E-commerce, technology, and business complexity

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of interviews. We're continuing our interview with Chris Davidson, and we are basically going to dive right back in. When we last were talking with him, we left off with a discussion about some of the things that you may not think about when you're building out an e-commerce site, in particular, pictures and the idea of how those are a critical part of e-commerce. People think of the e-side, you know, having a website. They think of the commerce side of how do we integrate with a pay portal or processor. And I think that's what sometimes gets missed is the whole idea that e-commerce is just an electronic catalog. We're going to talk back, get right back in our conversation with Chris, and we're going to talk about that and give you some ideas of why some of these things that are traditional parts of an offering or a service or a product are still just as critical in the modern world of the internet. Let's get back to our discussion. It is fascinating, but often it's insufficient thought given to what the actual pre-work that's needed. So when you talk about things have gotten more complex again, and especially after this, after going into detail like that, how much do you see the complexity as we swing the pendulum this time is really complexity and technology versus the business complexity of now we're having to drag, we'll say we're having to drag technology into the business side and actually get into all of those little pieces. So it's really almost a business problem more than just a technology problem. Business problem. It's a business problem. More often than not, it's a business problem. It's not a technology problem. You know? So I mean, if you look, I've just put together, I've used one of these integration pieces of software recently, one that used to be called Integra Mat, relatively recently renamed itself to Make, and I've just used that to solve a business problem that I had. And it was just incredible at how that was able to work. I was just amazed, frankly, that I could sit down in front of Make having not used the product before and solve this business problem I had with, you know, within an hour or so, I kind of had a working prototype that I kind of convinced myself, OK, this is actually going to work. I need to tidy it up. But I don't have a problem anymore. I basically solved the problem. What I now need to do is I need to tidy it up and I need to speak to the right people, get in touch with the help desk and all the rest of it. So really now, and if I roll back, if I imagine being a 20 year old in IT back in 1980 or thereabouts, I mean, that just was so far away we couldn't even conceive of it. So really, in technology terms, what I just did a few weeks ago was actually a miracle to the extent that it was something that could not even be conceived. It was just a miracle, you know, but there it was done. Now, so I don't think technology is the problem. Business being very clear about what the business issues are so that you know what the business issues are that you have to solve. You can always get the technology to fiddle it nowadays. Always. So how often, and this is a little bit of a, I don't know if it's a pet peeve of mine or something like that, but I'm wondering your experience. How often have you gotten into these projects and started talking to the business and it's sometimes even maybe started on stuff and then found out that they don't really get their processes, that they are like, oh wait, we have to either we never really formalized that and it's just been sort of ad hoc and we've got to clean it up sort of to that documentation point or they go into it and they get far enough into it realize that oh wait, this is like we haven't really progressed as far as we needed to on this process to be able to actually automate it and put it out to like, for example, out to e-commerce. An overwhelming majority of cases. This is normal. This is the norm. You know, this is the norm. And so to that extent, you know, one can be fairly relaxed about it with clients because they often get pretty head up by that point because they, you know, they see they've spent time, money, effort and all the rest of it and they feel no closer to their goal and things are getting more complex and they're getting a bit steamed up about it. And it's kind of helpful to be able to say, look, you know, don't beat yourself up because actually this is normal. Everybody's like this really. And even if you'd involved me right at the beginning, yes, we would have saved some time. But all that would have happened, the time that we would have saved is we would have got to this point earlier. We'd still have to be having these conversations. We just would have arrived at them quicker. That's all right. And we might not have done because I might have said, you know, we need we're going to need to discuss this. You know, we don't need to. Okay. All right. Bye. See what happens then. You know, so yeah, the majority of cases it is the norm. Yeah. So with that, then what is your and I know it's all different when you're doing e-commerce in particular, but what's your view on doing like in minimally viable product and things like that is trying to get a project together. That's just like bare minimum or bare bones. I love it. I love the way of doing it. I urge people to do that. Now the big issue with doing that with with a lot of SME organizations is SMEs tend to run slim and thin when it comes to people's time and management time and what have you particularly management time. Therefore, they don't kind of get this idea that we are going to do a small number of rapid fire sprints. It's kind of not what they do that they're not used to that. You know, we're going to go and weigh and we're going to build something. We're going to sell it to a client customer. They're going to build whatever it is. We're going to tarmac a road. We're going to build a bridge. We're going to do whatever they do. Right. So we're doing discrete projects. We're coming in and saying, yeah, we know you want this, but actually we're going to iterate this 20 times before we get there. Why? Why don't you build it? Well, we just had that discussion. We don't know what it is that you want. Really. You don't know what it is. So we don't know. But where they