Welcome to the ERP productivity podcast where top NetSuite leaders, partners suite app providers, consultants and users pull back the curtain on how they operate and overcome their biggest challenges and share their advice to supercharging productivity using ERP software. I'm your host Joel Garthwaite, and today I'm delighted My guest is Rico Andrade who is the VP of Marketing at Celigo. Welcome to the podcast Rico.
Thank you. It's pleasure to be here.
I'm so excited to talk to you today. I think that what Celigo is doing with IpaaS is incredibly interesting and hugely beneficial. And we'll talk a little bit about that later. But before we do that, perhaps we can start by you telling us a little bit more about you, and how you got to where you are now. I think before working at Celigo you spent five to six years working within the NetSuite ecosystem, didn't you?
Yeah, in total, I've been in the NetSuite system for about, I think six years now. I was previously at a company named iCharts, where I first got immersed into NetSuite. And now, I've been at Celigo for four years and Celigo is the largest NetSuite partner, we have well over 4000 NetSuite customers. And so if you are in the NetSuite ecosystem, you certainly have heard of Celigo, or the Cloudextend products, which is a part of Celigo as well.
So for audiences who maybe won't be familiar with what Celigo does, perhaps you can tell me a little bit more about that. And what you do and who you work with? Sounds good. Yeah. So Celgio is an integration platform as a service or an IPasS. And iPaaS is a really important category of applications that allow you to quickly integrate or connect, basically automating how data and processes move from one
application to the next. And so in the NetSuite ecosystem, in particular, a lot of people use us as they might be using NetSuite as the master data record for financial information for customer information. And that information needs to touch all sorts of other applications.
And so it might be a Salesforce, so the sales team can provide invoices and booking information, contact information, or it might be something within the supply chain, it could be a Shopify storefront, or a third party logistics provider or, warehouse management solution, or it could be a data warehouse, there's just 1000s of applications out there that could use NetSuite data or that NetSuite can use the data from, and instead of manually entering the information from one system to
the next, Celigo, allows you to quickly connect and automate those applications together. And so the data flows automatically. And one of the things that's makes it particularly interesting and different is that historically, what you would do is just leverage, technical developers, technical consultants, to build the integration via, scripting, API
calls and coding. And these, the iPaaS platform, and these connectors, allow more functional type consultants or more functional type of experts, who understands, the business logic to understand what needs to be done to be able to quickly automate a lot of these solutions across applications. So that's a lot of the reason why it's so popular within NetSuite is because it extends the functionality of NetSuite to, this whole ecosystem of applications that, NetSuite is the hub of.
Yeah, absolutely. I think Celigo does an incredible job of that, of extending NetSuite's own capabilities. Do you think that businesses processes around NetSuite have changed? And do you think that's where Celigo comes in and has influenced that and the way that businesses look at NetSuite and how they can leverage it?
Yeah, in terms of business processes across the organisation, I think the business processes are largely there. But what we have seen is, and that's what really has ushered This is, as companies move to the cloud, companies have gone through the full digital transformation. We've gotten to this era that there are, hundreds of 1000s of different applications that solve every particular point problem that you can possibly want to solve within an
organisation. And it's easy to for anyone in the organisation to buy these to procure them to implement them, and they can happen in isolation and they create all sorts of little data silos, across the organisation. And so, business processes when they are then, when each individual element of the business those processes uses a
different application. So it's something like order to cash, it might have a storefront and Shopify and review, you have, clearly the accounting and financials inside of NetSuite. You have your inventory management, you have third party logistics provider, you have you're dealing with returns, separately, you might be doing expense management, these are all like little different
applications. And where previously there will, especially prior to NetSuite, would have been somewhat of holistic, monolithic processes, that we're it controlled, and so what NetSuite has allowed to do is to kind of democratise I guess the whole, processes within an organisation. And in that democratisation, what has changed is that, the it area, every every person in the organisation has the best of breed solutions that they want
to be using. And so that's essentially what has changed is that these business processes have become fragmented across the organisation. And then, and that's been really kind of the big shift and really accelerate actually, with pandemic. This is the COVID pandemic, where more and more applications have had to move online and new channels have to be been created and e commerce tools. And so it's only
exacerbated this problem. And so that's where, solution, like Celigo, specifically is built for, to take all these fragment increasingly fragmented processes and try to stitch them, back together in a fairly holistic way.
