娇色导航

Hi. Good afternoon and welcome to 娇色导航Leadership Live. I'm Maryfran Johnson, your host for today's program. I'm the CEO of Maryfran Johnson Media and the former editor in chief of 娇色导航magazine and events. Since November of 2017

this video and audio podcast has been produced by the editors of CIO.com and the digital media division of Foundry, which is an IDG company. Our growing library of past interviews, all of them openly available on the web on both cio.com and CIOs.

YouTube channel includes more than 150 Chief Information digital and technology officers from mid sized to large companies across the the industries joining us today, joining that esteemed lineup of CIOs today is my guest, Antonio Marin.

He is the 娇色导航of US Med-Equip, which is a Houston based company that supplies movable medical equipment, patient beds and therapeutic surfaces to more than 90 locations nationwide, covering major medical centers and underserved rural hospitals. Antonio joined US Med-Equip in January of 2022

bringing with him more than 25 years of it, executive experience in strategic planning, business alignment, mergers and acquisitions, project management and more, as the President Emeritus of the Society of information management sim, their Houston chapter, Antonio is a widely known and respected it leader whose teams have been recognized by Technology think tanks and industry experts across the spectrum.

Most recently, his IT group at US Med-Equip won a prestigious 娇色导航100 Innovation Award for using AI and robotic process automation to develop a one click solution for ordering hospital beds and other medical equipment more quickly than it's ever been done before. Before he joined us, med equip.

Antonio held several sea level, C level leadership roles in various industries ranging from waste management and oil and gas to logistics and commercial software, retail and engineering procurement companies. Antonio, it's great to have you here today. Thanks so much for joining me. Very fun.

It's a great honor and pleasure to be with you. Thank you for having me. Ah, pleasure. Well, I'm going to take great advantage of you and all of your cross industry experience as we go through a very long list of our topics here today.

Let me start out with kind of a big picture view of us med equips customer base and what the biggest business and tech challenges have been for the rental medical equipment industry in these last few very disruptive years.

Well, as you can imagine, Maryfran, we're coming out of COVID, and COVID was an incredible active season for companies like ours, where we are part of this wonderful supply chain and hospitals and the healthcare world. And what we do here by move, by taking movable medical equipment

across the country, what we're really doing is helping hospitals serve patients in need.

The end of our supply chain is a patient who needs life saving equipment. So our role in information technology is to make sure all the steps from ordering to delivering work perfectly, perfectly to bring that equipment to somebody who's in it.

Yeah, and this has, of course, hospitals have been around for, I guess, hundreds of years, and so they've always had a way to get the rental equipment and move around that they needed, but not always as quickly as it needs to be delivered.

Talk about that a little bit well, something that we are very proud of is that one of our objectives as an organization is to be able to deliver equipment within two hours of requests plus driving time.

It's something that is very important to us, something that is embedded in our DNA, in the fabric of this company. One of the challenges that we see in rental equipment is having, first of all, the equipment available.

We have an incredible team of biomed technicians who can really make magic happen.

Secondly, we have a close relationship with our partners, and we call hospitals, and we're customers partners, because that's what we are. We are partners in there's in their ability to deliver care to their patients, so we close very closely.

We work very closely with them to make sure that we have the equipment available when this needed.

It's not just when you run medical equipment, is not just about the equipment itself. It's about the software that equipment uses.

Yes, the time, the last time that equipment was actually served with preventative maintenance, because we want to make sure that equipment goes in perfect conditions to sell some to save somebody's life.

Now these partner hospitals that you work with is us, med equip, the sole source of their rental equipment, or are you one of a group of rental companies that they work with? Sometimes we're the sole source. Sometimes we're part of a group of companies.

So it varies depends on the equipment, type of equipment, and the needs of the the needs of the hospital, yes, and the the ability that you have to get equipment there within a two hour period.

Is that pretty much an industry standard, or is that something unique to us? Med equip, two hours post driving time is very unique to us. Met equip, oh, okay, that's something that is a major differentiator between us and the rest of the competition.

And is that something that you are able to do because of technology? We do that because of technology.

Actually, US medical was one of the first companies, not only that, we were start using the rental technology that we use today, but also we were some of the first to share that information with our partners, really.

So whenever a company puts a request for equipment, they can see what the Oregon seen when it's going to be delivered and when we're delivering itself.

We track our all our equipment across the country, so we know when that equipment is actually delivered, and we maintain our SLAs of at the best rate that we can Okay. Now we're not talking about a few 1000 pieces of equipment here.

Tell us about the scope of the equipment you have moving across the entire country, or mostly in the southeast. It's an entire country. We have 90 locations across continental USA. We can reach almost every hospital in the country. In we have about 146,000 pieces of equipment.

So, just a few.

Yeah, just a few. I know we all tend to think that Amazon has these giant warehouses, I imagine you've got probably some warehouse management issues of your own. We do, but that's where we use technology. We that's where we use technology.

