121. Aligning Technology, Operations, and Resident Needs with Ray Benegas

Amber Bardon sits down with Ray Benegas, VP of IT and CISO at Presbyterian Living, for a candid conversation about what it really takes to build a strong technology culture in senior living. Ray shares how staying closely connected to residents, staff, and leadership helps his team move beyond reactive IT support and become a true strategic partner to the organization.

Amber and Ray explore why technology cannot be treated as just infrastructure anymore. From business systems and project planning to innovation governance and cybersecurity, they discuss the importance of creating a strong foundation before chasing the latest trends. They also talk through the realities of technical debt, modernization, resident expectations, roadmapping, and the challenge of balancing exciting innovation with the less glamorous but essential work of maintaining core systems.

You can connect with Ray on LinkedIn.

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Transcript

Amber Bardon: [00:00:00] Welcome to Raising Tech podcast. I'm your host, Amber Bardon, and today I have the immense pleasure to welcome Ray Benegas to our podcast.

He is the VP of it, as well as the Chief Information Security Officer for, uh, the recently rebranded Presbyterian living, um, here in my state of Illinois where I also live. Welcome to the show, Ray. 

Ray Benegas: Hi, Amber. Thanks for having me. I, I didn't know you were here. We should go have a drink. We should go hang out.

Let's do that. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. 

Ray Benegas: Where are you? 

Amber Bardon: I, I, uh, I am, I'm in the great state of Illinois, unfortunately for now. 

Ray Benegas: Unfortunately for now. Okay. Well, 

Amber Bardon: yes, I, as soon as my kids are done with school, I will be moving, but that's why still, 

Ray Benegas: that's another conversation.

Amber Bardon: Yes. Anyways Ray, I. Love that We met at a conference and you were presenting, you had just finished presenting and I was about to start presenting.

Mm-hmm. And I walked in and you just started talking to me like, I was your best friend. I was like, what is this [00:01:00] guy? And um, you know, I feel like ever since then we've, I just felt like so comfortable talking to you about what's going on in the industry, what you're seeing. Um, you know, personal stuff. And so I just appreciate the connection that I've made with you and I'm just really excited to get into this podcast with you because I feel like there's so many things we're aligned on.

And it's interesting because you're managing an internal team and across multiple communities and, you know, we're doing the same thing externally, but we have a lot of the same challenges. 

Ray Benegas: Mm-hmm. 

Amber Bardon: Uh, so before I get too far, why don't you just do a brief intro, tell everybody who you are, give everybody the details about you.

Ray Benegas: Yeah, so, I've been here for Presbyterian living for three years, but I've been in the industry for 17 plus, but I've been in it for I guess, almost 30 years. So I've been doing this in various industries, but my heart is here, just like you mentioned. I do this for the people and I love meeting people, which can be bad.

'cause most I do get asked a lot, are you a technology person? Because you're very personable, right? And I don't know if, should I [00:02:00] be offended or should I be like, yay. Um, I think that the, this aging services is such a, such a, a great. Profession to be in. I mean, I'm in my communities. We have four brick and mortar buildings where we provide care here in Northern Chicago at Presbyterian Living, and it's just the, well, every month I meet with the residents to understand their technology deeds as they age, and so I get that direct feedback in addition to our meet with the operations teams.

But it's such a great mix. To, to be able to just, number one, meet the people. 'cause that's what I love to do. And then the technology. But I always say sometimes technology gets in the way if you don't have the right partner or if you don't have the right team that actually can help, um, deliver that. And again, we, we definitely don't deliver technology for technology sake.

It's gotta be for either the residents and we always ask that, why, why are we doing this? And sometimes we don't get included in the projects originally. So then we have to really ask why. [00:03:00] Because we have to catch up. We have to always have to play catch up. Presbyterian livings is a 120 year old organization here again in Northern Chicago.

We did just do a rebranding and we're, you know, creating pathways for vibrant aging, which is really aligns with what we're all about. And we're really trying to keep up with what our residents want and the operations teams. I think over the last three years, I've replaced four core systems.

Electronic health record, dining services, uh, finance, payroll. And then we're, we're doing an overhaul of our, uh, maintenance and unit turn process that we're getting involved with, which is really interesting. So we, we definitely try to keep tight with our, our business leaders to make sure we're providing that value that they're looking for, um, or they need, because it's, we're spending a lot of money on these unit terms and, and just maintenance things.

