Why Price Wars Are Killing Manufacturers Without a Digital Differentiator | The Disruptors #9

Show: The Disruptors Episode: 09

Publish Date: 25 August 2025

If you’re still competing on price alone, you’ve already lost.

In Episode 9 of The Disruptors, Ritesh Shah and Julian Wallis unpack why manufacturers and industrial businesses get stuck in price wars — and how poor data, disconnected systems, and reliance on individuals keep them trapped.

They explain how to build a true digital differentiator: structured data, scalable systems, and repeatable processes that unlock growth and enterprise value.

Topics Covered

00:00:00 – Why quality and service aren’t enough
Every competitor claims these, which means they no longer create a real edge.

00:01:30 – Recurring problems in manufacturing systems
ERP struggles, poor configuration, and fragmented processes slow growth.

00:03:29 – The danger of relying on salespeople
When staff leave, customers leave with them — unless sales is systemised.

00:05:07 – The myth of quality and service differentiation
Why “we have better quality and service” doesn’t cut it anymore.

00:07:15 – Data chaos and disconnected systems
Messy, siloed data keeps leaders blind to opportunities and risks.

00:11:21 – Reactive vs proactive decision-making
Most leaders run the business by looking backwards instead of forecasting forward.

00:14:14 – Factory floor vs office disconnect
Teams on the ground and management rarely share one source of truth.

00:17:30 – Structuring data for scale
Building a foundation that supports growth for the next 5–10 years.

00:23:55 – The power of discovery
How deep on-site discovery uncovers hidden profit leaks and real value gaps.

00:31:27 – From cost-cutting to opportunity creation
Why the real edge is not just saving money, but winning new business.

Key Takeaways from this Episode

• Competing on price alone is a losing strategy
• Quality and service are no longer true differentiators
• Poorly structured data and disconnected systems trap businesses in chaos
• A digital differentiator enables scalability, resilience, and growth
• PSV Thinking™ shifts focus from cost-cutting to long-term enterprise value

Transcript

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:00:00:04 – 00:00:04:13)
You need something more than just quality because everyone claims quality as well. Everyone claims customer service.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:00:04:14 – 00:00:14:16)
When sales person leaves the company, the whole business, they take the customers as well. If they were digital first, the sales process, the sales channel wouldn’t have been tangled into this individual.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:00:14:18 – 00:00:19:05)
Having data structured properly opens up a world of possibilities for us.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:00:19:07 – 00:00:28:19)
Imagine in a city, all the traffic lights stop working, and then imagine the chaos, that is the level of chaos currently the industry is facing. That’s what I feel for.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:00:29:00 – 00:00:41:06)
But the better thing is to say, we landed that monstrous contract because we could offer something no one else could. Is because of our EdgeFactor® and what we built here.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:00:41:08 – 00:00:48:15)
Hey Julian, welcome back to yet another podcast with Disruptors. How are you doing, mate?

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:00:48:17 – 00:00:49:22)
Yeah, good. Yaself?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:00:50:00 – 00:00:54:20)
Yeah, doing good. How was your weekend and everything?

