Supply Chain Mapping Takes Five Seconds. Action Is the Hard Part

Supply-chain mapping can now take five seconds. The harder problem is deciding which supplier risks matter, who owns the response, and whether procurement can act before the data creates paralysis.

I’m joined by Justin Dillon, founder and CEO of FRDM, whose work focuses on human-rights, geopolitical and sustainability risk beyond tier one. As import restrictions, tariffs and customer requirements reach deeper into supplier networks, weak due diligence is no longer just a compliance problem; it can interrupt supply, delay sourcing decisions and expose the business.

We challenge the assumption that full supply-chain visibility is necessarily expensive or difficult, examine why supplier surveys are starting to resemble fax machines, and look at what happens when companies suddenly receive more risk intelligence than their teams can absorb. We also discuss where AI in supply chain genuinely helps—and why technology still cannot decide which supplier conversation needs to happen next.

Listen now to understand why finding supplier risk is becoming easier, while turning that intelligence into faster, more defensible procurement decisions remains the real test.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Transcript

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Justin Dillon: 0:00

You can give me a supplier today, we can map it in five seconds. That's how quick the technology can work. Now, that's not the hard part. The hard part is then taking that information and rationalising it into determining whether or not some type of oversight is needed.

Tom Raftery: 0:25

Mapping a supplier in five seconds sounds like a breakthrough. It's not. The real test is what happens next, which risks matter, who owns the response, and whether procurement can act before visibility turns into paralysis. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 132 of Resilient Supply Chain Stories and strategies that Keep Business moving. I'm your host, Tom Raftery. My guest today is Justin Dillon, founder and CEO of FRDM, a supply chain risk platform helping companies uncover human rights, geopolitical, and sustainability risks beyond tier one. His argument is refreshingly blunt supplier surveys are becoming the fax machines of due diligence. For supply chain procurement and sustainability leaders this episode is about turning more information into better, faster, and more defensible decisions. Let's get into it. Justin, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Justin Dillon: 1:32

Yeah. My name's Justin Dylan. I'm the CEO founder of FRDM. We are a supply chain risk platform. and we definitely play in the resilient space, so this is it's an honour to be here. Thanks for having me, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 1:46

Yeah. Thank you Justin, and for people meeting you for the first time. What problem are you trying to solve in supply chains?

Justin Dillon: 1:53

Well, it, it falls into the category of risk, but we help our customers identify risks of human rights, sustainability, geopolitical trade sanctions, you name it. Anything that is buried in the supply chain that might hurt a business or in fact hurt the world and the people living on it. We like to be able to find and help our customers address that. This process is usually driven through compliance and regulatory pressure. So that's, that's the space we play in.

Tom Raftery: 2:23

Okay, and you don't come from a risk background. You are actually doing storytelling and advocacy. What brought you from that into enterprise software?

Justin Dillon: 2:35

Well, yeah, I mean, I started. I mean, I don't, I don't really have a career. I've got a LinkedIn page, but I don't have a career. I've, I just have a series of things that I've, done with my adult life, which started off, I, I think the, through line is I like to make things and give those things for people to use that will benefit them and, benefit the world and make people feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves and something I think we all, I've been chasing that idea since I was 16 which started off in a, as a music career. I was a professional musician for, for a long time which is an obvious path to enterprise software. I mean, but that led me to advocacy and, really focusing on advocating for human rights. Did that in the music, but also started to, to build out to try to support what I saw was a human rights movement that was happening years ago. So as a musician, I, supported that movement and found myself being pulled into a more formal role in the advocacy, which led to making films. And then found my way to technology and using technology as a, tool to do movement building, which, I soon found myself working with the US State Department and Google and United Nations around human rights and supply chains. Also, something I knew nothing about. I was talking about, I think you and I met at a, at a SAP conference, I think, right?. Tom Raftery: Yeah. I was deep into not knowing what I was talking about when I talked to you. Hopefully I'm a little bit better now, but I was chasing, really chasing an idea which is. I think supply chains are the, the greatest network the world has. And if you can make that network work better for people and planet and and businesses, then you can not only create value, but you can create change. And so that's what led me into starting a B2B SaaS company was chasing that idea

Tom Raftery: 4:28

Okay, and let's get into the problems in supply chains.'cause this is where things get a little less abstract, I guess. So why is supply chain visibility suddenly becoming a board level issue now, not just a compliance team issue?