We do still RFID tracking, so all our equipment is bar code and tracked at all times.

Yes, we are one of the few companies that can actually do tracking of the equipment in hospitals through our asset management program called ASAP, and where we don't have to go inside a room to see that equipment is there.

We can scan our equipment from outside without interrupting the care of the patient. Yeah, and this capability that US medic quip brings to it. Is this something that I know you're there's probably six to 10 suppliers that are the leaders in your particular part of the industry.

Is everybody coming up the curve with technology capabilities like usme has. It is a very competitive market in that sense. But there's some things that we have done that are unique in the industry.

We actually especially for when you have to move beds, which is a, I know it's movable medical equipment, but beds are a little bit bigger to move than, yeah, like a suction pump or something else, like something similar, on that size.

So what we've done with beds is that we create a program, as you mentioned early in the introduction, that uses robotic cross automation, AI and machine learning

that takes takes advantage of the capabilities that exist into the EMR systems that exist in hospitals. Yes, so with a very few tweaks on the Mr. Side, from the hospital side, we're able to receive electronic messaging from their system, and we process that electronic messaging to orders, yes.

And when you say EMR, you're talking about the electronic medical record, medical record systems, yes. And those are fair. Those are standardized for the most part, across healthcare, for the most part, okay, the

in all of the different industries that you have worked in before, has there been an end, kind of an end customer that has been in healthcare situations, or is healthcare a whole new area for you, with the with the many places that you have brought your your IT leadership to in the past, well, I've been in different industries where it is the end result is helping somebody.

But in I never been an industry like this one where you have a direct impact. Act

into somebody's life.

I'm actually not only a member of us and me, but but also I've been a customer you have.

So this is one of the things where you realize that the work that we do here and as a as a father, who has been in a situation where we need medical equipment.

The work that we do here means something way more than just the process of what we do every single day,

we have wonderful stories.

Every day is a new story here, and we have phenomenal and wonderful stories of patients that recover faster because we brought the equipment on time, patients that were able to get the equipment and the nurses were able to act upon it immediately that could save somebody's life.

And we have other stories of employees of ours, biomed technicians, who unfortunately had a relative in the hospital, and when they checked the equipment is the same equipment they worked on before.

Oh, so we are, in one way, or in many ways, connected, not only, not only to our partner hospitals, but also to the patients they serve, Okay, interesting, and that must make for a different way, kind of a different impact on just on you personally, having this kind of a 娇色导航role,

put it this way, it makes My days go so quickly, so fast and so rewarding.

It is really rewarding to know that, because of the work we do, we've done here, somebody's gonna go home in a better health than when they arrived to a hospital.

Yes, we're a little bit we're a small part, a little bit part of the of the question, yes, but we're part of the question Yes.

Well, in that that personal connection that your tech team, and probably the now the whole company is about 700 people across the country, right? Tell us about the size and scope of your technology team. I know you can.

You can be a multi billion dollar company, but only be running it with a handful of really dedicated ninjas.

So tell us about the tech team, and also a little something about your marching orders when you came in January of 22 it's almost three years now, almost three years of excitement. So the theme is, here in the United States, is 19 people.

We supplement that team with some consulting organizations

in the US, and we have a team in India that is about 12 people now, okay, is so very strong group of people, very dedicated. And I can tell you, it is one of the best teams I ever work with. Their human quality and technical qualities are amazing.

And you use the word ninja, and you know, we you and I have spoken several times, I'm the kind of person who likes to have ninjas instead of have quantity. I like quality, and if that quality comes with great attitude, even better. Well.

And you'd mentioned too that when competitors or when other companies come to recruit your IT people, you're not happy to lose them, but that one of your beliefs is that everybody should be constantly recruitable from others, because it's a sign of increasing excellence on the team.

Talk about that a little bit. So as we said, as you and I talked about before, one of the things I'm very proud of is that I love my teams to get always ahead in technology, always been in learning mode.

And when they go to the extent where they become speakers, they get promoted within the organization. They get

a more prominent position, not only in the company, but also in the IT ecosystem.

They're going to be

very attractive to other companies. I want my team to be recruitable

because that means that their value continues increasing, okay, but what I love about my team is that they stay because they love being here. Yes, it's not just about one penny more somewhere else.

It's about creating an environment where people want to stay because they feel and they know that their role has importance, has meaning and they're appreciated. Yes.

Now, when you joined almost three years ago now, you had mentioned that it was essentially split into two major groups. Tell us about how you have restructured it to be serving the business better. This.

Brochure, the team was, in general terms, there

you have an IT team, that was the infrastructure, and you have the is team, which is the software development piece. Sure what they didn't have was something to connect them together.

So when I joined the organization, we talk about the value that every single person bring to the team,

but most importantly, we talk about the value they also bring to each other. And

one of the things I always fight with other people in in the industry when we talk about mission statements, right? Yes, I don't believe that it should have its own it. It mission statement. I believe it mission statement is a company's mission statement.