So that's. That's a little bit about me. 

Amber Bardon: So one thing I love that you said is you mentioned you're out there talking to residents, you're [00:04:00] talking to staff. I visit a lot of different communities and I talk to a lot of internal IT directors and I'm always amazed by how they never talk to their customers.

And you know, that's something that we do. So whenever I go onsite to a community, I'm always asking if I can interview residents. I'm meeting with as many people as possible, and it's just so important too. Have that understanding of the business side. So how do you feel, how do you, how do you go about that?

Like what is your cadence for meeting with people, uh, with, with the residents and with the, um, the business leaders across all the different communities you're at, and what would you say are the, the main benefits you get from that? 

Ray Benegas: Yeah, I mean, I have, I have meetings with. The number one we have every two weeks the leadership meets.

I have monthly meetings with the residents. And then I meet with the senior leaders across the organization and, and at the, the corporate office monthly. So it sounds like a lot of meetings, but some of them are pretty short spin. But anytime, like I, I think the big, the biggest gift we can give [00:05:00] people is our time.

And so that seems to be when somebody. Not need something, but if somebody wants to have a conversation or if I can glean a little bit about a project that's coming up, um, I think that that's, that's really the benefit. Even our, our, our definitely our, our corporate staff, they'll tell, they'll come and tell me and say, Hey, have you heard that we're doing this?

Oh, let's, let's, is it, is it in the priorities? Is it been approved? Do I have a budget? And then we'll start asking those questions. But obviously the benefit is. Huge. I always say we get a lot of grace because we, we take care of our, the customer services, number one for me and along with the technology stability.

Um, but we. We get to know the people and we get to know how they work. And then we had the organization kind of homes a little bit because we know how we need to work with those specific individuals. Do I need to give them more training? Do I need to be less technical? Do I need to be more technical? Um, do they need more, more steps to get it done or do we just need to automate the whole [00:06:00] thing?

Obviously we love to listen to the stories, the user stories so that we can try to help formulate with them a solution and, and not think we're moving away from here's, here's something, use it. We wanna kind of work, build around what they want, uh, as long as they're, it's as a reasonable request. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, it's so important.

And anybody who's ever heard me present on any topic will be familiar with what I'm about to say next, where I always talk about the technology pyramid. So I think for so long, you know, it has been, I am, I'm focused on switches, servers, infrastructure, and that's it. And uh, to me it is this, this pyramid where at the base layer, that's the base, but then we have the business applications, um, how we're using them, the processes we're using them, are they integrated, optimized?

Um, we have the technology culture and the way people think about technology and how they're integrating it, and then they have innovation at the top. So what you're able to accomplish by going out and talking to all these people is to build that pyramid and to look at all levels [00:07:00] of, um, you don't even like to say it.

I like to just say technology. Um, I, I went to a, uh, project management conference a few years ago and somebody from Hershey was presenting and he said. Every company today is a technology company. Hershey is a technology company that just happens to make chocolates. And you know that's true to some, you know, various degrees, but technology is the backbone running behind everything we do.

And it amazes me how often technology is forgotten. So, you know, maybe we can talk a little bit about that because, you know, we have a lot of strategies where we. Um, try to find out what's going on in our client community so we can make sure we're aware rather than being told last minute, oh, there's new construction happening, or, you know, um, we need to, uh, rebrand the organization.

Something you're going through right now. Mm-hmm. So I'm curious, what are some of the strategies that you deploy to make sure that technology is integrated in the business, and how successful are those? 

Ray Benegas: Hmm. There's lots of questions in there. I think one of the things we're starting is, um. In the next [00:08:00] two weeks we're, we're kicking off an innovation committee, not a, not an IT committee, but an innovation committee because we see so many.

Uh, vital monitoring carts, right? Wound care. We see lots of, Hey, I, I go to a conference to your point and see some bright and shiny and let's go do that and it's great. And if it's the questions of why and ROI and compliance and risk and, and just resident, um, improving resident outcomes and patient outcomes is gotta be top of mind, not just because, and so typically we've been just very reactive.