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:00:54:22 – 00:01:00:00)
Pretty good, can’t complain. Pretty hectic. But, no it was really good. Yourself?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:01:00:02 – 00:01:30:09)
Yep. Had a good time with family and everything. It was good. So, today we will be discussing around our target market that is, manufacturing industries and will be discussing around the issues, problems, they usually face. So what kind of issues and problems they face? We will be discussing around that. If you have anything in your head, you can just get started with that and then we’ll continue ahead.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:01:30:11 – 00:01:53:18)
Yeah, well I guess the main, main kind of businesses we focus on is, manufacturing wholesale and industrial services. So, more industrial businesses, typical problems they face. Like a lot of them, we come across pretty consistently. I’ve got issues with ERP adoption or just actually managing to get the most out of their ERP. Not just the ERP but systems in general, a lot of them are not configured correctly or just have been over time.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:01:53:18 – 00:02:17:20)
They’ve been mismanaged, I guess is the way to put it. And haven’t been implemented properly. So that’s a key one. A lot of them lack a clear what we would call your EdgeFactor®, but a clear, they’re not digital first or digitally enabled, if that makes sense. They, new technologies typically working against them, not for them. Now, there are things where they’ve implemented an ERP or CRM or something like that, where, okay, that’s pretty stock standard.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:02:17:20 – 00:02:39:07)
I would say, you know, that’s that’s not something that would be an amazing, use of technology, or being digital first or building your EdgeFactor®. But I guess there’s a lot there of where a lot of them typicallyare , the technology is working against them rather than for them, and a lot of them don’t know what they need to or most, I would say, even more importantly, they don’t know what’s possible.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:02:39:12 – 00:03:15:07)
So they, so used to doing things or paper based processes or manual based processes and they’ve built very successful businesses. Again, we’ve had the privilege to work with some very successful businesses, and large businesses. But still they don’t probably can’t grasp or haven’t had someone that can connect the dots between the business and the technology and go, how can we create this in a way that is scalable and repeatable, but is also built for how we do things, not necessarily that we have to conform to how the technology works.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:03:15:07 – 00:03:29:01)
And the final one is, a lot of businesses don’t have intellectual property or ownership or anything of their data. And also, more importantly, their systems. And a lot of them, it’s really there’s just nothing there from an IP perspective.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:03:29:03 – 00:03:59:11)
Exactly. One thing I wanted to add to this is like, I’ve seen businesses just struggling or fighting with, on the price. Basically, they are always competing on the price. If some customer gets a cheaper price, then they will switch the business, they will just deal with other things. That’s one of the biggest problem I see in the manufacturing industry, because they are always calculating cents, working on cents. Raw material or calculating around cents, on the raw materials and everything.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:03:59:13 – 00:04:28:00)
But if that is important, I see the importance of the cost benefit and that is also important. But what I see is like if, they should build something, their business around something, that if some salesperson or some price sense won’t like change the customer like the customer wont decide on someone else. I’ve seen like salesperson, most of the many manufacturing industry are tied up with the salesperson, right?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:04:28:00 – 00:04:54:01)
That is one of the things that I have also, because when, when sales, salesperson leaves the company, the, the whole business, they take, the customers as well. If they were digital first and then they were properly digitised, then it would, the sales process, the sales channel wouldn’t, wouldn’t have entangled into the sales person. Actually, the individuals. That is one thing I have been looking into is one of the issues.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:04:54:01 – 00:05:07:20)
And then pricing is the very crucial crucial issue. Operational issues are also there, but like these are the crucial issue that really hampers them. Most of the time. I feel that, they agree with that or what?