Yes, but a lot of people can't really parrot back what the mission statement is. But now I'll put you right on the spot. Tell me what usmes mission statement is. Our mission statement is to provide smart solutions to our hospital partners, for the environment of their patients.

And smart solutions can mean so many things to me.

Smart solutions means that we need to provide the technology that were supply chain team from ordering to delivery, have the right information to do it for our warehouse and equipment management team to be able to place the right piece of equipment

with the right partner at The right time. Okay, that's good. That's actually fairly straightforward. That's easy for people to keep track of, isn't it

easy to keep track of, hard to deliver, I would imagine. Now take us back to almost three years ago, when you joined the company. What sort of was, was there anything, any platforms on fire, or any things that needed immediate attention.

I know you mentioned there's a homegrown ERP, an enterprise resource planning system. And whenever I hear homegrown in front of any big, important tech system, I kind of brace myself and I think, oh, there's a lot of legacy technology involved in that.

So as you came into the company, was there anything that just obviously needed help immediately? And if so, what did you do about it? So I came on board just

in the middle of that transition between the old homegrown ERP the new version of the homegrown ERP. Oh, and as you can imagine, there's always communications issues.

There's a disconnect between teams or what operations wants versus what it understands what operations wants. So my role coming in was to first of all understand the problem and being able to build bridges between IT and the business. Once those Bill bridges are

coming along and being built, we were able to start really looking at the end of the at the end of the tunnel, and so that the light was really bright.

We saw that the development that we have done was solid, and we're looking for really go back to a little bit more of change management, yes, being able to bring people together, understand where the processes were meeting across different disciplines.

And once we did that, we were able to turn the project fairly quickly. Within three months, we went live with a new version, a new version of the homegrown ear, the home ear. But it's different technology, different user interface, so it was a major change, yeah.

And is there an ability to add all the sort of the modern bits and bobs that you need to, like micro services and, you know, the use of chat bots and all that sort of thing, are you able to do? Is that even appropriate?

That that may be a really dumb question, but first of all, there's no dumb question there, but no, there's some limitations with homegrown systems, sure. And I mean, if you think about it, two years ago, three years ago, generative AI was not even the conversation of many CIOs.

Suddenly, generative AI is dominating the conversation. AI in general, dominated the conversation. And when you have a homegrown system, it's very difficult to adapt to those changes. I would think so.

As a company, we have followed strategy, and we have actually moved some critical parts of the ERP to off the shelf software,

and we have seen, well, obviously we are connecting through the back end.

And to the our Go SME platform, but we have actually expanded the ability of our platform to be more effective and more resilient to changes in in the technology that is going on, okay,

and and we went almost 10 minutes into our conversation here without bringing up AI probably doesn't record.

Now we knew that might happen. Well, I've been I've been joking that it has become a federal requirement to talk about AI within the first few minutes.

And so let's pivot over into that, because AI and RPA and machine laying, machine learning all played a role in this your award last year, the Innovation Award, the 娇色导航100 tell us about about and that was not just the latest and greatest technology, but it also had a lot to do with The way you looked at the business process that needed amending.

So take us through a little conversation about that. So let me give a step back, because technology, for the sake of technology, is not the right solution. Yeah.

So one of the things that I happen to visit several hospitals, and I talk to the clinicians or in the battlefront trying to keep up with all the things they need to do to help patients get well.

And the common thing across many hospitals was hearing nurses say, if I could order equipment with one click, that will make the difference.

When you're ordering, for example, a bed, you need to order type of bed the surface that you're going to put the patient on, and the surface has to be configured to the specifications of the patient. Okay, sure, yeah. And once that different.

So you have a nurse who has to either go to a portal or

go to a third party system or do or make a phone call just to get the order process. And that takes the nurse away from

doing what she's supposed to be doing, which is taking care of the patients. Most of the information that is needed to order in that equipment, especially beds, are is already in the EMR system.

Okay, so we work with, we start with one hospital who had this issue, and they were very for forward thinking to say, Okay, if we even make the change to the way we order, like X rays, right?

Or send orders to the pharmacy through the EMR, can you take those orders? And the answer was absolutely yes.

So this what they did. They created a form within the EMR system for specialty beds.

It contains the what they call the algorithm, so when they have a patient with certain characteristics, it matches what they need to order, and they click, OK. And we get the information from the EMR system. And we can get the information different ways.

It could be what we call electronic messaging. It could be secure email, secure file transfer, or secure e fax. Yes, you'd mentioned e faxing, which I had not.

I honestly hadn't thought about any sort of fax kind of processes in a long time, but they're deeply embedded in the way the healthcare industry is still having to do business, right? Exactly, yeah, faxing.

It's a HIPAA proof technology. It was grandfather is firmly, is very secure, especially if encrypted. So it's very secure, yes, and, and is there's no paper on the other side. So just for safety reason, there's no paper on their side.

