Supply Chain AI Implementation: Deanna Harner’s Approach at Avanade

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity.

My name is Anthony Codaspodi and today’s guest is Deanna Harner. She is the US executive supply chain and AI strategist, as well as the executive supply chain and operations advisory lead for America’s manufacturing at Avanade. They are a global provider of Microsoft focused digital and cloud services powered by a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft. They help businesses harness technology and AI

to transform their operations, drive efficiency, and unlock new possibilities. She is also the founder, CEO, and executive operations supply chain strategist for RPE Solutions, where she works with executives to drive transformation across industries. She has over 25 years of experience leading supply chain transformations for Fortune 100 organizations. Along the way, she introduced breakthrough approaches like the tariff navigator,

to help companies mitigate cost and boost performance. She is also a published thought leader, having contributed to industry publications and spoken at top conferences. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.

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All right, back to our guest today, founder of RPE Solutions, Deanna Harner. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Deanna (02:12)
Hi Anthony, glad to be here. Happy Friday.

Anthony Codispoti (02:15)
Happy Friday. All right. So, Deanna, I’d like to understand your career arc just a little bit before we talk about present day. You graduated from college with a degree in human resources specifically for the hospitality industry, but it looks like you pretty quickly found your way into operations, supply chain, logistics, something very different than what you went to school for. How did that first happen?

Deanna (02:39)
Well, you know, at 18, we know everything, right? I mean, nothing’s changed from my 18-year-old self to myself today. So I thought I would be in hotel and restaurant management. It was just a degree in hospitality, and I really wanted to be a hotel manager. So I worked for the Four Seasons, Holiday Inn, all through college. And then I took a job working at the O’Hare Hilton managing the front desk.

Anthony Codispoti (02:43)
I did, I remember, very clearly.

Deanna (03:05)
They had 900 rooms and they would go from 0 % occupancy to 100 % occupancy thanks to the O’Hare airport. And I realized that’s not the life I want. I want to actually have a more regular day ⁓ and so forth. And so I pivoted to Continental Airlines ⁓ and went in to work for the executive chef designing menus and end-to-end supply chain. Now at the time it was not called that.

⁓ And that’s really where my transition from hotels into corporate supply chain and manufacturing came in, ⁓ is at that venture. I got to travel the world at 20, know, tasting wine, tasting coffee, tasting food, designing the menus and doing the end to end logistics. So it was a great opportunity and I fell in love. I liked to problem solve and in supply chain, whether it’s COVID or tariffs, there’s always something going on.

⁓ And so yeah, that’s where it started. And that’s how the pivot occurred.

Anthony Codispoti (04:04)
Okay. And so was it, did it feel like a natural progression to move from the front desk of a hotel into designing menus and traveling the world and finding suppliers? Nope. This was all brand new.

Deanna (04:17)
Well and and the fact that in my interview with the chef he asked me what temperature you kept food and I said at the freezing temperature not at the refrigerated temperature so like I had a lot to learn and so And so yeah, I know it wasn’t at all. I mean hotels is back-to-back shifts, you know, like, you know Seven days 14 days on and corporate even though you can work night and weekends You do have like an eight to five Monday through Friday structure

And when I went into the corporate role, I was like so surprised because I thought that was amazing. Like, I only have to be here eight to five usually, and I can go home at five and I have weekends. I mean, of course sometimes, but most of the time. And people who had been in corporate their entire lives were like, this sucks. And I’m like,

Anthony Codispoti (05:03)
You need to trade seats just for a little bit and figure out what it’s like elsewhere. So why did they take a flyer on you? If you had no experience, didn’t really have the skills at that point for it, ⁓ you charmed them.

Deanna (05:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

⁓ So I mean, in hotel and restaurant management, like in my degree plan, right, I had worked in the restaurant side. So there was some food experience that I had. I also think like, you know, quite honestly, and this is a key throughout my career, like it’s all about someone who opens the door for you. And one of, you know, the persons who worked with him recommended to talk to me. And I was young, I was eager, I did have that restaurant degree and he took a chance on me.

⁓ And so I came in and worked with him and learned like we used to have manuals of menus paper. Remember the blue back paper, know, stacks of menus and flight. Yeah, it was one that was all accordion. It was all tied together. It like these computer papers. It was old school and the menu were on that. Yeah, it was kind like a carbon copy. And

Anthony Codispoti (06:00)
blueback paper.

It’s not like the carbon copies. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now I’m with you. Yeah.

Deanna (06:15)
The menus were on there. So if you want to do a change and you wanted to change a product and a cost, you’d have to like flip through this thing. And I’m like, I was trained in Excel in college. Like what is, what is this paper thing with a calculator? But I learned the power of financial analysis. And like you would think in hotels, if I reduced your rate by $50, no big deal, right? But on an airplane, if one little item in the back coach on thousands of flights,

around the world with hundreds of passengers, a penny is millions of dollars. Right. So I learned like crucial information that really, you know, and then the quality, like vendor quality, like you would source a product and then when it got to the catering unit and got on the plane, it wasn’t what you saw. Right. And having to deal with vendor relations issues and cost negotiations.

I got to do all of that and it was really cool and travel the world. I got to travel in France with a bunch of chefs, you know, and it was a great experience. I pivoted into operations after about two years with the chef and then I spent the rest of my eight years at Continental in operations. So the regional carrier, they’re small jets, right? I manage all of the catering. So if we hit the aircraft and did damage,

If we had onboard quality issues with the flight attendants and the food, I managed all of that for about eight years.

Anthony Codispoti (07:43)
Wow, that sounds like quite an undertaking. And at some point you had enough and you moved on. Or you were just ready for a new challenge.

Deanna (07:46)
It was.

I got my master’s degree.

I got my master’s degree. So I took two years off and got my master’s degree. had my daughter. And when I came back with a master’s degree, everyone’s like, need to be in finance. And I was like, I don’t feel like that’s the right role for me. But I got a job working for Golf State Toyota, a freaking group who they’re a distributor of Toyota and supplier financial analysis, basically. So supply analysis.