And so this, this. This committee will be, you know, senior leadership and they'll be the, they'll be gating these requests. So number one, that'll help. But I also think we're maturing our, you know, right now, we've, next year for FY 27, which starts in April, we have 69 goals across our collective in this, in our organization.

That includes, um, hospitality clinical. Construction or all of them. And [00:09:00] to your point, all of them have some sort of, it. There's either their identity or a new piece of software or something they wanna look at. And I have five and I know what I'm doing and when they're scheduled. Uh, but we just met with, so to answer the question, we just met with our clinical team and said, what are your FY 27 goals?

And let's line them up with when we're doing it because. They're, they're different. Or I go through the list and say, you're, you're renovating the dining hall. What are you doing with the, the food nutrition and the kitchen management system? Oh, well, yeah, that's, we're just moving it. Well, just moving it means something.

Right? Some and, and we're trying to help. Our teams really plan, help be, help be more planners than anything else. And I think that's different. But number one, to your point, go back to the pyramid in the conversation. If you don't have that relationship, it's hard to go back and say, Hey. I don't wanna step on your toes, but what are you doing in this, in this event?

And is it a [00:10:00] small, medium, large project? And this help them in this. In our last leadership con conversation we had, Hey, can we just start talking about how we wanna do projects as an organization and how do we. Use the same words. Is it a work effort? Is it a t-shirt size project? What is it and what's a charter?

Right. I think that it's good to have some of these conversations, but if, if it's gonna be a solution project management, we really do need to formalize not only the innovation team to really help guide and select projects, but also formalize more of a project management office where we can help the whole organization really work through these.

Um, so I think. I think pro, a good example would be some of our construction projects that are going great. There's just that, oh, by the way, there's a robot down there and they just heard about it 'cause the dining team just heard about it and we just heard about it. So there's just, you know, a quick fiery hoop we need to jump through to just get through that.

Amber Bardon: So one of the things [00:11:00] that we do at Parasol, and I'm curious because I think you have a similar tool, so I'm, I'm interested to hear how you deploy this, is we write a technology roadmap. So it's a three-year roadmap. Um, and it's, it, it doesn't even need to have costs or anything like that, but it's just looking at comprehensive across this tech pyramid, what are all the different components we need to balance with, um, infrastructure replacement, business systems, changes in needs, innovation, um, security, all these pieces of, you know, governance operations.

Um, and then we take that in, align it with, with budget every year. And then, um, we meet quarterly to execute. So we bring that document up and we show it to our clients and we talk about which projects are we going to pick to execute against the plan. So project management is execution tool to the strategy.

Um, however, you know, things. Still get missed. Like you're saying, like, you know, we, we, every quarterly meeting we have with clients, we ask them, uh, you know, is there anything, um, any new department changes, any new operational changes, any new construction changes, any vendors that you're changing to try to get them to think about, you know, what to [00:12:00] communicate to us.

It's not on our roadmap. So do you have a similar tool or how do you handle that? And then how do you, you know, I know you're out talking to people, getting their information, but. Um, do you have like a formal way for people to tell you what's happening in their departments for you to support and how does that make it onto your roadmap if you have one?

Ray Benegas: Yeah, so we definitely have our three, three year roadmap, which is due for a refresh. And I think the challenge is to your point, and I, I think together, we talked a word about technical debt and I think a lot of times we have so much stuff that we've had accumulated. Almost like a technical hoarder where we just have so much stuff and then we keep adding new stuff.

'cause we're innovating, right? We're doing new things. But I'm not connecting. I'm not, I'm not integrating and I'm not able to innovate because I've got this weight of technical debt holding me back. And I think for us, the three year plan, which which was the strategy, was let's clean that up. Let's make a focus of [00:13:00] getting it healthy, and then let's do more integrations and connections and trainings.

And then along the path we can certainly do innovation, but let's. Let's not jump into AI right now because my data's not ready, and we all know that that's a requirement, and so let's really invest in the training and then the AI and the data structures and the security and the governance so that we are ready to do that.

So that's number one how we do it. I think that's the, the so-called strategy, I think. The tools that we use are, are, are really just, um, we use a lot of Microsoft projects and planner, but it's harder because not all the, all of our, our leaders, our teams use the same product. Like I've seen a lot of Excel spreadsheets and I, I have one that I use to graphically explain what we're doing.