where all this all falls apart is because they all run slim and thin. They don't respect the time scales. And when one person falls out the review cycle, then it all starts unraveling. So you do have to have that very, very heavy discussion. If we're going to do this, this is how it's going to work. So that's a bit of, you know, and that's a meeting that, you know, when you kind of your age, my age, when you are gray hair, you can kind of have those meetings. But if you're 25 years old, a bit difficult. But somebody has to have that discussion. You know, somebody has to have that discussion. Yeah. Yeah. I've run into that a lot that it is. Yeah, it is. It's definitely getting that upfront commitment is say, look, we're going to do this, but we are expecting we are requiring this amount of time and effort and review and turn around periods and all that. So you're as a customer on the hook as well. You are responsible for this project. Absolutely. We are. Absolutely. It's yeah, I've had those conversations where it's gone off the rails because the customer has it. And I have found even if you're for those that are younger, is it when you've set that put that down from the start, you have essentially that equivalent of like a paper trail to say, hey, we said this is when we're going to deliver. This is when we need back. And if not, it will impact a schedule. So when their schedule gets thrown off, it actually I've had several times where the customer is more like almost apologizing and saying, I know, I'm sorry. And stuff comes up. You know, it's like people were sick or COVID. We were locked out of our office for a month or something like that. Yeah. Now we're working together on it instead of it being something along, you know, more of a, hey, you fell short. It's like, well, no, things happen. So let's suggest and just try to work together to get to come to something that's complete. Absolutely. There are there are two tools that I pass on for what it's worth that your listeners might be interested in. So one is called Better Proposals, betterproposals.com. And that is what it says it is. So it's a it's a documentation system is built for writing proposals and it therefore has the ability. You write the proposal, you send over what is basically a link to an HTML document, very nicely formatted one. And then you're asking your prospect to sign. So they digitally sign the proposal. And then if needs be, you can take them all the way through to stripe and payment and all the rest of it. That was the fundamental design of the system. Then people got clever using it. And that's hang on a minute. I can use this for sign off. So you can give them and also in because it's a proposal system, it has pricing tables in it. So if it's got pricing tables, it's got option A, option B, option C. So I can say, OK, here are the three designs, A, B, C, tick which one you want. There's no pricing involved because we've already been past that stage. This is now just documentation control. Select ABC, sign it. Oh, you haven't signed it by the 20th of May. OK, the project stops then. Dead simple. Everybody knows where it's up to. It's on Fred's desk. And if Fred doesn't sign it. We're not doing any more work. That's one. So better proposals is a very you need to modify the templates and all the rest of it. But better proposals is a really good tool for just tracking digital signatures. The documents look nice. They will have nice tables of contents and all the rest of it. You can do various options and all of this kind of stuff. So it's a really nice documentation system. The other one is an online meeting management system called Yabu. That's Y-A-B-B-U. Yabu.com. And it's as I say, it's meeting management. So what does that do? You create an agenda, an online agenda. You share the online agenda with whoever is going to be there by email and all the rest of it. The lovely thing about that online agenda is that you have it on the screen when you're running through the meeting. I use it with my team. And we're having the meeting and we decide, OK, so OK, so you're going to do that, Rob. OK, fine. Let's make a note of it now. Task Rob in on the agenda. You get tasked. Date done by all the rest of it. That that documentation is a live document. And maybe let's just create the keep the story going. Maybe say we we meet monthly just for the sake of argument. I keep the document live and open for the next three weeks. So for three weeks, when you have done that task, you can go in and open that document and tick it off. It's being finished so that when we come to next month's meeting, we don't have to talk about that task because it's ticked off. You've done it. Or you go in, the meeting is still open. You open the agenda and you say, OK, we need to talk about this because I can't complete this task because da da da. So it needs to come up at the next meeting. Well, it's already in the agenda for the next meeting. It's a terrific tool. So better proposals and Yabu are two tools that I use and they are fabulous. Pass them on for what it's worth. Yeah, those are awesome. And it reminds me of how, again, that goes back to our earlier discussion about how far technology has come. We would have, you know, back in the day, you'd like you'd write it down on a note and you'd have to go carry it across the office. They'd have the inner office mail. And now it's just everybody can. And it's it's fun watching those things where you can have everybody in there. They can be editing at the same time. It'll say, hey, you know, Chris is over here. You can see where he's entering his stuff. I'm updating my things. We all get to see it. And we're all on that literally on the same virtual digital page. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, who would who would even remember what a carbon copy pad was? They were they were standard and everybody's station recovered, you know, years ago. Carbon copy pads. Amazing. But there we go. Maybe an industry that disappeared. I don't know if I've seen carbon copy stuff in a long time. Yeah. So we we talked about a lot in this and about the change, particularly, you know, flashback to 1980 when you started versus let's say you're starting in the 1980s. Or something like that. What would be what would be some advice you would give yourself as a especially looking at what you know, what you've seen, but also what you see going forward? What would be some advice for a sort of newish developer? What maybe should they focus on or look at or how would they are they going to best position themselves for a solid career such as yourself? Great question. I think that's a great question. Great question. Two things in my view. Words will always, in my belief, end up ruling the roost. So being to being able to express yourself or help your client express themselves well in the written word is always going to be crucial. Because, you know, Google is at the end of the day, Google and customers are always going to end up wanting to read something. And and I get some pushback on this. People was, oh, yeah, yeah, but you don't understand, Chris. I'm a commercial photographer and everybody wants to see my work. I got to have a gallery up there of all the beautiful work I do. Yes, I understand that. You're a commercial photographer. And to compete with other commercial photographers, people will want to see the work that you do, but only enough to know that you can do it. They are ultimately going to do business with you based on whether they like you, whether they can trust you, what your testimonials are like, what your terms and conditions are. And that's all stuff that's written down. You know, so words are always going to rule the roost, I would say. So so focus on being able to express yourself and help others express themselves, particularly in written communication that I think is going to be important. And the second point is that the I think there is going to be well, it's clear there already is a technology is already out there. There's going to be a coming together or a blurring of the sort of the space, the divide between a website on the one hand and an app that's downloaded to a mobile device on the other. These are just going to merge. That's clear. As I say, the technology is already out there. So I think that if I was starting today, I would focus some of my efforts on being able to help that merger happen from a business perspective. As I say, the technology is already out there. So I think that if I was starting today, I would focus some of my efforts and on being able to help that merger happen from a business perspective. And sort of do that, being able to do that, the combination of the BA stroke systems architect were work between the merger of websites and apps. I think that's excellent advice. Yeah, it's funny that I'm finding more and more that a lot of it is words is that it used to be that you would be the really there's email, but it was very simplistic and there wasn't much to it. Now, it seems like there's there's always these much more complicated. There's documentation and heck the you look at some of the stuff. It's raising the bar on that and saying, OK, we've got to be able to people are expecting more. We've got to be able to communicate it in a way that is not for lack of a better term techie that a normal person can understand because normal people, you know, average non-technical people are utilizing some of these things. And yes, that's right. The website's definitely if it's an e-commerce, but even the back end, there's a lot of times where it's people that are not terribly technical are you're trying to order through a back end system or or connect it to their Salesforce or whatever it happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Talk about APIs and all the rest of it. Yeah. You know where I want to connect my Salesforce to Shopify or whatever it is, you know, and then there's all the yeah, being able to sort all that mess out. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And this, you know, this wouldn't be so bad if I.T. had remained in the back room with data processing where it was in 1980, but it hasn't. It's escaped the back room and it's everywhere now. It's everywhere in the business. So you're right. People who aren't experts in it are going to come across it and they're going to want to know how they can use it. And we need to be able to explain all that. Definitely. So I want to be respectful of your time and we sort of we've spent a great conversation. But now and I'm sure everybody listening is like, hey, Chris is great. I love this. I love what he's doing. I love what his organization is doing. What is the best way for them to get a hold of you or reach out to you? My personal website, Chris Davidson, dot co dot UK, dead simple. It's all there. Chris Davidson, dot co dot UK. Excellent. So we will we'll put that out of links in the show notes for you guys listening and feel free to reach out, check out his stuff and check out the whole background. As I said, there's a lot that he's done. And as you can tell, he's got a lot of knowledge up there in that head that it's more than happy to share with everybody. So I want to thank you for your time. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Pleasure. Hopefully that you don't have to worry about too much traffic. Continue to have those kinds of easy. That's right. Yeah. Well, I've enjoyed my time here tremendously. So thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Oh, thanks a whole lot. Well, hopefully you have a great day and we'll talk to you next time around then. Thank you. And that will wrap it up. I hope you were as entertained by the conversations. I was having it. Chris has got a lot of experience, a lot of interesting things that he has worked with. And I think it's one of those where you can see where there's some some of that portfolio, some of that experience is something that you can draw from as well, wherever you're at, whatever you're working with. As always, you can learn from other people's mistakes and challenges and experiences, often almost as much as your own. And then you don't have the scars and cuts and bruises to show for it as much as maybe the other people do. All of the notes, all the links will be in the show notes. Anything that you need from him. Go ahead and reach out as you can see. I think very personable guy, more than happy to talk tech and career and business and things like that. So always a good time to get out there. If you do, till Chris say hi from the rest of us at the developer world. However, for now, it's time to get out into your world. However, that is whatever today looks like. And go out and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.