Planning Tools People Don't Abandon for Excel

Charlie Liu (00:12)

Hello everyone, welcome to Making Cents with Charlie. Our guest today is the founder and managing director of Bright Point Solutions, where he helps finance teams modernize how they plan, forecast, and make decisions. With more than 25 years in FP&A and performance management, he refocused Bright Point around Pigment in 2022. He's a lifelong learner who's spent the past few years digging into what AI can actually mean for the future of finance. When he's not doing that, he's out on a golf course or watching the New York Jets. I'm really excited to have you here, my friend, Bill. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you for being here with me today.

Bill Rausch (00:48)

Charlie, thanks for having me.

Charlie Liu (00:49)

So Bill, we always like to start with a round of rapid-fire, just to get you warmed up. So, really quickly: one app you cannot live without.

Bill Rausch (00:56)

One app I can't live without. Well, I probably, like most people: Claude. I can't live without it. 80% of my day I'm in Claude.

Charlie Liu (01:03)

Is it on your phone too?

Bill Rausch (01:04)

It's on my phone. Although on my phone I tend to use Gemini, so all my personal stuff I go to Gemini. All my work stuff I go to Claude. So, like, when I'm watching some show and I'm like, "Who is that actor?" I go to Gemini for that. But if it's work stuff, I go to Claude.

Charlie Liu (01:19)

Gemini is really good on the consumer side of things. I think, especially with media, they're really good at figuring out what their focus is. Have you tried the new AI feature on Google Maps? It's phenomenal. If you're on your next trip and you just want to figure out what you're gonna do for an afternoon, just go on Google Maps, go to the AI feature: it knows exactly where you're at, it knows your calendar, it knows what kind of day you've had. It'll suggest you should wind down or find something energetic, and it'll actually map out a whole plan for you, so you can just follow it. Go here first, then go here next. At this point, you really don't have to think anymore. But, next question: save money or spend on experiences?

Bill Rausch (02:06)

Given my age, at the moment it's been saving money. Retirement is on the horizon. It's not near, but it's close.

Charlie Liu (02:13)

I think you still have a while, Bill. I mean, you can't slow down.

Bill Rausch (02:16)

I've got a while.

Charlie Liu (02:17)

Yeah, every time we talk, I don't think you're gonna slow down for a while.

Bill Rausch (02:20)

It'll be a while. I just want the ability to retire. I want to retire and feel really good about it.

Charlie Liu (02:25)

We're all trying, right?

Bill Rausch (02:27)

I mean, it's what drives me, right? I love what I do, and I have taken time off before in my career, and I was bored, and I came back. That's where you and I met.

Charlie Liu (02:35)

Yes, exactly. How long has it been now, four years, five years? You were just leaving Cube, I think. You were at Cube.

Bill Rausch (02:38)

Six? No, five and a half. Actually, it was before that. It was January of 2021.

Charlie Liu (02:47)

Been half a decade. Well, I'm glad it's been a while. I know, since I've known you, you're a very unique human being. There's really nothing you can't do: you can sell, you can demo, you can scope. And we're talking, in terms of our trade, about the EPM, CPM, kind of FP&A systems world. You can consult, you've also built a business, you've sat on the other side as well. Not many people are in that boat. How did you end up like this? And the reason I bring this up is, we have a lot of folks watching who are a little younger in their career, and they don't know where to go. I often get a lot of accountants asking me for guidance. I think hearing your story will help a lot of people.

Bill Rausch (03:27)

My story's an interesting one, Charlie. It started... I won't go all the way back. Early in my career I fell into doing J.D. Edwards consulting. They were an ERP system, back in the day, very big for manufacturing and distribution companies. Had a very strong culture, based in Denver, Colorado. And I kind of left that environment. I was looking, trying to figure out what to do next, and I ended up playing golf with some random guy, and he said, "Have you ever heard of Hyperion?" And I said no, I hadn't heard of it. Well, actually, I said, "No, I'd heard of it, but I don't know a lot about the company." He goes, "Oh, it's amazing." And he knew a lot of the same people I did from J.D. Edwards. So, long story short, he basically hired me. I was doing consulting for them, grew with them, and then they got bought by Oracle. I was miserable. A friend of mine went over to Host Analytics, and they brought me in to do pre-sales. I was their first pre-sales person. So, in short, I'm doing jobs, right? But I kind of fall into this FP&A thing, having done a little bit of it earlier in my career, but that's another story, doesn't matter.