And I quickly learned that I am not a data processing data analysis person. Like I took a personality test and it was like, that’s on the bottom of my list of to-dos. And I was like, okay, it was good experience. every, everything that we’ll talk about today, like it’s all been good experience. I learned a ton and it has helped me be where I am today. So I’m grateful for all those experiences.

But if you offer me a job today in data analysis, I’m going to do us both a favor and say no. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (08:54)
So it laid the foundation

for some of your critical understandings, helping you connect the dots in a lot of the things that you’re doing today, but you don’t want that to be your primary focus.

Deanna (09:04)
No, Excel sheets is not my primary focus. I can tell you how to get out of Excel now into higher level thoughts ⁓ and analysis. But yeah, so then after that, I went into a work for Cisco Foods. ⁓ I got my black belt in Six Sigma. ⁓ So that kind of leans back to the operations, you know, side of the business.

So I got my black belt, went to Cisco and helped to run their ERP change. They were going from a homegrown to SAP. So I worked on that project. I did some pricing for them for about a year and category management for a year. So I did three different roles within three years. And I got called by someone I worked with at Comcast and said, I need you to come over here. I guess I had missed that. So there was Comcast in the middle.

And like, she was like, I need you to come over to Comcast, right? And I was like, utilities? You know, I don’t know. This doesn’t seem like a good fit from Cisco and all this other stuff. But when somebody calls that you have a great deal of respect for, and they say they need you, yeah. Yeah, yeah. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (10:04)
Yeah.

You listen, you take that call, you think about it seriously at least.

Deanna (10:22)
And it was a great experience because when you work for someone who you don’t have to worry about them, you know they have your back and they’re going to let you fly and soar and do what you do. Like that was a great experience because I could just go in and be my authentic self, do what I needed to do and not have the fear of leadership coming back and be like, why would you do that? Well, it was the right thing to do.

Anthony Codispoti (10:44)
I think that’s

yeah, that’s so powerful, Dan. I’m glad that you shared that because, you know, I’ve seen this with myself, different opportunities, different doors that have opened with so many of my friends who are in between jobs and they’re looking. It so often comes from somebody in your network relationship that you have, somebody who knows you, knows what you’re capable of. In this case, you weren’t looking for something. You were gainfully employed. But it was somebody that you respected so much that you were like, all right, I’m to pay attention to this.

I’m gonna step out. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do something a little bit outside my comfort zone.

Deanna (11:17)
Yeah.

I talk to a lot of people who are in between work, right? Either got laid off or whatever the case is. There’s a lot of that unfortunately right now. And I talk to students coming out and I tell them all network, network like you’re unemployed. Like even if you’re employed, I still network fearlessly and often and ask anyone for a coffee chat, right?

And you’re either going to become my client, my boss, or someone I enjoy time with, right? Like maybe we just have this time and we don’t talk again, but it was a great time. And the reason I say that is exactly what the point you made is like my network has gotten me every open door. Now I have to walk through it and kick butt, right? I have to show up and deliver, but those doors have always been opened in every role I’ve had by someone I know. And so it’s.

It doesn’t always work that way. Some people’s career is like, you know, very different than mine, but in mine, it’s my network. And so I think it’s extremely important to have a strong network that you can call on.

Anthony Codispoti (12:23)
So you

have this long experience of corporate America, good roles, different kinds of roles, getting all kinds of great experience. And then at some point you decide you want to step out of what I’m going to call a comfort zone, great benefits, right? The security of big corporations. And you step out into consulting. What was the impetus behind that?

Deanna (12:47)
Yeah, I was really frustrated and wanted to like, I was frustrated in the fact that I thought I had been an internal consultant and just kind of switch companies every three years as I would go in and fix it and then go in and fix it and go in and fix it. And so I was like, why can’t I do this like for one company, one W2, right? And just do multiple.

Clients right work for different clients and do the same thing and then go to the next one But have the same payroll in the same paycheck, right? And so the idea came to me and I talked to some friends that were in consulting They were like a small boutique firm and said yeah, you should come we need your skill We need this experience. And so it was a huge leap ⁓ It was going from a full-time paid job to contract work

right without benefits, without a guaranteed pay, ⁓ late in my career, right? Like I’m not in my 30s, right? And so it was, it took a lot of courage and a lot of people told me, even though the first part didn’t work out as well as I would have liked it to, like they were like, you were so courageous to try it, right? Like you took the leap of faith, you tried it, you put your all into it. And so, you know.

you can regret parts of it and wish parts of it went differently. But standing here three years later and getting to talk to clients and getting to like, really bond and be like, we can do this together, you know, show up together and get things done. I love that that part of consulting is why I came in. ⁓ But yeah, it was it was quite the leap of faith and it wasn’t smooth, but

you know, here we are three years later and I’m like, okay, you know, I learned a heck of a lot. So.

Anthony Codispoti (14:38)
Did

you feel like you were well prepared for that kind of work? No.

Deanna (14:42)
No, not well prepared for the changes and the pay and the project work. So like if you work for like a full time consulting firm, you get a paycheck, right? But when you’re an independent consultant, there’s no guarantee I could work with you for three months working on a deal and then you don’t sign it. And I don’t get any pay. And then I have to work the next deal and hope they sign it. And so I wasn’t prepared for that. Right. And so and

having worked in corporate America and like, you know, do a good job, you get paid, right? Hopefully most of the time to go to that type of work structure was very challenging for my mind and my finances and everything. So what I decided after two years of being an independent consultant with RPE, I wanted to work for a firm. So that’s when I pivoted to Avanade.

So Avanade, as you mentioned in the opening, is owned by Microsoft and Accenture, two really well-known companies, ⁓ and created 25 years ago. And they said, hey, I need someone to come in and talk about widgets.

Please, me. And I got hired on and, you know, did a lot of, you know, I’ve done a lot of cool things in the year I’ve been there.

Anthony Codispoti (15:59)
widgets, what specifically that they want you to talk about.

