Video: How To Solve Excessive Provisioning With Automation

hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso hey exciting announcement here get ready for a first ofit kind recognition program from Channel Insider this list honors best-in-class Channel Partnerships and is 100% nomination based sourced directly from vendors and solution providers themselves stay tuned applications coming soon okay now back to the interview my guest today is Richard McKinnon CEO of dvbe Technology Group a solution provider business helping to implement automation into government organizations across the US Latin America and Beyond Richard says many of his customers have Legacy systems or bought too much technology during the pandemic now they need help augmenting operations while staying on budget that's where Richard and his team come in Richard welcome thank you very much for having me here today you got it thank you so much for being here I have to make sure that before we start with anything else while you do have 28 years of service in the technology industry you are also a US military veteran and I just want to thank you for your service and your time spent dedicated to the country thank you so much thank you he was in honor yeah I was a us uh Navy hospital Corman actually I'm a disabled vet I thought I was going to do all my service in the military I absolutely loved it but I got injured but out of that I've been able to give over 3,000 veterans jobs in the process so that is something you take the good with the bad but I've been honored to be able to do that that aspect of business out of it and I'm I'm really big and helping in the VA and donating my time to events and stuff that happens in the veteran community I love to hear that Richard and I I love what you have to say about you thought that was going to be your whole career but it is interesting how when one door closes another one opens and I think that you've really been called on to do what you needed to do to be able to give people jobs and to serve people in a different way so I think that's a really special story you mentioned uh being a disabled veteran does that play into the name uh dvbe I was thinking I had my other company Technical and management for for almost 14 years before I started dvb Technology Group and I wanted to do something different but I needed a unique name so at the time when I did it I Googled it and the only thing that pulled up for dvbe was the actual certification for state and federal search so I actually put my company dvb Technology Group and I thought it was going to get flagged it didn't get flagged and actually when they did the Google searches I was above the government and stuff so for for years before other companies took part of the acronym and their names you would always pull up in dvb Technology Group was above everything on the internet and it still is on a lot of searches but I take pride in the fact that I've been a dvbe working to the state of California and to the federal government for almost 24 years total I've worked in all 50 states I've worked globally I've utilized my diversity to also work with wom owned businesses minority owned disadvantaged and linked together together both companies to utilize diversity to a larger scale within the government that is so incredible Richard I I really enjoy hearing about that all 50 states and all of these organizations that you were able to touch and help and serve let's go from there to talk more about dvbe Technology Group for the audience that doesn't know you would you mind giving us a description of what kinds of solutions and services you offer and talk to me just about what you do thank you very much so for you years I was always known strictly as a staffing company because we provided top quality Engineers we would also diversify in areas of risk management compliancy but push came to shove it was always Staffing and and a lot of times it still is so we have a staffing as a service practice but our focus on a lot of the stuff we do now is based on Automation and the reason that is is because during Co and especially nowadays government has budgets and they don't spend as much as they did during Co and they all have deficits everything needs to be automated and they overbought products they overbought by thousands and thousands and now all those bills are due and none of them have the budgets to pay that's what's happened they bought licenses Hardware software you name it some products they bought four products that were for the same tool because they didn't know what to do because it was a first time everything happened at once and people were being moved from their office to home and how do you do that and how do you manage that so what we do now is we take Automation and we link it to three areas of cyber Ai and digital transformation and everything is about data compliancy and we focus in those areas and for example last week was a great week for me I had in four days I had 17 different meetings with different state and federal agencies from around the country so that was a really good week and I think out of that I was in nine different states last week for meetings and it's opened up a lot of doors but for me lately the focus has been about Automation and I've taken that automation service and linked it to those three pillars talk to me more about those pillars you you've mentioned these government organizations tell me who are your typical customers talk to me about those specific organizations and who you typically hear from when they reach out for your services over the years what I've done is I've built relationships with cios from different states learned where they went to college where their kids are doing where they played football I've done it I've tried to make it more about the human aspect of it more than the business aspect of it but like for last week I had meetings with the head the head of Nevada that reports directly to the governor we had a meeting with the head of South Carolina which reports directly to the governor the cios of transportation state hospitals Department of industrial relations uh Social Services areas like that I built