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:05:07:22 – 00:05:33:05)
Yeah, I think it’s definitely a good point. I think there are, and especially the businesses that we work with, typically they manufacture or are doing manufacturing in the wholesaling or industrial services, whatever they doing, they’re typically incredibly good at it. And they’ve grown that business for that very reason. So they’ve got quality down pat. And there is one thing, like price is definitely a certain thing, but I think another point that is, a lot of business that we work with already have got like the quality part of it down pat so you can get the cheapest price, but you may not get the quality.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:05:33:05 – 00:05:51:18)
And that’s not something that we’re necessarily assisting with in regards to the quality of the actual, product that they’re selling or they’re manufacturing or the service they’re are delivering at that scale. But at the same time, you need something more than just quality, because everyone claims quality as well. Everyone claims customer service. And I guess that’s the whole, if you want to keep it simple.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:05:51:18 – 00:06:11:22)
The whole part of the EdgeFactor. We call it your digital differentiator, but it should be the number one thing salespeople sell. They shouldn’t be selling that, you’re a manufacturer or you’re a wholesaler or your industrial services business, or that you do great customer service, or that you do great quality or whatever. That’s fantastic. But they should, we should have something that enables them to sell.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:06:11:22 – 00:06:35:23)
This is the number one reason why, for example, X, Y and Z. And that’s where we want to get IntujiOS to, right? Obviously that’s what we’ve discussed. We’re not there yet, but that’s our whole aim with IntujiOS, is yes, we’ve got all these other things, PSV Thinking, the EdgeFactor, 4DCX Framework. But to make it relatable for the audience that are listening of what we’re talking about this, I would sell you IntujiOS, and so would the rest of the team that are working on this rather than us trying to.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:06:35:23 – 00:06:52:06)
Sell anything else. The reason you would want to work with us, is because of what we can give you access to with IntujiOS, and how we can run things. And that would be, again, it’s the same principle applies for these other businesses. You’re suddenly not competing on price. And it’s not just about having your EdgeFactor or your digital differentiator.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:06:52:06 – 00:07:15:05)
It’s not just about that, but how do you use tech to supercharge that? Right. To, to really take that whole everything else outside of it. And it’s an accelerant, right? It’s fuel for the fire, is what it is. Is that you can scale those systems, you can really give it a turbo, you can give it fuel, whatever you need, and scale it and accelerate it.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:07:15:07 – 00:07:35:08)
That you, that you otherwise couldn’t have been able to do. And, to be honest, where I think a lot of this falls down for businesses, is they just do not know what is possible. And they have possibly tried digital transformation or these digital initiatives or projects previously, and they’ve failed. Therefore, they kind of get a bit shy from it, if that makes any sense.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:07:35:08 – 00:07:57:12)
And, and pull away from it. The only other thing I wanted to mention outside of that price, would, just before we forget, and we can discuss this a bit later, bit later as well. But typically with these types of businesses, as, reiterate again, manufacturing, wholesale, industrial businesses or service businesses, is that a lot of the people on the floor, there’s a disconnect between what’s actually happening to what’s happening on the floor.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:07:57:14 – 00:08:16:04)
And that could be on the manufacturing floor. It could be out in the warehouse systems. Typically there’s a lot of disconnected systems. There’s no, consistency from, from order or preorder through to actual customer satisfaction. And, that is something that, you know, we want to try and overcome.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:08:16:06 – 00:08:39:22)
Yeah. And then I wanted to, why you were talking about, one thing I got into my head is like, basically this industry is the valuable thing. One of the valuable, is also the, their, with the raw material, with the raw waste raw material. They also try to sell it. Or is that is valuable for them as well. Right. Waste raw material resources.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:08:40:00 – 00:09:02:14)
Suppose with the raw material, they build a product and then there is a waste, they try to sell it. And then they, with application software, right now what they are missing out is that like, they missed out, for an example, they missed out on a lot of quotes. Right? They did quoting for the clients and then they didn’t got the job, all that kind of thing.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:09:02:16 – 00:09:34:10)
All those quote, quotes, if collected, would create a report. a, why did it fail? If, if the reports are collected properly, that is kind of, right now it’s just waste, right. They’re are not, this data. There is not, they are not calculating how valuable that is because they, to improve the system if they collect it properly, not only have it in the emails where it, causes, it takes years to refactor it and then get it to a proper data.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:09:34:12 – 00:09:43:14)
If they could collect the, only the quotes like why did it fail? In a year’s time, if there could be a proper trained, why did it failed? Right?

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:09:43:14 – 00:10:02:01)
Yeah, and I think a big part of that is that, number one, as you said, businesses aren’t even collecting the data. And then if they, it’s not structured properly or it’s not in one system and it’s not even useful, it’s not being used properly. Now, what I say here is even so, some businesses are doing extremely well of collecting data for quotes.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:10:02:01 – 00:10:18:04)
You know, why did we lose the deal or whatever else. They might have a simple drop-down about, but that that lives in another system, right? So that might live in HubSpot or NetSuite or whatever. It lives in one system and then the works orders for the manufacturing live over here, but then the email marketing lives here, whatever else.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:10:18:04 – 00:10:30:15)
But there’s no one system where they own all the data without going off on a tangent, but it’s not structured properly. It’s not housed in one place. And most importantly, which means it’s not all actionable, right?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:10:30:17 – 00:10:54:23)
Yeah, exactly. You might not want to see those data daily, but when you want it, you want it so bad that you wan’t to make change right. What I meant to say is like, daily, you might not want to. You are stuck with all those daily chunks of your daily work life and all that kind of thing. But when you want to see, you can’t see it.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:10:55:00 – 00:10:56:15)
That’s the worst part.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:10:56:15 – 00:10:59:09)
They’ve got all of this data, but it’s not actionable, right?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:10:59:11 – 00:11:21:06)
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I mean to say as well. Basically when you want to action you, you if you have to look for, like the search for data, you all the energy goes into the drain, like researching on the data and collecting all the data. The, you know, when you lost the energy and focus. It takes time to a lot of time to get back to that rhythm.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:11:21:07 – 00:11:44:08)
But typically it’s reactive as well, right? It’s not proactive. And that’s the biggest problem. Like we’re typically looking at things reactively rather than proactively. We’re looking at lag measures kind of thing. Like we’re looking at things in the rearview rather than looking forward. And as we know, even with forecasting and other things, any, the way we get the biggest change, the way that we affect biggest things is forecasting or looking ahead, not looking in the rearview, because you can’t change what’s already happened.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:11:44:08 – 00:12:06:22)
And so if we can collect this data, and we know this just through our own experiments with what we’re doing with IntujiOS and things that we’re implementing, is that the power of data, when it’s structured properly, and most importantly, systems implemented to proactively analyse that data and deliver it at scale, this is nothing new. People have been talking about data analytics and things for decades right? I was having a conversation with