Deanna (16:01)
with.

So I call it widgets because anything in supply chain is a widget whether it’s Walmart and you’ve got stuff on the in a shelf if you’re making light switches for a manufacturing company if you’re Cisco and you’re delivering product to restaurants you’re you’re you’re handling a widget right you may have made the widget or you’re distributing the widget so I I’ve worked across from cable reels at Comcast you know bananas at Cisco

to cars at Toyota, so I just call it all widgets. So basically I can go in and talk to any industry, any leader, and like if they have an inefficiency, a problem with costs, a problem with revenue, like let’s go and diagnose what that problem is and let’s come up with a plan that gets you out of it.

Anthony Codispoti (16:34)
Gotcha.

So are you still doing consulting? Are you full time with Avanade? Are you consulting with Avanade or what’s kind of your place there?

Deanna (16:58)
Yeah, so I am a full-time consultant with Avanade. ⁓ And so, you know, I spend most of my day, like I would say probably about 30 hours a week, just talking to clients, right? Strategizing on how we can solve their problems. Pretty much from May until probably September, I was on eight hours a day of calls about tariffs.

Anthony Codispoti (17:25)
Okay.

Deanna (17:25)
And so

yeah, right at April, I launched our firm’s tariff navigator, which you had talked about in the intro, right? And so what that was, was something very different for our firm. And it was like, in two days, we’re going to assess your tariff problems and two months, we’re going to fix your tariff problem and using Microsoft that you already own, right? And so we’re going to come up with a data layer to make it all transformed and ready.

We’re going to put an agent on top of it, an AI agent on top of it to help your team be more agile in dealing with tariffs. And so I spent like most of this year just talking tariffs. So if you want to talk about HCS codes and nerd out, we can, we don’t have to. But like it was a ton of conversation around that because that was the biggest problem this year in business, right? It’s still impacting businesses today.

Anthony Codispoti (18:19)
So that claim that you just made, we’re gonna fix your tariffs in two months. What do you mean by fix them?

Deanna (18:24)
Yeah. So most of the problems with tariffs is I don’t know what my HGS code is. I can’t tie it to the government data. Early on, was the government would change its mind every couple of days and I would have to reassess my cost impact. And all of that was manual. They had war rooms, right? And large retailers and manufacturing firms that were just trying to figure out with the new, you know, the new law, like what does that impact my cost?

And because their data was most companies data is not in a good state. They didn’t know that information. They couldn’t be agile and saying what even the impact was. So our solution would take all of their data, tie it to the government system and be able to say, okay, based on yesterday’s new government law, right? Here’s your new impact on your items. Well, now that I know my impact, what can I do about it?

Right? Am I going to look to distribute differently? Right? I have everything in China. Am I going to move it to Mexico? Am I going to just distribute it different or I’m going to manufacture it different? Is it I’m buying if I’m a CPG company, I’m buying electronics. Maybe I’m going to buy from someone other than China, right? Find someone in Taiwan that I can buy this electronic from.

And so those are the things that it would do. It would sit on top of the data layer we would create and it would help them tie that information and be able to talk and chat. Like, what should I do now? Right? Here’s the impact. What do I do?

Anthony Codispoti (19:55)
So I’ve imported a lot of products in the past. And there was that problem of, trying to figure out what our tariff code was. And it’s not always clear. I’ve got this pen. this pen, it might be under one tariff code if it’s plastic, another one if it’s metal. But if there’s glass parts in it, it’s completely different. And it was mind numbing to try to figure out.

Deanna (20:06)
there.

Anthony Codispoti (20:23)
I remember some of my peers, would look for a tariff code that was directionally accurate, that maybe was more favorable to them. Was there any of this kind of work going on? Like, there some flexibility, some leeway in those codes?

Deanna (20:36)
So the entity.

There’s not supposed to be if you talk to the US government. But I think quite honestly, like you may not know all that information. And so, you you’re using your best information you have. Maybe you’re buying it from a supplier and the supplier is telling you certain things they didn’t tell you glass was in it. So you’re assuming glass isn’t in it. Right. Because that indicator is not in your supplier records. But

the government started going into large retailers and manufacturers when they would change HDS codes, they would be notified, the government was notified and they would come in and audit the companies. So early on companies were very conservative in making any changes to what they had had in the past, unless they found it was like really, really wrong, right?

and they could justify that it was wrong and it was just an error in their data processing and they needed to update it. So most companies were just looking to fill in the gaps. Most of them just had gaps. Like we dealt with this one electronics distributor, right? And components, they put electronic components together. They created new parts, like a thousand a week, just based on new assemblies of parts. And so,

Knowing what all the HDS codes that went into those new parts and getting those updated when the tariff changes every two days, like that is administratively horrible. So like that’s what we were able to go in and be like, okay, well, let’s automate some of that and then tell your trade compliance person. Here’s what we found. That’s a similar code in your system, right? Here’s what we recommend the tariff code be. Do you agree?

yes or no, and then update their ERP versus manually trying to figure it out like you probably did in the export business, right?

Anthony Codispoti (22:29)
Mm.

Yeah. And so I think this is a really good conversation to highlight because whether you’re in favor of tariffs, you think that they’re good or you’re against the tariffs, you think that they’re bad. The part that doesn’t get talked about enough is what you’re highlighting here, Deanna, is the disruption that it causes in day to day business. All of this effort that you’ve had to put into it.

Deanna (23:00)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (23:03)
all of the folks that you’ve had to interact with at your client companies, they have taken their focus off of things that would have helped to grow their business, expand into new products, whatever it is. And now they have to focus all of this time and energy on not just a law that changed once, but changes from day to day, and week to week, and month to month, and tweet to tweet.

stability. I’m hearing this over and over and over again for my guests, even the ones who benefit from tariffs being in place. They’re like the lack of predictability is killing us. We can’t plan we can’t and that doesn’t make us comfortable to invest. And then it has this trickle down effect and you’re nodding your head like of course you understand all this. You’ve got a better front row seat to it than anybody.

Deanna (23:56)
Yeah, it’s exactly that and like whether you’re for against tariffs, totally agree like i’m agnostic i’ve talked about it so much I don’t have an opinion but But what is it was the instability? It was the constant change you would have executives and high level people like companies in war rooms trying to figure this out they would come up with their new strategy right of how they were going to try to

buy products from different suppliers to try and offset some of the new costs, right? You can’t avoid it, but you could try to offset it. And they weren’t focused on the things that matter, right? And they were just focused on this. And then what happens? They’ve spent two weeks to do this. They implement it and two weeks later it changes and they have to go through that entire process over again, because it was manual. It was in Excel sheets and it wasn’t tied back to anything that they could redo it.

quickly. And so that was like the drain. So now 10 months in, know, companies are still struggling with that. They’re still doing it manually. Right. But now they’re like, okay, this is here to stay for at least the next couple of years. Now I have to start looking at even beyond this stuff that I’m managing. Am I going to change out of China? Like is China really a good next three year plan? And a lot of companies now are pivoting. Right.

Anthony Codispoti (25:19)
Where are they pivoting to? What are some of the most common domains you see them going to?

Deanna (25:20)
But the challenges. ⁓

North America, yeah, Latin America, North America, Canada, they’re trying to keep it either in the United States or keep it close, right?

Anthony Codispoti (25:33)
which is what

the goal of the tariffs has been. And it’s interesting to me. So are they finding that with the tariffs in place that it’s now more cost effective to do here or are they just bringing it here because then at least they’ve got the predictability of what the cost is, even if it is more expensive.

Deanna (25:36)
It is.

Yeah, I think that they’re expecting that this isn’t going to change anytime soon and that their costs, they’ve done the analysis and the cost is better to bring it on shore, right? That China is not going to be a good long-term plan for them. And so they’re pivoting. ⁓ also like, but even Mexico and Canada sometimes are on the tariff list, right? But the companies can’t totally avoid that. They’re just hoping that Mexico and Canada is not as high as China.

Right? Because they all know that the labor rates in the US are too high. The cost to build new facilities in the US, if you’re talking about like a distributor or manufacturing, those are extremely high capital costs. They’re already down in their revenue because of tariffs. Right? And now you’re asking you to put a huge capital investment to bring it back to the US and increase labor rates. And they’re like,

Some companies have shut down lots of layoffs, like they’re trying to figure this out. ⁓ So it definitely has a trickle through effect, right? In all of the different areas we’ve described. But most of them are doing what they can, but I have to tell you, it takes me back to COVID. As a supply chain leader during COVID, we learned that you didn’t know what was gonna happen day to day, right?

Anthony Codispoti (27:07)
How so?

Deanna (27:15)
COVID, was it gonna be closed? Were we gonna be open? Were shipments coming in? Were shipments not coming in? That went on for two years, right? Very similar in the unknowns of the tariff situation. And systems were broken, data was broken, right? We didn’t have the ability to make those decisions quickly like I was talking in the tariff navigator approach. And it’s like,

Fast forward it several years and we still have the same problem with this economic disruptor. So when I talk, I bring that up because I want leaders to spend the time now to fix the agility problem, right? So that when the next one comes, it’s gonna come. We just don’t know what it is, right? There’s gonna be another disruptor that comes at some point. Like let’s get our stuff in order so that when it comes, we can be agile.

Right? We may not like it. We may lose some revenue, but like we could respond faster.

Anthony Codispoti (28:15)
What do you mean get our stuff in order? What does that look like? Because we don’t know what the next disruptor is going to be, so we can’t proactively build the next tariff navigator because we don’t know what it’s going to be.

Deanna (28:26)
Yeah, data, data insights, both tariff and COVID. I needed data insights quick. I needed to know where my inventory was, where my supply shipments were, what my alternative suppliers were, how I could pivot, right? When we’re talking supply chain, if logistics was a challenge, I couldn’t get the shipment right from China. Like what were my alternative logistics options?

And if you have data that’s transformed and you have real time key insights, I can do what if scenarios, right? I can do what if scenarios all day, like what if this happens? What if that happens? But most of the time, what I have found in both of these disruptors, it’s the data and the lack of real time insights that makes this so challenging.

Anthony Codispoti (29:15)
So is it that the data doesn’t exist or is it that the data is so hard to interpret? Like the data is already there, but it’s just not in a format that you can make sense of it.

Deanna (29:30)
Most of the time it’s because I have multiple ERC systems. have multiple SaaS pricing systems. have all of this disparate systems and I don’t have a data lake, a data warehouse, whatever you want to call that data fabric layer, right? I don’t have that. And so all of my disparate systems from the sales team to HR, to operations, all of those are in different systems. I don’t have a unified place.

And when I do have a unified place, is it accurate? Right? So maybe my people are putting in the delivery dates incorrectly. So I have bad data going in. Maybe it’s, it’s transformed incorrectly. Right. ⁓ And so that is, that’s the core. One is that most companies don’t have a very strong agile data layer. And then two on top of that, is it accurate?

Anthony Codispoti (30:29)
So part of what you’re campaigning for then is to create that agile data layer. What to me sounds like a really sophisticated dashboard. It’s pulling in data points from various places. That part I get, how do you fix the bad data input? Somebody ⁓ fat fingering something on an input.

Deanna (30:50)
If I can share a story of what I did. So when I was at Cornerstone Building Brands, we had 30 ERPs.

Anthony Codispoti (30:53)
please.

Why first? Why?

Deanna (31:02)
We grew through merger and acquisitions. It’s not uncommon. I’ve talked to a client that had 300. I thought I had a lot and then I was like, okay, there’s worse out there. But yeah, so 30 ERPs just within our windows division, we had eight ERPs. And so when we were making a window and one plant, it was called X and another plant, was called Y and another plant, was called Z. So we couldn’t even see like our inventory across our business unit.

because items were all called differently. I still talk to clients just this week that had the same item master rationalization challenge. So you have multiple ERPs, you have ⁓ IT, you know, inability to really like ERP transformations, one of the things Avanade does, it is the hardest thing to do at an organization. I did it with Cisco Foods, right? It is hard. And so a lot of times they just don’t do it.

Anthony Codispoti (32:00)
Yeah.

Deanna (32:00)
So they have

these ERPs. And so then it’s like, how do you do that data layer? Like who owns it? And I published an article not too long ago about data as the on sexy work corporations don’t want to talk about. CEOs don’t want to talk about data. They shouldn’t have to. But if they’re not able to be agile, then they have to talk about data. They have to get tactical and say, why can you not give me this information? And so if it’s part like

having that layer, but to the people aspect. So let me tell you about that. So we had 30 ERPs. We were going to one metric across all of our business units. We had five business units on time and full to our customers, right? How well were we delivering to our customers? Key for manufacturing. How was I satisfying you as my customer? Did you get what you need on time with the right quantity and quality? Everyone measured it differently, right?

And when we went in and looked at the data, if you just looked at the raw data, our first business unit was really at 49 % on time and full. Just with the data, no manipulation, no transformation, none of that. And we took them to 50%. They all had KPIs that said they had to be in the 90s. They were all going to lose bonus, right? We took them to 50 % at

Anthony Codispoti (33:25)
You took them from 30 to 50 percent.

Deanna (33:28)
80 to 50 percent. Yeah, 30 percent down, right? So they were meeting their goals. We took them to failing, right? Not meeting their goals. And but you know what happened? In three months, that data got corrected, right? Because it was the folks who were entering the wrong information, not entering the information into the ERP.

Anthony Codispoti (33:29)
⁓ okay.

Deanna (33:54)
And it was producing incorrect results because of that data. So we got people to say like, Hey, this is going to impact you. We need you to do this. This is how critical important it is. And then we had calls every week with finance sales and operations and supply chain every week. And we talked about every order, right? And what is the OTF? Why was it late? And we had all of these. So you dealt with the people side.

of having them accountable on these calls. You dealt with a people side like, hey, we’re going to go with the data that exists, right? We need you to do your part and put in the right dates, right? We need you to update the information. And within six months, we could now report accurately, right? What our real OTF was, because we weren’t at 30 % or 50%, right? We were at like 75%.

Anthony Codispoti (34:49)
It was just the bad data entry or the lack of data entry that was making it look bad.

Deanna (34:53)
Yes. So we took them down, got them to update the data quality. Now we’re at 75. And now because our metric is accurate, we can go and have real conversations with why is it at 75, which customers are we not delivering well to? Why are we not delivering well to those customers? And what do we need to do at a strategic level? And that’s how we did it. We got the people involved. We had those open communications and then

everyone got measured on the new success.

Anthony Codispoti (35:25)
Was it hard to identify that bad data entry was the first problem that needed to be fixed, or was that pretty obvious?

Deanna (35:34)
Within a couple of weeks, it was pretty obvious. We spent two weeks just arguing internally about what field in Oracle had the right customer promise date. And that began to highlight, this is if you can’t easily say this field in Oracle is your customer promise date, this is your customer due date, and everyone has a different opinion, that already highlights that this is a people in process data issue.

and we need to fix that. need to agree as an organization, everyone’s gonna use this field. This is what that field’s gonna mean. Everyone’s gonna do this field. This is what that means. Training and awareness, and also bringing the metric to what it really was with the data.

Anthony Codispoti (36:19)
Fascinating. OK, so tariffs. We talked about agile data, ⁓ getting ready for the next big disruptor. Who knows what it’s going to be? ⁓ Talk to us about how AI figures into everything that you’re doing.

Deanna (36:36)
Yeah, so I are firm is focused on AI. So right now, even with the tariffs, it was an AI conversation, right? And so what you hear a lot in the media, right, is that, you know, it’s going to take your jobs and not just the media. I’ve been on conference floors where people are like, it’s going to take your job. And, and so like, there’s that fear of it’s taking your job and all of that. My perspective is this. Every technology change that has happened in our careers.

right, whether it’s a desktop to a laptop to a cell phone, right, whether it’s RPA to AI, there’s changes that occur. They’re usually not massive changes and new jobs come out of them, right? So, you know, when you weren’t doing desktops, you were making laptops. So the workforce changed to that, right? RPA was a big thing, robotic process automation. Now it’s AI.

Will AI impact some roles? Yes, not at a very high speed. We’ve been talking about it for over a year and most companies are still at the beginning stages. They’re still just trying to figure out what it means and what they’re going to do with it. So it’s not an immediate job taker. It’s not going to take all jobs. And what I always tell folks who are on the scared side, it’s like upskill yourself, learn how to prompt.

No matter what your job is, if you’re HR, if you’re finance, prompting is going to be necessary. Like how to get the right information out of the chat so that it doesn’t give you the bogus information that we all talk about, right? That it gives you good information because you’ve asked the right questions, you’ve put the right parameters. That’s what we should be worried about in doing with our time, not that it’s going to take our job. Because the other piece of it is what we talked about with data. You don’t have to go into that again.

But if I sit an agent on top of bad data, I get bad results, right? There’s no silver bullet. Exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (38:38)
input equals bad output. So

what roles, what areas are you seeing that AI is currently having an impact on jobs and where do you think sort of that next layer of jobs that are perhaps at risk?

Deanna (38:57)
Yeah, I think the initial ones. So first of all, like the chat bots, you know that we have chat GPT and co-pilot that’s on Teams and Outlook and stuff like that. Those are productivity AI tools. Those are likely not going to reduce jobs. It’s going to make you maybe work less hours or maybe do different tasks. The AI agents is what we’re talking about when we talk about like a digital twin, like someone who can do what you do beside you.

and take some of that work off you. And at some point, if I have enough of you and I have enough agents, I don’t need all of you, right? That’s when the workforce reductions start. So for agents, it’s where the data and the process is repetitive. So accounts payable, accounts receivable, like those type of roles that you can have an OCR system read it, input it, analyze it.

And then all the AP person is being, yep, check, right? Data entry, those type of roles are definitely the best case where AI is a quick fix. Not even a quick fix, but a quicker fix. Where I think companies really want to get to, but they have to do the work that I’ve described so far, the data, the upskilling of their people. Then it comes into shop floor optimization.

your data from your machines, how can you be more predictive and maintenance and quality issues? Inventory optimization, we talk about planning. Think about if you had an agent that you could say, okay, COVID just happened, right? These factors just occurred. I need you to adjust my demand, right? Because I’m not gonna have all this demand.

I need you to adjust this. need you to tell me if I went to Mexico, what would happen? And I can do that quickly with an agent. It’s going to make me be able to be more responsive, right? So those are some areas that AI is going to come into place. Kind of think of as twins to people and their roles. And one of my colleagues calls it your intern, right? And she calls it your intern instead of a digital twin. And the reason she says that is because

And intern needs a lot of guidance, right? When you get a brand new intern is maybe your podcast intern, right? Like they’re not going to know everything you know on day one, you’re going to have to give them instruction. So when you’re chatting with your agent, you have to give it a lot of instructions so it learns and it knows. And so all of that being said, I think that the immediate next year is upskilling our people.

right? Getting them to use Co-Pilot and Chat GPT in their regular days, getting them comfortable with that and finding the right use case that makes sense, right? A lot of clients come to us and they’re like, just tell me what I can do today. And I’m like, you’ve been doing this a long time. Like there’s, there’s nothing that’s going to fix it today. There’s no out of the box that fixes things, right? Like it’s all like consulting.

finding out what your problem is, and then making something that works for you that could be multiple things put together, right? An agent could be part of that. ⁓ So that’s my perspective. I think that AI will impact jobs, but it’s not gonna be immediate. And there’s a curve that you can go along with it to be prepared.

Anthony Codispoti (42:27)
So it’s an interesting perspective, because I’ve certainly talked with a lot of folks who, let’s talk about computer programmers. They’re like, I used to need 10. Now I need two. ⁓ good friends, like kids graduating from college with degrees in computer science can’t find jobs. Like five years ago, that’s what everybody was telling their kids to go into, job security forever. Everybody needs good programmers. And you’re nodding your head. ⁓

Deanna (42:55)
Yes.

But, but those roles, we still have to program the agents. Like our company hires data engineers, you know, and programmers to have to code the agent. That’s a code. It’s code. So maybe the type of computer programming that they learned, maybe they learned SQL or Java or something like that. Like they have to learn a different type of code. So what they’re being taught needs to change.

Anthony Codispoti (42:55)
You’re seeing this or agreeing? What’s your perspective?

Deanna (43:24)
But you still need programmers. You still need those.

Anthony Codispoti (43:26)
So what would be the type

of code that they would need to know to be able to program the agents?

Deanna (43:32)
Yeah, so it depends on what tool you use, Copilot, right? It has its own language. So if you’re doing a Copilot agent, you have to know that language that Microsoft has, but it’s programming. It is, I’m not the technical programmer, but I’ve seen them and I’m thinking like, okay, that’s not that different than SQL and the things that I did know. And it is, it is people building those things. So when you come to us and you’re like, I want this podcast agent.

Anthony Codispoti (43:52)
Okay.

Deanna (43:58)
We have to build it and it is a technical programmer who’s building it.

Anthony Codispoti (44:03)
So, Deanna, I’ve got two boys. They’re nine and 11 now. And one of them thinks he’s going to be a professional football player. And his dad’s five foot seven and 155 pounds. So, you know, I don’t have the heart to tell him. And then the youngest one thinks he’s going to be a YouTuber, I think is where he is right now. You know, they’ve got kid dreams, which is fine. Yeah. But, you know, as like I said, his parents five, 10 years ago.

Deanna (44:24)
I love it, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (44:30)
Like, hey, you I knew the professions that, you know, had needs. Now I don’t know, you know, what the world’s going to be like in two years, let alone, you know, 10 or 15 when they’re out in the workforce. What, from your perspective, where you sit, the view that you have of the world, what kind of coaching would you offer?

Deanna (44:49)
I would see what you as a person would not go away from, right? If you go to a five-star restaurant, right, and you’re paying hundreds of dollars for your meal, do you want a robot to serve you, right? Do you wanna chat with something on your desk? If you’re on a flight, right? Do you want those flight attendants to, do you wanna chat with an agent? Maybe yes, right? But I think there’s a lot of

personal interactions that is done in the workforce, right? ⁓ That is still going to need to be there. Some of the marketing stuff, like maybe ChatGPT helps, but I still want a person who’s been doing it for a long time to help guide that agent to make sure that it’s an effective marketing campaign. I do LinkedIn posts and I use ChatGPT, right, to tell me which is the algorithm that’s going to pull this up. It’s not always right.

I have to help coach it too based on my experience of what works. So I think there’s twofold. Like one find where it’s not gonna completely change the job. You may have to upskill yourself to be able to prompt, but then the other is like, where is customer service not going away? I’ll give you a great example. I don’t do this often, but I do do it sometimes. Taco Bell.

Went to the Taco Bell recently and the person that comes on is an agent. It’s an AI agent, right? And I’m all about automation. It’s, you know, a dollar taco. I know the revenues aren’t high. I get it, right? And I was like, had this experience and I kept saying, I’m done. Like my order is complete. My order is right. And the agent was not like, it was like, would you like.

you know, Tabasco sauce, would you like this? Do you want this? Would you like to upgrade? Would you want to supersize? And I’m like, I am done. And the person in the background, like took the agent off and they started speaking to me. Now, since I’ve gone a couple of times since then, the agent’s gotten better, but it’s still not the experience that I even want at Taco Bell. Right? Now, maybe the agent gets better, right? And that’s some of the hope, right?

Anthony Codispoti (47:08)
course it will. Yeah.

Deanna (47:11)
it gets better, but there’s sometimes I just want to have a human. And so.