So we were able to take this electronic messaging

and we have an AI. We create a process through with robotic process automation, rpa, that actually uses AI to read the information.

And the reason we need to use AI is because, as you know, computers are not very good when you're trying to compare o's and zeros i's and ones.

So we use AI technology that actually help us

get information to our system. And then, because every hospital has a different way to order things, we start using machine learning to train the model on how the hospitals ordered equipment. Yes.

Now, had you done this kind of work with AI and RPA and machine learning in some of your other industries, like most recently, in retail? Or waste management.

Were there things you were able to or approaches you thought of as you were considering the problem for healthcare and for your partner hospitals that you know, where the light bulb went off and you thought, Aha, here's where we can use this particular approach to a business process, honestly, not at this level.

This actually, there was a very fun process. I had an opportunity to do some consulting for the 娇色导航then of UI path, okay? So I got really involved into what is robotic process, automation, right? And we did it for certain things. When I joined us, met equip,

we had a customer, a partner, customer, who uses their own system to put orders,

and we need a human to go on, connecting to the system to process the order.

Well, as you can imagine, orders from hospitals don't happen between eight and 5pm

It's a 24/7 job, not the important ones, right? Yeah, exactly. They happen at any time of the day, any day of the week,

any day of the month. So we built on this robotic process automation to be to learn how to connect to that system and being able to transfer those orders from their system to our system.

That was the first, if you want to call it proof of concept, that RPA had value in our world. Okay, so we did that. The second part is, how do you transfer an order from that?

So we start using this rpa, and they start using the machine learning model. And it was very interesting that when we start playing with the model,

it took it about only 13 to 14 times to learn the path the pattern for that order,

that was very and normally, when you start with the model, you start probably between 40 50% success rate. Our first success rate was 75% Whoa.

So you must have thought, Aha, we're really we have something here. Yeah, we've got something here. Now you're still for for a CIO, you're still fairly hands on and technical yourself, aren't you?

I tried to be now, and now you're being falsely modest. So I have a great team. I have a great team that indulge me in all my crazy ideas.

Yes, well, tell us about some of the some parts of this that you actually got hands on in helping to develop something Well, the first part was actually train the model. We were having a conversation. It was a three hour meeting with my team, and we were

we were having this conversation about the

how would the model do the interpretation of the data that we're submitting into it?

And while the conversation was going back and forth.

I was playing on the side of the conversation with the model. Okay, that was some multitasking going on there, and that tells you that, yes, I'm a little bit add if you want to put it

Hey, aren't we all come on. But so when we got the first results. I talked to my team. I said, Okay, guys, we know how to do this. We're going doing this in this example. Now we have this piece.

Now we have to work in the middle, which is the transport, yes, and the translation. And in within the first week or so, we had a very, a very rough draft of the RPA process and the machine learning working, and with the help of this hospital,

was which I mentioned earlier,

we start receiving information from there, from the test environment and the model start getting better and better and better until we got a product that we felt very confident to go live with.

Okay, now, were there additional hurdles because of all the privacy concerns with hospitals and also with the cyber security aspects of it?

Absolutely, but that's why encryption become different levels of encryption, one of the beautiful things of using this electronic messaging mode, yeah, is that you can control the security level. And also, once information is transferred, it doesn't exist anywhere. Once it's transferred, going to our

into our ERP, and the transfer disappears, it doesn't exist anymore, so there's no storage, additional storage problems. And yeah, you heard many stories, probably from companies and some hospitals that got hacked through their APIs. Yeah. Well, there's no API here to be hacked. That's great.

So there's no.

So there's no permanent connection that links both systems. It's a transactional

it's a transactional system, but because of the levels of security that we put together,

makes it extremely safe and at the same time, that information disappears.

Okay, so have you been asked to present or talk about this with other companies in your industry, or with software companies that would love to do something similar, because this is unusual in that it's a business process problem that's been a problem for 30 plus years, and with all the modern technologies, you've created a way to resolve it and to solve it without running up a huge bill for the hospitals using this right?

I mean, if you if you were a consultant, you'd probably be getting fired right now because you didn't spend enough, you didn't, you didn't charge enough money for this so well that we're very proud of what we've done as a team.

We are with our communications and legal teams who are patenting the process, patent pending. Okay, good. This is something that is gonna you be unique for us, med equip and very again, we're very proud of it. Yes. Secondly, yes, I've spoken to different hospital systems.

One of one of my favorite conversations was with a hospital in Flint, Michigan, where their IT team and supply chain team said, ask us if we could train the other vendors to do the same thing.

And what did you tell them

you'd have to get the vendors to cooperate, obviously. Well, we need to work on a licensing agreement or something. Yeah.

Again, remember one thing, Mayor Fran one of the things that we want to do is respond to the needs of our clinicians, right, right?

And one of the things as a company, we say, delivering equipment within two hours plus driving time is really important, yeah, so by it is something that we have to protect as an organization, sure, and it's our differentiator in the market, one of the many differentiators we are in the market.