Um, and then our construction team has a, a, a a, a SaaS product that they use to manage all their construction projects. So they're a little disparate. And I think we need a nice, um, one of my old companies, we [00:14:00] have a, a, we had a nice listing of all of our projects, even if it wasn't ours. And then how much of us was a stakeholder versus the organization.

And I think we are, we're just bringing this forward. So I think the innovation committee really needs to help us structure that with a single, a single project list that includes. Approved priority and then timing so that we're able to really execute this with our stakeholders. And it's not just us being a bottleneck.

I think right now we've got enough majority projects to, to take us by ourselves for through the year, let alone everybody else's. And I think balancing that, I think we, I think we may have to just li limit the number of projects we have in order to support the strategy of the organization in addition to our strategy.

Amber Bardon: So I'm curious, how are you, 'cause I know this is something you're doing that's new, so maybe you don't have an answer for this yet, but how will you balance innovation against. Maintenance, um, slash not [00:15:00] as sexy projects. You know, innovation is the exciting thing if people wanna jump straight into it. But you only have so many resources, both in terms of dollars and time, and if there are other things that need to be done, like, you know, I was on a call with a client where they were talking about AI and they were exploring ai, and I've got someone, um, you know, from the sales and marketing team saying, our phone systems don't even work.

Like, why are we investing resources into ai? So how do you, how do you anticipate balancing that? And also follow up question to that, how do you ensure you have the infrastructure to support the integration? 

Ray Benegas: Yeah, those are, those are important questions. And I'll start with the last part because our infrastructure has to, is a, is a, is a key, um.

Pedestal of support for, for innovation. And so I think for us, we have, we're still spending time and we're in the final six months of really cleaning up a lot of our technical debt. And then we're also doing that connective tissue of getting our data synchronized so that we're able to do more of that [00:16:00] velocity innovation.

Um, I think that that's. That said, how do we do it? I think we, we have a lot of consultants that help us. Uh, I think we've, we've budgeted because of the timing and the number of projects we have, we definitely partner with, with individuals to help us get this done. Just because we can't do it ourselves.

It's just not, there's not enough time in the day, and we are the same problem. Our phone system, why are we, let's get rid of that and let's modernize. So I use the word modernize a lot. So we're modernizing our infrastructure. We're modernizing our. On-premise file storage. We're modern, modernizing our phone system.

We're modernizing how we do workstation builds. We're modern, right? Cloud migrations strategy, everybody's doing that, but we're finalizing that now. So we're modernizing our data and our, our, and then we're modernizing our cybersecurity, right? So there's a, we're in this whole modernization phase because it's, the, the it healthy is, is almost complete, but we need to, to really solidify those legs of the [00:17:00] stool that support the innovation.

Amber Bardon: So if you have a situation where you have a C-level person who really wants to move forward with a certain type of innovation, but that doesn't fit into the overall plan and or where you're at with other roadmap items, how, how will you balance that? 

Ray Benegas: Hmm. Yeah, I think we, we get those, um, it's a lot of times when we see that request, we'll ask if it's budgeted.

Do they have the, is there money in the budget for resources? Uh, and we'll just either have the vendor potentially participate with us and we'll just provide the data and then we'll, um, try to get our subject matter experts trained in the new solutions so we're able to support it from an organization standpoint.

Um, or we'll just try to defer it. And we've done that with, A good example was somebody wants 16 new vital monitoring carts by the end of March. And I think we're going to, we're [00:18:00] gonna just try to schedule that with our teams, but it'll probably be moving into April, end of April, just, just because of our, our spinning up of a new 70 unit expansion and renovation at one of our buildings.

So we just have to pick the priority and, and we're gonna need the same feed on the street to deploy those. I don't, I don't need an external person. And we, we have some, and these new ones will get in, but. They're not gonna make that big of an impact, um, uh, until they get come in place with our CNA time back to residents and just efficiencies we'll gain.

So like we, we'll definitely push that back. 

Amber Bardon: Mm-hmm. Okay. Uh. Going back to something you said at the beginning of this call, you said you meet with residents on a monthly basis. What are you hearing from residents? What are, what are their technology needs, concerns, you know, are there any, um, types of innovation that residents are excited about, that they're talking to you about?