Anthony Codispoti (47:15)
I’m the same

way. If I’m on a computer chat or one of the automated phone systems, I don’t want a robot. If a robot can answer my question, then I could have found it in the help files on their website. I need to talk to a human being who can fix something for me. So I’m 100 % with you. So the end.

Deanna (47:23)
No.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. And I would just say

EPSCO, what I tell people, just when I talk to young students who are getting out of college, I’m like the two things I, in supply chain, but I think it also could go across other fields, data analytics, right? Being able to analyze data quickly and efficiently and prompting, prompt engineering. You don’t have to be a programmer of copilot, right? But you have to be a prompt engineer. What questions do I ask?

to make sure I get the right information to make my job more efficient. And then you’re gonna be more efficient, you’re gonna be more valued in your role when you get that role. And I think that’s what I recommend a lot of folks do.

Anthony Codispoti (48:14)
Do you recommend any resources for folks who are like, I’m trying to figure this out, where do I go?

Deanna (48:20)
Yeah, so I usually recommend like universities like MIT. I’m in Boston, right? So like local universities have, you know, prompting certifications, right? Microsoft, I am a huge fan of Excel because everyone uses it. And so Microsoft has certifications you can do online to learn how to do Power Query, which is in Excel and in Power BI. You learn that

code and how to do that. And if you use Excel, those are easy transformations. So the two I recommend is some certification in Excel and Power BI, not just because I work with Microsoft, but because clients use Excel. Companies use Excel.

Anthony Codispoti (48:59)
I’m going to give a quick

plug for one of my former guests. Cass Maxwell has a company for for those groups that are based in Ohio where I am ⁓ AIO.org actually a program where you can get training and then the state ⁓ pays you back for the cost of that training. I think it’s just specific to Ohio. So I’d like I like the other suggestions that you offered. So Deanna, you know,

Deanna (49:17)
Nice.

Anthony Codispoti (49:27)
The hardships that we go through in life oftentimes teach us some of the biggest and most powerful lessons. I’d be curious to explore a particularly big challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, how you got through that and what you learned going through it.

Deanna (49:42)
Yeah. So about four years ago, I went and had gastric bypass surgery and I lost 180 pounds and I’ve kept it off and it’s a 90 % regain. So the fact one that I lost it and two have kept it off has been transformational. I probably, the doctor suggested after surgery, I would have had a heart attack if I had not had the surgery because of how overweight and I’m short.

Right? So the combination is really bad. And I got to that point because I didn’t do a lot of self care. Right? Like I work too much. I didn’t take the time for myself raising a family and, you know, just letting it get to a point that exercise and diet alone was no longer successful. And over the last four years, not only just relearning how to eat and how to take care of myself, which is required as part of the process, I also learned about self care.

Right. And that it is there’s a lot of people who talk about balance in your life. Right. I don’t believe in that. I believe in harmony because if you start a new job you’re going to be spending more time at the office. If you’ve been at your job for a year hopefully you spend less time in the office. Right. And so even when you’re at a new job and spending a lot of hours there always keep time for yourself always because you show up better as a parent.

You show it better as a coworker and a friend and in society. And so those core like lessons that I learned and I’m not like, it was horrible, right? Like the experience is very tough. Like you have to learn to eat differently or you get sick. I’ve passed out and been…

Anthony Codispoti (51:27)
You’re talking about

the experience of coming out of the bypass surgery. It is tough. Yeah.

Deanna (51:31)
the bypass surgery. Yeah,

because your stomach goes from 30 ounces to three ounces and you can’t eat large quantities. You have to eat an ounce at a time and wait an ounce at a time and wait or you actually lose the food. And that is very difficult to learn if you’ve been enjoying food like at a normal pace your entire life, right? The other thing is because vitamin deficiency is very common.

I went through a low iron period for about eight months and could not find a solution. It was causing me that and dehydration was causing me to pass out. I passed out four times and ended up in the ER. Before I went to a cardiologist and a cancer doctor and I had to cry to the cancer doctor and I said, please do not let me leave here without a solution.

I said, I cannot get out of bed. My energy level is so low and the insurance companies, I don’t want to get into it, but like, you know how that works. They wanted me to take something. It wasn’t effective. I was there to see a follow-up and I was like, you have got to get them to give me the one that works. I can’t go through this anymore. So a lot of doctors helping, I talked to a doctor in Costa Rica who tied it back to my bypass surgery because of the dehydration and the low iron. And so.

Now, like I am exercise, drinking water, eating right. Like those should have been always important, but those are like center to everything I do.

Anthony Codispoti (53:09)
What was the fix

for your low iron in the dehydration?

Deanna (53:13)
Yep, so the low iron, had to do an iron infusion. ⁓ And so that fixed that. And as long as I continue to take my iron pills should be okay. The passing out could occur at any time. There’s a side, yeah, still. So if you’re dehydrated, your blood pressure is low, right? And if you eat food that the lower intestine is not expecting, it causes your body to go into shock.

So sugar is an example of that. The lower intestine, because they take out the upper intestine in the surgery and it becomes a lower intestine. So the stomach goes to the lower intestine. So if I eat sugar without protein, which is not healthy, you should eat a balanced meal. But if you do it, you have a cookie at two o’clock, right? Or a glass of wine before dinner and you’re dehydrated, blood pressure low, it hits the intestine, your body shuts down.

It never will stop.

Anthony Codispoti (54:15)
And this

should be something that they know about and they tell you about as part of the surgery.

Deanna (54:21)
The doctor would not even discuss it with me. I had to go to Costa Rica to get a doctor to identify that that is in fact what was happening.

Anthony Codispoti (54:30)
But this sounds like that’s just how the body works. It wasn’t specific to you.

Deanna (54:34)
It’s not,

it wasn’t, it wasn’t even an error the doctor had made. Like this is not a malpractice thing. This is just because of the new body function, right? This is how you have to live. Yeah, but they, they didn’t, couldn’t get anyone here to assist besides a cardiologist and a cancer doctor. ⁓ And then when I figured out the recipe, now I can.

