Neil D’Souza Of Makersite On How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

…focus on projects that can scale. This can be contentious because, very often, you don’t know if something can scale or not. It’s very important to think at the outset if the problem can be solved, can you scale it across the entire business? I have not come across a single IOT project that has gone beyond a proof of concept. That is principally because no one thought what would happen if you needed to scale this to all the factories in your business. It’s not possible, only things that scale are valuable to a business. If they can’t scale. they’re just experiments. You need to make sure you evaluate whether they can scale or not.

As part of our series about “How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Neil D’Souza, Founder and CEO of Makersite.

Neil D’Souza is the CEO and founder of Makersite, a company that uses AI, data, and apps to power sustainable product and supply chain decisions at scale. Formerly CTO at Thinkstep AG, Neil started his career helping companies understand how what you make and where you buy have an impact on issues such as cost, compliance, risk, and sustainability. Working with over 200 companies across multiple sectors, Neil found that the approaches we are using would never scale to the problem at hand. He solved that scaling problem by creating Makersite in 2018.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

My humble upbringing has been the bedrock of my success, personally and professionally. My father worked his way from the ground up in his career, eventually working in an executive-level position at an Indian pharmaceutical company. His position made it possible for me to come to Germany for my education and to pursue my professional passions and interests. I began my studies in physics and went on to applied physics, which helped me gain an understanding of the skills you have to have to solve real-world problems.

My goal was to find a problem in the world at large and fix it. During many trips back to India, I closely looked at how products were made and designed for different environments.

My desire to understand this inspired me to pursue a more purpose-led career and resulted in me joining a company called Thinkstep. I started at the bottom rung as a consultant and worked my way up until I was CTO of the company. My experience at Thinkstep was a tremendous learning opportunity and eventually gave me the tools to start Makersite.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

A funny mistake of mine would be the timing of when I decided to start Makersite. I started my company right after the birth of my second child. Needless to say, it was not a great idea. It felt like I was having twins during this time because I had two babies that were just born: my company and my daughter. I learned from this experience that a lot of life is doing the right thing at the wrong time, and I was fortunate that everything turned out alright for me, but that doesn’t happen for everyone. It’s not an easy thing to do unless you have great support from your family, which I was very blessed that I had.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

My wife. If it were not for the sacrifices she made and the support she provided during my professional and entrepreneurial career, I would not be where I am today. She always supported me and my dreams, and it meant everything to have her there. She didn’t necessarily push me, and was there to catch me if I fell. That is all someone who is starting out could ever want.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I found a book right around when I started Makersite that greatly influenced me. The book I found is called “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” by Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, who I believe is the father of Venture Capitalist work. He talks specifically about the hardest parts of running a business and the things that are not easy. He picks the most difficult things you might have to do as a boss, but he also speaks about how he turned them into success. For example, one of the scenarios he talked about was what to do when you have to fire your best friend. I thought it was brilliant, and I’ve imbued some of those learnings in how I manage my company and work. How I used to run my professional life before I read this book and how I run it now changed significantly.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?

We wanted to find a way to change how we waste the resources we’re given and get a better understanding of them. It’s not just about being great to the environment. It is just resources, whether it’s people, time, money, or the damage that we do to the environment. There is a lot of waste that happens that is unnecessary and dangerous to us. This is ultimately what we want and our purpose. We don’t want to make bad processes faster, we want to change those processes and that takes a different kind of mindset. I believe 100% of the environmental damage you see in the world today comes from the products that are made and used. It is not energy, it is not the oil that sits in the car you drive. The solution for us is to make better products and companies. There are two parts of a company that drive the process of creation. The people who decide what to make, and the people who decide where to buy the materials to make the products. It is all the small decisions that the engineers make in both these engines of creation that will make a change.

Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

We are trying to solve a very big and very difficult problem. We’re trying to change how people make products, from yogurt to rockets. Solving this problem requires as much time and dedication as possible. If I were to say we should carve out some time to do something, I wouldn’t be able to find something more meaningful and timely at this point. I mentioned that it is about doing the right thing at the right time. Given where we are today, there’s no better time to do what we’re doing, and I am putting my whole self into Makersite.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Digital Transformation. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like to engage in a Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is using software to enable better business. The application of these transformation processes are typically to improve a process and sometimes to greater benefit and redefine them. Digital Transformation enables you to do things completely differently. Take for example, what we’re doing right now. Ten years ago, I would have had to travel to you and do an interview in person. The opportunity of digital transformation is one that is twofold. It enables you to make things more efficient, but it also enables you to do completely different things. If you look at how fast companies spread across Europe because of their online presence and using web conferencing systems, it enables them to access new markets without actually being there. The second part of this is the ability to do things faster than ever before. Profitability is a palpable benefit of digital transformation. You can do things faster, which means you can go to market faster, there’s less amount of CapEx, and fewer topics that you need. Overall, digital transformation enables new and better business models.

Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is about implementing software that reduces the complexity of day-to-day operations for both small and large businesses. For example, if you need to send an invoice out every month, you can write it on a piece of paper, stick it in an envelope, and put it in the mail. However, if you operate out of 100 locations and have 10,000 customers to send invoices to, that’s an unfeasible amount of mailing. The business benefits from software that enables them to multiply their efforts, and any company could benefit from a digital transformation. Typically, larger organizations tend to benefit more, because it simplifies tasks that would otherwise be too time-consuming or complex.

We’d love to hear about your experiences helping others with Digital Transformation. In your experience, how has Digital Transformation helped improve operations, processes, and customer experiences? We’d love to hear some stories if possible.

There are four stages of digital transformation. The first is digitizing the process. Taking something that was done on paper and putting it into a piece of software on a computer. The second is enabling different people to operate by increasing user accessibility. One of the most common implementations of a digital transformation process is in enabling the sharing of data in different ways. The third phase is taking the data that you have received and trying to make some analytics out of it. The final phase is using those analytics for actual change, which is the improvement process. Although my idea of these 4 steps is relatively different from how others think, it is still very practical in how people think about it in the most basic sense.

Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?

I’ve noticed in my career that the biggest challenge has very little to do with technology. It is actually when you start touching the core processes of a company that you start having the most trouble and resistance. Nobody wants to change how they do things, and out of all the reasons, this is the biggest one why digital transformation processes fail. As soon as you get to something that’s sensitive and requires the business to take a risk, you see everyone pumping the brakes. Another observation I’ve made is there’s an obsession with data, and we’re focused on data, not value. I think this is one of the reasons why these projects become difficult. Not everything that can be measured is worth measuring if you don’t focus on what the value is that you’re trying to extract. With any transformation project, there’s a high chance, that when push comes to shove, it will not be successful. It never gets there if you don’t have a strong enough value.

Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”?

The first way is to create an environment where a team can think like their company is a startup. There are different ways to do this, but what this enables you to do is think differently. You don’t have to think of all the ifs and buts and what the consequences would be. Focus on what the business needs to do and how it can do it. That’s how startups think, and it brings a certain amount of agility, a certain amount of creativity, and a certain amount of out-of-the-box thinking, which is required for a process transformation. It’s not digital evolution or digital improvement, it’s digital transformation. Transformation is a big concept, and you need a fundamentally different way of thinking if you want to create a product that can be produced.

The second way is to focus on projects that can scale. This can be contentious because, very often, you don’t know if something can scale or not. It’s very important to think at the outset if the problem can be solved, can you scale it across the entire business? I have not come across a single IOT project that has gone beyond a proof of concept. That is principally because no one thought what would happen if you needed to scale this to all the factories in your business. It’s not possible, only things that scale are valuable to a business. If they can’t scale. they’re just experiments. You need to make sure you evaluate whether they can scale or not.

The third way is to start simple, as simple as possible. There’s this quote from Einstein that says, “Keep it simple but not simpler,” and that is a key sentiment to keep top of mind when it comes to digital transformation. It means that yes, you will find the easy wins and do things that create immediate success, however, don’t overthink it. What ends up happening then is you can miss out on an opportunity. The way to get around this is by identifying the value you want to achieve and making sure you have a roadmap as most startups do. When you’re a startup, one of the most valuable things in your company is your roadmap. Make sure you have a roadmap where there are things you will achieve first and things you will achieve later. It’s not the 90s anymore when every company said let’s build our own internal tool, and we’ll set up an IT infrastructure to make sure that we can maintain that tool. Things are much more complicated, more difficult to build, and more difficult to maintain. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. These are three learnings from my experience that one should keep in mind when creating a digital transformation plan.

In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?

Small teams that are well-aligned on goals and boundaries are at the core of creating a culture of innovation. That’s principally the kind of environment you want to create. You do not want to have a centralized decision-making system because that becomes a choke point for the business. Typically, in a centralized decision system, decisions are not made fast enough in an environment where speed is key. Being able to make decisions quickly is extremely underrated. Speed of success is just as important as the measure of success. If things take a long time, it frustrates people; therefore, I think the ability for teams to think quickly explicitly correlates with success. If you remember the four steps of digital transformation, all of those can only occur if you’re providing the ability for teams to make decisions in a decentralized manner where you don’t always have to have the final say of the CEO, chief product officer, or the chief procurement officer to proceed. If you don’t designate decentralized decision-making, you impede innovation in a company.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

When you’re starting out in your career, don’t turn down any work. When I was younger, there were a couple of times I missed the boat by saying no and missed out on great opportunities. Starting out with my business, I never said no to anything. I did everything that came to me and benefited greatly from it.

How can our readers further follow your work?

You can find me on LinkedIn.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!