Ray Benegas: Yeah, I think, um, we have a [00:19:00] technical concierge individual that works, um, with our residents specifically. Uh, and, and they're, they're talking to him daily. But when our, in our meetings, we hear a lot about the nurse call system, which we're looking to replace this year. Um, or enhance, modernize. There we go again.

But I also think that they're, they, they read a lot about ai. I mean, they read a lot about. Um, what it can do, what it can't do, should we be worried about it? Um, we get everything from, I've lost my password, or I, what's a good place to, to, to put my password? Can you help me get my bank statement? I mean, so we we're, we're very trusted with our residents.

To help 'em. Um, and then at the same time they just, we do have the, the, the, some of the age gaps where we have more people that want more streaming services and want more, more hospitality hoteling like services in the rooms. And, um, I don't have all, uh, we do provide resident engagement [00:20:00] products for them and, you know, mobile reservations.

Meal ordering and grocery orders and things like that. So that's in place. Some of them don't wanna use it, so I still have to provide the phone for them to call in the order, like Pokemon, I gotta catch 'em all. And I think we, we, they're, they really do want to understand when they should be looking at things, but a lot of them just want, somebody walked up to me today and asked for iPhone help.

And I, I sent them to the service desk, but at the same time, it was one of our staff that was running into that. But they have that all the time. I think hearing impairment we're showing them. The medical glasses and the glasses that do dictation because of, of some of the, um, ability limitations they may have.

Uh, and so we're, we're trying to engage with them and we're showing them and giving them, one of the things we do is kind of a show and tell, we bring vendors in and have them do a presentation to our residents, and then the re [00:21:00] the, the vendors get feedback, like they get instant feedback on, would you use this?

Uh, and so I think the other thing that they really want is just clearly, um, they want, uh, hospitality services to 24 7. They want, as I mentioned, streaming, mature streaming services. We have two large, um, entertainment venues, a, a chapel, and then a large venue where we bring life either, um. Church services and live performances, and everybody does this, but we're currently using Comcast as our ingestion method to deliver that, and that's going away from Comcast.

So we have to deliver a streaming service. So now we're turning into a little Netflix type of service where we're testing out streaming television services to smart TVs for in-house delivered content. And uh, that's, that's another big one that they're asking for. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, I'm curious. Maybe we can do another podcast about that.

Because every site I go [00:22:00] to TV is such a huge issue and no one likes their TV provider. And when we're working with clients on new construction, I'm recommending to them that they move just to streaming because of the challenges with the cable companies, um, and maintaining and managing those, which streaming has its own set of challenges, right?

Because the residents have to. How to, how to manage the streaming. And then you have to subscribe to different services. And then the channel inserts from the resident engagement apps don't work. 

Ray Benegas: Hundred percent. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. Maybe we can do a, another podcast actually. 

Ray Benegas: That's a, yeah, that's an interesting one.

Yeah. And we are, we're doing a lot of just ancillary, we're talking a lot, a lot, a lot of vendors centric and, um, unicast and looking at different ways to deliver it. So I'd love to hear what you are hearing just because. It's, it's, our situation is per campus problem where we've, we have to deliver that content in a various, in a different way.

And then they always wanna record, right? They want the Netflix experience where they can pick and choose what they're watching. And so we're, we're not, we're not quite that there yet, but [00:23:00] we're getting close. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, we will be doing another podcasts on that. So maybe we'll have you back on for that. Um, okay, so back to this podcast.

Um. When, you know, when I was saying earlier the technology pyramid, and I mentioned that, you know, there's the word, um, it versus technology and I think what you and I both have is a, is a philosophy of technology and technology culture and building that. So what advice would you give to anybody listening to this that wants to, to move from like an IT focus to this technology?

More all encompassing focus. 

Ray Benegas: Yeah, I, I think it goes back to what you said and people, we all need to realize that. We, we really do treat it like our electric company, right? It's utility. You turn it on and it just works. And the unfortunate part is it needs to work and the electricity is connected to everything.

And unfortunately it is now too. And if we think, like we [00:24:00] mentioned Netflix earlier, it's in Netflix and we're where there's technology there, remembering your choices and all of the network and infrastructure that has to work in order to get to a different place. I think it's kind of, in my mind, it's exactly the same thing of you gotta make sure your, it is healthy so that you're able to make these agile moves into ai and the genetic ai and these, you know, you hear these words, but I can't do it if I, my data is not, not there.