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:12:07:00 – 00:12:26:04)
Jack Levi, who’s from UPS and he was talking about what Orion and what they did with all the UPS system there and everything else, like the same fundamental principles still apply here, although I feel most businesses fail right now is, they are nowhere near having that level of system themselves or that structured data. And then most importantly, it’s great one thing to have the data, what are you doing with

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:12:26:04 – 00:12:32:01)
the business logic. Let’s just keep it simple. On top of that, for all your different stakeholders, to actually make it useful?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:12:32:03 – 00:12:58:23)
Exactly, what happens right now is that they have all the systems, but it’s not working properly. Imagine some, sometimes someday in Perth or in a city, what happens is you, the, all the traffic lights stop working and then manually, people are like, traffic police are there to handle the traffic. Imagine the chaos. That is the level of chaos currently the industry is facing.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:12:58:23 – 00:13:33:10)
That’s what I feel for actually. People manually tweaking things here and there and then not using the systems ability to do it. But the systems would be also properly designed to do that. As the best example I could see is the traffic light. For an hour it could chaos, it could just create a such a chaos, right? A similar thing if it’s manually in human dependent, like manual task dependent, then it’s always a chaos and the cost of it, maintaining the manual is huge.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:13:33:12 – 00:13:50:19)
Yeah. And it’s not just the cost of, like it’s maintaining the mistakes, it’s maintaining the, the resources and all of that kind of thing that come into it. I think the biggest thing about it is like, you take a practical example of what we’re trying to do with the, as just call up the projects application within IntujiOS without getting into too many details.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:13:50:19 – 00:14:14:06)
But we’ve got these automated sprint reviews and all of these kind of things that yes, there’s a lot of other products out there that have done things like this here, but aren’t done on proper data, again, it comes back. So much of it comes back to data right and like, it doesn’t need to be complicated necessarily. Like it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be this massive, over-the-top thing, this massive, you know, excessive thing.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:14:14:06 – 00:14:39:11)
But the hardest bit, in my opinion, is creating the data structure and the relationship between all of it. And then getting that data, inputted, and then coming back to the businesses that we’re talking about, right. Manufacturers, typically the biggest mistake I see, or the issue I see is the disconnect between the floor, the factory floor, the warehouse or the people on the floor versus the the office and so many people.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:14:39:11 – 00:14:57:02)
We’ve talked about this before, but have tried ERP, you know, using NetSuite, we’ve, we know for a fact we’re working with the client now that’s using another system that’s tried this kind of thing where, the interface is just not designed to capture that data properly. It’s not intuitive. It hasn’t been designed, hasn’t been, the data structure hasn’t been well thought out.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:14:57:02 – 00:15:24:00)
We haven’t thought, how can we make this as easy as possible? Not just to capture data, but capture it in a very intelligent way that not only lays the groundwork and like, gives them the ability to do amazing things now as a business. But what they’re talking about doing in five years time as a business will fundamentally shift how their business operates and mean that they can do far more in revenue that would have otherwise never been possible?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:15:24:02 – 00:16:02:08)
No. We have this example, real case situation, where in email field, a phone number is placed, in phone number field, name is placed. What kind of data would, what, how would that give us? Like, the give the application if it’s not captured properly. Right? So that is, and then one thing recently, I saw somewhere I don’t know the exact names, but I would love to share, one of the guy in somewhere around Facebook or some, multinational company, was, quit his job and then started a data manipulation company or just manually manipulating refactoring the data.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:16:02:10 – 00:16:25:19)
And then he earned million out of it. Actually just managing the data. It was like, this is the level of like, in every business, this is happening. Basically, if you have to invest that kind of level of manual work, then it’s like huge mistake. Again, like collecting data is one thing, but we have to make sure that right thing is placed in the right way.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:16:25:21 – 00:16:28:15)
Right, right fields actually.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:16:28:17 – 00:16:56:13)
Yeah, I agree with that. But without getting technical, with it,l I guess is, is the like, so many businesses or implementations, they fail to connect the business with the technology. That’s just a fact. And like it’s whenever, we know ourselves, through experience of working with these engineers and that kind of thing. If you, as an engineer or an implementer, a technical person, whatever you want to call like look at just, oh, okay, they’ve given us a checklist, so let’s implement it.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:16:56:13 – 00:17:16:15)
It’s a flawed mindset, if that makes sense. And we just know this through our own experience. And then what you end up with is a Frankenstein of a glorified Excel sheet or a glorified Google sheet, whatever you want to call it. There is no intelligent, and I know for a fact of going through this myself, just years and years and you know, this working together on these projects and that kind of thing.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:17:16:17 – 00:17:30:13)
