Step into the shoes of a tech wizard and Oracle guru, Richard Pepper, as he takes us on a nostalgic ride through his storied career. We kick it off by reminiscing on the groundbreaking MOD JPA program, where Richard's leadership seamlessly integrated Oracle tech for an impressive 350,000 users, ensuring even those in the most remote locations, like submarines, stayed connected. His reflections aren't just techno-babble; they're a masterclass in the human aspect of tech projects, team synergy, and the art of standardizing processes in a setting as varied as the military.
Ever wonder how the Oracle market stays so fiercely competitive? Richard lays down the law on effective recruitment strategies and the underrated craft of building enduring relationships. With a focus on the human touch at Veran Performance, we unearth the secrets to assembling teams that not only meet the mark but excel under pressure. This candid conversation doesn't skirt around the challenges either. Dive into the intricacies of sourcing talent with niche clearances and get a front-row seat to the balancing act of uniting team perspectives to navigate high-stakes projects.
As we cap off this enlightening discourse, Richard and Lloyd don't just reflect on Oracle and the post-COVID workspace they tackle the profound influence of non-monetary motivations and the relentless pursuit of impactful work. From dissecting the value-cost conundrum in professional development to the communal resilience in Oracle User Groups, this episode is peppered with personal tales, professional wisdom, and the occasional chuckle. So, whether you're a seasoned pro or a curious newbie, this is one tech talk you won't want to miss.
Check out more of the Focus Cloud Group Podcasts and chats on your favourite media players!
Youtube, Spotify, Apple, Google!
Step into the shoes of a tech wizard and Oracle guru, Richard Pepper, as he takes us on a nostalgic ride through his storied career. We kick it off by reminiscing on the groundbreaking MOD JPA program, where Richard's leadership seamlessly integrated Oracle tech for an impressive 350,000 users, ensuring even those in the most remote locations, like submarines, stayed connected. His reflections aren't just techno-babble; they're a masterclass in the human aspect of tech projects, team synergy, and the art of standardizing processes in a setting as varied as the military.
Ever wonder how the Oracle market stays so fiercely competitive? Richard lays down the law on effective recruitment strategies and the underrated craft of building enduring relationships. With a focus on the human touch at Veran Performance, we unearth the secrets to assembling teams that not only meet the mark but excel under pressure. This candid conversation doesn't skirt around the challenges either. Dive into the intricacies of sourcing talent with niche clearances and get a front-row seat to the balancing act of uniting team perspectives to navigate high-stakes projects.
As we cap off this enlightening discourse, Richard and Lloyd don't just reflect on Oracle and the post-COVID workspace they tackle the profound influence of non-monetary motivations and the relentless pursuit of impactful work. From dissecting the value-cost conundrum in professional development to the communal resilience in Oracle User Groups, this episode is peppered with personal tales, professional wisdom, and the occasional chuckle. So, whether you're a seasoned pro or a curious newbie, this is one tech talk you won't want to miss.
Check out more of the Focus Cloud Group Podcasts and chats on your favourite media players!
Youtube, Spotify, Apple, Google!
Welcome back to another episode of Focus Enter the Cloud. In this episode, lloyd is joined by Oracle aficionado and all-round tech guru, richard Pepper. In this episode, we hear about Richard's role in top-secret military projects. To navigating the ever-changing landscape of enterprise tech, we'll uncover the secrets of relationship building, track Oracle's evolution and explore Richard's pivotal role in shaping the Oracle user group. So get ready for a deep dive into the world of tech with Richard Pepper and Lloyd Gordon.
Speaker 2:Today I'm very excited to be joined by Richard Pepper, who I've known actually for probably 20 odd years. It makes me feel so old Not yourself, of course, but me, youngster but we met each other 20 odd years ago. So thank you very much, first of all, for coming and joining us.
Speaker 4:Pleasure, excited about what you're doing here and really keen to understand what's going on and just catch up. If nothing else, it's really exciting.
Speaker 2:So we met each other 21, 22 years ago. I think it was right yeah.
Speaker 4:I think you're probably looking at 2005-ish. So going back then, I used to work for a big American company, eds Electronic Data Systems, before HP bought them and I was Program Manager, build and Test Program Manager on the MOD, jpa, joint Personnel Administration System. So 350,000 users, massive rollout of Orkley Biz 11.5.10. So many people involved. I forget the budget, but million yeah um and really exciting program. I think you know we'll talk about lessons learned, but my three years on that program I think I learned so many work lessons, life lessons, entertainment lessons, everything, people.
Speaker 4:It was just an amazing journey and I still reference that program probably talk about it too much. I reference that program in everything I do. Now I'm sat in the pub or I don't give away secrets because I'm not allowed to um, but it you know it was just an exciting time and a vibrant time and you know different to what it is now yeah and your organization helped me at the time by just finding the right people, yeah, some proper talent, who are sort of people focused and we'll talk about people focus later on.
Speaker 4:But yeah, that was. If I look back now, what would I change? Probably absolutely everything, quite frankly, and try and get to the beach quicker, but generally I'm still still working. The more kids I have, the more house extensions and I need to carry on working. So, yeah, good to see you again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was a big HR payroll project, if I remember right.
Speaker 4:It was HR, payroll, it was finance, it was CRM. They had a deployed offline solution. I'm not giving away any secrets here, but so those who were out in the field so say they were in a submarine and they'd be underwater for two months. When they came up for air they could log on and action, self-service items and changes to HCM and payroll details, bank accounts, and it would transmit those changes via satellite. So not only did we have a system that was Oracle-based, we had a NET was Oracle based, we had a I think it was a NET solution that would, you know, have basic functionality for changing what was in Oracle via satellite. And then you'd go back down again for three months or somebody might be, you know, special forces stuck up a tree for a week and want to update their thing oh just check my name and address while I'm stuck up this tree.
Speaker 4:So it was a very broad solution, you know, from an infrastructure point of view and environments point of view that's not 70 environments during the program and went live with the RAF first, which I think about 70,000, then the Navy and then finally the army and including the Reservists. And if you look at, some of the biggest challenges of that which have taken forward is obviously the people management side but the harmonisation and adoption of standard business processes against organisations. Yes, you've got three military organisations. Within those organisations you've got another 50 operating units who'd like to do their own thing as well, and bringing all of those organisations together, integrating to external systems, was the biggest challenge of my life and it wasn't so much a technical challenge, it was the people and behaviour and adoption challenge that was most important and I learnt so much from that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. I want to talk about that and obviously stop me if there's stuff that you can't say about that project. Yeah, but I didn't know that when I was recruiting all these people and stuff for you on that programme, because I used to be an Oracle recruiter. So that was actually my first ERP job in recruitment.