Justin Dillon: 4:48

Well, pain primarily. Sometimes risk is more risk gets dealt with in businesses when there is some type of, understandable pain. Obviously, COVID brought the pain of supply chain to, literally everyone, right? We all understood whether we're a business or a consumer. All of a sudden people woke up and knew what a supply chain was, and I felt like, yeah, finally now you get it. These things are fragile. And so when it comes to supply chain risk, I know to probably many of the listeners ears you hear about human rights in supply chains or other types of risks, that might be happening in supply chains. I think the, the natural response is that's great. It's really not my problem. That's somebody else's problem. Well, the world is caught up and the problems of perhaps child labour deep in your supply chain or some type of abuse that might be happening in a certain part of the world. These have now found their way into laws and import restrictions, and they've even found their way into reinforcing tariffs here in the United States. So these problems that seemed far away and were affecting people that you've never met with, businesses you don't have a direct connection with, have now become increasingly important for businesses at a c c-suite level. And if you take these types of risks, which don't necessarily seem like business risks, and you layer geopolitical risks, trade risks, you layer all that on top of it, you start to see that the through line towards a solution to solving for these risks and quote unquote, as your point being a resilient supply chain. The key to that is visibility. And visibility is the first part. Visibility with action is really what we're looking for. How do you see where the risks might exist and then work on fixing that risk? And that's where a lot of companies are just getting started.

Tom Raftery: 6:45

And is the real pressure coming from regulators, or customers, or customs enforcement, all of the above, something else entirely?

Justin Dillon: 6:54

All the above. And what's cool about this, I don't know if it's cool, but it's cool in my, from where I sit is I just love being a part of seeing things change in the world that make the world a better place for everyone. And movements, you can't say you're in a movement. History tells the world whether you are in a movement at all. There's been a lot of movements that have happened over time that just weren't really movements. Nothing moved. When I started working on this, 14, 15 years ago there were no laws in the books. There were no resilience. The the word resilience in supply chains did not find their way in the same sentence, there were no responsible sourcing managers. There were no human rights experts or sustainability experts connected to supply chains and businesses. Now, 14 years later, every company has not just people, but departments focused on this. That looks like a movement to me. That looks like progress. That looks like the world has figured out how to take this serious and what the gestation of that is. It starts with people, it starts with consumers saying, I don't understand supply chains, but I really don't wanna be a part of buying anything that is against my values. But I don't really have a lot of power'cause I don't know how to run a supply chain, but I'm gonna use my voice. The organisation that I helped form helped build consumer sentiment years ago, back in 2012, 2014, enough to raise it to a congressional and executive branch level that allowed for the passing of several laws. Here in California, where I live, in DC, in UK, Austria, you, you name it. These laws started because consumers got loud enough politicians started to play, their role. The media started to continuously pick it up 14 years ago I would've been blown away to see the term modern slavery, human trafficking show up in any news media. It is literally on the front page sometimes because of Epstein files, sometimes because of a new lawsuit. But it is a major, major issue that comes, that is connected to law enforcement, whether it is connected to a supply chain or not. So you look at like a 15 year period and you realise that it starts with consumers. It gets handed to politicians. The media starts to expand that, and it lands into businesses where they start to operationalise that, and they're getting pressure from not just regulators, but from media and from consumers and from in B2B, they're getting pressure from their own business their own customers as well. So a lot of the companies that come to us, yes they have laws to comply with, but they also have customer expectations with the companies that are buying from them. Because if you are not addressing risk as a supplier, you're potentially passing on risk to your buyer. And so this is starting to, foment into something that I think could be really, really meaningful for generations to come.

Tom Raftery: 10:01

And obviously companies are increasingly accountable for risks sitting at tier two, tier three, as you alluded to there, or deeper. How do you manage responsibility for something you can't see?

