00:05:52 · Grace Gong, Kevin B. Boyd
[00:05:52] S0: When... I guess, like, when you're thinking about designing on, like, a commercial AI... APIs, like, like, whether it's, a open source model or, a model that running your own, like, infrastructure, how do you typically make these kind of decisions? [00:06:07] S1: Sure. I think in many ways there's sort of the old way of doing things and then there's the new way of doing things. Universities are generally pretty conservative. So historically, they don't change all that fast. Technology wise, you know, our focus has been on how do we make sure that things are just rock solid, stable, and you know, delivering what our faculty, staff, and students expect from us. You know, in an AI world, we're really having to be more innovative, move faster, build tools that maybe in the past we would have focused more on buying things. Now we're actually building them just because it allows us to deliver efficiency and effectiveness faster. So I think when you talk about, you know, how do we make decisions about AI or about, you know, the APIs and things like that, It's really a question of how do we both get to market fast, deliver the business value that our business partners across campus are looking for, but at the same time make sure that it's going to deliver the same stability and reliability that they're looking for.
00:06:07 · Kevin B. Boyd, Grace Gong
[00:06:07] S1: Sure. I think in many ways there's sort of the old way of doing things and then there's the new way of doing things. Universities are generally pretty conservative. So historically, they don't change all that fast. Technology wise, you know, our focus has been on how do we make sure that things are just rock solid, stable, and you know, delivering what our faculty, staff, and students expect from us. You know, in an AI world, we're really having to be more innovative, move faster, build tools that maybe in the past we would have focused more on buying things. Now we're actually building them just because it allows us to deliver efficiency and effectiveness faster. So I think when you talk about, you know, how do we make decisions about AI or about, you know, the APIs and things like that, It's really a question of how do we both get to market fast, deliver the business value that our business partners across campus are looking for, but at the same time make sure that it's going to deliver the same stability and reliability that they're looking for. [00:07:31] S0: When you were thinking about, I guess, would you say is the most important skill like a CIO needs to deliver like a leading AI adoption across like different organizations and technical teams of like, you know, and like researchers and faculties and administrative. Seems like they all like have like different priorities. How do you kind of like think about the AI adoption from that lens?
00:08:02 · Kevin B. Boyd
[00:08:02] S1: You know, I think think that's an interesting question. I really think that a lot of it is it's leading with empathy. It's being a really good listener, and it's helping to translate across different groups. So much of what we're doing, it's almost less about the technology. Yes, the technology is really important. But in order to successfully drive change and drive the transformation, it's a lot of talking to people and trying to understand what are the problems that they have and how can we deliver solutions that are gonna help them solve those problems. So like an area where we've put a lot of focus at the university is in the finance and accounting space. So we implemented a new financial system a few years ago. Enormous transformation exercise, the largest IT project the university has ever done. And now we're a couple years down the road and we're in a position of saying, okay, how can we use AI to make things better, to automate things? Like one of the, you know, one of the examples, our CFO had come to us and said, you know, we're we're investing a lot of time and energy in what what they call like the triple matching with invoices. So you think about it, universities buy lots of things. We buy, you know, things that go in the research labs. Just... And something like 80% of our transactions are less than $5,000. So a lot of high volume, transaction value things. But one of the things you want to do at the back end of the purchasing process is you do this triple matching where you say, okay, the purchase order was this amount, and what did we actually receive? And then what did we get invoiced for? And do those three things match up? If they don't, then maybe, you know, send that to a human being to look at it. So it's a great use of an AI agent to say, you know, do those three things match? Is there anything else that has happened along the way that might cause them to be different? And if something looks out of order, then let's make sure that a human being looks at it and gets involved. And that's really high value for the finance and accounting team. It allows them to work on the bigger transactions, higher value things. And, you know, that happens because of good relationships and conversations with the the finance team about, you know, what were the challenges they're facing.
00:10:42 · Grace Gong, Kevin B. Boyd
[00:10:42] S0: When you're thinking about budgeting out your, like, your... I don't I don't know if there's, a yearly budget or, like, if there's, like, a particular KPI for sales, like... But, like, you know, for... I guess, like, for, like, a regular or commercialized company, obviously, everybody have, like, some sort of, KPI and then, like, a budget to block for like each subsector. So when it comes to creating your own like yearly goal, how do you really like think about like whether it's like time or like budget allocation to spend on since like you know we talk about like cloud co work and like you know when you're making a decision to choose between cloud and like maybe this other like top competitor or like other solutions in the market. Obviously I could think of security as a huge thing and then maybe the budget stuff is another thing. I guess how do you typically... First of all, how do you... Is there, like, particular, like, road map that you're... You have for your own team? And then how do you select the solution that's presented to you? Mhmm. [00:11:54] S1: Well, so when you ask about budgets, you know, budgets are always a challenge at universities. You know, it feels like we never have enough. [00:12:02] S0: Never have enough. You know, that's everybody.
00:12:02 · Grace Gong, Kevin B. Boyd
[00:12:02] S0: Never have enough. You know, that's everybody. [00:12:06] S1: You know, that's that is everywhere. You know, so when we when we develop our budget each year, we're really looking across all the categories. So, you know, how much do we think is the right amount to invest in AI? How much do we think is the right amount to invest in information security? There's always making sure that you're modernizing applications, modernizing the infrastructure. You know, like, if you think about the, you know, university, we have hundreds of buildings. And all those buildings have infrastructure. And that infrastructure is, you know, constantly needing to be replaced, whether that's, you know, wired network or wireless and whatnot. So much of it is like having a plan. So how do we look out, you know, the next year, the next three years, the next ten years? What makes sense? And where are the things that we must do? You know, where if you don't do them, the wheels fall off the car. And then where are the things that want to invest because it makes the organization more efficient or more effective. So, you know, how do we make those decisions? It's it's a lot of conversation with our business partners about, you know, what are the challenges that they're facing? What are the are the things that we need to work together to help help them be more effective?
00:13:29 · Grace Gong
[00:13:29] S0: Thinking about, like, when you're choosing, like, I don't know if any startup come to pitch you all the time or like how do you kind of navigate that I'm sure like you know there's a lot like companies are probably trying to whether it's like sell or like distribute to you Chicago or like equivalent like when you're interacting with, I wouldn't say unproven, but like it's more of like an earlier stage company. How do you like, if you guys ever purchase a product off like existing, like smaller company before, how does that kind of like process? Basically, how do they typically sell to you that you felt like, oh, you're comfortable with trying a particular product?