1517: Escape the Tool Trap: Achieve Compliance and Drive Growth Through Better Processes — with Operations Innovator Santiago Cortés

Robert Plank 0:01 Most teams think they need better tools, but Santiago Cortez knows they actually need better processes. He is the founder of labcortex.com, and Mr. Santiago Cortez helps high compliance, mission driven organizations transform messy, manual workflows into clean, auditable systems that fuel sustainable growth. So if you say, oh my gosh, that's exactly what me and my organization need, where has this guy, Santiago been all my life? This is the most important podcast episode you will ever listen to. We're here at the marketer of the day podcast with Robert plank, brought to you by D FY podcast.com we handle the back end so you can focus on the conversation. And the conversation that we're having today is to escape that drowning in complexity, to embrace the process instead of the tools, and it kind of unlearn this weird tool obsession that seems to have got it's gotten so out of control, especially with all the AI stuff. It's like, hey, how would actually get to work? Have a workflow. Have a process. Mr. Santiago will set us straight. So, Mr. Santiago Cortez, great to meet you and be speaking with you.

Santiago Cortes 1:16 Thank you for having me. Robert. It's great to be here. You're the way that you were mentioned about your company, where you focus, have people focus on the value, while you focus on the back end, type of piece that's very similar to our approaches. There's a lot of loss in the technology itself, right? Because there's so many tools, and now, with the explosion of AI in the last year and last year and last couple months, it's blown up a lot more in a very operational, structural way, through a lot of systems. It gets very messy, right? There's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of thoughts of this is going to solve everything. We just have to have the greatest, best tool right now, and that's going to solve our issues, but not taking the time to really look at what your process really is and what your outcome is is ultimately going to give you a poor result, right? Garbage in, garbage out, right? So what we really try to do on our side is really try to figure out, what are you trying to accomplish? What do you really need this, you know, multi $100,000 or million dollar application to manage regular compliance, right? Or to manage your inbound forms? What's the real requirement there, and how is the people in that process actually working? Because even if you're in the same industry, in the same type of line of business, if you're a different organization, you're most likely doing it different. Everybody has their own special sauce and special way that they approach things. So we really focus on understanding why you're doing it this way, what your real outcome is, and that way we can really figure out whether or not you need new tools or you need to organize the tools you have in a way that aligns with what you're trying to accomplish.

Robert Plank 3:09 Very nice. And it seems like it's kind of just simplicity, isn't it, just getting this, this mess, drilled down to the bare essence. So you're saying, well, what's the why? What's the goal? What are the people doing? And then, what tools are they using? And then do those tools need to be replaced or used better? And give us an idea of who you help, like, what's the the criteria for for a client of yours, like, what's the kind of the size in the industry?

Santiago Cortes 3:38 Most of the organizations that we work with are in regulated spaces, life sciences, biotech, finance, and there's a very real need for compliance right up front. I would say we could realistically help any organization that's looking to provide clarity to what their work is and ensure that they're moving in the right direction. But most of the most of the work that we do is mainly in heavily compliance, regulatory industries. What What we try to accomplish in those pieces is the same thing as you mentioned, just simplicity. Right back to the tool piece. Everybody wants to just get this brand new tool that's going to solve anything, everything, but it never does, because you're never taking the time for that. So it's really just taking those small steps, just asking why, moving forward.

Robert Plank 4:33 And that's a mindset that I think it's it's so tough for me to to get into, and I can't be alone just this idea of, well, I need to embrace the boring and figure out, like, what's not working, what is working. And not necessarily go to what is fun, but go to like, what the those the processes and what those goals are like, you think of like, I come from a little bit of a software background, and there's so much. In software, of like, getting buy in and then. But there's also of the playing around. Like, remember when like browsers came out with, like the blink tag or the marquee tag, where like text could, like, bounce back and forth, and it's like, you know what all that stuff was? It was, whoever was working at Netscape or Microsoft, just like, saying, hey, instead of fixing some bugs or making it work better, I'm going to go and do something that's kind of like fun, and like, you know, tickles my imagination. And so do you come across any of that kind of pushback when you help some organization, you say, hey, like, things need to be kind of done with better rules. Do you is there like, the boredom or like the emotion, human aspect get in the way.