Justin Dillon: 10:13

Yeah. and that's just it. I think part of what our technology does is helps our customers rationalise risk based off the intensity and the proximity to the business. So you have to speak. I know I'm speaking in very kind of flowery language of change the world and all the rest of it. That is not what I do in my day job. I don't bring this stuff up. I talk about risk. I talk about threat to the business. I talk about all this stuff, the changing the world stuff that's just whipped cream on the top of a very, very thick shake of compliance and risk and threat analysis. So to be very, very clear. we have to help our customers understand what is the greatest threat to their business, which will trigger particular actions. Now, companies really, the, the greatest influence they have is the part where their money crosses the barrel to another company, right? That is where your tier ones, your direct suppliers are the, are the companies that you have the greatest amount of leverage with. And let's be honest, not every one of your tier one suppliers has risk that needs addressing. So it's really about being able to collect the data, to empirically talk to your tier one suppliers about risk to not only your business, but quite frankly, risk to their businesses as well. If a tier one supplier has a sub supplier that is doing some really risky stuff, you name it, it could be an oligarch on the board, it could be, child labour somewhere. It could be just huge exploitation to the planet, whatever that is. You bringing that data to the supplier and saying, this is now our problem. We need to address this together and we're willing to stick with you tier one supplier.'cause we want you to, continue to flourish, but we cannot continue to work with you if you continue to pass on this risk. That's just a Tuesday in risk analysis world, right? That is very easy to have that conversation. The challenge is that most companies just don't wanna get up to that, level.'cause switching costs, as Tom, with suppliers, when you build a supply chain, it's very fragile, very difficult. But companies are finding that supply chains keep breaking fines, keep, keep finding themselves, and so they. They are starting to build up these muscle groups where they start to engage their suppliers and start to work with these problems together.

Tom Raftery: 12:25

Sure, and we hear that you need to map the full supply chain and think that's impossible or it's expensive or both. Is there a practical version where you can map the full supply chain?

Justin Dillon: 12:39

It's not expensive. It's not expensive. And I charge people to do this. So it's not expensive. I just wanna be clear, like, let's get over that. It's not difficult. It is very possible. If you're trying to do it with a survey, you're going in the wrong direction. We are at the end. Let's, let's just supplier surveys had their time. Their time's over.

Tom Raftery: 13:03

So what's the alternative?

Justin Dillon: 13:05

Yeah, I mean, it's just, 2002 is on the, on the, on the phone. They want their survey back. Right. That's, that's where we're at right now. Like we are living in the age of AI. We're passing from the information age into the intelligence age. It's just laugh. It's like using a fax machine now to rely on surveys to, map your supply chain. So the ability to map your supply chain, and let's be clear, it is as much an art as it is a science. How do you find art? Art is never done. So this idea that you can one and done map your supply chain, have everything, of course not. The supply chains are moving like this. So best providers in the world on this are approaching it with a level of curiosity and of course integrating AI. But AI is not leading AI, supporting an idea for mapping and making it better and better, and cleaner and cleaner, and removing more and more false positives, but, it is extremely possible. You can give me a supplier today, we can map it in five seconds. That's how quick the technology can work. Now, that's not the hard part. The hard part is then taking that information and rationalising it into determining whether or not some type of oversight is needed. And we really believe as a company that the way forward is to build more of a network of values aligned buyers and sellers, meaning, a a long time. Can I just keep going here?'cause I, there's, there's an idea. So when I was running a charity, one of our funders for the charity was this amazing family called the Omidyars. They, started eBay and ever so often we do an event with them or something. I remember at this one event, Pierre Omidyar who's the co-founder of eBay, said when we were starting. What in the late nineties, like the internet was a very scary place. People didn't know. And so, now we go into people's homes and cars that we made on the internet and don't even think twice about it. Back then people were afraid to even put their credit card, into a computer that just seemed like absolutely crazy. So there's an enormous amount of trust. Now imagine trying to build an online marketplace in this dark, scary world called the internet. And so, when they started eBay, they had to have a foundational principles around, well, how do we as a company, how do we see the world? And one of their, primary ideas about the world is that most people are good. You have to start with the idea that most people are good. If you start with most people are bad, you're not gonna really build a vibrant marketplace. But if you start with, most people are good and there's gonna be those that try to exploit the system as there is in any, any network then you can really, build something. I think supply chains are the same way. Most companies want to do the right thing. They're all chasing growth. We're all chasing the same things. And so in order to build a network of values aligned buyers and sellers, we just need to start with the idea that most are good. Some are just uninformed. Some just haven't gotten there yet. Some just don't trust putting their credit card on the internet yet, and they just need proverbially and just need to, skill up.

