Episode Details

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Vinny Maurici. Vinny heads up the data engineering practice at ObjectEdge, a digital consultancy based in the Bay Area of California. He brings over 15 years of experience launching data programs for Enterprise and Fortune 500 B2B manufacturers and distributors. Vinny, welcome to the show.

Vinny Maurici: Thanks for having me.

Lisa Ryan: Share your background and what led you to do what you do at ObjectEdge.

Vinny Maurici: As you just mentioned, I've been in the data world for about 15 years, and for me specifically, my brain has always worked in a way where I've seen data as more than just a means to an end. I like to build tangibility around how data can affect businesses. It's fallen into more of the consulting world, and it's been an excellent opportunity to work with our customers over the years to say, Hey, let's take this thing called fluffy data. You go to conferences all the time, and they say data are the new oil, and you need to turn data into an asset for an organization, and nobody knows what that means.

It's such a big, wide-open topic, and for my team, we pride ourselves in saying, Hey, let's turn the intangible into a tangible. Let's create steps, order of operation, and actual outcomes and benefits for why data is essential to an organization. And it's been such a great time trying to build all these models for our customers.

Lisa Ryan: With data just expanding at the rate it is. Before the show, we were talking about how AI is transforming everything, and data can be used for good and can also be used for evil, and it goes the whole spectrum in ways that we would've never thought about before.

So specifically, though, when it comes to manufacturers, what are some of the data challenges that manufacturers are facing today?

Vinny Maurici: There are some very unique challenges that manufacturers are seeing. If I take a step back, for example, and I look at even the distribution side of things like B2B distribution, they're all pushing to be more digital. MSC Industrial, for example, is a major MRO distributor that just came out last year in fiscal 2022 saying, Hey, We now do 2.28 billion in digital revenue alone, and they're growing at 17% year over year. So that's at a distribution level. So, what does that mean for manufacturers? It means that all their customers, whether a distributor or a retailer, are pushing to increase the channel presence. This means that the amount of data that these manufacturers, many of them are mom-and-pop, is more significant. They now need to support all these digital transformations that their distribution network their customer network is going through.

It can be difficult because I have to manage more than I used to. And so I, as a manufacturer with a lot of unstructured data or data that I'm just used to, have supply chain information. So I want to send my products efficiently, not necessarily for people to use a digital network to make a purchasing decision.

So how do I do that without hiring an army of employees or utilizing my current employees without burning them out? Because there's so much more now than there was. That's a difficult thing to solve as it creates a foundation of a problem even though they know that there is revenue and their success on the other side of the equation because all of their customers and digital partners are distribution partners and are doing great in that.

Lisa Ryan: Can you give some examples of what you're talking about when talking about digital data and monetizing it? I'm wrapping my head around what that looks like, especially in a mom-and-pop shop or somebody that didn't necessarily have the technology, but they have all of this data. Yea