Speaker 2:And do you know, the funny thing is, you're bringing back lots of memories here. Right On day one, I remember joining the recruitment company that I joined and they were an Oracle shop, yes, which I stayed there for nine years and then halfway through I kind of went into SAP. If you know, and the truth is, I didn't understand anything about Oracle on day one, and I was extremely apprehensive about it because I'd come from an engineering and technical background.
Speaker 2:Yes, so the truth is, for the first six to eight, I had no idea what I was talking about. That was the truth and I had to learn by talking to people and obviously I went on some kind of both internal and external courses, but I was learning as I was going on and when we first met I'd been doing it for a fair amount of time and I was good at it and I understood it. But I didn't know that you implemented that system for personnel that were underwater.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, you couldn't make any changes to Oracle whilst they were underwater.
Speaker 4:No, it was what was known as a deployed offline solution that would sync via satellite. So there's a lot of challenges around. Well, if somebody on land you know through managed self-service updated your record and when you came above water to change something that was now out of sync with what they'd updated, so it was quite a complex process. Yeah, you know, from a record locking and just an integrity point of view of that data and data integrity was so important. You know, it was really before the days of having like a master data management solution that would control everything from a reference data point of view.
Speaker 4:Yeah, lots of nuances around. You know special forces, and do you hide people? Do you not hide people? And obviously I'm not going to go into any of the solutions, but the, the military, is a big organization and alongside you've got the, what used to be called the triple pa, which is the civilian side of things. And um, yeah it was, it was huge. It was huge and there and there were lots of challenges in terms of the implementation, but what a great journey.
Speaker 4:Probably fair to say. What have I learned since? Well, I sort of filled my brain with probably 70% of what I needed. And if you go back to what Oracle's about, I spent 28 years working with Oracle and I probably know 20% of Oracle. It seems strange to say, but Oracle I don't know what the count is now used to have 2,000 products.
Speaker 4:I'm spending a lot of time working with the FSGBU and construction and retail and you know some of the industry solutions which are fantastic, products which I'd never. I spent couple of years at ASOS implementing retail and that was my only experience of it. But if you look at core, ERP, HCM, payroll there's so much else out there. You know, let alone the tech side of things. There's just so much to get your teeth into. And you know, even though I'm president of the user group and I talk to lots of people every day about lots of things, it's still a lot. You know I could spend another 20 years learning about the products and you can't consume everything and it's important to be, you know, generic enough but specialized in certain areas that you're going to. You know answer or need to give advice and guidance about yeah, yeah, I'm, you're talking.
Speaker 2:it's bringing back all of these memories of the Oracle market, good and bad memories. Yeah, interesting times.
Speaker 4:They were good times.
Speaker 2:They are really good memories and I certainly started in the right market. Obviously, that evolved into different markets, but without that grounding I would never have been able to do what I did in other markets. So Oracle, so we 'll talk about the evolvement, I guess, of Oracle later on, but I want to focus a little bit on your career.
Speaker 2:So your career career one of the hardest things about recruiting for those companies that you was working with, and especially those projects- was not only did you need really tough skill set, a really tough skill set which at the time, back then was was quite a tough skill set to find, that payroll guys was like okay, that's. Oh, and, by the way, they need to be SC cleared. Yes, like that just added another level of complexity to the recruitment process.
Speaker 4:It certainly did, and there are other elements in that. You know you would think there'd be a global weekly teams call with everybody who wants to implement Oracle, be whatever industry they're in. It's like, oh yeah, atomic Weapons Authority, awe.
Speaker 4:So yeah, we're going to have a massive program, All right, okay, so that's going to hoover up all the people, so that bumps the rates up and the availability and it's now difficult to staff. You've got to have you know as an organization like yourself, you've got to know what else is going on around you. You can't just say, right, the M&D project and you don't get everybody well, the.
Speaker 4:NHS is kicking off and Pfizer having a big project and OCS are taking on lots of people and all of a sudden, it makes your job a lot harder because there's so many people after that smaller pool of resources that are available. Yeah, which is why you've always got to have your you know you've got your black book but your second black book and having the foresight to bring along the younger generation and the grads and the less experienced people who can come along for that journey, because there's only a finite pool of resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, 100%. Do you remember when slightly off topic, but do you remember when the RCUK project kicked?
Speaker 4:off, I do Research Council.
Speaker 2:yes, yeah and do you remember what that did to the market?
Speaker 4:It did, and that was an interesting one because they thought they would like to hoover up lots of people. I think when I was at Hitachi we did a bid for RCUK. I'm trying to remember the outcome now, but there was rc uk um, heathrow baa, as it was then. That just kicked off a massive transformation and it's like where's everybody gone? You know, what can we do? Where are we going to get people? We can't just put people on boot camp for two weeks.
Speaker 4:One thing we did, which was, I guess, evolutionary at the time, was that when we were at JPA, the military, we invested in South Wales and we had a boot camp which I delivered some of the training for, for grads or people who haven't worked with Oracle before, and brought along about 25 people, because we recognised on a three or four year program, you know, you, you can tie people into a certain extent and there were financial incentives for people to stay. Yeah, but again, it's not necessarily enough. You need that broader pool of people in the organization, you know, and ultimately, from an SI's point of view, they, they want permanent employees for various different reasons.
Speaker 4:And there's absolutely nothing wrong with needing the flexibility of interim people, but for one reason or another, a systems integrator will have more of a margin on a permanent member of staff. You know, let's say, for example, they would pay them 60K and they'd sell them for 850, as opposed to.
Speaker 4:You know, traditionally, way back then, it'd be 650 a day for a contractor and you'd sell them at the same rate. So you know there was that incentive to try and get as many permits as possible, but that was all blown out of the water. There wasn't. You know, can I have 10 permanent people on Monday? It's like good luck, I'm not even going to get you one. So you know it was. I think, if you look, there are periods in my life where the ability to resource projects has been completely dominated by the individuals and the candidates. I'm not quite sure where it is now maybe you can tell me, but it's sort of somewhere in between. But it's been difficult to resource some projects, which is why organisations like yourself are so important. They take away all of that headache, do?