Tom Raftery: 16:11

And walk me through how the approach works. What does a, a risk-based due diligence model look like in practise, for example?

Justin Dillon: 16:51

What does a due diligence? Okay, so, it's pretty simple. The folks that we work with who are amazing they are usually advisors to the procurement part of the, business. So if you're talking about responsible sourcing manager or sustainable sourcing manager, or you name it there's a bunch of titles in that space. They're usually the ones that have been tasked with managing all the compliance the supply chain, due diligence, compliance, doing risk analysis, vendor based risk analysis, either when a vendor's coming on or when a vendor's already in the system. So they sit on top of ERP data. Right. They're connected to the vendor master data. What we do is we take the vendor master data and we build intelligence on top of that. So for every vendor that they have either coming in or currently in the system, we build a profile, a risk profile for every one of those across multiple risk factors, whether it's geopolitical or human rights, or health and safety, you name it. And that profile not only contains information about the direct vendor, but all of the companies that they do business with, tier 1, 2, 2, tier three, tier four. And we rationalise all that together and give them an overall score that helps them understand if I've got 5,000 suppliers that have tonnes of risk everywhere 'cause of course every company's gonna have, risks somewhere in their supply chain. Which of those suppliers are the ones that need my attention today? Which of my, those suppliers need my attention tomorrow And which probably don't need any attention whatsoever.' cause they're either not in a high risk or they're just, they, they're managing it so, well, that's it. You know, It's kind of a rag report and you know which ones need the most attention and why. And then in, in doing so, it's not about cancelling the contract, it's about bringing that information to the supplier, learning more about what they're doing to be able to reduce that risk. In some cases for some of these suppliers, they're learning about it for the first time. So it is an awareness practise of like, Hey, you've got this risk. We want you to be aware of it. We're gonna come back and make sure that you're doing something around that. Here's some ideas around how you can reduce that risk. That's it. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that. It really doesn't. I think sometimes, because so many companies are overstaffed. They overcomplicate things and create groupthink. And the greatest, the greatest inhibitor of progress is groupthink. It's just, it's not as difficult as, as, as people make it out to be.

Tom Raftery: 19:15

Okay. What, what are the best signals then for where upstream risk might be?

Justin Dillon: 19:20

So, here in the United States there is a very clear import ban from anything that originates from Western China called Xinjiang. That is has been, known for some human rights abuses some pretty egregious so the, the United States and several other countries have just made it simple like. You can't source anything from that part, from, it's a geographic risk, right? It's not a human rights risk. It's say, Hey, if it's coming from there yeah, you can't, it doesn't matter what If it's the cotton or the aluminium, If that cotton or aluminium finds its way into a product, the US will ban that. and and the, and the United States has done that, and other countries are doing, are starting to put together similar laws, not just based on Western China, but just based on commodities and products. So there are, when it comes to human rights or when it comes to, Europe has a, they're, they're still struggling with a lot of their walking back a, a lot of their regulations, but they've got a deforestation law that requires visibility and, and, and measures to make sure that there isn't deforestation in certain types of commodities and products that are finding the way into products. So there's risk signals that can pop up, whether it's a person on a board or whether it's a location or whether it's a commodity from a certain part in the world that happens to be a hotspot. Or just frankly, something shows up in the media. I mean, we scan, we're scanning millions of sources of reports and court filings and all of that every day. And we, we're looking at tens and tens of millions of entities. And if those show up in our customer's supply chain somewhere, they're gonna be made aware of that.

Tom Raftery: 20:53

And how do you stop this then becoming an endless compliance exercise and turn it into something sourcing and procurement teams can use operationally.