Well, my, I have, right, I have, I have my office of 365 and I have copilot. Yeah, but is, are, is, do you have a policy and are you ready to use it? And is the governance there, like we've, we've talked about earlier. So there's always something and I, I think we, we have to be able to make sure the core is safe so that we can safely expand into innovation without always having to go back.

And clean it up or back and secure it. And I think that that's, [00:25:00] that's part of the, to your point, the pyramid is what does what I have healthy? Is it connected? Is it, and is it integrated? Is it easy to get data out or not? Am I prepared to, what are my priorities that I need to use this data for? 'cause it's just data.

How do I get from. Away from data rich and information poor and flip it. I have, I need to be rich in my information and educate my organization on what they, now they have all this data, what can they do with it? And um. I think we're running into that because we, we've replaced so many systems and now we're, we need to really start getting that rich information out for those decisions and innovations because now what's not optimized, right?

I think that that's part of it is kind of crawl, walk, run. Am I there? Can I get up and start walking? And what, where can I run and when should I, because just like anything, you might fall down pretty hard. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, you're, you're speaking my [00:26:00] language. This is exactly what we always talk about as well. So, um, we're on the same page.

There's, uh. You know, like I said earlier there, there's so much exciting new stuff out there that people wanna jump right into, but you and I have both seen that if you don't prepare for it and think it through, it's gonna fail. And then people just end up frustrated 'cause they're excited about it, they're told it's coming, especially if it involves residents.

And then when it doesn't work because they haven't done the proper, um, background research, making sure the infrastructure, making sure you understand the use case, making sure your data is where it needs to be, then it just ends up being frustrating and that can negatively impact your technology culture.

Ray Benegas: I think, um, that's such a great ex, a great example for me is we have this beautiful brand new vital monitoring cart. I just replied, they wanted do some of them in 16 of them in a bulk purchase. Great. Uh, I was not necessarily, we weren't necessarily involved in this. So now we're wondering, okay, how do you do what security look like?

How do you [00:27:00] do, how do the CNAs log in? Is there, is it. Is there a pin? We don't allow shared credentials. So what do you do? And so it's good, it's good to ask those questions. So now we're taking a pause and we're asking those questions and understand what that governance needs to look like and reporting and, and how, who's gonna own that?

Uh, but you know, as you have these in, as the device is a great solution, it's just, hmm, the, the nuances around, like I just said, technology's everywhere. We forgot about identities. We don't. How, how are we gonna do that? Well, let's, let's revisit this together. And if you could do it upfront, right? 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, 

Ray Benegas: let's, let's catch it 

Amber Bardon: first.

And what's what's frustrating is when that situation happens, sometimes it is blamed as holding back the organization. Uh, or when it doesn't work, it is blamed. Um, which is why I think it's so important to have that roadmap and that partnership that we talked about at the beginning so that everybody's moving forward at the same time.

So then there isn't this like push and pull with, well, it doesn't work, it's it it's fault, or [00:28:00] it won't let us do this, or whatever. So that you're, you're all aligned together as you move forward with new, new projects. 

Ray Benegas: Yeah. I think for. Such a great comment because I, I wanna know what everybody's priorities are.

And it's not only because it's because I'm a customer service IT person, but it's also so that I can have the resources aligned to help you make that decision. And sometimes I think what I'm hearing too is just the timing of, some of these are short, short, short spin work efforts. They don't consider it a longer project, and so they just kinda get a vendor in and do some demos and we do things.

And it's, it's got, it's again, to go back to being more plan. Let's be a little more plan about this. Let's be a more inclusive, not just, oh, hey, I'm in a meeting. Can you come up? And I think that that's where we're. This innovation committee with more of a PMO planning type of structure will really help us.

Um, because then it's not, uh, me saying no. It's the [00:29:00] innovation team with the PMO up there saying, we, we don't have the resources to help you, or you don't have all the requirements met. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I got my p and p certification in 2011 and I got my master's degree in project management before that.

So I have been preaching project management in senior living for years and years, and uh, it's one of the reasons why we just include project management services. Yeah. And our great contract because if you try to sell it to senior living communities, they say, oh, we don't need that. We don't need that.