Speaker 2:you see it like that honestly, because I know we've never actually sat down and spoken about you know, I've never really asked you, really asked you how do you feel about recruiters, do? I mean, I'm very and I'm very conscious of how customers may feel about recruiters, but I also feel like you know what I think you know I'm gonna say this a recruiter can be your best friend, but they can also be your worst enemy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would. That phrase will always be out there, but I think if you find an organisation, they are the lifeblood to you delivering, because I don't want to sit down and find, yeah, I've got a black book of probably quite a few hundred people who I can call upon for a project, but that takes a lot of effort and a lot of work and it's not just knowing that individual, it's knowing the examples of AWE kicking off.
Speaker 4:Did you know? You know we've just been talking to another organisation in government. They're about to kick something off. And having that intelligence is not just a case of like it. Well, you're going to charge me 150 a day and I don't want to pay that because I can do it myself. It's not just the markup on the individual, is having that competitive intelligence that everything else is going around you and working with an organization like yourself and there are I don't know what, the last number was 15,000 recruitment agencies in the UK. Not all Oracle, but there's a lot. My phone rings a lot and, let's say there's a good 20, 25 key players in the Oracle market who like to phone me up every day. You know.
Speaker 4:But it's not about working. I don't see an organisation like yourself as being a purely supply of resources. It's having a joint, you know, with my Vram performance hat on and we'll talk about that. It's about having a joint go-to-market strategy with people like yourself, because you've got a lot of information and so have I. We know a lot of key people and we can grow businesses together and that's how I tend to work, so it's not. You shouldn't look at it as a pure lens of oh, it's a necessary evil to have a recruiter and they're going to fleece me for a hundred pounds and I could make that margin. That is so backwards thinking.
Speaker 2:There's much more to it. I couldn't agree more. I really couldn't agree more, and I'm glad you brought it up. I think there are some really good recruiters out there.
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 2:There are some brilliant people there's some brilliant people out there, but there's some also some really not so good recruiters out there, which is a lot of the good ones, a bad name, but that's just business. I think it's better.
Speaker 4:I think the industry has sort of cleaned up its act. I mean, there are a lot of scattergunning of CVs. There's a lot of collection of CVs and information. I used to get phone calls from people pretending to be something else and trying to get information out of me. You know there's a lot of underhand tactics.
Speaker 4:I think the industry is a lot cleaner than it used to be. There's a lot more respected to it, and it is a shame for the great organizations to be, I guess brought down by certain tactics, but I think the industry is better than what it used to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, I'd agree with that to a certain extent. I think there are some organizations out there that still use those underhanded tactics, but I think this is about trust, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 4:It's about a long-term business rather than a quick sale of one person and you really screwed somebody over and so well, I'm not going to deal with them again. I've got a quick sale but I've got no long-term reputation and you want the repeat business. You want those annuity revenues and those contracts, be it in a delivery or a managed service point of view or a consulting point of view. You want that, that relationship, and it's all about relationships and trust.
Speaker 2:yeah, is a hundred percent and I think, I think that's actually from a recruits point of view as well. Yeah, you know the, the, the, the great customers that we have and we have had you know, I'm talking previous career here they've always been one based on trust. For example, if you called me up and let's say it was a Friday and you said I'm in a sticky position and I need someone by Monday, you've got to know that that person is going to work the weekend. You have to know because you've got delivery.
Speaker 4:It's that flexibility. We're all in consulting. We know that come and go live. Going back to the M&D, we worked six weekends in a row for various different reasons. It wasn't necessarily delayed For a number of reasons. We had to get some new legislation in, for example, right, okay, you've got to build up trust with somebody and treat them properly. To say can you work sixth weekend in a row? Is that okay? So if you're not a people person and you demand that, then they won't, and it's as simple as that. And the way I built up that team was very much a case of getting to know them. We'd go out for a beer, we'd talk to each other how are the kids? Rather than straight in without any pleasantries. You've got to be nice to people. Here's your work.
Speaker 2:You're working at the weekend again.
Speaker 4:Yeah, then people walk out and they don't. So you've got to build up a relationship to ask them to do that in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I know, I know that project was was was a really tough project, especially to resource for because of the element of not only the skill set but also the element of they must be sc cleared already. So you know your candidate pool goes from this to this straight away, or they must be sc clearable.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it wasn't bad in terms of it had to be dv, develop, vetting, because that can take six months, and £10,000 and lots of interviews. But in addition to that, I would say that everybody had to be a people person and have the ability to sit in a room and listen to three different, conflicting opinions and people who wanted to own the outcome and drive forward their agenda as to how a business process would work. Bring those people together to a common harmon as to how a business process would work. Bring those people together to a common, harmonised view of a business process. That was almost the biggest skill. You know the project.
Speaker 4:There was no failures around the technology. You can always. You know if there's a bug, you can fix it. You can do stuff. You can get Oracle on the phone from the States. It's the way that people behave, to bring people together and the adoption. That's why I'm working at Round Performance at the moment, because they absolutely realise the value of getting things right from a people point of view. Sas is so much. It's not a technical exercise anymore and if you remember, Mark, Hurd before he passed away he was working with Oracle and HP.
Speaker 4:when I was there he said that systems integrators will change over time with the SAS model, because it's about the functional process, knowledge, it's about the best practice. You know there are technical elements to data but again, data is not necessarily a technical exercise. It's about harmonizing your master data management. It's about cleansing your data master data management. It's about cleansing your data before you bring it into the new system. Yeah, there's integration and you might have bits of PaaS to bring in, say, fx rates from somewhere, but you've got to be off the shelf. So it's a people adoption exercise rather than a sort of technical exercise. So now SAS is very much about having candidates with people skills as opposed to.
Speaker 4:I've got a first class degree. I went to a red brick university. I'm amazing on paper, but I can't bring people together in a room and get the best outcome in a friendly way. Yeah, yeah. So that is the skill now, on top of anything technical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so the obviously the HP and the MOD project and the DWP project as well, if I remember right. Yeah, central payment system.
Speaker 4:I was up in Blackpool yeah, worst Hilton in the world I went to. You can cut that bit out if I get sued by the Hilton, but it wasn't great. No, the Hilton's great. The.
Speaker 2:Hilton's great everywhere you go, except Blackpool. No, I didn't say that, that's probably better now. I remember I went to a customer actually up there and it was the first time in the area and I did look around and go. This is nice. It was a lot of people that wouldn't go to those locations. Do you know that? Do you know what I mean? You demanded back in the day in all technologies right, not only Oracle. Do you remember the days of they've got to be on site?