Justin Dillon: 21:05

Oh, we're, we're, we're all about people getting treats along the way to an endless journey. It's just, I don't, I don't consider myself, an enterprise, as you made it very clear. I'm not really an enterprise software person. I'm not really any of the things that I've done. I'm just chasing my own my own curiosity here, but one of the things I've, I've, one of the sad things that I've seen along the way is people trying to change the world are never happy with and can never measure progress. I've seen that people don't celebrate. When you're trying to do something very, very, it's easy to celebrate hitting a quota, it's easy to celebrate getting a report done. It's, there's business has done a remarkable job at being able to measure progress and celebrate success along the way. Right. When you're doing something a little bit more endless like working on, food security or working on water security or working on things that just seem like there's just no end to it. It's really, really hard for, folks working in that space to celebrate success along the way. We work very, very hard with our customers to celebrate every measure of success, whether that is a more transparent supply chain, right? A reduction of risk. It's all built into our software that as our customers, their dashboard is getting more and more visible and less and less risky. There is clear KPIs, measurements that help them understand how that supply chain has become falling more in line with their company's values year over year. And it is a multi-year journey. And spoiler alert, there's no end. It's like fitness. It you, you don't become fit and then go, I'm good. I hit it. I can go back to donuts. Poof. I'm glad I hit that goal right? That's supply chain resilience. It's built into the name of your podcast. It is a process. It is something that you continue to do and the results, whether it's fitness or resilience, is you're stronger. You, you're able to operate better. Answers are coming more quickly and that's what we're seeing our customers get. And that gets us really excited is when they start to see and see the benefit of, and they get to share that benefit with the supply chain. Because let's be clear, a more just supply chain is a safer supply. chain. A more safer supply chain is a supply chain that is going to add more value to the company. None of these metrics live alone. When you work to reduce human rights abuse in your supply chain, you're creating efficiencies in your supply chain. When you're identifying where the geopolitical choke holds in certain parts of your supply chain, you're creating visibility that is gonna make that supply chain operationally more resilient. Everything comes back to value to the business. These are not cost centres that kind of fall in CSR worlds. These are direct touch the spine of the business over time. And so, you have to be able to celebrate every single win along the journey. Whether it's just more visibility or reduction of risk, or you know, suppliers come along for you on the journey. Those are all worth worthy of celebration.

Tom Raftery: 24:19

Nice. And when companies do get that better visibility, what decisions do they make differently?

Justin Dillon: 24:28

That's a great question. They don't bring me into those rooms. I wanna be in those rooms. But I think they probably think I'm just trying, gonna try to sell 'em more software. So the rooms that I have been in, some customers will have me come to all hands and present and get to enjoy some of that. I think the company's getting a sense of that there's less uncertainty. Look, there's tomorrow's uncertain. We don't know what's going to happen in the world. We didn't know what was gonna happen in Iran. And so uncertainty can be, its own psychosis, right? When you start understanding where you are as a business and getting a better footing of, how you can at least build resilience against uncertainty.'cause isn't that what resilience is? It's trying to manage uncertainty. You can't see in the business that there's a sense that they're contributing and moving the business forward. And to me, that's one of the greatest joys of, of work. is being a part of something bigger than yourself and moving something forward. And so, that I have seen where, companies are getting, and practitioners in the company are getting an understanding and they're able to contribute that to the business. That's a, that's a real win.

Tom Raftery: 25:39

So Justin, I saw a case study on your website with, I think it was AstraZeneca, which showed a huge reduction in their due diligence effort. You know what? What has to be true operationally for that kind of reduction to happen?

Justin Dillon: 25:53

That's a great example. So, if a company has decided that they want more visibility in their supply chain they can either point a people cannon at it and try to do web searches and call suppliers and ask them who their suppliers are and all the rest of it. You can imagine how the hours and the cost is going to roll up quite quickly, and the quality of that information is gonna be completely dependent upon whether that information is available through a website or whether the supplier even has that information, right? So if, if the ambition is, we want visibility beyond our tier one, the amount of, effort to chase that manually is, is, prohibitive. The case that you're referring to is, we were able to bring, I don't know if it's tier four, tier five level visibility in their supply chain to give them an understanding of where threats might be in the supply chain and do that, pretty much instantaneously. And so to be clear, the ROI is, if the desire is visibility, the ROI is huge to use technology like ours to be able to gain that visibility instantly and more importantly, have a place to and have technology to start to mitigate that. Because it's going back to the gym analogy. I can get you a gym membership, I can walk you in, I can teach you how to use the equipment. I can tell you, if you use this equipment, it's gonna make your arms big. If you use that equipment, it's gonna make your calves big etc but you have to use it like, we haven't accomplished anything when I've shown you the entire gym. Right? So supply chain visibility is the gym, right? It's supply chain. It is the supplier engagement, which is the effort in the gym, meaning it's the pushing of the weights, it's the using the intelligence. And I think most companies are at that part. They're either looking for a gym membership, like a subscription to FRDM, or they're in the gym so they've got access to information, but they're just, most companies are just starting to like, try different weights. It's like, what does this one do? And they're trying the machine, or how do I lift this? And is this gonna get me the result I want? And that's where most of the world is at.