The quality of our equipment is bar none,

and it's also the quality of the people that we work with is amazing. The hospitals love our team members because they honestly care about the patient and the work they do. Yeah.

So when you put all these things together, great people, technology and a mission that you can believe that you actually live every single day with, makes a huge difference. Yeah. What is the next natural evolution for a is, this a product or a capability?

It is, go, usme, connect, is the name of it, and

how do you what is it a I'm trying to I'm trying to get my mind around whether would I recognize that if it was sitting on the desk in front of us, I would call more of a product. Okay, at this point.

But I think one of the things that go yes and me connect has done for the IT organization. He had to open the doors to the executive management to be very supportive of AI and what technology can do for the company.

Ah, was the was that not their favorite thing when you joined back in 22 No, it is.

I mean, this, this company has always been supportive technology, but when you start talking about AI and what I can do, yes, a lot of people think about that pie in the sky.

Sure, a lot of people think about, oh, my god, now we're going to spend millions of dollars in development. Or Everybody talks about generative AI, and they start thinking about, Oh, look at all the hallucinations we're gonna have. Yeah,

and this is different, yes, this is a new way to look at technology that we have available,

that, as you mentioned, is not breaking the bank, yeah, but at the same time, is bringing a lot of value to the organization and to our customers.

Now, is this something that is uniquely there's a unique capability to do this now with AI and RPA because of how rapidly they've been expanding in the market?

Or is this something that could have been done five years ago, the technologies were all there, but nobody thought of it.

So when the idea started evolving about Go USA and me connect, yes, we started looking at certain parts, and there's a piece of the puzzle that was giving us a heartache.

And when we came around looking at testing some other products.

Box that could help us finish the link of the finish the process itself, that missing link, that technology did not exist two months before.

Ah, okay, so this really is not only unique and a unique way to look at and solve the problem, but it's been made possible by technologies that are okay and every day is going to get better and better. Yeah. What?

What do you have in store after this? What is phase two for your usme, connect? Well, would go, Yes, I mean, connect and goyism in general. What we're looking at is

using AI to really help us streamline a lot of the internal processes that we have in the company. Oh, okay, like I said, we already started with off the shelf software

to and we move our equipment, equipment management, our enterprise asset management, our procurement and our biome technology

to this off the shelf system. And what we're learning is that we're applying more of the predictive analytics,

where we're learning how AI is going to be able to solve some of the problems that are normally documented somewhere,

but then we don't have the visibility as quickly as we would like to have it.

Okay, one of the beautiful things of working on a company that has been in the business for more than 20 years, and being great of they've been doing for all this time is that in some of the pieces of equipment that we rent, we have more information, sometimes more than the manufacturers may have, of course.

So when you start applying predictive analytics, we could probably start looking at in the near future,

when is equipment really going to break? Yeah,

and avoid those processes for preventative maintenance, yeah. I remember a few years ago, a lot of our discussions at various conferences that you and I have been at together over the years too, predictive analytics was always the shiny red ball of the conversations.

Everybody was heading toward that as a winner, and we talk about it a lot less these days. Everything is switched to the idea of AI and Gen AI, but it really seems to have been, it seems to have brought predictive analytics full circle where it's practical and doable.

Is that, am I overstating that? Or do you is that you're absolutely right. I think one of the challenges that we have, for those of us who've been in technology for so many years, is we try to think in ones and zeros either or.

And this is not an either or situation. This is an end situation

where you start really taking advantage of what you have in the past and enhance it with the technology that you're getting now. Yeah, and when you put those two things together,

it is, it is the next level of what we always wanted to do. Okay, now, what do you do about the talent that you need on staff, maybe talent that you don't have now, or that you need more time to develop with these AI skills. How?

What is your kind of what is your talent challenge? When you think about the ways that AI has started to change us, med equips business going forward? Well, the typical situation is the urgent. Network gives you time for the important things.

So what we try to do is, and my team has full access to training, I encourage them that training is key to anything they do in life. As we start the conversation we talk about I want them to be recruitable.

Well, the only way you can be recruitable is if you continue learning. So we are in a continuous learning process.

The other thing that I've done is that, and I mentioned some of our partner companies, we bring talent that has already experienced in the areas that we want to work on, and I pair them with those consultants, with that extra, okay, extra level technology.

So not only they have the opportunity to read, to read and learn from the books,

but also they have the opportunity to learn from people who are doing that every single day. Yes, yes, I would think that the there'd be more danger that your folks who get recruited by your partner hospitals, then then by other tech companies or providers in your area,

again, it's one of those things where

I want them to be recruit, recruitable, but I wanted to say because they love it, yeah, que sera sera on that we've had.

One of the highest engagements in the company.

We have a great retention.

I think I've been here for three years, and I can think about

maybe one or two people who we lost

due to a computer that's a pretty out of roughly 30 people around the world. That's that's a pretty good attrition rate, absolutely one of the things. And it's not just it.