Santiago Cortes 5:42 Yeah, there's, you know, there's always the need of be compliant versus the need of need, need and move really fast and wanting to look really, you know, spectacular in the process, right? But part of what we do is really just making that boring become more appealing, right? Because how boring is it that you have to work five extra hours a day because your system doesn't work properly, or that you have to stay on a call with multiple departments to fix issues on a regular basis, or that you have to miss someone's birthday or something like that, just because you have to spend extra time? Right? So if you take the that out of it, right? We're looking to say, hey, we're trying to give you as much time back so you can spend time where it's valuable, both at the organizational level, which ultimately is going to speed and accelerate the growth of that organization, but then ultimately that comes back to you personally as well, right? So thinking of it in that sense that, yeah, it's not incredibly exciting to read through 190 pages worth of compliance documents, but at the end of that, we have a really cool process and product set up where this is going to make your life better, right? So I think the there's definitely push in that, like, where I want the coolest, latest tool to give me all the, you know, marquee signs that there could be. But I also want to be practical, practical certain point, right? You want to just ensure that this is scalable and sustainable, and it could be fun work, right? That collaboration, that communication, identifying, Hey, these are actual issues that we're seeing across all of our departments. Or, oh, this person had another perspective that we were trying to change this. So through that creation and discovery process, there could be a lot of exciting things taking place.

Robert Plank 7:35 It sounds like it like that. There's a better way. And so you talk about this, like creation and discovery process. Can you tell us, just like, what this is like when you jump in with some organization? Do you have a fun like, case study success story, just to share with us, to you know, know how the sausage is made? So to speak, sure.

Santiago Cortes 7:54 So, I mean, I can, I can speak in general terms of how we go about helping organizations. So you know, as I mentioned, we are process first. So unlike other organizations in our space, they really want to sell the tool. We're looking to see how you're doing it. So we sit down with you. We take a look at what your day to day looks like. What are you actually saying, and the differences between the compliance and what you do on a regular basis? Right? You may have a humongous document that says we do X, Y and Z, but when you come down and actually look at the process, it's one, two and three, right? That happens very often, and there's always a misalignment there. So we start with identifying that. We try to map out big wins up front. What's a good return on investment based on this, and then based on that, we can try to see if the tools that you have already in good shape, you have the good infrastructure to manage this, or we need to switch you into something else. We do a lot of development in the Microsoft Power platform, which is a low code easy for the organization itself to manage the information afterwards, or create modifications. And then from there, we work into establishing training material, ensuring the team is up to date, that we're ensuring that they're adopting the process long term. So we provide a lot of back end support at the end of any project that we do most of the time is multi year engagements where we're in helping you keep moving forward.

Robert Plank 9:29 Okay, so the maybe when you jump in, the instructions are not fully being being followed, and so you kind of like break things down and build it back up, and then you make sure it gets implemented and make sure it sticks. And it sounds good in theory, but, but I can only imagine the ways that this might go wrong right as as the human factor is a part of it. So, like when, when you are implementing this multi year process and getting things performed in a better way. Like, what have you seen as far. Far as where there is just the same problems happening, or where do the screw ups occur,

Santiago Cortes 10:07 it happens. There's a lot of similarities in morning organizations, and it really comes down to the people, right? I find that I'm more of kind of psychologist of the process than a tech consulting company in that sense, right? Because you'll get to the situations where someone says, Okay, well, why do you do this? Oh, I don't know. We just always done it that way. And that says to me a couple pieces, right? Either they're just so swamped with work that they don't have the capacity to get beyond that, right, or that management really doesn't allow for those type of communications or that type of collaboration. It's really important on a regular basis. What I see is that there's always a sometimes there's a small disconnect, sometimes a much larger disconnect, but there's always a disconnect between the management team and the actual production team, right? You really have to take the time to ask why we're doing this, and embed that thought process into the team regularly, right? But then you have to have a feedback loop on that, because you can't have teams every day just say, hey, I need to switch this or this is wrong. This is wrong, this is wrong, right? You have to come with constructive options through this process. So the thing I see the most is there's lack of communication within the organization, right, within the same team, within different within the same department. The way that the communication goes back and forth is not always as clean as it could be, right? And part of that could be the process, part of that could be the management team and the way that they communicate, but we go through that to say what's really important here? Why are you here? Well, we're trying to build X product, right? Okay, so what do we really need to do that? Well, we don't need any of this, or we we need more of this, right? And when you have those conversations, one the team gets aligned, right? And so that's epically important to ensuring that the goal gets met, but it also helps identify a lot of items where there are issues before. So at the essence of it, right, ensuring that there's a better communication within the team, that's, why we'd say where most of the failures come from. Wonderful.