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and still on site at 5 pm on a Friday? Yeah, and you know I've worked with some great clients in less exotic locations. I'm not going to, you know, drop any locations that I don't like, but you know there are. You know, sometimes you have to blindfold consultants and then take it off when they get there and don't tell them where it is. I'm joking, but you know we had some. I worked with Oracle Consulting and we had some great times in Blackpool and you know during we worked at.
Speaker 4:It was an old World War II I think it was a military hospital with the longest corridors in the world and I remember there was a lady there in the canteen she was so funny and you could have either gravy and beans with anything, so you'd have a sandwich. And she said, do you want beans with that? I thought, yeah, go on then, and we'd just be eating the finest cuisine. Do you want gravy with your sandwiches? To dunk it in like. Her menu wasn't quite Michelin 3 star, I think it was minus 3 star, quite frankly, but just the camaraderie of working with Oracle on that project was amazing and I've got so many stories which, again, I can't necessarily share. But you know, if you look at that system, it was paying 60 million people pretty much on a daily basis.
Speaker 4:So, if you think of an organization's year end. They're doing that every day and it was the heart and soul of the whole social system in the UK that was running an oracle. So it was sort of one wrong move and you're on the front pages and it was a slating and I do feel sorry for organizations and we were in private eye a couple of times and I think the press like to see a potentially bungled public sector IT implementation for any reason.
Speaker 4:They're always out there, yeah, and you know that that's the nature of the beast and you are sort of looking over your shoulder to make sure that you you're doing things from a PR perspective and doing the right thing. Ultimately you do, but it's really important that you're thinking about implementations from all perspectives and it goes back to the people as well making sure you're doing the right thing for the system that the that they're serving from a facilitation point of view you know what was it giving.
Speaker 4:If you know, I'm a single parent with three kids and I need my money paid into my account and it doesn't happen. I can't pay my rent, I can't buy food. I can't buy clothes for the kids these are mission critical systems, and if you do it for that reason, always thinking about that then you will always get the best outcome yeah don't do it for money, don't do it for PR. If your heart is in doing it for the right reason, everything else will get delivered.
Speaker 4:Because, you drive yourself by doing it for the right reason and not for any other reason, and that always helps in terms of my mentality. Why am I? Getting out of bed.
Speaker 4:Well, I've got three kids to feed and I've got everything else to do. But if you do it for the right reasons because I want to help this person get better they want to improve their lives. That's why I get out of bed, yeah it helps to have money to pay the mortgage and all that sort of thing, but that should never be the primary driver, because you won't be successful in the long run, because you'll trip yourself up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, money doesn't, money really doesn't. They say money makes the world go round, right, but I don't. I don't agree with that from a career perspective. No, I really don't. I think you've hit a nail on the head when you say, like you've got to be emotionally invested in the work that you're doing. And if you're doing it for, if you're doing it for money, you can do a great job. Doing something for money, let's, you know, may know that no bones about it, but it's got to be more. Otherwise, once you've, once you've earned that money, you kind of go I gotta go to work again, you know, because you've earned enough money, right, you've earned enough money to pay whatever you need to pay and when is enough you know, I'm just in 50 and I said I'm retiring at 55 and I think well, maybe 56, I could do a little bit more, and you know don't get me into that conversation.
Speaker 2:I was talking about it with my wife yesterday when when.
Speaker 4:when is enough? Because you know I could have. You know I'm not a mega wealthy person, I'm not interested in my third. You know offshore property and that sort of thing. But you know, yes, I could have earned a lot more money, but I'm happy I sleep at night and you know I do. Okay, don't get me wrong, but it's you've got to have that foundation of doing the right thing, because I'm a big believer in life that, yeah, there are lots of people out there. I meet them every day in terms of, yeah, they're doing it for themselves. And I think you can see through that quite quickly and it goes back to that point of trust. If you can see that somebody's doing it for themselves, how can you trust them in the long term? Because when the going is tough and somebody's doing it for themselves, how can you trust them in the long term? Because when the going is tough and somebody's doing it, for themselves will they support you, and I think, ultimately, that's what it's about.
Speaker 4:You've got to. You know, when I interview people or meet people, I want to make sure that I know that they're there for the journey if it gets tough yeah and there's been a lot of people in my life who haven't been on that journey necessarily. Maybe I didn't know at the time, but I'm a lot more cautious now and inquisitive, to make sure that I work with people who have got similar beliefs in terms of what I'm looking to achieve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny you bring this up right when you mentioned money. Money's almost one of those things that know as a recruiter. We hear it every day, every call. You know this is the money I want absolutely and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But there's other reasons. There's other reasons why candidates um, uh, move roles or clients want people, or whatever. They don't necessarily always care too much about the money and as a recruiter, you should qualify someone based on those. What we call MIT is the most important things, yes, and if money is number one, that puts your grading down of the person, because you know that, hey, you know. For example, if I, if I get you, you tell me you want a hundred grand, yeah, and you're on ninety grand in your current example. If I get you, you tell me you want 100 grand and you're on 90 grand in your current role, and then I ask you what you're going to do if the current company counter offers you to 100K and you hesitate in your response to me and I hear that I'm thinking this is a deal breaker and I don't think this person is doing it for the right reasons. Do?
Speaker 4:you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely, and I think similarly on the client side as well. You know I have lots of conversations which largely come around positively, around value versus cost. Yeah, cost is almost irrelevant. It's what value is this so? Okay? You know I'm in a world where you know if I'm a contractor. You know there's four-figure day rates out there, but it's not about how much is it costing, what value can you bring to the business?
Speaker 4:You know, if I go in at that rate or a rate that's three figures, you know you can have one conversation with the board and say do you know what that's actually saved us three million quid. It's not about, you know, looking at a piece of paper, looking at a cost and I know there is still a fixation around. You know, potentially CFOs and CapEx and not looking at the TCO, and I'll get that because there is pressure. You know budgets have been set at the start of the year etc. But look at the longer term value of what you're paying for and sometimes that is still ignored, purposefully or forgotten.
Speaker 4:And it's so important to you know not fixate on either side about that day rate or about that salary. Decide about that day rate or about that salary. If you look at post-COVID era, now it's a candidate's market in terms of well, I'm assuming I'm working from home three days a week, you've got to have come along for that ride. Yes, you will get certain CEOs saying everybody's back in the office five days a week and the candidates are effectively saying well, that's nice.
Speaker 4:I'll go somewhere where I can be a bit more flexible, because covid has allowed people to take their kids to school, to go to the dentist, to do, you know, have a life. And I think, if you trust people to work hard, I work in the evenings, I work at weekends on rfp, you know, because I know that I'm in an industry which isn't nine to five. I know that I'm in an industry which isn't 9 to 5. I know that I'm in an industry that demands that and I support If I've committed to a client to go live with a set date you know, I'll work three weekends in a row.
Speaker 4:I'll fly to India and help the team. I'll do this, that and the other Because I've signed up to that, and I've signed up to it for the right reasons. I haven't signed up to it for a day, rate or salary. I've given my commitment to a person that I'm going to do that for you and help you. It's a byproduct isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the money of it becomes a byproduct, and it's needed, don't you?
Speaker 4:I think everybody should have their value and know what they're worth. But you should also be able to articulate cost versus value and say, right, okay, I'm worth this because of this, or I'll do something at this cost because of this, this and this and this. You know, it should always be about the longer term picture. Yes, as an immediate engagement, but you should be looking where else you can help that organization. Yeah, and not be.
Speaker 4:You know, I think it's much better now, but yeah, 20 years ago, you know, there was a mentality of it's five o'clock and I, years ago, there was a mentality of it's five o'clock. I know I'm on a call, but I'm leaving. Now. I'm going home, you know, and I think people, if they're treated in the best possible way, there's a work, can't play hard mentality. There's a flexibility. You know the number of times my phone goes off and it's the kids' school. It's like, right, what's happened? Just banged ahead, you need to come home immediately. Right, okay, I've got employers who it's like, yeah, off, you go, I'll do that call on the train on the way back, and I'll work in the evenings. Every organisation should be like that, because nobody's a slave to an organisation, because you're helping them, unless you're the owner get to a better place.
Speaker 2:So you know, everybody should respect each other in terms of how they're working. Yeah, I agree, I absolutely agree. I, I was, I was coming on to um.
Speaker 2:I'm a lot more philosophical since the first time we met, right now they're in the 70s like me, yeah, and some, um, and it's funny right about about six months ago, I, I'm uh, I'm of these people where I think really deeply, when I've got time to think really deeply, which is usually on the train or whilst I'm driving along the way, and I got off at London Bridge and I was thinking about why people do things right. Don't ask me why I was thinking about why are people coming into London? Right, why people do things Right. Don't ask me why I was thinking about why are people coming into London? Right, some of them don't live in London. Why are they having to travel into London and they're walking across the bridge in the morning and stuff like that. And, as you know, when you're walking across the bridge, there's loads of people there. So I'm the guy that's there with my headphones on and they're not on, right, so I just wanted to I put my noise canceling head, I'm not listening to focus on what I'm thinking about and I'm walking across this bridge.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking I was looking around people. It's really embarrassing me saying this, right, but I will say it. I was looking around at people, just thinking. Do you know what All of these people have got families or they're going to have families, and most of these people are good people. They're just good people and they're just trying to do the best for themselves and the best for their families and earn money, and that's okay. Do you know what? I don't know why I was thinking it. I did and I thought I think I've done a post on it. Actually, when I got to the office, yeah.
Speaker 4:I think everybody's got something going on. There's lots of memes on the internet around.
Speaker 4:You know everybody's got some stuff going on in their life and you don't know what's going on, you know just be nice and kind to people yeah, and know I've had a few instances in my life when it's not been amazing and you turn it to work and put on a brave face and then just gone outside and screamed or had a cry or gone for a beer and something. And you know there's a lot of stuff going on. You know, and we're in quite a challenging geopolitical environmental situation at the moment. It's quite precarious. And geopolitical environmental situation at the moment it's quite precarious and you've got to stop and think because the plug could be pulled in so many directions short-term, medium or long-term for any of us. So you've got to give yourself time to take stock.
Speaker 4:Stop on London Bridge and just have a look around you and look at the big pointy thing and think, oh, that's good, you know, and you've got to make time for yourself and I think, yeah, mentally I've been through some challenges and you know times in my life when, well, you know this isn't good and you build it resolve and strength and you learn from it and coping mechanisms. But life shouldn't be about having coping mechanisms, mechanisms for everything. It should be about just choosing the right direction to go and work with the right people that share your ideas and beliefs in doing the same thing and largely I believe if you work hard and you do the right thing, largely the money will sort itself out and everybody will write. You know direct people. I'm a director. Yes, I occasionally do something, but in pointing I'm a director.
Speaker 2:Not all directors are like that, by the way.
Speaker 4:And it's very much. I direct my kids. I don't sort of sit down and micromanage them. You know, if my daughter's 15 and she, you know, she doesn't let me know where she is and it's dark, and it's two hours, and I've heard from her, you know, and I'll phone her up and she's out with her mates in a cafe and she's quite happy doing stuff, you know. But when she comes home I will direct her in terms of you know, maybe let me know what's going on, it's dark, etc.
Speaker 4:And it's using your experience to chaperone and direct people, because I can't be a presence at user group, a programme manager, a head of Oracle and a programmer, because you can't be all of that you should. Each time you move on to something, I'm somebody who, within three years, I want to move on to the next thing. Yeah, and ideally it's. It's not necessarily upwards, but a different challenge. I'm not particularly interested in being a ceo, particularly interested in being on the front pages of magazines, but I want to go into something that is another challenge and, ideally, sort of 50% worth of they've done that 50% before.
Speaker 4:But this be you haven't because that was that gets me out of bed and say before yeah, now I'm gonna do a bit research, I'm gonna do this and just experience and yeah, that went pretty well. So keep building upon it. And adding 50% of what you've not done before is my challenge. I must admit, I don't get motivated by doing exactly the same thing for another company, because you're always going through the motions. In my view, it's got to be exciting, it's got to be different, it's got to be a challenge and that's what I like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Obviously. Do you know, when I first met you, I didn't have any inclinations to start my own company.
Speaker 4:Interesting. I've been involved in various different ventures. I've probably spent two thirds of my life as a permie, although I've been saying that for years, so it's probably about half my life as a permanent employee now, and various different ventures. You do learn. You learn a lot. You know I spent a lot of time in investment banking and you know that is an industry that came out of the 80s and there are some interesting people there and you do learn a lot.
Speaker 4:You learn you know, you learn. You know you learn when not to talk, you learn when to listen and you learn when to take notes. Yeah, I remember getting there probably a couple of bollockings in my life from just not being prepared. One of those, the MAD. Yeah, I went into a meeting and was requesting stuff and the person I worked for was such a meticulous attention to detail I didn't know the answers. And.
