Shashi: Hello, and welcome to this new edition of the Dreamers & Doers podcast from Aryaka Networks. We invite thought leaders from all over the world for some candid and insightful conversations.
In today's episode, we're talking to Nikhil Sud, the chief information officer of Boyd Corporation, which is a 90-plus year old, young industrial company that's a worldwide leader in advanced solutions that cool, seal, and protect other disruptive technologies. With a focus on customer success, their technologies have helped in diverse endeavors such as safe space exploration, to medical care, and transportation, to self-driving cars, and brain surgery, to name a few.
Nikhil, welcome and thank you for joining us. Thank you for being an Aryaka customer.
Nikhil Sud : Hey Shashi, thank you so much for the opportunity, and I really look forward to this conversation.
Shashi: Well, let's get started. I just rattled off a few cool things that Boyd Corporation does, and being CIO there must be a lot of fun. How would you describe your role? And maybe talk about the company as well in your own words, Nikhil.
Nikhil Sud : Yeah, sure. Yeah, it is a lot of fun. But as you mentioned, Boyd is a 90-plus year old company, and we're in an amazing growth patch really, both organically and by strategic acquisition. I would say you covered some of the cool stuff we do, but the real takeaway from here is we are firmly entrenched in some of the world's biggest mega trends at the moment. And we're critical suppliers in industries like immobility, semiconductor, medical devices and wearables, green energy, and so on/ you name it. So, we truly are today, a leader in industrial technology, and the future's very exciting here.
My role as CIO, as you asked, is really to enable all the parts and pieces of this company, both a legacy Boyd standpoint and from a newly-acquired company standpoint, how do we get them to work together, make sound business decisions in real time, and provide the information that we need to keep running and growing the company? So as you said, a lot of fun, a lot of work, and never a dull day.
Shashi: Life is exciting. Now, I know that you have two hats that you wear. One as a CIO, and you also have the added responsibility of somebody overseeing a lot of this business process integration and standardization. How does that work? Particularly when you look at acquisitions that you talked about, and I see Boyd is at the place of acquisitions. And in that instance, how do you balance these roles and make everything successful at the end of the day?
Nikhil Sud : That's a great question. And I think you're asking two separate things here. One is from an acquisition standpoint, and then the other is from how do I wear the two hats? Correct? Let me address the two hats part first.
Listen, there's always going to be foundational IT that has to be taken care of in any company. It's just how do you keep the bits and bytes flowing efficiently and as securely as possible. That's a given, those are table stakes for any company at this point. But aside from that, any investment that you make in information technology, whether it's time, money, resources, we really need to look at it from a business process impact standpoint. Once that is built into the organizational DNA, the two paths converge. So actually it's not really two hats. It just becomes one hat if you look at it the right way.
From an acquisition standpoint, the second question you asked, is we're in a fast track acquisition path, right? We're doing almost one quarter, and we'll continue to do that wherever it makes strategic sense for us. So then there is the second piece, which is how do we get these companies to start working together. And that really, we can get into a little bit more detail if you want, but it really is a matter of an approach, a playbook, and making it more of a science than an art. When you try to do one off acquisitions, you end up spending a lot of time, money, and effort, and probably waste a lot of those resources on things that may not be critical to the company as a whole.
Shashi: Nikhil look, I have done my share of acquisitions in the past. We did our first ever acquisition from Aryaka's perspective earlier this year, when we brought a company called Secucloud based out of Germany. And I can tell you, it was a fair bit of back and forth in trying to do that. Now, Boyd is at a pace of one acquisition every month or so, and I can only imagine the kind of process and structure that you guys have put together to make that happen. This velocity, assuming you go public or you further increase it, how are you actually building your IT systems for this kind of change, and this kind of scale? And still keeping everything sane?
Nikhil Sud : So that's a great question, Shashi. And the last part you said, "Keeping everything sane." That is something we actually evaluate on a case by case basis. So when we acquire a company, when we do a preview diligence and then post diligence after close, we really have to make some decisions. And there are some fundamental things like infrastructure and financial consolidation. Those are a given. We have a playbook for that, and within 60 to 90 days, we have that completed, and they're part of Boyd. From a daily operations standpoint, their email's the same, their networks are the same, they can access the systems up and down. So that is done. Their financial numbers flow through, rolls up into our numbers. That part we get done in the first two to three months post acquisition.
When it comes to business systems, specifically around ERP, that's our bloodstream of our company because we are in a manufacturing environment, that's really more of a case by case decision. We do have some standard ERP systems that we support at Boyd, but then we look at it best part of our diligence. Does it make sense to convert the acquired company over to our system, or does it make sense to let them keep running on theirs? They're secure enough and they're stable enough, it's supported, and then consolidate more at a data level. We have these global data warehouses and data lakes, and we can actually provide a lot of the same information and even perform a lot of the business process and data standardization without ever re-implementing an ERP or other major business systems over there. So we're really looking at it on a case by case basis.
As to what the future holds, we don't know what's going to happen in the future. But our goal here, and my specific aim is to set up all the building blocks that no matter which direction this company goes, that we are ready for that. When there's an actual strategic plan, we will come up with a tactical plan to kind of meet those needs. But in the meantime, make sure that our foundational building blocks are in place so that whichever way the company decides to go, we're ready for it.
Shashi: It looks to me that you have taken something that's incredibly complex, which is disparate IT systems and processes, and somehow figured out that magic formula to make them all come together. Is there also a cultural shift that you need to factor in, because people are used to doing things a certain way, or is that second nature to a post-acquisition scenario?
Nikhil Sud : No, you're absolutely right. When you go through acquisition of multiple companies culturally, and people internalize it, it's very difficult to get people to switch from mindset of working for company XYZ, to company Boyd. That starts with even the email addresses. There's always a little bit of resistance. "Well, I've used this email address for 20 years. My customers and suppliers are all very familiar with this. Why should I change to a Boyd Corp email address?" And the challenge really is how do you rebrand our company? How do you rebrand not only our company, but every acquired company to be that one Boyd. And that is the plan actually we've just recently started executing, which is customers know us by our older names, suppliers know us by older names. How do we change that to just be Boyd, and be known in the marketplace as Boyd?
When it comes to employee culture and employee thought processes, I think that's where it starts from. It starts from signage, it starts from who signs my paychecks, it starts from what my email address is, it starts from what do the customers call me when they call in? Do they ask for Boyd, or do they ask for whatever my previous company name was? Again, if you set all this branding and this philosophy around this whole rebranding process, thought processes and the cultural shift happens gradually, but it happens automatically.
Shashi: Yeah, you mentioned something about email, which struck the thought, we associate it so much with our identity sometimes that I can imagine why there is a resistance to change. When I have moved between organizations, there are certain emails that I have wanted, and I was always frustrated if it were taken by somebody else. So I totally relate to what you're saying, and in some ways it's perhaps treading into territory of marketing and branding, and how do you get somebody to have the same sense of identity and passion? But kudos to you and Boyd Corporation. Looks like you've cracked the code on a lot of these things, which are hard to do.
I want to switch gears a little bit, Nikhil. I don't want to talk to you about the pandemic. I think you guys have navigated it as successfully as lot of other companies, but I want to touch upon this issue of supply chain. Every news agency, news portal we go to, we see ships stranded, trucks backed up, chip shortage, a lot of these things that are byproduct of the pandemic, in some sense. And the businesses that you deal with, I imagine have some dependency on all of the supply chain issues. So how have you navigated that, and what do you think is the impact on the business environment going to be? Not just for Boyd, but industries in general if this continues.
Nikhil Sud : If I had the answer to that, we'd be having this conversation on a beach somewhere, right Shashi? But unfortunately, that's the world we are in today. Everyone in the manufacturing sector, or pretty much any sector, just a confluence of material shortages, freight inflation, labor shortages. They're just pressing down on everyone's bottom lines. It's a crazy, crazy world we live in today, but it's also an opportunity, if you can handle it right. I don't think there's anybody out there who can say they've been completely untouched by this, but there are ways of mitigating the impact of these factors.
We do have a team in place to effectively, how do we reduce, minimize the impact of Boyd's bottom line, and our customers requirements in these inflationary conditions? And I can tell you this, that we've done a lot of data mining, a lot of good old fashioned negotiation skills, and actually have managed to keep it to a minimum. To where it's not a killer. It's still a little bit of an impact, but it's not a killer to our plans and to our performance. And this doesn't end here. Who knows what the future looks like?
So part of it is doing that data mining once, but make it a repeatable process. So if we had to go look at what my purchasing data looks like, what my pricing data looks like, that we have these tools readily available to our internal customers so that they can go and use their skills and use their relationships to do this. I can proudly say that in spite of all these shortages, whether they be chip shortages and ships being held up at places, and trucks being canceled, we've not had a single customer lying down situation so far in the six months through this. That's always our primary goal. How do we keep servicing our customers and not impact them? You take care of that one thing and everything else just flows through.
So to answer your question, no one's cracked the code on this. But through really a lot of good, hard work and using data as the backstop for all the actions we take, we've been fairly successful in minimizing it.
Shashi: That's remarkable. And one of these recruitment firms told me that the jobs that are in most demand today are around procurement officers. It seems certainly the demand for procurement officers have spiked up, especially those that can handle some of these issues with chip shortages and things like that.
Nikhil Sud : Yeah, yeah. And no surprise there, because it's availability and it's also prices. And one's going down, the other's going up, and this is the time you realize, "I should have a procurement manager to manage this."
Shashi: And relationships matter.
Nikhil Sud : Yeah.
Shashi: That becomes very important now. Hey, speaking of customers Nikhil, if we look through your website, you have several blue chip companies as a part of your customer portfolio. You're also a vendor to the Department of Defense, and essentially have locations all over the world. So how do you look at your own infrastructure, how do you look at the security or regulatory requirements as you service customers worldwide? Is there a methodology you bring in for something like that as well?
Nikhil Sud : Yeah. That's another, I would say, great question. But it's another point of action for pretty much every company. Look, cybersecurity in general is a big agenda item in today's world much every company. And those needs get further compounded by specific requirements from customers and how they want you to treat their data special, apart from everybody else. And that includes the Department of Defense and some of our other blue chip customers. But you kind of talked through it. We have to set up these data walls between the data sets, based on customer requirements, geographies, and a whole host of other factors.
But specific to government or DOD business and their data, I actually look at it a little differently. The government actually has pretty well-defined frameworks that a company that business with them needs to implement, and we have implemented. The security guidelines that they put out actually are being further enhanced under their recent CMMC program, which all DOD suppliers are in the process of getting certified on. So it's a lot of work, don't get me wrong, but at least you know what the end looks like. You start with a defined goal and you can work towards that. But just like every other company, cybersecurity is one of the top things on anyone's minds these days.
Shashi: And do you have to think about security or even networks differently as a result of all of these things?
Nikhil Sud : No, absolutely. Absolutely. And shameless plug in here for Aryaka. We actually changed our whole network, our global network, with that in mind. How do we make it more secure, more reliable, and be able to meet the needs of our customers, specifically the DOD in here.
Shashi: I'm really glad to hear that. And we're privileged to have you as a customer, Nikhil. And Boyd is an innovator, and we really are honored to partner with such innovators.
I want to again, shift gears a little bit away from the company and technologies to Nikhil Sud as a person, as a leader. Is it possible for you to share your career trajectory in terms of how you became a CIO, and what your philosophy of leadership is? I know in one of the previous conversations we had, you talked about this concept of servant leadership, which I think is a very profound concept. So how do you explain some of these to our listeners?
Nikhil Sud : Okay. Yeah, we can certainly talk about that. And from a career trajectory standpoint, I've been in this business for over 30 years, came up through the technical ranks, actually switched to ERPs, which let me understand the business processes side of things. So really armed me well for both the technology, as well as the business process sides of the equation. And my career trajectory really took off from there. Because at the end of the day, and this is very cliche, but the most successful IT leaders are the ones that are viewed as business leaders first, and technologists second. You still have to have the technology piece of it, but you should not be viewed or thought of as just the technology person. So that's kind of how my career has progressed. And looking back, I would say I made a few right decisions at some of the right times.
Talk about leadership style. Yeah, you mentioned servant leadership. There are a lot of buzzwords out there for leadership styles, but I think when it comes down to it, every leader has their own unique combination of values and philosophy when it comes to leading their teams. My own approach, as you mentioned, is that my primary function is to ensure that my team has the best chance of success at what they do. This means that I have to lead the team by actually working for the team. By making their job easier, removing obstacles that are in my area of influence to do, and sometimes shielding them from a lot of unwanted noise. I believe a leader should start really every day with their team with a, "How can I help you today?" kind of thing. Not necessarily in words, you don't have to say the words, but in actions and in your approach. And really when you look at it, whether you call it servant leadership or whatever, that's been my philosophy and approach so far. Which is, how do I make my team more successful? How do I make it easier for them to do their job?
Shashi: Like I said Nikhil, that's a very profound concept, and I think your team is very lucky to have you as a leader, and Boyd is certainly very lucky to have you as a CIO at the helm. I think we also got the title for the podcast when you talked about requiring to have that business knowledge to succeed, in addition to being a technologist. It's actually a very valuable insight, and something that doesn't come across easily. That every role, no matter what it is, needs to have that business context and relevance.
I thought we got a lot of good information here, Nikhil. Is there anything else you want to share in terms of how you see the future evolving, or what excites you over the next few year?
Nikhil Sud : Oh, there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon, Shashi. We'd be here all day if we start talking about it. But really truly for Boyd, I am excited on the paths we're on. It is a high growth, in a high impact market, at a global level. It's not in one region or one geography, it's all across the globe. And being on as part of our leadership team through this exciting phase of the company is something that is really exciting to me, and gets me up every morning. As I said before, the future's super exciting, and it's going to be a fun ride.
Shashi: And with those famous words, let's wrap up this podcast. Nikhil, it was a pleasure to host you. Thank you for making the time to spend and share some insights with us.
Folks, that was Nikhil Sud, the CIO of Boyd Corporation, who shared his thoughts on the technology landscape, supply chain. Also, his concepts around servant leadership. Nikhil, thank you again. I truly enjoyed the conversation and would love to have you again some other time, and let the future be as bright as you portray it to be.
Nikhil Sud : Okay, Shashi. Thanks for [inaudible 00:20:02]. Absolutely enjoyed the conversation, and I look forward to doing it again.
Shashi: Thanks again, Nikhil.
Nikhil Sud : All right, thank you.
Note: The transcripts of the podcasts may not be fully accurate. Please excuse any grammar and spelling issues.
