00:00 Introduction: Welcome to Tech Talk, a podcast featuring employees and leaders discussing all things tech at Mutual of Omaha. Join us to learn what tech professionals can gain from a career with us. Let's talk tech.
00:11 Brian Poppe: Welcome everyone, to Tech Talk a podcast sponsored by Mutual Omaha, where we talk about all things technology. I’m Brian Poppe and I am joined today by….
00:22 Maura Ramsey: Hello everyone. I am Maura Ramsey, Brian’s co-host.
00:27 Brian Poppe: Maura, how have you been lately?
00:28 Maura Ramsey: I've been good. It's been a while. It's great to be back. Have you been doing anything fun or new and exciting?
00:36 Brian Poppe: Over the weekend, I got back into cooking, So, I made Paella, which sounds very fancy but, it's really like you just put rice in a dish and then you put, chicken stock over the top of it, and then you, just cover in foil for like 20 minutes, and then you shut the pan off and you let it sit for like ten.
00:57 Brian Poppe: And it turns out amazing. Like you add a little bit of saffron, a little bit of like, I don't know, it's just like the easiest thing ever. Like, I'm so excited to host a dinner party because it's going to impress everybody and they’re going to be like, this was amazing, like authentic Spanish dish. And like, all I did was I put rice in a pan, and I poured some chicken stock on it, let it sit, and y'all are impressed by that.
01:16 Maura Ramsey: I was getting prepared for you to say I spent the afternoon prepping and cooking and doing all the things.
01:21 Brian Poppe: Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes Maura, I cannot recommend it enough.
01:25 Maura Ramsey: All right. That's usually my criteria for a recipe, thirty minutes or under or premade. So that's good to know. Paella.
01:32 Brian Poppe: But I do have to admit, I had avocado toast this morning so, that also makes the 30-minute rule.
01:37 Maura Ramsey: So that's also in the Maura Ramsey cookbook. Also, peanut butter and jelly, ramen noodles. All 30 minutes and under. So, I get good protein in there too, don't worry.
01:51 Brian Poppe: Good.
01:52 Maura Ramsey: Paella, that's going to be a good one I can add to the list. That's good to know. All right, Brian, let's dive into it. So, our guest joining us today is Katie Palmer, an Information Services Manager here at Mutual of Omaha. So, Katie, she leads the I.T. Metrics and Reporting Team, and she is here to chat with us a little bit about how automation is being leveraged in the reporting world.
02:15 Maura Ramsey: Welcome, Katie, to the Tech Talk podcast.
02:18 Katie Palmer: Hi, thanks for having me Brian and Maura.
02:21 Maura Ramsey: Yeah, we're thrilled to have you today. So, before we get into all the good automation and reporting stuff, we were wondering if you could share a little bit about your role as an Information Services Manager here and what was the career path that took you to where you are today?
02:37 Katie Palmer: Yeah. So, Maura, I, like you mentioned, lead the I.T. Metrics & Reporting Team. I started at Mutual in a little bit of different role, thirteen years ago, I worked as a Business Systems Analyst on a highly technical project that I really, enjoyed the data portion of it. And so, I found my way trying to navigate through roles at Mutual to get my hands on more data, learn more about it, and found myself in the Enterprise PMO when it formed because I also love the enabling enterprise strategy.
03:11 Katie Palmer: So, I'm really in a great spot because I get to use metrics and data to help support the strategy and help support our software development value streams that use it to help enable their strategies.
03:26 Brian Poppe: So PMO, for those of you that are listening and may not be familiar, it's Project Management Office. So, Katie, like where I imagine with the data and the ongoing reporting that you've got to build out, it does take a lot of time. Can you shed some light on how Mutual is using automation to streamline processes and make things a little bit easier for the folks who are either reviewing those reports or putting them together?
03:52 Katie Palmer: Yeah. So, I really think that it's really about how can we focus on the big picture questions and enabling big picture questions and the business challenges. How can we spend our expertise solving those really difficult questions and then automating the rest of it? So, I really think that we're doing a lot of fun things at Mutual related to using AI automation, machine learning, process improvements, a number of different things to help focus our time on things that are more of those really groundbreaking questions and business needs instead of just doing day to day filling out spreadsheets or PowerPoint docs. There’s a better use of our time. So, we're really trying to focus in on how we can better use our cognitive capacities to do something that is more important to the business.
04:50 Maura Ramsey: So, it definitely sounds like you're fostering a good dynamic and collaborative team culture. So how do you really encourage your team to be more innovative and creative with this extra time?
05:04 Katie Palmer: To us on the team, it's really a norm to be innovative and creative. So, thinking outside the box is something that we've written down on our main page and we always ask ourselves, why are we doing this? And do we still need to do it this way? So, it's not just doing the same thing over and over, and it's really about questioning what we're doing and what business value it provides. We also dedicate a capacity, a portion of our capacity every month or quarter in the work that we plan for that month or quarter to focus on enablement efforts like automation or process improvement. So, the intent of that is to really set aside some of our time to focus on how we can automate something or make a process better.
05:58 Katie Palmer: So, the next month or in the next quarter, we can then deploy that. And then obviously we've got capacity and time back because those may not be those are things that we may not need to spend time on anymore. So, it's really thinking about saving our own time, but then also our business partner time. So, with some of the most recent changes that we have deployed, we’re looking at saving upwards of 300 hours of our business partner time, which is just amazing for us. That's, that's something that really gets us excited.
06:37 Brian Poppe: Yeah. To that end, like what trends or technologies have you seen or are you most excited about for the future for maybe taking that innovation time?
06:45 Katie Palmer: Yeah. So right now, we do an amazing job of reporting and looking back to see what's going on, what’s happened. But I really think that more of our focus is going to be on predictive or prescriptive analysis. So, looking into the future to use all the data, all of the insights, all the information that we've gathered to create more forward-thinking data and insights or analysis or using, you know, statistics to help tell us what we will look like in the future. What based on history, when will we deploy this initiative or this project and really helping us kind of be better about our predictability? It's all about the future.
07:39 Maura Ramsey: So, we have one last question for you today, Katie. If you were to automate any task in your personal life, what would it be and why?
07:48 Katie Palmer: That's a good question. So, I'll use my experience in the last weekend. I would automate all the calendars across all every sports app as well as Google and workout calendars to integrate, compare that to waits, travel times, and then bake in a little bit of eating and changing clothes time to help, you know, model your day.
08:16 Katie Palmer: I would love that. That would be great. The four different sports apps are killing me.
08:30 Brian Poppe: Katie, thanks for joining us today. And thank you for listening to the Tech Talk. Again, this is a podcast sponsored by Mutual Omaha. Have a great day, everyone.
08:37 Maura Ramsey: Thank you.
08:38 Katie Palmer: Thanks.