I mean, it is just a little island, not an island, but a little portion of a big continent called us. Medequite, okay, we have been named for the last six years in a row one of the top places to work.

Yes, I've seen that on your website. That is not accident.

We drew for 10 years in a row. We were one of the fastest growing companies,

and we just received an award that it was an Ink Magazine Award. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're from but that that award came from our partner hospital, saying how much they love us. Oh, nice.

So I think we have put all the pieces of the puzzle together to be a great company with a great future.

And I can't see why people would not like to be here.

As a matter of fact, hopefully I get a few resumes of people who want to be in an environment like ours. That is always a really key reason why award winning CIOs like yourself come on this podcast to talk about what a technology magnet their company

can be and will be, and is, especially in some of the industries that don't have quite the razzle dazzle of being like startups and software there are, you know, a medical equipment rental company you wouldn't ordinarily think that you've got a whole lot of leading edge activity going on in AI, but here you are getting really here you are getting a patent on something that your staff invented.

Now you are aware coming in, I know when in one of your previous

roles at, I think at WCA waste you at the time your IT group was in the what was it? The future, the future forward 50 for digital, for using digital, digital, age 50. That's it.

Yes, and you were not shy about sharing that with your group when you got there. Why did you do that? Why did you come in and talk about an award that your IT group got elsewhere? So one of the things I wanted to

show my team, when you walk into an organization and there's not an IT culture per se, you have people who work in two different branches of it, but they haven't worked together, right? They haven't seen the results.

And you can talk about those things. You can always show what a great organizations are doing, but it feels foreign, foreign, something that happens somewhere else. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily sound achievable Exactly. So WCA waste had a team about the same size at us, Medic whip,

with the same kind of challenges we had before. Yes. And I brought the trophies, and

I put them in my office, and I said that I was gonna remove those trophies the day we want our first one. Okay?

And because I said, this is what we can achieve, working as a team, right?

Once we achieve those things, then we start building our own story.

And actually, before the 娇色导航100 award, our director of it, of infrastructure and cyber security, won the 2024 CISO award, excellent.

So we started award, if Information Security Officer Award, which is incredibly important, and I'm very proud of him, how he took the role and he ran with the ball good. So that was the first big message to the team, to say, We can do this.

And then we validated. We validated with the 娇色导航100 which is an incredible honor,

and it's a very competitive contest. And I was, I was running that program for well over 10 years when I was still full time at Foundry and@cio.com

and the, I think somewhere around 400 companies apply for that award. So there.

A one out of four chance, and the judges, it's more than 50 industry luminaries and executive recruiters and a lot of former or retired CIOs who judge it, who can read through an application and can really tell but the most important point there, especially for anyone listening, is that you have to apply if you want to win these awards.

And that was something you you applied. You know, you didn't just like a 娇色导航100 award doesn't just happen to you. You have to. It's there's intention, I guess, is what I'm saying.

And I wish every 娇色导航would think about it that way, because it's an award for your team. It's not necessarily. I mean, you do win a lot of awards, but these aren't your awards. No, this team's awards.

I actually, I don't know of any 娇色导航award that is a 娇色导航only award.

It's just they sometimes will honor a 娇色导航of the year and some, and that's a general leadership kind of award, and there's a few organizations that do that, but this one has always what I've always loved about the 娇色导航100 is so many companies across so many industries get recognized, and they get recognized for their team accomplishments.

Oh, and have your name

us medic whip, align with so many great companies. It is amazing.

Yes, I can tell you the feeling that it was to see our name on that wall with Fortune 100 Fortune companies, yes, which means one thing which is very important is that it's not the size of the IT department is not the size of the company.

Is what we can do with the technology to make it better for our company, for our customers, and in my case, particularly for our patients. Yes, exactly, exactly.

And a lot of companies, once they get, once they win a 娇色导航100 award, it becomes one of the things that they keep track of over the years, and they try to win another one. And they often do.

I mean, I was always telling people about companies like federal FedEx and UPS and Accenture. They have won. I think the 娇色导航100 has been in effect for since 1988

you know, back when you and I were still in high school, right? And,

and there are companies like FedEx, I think, has won well more than 35 times. And, you know, IBM has been a regular winner as well, and it's always honoring the work done by the technology teams. You know, they're, they're that way.

Let me pivot over to ask you about we've, we've talked a good deal about AI and Gen AI has come up too. Are there other emerging technology or kind of new, shiny red objects out there that have an especially big interest for your industry right now?

Or is it all pretty much still about is AI just drowning out the environment with around it. I think AI has taken the center stage, okay,

that's, but there's some things that AI has not been able to do that we need to continue doing as an organization, okay, such as data management. Oh,

enterprise data management, that's that's a subject good business and good it business practice is still the core of what we need to do. Yeah, everything you if you have a solid foundation, building on that foundation is very is, is very simple. It's easier.