relationships with all my relationships are all C Level with that said tell me a little bit more about how far and wide dvb Technology Group offers Services because you've just mentioned a lot of states and different organizations within those States from all over the US so are you only focused on on us business or does it go wider than that no we actually opened up a second company called dvb technology Columbia so we're in Latin America my wife is the CEO of that company and uh she has dual citizenship there has been an interesting amazing opportunity for me I didn't expect it I've spoke at Congress I've had multiple meetings with the ministry of Defense I've met presidents from eight different countries I spoke at an International Conference recently in medene Columbia there was 13 countes all us allies I was the only US citizen there speaking on behalf of smart cities and automation then they asked me to speak about the metaverse and the Omniverse and I was like oh cud this is going deep but I had I had to translator thank goodness because what's happened there is I've got to do things there that I've also always wanted to do in the United States we were the lead sponsoring company at a large cyber security conference in bogot Columbia Amazon Microsoft all of them were there but it was sponsored by dbb technology Columbia and so when you walked in we were on the the banner and I've had a great other side of business and I've learned where people stand as far as Technologies and their advancements based on whether it be in Europe United States Latin America So eventually we will open up our practice in Europe and London too and that'll be regular dvb technology North America we're opening up a new office eventually in Canada we do a lot of business up there in Toronto area with companies like CG and others but I've already worked in all the Canadian provinces so I kind of want to build a presence there too but it's interesting because I work in all 50 states and you see the difference in personalities and backgrounds and budgets in all 50 states so you have to adapt to the way it is and and the dollar spend I imagine there's different policies uh and different government policies that you you have to think about when you move from state to state and Country to country but what are some some of the most common challenges and connective threads that you see among those offices and customers that you work with in 2024 a lot of people old school people that have been in in state and local government are are honestly sometimes afraid of certain things like automation because they think that that's actually going to replace their job because a lot of state agencies still have so many old Legacy systems from the 70s and 80s that they put Band-Aids on just to keep them running there still people working those project automation doesn't replace people it makes the processes easier but it also enables when you have a shortfall of budget and you can't hire people like California is going to be 15,000 people short $78 billion deficit and we're the fifth largest economy in the world that we have a78 billion deficit how do you fix that you automate everything including cyber AI everything so we work and we automate process is even on our automation also works really good with like cells for our service now powerbi for Microsoft we can automate all of those tools and enhance them and pretty much make them tenfold of what they currently are and save agency is a lot of money I want to make sure that I'm really giving the audience a clear picture of what you're working on with these agencies and with that automation could you walk me through a success story in which you were able to implement that technology and what exactly did that solve for that office we started a POC and what happened was they saw during like we talked about during the automation sprawl where things are out of whack and they bought all these different Technologies and stuff through my one automation process I was able to display six other renewal licenses that they normally get for areas of documentation sign robotic process everything and in the first two years they save almost $2.9 million and they have one license and it allows them then to automate all their processes and a lot of times you'll have health and human services at the top with multiple medical agencies underneath it we're able to automate at the top and when we automate it also links to all those other agencies that are within their ecosystem and allows them then to automate also without spending extra money and a lot of these agencies don't have any money and they're still working on technology that's 10 to 20 years old we're able to bring them up to date save millions of dollars and we've been doing like I said my my 17 meetings last week I also was at the Department of Defense and other agencies all on automation all on linking how do you stop the sprawl of spending and the thing is is all these Technologies are amazing the problem is everybody overbought because they didn't know how to do it and I needed to figure out a a different avenue based on with budget crunches in different states and the fact that I can also automate with Salesforce service now in Microsoft and they're in every single agency in the world it's allowed me then to diversify and build a new pillar for myself and what's interesting in Latin America is they still are behind in the times and when I say that they have technology that they should be up to date and then they buy stuff but they don't know how to use it and so we're automating there but we're also bringing in Technologies of companies like other ones that I work with a lot here like the nx's the Lexus nexuses of the world that do Finance we're doing a a project in Latin America for anti-money laundering and I'm the Prime on it and it's a big project and how do you link that all together and what areas do you bring within the organization the other part that that I think's missing a lot nowadays that's very important the companies I work with I make sure that they mandate that they train employees so that way they learn and that way they keep the technology there and