Speaker 4:I was clipped around the ear and basically told not to come back, and you think I've learned a lot from that. And then, yeah, an instance in investment banking where, yeah, that can be a tough crowd, you know before the days that you know the financial crisis and again so the banks looking at different ways of behaving.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that could be a tough industry as well. Now. Most clients are tough to work because they expect there's a lot of. I think, more so now if you look at the way that organizations operate. People want to walk a lot more with a lot less, you know, which is why I think Jenny and I is coming into the fall, because you can get a lot more with a lot less spend. But I think people's behaviours have changed and they've had to behave. You know there's only so much that you can stripe off or sharpen your pencils to the point where, say, a systems integrator can't deliver it. And if you can't deliver something, say at a fixed price, but you accept it, then behaviors change right from day one, because if you've been really sort of driven into the ground on price, it immediately affects behaviors and your outcome isn't the best it could be yeah, and I think that is goes back to my cost and value.
Speaker 4:You know, if one part of the organization is saying we've only got. I work for organizations who say I've got 600K and I've already told the business I'm going live in September. All right, okay, we're interested to know how you know what your plan is. No, we've already told them that that's happening and you've already driven a stake through, potentially the success of what's going on. And then you get bids in from suppliers and they're all a million pounds and you're having to de-scope already and you can't deliver. So you've got to work with organizations and I always say there's four legs to a stool, and then I remember three of them. I can't remember the fourth one. But you've got to work with the client. You've got to work with Oracle, you've got to work with the systems integrator and, importantly, work with organizations like the Oracle User Group, where we've got hundreds of customers who are doing the same thing. Yeah, I want to talk to you about that, don't talk to other people.
Speaker 4:Maybe it's a good segue, but there are four component parts to success and you've got to work in partnership. You've got to leave your badge at the door. You've got to think well. I'm from a consultancy X9, from here. Sometimes contracts are devised right from the start where people are competing. They're not working as a team. And if you look at some of the projects I've worked on, the best ones I've worked with are the joint risk and reward approach and so if we all do well, we all do very well. If we all do badly, we all share the financial pain, the pain of correcting things. So let's all work better together and I always propose that if there are multiple partners involved commercially, you look at those contracts from a holistic point of view rather than a. These people are driven by a fixed price. These people are driven by this. They're not going to talk to each other properly because their contract has dictated that there are dependencies on these other organizations to do their bit. So procurement and contract management from a big implementation point of view is really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you think? How do you think that Oracle has changed over the years? So if we span that over 20, let's say, 20 years, how do you think Oracle has changed as an organization? Has it changed as an organization? Oracle has changed as an organisation. Has it changed as an organisation? And, in your opinion, how has the product got so much better? Because what I'm seeing at the moment and, as you know, we're about to launch an Oracle division within the Focus Cloud Group and there was a period back in, I guess, pre-covid, when that Fusion product did not have the best reputation and it allowed because Oracle somewhat has a very good user base, of course, in the UK and Europe and, of course, the US, but the new Fusion product allowed other vendors to scoop up some of those customers and I know that they have improved that since. Okay, so how do you think? Do you know what?
Speaker 4:You've almost answered that question and it's very perceptive in how you've summarised the last 10 years. So if you look at when I started in 2005, I did Oracle Database, forms 3 and character-based stuff and did a bit of Power Builder and there's been times when I think all vendors have been either caught sleeping or they've potentially been a bit too belligerent and arguably arrogant in that we're in charge, but there's a few guys in a shed at the bottom of the garden who are developing some cool stuff. You know, and I think that's happened two or three times, if you look at any vendor and it's not just oracle- it is sort of a bit of a rowing race like that in terms of, you know it's good to have that competition.
Speaker 4:You know, if you go back to Oracle in 95, they brought out forms for which was a GUI based, post character based implementation and it was a bit flaky, it wasn't so very quickly got reputation. So he had organizations and products like power builder, like Fox Pro and a few others which were, you know, visual Basic back in the day where they just leapfrogged a product. If you look at which is the reason I use Macs if you look at Windows 8, do you remember Windows 8? Not that old, that wasn't the best, not that old Windows 8.
Speaker 4:No, I'm just joking. Remember Windows 8? That wasn't the best. Windows 8 was. Oh, let's copy the interface on the Xbox. Everybody hated it. Well, you can still find a start bar if you and I was logged on to Windows 8. I couldn't print for about a day. I didn't know what to press, you know. So there are brave decisions and that's why we've used an Apple Mac ever since. Windows 8 is the first one. But you know, if you go back to that example in 95, where competitors saw the opportunity, they weren't necessarily. I don't think they were looking at Oracle and saying Forms 4 isn't very good. I think they just happened to be in the market at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know implementing a Windows 3.1 or Windows NT GUI development software, you know Microsoft were software. Microsoft were ahead of the game there as well. If you look at Oracle had a glory period of probably 10 or 15 years of from an app's point of view. There's a million bespoke bits and bobs going on in the database and that was all brilliant. Still in Forms, forms 4.5 is a brilliant product reports discoverer. I just love.
Speaker 4:Designer 2000 wrote training courses, a great suite of products really sweet, really good, and you know I could hang my hat on it, because if you're trying to implement something which you don't believe in, that's tough as well. You can't implement slideware, you can't implement something that's flaky and when you press on a button to save, it gives you a gpf or a blue screen of death and it all crashes. You know there's only so many times you can survive that with a customer. If you going back to your question, if you look at erp, for example, you know 1103, 11, 10, brilliantly stable products, 12, brilliantly stable. I wouldn't say that Fusion's ever been unstable. I think it's still. It's come on leaps and bounds.
Speaker 4:When we talk about that Redwood interface and so on, there were famously there was a time it's all over YouTube when Larry said cloud, what's all the hype about cloud? It's just a program on somebody else's computer, just hosted, and there was a difference then between what cloud meant and what SaaS meant, and I think it did rest on their laurels for a few years. So you got quite a few ex-Oracle employees who were thinking, yeah, I think this SaaS business is going to be the future. It's not about just hosting it on somebody else's computer.
Speaker 4:It's about having a mentality of best practice software as a service that you access through an internet browser.
Speaker 4:Why on earth would you first of all have your own data center? Because that's hard work.
Speaker 4:Why would you want to download through? You'd have a load of floppy disks turn up or CDs turn up on your desk. Somebody would go around and say I want to implement your new software, go and have a sandwich for an hour and then they had sort of SMS downloads. So it'd be done every night. And now I've not got one piece of software that isn't core operating system downloaded.
Speaker 4:Everything's SaaS and a SaaS-first mentality. I'm a cloud advocate and a SaaS advocate as much as I absolutely adore eBusinessSuite very strong apps and limited set of products. Things are going SaaS because I think of the generally the hosting side of things. But Oracle are offering such a broad set of options for customers. They're offering multi-cloud, which is great. So Microsoft great relationship with this year. Now they're offering apps and limited.
Speaker 4:So if you look at products like people, soft, jd Edwards, siebel, the business suite and another application technology, you know you can get rid of your headache of your own data center and put it on Gen2 OCI. It's Oracle's cloud infrastructure. So you're moving that workload, moving the applications onto an Oracle server. That's cool. Or you can go down the route of SaaS. So still innovation, perhaps in limited products. You've still got regulatory changes, anything that comes in from the government, around payroll, for example, you will still get all of that functionality. You could argue that there's a lot more innovation, a lot more standardization, harmonization of product. Not to the extent, although I do talk to customers and say what say? What does SAS mean? So right, you need to go in with thoughts and the mindset of you're getting Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Are you going to change that, the way it's implemented? You're going to find that Microsoft can request a new button no, you don't.
Speaker 4:You've got to put yourself in that mindset of SAS is I don't change it. I can configure it, but not customize it. Release 12, release 11, 5, 10. Work with some organizations. They've got a thousand customizations. Yeah they could be you know, chem leases. They used to be called and, and their journey can can be troublesome.
Speaker 4:To move to the cloud yeah for some organizations, an upgrade is the right way, other organizations, a reimplementation is the right way. And the more time, more modes and acquisitions you do. And the financial crisis has meant that some organizations disappear, some get bought, some get divested. There's so many things going on. But going back to Larry's point and I don't know when, it was in the 2000s, but you could argue and Oracle will admit, there was a time of a couple of years when they kept sleeping.
Speaker 4:It's now all off the ground, bottom-up SAS products which were based on the premise of having best practice functionality that you don't change, you configure it so. And then I think there was a lot of catch-up. And now, if you look at yeah, I'm an Oracle advocate and if you look at a lot of work in HCM now, as it's called, which is their initiative for mid-enterprise, if you look at, I do a lot of work in HCM, now as it's called, which is their initiative for mid enterprise. If you look at what they're doing and their Redwood interface is brilliant. Oracle was a bit stale in terms of its interface and I think if you look at SAS, it's got to be about that user experience. You know, if you go and look at a house or a car or absolutely anything. It's your first impression and when you log on it's like that's a bit dull isn't it.
Speaker 4:I don't really want to use this every day.
Speaker 2:That was the issue, right.
Speaker 4:I think largely I don't think it was the functionality, but if you look at, you know the way that it's all set up now and the journeys. It's not a technical exercise to go and you join his movies, leave his process in HCM, for example. That shouldn't be a technical pain to enter in. What was effectively might have looked like a spreadsheet on the internet. That's where's the in August is brilliant now in terms of its.
Speaker 4:You know it's a lot about the user experience and if you listen to suffer a cloud world and, yeah, I work with them, emma Sutton a lot and she's brilliant. She's cxo, customer experience, um leader for emir and you know it's about the customer. It's about how they feel and happy customers will buy more and they'll renew. Because if you look at where apps unlimited is at the moment, customers have got a lot of choice. If they're thinking right, okay, I've got my on-prem stuff, I might go and have a look at Workday, I might go and have a look at some other stuff going on, I've got a choice. Now, if I've got to uproot everything, I'm going to go and look at different vendors.
Speaker 4:So if your product isn't at least, looking as good and the functionality is not as good as the others. You're in trouble, you've got to watch out. You've got to watch twice as hard to sell it and convince people to stay where they are. So, yeah, I think, with all vendors and Oracle's no different to anybody else. If you look at what SAP are doing Unit 4, potentially almost forcing customers to move to their SaaS products like HANA, etc they almost don't have a choice.
Speaker 4:Oracle have stuck by their customers and said you have got a choice, Because if you try and force an organization to do anything, if I try and force my kids to eat the greens, they'll hide it under the table and no one talk to me for a day. So you can't force customers to do anything. You can influence them by giving them incentives, but that incentive has got to be around harmonisation and simplifying your business with a cloud product. And Fusion is not just ERP and HCM payroll, it's the EPM suite as well, which is massively important for post-COVID scenarios of organisations. So strategic workforce planning what if COVID happens? What if there's a geopolitical crisis? And modelling everything in terms of planning and budgeting cloud service. That's just so important to de-risk your organisation because shareholders want to know that.
Speaker 4:You've modelled scenarios of another COVID. What are you going to do? They want to model that. You've modelled scenarios of another Covid. What are you going to do? They want to model a situation of some of the crises around the world. How does that impact us? If you're an oil company working in the Middle East or you've got organisations in unstable areas, have you modelled that so that your business can remain stable? If you look at some of the banks in the financial crisis. Some survived, some collapsed and you've got to spend and you've got to invest in modeling the future for your organization. Oracle EPM is great at that.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because we recently went out to market for a new financial software and we chose. So I went through the sales process with my team and we chose a product right after looking at multiple vendors, and one of the big ticks for me was if you buy this product, you're going to be able to see that the next time you do an acquisition you can see if that business drops 10% revenue or increases 20% revenue. You will be able to see what the group result will be.
Speaker 2:just have a click of a button, Lloyd and me being you know I'm not, I'm not an accountant and you know, don't ever, ever told you that I'm not an accountant. You probably know that anyway, right, but I'm not and I want, I want the best software that I can log into. You know, yes, I have a team of accountants now, you know, in our thing and they are a different mindset to what I am, and they understand all that stuff.
Speaker 4:They are, and I think you know accountants have absolutely got a firm place and they need to roll out that information to you to be able to make those decisions. I think if you run a business based on accountancy, ultimately you'll fail because you're driving the wrong behaviors. Your business should be based on people, experience and not accountancy. If you're obsessed by the numbers, then ultimately you will drive people away.
Speaker 2:So obviously you're the president of the Oracle.
Speaker 1:User group. Why did you?
Speaker 2:set that up. Why are you in? Because the Oracle user group has been going for a long time, right 41 years this year. So why did?
Speaker 4:you want to do that? What's the kind of motivation? So it was largely around my interest in customer journeys. Because and wanting goes back to that four legs on the stool there was always that missing piece. I always had a bit of an interest in the passion for user groups. Because it was, it was a volunteer organization, it's a not-for-profit organization and, again, that drives the right behaviors. As soon as you put commercialism behind anything, it drives the wrong behaviors because you, you act in a different way to get money going back to other, shout out Simon Hayes I work with.