And now, just for IntujiOS, I’ve been heavily involved with yourself and others, but in the database design and what we’re trying to do. Yes, we’ve got to refactor things as we go along. Yes, we’ve got to improve things and not to just get derailed into that conversation. But I think it comes back to this data thing.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:17:30:13 – 00:17:54:15)
Right? The whole time is we’ve got to set a foundation for success for the next 5 to 10 years as best as we can, and limit the refactoring right and make it as scalable as we possibly can from the beginning. And again, we’ve tested this model. I know for a fact I have myself we’ve tested this model of like, playing out those future scenarios and what’s going to be possible once we actually achieve it.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:17:54:15 – 00:18:01:03)
And again, just at the end of the day, it’s just having data structured properly opens up a world of possibilities for us.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:18:01:09 – 00:18:27:04)
If the application is designed, not designed to scale, then sometime, someday in the future, if you want to scale or like bring some change, then it’s very, very difficult. The change is, I call the change paralysis. You. You can’t change. You can’t move because you are so much like, the, your data is here, there, not managed properly. It’s like you.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:18:27:04 – 00:19:08:08)
What? You will be stuck. Stuck there forever. Very hard. It will, it will be like a biggest problem. The other thing is like, I would love to see, like you already discussed around the operations thing, like one department is not connected to another. The information is not flowing. I’ve seen people having the, they’re are not aware of the stock level. And sometimes like, sometimes what happens is, also happens is that with this kind of business, not only, they, you always stuck something because they currently work with their intuitions.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:19:08:10 – 00:19:32:18)
Right. This season is, seasons of this. So it might we might get this kind of thing. But if you have real data too, and then and then the one time, like there’s so much of frustration, I’ve seen this. Like, customer has order, sales team has over quoted like this or we have this in stock and everything. Did this and they did their job great.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:19:32:18 – 00:20:07:13)
Right. But coming back to the operation department, then oh there’s no stock because they are not, the data is not properly connected to each other. The department are not in sync. That is one of the biggest problems also in our kind of industry that I’ve seen, the, all, everyone is always busy on the day to day, like on machines, like running the machine and everything, and, but haven’t been able to see this picture properly.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:20:07:15 – 00:20:16:11)
And this is what we have learned during the discovery as well, right. They are literally not aware of the stock level.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:20:16:13 – 00:20:35:11)
Yeah. And that’s, that’s, absolutely that’s one example. I think a lot of them that, stock level is one. Yeah. It’s a good example. It’s a simple one people can understand. It’s just like, there’s misalignment across the business where there’s there’s no transparency or alignment across the board with. And this isn’t just one client. This is happens. This happens nearly with every client we work with.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:20:35:11 – 00:20:55:12)
Honestly, this stock thing basically happens nearly with every single client and every single business. And it’s a challenge. But even further than that, what I bring it back to at a higher level is, forget the stock part of it. It’s repeatable systems and processes. For example, there’s not one system that people can rely on that they know if they follow it, everything works.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:20:55:14 – 00:21:15:05)
That just doesn’t happen, right? And we know this through our own experience and our own business, that that’s where most problems come from. We haven’t. Yeah. When we’ve had the issues, we’ve come back to it. There’s not a repeatable system, scalable system, system in this particular instance, meaning both a SOP, a standard operating procedure, as well as the actual technology that’s running it.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:21:15:05 – 00:21:48:21)
Right. And. We know through experience of working with people and ourselves that if we can give team members a technology system that holds their hands through whatever they need to do within their role, it will eliminate 80% of the issues. From performance through to expectation of deliverables, even with clients, etc. and that kind of thing. This is where, and to bring this just practical to someone that’s listening is you might have a particular system on the floor that you need to do from a quality assurance perspective or customer’s request.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:21:49:01 – 00:22:16:04)
You might collect this information and give it to them in a report, right. Now, at the moment, you’re doing all of this in two spreadsheets and two paper-based forms. And then at the end of the month, you’ve got three admin people collating all of this, sending it to clients, etc.. What you don’t realise is, if you properly systemised and digitise these two things here, probably systemise and digitise the business with your own, what we call your EdgeFactor, whether that’s layered on top of your ERP, it’s an entire system, whatever.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:22:16:04 – 00:22:43:15)
Let’s not get into the specifics. It doesn’t matter. The point of it is, if you properly systemise and digitise the business, not only can you eliminate that process, meaning where, we intelligently, coming back to earlier, we capture that data throughout the process so that we can generate that report automatically. That’s just one example. If we do that well enough and we captured more data in other places, not with more work, we intelligently, intuitively do this.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:22:43:17 – 00:23:03:20)
We can now deliver live value to the customer in a way that we’ve never done before. We can now give insights to the factory floor in a way that we’ve never done before. We can give coaching to the back office staff about a specific thing. We can trigger a proactive account management notification on a specific thing, whatever it is, a whole business model changes.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:23:03:22 – 00:23:41:14)
Right? And again, this is what we discussed. I think it was a couple episodes ago, but a lot of this comes back to the scalable systems and processes. I don’t want to bang on about it because the stock level is an example, but I want to give everyone an example. Again, just an overall example. This comes back to how do we give every stakeholder, whether that’s customers, back office staff, whether it’s your factory floor, warehousing, customers, different subset of customers, every stakeholder, an intuitive system that just does, their role for them, basically.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:23:41:16 – 00:23:55:12)
All right. And if you do that, you’ll be forced to capture the data properly. You’ll be forced to make the system intuitive. But most people don’t know how to do that. They can’t connect the business and the technology part of it, honestly, that’s where it falls down. They cannot connect those two.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:23:55:14 – 00:24:27:13)
Exactly. And then one thing I’ll use the term discovery. I just wanted to share out with the audience. That discovery is one of the phase that we do with the clients. Basically, we literally go to their businesses and almost try to spend a week with them in their business, in the field itself, and then understand each and everything, every part of it, basically collate all the issues and problems and then, and then with the PSV Thinking, we try to calculate the value of the problems actually, basically.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:24:27:13 – 00:24:50:12)
And then also this is not only ends there, but we also communicate these problems with our team members. So that whoever is doing the coding or whatever, problem solving, they know what value of problem solving, they we relate to the problem properly. This is how we do the discovery phase, so that to the ground level, the problem is communicated properly and the value is communicated properly.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:24:50:16 – 00:24:56:12)
Everything is communicated properly. This is what we envision with every discovery, what we do.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:24:56:18 – 00:25:14:18)
Just to add to that, I think it’s super important to add in here that, when we go through these things, specifically the PSV Thinking, so many of the times, I would say 80% of the time or more, we find things at the business, they may have already known they were there to a degree, but have never looked at in a way that we find and help them understand and look at things.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:25:14:18 – 00:25:35:06)
Right. And again, this is about saying, very simply, how do we get and solve the problems and focus on the problems that, solve, well increase profitability the most, enable scale the most and build the most enterprise value. And I’ve had so many scenarios where we’ve worked on this for clients and they’ve gone like, we had no idea it was costing us that much.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:25:35:08 – 00:26:00:23)
And not only that of like, direct cost, it’s like how much it was costing us in opportunity cost as well. And I think that’s just the thing that gets missed, but coming back to these these problems, its pretty standard that we can list like, there’s a disconnect between systems, there’s a disconnect across different stakeholders, that kind of thing, but there’s just real time lack of transparency, lack of alignment, lack of data honestly, and lack of repeatable, scalable digitised systems.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:26:00:23 – 00:26:15:16)
Which means that so much stuff comes back to people’s heads and comes back to relying on a human to actually execute it. And if either of those things fail, then what we end up with is angry customers, misaligned processes, etcetera, which we again, we know, we know it.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:26:15:22 – 00:26:41:00)
Basically like what we are thinking of is like, we are not only trying to solve your operational problem, not only trying to just solve your customer experience problem, but also with, while we were talking with a regarding EdgeFactor, we are also trying to create your brand value, increase your brand value as well. With IntujiOS its the same thing. Thats what we are trying to do.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:26:41:02 – 00:27:05:20)
We are trying to create our own brand value. We are trying to increase the customer experience, improve the customer experience, improve the employee experience that we currently have. That’s what we want to build it for you as well, for everyone as well, because this is what we want to share this type of content in our Disruptors,a ctually. This is what we want to do with, how we want to disrupt the market.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:27:05:22 – 00:27:31:10)
We’re all learning here right, that’s the point. Like we’re trying to share in real time to prevent people making the same mistakes that we’ve made and to help them get ten years of experience in a very short period of time rather than having to, you know, just try and go through that themselves. And I guess the biggest thing, I’ll literally had a conversation with someone recently as well about this specifically, potential client and that were just talking about exactly the things that we’re talking about.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:27:31:10 – 00:27:47:21)