expanding and that's the area that I see it's huge in the state of California it's huge in other states they don't get the training but they purchase the product we were doing an AI project in Latin America one of these agencies publicly went on LinkedIn oh we bought all these drones state-ofthe-art they didn't have the pilots and they didn't know how to fly them they spent almost $6 million on drones but then they didn't know what to do with them so we actually came in did a training process with them in Colombia showed them and then we actually even got them drone pilots and they hired them fulltime but then we added our artificial intelligence to it but I'm getting to do cool projects taking internet into the jungle and doing all kinds of things that I always wanted to do and so we're using satellites and everything linking them to cameras and drones and linking them to iot devices to bring it down to the ground through the jungle and the trees and we're getting to do some cool stuff and something I'd like to talk more about you mentioned it way back in the beginning and it's been a constant theme throughout this interview you measuring that human as ECT that those human relationships and that interaction with your customers with your peers with your contacts in your network can you talk to me a bit more about an example of how you measure success as a company and as an individual in this space people can't do everything and for the first time in my life I've learned to delegate because I've always wanted to be handson with everything and I think I owe a lot of that to my wonderful wife that I got married and she Pro gave me wonderful daughters that I never had but what happened was it's taught me to go back to where I was and how I was raised now that I'm a dad and a husband it's just kind of changed my focus but I've always been blessed as far as relationships I have no fear speaking in front of thousands of people I have no fear meeting the highest level person like I said I got to meet eight presidents in eight different countries in a two-day window and for me it was amazing I'm blessed in the fact that I get to have fun at what I do a lot of people don't know for example my CFO Lisa Hibbert no one knows she actually is my big sister well I have one sister only her one sibling but she's been with me for 24 years she's a CFO we put hundreds of millions of dollars through our businesses never been off by a penny she's the best I've ever seen in my life our VP of operation Sharon CR I've known her since 20 2001 we did business together she's been with me now for almost 10 years and then of course Mary everybody doesn't know but Mary's my mom when my dad got cancer years ago I actually made her quit her job at the county and I made her a partner in my company so my family is important to me business is important to me honoring what I say is important to me are there any vendors who have great Solutions or great support any of them that lately this year you've just seen as rock stars whether that they've been supporting you or providing you with great tools or events any vendors that you would want to shout out yeah actually 100% nintex uh for the automation piece I've been blessed with Lexus Nexus I've been on the same project with them for the State of California for about the last six years I resell their product monthly but then they actually I brought them to Latin America and I have multiple opportunities like I talked about with the anti-money laundering and stuff snowflake has been a great partner Splunk Red Hat Juniper Cisco even though some of them compete against each other a net app's always been good to me this last year yeah and even one of the implementations I had on one of the projects Pega was really good too and Dell because Dell's been really good I've sold millions of dollars on Dell in the last year on multiple projects and they California teams been really good knowing that you're working across countries working across States is there anything that now that you have a platform right here right now is there anything that you would tell vendors to do to better support you and better support your work uh for these customers and these organizations think about the bigger picture about what you're going to sell and the reason I say that I'm dealing with companies now that have one company has agency has 30,000 extra licenses and they're committed to it and they don't have the people to even work them and they have to pay the renewals and so what do what do you do with those license cuz like I said everybody bought I would say think think smart how you link business you don't have to go to a large SI to actually get your product in the door there's tons of amazing diversity companies there's tons of amazing woman on minority on disadvantaged even dvbs and you mentioned many of these organizations that you're working with to help uh this year some of that philanthropic work and that charitable work is there any way that the audience listening can help you and help those organizations hire a veteran give give a diversity person an opportunity teach technology to anyone there's so many people in our own backyard that if given an opportunity are learning something would be it doesn't matter whether they're man woman whatever it it doesn't matter it's about teaching our own Before I Let You Go I'd just like to know if we'd like to reach out to dvbe technology group as a customer to learn about your services and how us as end users can get help from you where can we go to find out more well you can email me directly at R McKinnon dvbt g.com or just go to dvbt g.com and we have all our contact information for everyone uh on the website and also ability to reach us and if you're someone looking for a job go ahead and send your resume and if I can't find you anything I will find someone that can help you thank you so much much to Richard for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch on our YouTube page at Channel inssider newsand Trends you can also listen to every interview as a podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time n

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