Charlie Liu (04:29)

Yeah.

Bill Rausch (04:29)

Long story short, my wife at the time got a job traveling. It was a big job, making a lot of money, and I left Host Analytics. There were things happening that weren't going to work, and they needed me to travel, she was traveling. I said, "You know what, I'm just gonna be a consultant. I know how to be a consultant, I know this Host Analytics platform, I'll be a consultant." Got a few projects through the company, and the next thing I know, my wife and I get divorced, and she's still traveling a lot, and we've got a family. And I'm like, I can't travel. So, at the time, working in the cloud was a big deal, and I'm like, this is great: I can still do my job, I don't have to travel, and I can be home for my family.

Charlie Liu (05:19)

When was this, Bill? Like, you're in the late 2000s, if you're talking about the cloud.

Bill Rausch (05:22)

Charlie Liu (05:24)

Okay.

Bill Rausch (05:25)

And I mean, at the time I was like, I have to make this work. I can't get a job because every other job I've ever had required me to travel. And it's sort of a long story, it's a burn-the-boats story. I had to make this work, I didn't have a choice. I mean, I felt like I didn't have a choice. But it also happened to be that I love talking to people, I love connecting people, I love solving problems. And for me, I am very comfortable being uncomfortable, and that's a thing that...

Charlie Liu (05:56)

Okay. Yeah, I'm in the same boat.

Bill Rausch (05:58)

...most people that move into consulting, like, you have to understand that's a thing you have to be okay with. It's never easy, especially these last four years. Things are gonna surprise you left and right, and you just have to be prepared to roll with it.

Charlie Liu (06:11)

Well, they say, what is it, something is the mother of all invention. Necessity, I think it's necessity, 'cause...

Bill Rausch (06:17)

Necessity is the mother of invention. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's the case, Charlie. I had to make Bright Point work, and it did. I got lucky. They hired a new VP of sales at Host Analytics at the time, and this is like two and a half years in. I'd been working my ass off, putting in a lot of hours, working really hard. And this new VP came in and he's like, "Why are you on your own, suffering like this?" And I'm like, "I don't know, it's just what ended up happening." And he goes, "This is dumb. You're smart, customers seem to like you. Let's make you a real partner, let's help you grow your business. We need you, you need us." And we took... I took the company from that point. I think there were four of us, and suddenly...

Charlie Liu (07:01)

Yeah.

Bill Rausch (07:01)

...we were 15, and then, like, a year later. I mean, that was within like six months, from four to fifteen, and then jumped up to like twenty or twenty-five, and kind of stayed there, vacillated a bit, but basically hung around that spot for a really long...

Charlie Liu (07:17)

I believe it was at one point one of the biggest, well, that's called Planful now, partner in the ecosystem, right?

Bill Rausch (07:24)

We were, from probably 2015 or 2016 up until we sold in 2017. I think we had the most consultants.

Charlie Liu (07:32)

You learn a lot, kind of being forced. I mean, like you and I talk about this, it's not easy building a business. A lot of times you just have to make it work. It's like staring into an abyss and eating glass, I think that's what some people call it. You don't know where you have to go, but I do think you make your own luck, right? Like, if you go back to that story you just told, if you weren't good at what you do, and you weren't good at building relationships, the VP of sales wouldn't have started an initiative with you.

Bill Rausch (08:00)

Exactly. And, you know, I had spent two and a half years building a reputation of doing a good job and being willing to do whatever it took to make sure the client was happy, and establishing that as my brand. And when he got there, I was in a position to take advantage of the luck. And I think that's a lot of it, right?

Charlie Liu (08:19)

There was a quote I got, I think it's Hormozi, that really jacked guy on YouTube these days. He's very good at going viral. One thing he talks about is, if you don't know what you need to do, you build capacity. So, if you don't know how to invest, save cash. If you don't know what you're gonna do tomorrow, sleep early. And I think in your case, in cases like this, it's just building the brand, building the connection, building the ability to have those conversations, so when it does show up, you're ready for it. Bill, I do remember you telling me you actually started in the ERP consulting days. I tried hiring ex-ERP consultants. They had a very difficult time jumping from ERP to FP&A systems. They're very different animals. One is all about settings, knowing exactly what switches to use. I've met NetSuite consultants who know nothing about consulting, but they're like gods with NetSuite. They know exactly what they have to change, they know how to move data with settings, but they don't actually understand the whole picture. How did you find that transition?