Tom Raftery: 28:02

Are they kind of deer in the headlights when they get access to all that visibility?

Justin Dillon: 28:06

Oh, no one's ever had this information before. Let's be super clear, It is like. It is, yes, it's paralysis of analysis times a hundred, And we hear this all the time. I want supply chain visibility. Here you go. Whoa, that's a lot. You. You're right. It's a lot. You asked for it, right? And so now takes, the effort to wrangle this into, into real value. And it doesn't take much effort. It doesn't take much pumping of, this information or pumping the weights to be able to actually start to see results, right? So it's a lot of our work is helping train them as like, okay, focus on this, focus on this now go use this now talk to the supplier about this. And then people start getting in that rhythm of quote unquote, the due diligence rhythm on top of this information. And then they start to really, really cook. And they, come out looking like they've got a place in Malibu.

Tom Raftery: 29:00

And what most often surprises companies when they do get access to that information?

Justin Dillon: 29:05

I can't read their minds. I can only listen and read their faces.

Tom Raftery: 29:10

Sure.

Justin Dillon: 29:11

but it's it's a, oh wow, we had no idea. That's, that's usually what's going. on. And, and some of it is like, do I really want, do I really wanna bring this information to the business yet? And, and quite frankly, that's the wrong. That is thinking like through the lens of a general counsel, which I, I understand everyone has to, at a business, like, do we really, if we're, are we responsible for all of this? No. Like the, the, the reality is every supply chain has risk in it. Everyone, including mine. Let's just be super clear, but we're a startup. You think we've got a lot of pressure that we can put on the people who make our computer? Of course not. We're just one teeny teeny buyer in a, in these supply chains. So we believe that, in order to be compliant, companies have to have a risk-based approach. Be looking for that risk and where they find it, take some type of action. It doesn't say what action. And by the way, there's lots of different actions you can take. But the best action is to share that information with the supplier so that they can help you remediate that risk. And In doing so, you're able to just slowly check those boxes, slowly build better visibility, and going back to the gym, you start to feel stronger and you can do more. And when you're stronger, you can do more and more and more. The companies that are chasing it with that mentality. I was just meeting with a, I, I met with a, a large, very, very large defence company a while ago. And, yeah. I get on the meeting, he is like, all right, lemme tell you my vision. We're doing a supply chain visibility project. It's gonna take five years. Well, there you go. And he is like, yep. Human rights, of course. But it's absolutely defence of the business. We have to secure our supply chain. This is national defence now. So I've been talking about human rights. I haven't even brought up national defence, right? Like the, all of these problems come together around supply. Visibility is a part of resilience. So it's visibility plus action, and they get it. And so it's not something that you're gonna be able to achieve overnight but you will get stronger and stronger along the way, and the business will get stronger because of that. And CFOs love cost reductions and love increased resilience when you can prove it out empirically. And we help our customers do that.

Tom Raftery: 31:24

Justin, we've managed to get 35 minutes into this podcast without getting into AI there's a lot of AI theatre in supply chain right now. Where is, or is AI genuinely useful here and or is the industry getting ahead of itself?