Yeah, I was gonna say that COVID probably had a fairly significant impact in the way that people work. And particularly when it becomes decentralised, like you said, and people are looking at hybrid solutions to work and ensuring their data is still in that kind of single source of truth, and people know that they can access it. Do you think that people's productivity levels have changed, or will change as a
result of the pandemic? And have you seen anything firsthand, through through the work that you guys are doing to indicate that?
Yes, I think it has changed for sure. I mean, I think one of the things that we've certainly recognised that a company in Celigo is that there is a way to be really productive, remotely, which was something that was hard to see pre pandemic, with the idea that everything needs to be in office, but we've found, new processes and new systems that actually work really well, not having, not meeting everybody in the office at the same time, at
all times. And I think just being forced to discover the solutions, and a parallel to that is, being forced to discover new, new revenue sources, new channels of sales and things like that, in the pandemic, ultimately has, has now made us a better company, as we begin to start, thinking about and seeing what the world might look like, in the post
pandemic. Reality is that these processes that we learned, these these methodologies, these, gains that we made from a productivity standpoint that were forced upon us with a pandemic are going to make us better companies. You know, on the other side, these are insights we would not have had, unless we had gone through the, the extremely challenging times that we've been going through these last few years.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that's a really great overview of what you guys are doing, and the benefits that you can bring to the NetSuite ecosystem. I'd like to learn a bit more about you as in your role, and I think people listening would be fascinated to hear that too. So, regarding productivity, what inspires you to be at your productive best, you've got all the tech in the world at your disposal, you're a tech savvy guy, what makes you productive?
I mean, I think for personally, for me, is a, certainly a belief in the, in the vision, it's a clarity of strategy definitely helps, , what are you trying to do, when everyone knows what they're doing and what they're trying to accomplish? It makes a massive
difference. And then, something that I think I've been learning more from being at the company that I'm at is that, taking automation first attitude, what are the things that you can do that can be automated or previously, you would have just
done that before? Because you really do gain some, I mean, there's massive gains in long term even though in the short term, It seems like it's, it's, it's gonna take too long to, build these automation processes, especially on a smaller growing company where people do wear many hats, you're often thinking about, like, how do I deal with the day to day, but then you start, as you start scaling, it becomes more and more important to start thinking about, growing for the future.
And I think, by the way, I have a new boss now, his name is john burgum, and he's just been hired as CMO of Sligo, and I think that's something that he's been instilling in us is this, how do you set a foundation for scale, basically, so from an automation standpoint, we've done a few things, we've adopted a data warehouse, because he, it's important to make data driven decisions and to know what the right data is at the right time, but it's not enough just to have
the data, right, you need to be able to build the insight, so we adopted tools, like Domo, so that we are able to build, the reports on that, right data at the right time. And versus Previously, we were building a lot of Excel based, reports, on doing a lot of stuff, based off of spreadsheets and things like that, and now it's better to have just that real time data.
But more importantly, for us to is you need a connective tissue to send the data from different places, and this is where an area where Sligo is using our own tools, to be able to take the information, whether it be coming from Zendesk or from a product, our own product from Splunk, from NetSuite from Salesforce, and use that, our own tools to make sure that the data is either going into the right places, or going into the data warehouse, and then, being leveraged out through our
analytics tools, and things like that. And so these are, kind of three initiatives that we took on, that is making a really big difference in terms of us not needing to enter data in multiple places, not needing to, manage everything, just spreadsheets, which, once you once you download data from this piece of software to a spreadsheet, it's not live data anymore, it may have changed since the last time you downloaded it. So, keeping it as live, and as close to, real time
as we possibly can. And that certainly has made a big difference in us, being able to continue to scale, especially as the last two years.
Yeah,
absolutely. I think, yeah, it's something that I hear a lot in not just small companies, but very, very established companies, these data silos, I guess, where stuff's being passed in what used to be the gold standard of communication, which perhaps was email, back in the day, and you've got, potentially highly sensitive information or time sensitive information with various versions of it floating around people working off wrong versions, and it's amazing how many people still operate multi
multi million dollar businesses this way. You mentioned you had a new boss there, which is interesting, because one of the questions I was going to ask you was, if you could wave a magic wand in your role, and have one wish, what would you ask for? Maybe you've asked him already?