And if you don't have that foundation, so as an IT leaders, we still need to be conscious and responsible for making sure that foundation is strong, sure. The second part of it is when we talk about AI. What AI is the best AI for your organization there?

And there are many of them right now, aren't there? There's different versions of what you have to do with AI. We got generative AI, which in many cases people love, because it becomes like the new search engine, but with a brain. I'm

particularly fascinated by text to speech. Yes, we talk about YouTube, you mentioned bots, right? And having chat bots, but having chat bots in the regular way or the series and Alexa still not develop enough

to really help an organization like ours do more? Yeah, yeah. So I can't wait to continue working with our partner.

In the industry with some of the new technologies coming out to see how we can take that to the next level.

Now, when you are evaluating outside partners to work with you on special projects like in AI, how do you how do you go about judging how good the fit will be.

What is some of the advice you would give other CIOs when they're considering working with you know, of course, this could be a consultancy that, three years ago, was convinced that blockchain was going to be the next great technology, and maybe they were talking that up.

And now everybody has switched over, and now everybody's an AI expert. So how do you how do you judge, how do you make sure that you're dealing with somebody who's really going to bring a lot to the party? Well, there's different aspects.

Let's start with the easy one, the technology side.

And if you mentioned when, when we're in kindergarten. One

of the beautiful things about being a computer scientist is that all this AI stuff we're learning in college, but we didn't have the computing power to do it, so right? The math is there? The math still valid?

Yeah, now we have the ability to see it live, and to be able to play with it, to put the math to work. Yeah, I want to, when I look at a company, I want to make sure that they understand the technology and the math behind the technology.

So that's the easy part.

The hard part is to find a company that believes in the same values that you believe in,

to be able to risk

and to put their investment where they think that technology should be for you,

if they understand what you're doing and the value of what you're doing and why you're doing it, yes to me, and they're willing to bring their technology to make it better for for you?

Yeah, I think that's a big differentiator, and it's amazing how many companies don't do that. Really.

I know a lot of companies want to sell your product, yeah, and you bring input on one side and you get an output on the other side, and you should be happy with it.

Obviously, we can do that. Okay? We want to make sure that the outcomes at the end

are something that are going to make us

help somebody save a life. Yes, so anything that goes before that, they have to be 100% vested in our mission and vision. Good, good.

Well, remember you told me one night when you were deciding to join us, meta quip, one of the of course, the conversation, those initial conversations with the CEO, are always very important in making that decision. But your CEO. His title stands for the chief enablement officer.

Yeah, he's a the ward

chief empowerment officer, empowerment, that's it. I'm sorry. That was my enablement. Yeah, He enables. But no, he's chief empowerment officer. And

you know, when I was talking to him and the Chief Operating Officer, and we're going through the interview process, I came home and I was completely sold in the company.

Normally, when you go to a job interview, you think that I may get it, I may not get it, you know, yeah, but that time, I told my wife, if I don't get this one, it's going to hurt, because I never been in a company with so much heart.

So I just And when you think about you've been in five or six different industries, so and every industry has an end product of some sort or a service.

But I think probably the service industries I have has any other industry that you've been in held this level of satisfaction for you in terms of the the impact you can have on on your world, not, not at the level of this company, on every single day. Okay?

Because here, like, like I mentioned earlier, there's a story every single day. Something happens every single day across the country. And I, we always like to think that I we hope that you don't need us, but if you need us, we'll be there for you.

Yes, and the other, the other company during Harvey,

during Hurricane Harvey, Houston was really huge for that. Was huge hurricane hit. Yes, the city was in in a very bad position, and I was working for WCA waste. Mm, hmm.

And something that it was really heartwarming is to see our drivers,

getting the truck, getting their crews, and going out there to pick up garbage, because,

because we knew, because we knew that it was very important to make sure the city was clean, to make sure nothing was going to happen by having all the debris out there, right, right? Well, that was one big event. Harvey, here we have big events every single day.

Not so long ago, we had an amazing story, and I told the story to my team, because everybody, everything had to work perfect. We get a call from a hospital about an hour drive from

an hour drive from McAllen, Texas. Okay, so nurse calls.

So the system has the phone system has to work closed. Arm experience takes the call dispatch the order to the branch in McAllen,

our goy SME system work perfectly. The equipment management had the equipment ready to go. That means all the inventory, the preventive maintenance, all the pieces that possibly go before having the equipment ready and being on the shelf ready to go work perfectly,

the branch lead calls the police and said, I need lights to help me out.

We got the police officers coming over. They score the usme ban, and when they arrived to the hospital, they have a nurse doing hand compressions on a newborn baby, so the equipment arrived just in time to save that baby's life.

So I'm a father of a baby boy who was born one pound

you've told me, yeah, I I know how that feels when the technology comes to the rescue and

and can you imagine that story repeats almost every single day here, I would have just trouble keeping keeping it together every single day, when I would hear stories like that, I feel like I'd be an emotional wreck most of the day just feeling all that empathy and being so glad to have been a part of it.

