wish I had? [00:25:05][10.5]

Jeff Frye: [00:25:06] I think, Tom, I think, you know, for the purpose of this, I think, you know, I think we've really given good content. And certainly, hopefully the audience enjoys our discussion here. I certainly enjoyed it. Well, like I said, I think you and I could talk days about this. But I think at a high level, you know, I think that if we could just get the awareness out there that that, you know, companies that have SAP as an example, there are solutions that that they're probably not aware of that could help them accelerate and get to where they need to a lot faster and help them manage this from an structure. [00:25:40][33.7]

Tom Raftery: [00:25:41] Super. So finally, if people wanted to know more about Jeff or about Linx-AS, I guess, or about any of the things we've discussed today, where would you have me direct them? [00:25:52][10.7]

Jeff Frye: [00:25:52] I think the easiest place for us would be really to do hit w w w dot linxas dot com. That's our Web site. But everything's out there. There's case study, there's experience. And I've talked a lot about our approach. But certainly, you know, they can certainly contact, you know, our marketing partners, particularly if they're interested and understand more about risk management and what it could mean for them and what their transformation processes look like. [00:26:17][25.1]

Tom Raftery: [00:26:18] Superb Jeff that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the show today. [00:26:21][3.0]

Jeff Frye: [00:26:22] Tom, I really appreciate it and thank you. [00:26:23][1.0]

Tom Raftery: [00:26:24] OK, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to SAP dot com slash digital supply chain or simply drop me an email to Tom Dot Raftery at SAP dot com. If you'd like to show please don't forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time. [00:26:24][0.0]

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