Bill Rausch (09:21)

Unbelievably difficult. It was so hard, it was really hard. There are so many things that are different. In short, for me, I actually have a fairly technical background. That's my background early in my career. The two things that were hard: one was moving from a transactional database environment to an online analytical processing environment. Just the star-schema, OLAP concepts of FP&A versus your traditional SQL environment for ERP. That change was hard, but you can work through that. And I think OLAP was still new back then, so people didn't quite know how to describe it. I think now we've gotten to a stage where it's very easy and fairly well known how it works. The harder thing was process. ERP consulting is all about uncovering the processes companies have, whether it's how do I handle blanket purchase orders, how do I close the books, how do I take a sales order, how do I manage inventory. It's these processes, and you're translating processes into transactional systems. FP&A consulting is all about... you don't care about transactions anymore, it's all about effectively balances, and then adjusting and slicing and dicing and planning. And there's not as much process, other than your annual budgeting process, but that's only, to me, a tenth of the issue. So that was the understanding. And then, probably, the idea of working in a live model. Like, in ERP consulting, you never touch the live system, you always...

Charlie Liu (10:57)

It's always a clone. Sandbox.

Bill Rausch (11:00)

...work in a clone. You have test, development, and production environments. In FP&A consulting, I mean, you have a little bit of that, but not a lot. And that was a big part of my career too. Like, "God, wait a minute, we're in a live production OLAP cube, and we're changing stuff?" But it's fine, it's okay.

Charlie Liu (11:17)

Do you...

Bill Rausch (11:17)

It took a lot of work. I think the maturity of the FP&A platform environment has made it significantly easier for people, too. Kids are coming out of college with corporate finance degrees now, degrees focused on doing planning. Back when I got started, there were no degrees. People just had an accounting degree, and that's what you would hire.

Charlie Liu (11:39)

I want to come back to that, 'cause when I was in school there was no corporate finance, the only finance was Wall Street banking finance.

Bill Rausch (11:48)

Right, that's what people thought of.

Charlie Liu (11:49)

Yeah. And I don't know if things have changed in Canada, I still haven't heard of any, but I know in the US they exist now, and it's fascinating. I do want to come back to that, but you're one of the few I know who've sat on all the different sides. You've sat on the corporate side, the ERP side, the FP&A systems side. 'Cause I get this question a lot, and I know enough to sound intelligent, but you've actually done both sides of it. When anyone's actually implementing an ERP system... I know J.D. Edwards was one of the older systems, but I think a lot of the best practices are still similar, they're evergreen in essence. Are there things you should be aware of, in terms of how you think about dimensionality, in terms of your setup, so that you're set up for success with other systems, like an FP&A system, in the future?

Bill Rausch (12:44)

Charlie, I think probably the thing I'd coach our clients on is: try not to... I see this happening where folks want to build this gigantic chart of accounts, and they're embedding dimensionality into their chart of accounts. And I coach them, saying, well, you have these other dimensions. In NetSuite they're called classes, in QuickBooks they're called classes, right? And you can have many of those things, and frankly I think those are a little easier to work with than just having a very, very long, complex chart of accounts. So dimensionality, I think, is important. And then, as you're working with other systems, the best thing I tell clients is: have some platform for master data management. It's just a fancy word to say, how do I ensure that my departments in NetSuite match my departments in HiBob, or in Greenhouse? Somehow those things all have to match, and invariably they don't, because different departments using different platforms require different levels of granularity. So, invariably, you're building these mapping tables, where it's a one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many relationship. And building a mapping table that someone in the business has access to change, that, to me, is one of the most valuable things a company can put in place before they do an FP&A solution, or at least while they're deploying those types of solutions. 'Cause invariably, that's the other thing: FP&A tends to be a clearinghouse for really all of your data. Data is coming from all different kinds of systems, being brought into your FP&A platform, your planning platform, EPM, whatever you want to call it. And that's when you need these sorts of mapping tables, and having them somewhere easy for those folks to manage is, to me, the most important thing. I've seen it put in SQL tables in Snowflake, but then the only people who can update them are the IT folks. So, recently... there's a whole story behind it, I won't bore you with it, but I've been using database tables in Notion for doing these mappings, for our own internal processes.

Charlie Liu (14:50)

I'm using Notion as well, and it's accessible through AI, so you can manage all of that. I love this tip you just gave. It's pure common sense, but I do believe common sense is not common, and that's phenomenal advice. Because one of the biggest things I see is, once companies get larger, they're manually mapping this stuff every month between every system they have. They never really track and manage it, and then it gets really, really difficult. And I honestly do believe, we're in the same space: a big part of the value proposition of what we do is not even setting up the system, it's making sure the data is all normalized, mapped, and clean, sitting in one place. And then you start getting value out of the platform. If you start doing that homework from day one, where you map, that's phenomenal, that's great advice.

Bill Rausch (15:41)

We're implementing a new offering for our clients. We're calling it... I haven't got a good name for it yet, but effectively it's a data-readiness workshop. I don't really care whose platform you're going to use, but it's having someone with a systems mindset come in and look at your data from all different sources, and figure out: is this all ready for an FP&A deployment? It's everything from, you know, I'm extracting the trial balance out of NetSuite, and wait, there are these five cost centers over here in this old entity, and somehow we're still using one of those cost centers, but the others aren't being used. Or, can I come up with a balanced balance sheet out of the trial balance coming out of NetSuite? Or are there these weird top-side entries that somebody's doing in some offline spreadsheet that nobody knows anything about? So it's getting that data cleaned up. It's not hard, it shouldn't be that expensive, but just giving someone with that mindset to ask our clients the right questions, so they can go solve the problem themselves. Our conversation triggered one other thing, Charlie, that I don't want to miss. Often clients will give us spreadsheets, and something's wrong with the spreadsheet, whatever it is. There's a couple of misspellings, or something. And often consultants will just clean the spreadsheet up, load it into the platform we're working with, and move forward. But they don't always remember: I need to understand why I had to make that change, because I don't want to have to make that change again. Our consultants do it, our customers do it. I try not to let our consultants do it, but it happens, it's a thing you have to learn as you evolve your consulting career. But understanding where those errors sourced from, and fixing it that way, versus just saying, "I'll fix it, upload it, and pray it never happens again."

Charlie Liu (17:35)

What's the concrete... I think I'm following, but what's a concrete example? Because to me it sounds like, is this a data problem? Is it a process problem?

Bill Rausch (17:43)

It's a data problem. Almost always, it's a data problem.

Charlie Liu (17:46)

So, an example of this would be: you export your data from NetSuite, and there's an adjustment they just never make in NetSuite, so they're doing it in Excel instead.

Bill Rausch (17:55)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie Liu (17:55)

When, if the proper process had made that adjustment, whether it's an allocation or a journal entry, it should have just been done in NetSuite, so that when it comes out, it's clean.

Bill Rausch (18:04)

In short, yes. Invariably, it's related to something that happened. We acquired a small business two years ago, and it's been incorporated into our NetSuite environment for a few years, and then auditors found something from a year and a half ago, and there was some journal entry that got tagged weird in NetSuite, and it never comes out clean. And so somebody in finance always goes, "Yeah, there's that one thing I have to do to clean this up," and they forget, because they only have to do it maybe once a year. That's the kind of data problem I'm talking about.

Charlie Liu (18:36)

That makes perfect sense. And for everyone listening: this should be done in the accounting system, that's your system of record. I've seen people do this in Excel, I've seen people do this in FP&A systems. You can mirror the system of record in an FP&A tool, but that's not where you should be doing it. Also, like Bill and I, we live off FP&A platforms, but the average life of an ERP system is 8 years, and the average life of an FP&A system is 4 years. So, statistically, there's a higher likelihood you're going to be switching FP&A systems. You want to make sure those records are stored in the accounting system.

Bill Rausch (19:09)

Yeah, for sure. And keeping your system clean, it's hard to do, and there's so much transition in accounting and finance departments today. People move from job to job often enough. I don't think we're quite at this stage yet, but I can imagine in the not-too-distant future where people are gonna know, like, "Bob from such-and-such Incorporated, that guy leaves a mess in his accounting systems." At some point that'll start to get around. I don't think we're quite there yet, but you don't want to have that reputation of not leaving a clean environment.

Charlie Liu (19:44)

That triggered a thought I had that's potentially unrelated. You can't escape a bad past, so I agree with that completely. And I just had a memory: this was years after I'd left, I had a consultant reach out to me on LinkedIn. What happened was, you and I, we write ETL codes and scripts, and very early on I had a mentor who came from Comsite, and a big piece of that art is just commentary: writing who made what change, what the log was, what the date was. The consultant had issues with it, but my comments still lived in the ETL script four years later, and they had to basically ask me what happened. And I actually did remember the project. It was a very technical integration, I think it was joining about 9 different systems, and I was able to give them a few pointers. I'd be fascinated to see, worldwide, if the systems of record actually track who's making all the entries. You could technically find out, if you wanted to.

Bill Rausch (20:41)

You do, yeah, I mean...

Charlie Liu (20:42)

...could technically find out. Now, Bill, I said I wanted to bring this back: talking about students coming out of school, actually graduating with corporate finance degrees. Have you had any experience working with them, what's that like? Because I've only trained accountants out of school, I haven't met one yet who's from corporate finance.

Bill Rausch (21:04)

I have a client based in Fort Worth, Texas, and they hired... I mean, we had an on-site meeting, I don't get to do many on-site meetings, but I had one with them, I don't know, two and a half, three years ago. And we're just sitting at lunch, and I said, "Well, where'd you go to school, what'd you graduate in?" And they all said corporate finance. And I was like, really? So, you learn about budgeting and allocations and headcount planning? And they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had classes for all that stuff." And it was amazing. You didn't have to teach them any of that. All the stuff that corporate FP&A people do, they're learning it in school. I mean, they don't know everything, but, holy mackerel, that whole piece, they just know it. And so now you're just applying the technology platform to the things they already know. I used to teach accountants too, and it was like, you have to teach them, "Hey, we're not doing accounting here. Getting your budget variance to some tiny little threshold, that's not the value of this job. The value of the job is getting a plan together and understanding where variances are coming from, why there's a variance, not just chasing a small variance." And you don't have to teach them any of that stuff, they all get it. They're immediately talking about getting value out of these systems, and how they can be a better partner to the business, as opposed to just getting very tight variances on BVA reports.

Charlie Liu (22:35)

Debit, credit. I get it, that's fascinating.

Bill Rausch (22:37)

Yeah, definitely all that stuff. It's fascinating, honestly. I wish I knew who these people were, I should ask them what school they went to. Or I guess I could just look them up online and see what school they went to. I wish there was a tool you could use to do that, Charlie. Is there a platform where you can look people up and see what college and jobs they've had?

Charlie Liu (22:57)

If only one of those tools existed! I'm looking it up right now. I'm seeing, even in Toronto, they have this now. I don't know if they're master's-level courses, but no such thing existed when I was in school. And that's such a useful thing to understand, for anyone listening who's a little younger: I don't think there's a single degree coming out of school where you holistically understand a business. In accounting, you get accounting really well, but I think most accountants don't actually understand how a business works. Marketers, marketing. No one really understands a whole business coming out of school.

Bill Rausch (23:27)

True. Well, I mean, obviously your MBAs do, but I think there are pure...

Charlie Liu (23:28)

I'm talking undergrad, yeah.

Bill Rausch (23:36)

I think there are now pure business degrees you can get, more of a holistic business approach. But yeah, for me it was...

Charlie Liu (23:44)

I think that's really helpful, yeah.

Bill Rausch (23:46)

...lots and lots and lots of consulting. That's how I got my degree.

Charlie Liu (23:49)

I actually think I was too dumb. I don't think I actually figured it out when I was a consultant. It took me building a business and working in corporate, doing different parts of a business, doing ops, doing sales, doing marketing, little bits of that, to understand it. And then when I came back to our space, I was like, okay, I get why I'm doing what I'm doing now.

Bill Rausch (24:09)

I couldn't agree more, Charlie. When you have your own business and you don't have a planning tool, it's torture. Or your planning tool is in Excel. It's awful, it's awful.

Charlie Liu (24:20)

Yes, and yeah.

Bill Rausch (24:22)

I built a whole... I built a spreadsheet to manage my company, I did that earlier this year, and I didn't account for, well, what happens if I bring on some consultants as opposed to just hiring people full-time? And changing the model was a nightmare, it was a lot of work. I used Claude to actually build the whole model, it still took time.

Charlie Liu (24:44)

Having a system helps. We're on a system now, and it's actually helped me learn that my philosophy on implementation, on how to set things up for clients, has changed. I actually think you should rebuild your FP&A platform every year or two. If your business dynamics are changing, I think it's a fallacy that a consultant can come in, put in the time, and set up a system you can use over and over again, like an accounting system. I don't think that really exists. I think you either have to accept that you need someone who's gone through that full training and can operate near a consultant, near an admin level, or get some consultant help, so that every 6 to 12 months, when things change, you can rebuild. It's supposed to be a reflection of FP&A, right? And FP&A itself is supposed to be that.

Bill Rausch (25:31)

I had somebody ask me, "Why do you do what you do?"

Charlie Liu (25:35)

On your team?

Bill Rausch (25:35)

No. I don't even think they're a business person, I don't remember. This feels like it was a week ago.

Charlie Liu (25:41)

Yeah.

Bill Rausch (25:42)

And they asked me, "How did you get to this? How'd you fall into it, why this?" And for me, the value is exactly what you just said: I have to understand the entire scope of how a company works, all the different pieces and parts, how they work together, how one part drives another. I find all of that really fascinating. Frankly, it's probably like people who like working on cars, right? How the fuel system drives the engine, which drives the transmission, which drives the wheels, and how all those different pieces interoperate. For me, it's the same thing with business, that's the part I find really fascinating.

Charlie Liu (26:22)

I think that's a big part of what we do too. We get to meet clients, understand a new business. It's almost like an investigation, understanding how it works, and then figuring out how we can help. I find a lot of clients don't actually know how they can improve, I mean, that's why it's called consulting: you get in, understand their pains, process their data, understand it, and then you can actually prescribe things. How have you seen things change in the last 20 years? I know a lot's happened in the last couple years, everyone's talking about AI, but how have things changed over the last 20 or 15 years?

Bill Rausch (26:58)

I'll leave AI as the second part of my answer, because I think that's dramatically changed everything. But going back 20 years, nothing was in the cloud, or very few things were. That movement alone was pretty enormous. Not just how you deal with software, but how we work together. I'm going back to 2008, when I joined Host Analytics: we would do calls, we'd do GoToMeeting calls, but nobody turned their camera on, very few people did. I think COVID changed that. We were all working remotely, and clients were like, "Wait, you're not gonna come on-site?" That was a question we'd get, 2008 to, I don't know, 2015. And then around 2015 or so, clients would say, "Please don't come to my office, I have too much work to do, can we just make our meeting an hour or two hours long?" So remote work has been dramatic.

Charlie Liu (27:54)

Do you think that was negative or positive?

Bill Rausch (27:57)

I think it's incredibly positive. There are negatives to it. I love seeing people in person.

Charlie Liu (28:02)

Yeah, really?

Bill Rausch (28:03)

I mean, the funny thing, Charlie, is we've known each other for five and a half years and we have yet...

Charlie Liu (28:05)

Yeah, I know, I haven't seen you yet.

Bill Rausch (28:08)

...to meet in person. I know we've tried, but we'll get there. But anyway...

Charlie Liu (28:10)

We tried, we'll make it work, yeah, we'll get there. Yes.

Bill Rausch (28:16)

I think that's a negative. But the positive is, I hire folks from all over the country. My hiring pool is North America, frankly, Western Europe too, if I really wanted to go that far. And that's allowed us to get the right people for the job. We're all specializing, as people, as a society, we're specializing. Back in the day you were a businessman, now...

Charlie Liu (28:42)

Yeah.

Bill Rausch (28:43)

...I'm a very specialized businessman, right? Same with doctors, it's the same thing, it's across the board. We're just getting specialized, putting the right person in the right job. For me, I've got just about 1.5 million flight miles, and these aren't frequent flyer miles, these are flight miles, that's my butt on a seat on a plane, going somewhere. And of that 1.5 million, I promise you, 1.2 or 1.3 is domestic travel, and it's really hard. New York to Chicago, Denver to San Francisco, Raleigh to San Francisco, Raleigh to Toronto. That is draining. It's draining on you as a person, it's draining on your relationships, your family, your friends. It's just draining, it's a definite hard thing to do. Having everything remote, I no longer have to do that. I spend my time at home with my family, with my friends, that's what's important to me. The other thing I'll say is, I do think it forces us to be...

Charlie Liu (29:47)

Yeah.

Bill Rausch (29:48)

...significantly more organized. I've always been a kind of organized person, but the more remote work, the more I really need to be hyper-organized. And frankly, if you think about it, we tell our clients to be organized with their data all the time, right? Make sure your data is clean, because your systems...

Charlie Liu (30:00)

Yes.

Bill Rausch (30:00)

...will work. AI, to me, has completely changed everything we're doing. We were pretty early with AI, building a solution where we were trying to normalize vendor names for Planful, when ChatGPT first came out. And now, we're using Claude for everything. I've got Claude connected to all my systems: Google Drive, Calendar, Notion. We've developed AWS knowledge bases for all our call transcripts, those are all connected in. I've got all of the stuff for Bright Point connected into MCP, and if it's not organized, AI agents don't know what to do with it.

Charlie Liu (30:40)

That's the first piece of having an AI strategy: your data strategy. I'd love to dig into it, I don't think we have enough time today, but I agree with you. I do think there are some negative impacts in terms of getting systems on board. I remember when I used to travel, I didn't get to 1.5 million, I think I got to about 700, 800k, and I gave up, it's exhausting. There was a couple of years where I was basically half in the US and half in Canada, and it's rough. For a while I couldn't travel, I hated airports. But it did allow you to be locked up with a client for 4 or 5 days, and that drastically improves the knowledge transfer, the speed of a project. But I do completely agree with you, I think from the human standpoint, the work-life balance, that's day and night. Sometimes I think about how efficient we were back then, but I didn't really think about it until you brought it up now. I hated life for years, I actually left the space for a while because of the travel that came with it.

Bill Rausch (31:45)

Well, frankly, that's why I left doing ERP consulting, 'cause I just did not want to get on a plane anymore.

Charlie Liu (31:50)

Yeah. Story for another time. When I was doing pre-sales, that was a whole different world, that was a flight every day. But Bill, this was lovely, we're coming down on time. I can't wait to have you back, we can nerd out a bit more on AI, it's the topic of the day, I think we could definitely do a full workshop together on how to get clients prepared for that. But we often end our podcast with two-cent advice from you. What's your two-cent advice?

Bill Rausch (32:17)

Yeah. I would say: don't over-engineer anything you're working on. I'm a perfectionist by nature, I want to over-engineer everything, I want it right the first time. And I've learned it's better to get something done and get it close, versus getting it perfect.

Charlie Liu (32:33)

That's really good advice. I'm gonna ask a second part to that, since we have a little more time: I, being a perfectionist, have had a ton of trouble stopping a build with AI, because you can just keep finding areas to improve it, and it tells you how else it can get better, and then you just spend so much time building it versus actually using what you've built. How do you manage that?

Bill Rausch (32:58)

I don't know, I don't know if I have a good answer, Charlie. That's... I said I'm a lifelong learner, as part of my intro, and I'm still trying to figure that out, I don't know if I've got a good answer. Sometimes I get it as close as I can, and I'm like, okay, it's gonna be good, and then, invariably, I let other people test what I've built, just to figure out if it's gonna work. Our call-transcript knowledge base is a perfect example of that. It's a little bit more than duct tape and bailing wire, but let's just say it's that, and it's far enough along, people are...

Charlie Liu (33:28)

Yeah, but most AI infrastructure looks like that.

Bill Rausch (33:33)

Yeah. But anyway, it's still a learning process. Part of it is having confidence in yourself, that even if it doesn't work, or somebody doesn't like what you've built, or it's not perfect, you can make it perfect at some point in the future, or you can scrap it and start over and do something different. You have to have a lot of confidence in yourself to pull that off.

Charlie Liu (33:56)

I think that's really helpful. I think a lot of folks are too scared to get started, but it's really just about getting started, building something, and if it's crap, throw it out, rebuild. One thing I found immensely helpful for me was, I told Claude that I have focus issues, that I sometimes go off on tangents. I told it to basically manage me. So, often when I'm going off on these tangents trying to perfect something, it'll tell me, "I recommend you stop here for today, and leave that for another time," and that's been really useful for me. But Bill, this was lovely, this was a lot of fun. I can't wait to have you back, thank you so much for joining me today.

Bill Rausch (34:33)

Charlie, thank you for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to having you on my podcast, whenever I get that rolling.

Charlie Liu (34:39)

Anytime, appreciate it. Take care, Bill.