On the counter, we're very proud of being part of that. We have an opportunity that you seldomly have in your career.

I mean, there's great CIOs from big hospitals and hospital systems that have to do that for their teams as well. Like said, we're a small part of the supply chain,

but we are very happy to be part of that, of that chain well, and I love that as small a part of the supply chain you may be, you're having such a big impact through this, you know I mean, and if you're USA, if your usme connect had not won a 娇色导航100 award yet, I'd be encouraging you to apply for one this year.

But you've probably already got something else in mind for this year, at least. I hope you do. I do, we have a story to tell. Which girls, I mean this,

this chain of events,

this thing about my team, started as a two different teams, and now it's a very strong, cohesive team. Yes, it gives you the opportunity to really build more. Yeah,

build faster and build better. Yes, and the supporting cast that we have, we're supporting cash for operations, we're supporting Casper. But how we work with communications, how we work with equipment management, with human resources, with accounting and finance, with customer experience, yeah, it's amazing.

And again, I hope you could be here one day and see for yourself. We have interviewed people where we tell them about the culture of the company, and they flat out tell us, I don't believe you.

And they come in and they see that it's a reality, right? Well, tell me in this for our for our last question here, tell me about what you've learned about your own leadership style.

How have you and all these industries you've been part of, I think there were five or six of them, and now at this job, which seems to suit you incredibly well, how has your way of leading your teams changed over time.

What are some of the things that you feel like you've really grown into as a leader? I think one of the things that I learned a lot is

it so it comes about to be patient. Yeah.

So.

Times we want everything done yesterday. And if you talk to my team, they'll probably tell you, I'm the same way,

but, but I learned to be more patient. I learned to be

to to listen better, not to listen more, but listen better, yeah, and to really incorporate them as part of my family. They're truly my I spend more hours with them that I spend with my spouse and children.

Most of us do. They get deeply involved in our roles that way, but sometimes it's not as clearly enjoyable as it is for you. Oh, it is. It is, and

but, but the part of them to you have to be patient for them to develop on who they need to be,

and you have to be patient to develop in the people they want to be, yes, so what I do is

I'm not here to tell them what to do.

They know what to do. They are the experts. They tell me what I need to do. That's what they were hired, because they have a level of expertise that I wish I could have, and they're very smart about it.

So I listen to them, and because I'm listening to them, I can provide the tools they need to be successful. I'm here for them. They are.

I know I report to the CEO, but they're my bosses. Yes, exactly, well, and hopefully your CEO feels the same way about you that you know he's there to, essentially to empower and enable you in what you need to do.

I can tell you, we won't be this successful without his support and the rest of the C suite, good. They're an amazing team, and it's a it's a group of people that we just don't meet at work. We meet outside work.

There's a friendship beyond the business partnership we have internally. Yeah, well, for a company with such a very clear mission and a purpose, and then being more mid sized, so you're not hundreds of 1000s of people. It can be a nice, tight knit group. That way.

It sounds like you're very lucky. I think in the role that you have, have grown into yourself here, I'm lucky. I'm very blessed, too, but I hope one day that 700 people turn into 1500 or 2000 people. That's right, and we'll prove that we can maintain this culture.

I think people is something that people like. It's something that people are drawn to. And most importantly, when you live and work in an environment like ours, yes, you are passionate to protect it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, and that's and you can't just manufacture an IT culture or even a company culture. It really just evolves over time. It does

sounds like you're doing a very good job leading it forward. So thank you so much for joining me here today, Antonio, this has really been a great conversation.

Oh, maritime, thank you so much for having me, and it's been a dream of my life to be talking to you like this. I'll be go.

I'll be watching for you on the next 娇色导航100 awards list. When the when that comes out next? When does it? Usually debut sometime in the spring. So I hope I'm sure you're all doing the homework to get that work done right now.

So one thing I can tell you, and my team will promise you this as well, we'll do our best to be in that list. Good, excellent. And you know what, if you're not in the next list, there's the list after that. So that is true, that is true.

That is totally true. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Yup, it has really it's been a pleasure. Antonio, if you joined us late today, you can watch this full episode here on LinkedIn, but also you'll find it on cio.com and on CIOs YouTube channel.

娇色导航leadership live is also available as an audio podcast, wherever you find your podcast, and I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with 娇色导航Antonio Marin, of US Med-Equip, as much as I did.

If you want to be sure you don't miss any more of our shows, do take a moment to subscribe to CIOs YouTube channel, where you'll find more than 150 previous episodes of 娇色导航leadership live along with several international editions of this podcast, which are featuring senior IT leaders and CIOs from Canada, India, the Middle East, New Zealand and Australia.

We are spreading around the world, and we invite you to tune in and join, join in enjoying these conversations. Thanks so much for being here with us today, and we'll see you back here next time you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai