The Bureaus, Inc. | Marian Sangalang on Selecting Debt Buyer Software | Ep 200

Adam Parks (00:01.919)

Hello, everybody. Adam Parks here with another episode of Receivables Podcast. Today, I'm here with one of my best friends in the entire world, Marion Tseng Leng with the Bureaus Incorporated. How you doing today, Marion?

Marian (00:16.131)

Well, thank you very much for having me, Adam.

Adam Parks (00:19.111)

I do appreciate you coming on and having another chat with me. I know I've had the opportunity to really get to know you through the years, but for anyone who has not been as lucky as me, could you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?

Marian (00:32.566)

Sure. Okay, so let's start. A long, long time ago, in a far away place, I started out as a bill collector. So I worked really hard and decided that if I was gonna be a bill collector, that I was gonna be the best bill collector that I could possibly be. So I needed to learn as much as I possibly could about the industry, as well as people in general, learning about

Adam Parks (00:37.595)

In a far away place.

Marian (01:01.782)

people and how they react to certain things and learning about being empathetic and all those things. Again, I was very young at the time and then I moved to Illinois and I'm skipping a few places or a few things in there, but I started working at the bureaus in 1996. That's a long time ago. And at the time I came in, sorry for the puppy dog, please.

Adam Parks (01:29.309)

That's OK.

Marian (01:30.768)

new puppy. I started at the bureaus in 96 and started as a bill collector and worked my way up through, being a bill collector to a collection manager, to do a marketing, to handling and managing, in, internal strategic planning and, work through and was given the opportunity to learn how to be an IT geek. So I learned about SQL and.

Marian (02:00.182)

all the things that I needed to understand that are relevant to the topic that we're going to be talking about today. And then continue to work my way up and am now vice president. So that's a very brief summary of all the things.

Adam Parks (02:15.849)

Well, it sounds like you're the type of person who has done every job in the organization. And I know as you and I started working together at the bureaus, a lot of our relationship was focused on the technology and the underlying platforms that you were using to move things forward. And I always found it interesting that the bureaus was always, I'm gonna say light years, mean, sometimes decades in front of the ideas of what we're now starting to deploy from a technology perspective, I think on a

broader across the industry, meaning that you guys always had these custom proprietary tools that were built that were kind of stacked on top of each other throughout your workflow, which I always thought was interesting and is honestly, I mean, as we've talked through the years and you were one of the first if not the first user of the comply arm platform, right, getting an understanding for kind of how you guys have looked at that technology over time. And I've been blessed to have the opportunity to work with you on so many different

technology projects, which is why I wanted to have this particular discussion with you today. Because of what I really want to talk about is the

the intersection of the systems of record that we have. have these underlying technology platforms that are responsible for our account management. And then we have all of this other technology that we ultimately want to use. And I'll throw out a little bit of a latitude, right, as kind of a hub here, right, sitting in the center, right, if you're using latitude as your system of record, all of these ancillary products that you're capable of integrating into it from a

Marian (03:39.787)

Yep.

Adam Parks (03:51.229)

from a workflow perspective, let me kind of.

pull back a little bit here and let's start by talking about systems of record. you know, I've been talking with a lot of groups over the last, I'm gonna call it six months that are either just starting their journey of converting systems of record or updating their system of record. But I feel like with the account volume increase expected in 2025, a lot of organizations are trying to prepare their technology train tracks so that they can run more trains down the rail as more accounts come in. As someone who has been through

through lot of upgrades through the years, right? Any advice that you would give to those that are just starting their system of record conversion journey?

Marian (04:36.498)

Lots of advice.

Adam Parks (04:39.443)

It's good advice too. That's why I wanted to have the chat with you.

Marian (04:42.432)

So.

Marian (04:45.93)

give you a little lowdown on how, on what had transpired when we first converted to Latitude. So we were on an old, old, old archaic DOS based system that was nuts. And we had a very large staff at the time that many of them didn't even know how to use Microsoft products or windows or anything.

Marian (05:15.542)

So that alone was its own challenge. But when we converted to Latitude, we were bringing in Windows and Microsoft into our organization at the same time that we were moving to this new software. So there was a lot of change happening at the same time. Once we got past the Microsoft and Windows concerns and trainings, and again, I will tell you that I literally had people pick up the mouse,

Adam Parks (05:17.833)

Sure.

Adam Parks (05:31.358)

Yeah.

Marian (05:44.438)

and put it up to their monitor. So that was a challenge on its own. But once we got past that and we got to the point where we were truly understanding how to convert the data, it was a six month process. This was not a, I'm going to take all of this and slap it into here because in reality, what you have may not be good enough. It was what you had and you're obviously trying to improve upon that. And so,

Adam Parks (05:52.818)

Yeah.

Marian (06:14.534)

know what you want to gain, develop an action plan, look at everything that you've got, whether it's existing workflows in your existing system and how you can prove upon them in your new system. Look at your status codes, look at your action and result codes, look at everything so that you can map it out before you even start testing. Think about what you want and how you want it to be presented. Most systems of record

Marian (06:44.436)

have these standard codes that are in there. And some system of record, some systems of record may not allow you to use the same thing that you have. So you have to understand what that conversion is gonna be. Talk to consumer, what's it gonna be in this new system? When you're creating that, you also want to go ahead and start begin your training, your training material. Because again, every system of record is going to have training material, but that's training material on the system of record.

Marian (07:14.068)

It's not training material for your environment. And that's where a lot of people miss step because they, sorry about the dog. I'm so sorry. A lot of people miss step and they don't focus on the fact that that training material needs to be specific to their users and not to just the system of record. But with that being said, we'll go past the training part. It was a six month testing process. And so we put everything, we installed the new software into a test region.

Adam Parks (07:22.463)

It's okay.

Adam Parks (07:36.639)

Sure.

Marian (07:43.446)

And we work slowly on how the data would appear in the new system of record. Again, not having ever had SQL tables before, not, and again, many of the agencies and law firms and other people in our industry, they don't have SQL databases today either. And they may be migrating to a SQL environment. I love a SQL environment personally, because you have the ability to access all of your data. You can query on it. It's not,

Adam Parks (07:57.055)

Thanks

Marian (08:12.264)

something that you have to have your support team at the, yeah, yes, exactly. Yes. Yep. And that was very important to us, which is why we chose latitude. was very important to us to be able to have that ability because as you said, we were already creating things outside of our system of record before, and we wanted to be able to enhance it by linking to those SQL tables. So back to the fact that that

Adam Parks (08:15.561)

flexibility and unlocked, right? It's flexible, I can get into it, I can touch it, I can feel it, I can manipulate it, and it's not locked away.

Marian (08:41.558)

testing of how the data should look and what it should look like was a six month process. So then we worked with the team at Latitude to have them put data into our new test region. And then I created, I don't know, 50 different test scenarios for each

branch of the division. So payment processing, what a collector would do, what a legal would do, all of it. And so they had

Adam Parks (09:15.463)

everybody's job responsibilities, but a specific test to run the actions of each individual's responsibilities.

Marian (09:19.838)

Right. And that's vital because you want the users to actually do it because not only are they testing the product for you, but they're also learning at the same time exactly what's going to happen with the actions. Because in one system, a promise might look like this. In another system, it might look like this. And so they have to understand, and you have to understand what the results are to be able to create your training material and to determine if you have any bugs or issues or concerns in the software.

Many times, because it's not what they're used to, they think it's broken. And it's not broken. It's just different, right? It's always broken. Right. And it's just, the more you engage your staff and your team in an upgrade, the more receptive they're going to be to the change that you're making, because it's a huge change. It's something they're used to doing every single day. So them having a part in it makes them feel more comfortable and they're getting to use it and test it and play around with it. So.

Adam Parks (09:56.647)

It's always broken. And it's IT's fault too.

Marian (10:20.896)

For a system of record and an upgrade, that to me is vital. The testing, the training material, the actual dialogue, the conversing with your team and making them feel a part of what you're doing because it's their job, it's their livelihood. It's not just IT making changes behind the scenes. That may come later when there's a minor upgrade that has to be made to the software, but when you're doing a conversion, you need to keep everybody involved.