Anthony Codispoti (54:45)
that probably a lot of people you would think experience.

Deanna (55:01)
you know, manage it myself. If I’m traveling, I have a bracelet. If she passes out, you know, give her water. But like, yeah, I totally agree with you. I would still do the surgery today. I would still do the surgery today. My life from walking, I call it walking dead. I couldn’t walk to the end of the street. I couldn’t travel. I couldn’t do the things I wanted. I couldn’t show up how I wanted. I would absolutely do it again. 100%.

Anthony Codispoti (55:13)
Yeah.

Deanna (55:30)
but I wish I would have known a few things.

Anthony Codispoti (55:30)
Have you,

yeah, really, and that was gonna be my question. Have you talked to other folks who have had the procedure and have had the same kinds of side effects, experiences you?

Deanna (55:41)
The tough thing is like I’ve been to some support groups, but it’s only the people who have just had the surgery and they’re dealing with that first phase. And I haven’t found an avenue to communicate with the larger bypass group. And there’s a lot of us, right? Sometimes they don’t want it to be known, right? That they had it. And so there’s a lot of shame and shock and like hiding it. I go out and say it because I’m proud of the journey I’ve been on.

And I think others need to know that there’s some challenges, but the success is worth it. So it’s hard to find the folks to communicate. And I find that doctors are not as interested in communicating it. And I don’t know why. There could be several reasons why. So yeah, I don’t have a solution for yet. So if anyone listening to this podcast, message me afterwards if there’s a way to communicate it out, because it was scary.

Like I was passing out in areas that like on the time I was with my exchange student in Madrid. She’s 19. We were going to the top of the space needle in Madrid and I was like, I don’t feel good. I sat down at the top where everyone’s coming out and I like you pass out cold, like blue face, non-responsive. And here’s this 19 year old like, ⁓ my God. Right. And

None of us knew what was happening. So the first time it happened was there. Yeah. So, and then it took a year and three trips to the ER before we figured out, you know, it was tied to the bypass and I had to do things differently. And still to this day, it’s hard. Like who doesn’t like a nice cookie at two in the afternoon? Who doesn’t want the glass of wine before the appetizers come? Right? Like we all want that.

Anthony Codispoti (57:10)
This was the first time it happened.

Deanna (57:38)
And I’m like, can I get the bread? It’s like, I need bread. So yeah, so that’s my transformation. And I’ll tell you that in some of the consulting challenges that I had, talked about a little bit. It all happened at the same period of time in my life. And what I have learned is my superpowers connecting and talking and being authentic. And I will not ever stop that.

sharing with you today, sharing with others, like that is my passion that came out of this really bad situation is like, how can I use my story, my career story, raising a kid’s story, my health story and help others, right? And I think if we do that as a society and we connect with people and we help where we can, I think that’s an amazing legacy, right? And that’s what I want to do.

Anthony Codispoti (58:30)
I love that. And I appreciate you opening up like that, Deanna. Thank you. And I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to do three things. First of all, I’m going to share or tell people how to get in touch with you, whether they want to talk about the bypass or something else, AI, ⁓ digital dashboards, getting your, you know, your data ready and cleaned up. ⁓ So you can find her at Deanna Harner.

on LinkedIn. search Deanna Harner. You can look for Avanade, A-B-A-N-A-D-E. And we’ll also include a link to her profile and the show notes. So that makes it really easy for folks to find. Also for listeners, as a reminder, if you want to get more employees access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com.

And finally, if you take just a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, you will hold a special place in my heart forever. So thank you very much. So last question, a year from now, you and I reconnect and you’re celebrating something big. What do you hope that big thing is?

Deanna (59:37)
My big thing is I want to start doing ⁓ speaking engagements and getting paid. ⁓ So I started about a year ago, right? Doing small university speaking. And then I had my first main stage event. I’m doing a podcast next week with the University of Ireland ⁓ on a master class. And I really want to do that. And it’s not all work related. Like I do want to do some, like we talk about life and work.

But also share experiences like about AI and like, know how you can do it effectively and go through supply chain resilience a little bit better and faster. That’s what I want to do. I want to continue to be out and talk to people and just be able to share experiences and stories and connect with people. That’s my next thing in a year.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:27)
So there’s the personal stuff, and that might be sort of one set of audiences and speaking opportunities. But on the professional side, the work that you’ve done with tariffs, with AI, with data cleanup, ⁓ seems like those opportunities would be rather vast. Do you have a specific direction or directions in mind for that?

Deanna (1:00:52)
Yeah, so right now focusing a lot on universities and organizations, right? So like, ASCM, right? As a national supply chain organization, doing a lot of speaking with them, universities who have supply chain degree programs, ⁓ and any conference, right? That can have that, the main stage that I did for change conference with ASCM, in Ohio a couple of months ago, we were talking about the future of supply chain and AI.

Right. And so a lot of that is where I think the opportunities are is to speak through organizations and professional associations and conferences.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:31)
Well, and I see something we didn’t mention in your intro, but you are an adjunct professor at the Houston Community College. So are these the kinds of things you’re talking about there?

Deanna (1:01:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So they wanted to bring in professors who hadn’t been career long professors who had real world experience in the community college space, especially they get paid and incentivize on kids going to the four year school. So they wanted to bring in professors who had the experience to teach and give them real world experience and knowledge so that they stayed interested and finished their associate degree and then went on to the four year degrees.

So I was hired to have these conversations with students to talk about the real world. The real world in supply chain is you have to know Excel. Every role, you have to know it, right? And so like, know that, like learn it. And then in your first week, you’re gonna improve your, impress your boss, right? And they’re gonna be like, wow, what the heck was that? It took me 40 hours last week to do that and you did it in four.

So it’s taking those insights that we kind of talked about in my career that I talked to clients about and translating that to future leaders and how they can then take that information and apply it in their education and then hopefully, obviously in their career.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:52)
Deanna Harner from Avanade and RPE Solutions. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Deanna (1:03:00)
Thank you, Anthony, I appreciate your time.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:03)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.