Justin Dillon: 31:43

Yeah. I think the industry is at that place. I'm old enough to remember switching from my flip phone to my first iPhone and going, oh my gosh, wait a minute. Hold on. I could text with my other phone. I could take calls with my other phone. What is this gonna do for, like, this is, is more expensive. It's a little bit bigger. And there's a couple apps, but like, I don't know. I mean, I, I think it's helpful, but I really think this phone is like the future. I think that's where we're at right now. And so as the iPhone opened up a marketplace, it really wasn't until the iPhone created its own marketplace of apps and people started building on top of that. It changed the way that the world works, frankly. It wasn't the iPhone, it was the marketplace on top of that, I think that's the place where we're at. People are getting used to it. We're seeing some of the benefits, like still kinda look at their smartphone, IE spreadsheet or whatever it was or not their, their flip phone, which was their spreadsheet or their supplier questionnaire and go, well that's that's still work. That was good. But they're, but they're playing in this space. For those of us that are building on top of AI and building on top of this intelligence, we can't move fast enough to get value to our customers.'cause we, I think from a B2B practitioner standpoint, if you don't understand your customer's pain, then there isn't enough AI in the world to help your business. But if you truly understand what your customer needs, maybe, maybe, maybe even better than they do, that's my job, is to understand my customer's pain better than they do. I need to be five steps ahead of them. If I can really provide value to them, not three steps behind, and with some golden handcuffs that locked them into a three year contract, that is not being helpful, that is being greedy. But if I'm like three steps ahead of them going, I know what you need better than you do, and I can get there. And what we are seeing on a daily basis. If you saw our Slack channel as a company and the stuff that we're going, oh my God, I cannot wait to integrate this analysis or this research or this summary into our customers like the, rapidness of not just gathering intelligence, which we've been a company that most companies have about, Hey, we're great at intelligence grabbing information, I should say. We've been information gatherers as SaaS companies for so long to be intelligence platforms that actually do the jobs of the responsible sourcing manager for them. That is not years away, that's minutes away. So that is what I as a CEO of a SaaS company I am most excited about. It's not about headcount reduction or all the rest of that. It's about productivity to get to solve the customer's problem faster. That is what AI is gonna do. And if you don't understand the customer's problem, you're just bloviating about AI and just trying to get your next job.

Tom Raftery: 34:41

Okay. I wanna do a quick lightning round if you're up for it.

Justin Dillon: 34:45

Yeah, sure.

Tom Raftery: 34:47

One sentence answers,

Justin Dillon: 34:48

That's tough for me, but I'll try

Tom Raftery: 34:53

okay, so first one, map deeper or audit harder?

Justin Dillon: 34:58

Map deeper.

Tom Raftery: 35:00

Nice, cheaper sourcing or cleaner sourcing?

Justin Dillon: 35:04

Cleaner sourcing. Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 35:07

Policy first or proof first?

Justin Dillon: 35:10

Oh Proof. It's always, it's in the pudding.

Tom Raftery: 35:14

Okay. One trusted supplier or more redundancy?

Justin Dillon: 35:19

One trusted supplier

Tom Raftery: 35:22

Nice. What risk do boards still underestimate most?

Justin Dillon: 35:27

Geopolitical.

Tom Raftery: 35:29

What supply chain myth needs die?

Justin Dillon: 35:32

That supply chain visibility is difficult and expensive.

Tom Raftery: 35:37

Okay, and a left field question for you now, Justin, if you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional a champion for supply chain visibility, who would it be and why?

Justin Dillon: 35:57

Alive or dead. Wow. That's great. I, I'm gonna go with Abraham Lincoln. It's an obvious choice, but, not just because of his historic role playing a part of the role in, ending one of the worst chapters or, or beginning to end, one of the worst chapters here in the United States. But his understanding of soft diplomacy and recognising that to create systemic change, you need to be available and you need to be able to sit on the side of the desk of your opponents or those who stand in the way of it. So, a way of the kind of change that you're creating. Change is a series of systemic shifts. And change is not something that people want. And if you don't respect that, and if you're just going to try to drive change without having respect of where people are at, even if their assumptions or beliefs are punitive to themselves and society, if you cannot see people, if you cannot truly see people for where they are, whether they are in your boardroom or in your supply chain, it's unlikely that you're gonna be able to create any systemic change. And I think Abraham Lincoln, of, of all the presidents we've had, had demonstrated an a keen ability to truly see people.

Tom Raftery: 37:24

Cool. Justin, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Justin Dillon: 37:34

You can find me on LinkedIn. Pretty easy to find. And you can learn quite a bit about our company at , fr dm.ai.

Tom Raftery: 37:42

Justin, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Justin Dillon: 37:46

I'm glad we finally did it, Tom. Thanks for having me on.