Marian (10:49.256)

It's not just, we're gonna switch to this platform tomorrow, so be ready. Because that's not gonna work. I mean, we were crazy because not only did we move to Microsoft and Windows all at the same time, but we also changed to collection software and we added a dialer on top of that and we were installing new carpet. So all of that was happening at the same time. I don't recommend that. That was crazy.

Adam Parks (10:52.98)

and good luck.

Marian (11:14.868)

But that was what was happening during our conversion period. And again, of course, we had to all have new computers and all of that stuff.

Adam Parks (11:21.501)

No, and at that point in time, you guys were going through the whole industry was going against this technology change. And so you had these groups that were going from call it a DOS old based environment that was mostly text driven to the interfaces that include a mouse, right. And like that was all pretty new as you were dealing Mac wasn't really big or Apple wasn't anything you would ever consider for that type of an environment at that point in time. And so everything was moving towards windows and that in the Xerox mouse.

Marian (11:27.232)

Yes. Yes.

Marian (11:40.342)

Nope.

Marian (11:47.702)

Yep. And that was, yep. And that was 2003, by the way. It's not like it was yesterday. It was 2003.

Adam Parks (11:53.105)

Yeah, fair. But but what I what I pull from that is in terms of advice for someone who's looking at taking this on is it's all about the planning and testing, right? It's all about the planning upfront and making sure that you understand how the data is going to go through and that the data is formatted correctly and that there's a place for all of the data points that existed.

in your original system in your new system, right? So you've matched everything up and you've got a good flow for it. But then I really like the individualized user testing. It's not just look, I ran this test. And now it's this. I'm a big proponent of

Marian (12:15.541)

Yes.

Marian (12:21.962)

Yes.

Adam Parks (12:28.223)

experimentation documentation when I'm trying something new, right. And so that I'm saying, here's what it is that I'm testing for in my experiment. And it's very eighth grade, you know, like science experiment these days, it's, you know, here's my perfect here, let me restate the problem. Let me state my hypothesis, let me describe exactly what that experiment is going to be in what I consider

failure or passage of that test to be upfront, not after we've run the test, do we determine whether or not it was quote unquote, acceptable, that acceptable tolerance level should be set prior to running that experiment, right? Like

Marian (13:04.406)

Absolutely. And what we learned with that is while it was extremely valuable in an actual conversion to a new system of record, it proved even more valuable as the software rolled out updates and changes and improvements to the software. We did the same level of testing. We had a test region. We never will be the guinea pig. I mean, we're just not that because with any system of record, there's...

Marian (13:30.676)

just things that may not work. especially if you have any sort of custom programming, the likelihood of stuff breaking is a real likelihood. as you begin, once you install the new software or the upgrade into your test region, you're going to spend 90, 120 days doing the same level of testing. But now not only are you doing your user testing, everything that you've built based on that existing platform, now you have to test it with all these new things because

Marian (13:59.134)

Again, depending on the system of record and the way that they have their tables, they could throw in a new field in the middle of the table structure that would just skew everything that you've got going. Hopefully they'll just put it at the end and that would work out fine. there are things like that that happen that you have to test for. You could have programs that run at end of day that certainly, sorry, that certainly, that.

Adam Parks (14:24.871)

Okay.

Marian (14:26.004)

that change information that might break if you're not testing for it. So you've got to run your end of day process all over again. You've got to do everything that you would do in a normal environment needs to run for like a 30 day process just to see what breaks. And if it doesn't break, great. It's unlikely that something's not going to break and it's okay if it does, but that's the point of testing. That's the purpose. You can't just roll out something new. And I'll be honest.

Adam Parks (14:41.097)

Concurring systems. Yeah.

Marian (14:55.007)

We didn't know that in the beginning.

Adam Parks (14:56.573)

Yeah, of course, we all learn through this process. That's why I wanted to have this discussion today, Marion, because most people are going to learn through this experience.

Marian (15:02.944)

So what happened to us, I think it was 2000, we went live in March of 2004. And so I think it was, I'm go with March of 2005 ish. We received the first upgrade from Latitude and.

Marian (15:21.3)

I was so naive. thought that, cool, they've tested it. Everything's great. No, we rolled it out. We went live and all of our promises disappeared. Now again, at this time we were a very big call center. And so that is detrimental when all your promises, all your post-dates, all your credit cards, everything, the accounts changed to a different status. It was just a hot mess. We got it fixed, but that proved a...