But when it's included and you do it, and people see how effective it is for EDU execution. Um, it, it's, uh, it's really powerful. So, you know, I think it's, it's really great you guys are moving in that direction. I think it'll be really helpful to your organization. 

Ray Benegas: Yeah, I was gonna comment on that because I think what we found is as we, as we send a business analyst to meet with somebody that has a new project, that's a new, a little bit of a new ex, newer experience, because we're not just buying the thing.

Securing the [00:30:00] thing and deploying the thing. We're meeting with the customer to say, how are you gonna use it? Tell me the use cases, right? Let's create sort of a light charter. Let's just kind of agree this is what we're gonna do and this is the scope of work. This is what we're gonna do for you and when, and but just that interaction to go back, to have, to have the interaction with our customers so that we know and, and I.

Executive team, um, our residents and, and our, our operations team so that we understand how they're going to use this or not. And then otherwise we're gonna build something that's purple and they want it blue. And I think that that's where, where we really are trying to get, and, and the feedback has been really good.

Like they're surprised. Oh, I really like that process. Can we do what we did there? Yeah, let's do that again. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. 

Ray Benegas: Can I have it by Friday? No. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, that's another conversation. Yeah. And, and I understand like people do [00:31:00] get frustrated sometimes 'cause they see that as slowing down the project.

But how many times have you made the wrong decision when you're rushing things and then you go back and have to replace it, you know, a a year later or something like that? 'cause I've seen that situation many times, so I just always. I think it's worth taking the time to, you know, before you go out and commit to in investment time dollars, um, because again, as we talked about earlier, failed projects can have a, you know, ongoing effect where people, um, have this perception that every time they put something in it doesn't work.

And now we're frustrated. Now we don't want any new things. And so, you know, it's, it's worth it to take that time to understand the requirements upfront, in my opinion. 

Ray Benegas: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think we, um, we started down the path of our replacing our food nutrition and our dining service and our kitchen management service product.

And it was a, there were multiple people running that, running it, and we started deploying it and I quickly said, this is. We, we need to do a little time out here. Let's, let's stop after this and do a little [00:32:00] lessons learned. But also like we, we could just feel that it wasn't a hundred percent ready for, for our teams, and we delayed it, I think by five months just because we needed to do.

You know, get more of the integrations ready, get more of the training ready, get more of our team involved as it involved more clinical food and food nutrition and access to the system and more training for residents. And then we were matured that process, and then we got really good at it and deployed it.

You know, to the rest of the organization within three months. So it just, I, I think that initial planning was just a little rushed a little bit. And I think we, we need to do, take that, have that voice of, you know, let's, let's not do this everywhere right now. Because, because you could see the gaps that we're, we're in the plan, we missed that up front.

Amber Bardon: Sometimes it's a be for projects to fail. 

Ray Benegas: Yeah, I abs I think as long as we fail fast, right? I think that we, I think in [00:33:00] my head, as much as people think that's a failure, I think that's a great, we always have to learn from these things. And I tell the team all the time, my team all the time and in my past is, you know, it's okay.

This is how we learn, but let's fail fast. Let's have a plan B. Let's understand how we're gonna get up and repair this. But, you know, don't, uh, don't. Beat ourselves up over it, but let's get up and move forward. As long as we left it better than we found it, let's keep going. 

Amber Bardon: Excellent. Well, Ray, it's a joy as always to talk to you.

It's, uh, always such a pleasure and I always learn something. Um, in speaking to you, if people want to find you, where can they reach out? 

Ray Benegas: Uh, are we gonna do that? Are people gonna reach out to me? 

Amber Bardon: We can skip that part if you want. 

Ray Benegas: Yeah. Okay. No, I mean I could, I I'm happy to answer that. I mean, LinkedIn, right?

They can reach me on LinkedIn or if they, I don't know if other people do that, but Yeah, I mean if, certainly if people have more love to meet people. So hopefully we'll see people at conferences and [00:34:00] can't wait to see you, Amber and, um, the team and, uh, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, so, you know, reach out. Anybody wants to, to connect on LinkedIn.

I'm happy to do that. 

Amber Bardon: Thank you so much for coming on. So good to see you again today. 

Ray Benegas: Yeah, it's great to see you.