Value Driven Data Science: Boost your impact. Earn what you’re worth. Rewrite your career algorithm.

00:00:00 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Hello and welcome to value driven data science brought to you by Genevieve Hayes Consulting I'm doctor Genevieve Hayes and today I'm joined by Dasan Premadasa to discuss ways in which data scientists can improve the customer experience for the end users of their work. Dasan is the founder of DAS.
00:00:20 Dr Genevieve Hayes
DX and independent business analyst consultancy that helps businesses with their digital transformations and IT project delivery.
00:00:30 Dr Genevieve Hayes
He's also the host of the DAS CX show on YouTube.
00:00:35 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Dasan, welcome to the show.
00:00:37 Dasun Premadasa
Thanks for having me Genevieve.
00:00:39 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Few months back I had the pleasure of appearing on the Dash CX show and we talked about how businesses can make use of AI and machine learning and where we see those technologies heading in the not too distant future. Now we had a fantastic time doing that.
00:00:57 Dasun Premadasa
We did, we sure did.
00:00:59 Dr Genevieve Hayes
It was about an hour long recording, but afterwards we ended up talking for maybe an hour or two more.
00:01:07 Dasun Premadasa
About two hours, yeah.
00:01:08 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And we discussed everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to ways in which technical people can often trip up when it comes to customer experience.
00:01:23 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, yeah we did.
00:01:25 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So we decided we'd continue this conversation, and that's exactly the topic we've got for you today.
00:01:33 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, it's a very exciting topic, it's.
00:01:35 Dasun Premadasa
Number one when when you have.
00:01:37 Dasun Premadasa
A conversation with somebody. You always think it's gonna be the interview and that's where you're gonna cover all the interesting bits.
00:01:44 Dasun Premadasa
But it's funny that we ended up talking a lot more about Marvel ideas, obviously with who who's who's our favourites, and also ended up talking about.
00:01:54 Dasun Premadasa
How data analytics and how customer experience? How all those?
00:01:58 Dasun Premadasa
Things work together.
00:02:00 Dasun Premadasa
And how they are all interdependent on each other.
00:02:03 Dasun Premadasa
To deliver the results. So yeah, so I I I hope we can wrap everything today, cover everything we want to cover or else we may have to do maybe.
00:02:13 Dasun Premadasa
Two or three more.
00:02:15 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I would be very happy to do that.
00:02:18 Dasun Premadasa
Same yeah.
00:02:19 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So to begin with, Dasan, you originally started off as a software developer. Now somewhere along along the line, you shifted to focus on the end. User experience seems like quite a shift.
00:02:33 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Can you walk us through your journey from software developer to customer experience consultant and tell us why you made that shift?
00:02:43 Dasun Premadasa
Well, that's an exciting question because if nobody have asked me that.
00:02:46 Dasun Premadasa
Before let's sit the grown back like a foundation is I'm a geek straight up straight away exam and that stuff I do and things like that.
00:02:58 Dasun Premadasa
But but growing up, always want to be a software developer because that was for me. That was a cool thing to do to build new things, and you can actually make things come to life, but I will always, even though I was a software developer, web developer, UI developer, whatever it is.
00:03:19 Dasun Premadasa
Whatever the rules, those.
00:03:20 Dasun Premadasa
Rules I had an opportunity to interact with customers and the clients and the employees. The people who are using this these systems so I enjoy that whole aspect of linking technology.
00:03:35 Dasun Premadasa
With the business and the use it.
00:03:37 Dasun Premadasa
Delivered so I was more.
00:03:39 Dasun Premadasa
Attracted to that part than the actual technology of the solution at the the technology behind the solution.
00:03:47 Dasun Premadasa
I've always focus on the application.
00:03:50 Dasun Premadasa
Of the technology to the business. So for me you can have the always been a guy you.
00:03:56 Dasun Premadasa
You look at our technology and go.
00:03:59 Dasun Premadasa
It's a cool technology, but then I'm the I always look at it. OK, how can we apply this to to improve the user's life or or the business?
00:04:09 Dasun Premadasa
Or whatever it is.
00:04:10 Dasun Premadasa
So I always have that tendency and then obviously growing up. In Sri Lanka you have these.
00:04:17 Dasun Premadasa
Large soft houses.
00:04:18 Dasun Premadasa
We actually.
00:04:18 Dasun Premadasa
Worked, but when?
00:04:19 Dasun Premadasa
I moved to Australia. I ended up working for a lot of organisations as that technical person.
00:04:28 Dasun Premadasa
So that means lot of interactions with the business. A lot of interaction with the users and so on.
00:04:34 Dasun Premadasa
So eventually I realised that I really love doing that because I don't think I'm a full on introvert person and I wouldn't call myself a complete extrovert as well.
00:04:43 Dasun Premadasa
I'm that there's somebody in the middle, a hybrid I think.
00:04:48 Dasun Premadasa
The the whole part.
00:04:50 Dasun Premadasa
Of business analysis. Why I became a business analyst?
00:04:53 Dasun Premadasa
Because I looked at that role and I went look that's a role where you gonna play that entire life cycle of the project you're gonna get involved at the beginning of the project and you're gonna be there until the change management. That's way beyond the involvement of a software developer.
00:05:10 Dasun Premadasa
In the life cycle, and I'd love that piece like I love the whatever the technology we build. You build it to the best way you can.
00:05:20 Dasun Premadasa
Then you apply it, then see you look at OK. Is that improving custom experience? Is that improving capabilities is that improving operational efficiencies.
00:05:30 Dasun Premadasa
So I was more interested in that.
00:05:33 Dasun Premadasa
So that's how I ended up becoming moving into the BA part of the function, so I still call myself this terminology.
00:05:42 Dasun Premadasa
It recently I think last year I heard from a gardener called Business Technologist. I would put myself there as a business technology because even right now what I do. I still get excited.
00:05:55 Dasun Premadasa
If when somebody says there's a problem like that and how can we solve it?
00:05:59 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, that's the story.
00:06:01 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Now your consultant in customer experience is that basically the same thing? Or is there a slight difference again between the customer experience side and the business and?
00:06:12 Dasun Premadasa
So I've always been a I've been a business analyst for about the last 10-12 years, but the customer experience is something I've always been digital transformation.
00:06:22 Dasun Premadasa
Customer experience is something I've always been interested in even way beyond.
00:06:26 Dasun Premadasa
That so it's.
00:06:28 Dasun Premadasa
About when I'm building solution, I always look at OK, how would the?
00:06:32 Dasun Premadasa
Customers uses and how we can use it to improve the customers experience. They're having customer or the employees experience on the system we are building.
00:06:43 Dasun Premadasa
Fortunate for me. I work for a lot of organisation which actually gave me the opportunity to look at row custom experience.
00:06:50 Dasun Premadasa
How can we improve customer experience? This is like mainly.
00:06:54 Dasun Premadasa
When I was working.
00:06:55 Dasun Premadasa
For a company called Club Assist we were doing looking after battery operation for almost all the auto.
00:07:03 Dasun Premadasa
Most of the auto clubs in the world. So when we build those solutions, we always very much focus on on giving the best experience to the member. That's your RCV member and remember.
00:07:17 Dasun Premadasa
And your Rd service person. The person who's delivering the service so that shifted the way I think about stuff.
00:07:25 Dasun Premadasa
So I I pretty much looked at everything beyond that point. Like OK, how can we improve the experience? How can we improve the engagement? Because when the businesses look at these people.
00:07:38 Dasun Premadasa
You want to retain your member.
00:07:40 Dasun Premadasa
So you have to make sure you continuously deliver the best experience to your member. Also, you have to make sure that you retain your service providers as well, because these are contractors.
00:07:52 Dasun Premadasa
So how can you improve your experience when you're delivering that service to them so they keeps coming back? Because in lot of instances.
00:08:00 Dasun Premadasa
These companies it's where you find a company that pretty much dominate the market because they are the only people who provide these solution.
00:08:09 Dasun Premadasa
Right, so that defining factor is customer experience. How do you make your customer? How do you make your member?
00:08:16 Dasun Premadasa
How do you make your contractor enter you feel about you so you they look beyond price, so that's where the custom experience it. So I've always been that and I felt like.
00:08:29 Dasun Premadasa
I enjoy it a lot more when I look at it like that and also like then after that I ended up working for a company called Treasury Wine Estates where we had a very similar.
00:08:41 Dasun Premadasa
When I did the digital, they hired me to do their.
00:08:44 Dasun Premadasa
Digital transformation for their B2B sales operation.
00:08:48 Dasun Premadasa
So the 1st 12 months I need the strategy and then the next three or four years I ended up implementing it with with a team of course.
00:08:58 Dasun Premadasa
And we looked at it.
00:08:59 Dasun Premadasa
Through a similar lens where we looked at the beach.
00:09:02 Dasun Premadasa
The sales team service providers. How we can make their life easy so they can go and provide a better service for their customers.
00:09:11 Dasun Premadasa
And also we looked at OK. What are the problems these people are having so we can actually address those issues?
00:09:18 Dasun Premadasa
Give them capabilities. Give them technologies so they can do a better job. I would say for the last 10 to 12 years it's pretty much been around custom experience.
00:09:31 Dasun Premadasa
Centric jobs where I ended up so whenever somebody says digital transformation, in my opinion that's 11. Aspect is customer experience improvement and then capability improvement. Then obviously you have people and.
00:09:50 Dasun Premadasa
So those are the things you look at, so that's how it shifted from developer business analyst to a customer experience because you can have programmers who are customer experience focus programmers.
00:10:03 Dasun Premadasa
You can have.
00:10:04 Dasun Premadasa
A BA whose custom experience specialist BA.
00:10:07 Dasun Premadasa
You can have a project manager.
00:10:09 Dasun Premadasa
Who's actually a specialist in?
00:10:11 Dasun Premadasa
That area, so it's more like a specialisation I'll I'll look at it that way.
00:10:17 Dr Genevieve Hayes
What got me really interested in customer experience was a comment that was made by a previous guest on this podcast, Jonathan Stark. In Jonathan's episode, we discussed building your authority as a data scientist. One of the suggestions he made was that rather than going super deep technically
00:10:37 Dr Genevieve Hayes
The data scientist could also build a niche for themselves by becoming very good at delivering a superior user experience, because this is something that technical people often neglect. What are your thoughts about that comment?
00:10:50 Dasun Premadasa
I mean, we can't say it any better than that.
00:10:53 Dasun Premadasa
Because even if you look at developers, but I'm I'm gonna go back to that example. So you have your developers who are full on introverts.
00:11:03 Dasun Premadasa
If you work.
00:11:04 Dasun Premadasa
In a business, this is my experience. I know some great developers who are introverts who actually just do that thing, but.
00:11:13 Dasun Premadasa
What business, if you're actually working in a business, you have a person who look at things from the business application, business value point instead of a technology point, those people.
00:11:25 Dasun Premadasa
In the long.
00:11:26 Dasun Premadasa
Run adds more value to the business and the businesses appreciate.
00:11:29 Dasun Premadasa
With them all were the ones who just focus on technology. So so in his point where he actually said the data scientists instead of technology, they have to look at the applications and the user experience and things like that. That is more improved because our our done this.
00:11:49 Dasun Premadasa
Example, once I wanted to do a trial or a test like this, So what I did was we built two solutions.
00:11:58 Dasun Premadasa
For a group of companies we have one. We built a really good UI, amazing UI, but we didn't spend too much time on capability.
00:12:09 Dasun Premadasa
The other one, the capabilities was top notch. We had the best.
00:12:14 Dasun Premadasa
Developed so yeah.
00:12:15 Dasun Premadasa
But the UI wasn't good for over.
00:12:18 Dasun Premadasa
12 months people in that good you. I want trace that solution. They loved it. They told this is the best thing ever.
00:12:27 Dasun Premadasa
The people who got the bad UI with the bad user experience that system they hated it, even though that did the job.
00:12:36 Dasun Premadasa
Better than anything else they had. Simple as that the user experience plays a massive role in when it's come to choosing who you prefer.
00:12:48 Dasun Premadasa
Customer experience, same story. People would pay a little bit extra to get that special feeling. Ease of use.
00:12:57 Dasun Premadasa
Like I don't think I'll ever go beyond an Apple phone because I find it very user friendly compared to. I have an Android which I use for development, but I've never see myself using one of.
00:13:11 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I think Apple is the best example of a company that understands customer experience.
00:13:17 Dasun Premadasa
Oh yeah, 100% hands down.
00:13:19 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Even just looking at the Apple stores Full disclosure, I have an Apple Phone, but I have a Dell PC.
00:13:26 Dasun Premadasa
Just like me.
00:13:27 Dr Genevieve Hayes
But one of the things I've noticed if you go into a shop where you buy a regular laptop, it's Geek central.
00:13:33 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Whenever my parents need a new laptop, they always bring me along because I can speak geek and I can make sure that they actually get what they want rather than sometimes you see those people there and they go in and they say to the salesperson. I just want a lap.
00:13:49 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Top and the person can sell them just about anything because the person who's buying it doesn't have a clue.
00:13:55 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And yeah, I feel.
00:13:56 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Sorry for them but.
00:13:58 Dr Genevieve Hayes
If you look at a Apple Store, it's actually targeted at normal people who can't understand all of these technical aspects of laptops and computers and.
00:14:10 Dasun Premadasa
100% like we can talk about Apple like every day. I love how.
00:14:15 Dasun Premadasa
They do it.
00:14:16 Dasun Premadasa
They started opening like have you seen that interview Larry Else and did with with somebody and he talks about when because him and Steve Jobs are best buddies. So when when Steve Jobs came and told him that we are opening up stores?
00:14:32 Dasun Premadasa
Because Oracle they run Oracle.
00:14:35 Dasun Premadasa
The checkout systems and ERP, so I think they're still running Oracle there, so they're like oh so you're only gonna open one he's like now we're gonna open it everywhere so they in a time when everybody's shutting down stores and stuff this guy just went and did it and it's still working did something right?
00:14:54 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Steve Jobs was fantastic and I think part of the reason why Steve Jobs was so successful was because he was not a developer first and foremost. But he understood how to speak to developers.
00:15:07 Dasun Premadasa
100%.
00:15:08 Dr Genevieve Hayes
That pairing of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was what made Apple so powerful.
00:15:13 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, and also he got into this guy who Bill Gates to help him out as well. For him it's it's all about the outcome.
00:15:23 Dasun Premadasa
Delivering a good user experience, I mean this with the surface and Microsoft Surface, and that was the idea for him to put the apple.
00:15:32 Dasun Premadasa
The phone, I think the first iPhone, they they he want to put make it smaller so it will fit in a pocket so it again it's it's the experience.
00:15:43 Dr Genevieve Hayes
The fact is, people like things that look.
00:15:45 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Me another example I can think of is back when I was in high school we had this horrible maths textbook.
00:15:52 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Each page in it looked like it was typed on an old-fashioned typewriter from a technical point of view, I'm sure it was fine, but I hated using that textbook because it was just so ugly and I liked using the nice pretty.
00:16:07 Dr Genevieve Hayes
One with the nice new glossy pages and the new texts and the pretty pictures and the information could have been exactly the same, but it was all the presentation and the user.
00:16:19 Dasun Premadasa
So it matters. It's just like when you're giving a presentation, you can put colours and make it pretty, or you just can do it in a really ****** face. But message sometimes doesn't get through to the people, so I think you're that's what. Jonathan Jonathan, right?
00:16:36 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah Jonathan.
00:16:37 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, and I I completely agree with you what he said. It's all about. This is what I'm telling my.
00:16:43 Dasun Premadasa
New BA as well. It's all about application business use. If you can't use it, there's no point. It can't just because it's a new technology, it's fancy. Unless there's a business application to it, it's just useless.
00:16:59 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So why do you think technical people do tend to neglect the customer experience side of things?
00:17:04 Dasun Premadasa
I think it's what gets gets you excited when you have a project and if you just have a developer doing everything.
00:17:12 Dasun Premadasa
Projects fail if the developers the B. If the developers, the developer if he's the project manager. If he's the better, and if he's a support, there's a massive possibility that project gonna fail.
00:17:24 Dasun Premadasa
You need those different people coming from different angles and try to drive the ship to the destination you need.
00:17:32 Dasun Premadasa
And you need a good DBA who actually look at it from the business perspective and convert those.
00:17:39 Dasun Premadasa
So the developers can understand clearly and then you need PM's to lead the ship. Get it done, get to the destination.
00:17:48 Dasun Premadasa
I think the developers the at least. When I was studying we were so focused on the device. If you're doing an engineering degree, that's your engineering.
00:17:59 Dasun Premadasa
Everything's numbers every this and that you do not talk about the fluffy stuff like you know how does the person think what's your feeling? And this and.
00:18:09 Dasun Premadasa
That they don't talk about that.
00:18:11 Dasun Premadasa
And then, but if you go to an art school or something like that, you actually think about this.
00:18:16 Dasun Premadasa
Those things, right? That's why developers never don't like to work with UI designers and things like that.
00:18:23 Dasun Premadasa
Because they think that's a bottleneck.
00:18:25 Dasun Premadasa
You you know what I?
00:18:26 Dasun Premadasa
Mean right? It's and it's a normal thing and I don't think it's gonna.
00:18:30 Dasun Premadasa
End as well.
00:18:31 Dasun Premadasa
Anytime soon, because it's it's a personal trade thing.
00:18:36 Dasun Premadasa
For me, and I've always been the person.
00:18:39 Dasun Premadasa
Like the I.
00:18:39 Dasun Premadasa
I always prefer the business application. How? How does it look like? Even if I'm building something I wanna make sure the design also look better. You guys better.
00:18:52 Dasun Premadasa
Background has to work, but the design and the look how how, it's how does it look like from outside and what does it do?
00:18:59 Dasun Premadasa
The purpose of what we're building that's more important.
00:19:03 Dasun Premadasa
To me, but.
00:19:03 Dasun Premadasa
Then you have people who gets excited about the technology behind it. I there is one CIO who I was.
00:19:12 Dasun Premadasa
And working with him and we were in one of the leadership meetings with the directors and stuff with all the directors of the business.
00:19:20 Dasun Premadasa
And there's not.
00:19:21 Dasun Premadasa
Even a small business to the entire conversation when we were talking about the business value and things like that, that the only time that guy stood up and got very excited when we started talking about SAP Hannah some cloud something he got super excited.
00:19:40 Dasun Premadasa
And then one of the directors like well. So then this is the first.
00:19:42 Dasun Premadasa
Time I've seen.
00:19:43 Dasun Premadasa
You laugh, smile this much and got excited because they love that technology.
00:19:49 Dasun Premadasa
They love the whole the thing. It excites me more, but not that much so. So I think it's a hard wiring thing.
00:19:57 Dr Genevieve Hayes
One of the things I've found tools like Power BI are everywhere nowadays, and they're everywhere because business executives get excited when they have a pretty dashboard that they can use to access information. But a lot of developers really hate using things like.
00:20:18 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Power BI because they wanna be doing the old style coding.
00:20:22 Dasun Premadasa
100% so one of the reasons I actually moved into moved out of being a developer was I saw the trend. The technology is going. It's actually getting to a low code no?
00:20:35 Dasun Premadasa
Would pay unless you are actually in the lower level. Doing development at the core level the the the layer, the application layer, the the UI layer and that apart from the outside of the business logic layer, it all became no code low code like right now. If you look at it like.
00:20:55 Dasun Premadasa
Power apps, how powerful is it for a business with somebody with a base with Excel, expertise can pick up a A can go and create a basic automata basic.
00:21:08 Dasun Premadasa
Process using power apps and power to emit disease skills that you previously about five years ago you or 10 years ago you couldn't have done without a developer you.
00:21:20 Dasun Premadasa
Always needed it to go look at it and start calling something. It's getting to that and I'm sure there are so many no code low code.
00:21:30 Dasun Premadasa
Platforms coming up now, unless you really a good core and you're really at that level, there are so many applications are there now just targeting the general business user and giving them the ability to get it done without engaging a diva.
00:21:49 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So what you're basically saying is that because of all these, no code and low code software products, and when I think of those, I think of things like there's power BI, but you've also got your website builders like elementor for example. Those are taking the average coders.
00:22:09 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And forcing them to compete with.
00:22:11 Dasun Premadasa
Oh yeah, 100%.
00:22:12 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And you don't want to be competing with robots because the robots are always going to win.
00:22:16 Dasun Premadasa
100% and.
00:22:17 Dasun Premadasa
And average, it's it's actually anything to do with average. If you're average, you have to either pick up your game or you have to move.
00:22:24 Dasun Premadasa
On or move aside.
00:22:26 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, you've gotta move up the value chain and customer experience is a way of moving up.
00:22:31 Dr Genevieve Hayes
The value chain.
00:22:32 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, and and then.
00:22:33 Dasun Premadasa
Again, you have to. It's again going back to what you wanna do. What do you really enjoy?
00:22:37 Dasun Premadasa
Like I.
00:22:39 Dasun Premadasa
The only reason.
00:22:40 Dasun Premadasa
I I want to be a developer. Was I enjoyed building the end product. I enjoyed the end product but I knew I had to build it to see it the way I want.
00:22:50 Dasun Premadasa
To see it, but.
00:22:52 Dasun Premadasa
But then you realise look, you can get to that end point without you developing it. So that's where all your other tools. It may not be as good. It's like that conversation argument you used to.
00:23:03 Dasun Premadasa
With Java developers and C sharp developers with C.
00:23:07 Dasun Premadasa
Plus plus developers ohh yeah.
00:23:09 Dasun Premadasa
C++ you always say, Oh yeah, we don't have J like virtual machine like what you call run times.
00:23:15 Dasun Premadasa
You know, like we run through like lower code? Yeah, that's cool awesome, but the other guy gets done a lot more work.
00:23:23 Dasun Premadasa
Faster than you and things like.
00:23:25 Dasun Premadasa
That so it it's.
00:23:26 Dasun Premadasa
That same argument, again? Right now you can say.
00:23:29 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah yeah, the power and they're not good. They're not good enough. This and that yeah, but you see the business start using the system within few days of time and they they just automated the process within few days compared to few weeks and months of somebody building something.
00:23:45 Dr Genevieve Hayes
A lot of what we've been talking about so far has been in examples of software and computer hardware. In the case of Apple, but for data scientists, most of their output are going to be things like pieces of data analysis and models.
00:24:02 Dr Genevieve Hayes
What would good customer experience look like in that?
00:24:07 Dasun Premadasa
Look data science. That data itself plays a massive role in delivering customer experience, so you know the one of the first steps we do when we're actually trying to improve customer experiences. We actually have to gather data. It all starts with data and understand in the data gathering insight.
00:24:27 Dasun Premadasa
Relates operational insights, whether it's customer insights.
00:24:32 Dasun Premadasa
Whatever it is, so based on the data only we can make those decisions around. We have to do these 12345 steps to improve customer experience.
00:24:44 Dasun Premadasa
So the data is the.
00:24:45 Dasun Premadasa
Backbone of any customer experience improvement effort in the business. So if you have the data.
00:24:52 Dasun Premadasa
That's good, and if you don't have the data, you have to figure out. OK. What kind of work decisions? What kind of decisions we and for to make those decisions, what data we?
00:25:03 Dasun Premadasa
Quiet so you you that's where you actually going. You need to bring in data experts to look at the data and create those models to help us to make those right decisions.
00:25:14 Dasun Premadasa
Moving forward to improve customer experience. So am I on the right track with the with the answer here?
00:25:23 Dr Genevieve Hayes
You're looking at this from your point of view as a customer experience expert.
00:25:28 Dr Genevieve Hayes
But I'm looking at the flip side of your answer. As you're saying it, I'm thinking if I was a data scientist who was working it with you, I would be the one who would be gathering that data and building those models.
00:25:42 Dr Genevieve Hayes
If Someone Like You didn't exist within the organisation that I was working for, I'm thinking how could I use those?
00:25:49 Dr Genevieve Hayes
In order to deliver a good customer experience.
00:25:53 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And from what you're saying, I interpret that as the focus should be on the decisions that you're trying to.
00:25:59 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Like rather than on the models and the data themselves is.
00:26:02 Dr Genevieve Hayes
That right?
00:26:03 Dasun Premadasa
100% yeah. So first question you should ask is if you are the one who's interacting with the business. You have to do that engagement discovery to understand what matrix, what KPI's we trying to change.
00:26:20 Dasun Premadasa
To improve customer experience, if you try to, let's say, let's let's talk about an example. Let's say you wanna improve B2B customer offer. Retail thing that you have. So you have to first of all get OK. I'm trying to understand, improve customer experience.
00:26:40 Dasun Premadasa
That's me.
00:26:40 Dasun Premadasa
It's I have to understand, OK, what kind of action would improve customer experience?
00:26:48 Dasun Premadasa
Right, it can.
00:26:48 Dasun Premadasa
Be anything about giving them access so online order.
00:26:54 Dasun Premadasa
So today they have to call up my office and make an order. So I'm gonna give them I'm thinking.
00:27:01 Dasun Premadasa
Thinking of giving creating an online portal to do do that. So for me, what you should do is you have to have those conversations with the business users who are interacting with the.
00:27:14 Dasun Premadasa
Uh, to understand that ohh, you have to make sure you run survey so you go directly and talk to these customers and ask.
00:27:23 Dasun Premadasa
Hello Mr customer, what can we do to make it easier for you to interact with us? How we like. How can we make it easier for us to do business together?
00:27:34 Dasun Premadasa
Then you work.
00:27:35 Dasun Premadasa
Backwards, then you identify OK. What are the things we need to change? OK then break one level down. What are the KPI's to for those to understand those? What data do I?
00:27:47 Dasun Premadasa
And to make those decisions, what data models do I have to create? Then only you have to go and start creating data models.
00:27:55 Dasun Premadasa
If you do it the other way around, I have this data and be using this data. I can create this data models. Then you tell the customer use this data model.
00:28:07 Dasun Premadasa
You make your decision.
00:28:08 Dasun Premadasa
That's not gonna work. That's when you run into a lot of resistance from the business and a lot of people don't want to use it because they people are very simple.
00:28:19 Dasun Premadasa
They look at it and go. Your data model is not working right because you're not.
00:28:23 Dasun Premadasa
Addressing their pain point.
00:28:25 Dasun Premadasa
And you are making an assumption based on your experience. This data this data model.
00:28:33 Dasun Premadasa
Would help you.
00:28:34 Dasun Premadasa
It might, but it all comes down to how good are you in conveying that message, and how good are you selling it. I know some people are really good at selling that, but 85% of the time.
00:28:46 Dasun Premadasa
Let's say you will have run into a lot of.
00:28:49 Dasun Premadasa
That if you have a data scientist who have those conversations with the frontline people or the ones you are interacting with, what are the decisions you're trying to make? What are your pain points? Let's work together and work out how we can. What data you need.
00:29:08 Dasun Premadasa
What models you need and let me go and build those data models for you. That's the.
00:29:13 Dasun Premadasa
Right way to do it.
00:29:14 Dasun Premadasa
You may not have all the data. Then you have to work.
00:29:17 Dasun Premadasa
It out, how can we capture the day?
00:29:18 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So it's a directional thing, really. I think it's how data science science is taught in universe.
00:29:24 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Cities, people in schools and universities are taught to start with the data and the model because they're being assessed on. Can you fit this particular model to this particular data?
00:29:36 Dr Genevieve Hayes
It's very hard to simulate that environment where you have to start with the end user and then work out. What does that end user want.
00:29:45 Dasun Premadasa
100% and and it's that's why everybody.
00:29:48 Dasun Premadasa
Have a resignation. You just play a part in a big big in the big picture.
00:29:54
So it's a it's a.
00:29:55 Dasun Premadasa
Big book that you have your analyst, business analyst, data analyst, not data analyst business.
00:30:01 Dasun Premadasa
And it's doing the requirements. Understand what I can talk to. The data, scientist analyst, whoever it is and just explain to them.
00:30:10 Dasun Premadasa
This is what?
00:30:10 Dasun Premadasa
We're trying.
00:30:11 Dasun Premadasa
To do, do you have the data? What other data sources? How can we create the data model to support?
00:30:16 Dasun Premadasa
These dishes in the business.
00:30:18 Dasun Premadasa
So it it comes from.
00:30:20 Dasun Premadasa
There so in.
00:30:21 Dasun Premadasa
In an organisation and understanding.
00:30:23 Dasun Premadasa
University they won't teach you to be that anybody in that spectrum, they just teach you you're doing a data scientist degree or whatever it is, so that's your piece. So you are specialised.
00:30:37 Dasun Premadasa
In that.
00:30:38 Dasun Premadasa
There has to.
00:30:39 Dasun Premadasa
Be somebody else to do it or you figure.
00:30:41 Dasun Premadasa
Out that just like I did this is not a not fun for me anymore.
00:30:47 Dasun Premadasa
You have to go do something else. The really thing is just like in BS the Great one. So you have your. This may sound controversial.
00:30:57 Dasun Premadasa
For you to be great if you have that really good data scientist technical data modelling one. But if you can build that soft skills to interact with.
00:31:08 Dasun Premadasa
The customer and.
00:31:09 Dasun Premadasa
Articulate the problem and get things done.
00:31:12 Dasun Premadasa
You gonna go to complete new level, otherwise you can be OK. You can be good. You can be somebody respected in there, but if you want to be the big shot if you wanna be if you are as competitive as if you don't want to be ordinary average. If you want to be.
00:31:32 Dasun Premadasa
The best at what you do then you have to have that same thing. I tell all the beers you have. Lot of average beers are really good at you.
00:31:41 Dasun Premadasa
Just because you can write a good, uh, requirements document doesn't.
00:31:45 Dasun Premadasa
Mean you're a good DBA you.
00:31:46 Dasun Premadasa
You have to have that soft skills technical skills. You should be able to have conversations with.
00:31:53 Dasun Premadasa
IKEA Technical developers, business people and just do it like without an effort. So that's very, very limited number of BS like that.
00:32:06 Dasun Premadasa
In the world, so I'm showing the data scientist world. Also it it's a very limited number there, so you have to make sure you have that those skills. And unfortunately I don't think you need that. All look at it that way.
00:32:21 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Through my work I speak to a lot of data scientists and one of the things I've heard again and again are stories about data scientists who've built these incredible models that would.
00:32:33 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Involve pressing business problems, for example, automating some manual task and they can do it with high levels of accuracy, but they can't get anyone to use those models, so they are actually answering a problem that the business has, like you mentioned that the.
00:32:53 Dr Genevieve Hayes
The scientists should focus on, but they're also not getting take up of those data science products. How could they change that situation?
00:33:06 Dasun Premadasa
Let me make sure I understood the question. Do you wanna know if the data scientist is a business? If he's running it as a business and if you want to sell that product the solution as a product, how can we sell it through it by improving customer experience?
00:33:24 Dr Genevieve Hayes
A lot of data scientists are actually working in house. A lot of them. It might be a data scientist who's working for a big company, and they've built some models that's meant to help the internal functioning of that organisation. They've addressed customer need, and yet they're still not getting take up of.
00:33:43 Dr Genevieve Hayes
That model
00:33:44 Dasun Premadasa
But then in that case, do you have to really be honest and ask the question, is that really a problem for the user, right?
00:33:52 Dasun Premadasa
Because that's where the problem is. Lot of developers lot of.
00:33:55 Dasun Premadasa
Lot of us.
00:33:56 Dasun Premadasa
Technical people we think that's a problem.
00:33:59 Dasun Premadasa
But in the business sense, it's actually not a problem. It can be due to multiple reasons. #1.
00:34:04 Dasun Premadasa
The people person who's doing it might look at it and go oh this thing gonna can fire me. I might lose my job. That one concern, my experience what I've seen.
00:34:16 Dasun Premadasa
The other thing is the whole point of you implementing that problem. Maybe just two or three minutes a day for me to continue working with the problem.
00:34:29 Dasun Premadasa
Then me taking a step back and relook at it and interrupting my life. My world of how I do #1.
00:34:36 Dasun Premadasa
#2 you haven't sold it right to the right person, right? You might be trying to talk to somebody who's actually when it's going to customer experience as it comes down to the levels that you sell. And if you're actually somebody in the business. If you're a working person.
00:34:55 Dasun Premadasa
If you're doing the job, the financial benefit to the business. Most cases what I've seen, not a top.
00:35:02 Dasun Premadasa
Priority for you.
00:35:03 Dasun Premadasa
Is it saving me time? Is it helping me to reduce my stress levels? Is it helping me to do something really good and look really good in my next performance review? Is that going to help me win a race like a get a race like a salary increase?
00:35:24 Dasun Premadasa
Those are the big motivators for the people who.
00:35:27 Dasun Premadasa
Are in a.
00:35:27 Dasun Premadasa
Role I've seen that in government. I've seen that in private clubs.
00:35:32 Dasun Premadasa
So if you're selling a solution like in my like as a B, I've seen so many solutions and be like you can fix all this, but they don't wanna listen to it because it's not addressing their problems.
00:35:45 Dr Genevieve Hayes
They're addressing the businesses problems, but not the individual users problem.
00:35:50 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, so if that's the case, you don't go to them and try to sell it. You sell it to somebody up in.
00:35:57 Dasun Premadasa
The top CFO.
00:35:58 Dasun Premadasa
You're gonna say buy implementing this model or a sales leader, you're gonna say it's gonna help you to generate this much revenue. And it's going to help you to hit the target within short.
00:36:10 Dasun Premadasa
Period of time. It's gonna help you in the next 12 months to increase your revenue. Increase your sales volume by 30 percent 40%.
00:36:18 Dasun Premadasa
Or you talk to your CFO and it's gonna help you to reduce this much money from your P&L.
00:36:25 Dasun Premadasa
It's gone to, oh, you look at the order of the business medium scale you're gonna say look it's gonna help you to get a full visibility into your how the business runs. So whatever it is it it it's about.
00:36:39 Dasun Premadasa
Why didn't you find who you gonna pitch?
00:36:42 Dasun Premadasa
And for whom it is a big problem. It's as important as solving the problem.
00:36:48 Dasun Premadasa
Because you can't solve a problem about that PNL it's gonna save 50 grand or 50 million for the person who's pushing a button.
00:36:58 Dasun Premadasa
In a in.
00:36:59 Dasun Premadasa
A workflow he doesn't care in most of the time unless he can get the credit.
00:37:06 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And also there's a risk from those points. People's point of view that by using your model, it could make their job redundant and they could lose their job.
00:37:16 Dasun Premadasa
100% so they're gonna kick kick down and most of the most of the people don't go beyond that they there's like, oh, we're trying to solve the problem there because you haven't gone spoken to the right person.
00:37:29 Dasun Premadasa
To take that.
00:37:30 Dasun Premadasa
To to the CFO, to the person department heads. Sometimes even the department heads don't want it because his number of people that he's reporting into going to go down.
00:37:40 Dasun Premadasa
If you apply so, you have to go beyond that, so it's all about finding the right person as well. Very important when you're pitching. I'll tell you what.
00:37:50 Dasun Premadasa
That's something I'm also learning because I've started my business and I know this. I created this product for digital strategy to improve.
00:38:01 Dasun Premadasa
The performance of customer experience improve the performance of your field sales team as well as customer experience. So you go and offer that to sales people and and some low like like normal sales reps and things like that.
00:38:21 Dasun Premadasa
They even though they like it, some don't like it because that means you're giving more visibility into what they do on day to day basis to the leadership.
00:38:31 Dasun Premadasa
So by implementing those things because they just, you know, they instead of calling 7 customers, you're only calling 5 customers.
00:38:40 Dasun Premadasa
But when you actually introduce more visibility into start tracking points.
00:38:45 Dasun Premadasa
And things like that.
00:38:46 Dasun Premadasa
It's it's it's gonna you pretty much going to get caught that you're not doing it right.
00:38:52 Dasun Premadasa
So if I wanna sell that I wanna go I have to go and sell that to the the person who's either owns the business.
00:38:59 Dasun Premadasa
So runs the sales or so he can actually tweak here and there and make sure that he improves.
00:39:05 Dasun Premadasa
The sales and the sales volume.
00:39:07 Dasun Premadasa
Performance of the people and things like that. It's all about.
00:39:10 Dasun Premadasa
Who you take the idea to? Because otherwise your idea's not.
00:39:13 Dasun Premadasa
Gonna go anywhere.
00:39:16 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Understanding the motivations of the different people at different levels of an organisation.
00:39:21 Dr Genevieve Hayes
As you've been speaking, I've been thinking about this in the context of chat GPT.
00:39:26 Dasun Premadasa
I love it. I love it. I love changing P.
00:39:29 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Seems like we can't have an episode of this show without having a mention of chat Chief QT these days.
00:39:34 Dr Genevieve Hayes
You've got two groups of people that have come emerging since the arrival of Chachu.
00:39:40 Dr Genevieve Hayes
OK, you've got the people who think isn't this great. We can save all this time and we can do all this thing.
00:39:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
These things, as a result of it, but you've also got the people who are thinking, Oh my God, my job is going to cease to exist because a robot can now replace me.
00:39:56 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And if you were trying, if you were a data scientist who'd created your own chat GPT for an organisation.
00:40:03 Dr Genevieve Hayes
If you took that to the people who were thinking.
00:40:07 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Oh my God, my jobs going to cease to exist. They would want to bury chat GPT because they could.
00:40:13 Dr Genevieve Hayes
They're thinking they're gonna be made redundant, whereas if you sold it to the people who could envisage the savings to the organisation, then they've got more likely to take on that model.
00:40:27 Dasun Premadasa
100% because.
00:40:30 Dasun Premadasa
There was a time that we did an automation project and to replace these data entry operators they they had.
00:40:40 Dasun Premadasa
This company had fourteen data entry operators in Australia who capturing all the invoices from across the world and then manually.
00:40:49 Dasun Premadasa
Key that into dynamics. Create clients.
00:40:54 Dasun Premadasa
So when we automate that system.
00:40:56 Dasun Premadasa
Were implemented the system where they hold everything gets automated and that.
00:41:01 Dasun Premadasa
And that project was so hard.
00:41:03 Dasun Premadasa
Because we could not go and sit down with these people and get requirements and understand what they're doing because they knew they all gonna get redundant, that entire department gonna go away.
00:41:15 Dasun Premadasa
So if you went to them to do, it wouldn't have gone right. So you have to go to the top and they communicate it down. They tell them, but it's still tough.
00:41:24 Dasun Premadasa
Because these guys don't want to say anything and it's really tough for us when you go sit down with it.
00:41:29 Dasun Premadasa
They just ask the first question.
00:41:30 Dasun Premadasa
So am I gonna get replaced? You just.
00:41:33 Dasun Premadasa
It's not that.
00:41:33 Dasun Premadasa
You, like, I don't know.
00:41:36 Dasun Premadasa
I'm just doing my job, so it's like that, so look.
00:41:41 Dasun Premadasa
Unless you evolve.
00:41:42 Dasun Premadasa
You're gonna be out redundant, but as simple as that it's really ugly thing. But even myself I have to make sure I stay in front.
00:41:51 Dasun Premadasa
Otherwise my business not gonna survive somebody else gonna come and do it better than me and it it can it.
00:41:56 Dasun Premadasa
Gonna happen so you have to consist.
00:41:58 Dasun Premadasa
Like our plan out, strategize and outwork right so consistently doing that. Otherwise it's gonna happen. Chad Cheap PT is awesome like I since I started my business I went through so many content writers because I'm a IT company and I get.
00:42:18 Dasun Premadasa
Somebody to write an article, blog article and I write the entire briefs and stuff. Still, these people like, Oh yeah, I'm an IT writer copywriter.
00:42:27 Dasun Premadasa
But they can't.
00:42:29 Dasun Premadasa
They don't do it right, so you read the article you're like. This is just really Shelly really sloppy and they put fill overs and stuff like that.
00:42:39 Dasun Premadasa
Chachi PT you just say, tell me how this works and it just writes it in such.
00:42:45 Dasun Premadasa
A good way. I'm not saying this is how we.
00:42:48 Dasun Premadasa
Use like I still like.
00:42:49 Dasun Premadasa
Lucky for me I have. I actually found a.
00:42:52 Dasun Premadasa
Really good writer recently.
00:42:54 Dasun Premadasa
But GPT just does it so well. And yes, those things, unless you really add value.
00:43:04 Dasun Premadasa
You're supposed to be retired. We extend like we should be pushed away so things we can improve things.
00:43:12 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And no one wants to face that reality.
00:43:16 Dasun Premadasa
100% and like it's it's sad but.
00:43:19 Dasun Premadasa
It's your fault if you if something's being.
00:43:22 Dasun Premadasa
Better than you.
00:43:23 Dasun Premadasa
It's your fault. You can't blame anybody.
00:43:25 Dasun Premadasa
It's it's supposed to happen.
00:43:27 Dr Genevieve Hayes
What you're just saying, there just reminded me of something I was reading recently that Seth Godin wrote.
00:43:34 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And you're saying that when the world changes, you've basically got two choices? You can either fight to try and keep the world the way it's always been, or you can accept that the world has changed and then make decisions in response to that change.
00:43:51 Dasun Premadasa
100%. That's like the best way to put together.
00:43:55 Dr Genevieve Hayes
A lot of people, they think their natural tendency is to fight to keep the world the way it's always been.
00:44:01 Dasun Premadasa
Because it's really hard to change as well. Like I mean, I'm. I'm like an old record. I'm going to keep going back to my being a developer, right? The technology changes so fast in the programming.
00:44:16 Dasun Premadasa
World, you know how quickly the technology if you want to be a developer, you have to always stay on top of that, changing game, right?
00:44:25 Dasun Premadasa
Because you have to know what's coming out, you have to learn OK, this is what how this is, how many versions new version is like this and this is what you should do you.
00:44:33 Dasun Premadasa
Shouldn't do blah blah blah.
00:44:35 Dasun Premadasa
If you don't do.
00:44:36 Dasun Premadasa
That if you take your foot off the.
00:44:38 Dasun Premadasa
Accelerator, you're gonna.
00:44:39 Dasun Premadasa
Be outdated in a in a very short.
00:44:41 Dasun Premadasa
Term period of time.
00:44:44 Dasun Premadasa
Compared to three years ago today.
00:44:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
One thing I find really interesting, I'm currently developing a university level data science course.
00:44:53 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And I think about what I learned when I was first learning machine learning at a university level. That was the basics of machine learning as it was back. How many years ago?
00:45:06 Dr Genevieve Hayes
What's but the world's changed since then?
00:45:10 Dr Genevieve Hayes
A lot of the data science courses are still what they were like back when I learned it.
00:45:16 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And one of the things I'm trying to think.
00:45:18 Dr Genevieve Hayes
About is.
00:45:19 Dr Genevieve Hayes
OK, given everything that's happened between when I learned this and now.
00:45:24 Dr Genevieve Hayes
What would be the best way to teach this? And it's actually quite different from what the answer was back however many years.
00:45:34 Dasun Premadasa
It's just it's game, it's. It's like the whole chargeability thing. Lot of industries gonna lot of jobs. Gonna get redundant but just this one tool and it's it's actually good that that's how we always evolved as people like. It's like you know horse riders and all like.
00:45:54 Dasun Premadasa
You don't need them anymore, so things like.
00:45:58 Dasun Premadasa
That and that.
00:45:58 Dasun Premadasa
That you have to embrace it. You have to embrace. And if you think like.
00:46:03 Dasun Premadasa
There was a time I.
00:46:04 Dasun Premadasa
Spent quite a like a.
00:46:06 Dasun Premadasa
Checking what what are the business application of chat GPT is like.
00:46:10 Dasun Premadasa
And it's it's amazing and.
00:46:12 Dasun Premadasa
How people come up with it like I was talking to somebody and he was talking to me and.
00:46:17 Dasun Premadasa
Telling me about.
00:46:18 Dasun Premadasa
How they use change GBT to summarise their meeting notes and get it automatically emailed and I'm like that's awesome.
00:46:26 Dasun Premadasa
I hate taking meeting notes. Obviously teams has the new transcript thing, which is awesome.
00:46:33 Dasun Premadasa
And and yeah, that's thing. So 10 years ago, but like 15 to 20 years ago you had a person.
00:46:40 Dasun Premadasa
To take notes.
00:46:41 Dasun Premadasa
That's that, was their job, and if you had a copywriter, and if you're an average copywriter and just complaining about chat GPT, like writing blogs, and there's a copy of the ID as well, and then you look at it and go. Well, you you? You meant to be pushed aside.
00:47:01 Dasun Premadasa
Because you're not that good, it's it's a harsh thing to say, but that's the real. That's the truth.
00:47:08 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Actually reminds me of a conversation that I had. This was several years ago with was actually Tim Davey who appeared on a previous episode of this podcast and one of the things I was talking about was how there was this particular task that I had to perform in the job I was doing at that time. And I was saying how I'd really love to.
00:47:29 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Get this task off my flight and one of the questions he asked me was do I actually want to get rid of that task, or am I just saying that I want to?
00:47:38 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Get rid of it because a lot of people will actually complain about a task that they're.
00:47:43 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Thing, but then when an opportunity comes up to get rid of it, like for example an artificial intelligence tool.
00:47:51 Dr Genevieve Hayes
They actually want to keep that task because it's a part of their identity.
00:47:57 Dasun Premadasa
People also like pat on the back. They're like, oh we did that we solved it then you have somebody come along and say, oh, I wrote a script and it's gonna do that task for you for forever now they're like.
00:48:10 Dasun Premadasa
Oh really, OK.
00:48:12 Dasun Premadasa
I just like to.
00:48:13 Dasun Premadasa
Or place I used to get so you have that so.
00:48:18 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, yeah, didn't you do a good job for spending two weeks doing this task?
00:48:22 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, something like that. So it's like creating reports. Remember, like there was a I remember there was a person she used to create reports for before the meeting.
00:48:34 Dasun Premadasa
Before the big board meeting.
00:48:36 Dasun Premadasa
And she spent about one and a.
00:48:38 Dasun Premadasa
Half weeks just big big deal make up massive deal out of it.
00:48:44 Dasun Premadasa
Then once he put poppy, iron and ohh, she was not happy. Tell you that because then after about three months time.
00:48:54 Dasun Premadasa
People asking sorry, what do you do now?
00:48:57 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah, exactly.
00:48:58 Dasun Premadasa
What do you do though? Like how do you add value to this whole thing? So yeah, it's it's like that. So we got a whole. Otherwise you're gonna be like, you know, be like Neanderthals.
00:49:13 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So is there anything on your radar in the AI data and analytics space that you think's going to become important in the next three to five years? I mean, in addition to everything we've just spoken about.
00:49:24 Dasun Premadasa
I I think so. One of the areas I'm really looking forward to is again going back to Church EP that actually showed us so before church GPT.
00:49:33 Dasun Premadasa
All these self, what do you call bots, AI bots and all has been really bad. Exit chat bots people implemented.
00:49:40 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Chat bots.
00:49:44 Dasun Premadasa
Thinking or it's going to improve customer experience, but I have never seen a chat bot.
00:49:50 Dasun Premadasa
Improving customer experience, it's just always goes other way around because you ask for something and it gives you something else.
00:49:59 Dasun Premadasa
It's then they're like, OK, let's turn everything off and just make sure it's specific preconfigured questions and based on that.
00:50:10 Dasun Premadasa
You showed these options like that, so it's not a chat bot, so with chat GPT. I am really keen to not not next three.
00:50:18 Dasun Premadasa
Five years next, six months, Umm, to next 12 months. I think the technology the world is changing so rapidly now, you.
00:50:27 Dasun Premadasa
Can't say what's gonna happen. Three years and five years we, we only hope I have there is we're not gonna end up in a.
00:50:34 Dasun Premadasa
Nuclear war, right?
00:50:35 Dasun Premadasa
That's my only hope that I can do, but technology wise charge GPT wise. I am really keen to understand how they're going to use this.
00:50:46 Dasun Premadasa
As a self.
00:50:47 Dasun Premadasa
Assistant true assistant for people to help them to get what they.
00:50:53 Dasun Premadasa
What right so right now I have to type in the chat GBD hey chat TBT to. Can you show me?
00:51:01 Dasun Premadasa
How to do this?
00:51:03 Dasun Premadasa
Imagine like I like field service field sales and things like that. Imagine if we can train create right data models create right?
00:51:14 Dasun Premadasa
And give right data to train an AI to give us anything that we need. Answer any question.
00:51:23 Dasun Premadasa
On a specific topic with reputed data sources.
00:51:29 Dasun Premadasa
Put it in a car, put it in a on a phone, put it in anywhere. Imagine you have that around the office.
00:51:38 Dasun Premadasa
You just ask a question. That's number one. It will give you the answer. Imagine you ask a question and you get it to do something. A follow up task.
00:51:50 Dasun Premadasa
So I am super excited about.
00:51:53 Dasun Premadasa
How we self train how we train.
00:51:57 Dasun Premadasa
This one with reputed data sources and what kind of data models we create for that and how that's gonna assist us to push the boundary.
00:52:07 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And I've actually heard that Microsoft and open AI are planning on releasing an enterprise version of Catch FET. Yeah, so companies can just point it at their own internal data and use it.
00:52:16 Dasun Premadasa
Oh yeah.
00:52:20 Dasun Premadasa
I am all looking into it because I am super excited about it because one of the biggest thing is let's say you have.
00:52:29 Dasun Premadasa
Big Knowledge base right within the organisation and right now.
00:52:36 Dasun Premadasa
People are like.
00:52:37 Dasun Premadasa
It's in SharePoint. You'll find it never apart from a leave application form. I never found anything by searching in SharePoint.
00:52:47 Dasun Premadasa
Right, because it's garbage, people just upload document, no keywords, nothing, document one, but that's what it is. So imagine we train something like chat GPT.
00:52:58 Dasun Premadasa
Or or another, yes, similar I.
00:53:01 Dasun Premadasa
To share this information and repeat back to us instead of us instead of us reading a document, imagine that applications to in the healthcare industry. Imagine that application in the sales industry. Imagine that in a manufacturing, imagine that in education.
00:53:18 Dasun Premadasa
I'm super excited about that and and I I I've always been a fan of Microsoft Technology. I've obviously been there since I started using.
00:53:29 Dasun Premadasa
I can take technology stuff so I am really excited to see what they how they plan to use that and implement it to business because Microsoft one thing you have to say is they really do well when it's come to that business space applications. So yeah, I'm I'm very very keen to see how that.
00:53:51 Dasun Premadasa
Gonna work.
00:53:52 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And there'll be the Google version of Chat GPT very soon as well.
00:53:57 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, I saw that. I saw that because apparently some of the some of the stuff that they actually used was from originally sold by the Deep Mind.
00:54:09 Dasun Premadasa
That's the Google One, so I was listening to something.
00:54:11 Dasun Premadasa
And they were.
00:54:12 Dasun Premadasa
Saying that again, it's all about the application they picked up the geek stuff and they applied it and it's still in beta. I think right? So GPT, yeah.
00:54:22 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Yeah it is and I think this is a really good example of customer experience because they're giving people what they want and people are excited about it. They're using it.
00:54:31 Dasun Premadasa
Exactly 100%, and that's that's again, that's my biggest. The the thing I'm looking forward to. The next 6 to 12 months.
00:54:40 Dasun Premadasa
How this is gonna revolutionise the customer experience, specifically data access and distribution? Because right now if chat GPT says something, I do see a problem like if you say how to improve the benefits.
00:55:00 Dasun Premadasa
Of CRM.
00:55:04 Dasun Premadasa
In manufacturing you get an answer and if you ask benefits of a CRM in healthcare industry you get very very much the exact answer.
00:55:15 Dasun Premadasa
Again, yes, right? So it's not there yet, but it's way more like leaps ahead of what you said.
00:55:23 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Well, we all know how to trick cheque JP.
00:55:26 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Now and we all know if you trick chat GPT and then call it on it, it will say yes.
00:55:32 Dr Genevieve Hayes
I am aware that that's wrong, I know, and this is the correct answer. What they need is to have to be able to build something into it between there where it actually says no. This is the wrong answer. I'm not going to give you the wrong answer.
00:55:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Here is the correct answer.
00:55:48 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, and and you can do that when you're in an organisation and your own data. You train it the way it is with your data.
00:55:56 Dasun Premadasa
Then imagine like imagine you have caregivers who are going to places and doing things, and if they do, if they have an answer you can actually after GPT.
00:56:05 Dasun Premadasa
Or or that tool like how to do this. It's not like how to do surgery. How can I do that and what's the next steps if this is happening so the system should be able to tell you here step one, Step 2, step three, it's not coming from the Google, Wikipedia or something like that. It's coming from your official procedural documents.
00:56:23 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And it would be fantastic in an emergency situation, such as in a hospital where you don't have time to look stuff up and you can say this is the emergency. What do I need to do now in order to keep this person alive?
00:56:37 Dasun Premadasa
Absolutely, but 100%.
00:56:41 Dasun Premadasa
100% so it's gonna be. There's so much applications and it's nice to see people are jumping in like our our we are.
00:56:49 Dasun Premadasa
Working on a project right now.
00:56:51 Dasun Premadasa
And that's why I know how that Microsoft is investing. Further investing and bringing it into their business soon. And we are looking at in incorporating chat GPT to assist with finding.
00:57:07 Dasun Premadasa
Documents and things like that. So just through voice commands. So yeah, so I'm super excited in that space and I'll be that. That's the main thing. The next 6 to 12 months what's gonna happen?
00:57:21 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And what final advice would you give to data scientists looking to create business value from data?
00:57:27 Dasun Premadasa
It's all about.
00:57:29 Dasun Premadasa
What's in it for the user? It's all about what's in it for the user, what's in it for the right user? Identify the right user who's.
00:57:39 Dasun Premadasa
Suffering from a problem.
00:57:41 Dasun Premadasa
And if you have a data model solution, sell it to them because it's easy to sell it to them because they.
00:57:47 Dasun Premadasa
Are suffering from a prop.
00:57:49 Dr Genevieve Hayes
So it's a matter of putting yourself in your user's shoes and asking yourself what's in it for me.
00:57:55 Dasun Premadasa
Yeah, 100% what's in for that? It's all about what's in it for that. And yeah, that's that's the only thing I have to say.
00:58:05 Dr Genevieve Hayes
For listeners who want to learn more about you or get in contact, what can they do?
00:58:10 Dasun Premadasa
I'm quite active active on LinkedIn, so you can.
00:58:14 Dasun Premadasa
Find me on Dasun Premadasa or you easiest thing. Shortest way to search for me is that's CX that DA SCX that's the name of my consultancy and you can find me straight away there. Otherwise you can email me as well as soon as at dasseyx.com dot AU.
00:58:35 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And I'll put links to those in the show.
00:58:37 Dasun Premadasa
Thanks, Genevieve and thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.
00:58:43 Dr Genevieve Hayes
Thank you for joining me today.
00:58:45 Dasun Premadasa
You're welcome.
00:58:46 Dr Genevieve Hayes
And for those in the audience, thank you for listening. I'm doctor Genevieve Hayes and this has been value driven data science brought to you by Genevieve Hayes Consulting.