Marian (15:50.408)

why we would never do that again, that we will always test. So I learned from my mistakes. That was the first and only time that that ever happened. I never let that happen again.

Adam Parks (16:01.183)

But then you also had the you had all of these, I'm gonna call them experiment documents in my world. But then you had all of these experiments that were pre written that you knew what you needed to do to go test. yeah, all right, we jumped the gun a little bit once. And, and that's why we wanted to have this discussion and make sure that other people don't make that same mistake of just kind of like jumping out in front of it. You know, and really going down that path, it's fine with the dog, Marion, it wouldn't be a conversation with you if there was not a dog involved. Okay, like

Marian (16:13.675)

Yes.

Marian (16:17.194)

Ruff! Ruff!

Marian (16:29.462)

I'm so sorry.

Adam Parks (16:30.439)

It just wouldn't be the same.

Marian (16:32.648)

She thinks anybody that walks down the street is in her yard, so she's like having a fit right now. I'm so sorry.

Adam Parks (16:37.229)

She's she's learning her territory. It's okay. I'm just hey, what a lucky dog is the first thing I thought when I saw the pictures on Facebook, that's going to be the happiest dog that has ever lived.

Marian (16:39.528)

Yeah.

Marian (16:49.056)

Well, it's been a minute since we had a puppy in our house, like one time, I'm so sorry.

Adam Parks (16:54.609)

That's okay. It's okay. So you know, as we talk about the systems of record, and we talk about kind of how the we've been dealing with the data conversions and all of those pieces, let's talk a little bit about kind of the the smaller pieces of incremental improvement. And what I mean by that is like, so now you've, as you're rolling out new technology that say ancillary to the system of record, right, so expanding upon what you're using within the system of record into payment portals and dialers and all of this other, you know, technology that organizations

may want to integrate, what advice would you have for organizations as they look to, let's say, connect their system of record to other pieces of tech?

Adam Parks (17:39.305)

I mean, obviously plan and test, right? Like that, I think that carries through whether it's a systematic conversion or something new, but outside of that, anything that you want to think about that's maybe a little bit different when it comes to connecting technology platforms.

Marian (17:41.782)

Yeah.

Marian (17:54.835)

We all have moments of massive amounts of brainstorming where we're like, my God, that's a great idea, let's do that. And yeah, I mean, the reality is not every organization moves that fast. know, many organizations have, I'll call it red tape or whatever, they have channels that they have to go through and it takes a much longer period of time to roll. Fortunately for us, we...

Adam Parks (18:01.907)

my whiteboard right here.

Marian (18:22.536)

ID, we identify something that we're interested in. We do an extensive amount of research. it's very important for us. if we're going to integrate with an API, if we're going to integrate with whatever, tool that we're using that, one security is by far the most important thing, to test, test, retest, understand what the results are going to be and understand, what data that you're.

Marian (18:52.448)

pushing out. like for example, we do work with several vendors that have APIs, but we do not have an API connecting directly to our live database. We created views so that they could only have access to the views in case something happened to them. They don't have access to our actual database.

Marian (19:18.175)

So when you say.

Adam Parks (19:18.409)

Creating separation and granular access level. So that's one of the first things that I would suggest that people look at is how granular of an access level can you make it for a third party who's going to access any information that's stored within your systems, right? Like clearly not a full database view, but even whatever it is that they are going to view, I wanna look at that and minimize it as much as possible.

Marian (19:27.05)

Yes.

Marian (19:40.468)

Yes, absolutely. Again, I can't stress enough the level of importance when it comes to security. That is by far the most important thing I have seen and heard and watched organizations in our industry fail and it terrifies. That's the biggest fear that I have as well as anyone in our organization. just, it's scary.

Adam Parks (20:02.633)

So don't feel alone, Marion, I can tell you after conducting the trans union survey on the debt collection industry for 2024, that it is the single top concern of debt collection organizations across the industry, regardless of discipline. That's buyers, agencies, law firms, creditors, that is the number one concern right now. And in my opinion, I think that's partially related to just, you

general good practices, like general best practices of how we run our organizations. And some of that is due to just having seen some long standing organizations, you know, end their companies in the last 18 months, and there's been more than one and they've been pretty significant. So I think that that fear factor has been amplified exponentially in 2024.