Speaker 4:He was my boss. He was the chairman of the user group in 97. I thought, oh, he's really cool and important. I said I was just a programmer when I was 23 or something. It's like one day I could do that role. And I was just joking. And he dropped me a note a year ago saying you know, I remember.
Speaker 4:I remember when you were sat there, you know, delivering training courses or something, and he was, and now it's sort of you know, it's really interesting of you know, I don't know who was looking down on me for me to go into that role.
Speaker 4:26 years later I wouldn't have even thought about it. But the more and more I worked in change and transformation, the more and more it sort of naturally felt to be a people, person and that be the. I guess the route to successful implementations is understanding what a client wants, because you've got salespeople who want to sell products, you've got systems integrators who you know everybody's got the best intentions, but you've got to have so many different elements for it to be a success. So I applied to be the member advocate. I sort of sat and looked at the user group from afar, presented these groups in Birmingham and various things that presented the MAD case study, and always looked at it from afar. It's quite interesting to do. I don't have any hobbies. I do Oracle as a hobby as well. That's really sad. So I do have hobbies and it was a case of. So I applied to be a member advocate and I didn't get it. I thought, okay, then I'll leave that alone.
Speaker 3:They phoned me up afterwards and said I know you didn't get it but can you, is there something else you want to do with us?
Speaker 4:so I was just on the board as a minister with that portfolio and I sort of got to know everybody. I thought, yeah, no sort of shaping stuff. And then, you know, recognized that post-covid, the organization was shot to pieces, used to be a rich organization with 20 permanent staff. Now we're still, you know, looking down by the sofa for pennies sometimes, you know, but still providing organisations with the ultimate support that they need. It's valuable, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's absolutely valuable.
Speaker 4:And so.
Speaker 3:I decided to be president which yeah, sounds like a great, fantastic role.
Speaker 4:I don't have a long red tie. I haven't worn a tie for years, but it's a role that I haven't worn a shirt for years. No, I'm just joking. I've dressed down for nine years. So, no, I'm not usually. I'm normally at home in a t-shirt watching Netflix. When I'm not. So it was, it was a case of no, I do. You know what people who work for the user they don't know why they do it it's a bit like a tractor beam.
Speaker 4:So I must do it, I must work these good, but because, again, it's just the right thing to do and it's not commercially motivated. I don't get anything from the use group. I think they paid my flights go to somewhere recently, but no, it's a voluntary role, because what?
Speaker 4:it allows me to do is learn more about the Oracle product set, how you implement it and learn more about, I guess, the challenges and how people are feeling. So what that does in my day job allows me to have, you know, guide people for a smoother journey, which, again, ultimately you know, the byproduct is yeah, I need to earn some money, but it's all being absorbed.
Speaker 4:I talked to lots of different ones at manchester retail company the other day and I just listened. Okay, you know, I always say the biggest skill is listening and not talking. And I've spoken a lot, but listening to, to customers and gathering that sleeping on it. And I gave this retail organization a 10-point plan of setting them on a better course how to work with SI, how to work with Oracle over Christmas, where these guys are doing millions of stock movements every day, and I got a lot out of that. A cup of tea would be nice, but didn't get any. You didn't get a cup of tea or a coffee. No, I'm joking.
Speaker 4:We went to Greg's actually I'm not giving away the company.
Speaker 1:I treated everybody to Greg's After the podcast.
Speaker 4:No, it wasn't Greg's, no it wasn't, I went to Greg's, plugged for Greg's. I do love Greg's sausage rolls, good for my cholesterol. And yeah, why do I do it? Do you know what? I don't know, but I do it because somebody needs to do it and somebody needs to be in charge and bring it back on its feet to its glory days yeah. And yeah, it's just something I really enjoy doing.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I like being up on stage and beaming up pictures in front of Oracle of Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes because I'm a Mercedes fan, sorry Oracle and you know making it a bit more light-hearted, but again, sort of attracting people to, ultimately, the knowledge that we've got the connections, that we've got the networking. You know networking. You know it's a fantastic organization. So we're rebranding. I've got some new branding on my phone which I've been looking at. We've got Leona bringing in some great assets around just managing the organization. She's got her own CX company, so she's ceo.
Speaker 4:Yeah, um, it's very important to be independent from oracle, but in order to get the right knowledge from our for our customers, we need to be very closely to oracle. Yeah, my role isn't to necessarily really give oracle a hard time. It's to understand the best way to get things done, the the challenges. So I've spent a lot of time working with Oracle to make sure that everybody works closely together. Yeah, so, yeah, we've had a renewed support and worked hard and you know we do give up our own time to do this and it's a great team. Shout out to that team who put on events for 700 people with less than a handful of volunteers.
Speaker 2:That's dedication and hard work and doing it for the right reason, for no commercial value to them, it's good. Well, look, I want to say to you that you know when I decided that we are going to launch this Oracle division.
Speaker 2:I was sitting there in my office at home and I thought and we're talking about years and years and years ago, right, so we haven't done Oracle yet. We've been doing some Oracle stuff in the background for our customers and helping them to find some people, and we've made lots of placements and all that sort of stuff, but we've not physically launched this division yet. And we've made lots of placements and all that sort of stuff, but we've not physically launched this division yet. And when we first spoke a few months ago after many years, I was sitting in my office at home and I thought I rack my brains about all my old Oracle contacts and I thought Pepper, I really did. I thought he was a great guy.
Speaker 4:Is that Pepper, the Oracle robot? He's called Pepper, no.
Speaker 2:Richard Pepper, richard Pepper. So, richard Pepper, you've got a very distinctive name, right? Yeah, it's not like I can get you confused with someone else.
Speaker 4:It's not it's quite a few. There's a Jason, there's a Robert, there's one at Version 1, there's two at Oracle. There's quite a few.
Speaker 2:Is there? Yeah, okay, yeah, they must be in thesince the period.
Speaker 4:I've been out right. I think they must get all of my commission payments, because I haven't seen any recently.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure what's going on, but I want to say I want to say I think that you've got you definitely got, you know a very good reputation in the marketplace. Thank you, I commend you for the Oracle user group stuff that you do. I think it's brilliant. It can only help the ecosystem, right. That's what it's about. Yeah, Congratulations.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming in. Good luck with your new ventures in Oracle Well yeah, I'm looking forward to it.