Yeah, no, that's a great question. Um, well, in my current role, I mean, I certainly would wish for the, the world to return back to normal for all the, all the obvious reasons. And, and, in addition to, getting getting out of the circumstances, we're at, from a marketing perspective, I miss the events, and I missing
people in person. And it makes a really big difference to be able to build relationships, when you are getting to meet people and, building the trust and, being able to show face to face, what we're done, but in terms of other magic wand, possibilities there. I wish it was possible to hire fast enough. I wish hiring is such an important yet such a hard thing to do. It takes so much time and it's so critically
important. And, especially with growing companies hiring the right people, just, I mean, in any size company hiring, it's so important to hire the right person, the right roll, I wish I could wave a magic wand and just make hiring a lot easier. Get the right people here all the time faster, and see all the gains that you get from that.
Hopefully, some super talented people are listening to this who can reach out to you directly and get you one step down the road with
that. You mentioned you mentioned kind of getting back to work and kind of, the benefits that that face to face contact with people and the relationship building that you have with people, it's interesting to hear tech companies talking that way, because, by their very nature, the kind of remoteness of them and the communication that one would normally have between a client and a software provider tends to be quite removed. So is that something that at Celigo you guys are building those
relationships face to face? You feel that kind of more long lasting?
Yeah, I mean, just from a, you know, personal selfish standpoint, I certainly love, I mean, I absolutely, it's probably my favourite thing, I absolutely love building relationships with customers and partners and, potential customers. But I think the, it certainly depends on the type of company, the type of company that your product that you provide, if you have a product that isn't a big share wallet
for the organisation. And, there's, I guess, in a sense a little risk for the company to make a purchase, and see if it works out or not, those relationships aren't as
important. But as you get into larger and larger organisations, providing a holistic solution and that's something that we are doing, right, if you start getting into companies where they have 5000 10,000 employees, and they need an incredibly secure system that's going to move data, Central Station that's going to move data across all their different applications, and it's going to be trusted by all their departments, and it needs to, with key financial information is going to go through it and
things like that. These are, these can be big investments for a company, and you want to make sure that you're building the trust and the relationship with the right decision makers who might be fairly high up in the organisation, and to take the time, they need to be able to evaluate the product, answer all their questions make sure that everything is the needs of the organisation and ultimately would make them de risk the decision making as much as possible they can certainly look
at the vendor, and they can look at their boss and say I stand behind this decision for for these particular reasons.
Well, it's been fascinating to hear more about you and Celigo today, Rico, I'd like to finish off with (put you on the spot), if you kind of quickfire questions. So, what was the last book you read?
I read Obama, Barack Obama's book, Promised Land, and I loved it. I was enthralled. I mean, it's a lot of sausage making of government. Yeah. Which was a really with some amazing stories of, you know, what's actually happening at the ground level. And I loved it. So I highly recommend it.
He's a very gifted storyteller, I think, I've got, I'm working my way through the audio book. But the problem I have with it is it voice is so melodic and soothing. And the time I get to listen to it is normally before bed. So I don't get very far to move only to actually get the hardback version.
He's whispering in your ear, though the whole time!
He is, he is! Where would be the best place to eat in your hometown? Obviously, nothing NetSuite or Celigo specific but if we're if we're your way, where should we go for a good meal?
Oh, my goodness, there's so many options. So I live in Palo Alto, California. Where do I even start? I'd say, what, my wife and I have a favourite place we go to it's called St. Michael's Alley. Although we usually frequent there every Tuesday. But there's, you know, no shortage, especially, I mean, if you're coming to California. I mean, there's some absolutely terrific, you know, Mexican food, I mean, terrific food of every kind that you could
possibly want. There's a wonderful Pakistani place within walking distance in my house called Zarines that I love, because there's no shortage of good places to eat around here.
If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
I'd Love to be remembered as someone who tried to do the right thing? Try to be on the right side.
And finally, before I let you go, I know you've got a busy day ahead. What keeps you up at night?
It's a good one because I'm a sound sleeper. I'm think what keeps me up at night is certainly how my team is doing. I think it's really easy when you are in it at a growing company, to drive your team incredibly hard in many cases. I mean, you're working with wonderful people. Hopefully, you know, you're hiring people who have kind of the same passion and fire for the work that you do. But you know that it can be super impactful and
people's lives and people. So I often ask myself, am I doing everything I can to be able to make sure that we are using our our colleagues and employees times wisely, making sure that they're not, that you are being as helpful as you can, that you are being as clear as you can that we are being of service to them, basically, to the do their jobs in a way that is scalable.
Well, Rico has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you today. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. I'll follow Celigo very closely. So I wish you well, and no doubt we'll see more of you and Celigo in the near future. Rico Andrade, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you. It was a pleasure. And you know, we have built a long relationship with GetBusy as well, so it's really a pleasure to be able to continue this conversation and other ways with you guys.
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