Marian (20:44.692)

Yes.

Marian (20:51.24)

Agreed. And we kind of got off off topic there. But again, security, security, security. It terrifies us. So we are doing everything that we can to ensure that again, one, if we ensure that our vendors as well as our service providers, as well as us are following FTC safeguard rules, we feel pretty safe about that. I mean, that has been.

Marian (21:16.416)

You know, that was a hurdle that I don't think anybody was truly prepared for when they pushed that out. don't think they, anybody understood the level of expectations that were coming down from FTC safeguard rules. That was a huge, huge thing. but as long as everybody's in compliance and they're doing the right things that are laid out in there, they're pretty much doing all that they can to protect themselves. It's pretty laid out and detailed in that, in that FTC rule. So.

Marian (21:45.418)

I know we changed topics. Sorry, Adam.

Adam Parks (21:47.045)

No, this is that to me, this all ties together quite nicely, right? Talking about the system of records and kind of converting those and now talking about how we start pulling some of these different pieces together. But the number one concern as you're connecting your system of record to anything is going to be data security, right? It's the same reason that we never connect to the front publicly facing websites to anybody's system of record or anything like that, because we don't even why should the gateway even exist?

Marian (22:04.362)

Yes.

Adam Parks (22:15.475)

Right? It's real hard to walk through a wall. It's a lot easier to walk through a gate. Why should... If you have a gate, a gate could be left unlocked. If there is no gate, there's no way to walk through it. And so, you know, avoiding that, think, altogether and doing that through granular access is one of the first steps I would always take.

Marian (22:17.984)

Yes.

Marian (22:25.952)

Great.

Adam Parks (22:34.399)

towards looking at that. The other thing is, like you said, was the testing and really planning it out in advance, what's passing and where and why and how can I minimize it? And then the testing aspect of it all of still going back and testing the individual workflows. The other thing I see that organizations I think, and this is one of those many things I've picked up from the Bureau through the years, is never shortcut the consumer experience and testing, meaning like there are no shortcuts for the consumer.

Marian (22:59.609)

right.

Adam Parks (23:01.917)

You have to go through it and you have to try and break it. You got to click on every button. You got to click on everything. You got to go through every workflow and you got to go through the whole thing to truly understand what that consumer is going to experience and don't take it for granted because you saw it in demo, right? You got to do it yourself.

Marian (23:01.974)

No.

Marian (23:17.0)

Absolutely. That's absolutely the case. Again, for our website, for example, it's not consumer facing. The consumers can make a payment and it's not on our website. don't have any consumer data available for the consumer nor do we store any consumer information. It takes them to our vendors site if they want to make a one-time payment. And that works for me. Again,

the level of security involved, it's scary. I applaud those people who are able to make it happen. I just haven't made the jump. I just haven't done it. I'm not saying that we won't. I'm just saying that we haven't done it yet. Again, that's a product that we're still researching. It's been a year now. So still trying to figure out how to make it work with a level of comfort that doesn't keep me up at night.

Adam Parks (24:13.065)

Fair enough, fair enough. it's like, it's not an it, it's an important piece of technology. I think a lot of organizations in the debt collection space have taken that similar approach of accepting it. And even if you are going to connect it to the system of record, it should never be your website that's connected, it would be your right like your portal, it should be something that is sitting separate and apart, and creating separation between what I call your honeypot, right, like the value for the hacker, like keep the honeypot.

Marian (24:29.664)

Right. Right.

Marian (24:37.216)

Yeah.

Adam Parks (24:39.493)

away from the front door and then it's a lot harder. This isn't Canada where you leave your keys by the front door to make it easier for them to steal the car. That's not what we're doing here.

Marian (24:49.654)

So a minute ago, you mentioned dialers. And so I wanted to talk about that for a second. We're doing a lot of work with our service providers right now on call logs and data that they're sending us each day. And everybody uses a different vendor for their dialer. And in the course of this analysis that I'm performing, I'm speaking with IT teams at the different agencies. And quite a few of them are actually converting to a new dialer.

Adam Parks (24:55.199)

Thank

Marian (25:19.368)

a new system. And so I've learned a lot about what they're doing and I've shared my experiences with them about testing, testing and retesting and the end result for the consumer. One example, let's just say that, for example, in vendor A, they send you all these termination codes and they're supposed to be mapped to, and they mean this. And in vendor B that you're converting to,

Marian (25:48.01)

They're sending you a whole bunch of different termination codes, but they have the same descriptions of these termination codes. But for some reason, they're mapping something different. So before you just jump and go live, you've got to ensure that you're going to receive the same results. So there's one service provider that I thought did an exceptional job. I've not done this personally, but they did an exceptional job where they were running both systems in tandem to ensure that the data was

Marian (26:17.11)

comparable to what they were used to receiving and identifying the areas in which that they could improve on. And it was their IT teams department to do that, not operations, because operations be like, let's just go. But IT, their IT team took the time. They mapped it out very thoroughly. I was very impressed with what they had done because those codes that they get, they map to codes that we're expecting to on a daily basis, which is why I was so involved with.

Adam Parks (26:32.39)

Yeah.

Marian (26:47.028)

changes that they were making. But they did an exceptional job of running both in tandem to ensure that the data they were receiving were receiving was the same or improving on the consumer experience. So like the vendor that they had initially didn't offer an IVR option that was robust enough. I'm so sorry, Adam. That was robust enough for them. And so that was one of the reasons that they were

Adam Parks (27:11.41)

It's okay.

Marian (27:15.774)

upgrading to this new, sorry, I got a toy. I'm just trying to keep her occupied. That was one of the reasons why they were upgrading to this new system. And in doing that, they taught me some about a way to convert to a new dialer system. I thought it was an exceptional plan to do both at the same time. I didn't even know that you could do that.

Adam Parks (27:19.76)

Hahaha!

running concurrent platforms is something that we've done a little bit as we've gone through testing phases and you end up running two different systems next to each other so that you can validate that it's flowing through. Sometimes we do that with websites from an A B testing standpoint, just to try and understand what's going to provide a higher level of value for the end user, right? And so like, what are people going to react to? It's not easy. And it does take a significant lift. But I've never met an IT team that felt like they had available resources, right?

Marian (27:57.942)

I think it's great.

Adam Parks (28:07.747)

like every IT team is stretched as far as it can be stretched, because I think every organization is trying to squeeze every ounce of efficiency that they can out of their technology. And obviously, the guys that hold the keys to that kingdom are going to be essential across your organization. But as we go through the process of converting systems or tying into new technology,

it's it I still go back to all of the planning and testing and it seems like those are kind of the core functionalities that we need to look at. But even as you start to expand your system or record into other platforms or tying together other technology, we find ourselves in very much the same space right where it's all about plan it out appropriately and test it, test it, test it until you have broken everything that you can break.

right? And my favorite email is to get one from a client and I've got them from you in the past that just says go try and break this. This is working too well. Go break it. Okay, like let me see. Let me see what I can do.

Marian (29:05.91)

Yep. Yep.

One of the things that helps that, and you've been privy to these conversations as well, is when you have major changes that are happening in your organization, it's not just IT, it's not just operations, it's everybody. So for example, several Christmases ago, you received a phone call that said, can you get on a plane tomorrow? And that was because we were making some significant changes and

determined that it had to happen right away, immediately. And so one of the things that we did is I brought all the vendors into the office, every single one of them, including yourself. I had a representative from a latitude, I believe was there. had multiple, everybody. I had a room full of people and giant whiteboards. And we laid out what the action plan was gonna be.

Adam Parks (29:57.759)

We had technology people, had everybody there.

Marian (30:07.744)

Who's gonna be responsible for what? Accountability is key. Set target dates and then prepared this massive document. Now again, that was before COVID, that was before Zoom, that was before all of those things. I'm sure that the same thing can be accomplished on a Zoom call. don't have to...

Adam Parks (30:24.017)

I don't know that that was one of my best whiteboarding sessions of all time. We had the Gantt charts for what was going to happen and what had to happen in advance of this in order to unlock that and it was it was pretty cool.