They’re trying, they’ve tried to do a lot of things. This is not the first time it happens very often. They’ve tried to do things internally. They’ve tried to do things, as best they could. They did a very, you know, they did the best they could themselves, but they’ve tried to do all of this internally, tried to build their EdgeFactor, they’ve tried.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:27:47:21 – 00:28:05:16)
They’ve got a really good idea, but they’ve failed on the execution. They’ve failed to take, again it comes back to that business and technology. You might have a fun.., like a fundamentally good business idea or idea that can help change their business, but they can’t then translate it to the technology side. And even when they think they do, they’re not doing the right thing.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:28:05:16 – 00:28:23:05)
If that makes any, as we know this? And the problem with this, it’s even different to building and construction. And a lot of our listeners that are in, these industries we’re talking about, will be familiar with construction and manufacturing things. The difference with that, you think about like manufacturing, right? So forget building, think manufacturing. You’re building a widget or a product.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:28:23:05 – 00:28:36:21)
You can see it. Right. So when I weld something or, you know, fix it together or whatever I do, I can physically see it. I can actually look at it and any anyone that may not even be involved in it can pick something out like this pen, for example, something you say, oh yeah, I can’t see everything about it.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:28:36:21 – 00:29:03:05)
But at least I have some idea. I can look at it visually and go, you know, it’s kind of, kind of okay, people cannot do that with technology or systems. They have no reference point, whether something is good, something bad, it is much harder than people realise. And I say this time and time again, it takes a lot more investment and a lot more time than people.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:29:03:07 – 00:29:30:03)
Allow for, to build your own technology, eg. your EdgeFactor incredibly well. At the same time, people massively underestimate the power that it has, that it can, how it can, in a way it can transform their business. And we’ve worked with businesses that have done this right. We know businesses that have done this, and there’s no way they could do what they do today without those systems in place.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:29:30:05 – 00:29:58:15)
Exactly. One thing I was thinking of this like, was this. While we are building EdgeFactor. If EdgeFactor like saves five minutes of someone’s day for a year daily, then it saves a lot of money. This is what I see, what we are actually are trying to build. Saving time is saving money. While the industry manufacturing is always fighting against the price.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:29:58:15 – 00:30:04:10)
If saving money makes sense, then building EdgeFactor, is makes sense more.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:30:04:12 – 00:30:28:07)
Yeah. What our position is as as well, personally, the way I position this and again, this is a conversation we’ve had from a client recently, about an EdgeFactor that we built from them was, and there’s no guarantee in this and there’s obviously other parts to it, but they were going for a tender or a contract opportunity that would double the sales in their business because of what they’d built.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:30:28:09 – 00:30:47:10)
Okay. So it was worth, the whole contract was worth double their sales, right? So it was a massive contract. And it would double the sales of their business if they were to win it because of the technology that they’d built. And we’d work with them to build. Now, it doesn’t mean that, that its perfect, that you don’t need to fix things.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:30:47:10 – 00:31:02:02)
And that’s, that’s part and parcel is like saying that I, we never need to fix our products or refine our products or improve our products. It’s just a silly way to look at it. You, of course you’ve got to. You’ve constantly got to invest and you’ve constantly got to improve. But what I’m saying with that, I totally get the point.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:31:02:02 – 00:31:27:11)
And I agree with, saving time is massive, massive cost but I argue and push for, what it allows you to do from an opportunity perspective is far bigger than what it can ever save you. And our position in this fact, for example, could you take that same thing that the client has experienced and say, okay, we now, the only reason we’ve been able to win this contract or this business is because of our EdgeFactor and what we built here.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:31:27:13 – 00:31:54:12)
Right? And one day we’ll be saying that about IntujiOS, right. And that’s the difference between oh yeah, it’s I’ve just 5000 hours a year, which is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, because that is brilliant. A lot of big cost savings. Brilliant for the business, should still happen. But the better thing is to say, we landed that monstrous contract because we could offer something no one else could.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:31:54:14 – 00:32:19:21)
There’s a big difference in mindset. And again, I even encourage people when we work with them. Yes, we, we absolutely need to be looking at where we can increase profitability, and save costs. 100%. But if that’s your only mindset, you’re looking at this the complete wrong way, because what you miss out on is the opportunities. If you think about it in a in a different perspective of like, okay, what could we possibly do, right?

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:32:19:21 – 00:32:49:12)
If we had this, this, in this, that would mean that we were hands down the leader in the industry. Okay. How do we do that? Not just, oh how do we take this process and cut 1000 hours a month out of it, right. It’s, it’s a different, different kind of mindset. But then at the same time, when you start talking a scale of the clients that we get to work with, and the privilege that we’ve had working with them, making a small improvement in a process can sometimes be worth a lot of money.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:32:49:14 – 00:33:24:01)
Exactly. Look, like one of the experiences I’ve seen is like the simple quoting tool. In email and every process is like, it takes weeks and weeks. A simple quoting tool, if a customer can jump into the application and then okay, this is the cost they can see, they can make the decision instantly. The instant thing creates a lot of business, because in the, in weeks or two’s, two weeks more time, they always switch their mind.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:33:24:07 – 00:33:38:09)
This is not better. They already research on everything else and then this, change their mind. If they can click the button ‘buy now’ that is, that is very like, like that is the instant decision I’ve, with the guts right.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:33:38:11 – 00:34:01:02)
Yeah. Well, very powerful though as well. Like it’s the same, it’s just, people want when someone wants a solution they want it now. And we know this for ourselves and it’s very difficult for us because we’ve got very complicated projects and like it’s but, it’s exactly what we intend on doing with IntujiOS, how do we take some of these things that take us 3 to 4 weeks sometimes, to put together, because the amount of effort that has to go into it right.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:34:01:04 – 00:34:24:12)
How do we take that down to 3 to 4 days, right? And not deliver anything worse, but deliver something better? Again, it’s not like, it’s going to be quicker and worse, but it’s got to be quicker and better. So yes, it’s not just easy to do that. It’s hard to do that. But it is possible. And we know through the POCs that we’ve done and everything else that we are heading towards that direction.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:34:24:14 – 00:34:41:05)
But this is the same with any other business. It’s different to us, but it’s, the same principle applies. The same thing applies, of that’s how you should be looking at things. And same thing. Imagine if we could take those ones that are taking 3 to 4 weeks now do them in 3 to 4 days. Oh, now we can do four times the opportunities.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:34:41:05 – 00:34:48:18)
Oh, suddenly. Wow. That systems just opened up four times the growth for us that we otherwise would have been able to do right, with the same power, same thing, right?

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:34:48:18 – 00:34:51:19)
Yeah.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:34:51:21 – 00:35:13:21)
Okay. We discussed a lot with, it was a very, very mindful discussion and I loved the conversation today. Thanks, Julian again for this week’s Disruptors podcast. I’ve touched a lot of part of the businesses we deal with. I hope you enjoyed and hope everyone, whoever is listening, enjoys as well. Thank you.

Julian Wallis, CEO at Intuji (00:35:13:23 – 00:35:16:01)
Thanks mate. It was a good chat. Thank you.

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:35:16:03 – 00:35:46:04)
Thank you mate. That’s a wrap on this episode of The Disruptors. If you are serious about unlocking your EdgeFactor®, the thing that sets your business apart and helps it grow sustainably. Don’t forget to follow, share and leave a quick review. We will be back next week with more real-world insights and no fluff conversations on how to rethink your systems, modernise operations, and build value that lasts. 

Ritesh Shah, CTO at Intuji (00:35:46:06 – 00:35:50:09)
Until then, stay safe, stay focused, and keep disrupting!