Robert Plank 12:24 So better communication as far as, why are we doing this? And maybe, if we're doing it in an awkward way, and we're fudging it and it's broken, it's not great, is there a better way? And then that that other communication to the other department. So that way you have the feedback loop right between the management and the production. And there's, like, you always hear all these, these silly cliches and stories about things like, well, there's some ticketing system and, like, they they didn't use the ticketing system because they didn't. They didn't want to look bad as far as fixing the software bug. So you hear about, like, some grocery store where the customers have to, like, double up on the grocery bags, because the management just, like, doesn't know how the how it actually works on boots on the ground, where you only use one grocery bag, it breaks so you need two. So it's like, all the all these little problems, this death by 1000 cuts, that could be fixed if there was just, like, people talking to each other. And so it's, it's quite a fascinating like, science and method that you have, and you have this thing called operations as a service. I understand. So can you tell us what that is, sure?

Santiago Cortes 13:32 So, you know, we have a lot of going into, like, you know, software as a service, and kind of falling into that realm where the way that we approach this is we're not we don't sell tools. That's not the goal here. We are looking to partner with you to ensure your success long term, and that takes a long term commitment from both our sides, right? So what we're really trying to accomplish here is we say we will be your partner. We're going to be your embedded team. We're going to be an extension of your team to help you through this process. So our operations as a service model is we are embedded with your organization in a long term to help address any operational and technology needs that that align with that, that kind of process. And it's everything that we've been talking about, right? We look at your process, we look at all the variables associated with it, and then we look to see how we can make this most effective and efficient, organizing it based on the goals of the organization, right? Whatever their priorities are is really what our priorities become at that point. But those are generally longer engagements. That's That's how we organize those. We also do work at the project level and such. But you were saying,

Robert Plank 14:48 Oh no, I would just, it's, um, I'm getting, I get excited like, hearing about this from you, right? It's like, infectious. It's like, you take something when you're talking about, like, processes, workflows, tools, and. Goals and metrics. Like, it sounds boring, but then someone like you I talked to and it's like, hey, it can be fun. It can be exciting. So it's like, listening to you. I feel like it's like a matter of you take your excitement where you can get it right, like, say, say, you, you got offered, like, a million dollars a year to dig a ditch, and you'd be like, Well, I don't want to dig a ditch, yeah, but if you had a million dollars you get take your family on a cruise around the world. Wouldn't you say, like, hey, well, I'm not getting the enjoyment from the present drudgery of digging a ditch, but I like what it will accomplish. And it seems like some of these things, like fixing up the systems and, like, you know, getting the workflow figured out, like, it's kind of it sucks in the present moment, but then what will give you after the transformation occurs? That seems like that's, that's what we should be shooting for, right? The the excitement, the encouragement of what, what the rows of your future will be,

Santiago Cortes 15:53 absolutely that that outcome really keeping in line with that goal really makes a big difference, right? Because you're going to get lost on that journey. The moment you're like, Man, I have to review all of these documents, right? Or we have to go through all of this information to figure out, how do we do next? It's not the most exciting type of work in that sense, right? But people forget that hard work is what ultimately is going to get you there, right? So it's not glamorous, but it's going to get to it's going to get you to where you need to be. And, you know, in the sense of like, it's not glamorous, I never thought operations was going to be my thing. I didn't think that. I didn't wake up, you know, five, six years old, and say, I'm going to be an Operations and Technology leader that helps people make their processes better. But you know now, at this point in my life, I really enjoy it, and I see that there's tangible benefit to the organizations and the people within the organizations that we provide on a regular basis, just ensuring that there's no obstacles in their way that we're fixing these pieces right so at a high level, not, not the most glamorous thing, but it's a very fulfilling work. And I really enjoy helping these organizations do that, do that work.

Robert Plank 17:15 Yeah, you found the right fit in the same way that you want the right fit tools and the right fit people in that organization, and it's a great thing to aspire to. And so we've been kind of geeking out a little bit about what you do to help these companies, but I have to admit, like I know, I know very little about what you do right with these, these compliance companies and the industries that they're in, but you're the star of the show here, and I want to make sure you focus on what's important to you. Mr. Santiago Cortez, so in our conversation here, what's the missing question? What should I be asking you? I just don't know to ask you,

Santiago Cortes 17:51 I think you, you've asked around it many times, right? Like, how do we help organizations be better, right? And really, of that, at the core of it is, start with start with the small start with the boring things, right? Work on those and ensure that those things are being addressed on a regular basis, that you have a mechanism in your organization to ensure that that's one coming up to light, and then that you're having a conversations about how we can make those better, right? Those are the important things that really help move forward. That's important in business in general, but also in life in general, right? You just want to ensure these little things don't get caught in your way of the big things, right? They all lead to that. So I would say that that's from a growth perspective, that's really important.

Robert Plank 18:42 Oh, yeah. So you're saying, and you mentioned earlier, the easy wins. So there's the easy wins with little things just like, What can I do to make sure the trains run on time? And that means like, what's currently working and and what should I revisit to just to make sure, on a recurring basis, that it's all running smoothly? And so if someone is listening to our conversation here about what you figured out about the transformation you apply, what is the next logical step? If someone wants to know more about lab cortex and you yourself, Mr. Santiago Cortez, where should they go?

Santiago Cortes 19:15 Well, they can check out us out on our website, lab cortex.com, or check us out on LinkedIn. Or, you know, if you want to reach out through us, through some of the forums we have, our team can reach out to you and try to coordinate a discovery session, figure out what how we can help you, and where do you really need the help, right? Because sometimes not knowing where to start is also a hurdle in this process, right? So we we help you through that piece.

Robert Plank 19:46 Oh, yeah. And many times you need additional brains on the problem, or you need someone to, like, set up, like, what you mentioned about Microsoft Power and just be like, Hey, here's our take on it. Here's our way of just, like, showing you a. How things are and so that's labcortex.com lab cortex helps organizations work smarter and safer. They partner with teams in healthcare, life sciences, financial services, nonprofits and governments to solve real problems and make daily work easier. They deliver results you can measure. They listen, they learn. They work alongside your team to create lasting improvements. And so if you say, you know, there's got to be a way to make our business operations easier, use AI to make those decisions better work. Use the right digital tools keep our company compliant, all those things. Then lab cortex, which you can find@labcortex.com linkedin.com/company/lab, cortex. And most importantly, linkedin.com/i, n slash, Santiago Cortez. This is a guy that you need to be speaking with, if you just know that there's some dysfunction with the people, with the processes, with the tools, and you need some additional outside help. That's Santiago cortez@labcortex.com but before I let you go, Mr. Santiago, it's time for the scary part of the podcast where I tried to stump you. I tried to put you on the spot by asking you about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So what comes to mind as far as that fun or interesting quote or lesson,

Santiago Cortes 21:29 I would say, tools amplify a process. They don't replace it. So that that's something important in this, in this for your listeners and anyone that's just doing this type of work right, focus on that process and ultimately that everything's going to be right.

Robert Plank 21:52 Of course, you have a computer, you have Google, you have a smartphone, you have chat GBT, you have all these amazing tools, but you have to use it properly. And Santiago Cortez and his team@labcortex.com can help you use these amazing resources available to you with the cloud and all this remote work. So lab cortex.com L, A, B, C, O, R, T, E, x.com have that conversation. Talk to him and his team. Keep your company compliant, make business operations easier, build and connect digital tools and they can help your organization. So schedule a call and get started@labcortex.com thanks for showing us, stopping by Mr. Santiago Cortez and educating us and Robert telling us how things can be better and different. I really appreciate you.

Speaker 1 22:42 I appreciate the time. Thank you for taking the time with us. Heck yeah.