Marian (30:32.756)

Yeah. Well, I am not, I'll be the first one to tell you what I don't know. Cause I know what I know. And I know that I don't know everything about all the things that were going to take place with these changes that we had to make. And so I needed to look people in the eye and have them commit to a timetable for me because it needed to happen and it needed to happen quick. So yes.

Well, you needed to coordinate somebody had to be the maestro, right? Like somebody had to conduct this orchestra to move us towards where we were trying to go. And I thought that approach of bring everybody together, let's outline it all together. Let's all commit to what we're doing. Because one of the things that I saw happen in that environment, that wasn't even driven by you is we all started challenging each other.

Marian (31:00.331)

Yes.

Adam Parks (31:18.175)

Right? So like all the vendors start challenging each other as to what they're capable of, or how quickly they can do it and not in an unreasonable way. But it created these like new relationships across the board. And then it wasn't like, well, this is my responsibility. And that's his responsibility. Yes, there was accountability to it. But there was a camaraderie to it as well. There was a team aspect to

what we were trying to accomplish and that can only be done if it's being led by somebody within the organization who has the vision.

Marian (31:49.866)

Yep. You're good friends, not only colleagues, but good friends with some of the people that you met that day. Yep.

Adam Parks (31:54.673)

I'm now incredibly good friend. mean, there's a lot of the people that I met that day that I am now on first name text messaging, you know, happy Christmas, kind of relationships with now. I mean, it really, because we challenged each other in that room, and we found ways to actually drive each other forward. And it was a phenomenal experience. So I guess that's the last piece of advice we'll leave for the audience today is that if you do have the opportunity

Marian (32:20.427)

Yeah.

Adam Parks (32:22.567)

to actually bring everybody together, do it. And if you have, and if it costs you a few bucks to get everybody into the physical same room, spend it, spend it. The cost of flights and time and hotel rooms is nothing in comparison to what we exited that room with.

Marian (32:25.482)

I totally agree.

Marian (32:30.996)

It's worth it. Yep. It's absolutely worth it. get, yep.

Marian (32:41.642)

That's no joke. It was a great time. mean, again, so much was learned that day about everybody and every process. So yes, I'm glad you feel the same way.

Adam Parks (32:49.415)

I was looking around, I still keep a packed bag in December just in case.

Marian (32:54.356)

I don't always ask Adam to come in December. I'm just going to say it's not always in December, but it has happened more than once. It is. It has.

Adam Parks (33:02.279)

I get a lot of emergency calls in December. I don't know what that is. think it's people want people are just upset that I'm here in warm South Florida and they want me to be cold. I think that's what it is.

Marian (33:05.642)

Me either.

Marian (33:11.082)

That's probably what it is. There's no, but you know, I will say that over the years there's been more incidences that we've had in the month of December than any other month of the year. And I don't know why that is. I don't know if it's freezing. I was going to say, is everything freeze here? And that's why maybe.

Adam Parks (33:22.131)

I think it's weather related for you.

Yeah, I think that's it. I think it freezes over. Marin, I really do appreciate you coming on and having this chat with me today. There is nothing more valuable to me than a chat with you. I really do appreciate you coming on and just discussing your experiences.

Marian (33:41.622)

That's very kind. That's very kind. I will just say that I hope that I was able to add value to somebody who's seeking to do what we're talking about today. And if there are questions, most of you who know me just reach out. I can tell you experiences. A lot of things that you're gonna go through, I went through, I went through something similar so I can give you what I know from my experience.

Adam Parks (34:06.237)

And it's wildly valuable because you've gone through it with boots on the ground regardless of the title on your desk, you are always in the dirt making it happen. And it's honestly one of the reasons that we've learned and that I learned so much through the process of working together. For those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions you'd like to ask Mary and myself, you can leave those in the comments on LinkedIn and YouTube and we'll be responding to those. If you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss. Well, I know we've got a few planned for next year and some really great discussions in 2025.

Marian (34:12.405)

Yep. Yep.

Marian (34:18.197)

ingredients.

Adam Parks (34:36.361)

but you can leave your ideas in the comments below as well. But until next time everybody, thank you so much for joining us. We really do appreciate your time and attention and we'll see you at the RMAI Annual Conference in just a couple of months. Thanks everyone, we'll see you soon.

Marian (34:48.746)

Yeah, we will. Bye. Bye.