The ZIZO Effect

Ep 10 We Sell Trust: Data Integrity

• ZIZO Technologies Inc. • Season 1 • Episode 10

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In this episode of The ZIZO Effect podcast, join hosts Jimmy Chebat and Andrew Reimers as they explore the crucial role of system integrations in optimizing business operations and maintaining data integrity. We're excited to have Zach DiaPaul, ZIZO's System Integrations Coordinator, share his expertise on transforming complex data into actionable insights and how ZIZO's cutting-edge solutions combat the common pitfalls of manual data entry and overwhelming data volumes.

This episode discusses how real-time data can enhance decision-making, streamline operations, and uphold our commitment to trust and accuracy in data handling. From discussions about leading vs. trailing indicators to the importance of data integrity, learn how ZIZO leverages technology to ensure that every piece of data tells the correct story of your business.

Whether you're a regular listener or new to the podcast, prepare for an engaging conversation that sheds light on the technology driving ZIZO and the people behind it. Get ready—It's Game Time!

Jimmy Chebat:

Welcome back to T he ZIZO Effect podcast, your go-to source for all things gamified. I'm Jimmy Chebat and today we're thrilled to have a very special guest with us, Zach DiaPaul, ZIZO's System Integrations Coordinator. In this episode, we'll dive into the crucial role of systems integration and optimizing business operations and maintaining data integrity. Zach is here to share his insights on turning complex data into actionable insights and how ZIZO's cutting edge solutions prevent the common pitfalls of manual data entry and the overwhelming data drown. We'll also explore how ZIZO leverages real time data to enhance decision making and streamline operations, all while upholding our commitment to trust and accuracy in data. So, sit back for an insightful conversation about the technology driving ZIZO and learn from one of our key team members. Get ready, it's game time.

Andrew Reimers:

Hello and welcome to T he ZIZO Effect podcast. I am your host, Andrew J. Reimers, and at one time I was considered, at worst, the fifth best country singer in Western New York. Now I don't know where I fell. I knew I wasn't number one. At worst? What about at best?

Zach DiaPaul:

Second? Okay.

Andrew Reimers:

I'll never figure out the exact numbers of the tally in the votes but, as they say, it's an honor to be nominated. But today I am really excited to jump into the world of data, which is a statement I never thought I would say. You're lying, but that's okay. With a very special guest, our systems integrations coordinator at ZIZO, Mr. Zach DiaPaul. Welcome, Zach to T he ZIZO Effect podcast.

Zach DiaPaul:

Thank you, thanks for having me and, uh, my fun fact, this was actually my original office at ZIZO.

Andrew Reimers:

Was it really?

Zach DiaPaul:

It didn't look like this, but it was. No, it did not.

Andrew Reimers:

That is funny. Yes, this is where we used to come and chat and really where we got to know each other. And you know, dare I say it's you're kind of like my work husband, man Whoa.

Zach DiaPaul:

Listen, I don't want to get in trouble with that, but it's that is true, listen.

Andrew Reimers:

Your wife doesn't watch this. Yeah, it's true, she won't pay attention. Well, Zach, honestly, man, it's so great to have you here. You know, we're kind of going off our plan a little bit. Usually, Jimmy and I are here talking, but we wanted to bring you in because we want to really discuss the importance of data and integrity. You know things like that. But if you've been following along, and hopefully if you've been following along at home, you know that we like to start every single episode with a game, and that game is called Name the Game.

Zach DiaPaul:

I got it wrong, but that's okay. We knew it was going to happen.

Andrew Reimers:

It's all right.

Zach DiaPaul:

Doesn't matter the amount of practice.

Andrew Reimers:

I'm ready to play.

Zach DiaPaul:

That's the important part, awesome. .

Andrew Reimers:

Well, we have wonderful and talented producers backstage Alex and Emma and what they do? They play a song. We have our buzzers here and it is up to us to see who can name the game first. Now, points don't matter. The records at this point are just oh, it matters, it matters, no, it does matter, but let's get your buzzer to the front. H and on the table.

Zach DiaPaul:

When you're ready, we are, too. Got it, although. All right. So it was definitely early 90s NHL, ZIZO . get the exact game I'm going to go with. Played a lot of 93 and 94. I'm going ZIZO go with 94.

Andrew Reimers:

NHL 94,. Is that it? It is! Pumping crowd noise. Zach, you win an amazing pair of ZIZO socks. Awesome. Thank you, oh my gosh, you were going to step up your sock game with the ZIZO logo socks.

Zach DiaPaul:

Love it.

Andrew Reimers:

Do you love it?

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, sure, I'm a dad now, I can wear this kind of socks.

Andrew Reimers:

These are a hit wherever we go. That's what everybody wants, is the ZIZO socks. All right, so let's get down to business. Zach, you've been with ZIZO here for a couple of years, and if there's one phrase that resonates through these halls and through these offices, what is it? I k now exactly. W e sell trust. We sell trust. So, as our resident data expert, I think that's fair to say. Sure, let's dive straight into how ZIZO embodys the concept of we sell trust through data integrity.. . Whyon'to y d y don't give me a little bit of background? a b p o w Z f d i w m s i d w o

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah. So I mean, the biggest thing is, if people don't trust what we're showing in ZIZO, then they're not going to care about what we show them and they're going to kind of fall out of love with ZIZO I'm going to say it that way and they're not going with our systems and we show them exactly what they're doing on a day-to-day basis and numbers m those umbers have to match. So that's one of our biggest things here is making sure that that data is correct and accurate.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, definitely. You know, we've seen some pretty amazing examples of the way people are attempting to do what we do using spreadsheets and things like that. Can you talk to me about some of the crazies? Maybe you have some background, some history and some stories prior to ZIZO as to how you were managing data and how you were doing all of that without a. It was a manual process, right? Absolutely.

Zach DiaPaul:

I think part of basically my career has been being that guy at a company and managing spreadsheets that just can be incredibly time intensive and sensitive. And you know, I think a lot of things you see at companies is that data drown, where you know they are able to pull the reports from systems you know they may get into their phone system, their CRM, you know time and attendance system and they're pulling all these reports and they get all this data compiled and you know pages and pages or they put it all on a nice big spreadsheet and then you know it's very difficult to sift through that data and actually, you know, use it in a meaningful way. And I kind of liken it to Charlie I know he's sunny the meme, I don't know if you probably know it.

Andrew Reimers:

No, I'm familiar For anybody that doesn't.

Zach DiaPaul:

He's trying to solve a mystery and he's got tons and tons of notes and pictures on a board and there's string going in all different directions and he's all frazzled because it's so much to try to take in and digest that it just can be confusing and difficult to follow and track. And I think that's what we see a lot in companies with these spreadsheets, where they're impossible really to you know. You spend all day trying to analyze the number that you see in there because they're just not, you know, optimized in a way to easily read or manage the data.

Andrew Reimers:

So data drown this term you threw out there, man, we hear that a lot and you know. I would love if you could talk to me a little bit more about data drown and why it's crucial for businesses to manage this.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, I think you know really using the data is telling the story of the business, and when you get this data drown, where you know there's just there's so much data you can't analyze it properly or you know you lose track of certain things. It's really easy to tell the wrong story or tell an incomplete story on what your business is doing. So it's really important to have you know an easily managed way to digest the data that you're able to pull from your system.

Andrew Reimers:

Well, I mean not just wrong or incomplete, but you know I mean we've seen examples in the past and you know, I'm sure that you've experienced it as well. When you have that much data coming from that many different places and you try to organize it and you try to bring it into one place, you know anyone can manipulate that data to say whatever they want it to say.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, that is a big thing. I think it's kind of like storytelling. You know you can tell your own story from you know the same situation, I think you get. You know different people in life. They go through the same situation and they both tell a completely different story, and it's all about how you digest and reiterate that information, data and so, yeah, I think it's important to have it optimized in a way that you can easily tell the appropriate story. Yeah and back it up, if nothing else, exactly.

Andrew Reimers:

That brings us, then, to the idea of ZIZO and the way we combat that solutioning, as we like to say around here, and our mission is to centralize that data and become that single source of truth right.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, I think the centralization is the big, the big part there, and really that's that's where you know we're taking all those different systems phone systems, crm and we're pulling that data into a centralized warehouse where you know they don't have to manage all those different reports. So we get that in different ways. We maybe pull reports, we have them send us reports regularly, or we'll integrate through an API and get that information directly and we pull it on to one centralized place and then we map and optimize it in a way that we can display it so it's an easily told story or you can at least easily track what's going on and you don't get lost in all of the irrelevant data that maybe kind of um is part of those reports. You know we pick apart what's most important Um and that's a big part of the process that we do here at ZIZO.

Andrew Reimers:

Well, a big part of the process, and when we talk about data lag, we try to get as close to real time as we can.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, as as close as possible, and that's that is a big aspect of it. Is that real time? Um, you know, I think a lot of times people pull reports, you know, end of the month, and they they can see what happened, you know, during that last month, but that's not really relevant to today and I, you know, I kind of use a sports analogy. You know, if I'm a coach and I'm, I'm in the middle of the game and I need to change my strategy up because something's not working, if I get that report, the data on what's going on in the game tomorrow or a week later, okay, well, I probably already lost that game because I wasn't able to make the changes I needed. So that real-time feedback loop, that's the important thing. I need that data now. I need it during the game so I can make my adjustments and hopefully win the game or, in business world, hit your goals for the day. You need that instant feedback.

Andrew Reimers:

I want to dive into something you just said there about the feedback loop. Can you give me a little bit more about what that means?

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, sure, I think you know I use the coaching analogy for the real time data. But the next step in that is the players in the game. Or you know, your agents and your business and and that feedback loop that they get from that real time data. Where you know if I'm in the middle of a game and you know maybe I'm a quarterback and I I, you know, I'm not seeing the field well, or the defense is disguising coverage to one side, you know, if I don't get that information in real time where I can then make the adjustment in game to you know, make my changes, then I'm not going to win the game, I'm not going to. You know I'm going to end up struggling.

Zach DiaPaul:

And and same in the business world where you know, if I don't know during the day, hey, this is what I'm doing wrong and why I'm not going to hit my goal. You know I need that feedback loop of saying, oh look, I made a couple extra calls and closed a couple extra deals and I can see it. I just took the call and boom, there's, my number increased. Okay, this is working. And now I'm going to keep working at it and keep doing better at my job, knowing that I'm seeing what I'm doing is correlating to that end goal.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, no, it's a great thing and that's some of the best feedback that we get from our users of ZIZO is having that transparency and having that real-time feedback loop, because instead of having a manager come and yell at them at the end of every month and say they did a bad job, they can, you know, go to them during the day and say hey, you know your numbers are down a little bit, you know anything going on and maybe there is something in their personal life that's happening, or maybe that's just. I don't know. I'm just unlucky today, but you know, I'm going to keep pushing and trying harder. Like it's, it adds so much, you know, not only you. You mentioned the business side of things, but in terms of the relationships and the culture, um, it changes everything. We've seen it firsthand.

Zach DiaPaul:

I think you made a good point about. You know, at the end of the month, someone comes back to you and says oh, you know what happened here and you may not remember two weeks ago I mean, I don't remember what I have for breakfast at the time Like I'm not gonna remember why I had a slow day. You know, the third day of the month, I need that instant. Oh man, I'm really lagging today. Let me pick it up, and I know why I'm lagging. You know, maybe I need coffee or something like that to get me going. You know, having that real-time feedback. It's way more impactful than at the end of the month being told you didn't have a good month. What happened? I don't know A million things.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, a million things happen. I'll do better next time. Yeah, exactly, and you buy yourself another month, that's it.

Zach DiaPaul:

And then it just keeps building. You're doing the same thing. You're always oh, I'll fix it next time, or something else goes wrong? Well, I'll figure that out next time. And you're never actually solving any problems.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, we've both been under the Jimmy Chebat learning tree, as it is here at ZIZO for a few years and I think there was so much I needed to learn about. ZIZO is great and the platform is slick. It looks great. What it does is amazing, not only for the people that use it, but for leadership that use it to manage their employees. But I think one of the coolest things that I've learned over the last couple of years is the idea of leading versus trailing indicators. So I want to sort of pass it over to you. Can you clarify the difference between leading and trailing indicators and why they're both important?

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, no, I think we kind of touched on it a little bit there with, you know, the idea of finding out at the end of the month how you did and seeing what that happened. That's that idea of trailing, where you know you're seeing the end result but you're not understanding necessarily what happened to get there. You just see the outcome and that's kind of that trailing indicator or something like you know cleared money or closed deals in you know the business world where that's the ultimate goal but it's not telling you how you got there. And so that's the idea of leading indicators and those are the things that really we use in ZIZO to help end up getting to that ultimate goal and that I don't want to call it trailing metric necessarily, but you want to increase that cleared money at the end of the month you got to work on making calls, making the right calls, right party contacts, payment agreements, things like that that you're on a day-to-day basis are projecting kind of where you're going to hit at the end of the month.

Zach DiaPaul:

That's what that leading indicator, really those metrics, do is. They kind of show you your forecasted outcome based on how you're doing right now, and then it goes back to that feedback loop of, okay, well, I'm not on pace. It's kind of that idea of, like I said, projecting, I'm not on pace, well, let me work on the thing that I'm not doing well at and having that feedback loop. I can easily do that now instead of at the end of the month. Well, next time I'll fix it, because now I know, oh, I didn't hit my goal. Well, I want to know, am I on my way to hitting it? And that's where that leading indicator comes in.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, definitely. I don't want to paint a picture here of all just sunshine and rainbows and every unicorns and teddy bears. When it comes to integrations, I know that your job is very hard. I know there's a reason that ZIZO is set apart from other gamification platforms and I know it's because of the custom integrations. Now, I'm not asking for any secret sauce or anything like that, don't worry, but can you just talk to me a little bit? I know the story, but I think it'd be really beneficial for the people listening. We did run into a client it was a pretty well-known bank that we struggled with getting real-time data and getting those leading indicators. But can you tell me the story about how you worked around that and how we were still able to improve the way they were getting their data?

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, I think that's the thing you know. Obviously, this is all kind of perfect world that we're talking about. You can't always get you know everything to the hour or you know we can't get every piece of data that we want, just because there's limitations on the systems. And that's where you know we spend a lot time. Part of the integration process. It's really about a three-month process and a lot of that is working with the IT teams of our clients and working with our own IT team, which is incredible. They do all the real work figuring out how we can get that data as close to real time as possible.

Zach DiaPaul:

And, like you said, one of our clients I think it was eye-opening when we talked to them about, hey, how do you measure your agents right now and they said, oh well, we track how they did in a couple of calls throughout the month and we kind of tell them probably at the end of the month they're checking a call from two weeks ago and saying, oh, was that a good call? Was it a bad call? And then they maybe give that feedback in a kind of a poor feedback loop to their agents and that's really trailing. I mean that's like we talked about. It's really hard to make a difference, at least in real time. You're going to maybe do better next month, because you got told last month you were a little bit low on quality or whatever it may be.

Zach DiaPaul:

And so what we try to do is we try to identify as many kind of what we call behavioral changing or effort KPIs that we could track, that we could then identify in the interim, even if it was a day late.

Zach DiaPaul:

That's a lot better than end of month average wait time, something system called call minor, which is a really good job of tracking kind of the tone of calls or a different score metrics within a specific call for an agent, and so tracking those things and we want to build more on that is how you can really help, you know, give that instant feedback on things that they're doing, the agents are doing right now in order to fix the end of month numbers. And so we started building those ideas out and, like you said, it wasn't perfect. There were some KPIs that we didn't get the data for a full week and we kind of hated that, truthfully. But a week is still better than a month and I think that's where, even not in an ideal world, we're still able to make a difference and ideally in the future we'll get it down to a day or intraday. But just any kind of improvement like that is going to make a huge difference. Having that feedback.

Andrew Reimers:

Shout out to CallMiner, a leader in voice and call analytics. I love it. No, they're a great company. If you're looking into that, I would definitely recommend checking them out. They don't sponsor this.

Jimmy Chebat:

This is just my own personal opinion Not yet.

Andrew Reimers:

I like it Not yet. No, that was great and I loved. You know the magic that you were able to work behind the scenes to be able to get like you said. You know it wasn't perfect to do because you really set me up here. You lobbed one up.

Zach DiaPaul:

I'm going to knock it out of the park with this transition.

Andrew Reimers:

You talked about a couple of different KPIs. I would really like to discuss that more in depth, because we discuss here on The T ZIZO Zizzo Effect podcast and also, just you know, with our customers and people that we're onboarding and things is the different types of KPIs, because it's not just about the bottom dollar, it's not just about looking how you did last month, look how you did last quarter, look how you did last year. It's everything else, like you said, that goes into creating that money. So, if you would, can you break down the different types of KPIs that companies, businesses and leaders could be tracking? Sure, yeah.

Zach DiaPaul:

So I think it's really a great. You know something I learned when getting to ZIZO you know first you think, okay, everybody's got a specific goal that they're trying to hit at their job. You know everybody's job has a metric that you're told make sure you do this and maybe that's all you focus on. You don't think about all the things that go into. You know what help you do better at that one specific metric. And I think that's where, when you really break it down and what I learned to do here is breaking down all those little things that you're doing at your job into those different KPI types that we're talking about. So you know one is behavioral KPIs.

Zach DiaPaul:

So that's really something that's great in ZIZO to show, being able to see you know something like hours, worked schedule, adherence. You know you're showing up to work on time. That's behavioral thing and we can track that and say through your time and attendance system okay, yeah, you're doing a great job of showing up and being at your desk. You know at the time you're supposed to be and working your hours and you know that's something that if you're not doing that, okay, well, we're going to show you. Hey, you're showing up to work five hours a day and you probably know that. But now if we're throwing it in your face and ZIZO and saying, hey, like look it, I can see and everybody else can see you're only working five hours a day. Okay, well, let's start. You know it's going to. That's kind of seeing like I'm lagging behind everybody else and everybody else sees it now. So maybe I'm going to make that change internally. I want to make sure that I'm not the last in the office or whatever it may be.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, and we saw that actually with the bank we were speaking about earlier. I thought something that was really interesting that came out of our time with them was it was an inbound call customer service department, so they couldn't be. They had no control over the amount of calls that were coming in. However, what we did see was a spike in their availability on the phone.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah.

Andrew Reimers:

That they were willing, you know, ready, willing and able to take those phone calls if they were to come in and those numbers went up and again that's a behavior.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yep, and it's even a little bit, you know. That kind of gets into the next one there, which is the effort KPS. So, yes, you know, am I showing up to work on time? It's behavioral in a way, but it's also effort, and effort really is where we see the most effectiveness within ZIZO, because that's where you know we're able to say, okay, how many calls are you making? You know right party contacts, your availability time or in queue time, things where it's not just behavioral, it's something that you can control based on how much effort you're putting into your job. And for us it's really easy to show those in ZIZO and say, hey, you're not making a lot of calls and I know that it doesn't take us. You know it's not skillful to dial the phone.

Zach DiaPaul:

It's probably just behavioral or effort, where you're just not putting in a lot of work and so being able to show that in a way, that again that micromanages, where they're kind of like, well, I'm lagging behind everybody else, I better put in a little more effort today. Or, you know, maybe you're having a slow day. It's not necessarily always a terrible indicator of who you are as a worker, but just maybe you had a slow day, or whatever it may be, and you know we, whatever it may be, and you know we can show it like, hey, you're kind of lagging, maybe pick it up a little bit, um, and so that's where it's easy for an agent to pick it up, because it's not skill, it's just effort. It's how much, you know, are you putting into your job and we're rewarding you for putting in that effort. So that's the incentivization that we do within Zizo. Uh, I think my favorite one next would be the skillbased KPIs. Can you talk to me a little bit about those? Yeah, so, skill, as I kind of mentioned, that's generally not something that you I mean you can get better at it through practice. But putting in effort necessarily isn't going to get you more cleared money or closing deals or selling things like that does take skill, and so in Zizo it's a really great one to reward through incentivization, because usually you know better skill, the better you're doing for the company, the company is making more money, and so we want to reward that. And so, you know, having a skill-based KPIs, as I mentioned, it's really great to see that hey, I'm really good at my job and I can see that I'm doing really well, I'm on top of the leaderboard, I can see that I'm doing really well, I'm on the top of the leaderboard, I'm earning the most money, you know. So that's where we're kind of building on already good habits and just rewarding for that, and even not even necessarily monetarily, but just seeing you at the top of the leaderboard, you know, it's that instant gratification of hey, I'm really good at my job through skill, you know and I'm showing it and everybody else can see it.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, I'm showing it and everybody else can ZIZO see it. Yeah, and you know, another real world example as a former collector, I've been there and you mentioned. You know anybody can make a call. It's important to the process. It's, you know, definitely one of the steps you have to take. Yeah, you get the right number and you get the right person on the phone Great, you talk to them. But the thing is that phone call is going to end one of two ways. They're either going to pay their debt or they're going to tell ZIZO to screw off and hang up on you. That's generally how it goes. But the reason I bring that up is because to close that deal and to get somebody to acknowledge and to pay their debt after they've been defaulted for so long, there's a genuine skill that goes into that, and I saw a lot of collectors come and go that did almost everything right but they just didn't have what it took to close the KPIs, like you said, these are the ones that are really cool to reward and there's even ways to reward them. You know we can go down a rabbit hole with this as far as rewarding them more for helping other people and teaching people and training, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Zach DiaPaul:

No, I mean, it's good to have those in there because, like you said, that's that's really bottom line for the business. You know that, that skill of being good at your job. But then there's, you know, another way to kind of influence. Okay, maybe you're not as good at your job skillfully, but there's other things behavioral effort, engagement. Engagement's another type of KPI where you know, doing different things like trainings, surveys, participation, you're going to get better and become more skilled at your job through some different things that we can track in the system, and it's that learning, basically, is another way to put it. And so I that's another type to track and help you advance in your skill-based KPIs.

Andrew Reimers:

finally the outcome. Kpis yeah, no, you're right, that was engagement, and then finally the outcome.

Zach DiaPaul:

KPIs, yeah. So just last is outcome. I mean clear money, qa score or whatever it may be. It's the bottom line for the business. It's how are you doing at those KPIs? And obviously that's the thing that the company wants to reward the most. So we make sure in Zizo that that's something that we definitely incentivize. But we understand that, as we talked about through this whole podcast, it's all the other things that lead to that are the things we want to change and then, ideally, everybody's doing great at their outcome.

Andrew Reimers:

Kpis Exactly it's important to have Positively reinforce all the behaviors that go into driving the ultimate outcome that you're looking for. Absolutely so, zach. Real-time data, direct integrations, feedback loop, real-time we've discussed all of that. Talk to me a little bit about how that enhances decision-making amongst leaders within businesses.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, I think all of that kind of puts in place the idea of board, having it all easily at your fingertips, having the you know relevant information, sifting through you know what's actually important, what actually changes that bottom line, that all helps the business and the agents tell the story of how they're doing in that real time and in a way that then you can, you know, really understand the impact and how the business is doing and change your you know future plans and your behaviors based on your you know what you're seeing in the data. So telling the right story, the accurate story and really what we see. I think one of the big things that I didn't necessarily think was going to happen, or one of the things that maybe surprised me, was the amount of micromanaging that we see from the agents, where now they have all that data at their fingertips and they can easily sift through it. It's not you know, it doesn't take someone who's you know, really you know in depth with spreadsheets to piece together the information. It's just readily available and they can see how they're doing day to day and they can make changes and they can come to the managers and say, hey, you know I'm leading in all of these KPIs and doing really well, I want to promote it. Or you know I'm not doing so great, I got to pick it up. And they may do that before the manager has to go to them and say, hey, you're not really. You know you're. You got to pick it there and easily, you know, digestible in a way that they can understand.

Andrew Reimers:

you're absolutely right, man. Before we wrap up, if you're interested in doing this, I want to make sure that I don't want to put you out.

Zach DiaPaul:

All right.

Andrew Reimers:

But why don't you tell us a little bit more about your role at Zizzo and how you make this data-driven strategy a reality for the customers? Sure Again, no secret sauce.

Zach DiaPaul:

Yeah, no, no secret sauce. I think the secret sauce is a little bit of the teamwork here between the two of us, not to humble brag a little bit, but helps a lot having a good partner and a lot of good backup behind me on the on the development side. I mean we have a great team of developers that um really do all the difficult. Uh, you know, as you said, the secret sauce stuff that we won't get into too much about how we integrate and how we pull that data, um, but really, you know, zizo isn't just a platform, it's. It's kind of a lifestyle changes, maybe a little bit much, but it's, you know, a business lifestyle change where you and I we really do a lot of work with both the IT team for our clients, obviously, finding ways to integrate with their systems, high level stuff, reports being downloaded and sent, apis, either pulling data from

Zach DiaPaul:

But really it's not just the IT teams. We work with operations teams and we delve into, you know, what their business is doing on a day-to-day basis and their departments to figure out, okay, you know, what are those different types of KPIs we can track, what are the KPIs that maybe they're not tracking, but hey, we can get the data. So, like, let's start tracking this and showing you why it's relevant to have this, you know, leading indicator that maybe you didn't track before. A lot of what we do is spending those months, really multiple calls with the operations teams, understanding their business, finding those KPIs, and then figuring out how to track them through the data and pulling that information into our centralized warehouse mapping, optimizing it in a way that we can display it in Zizzo. So it's, you know, a nice concise story for agents and managers to see and understand. Awesome man.

Andrew Reimers:

Well, god, it's been really cool talking with you in a setting. I mean, we we talk all the time, every single day, and uh, you know, but we don't often do it with cameras all around us and lights and that. I don't even see a camera.

Zach DiaPaul:

No, there's no cameras here, it's just a couple guys being dudes, guys being dudes. Yep, nailed it, I think it was half the demographic.

Andrew Reimers:

So, zach, I gotta ask it's important that I think we get this out. I think it's uh important that we discuss this. Listen, we have the world here watching. So, zach, everyone is wondering, and I'm here to ask the hard-hitting questions.

Zach DiaPaul:

Good journalism. I like it. Go ahead, that's right.

Andrew Reimers:

When did you first realize you were such a nerd?

Zach DiaPaul:

I think that's just. I've always been a nerd. There was no realizing, it's just always been the case.

Andrew Reimers:

So you were born that way. It was not a choice. Exactly Born that way.

Zach DiaPaul:

I can tell you choice, exactly, born that way. Um, I, I could tell you actually, I as a child. Uh, halloween candy. You know, I think a lot of people organize your Halloween candy, maybe some OCD. But uh, I didn't just organize it, I made a bar chart with my candy to, to see, you know which?

Andrew Reimers:

Is there a picture of this?

Zach DiaPaul:

I hope not. If there is, you're not getting it. So I guess I've just always been that way, I don't know why. A lot of problem solving it's something I'm passionate about. I've always every job I've been in you know, I went from software engineering to accounting, back to software engineering and every job I've been in I just find my way to spreadsheets and analyzing data. So it's just, I guess, something I'm passionate about. It's been a great opportunity for me to be able to explore that more.

Zach DiaPaul:

Definitely honing in on my nerd inner qualities. It's been fun, so I guess it's just something I was born with.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, no, that's important for people to understand. You know, live your truth, folks. It's a Zach. It's honestly been such a pleasure. I know I joked at the beginning how excited I was to talk data, but truly the data integrity is in. We sell trust. Those are, you know, the biggest factors in the success ZIZ O of and if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be able to accomplish that. I want to thank you for being amazing at your job. I want to thank you for going out of your comfort zone joining us here on the ZIZO Effect podcast and, most of all, I want to thank you for being a friend.

Zach DiaPaul:

Appreciate it Part of a great team. It's not just me. It's a good team here. Awesome man Includes you.

Andrew Reimers:

Well done. I'm proud of you.

Zach DiaPaul:

Thank you for having me.

Jimmy Chebat:

That wraps up today's deep dive into the world of systems integration and data optimization here at ZIZO. A big thank you to Zach Diapal for joining us and sharing his expertise on how sophisticated integrations and real-time data can transform business operations. Don't miss our next episode, where we'll have a very special guest, richard Gold. Member of the board of ZIZO at M&T Bank and adjunct professor at the University at Buffalo School of Management, rich will bring a wealth of knowledge and insight into the role of technology in shaping modern business practices. Thanks for tuning in and, as always keep playing the game with T the ZIZO Effect. See you next time. It's game time.

People on this episode

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Andrew Reimers

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Jimmy Chebat

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