#375 AI Is Turning Tacit Knowledge Into Executable Process

Summary

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Embracing Digital Transformation

Episode #375: "AI Is Turning Tacit Knowledge Into Executable Process"

Original Release: August 11, 2026
Host: Dr. Darren Pulsipher, with guests Italo Balandria & Eric Hugany

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way organizations capture, share, and operationalize unspoken "tribal" knowledge. Host Dr. Darren Pulsipher welcomes SaaS growth expert Eric Hugany and operations innovator Italo Balandria to discuss how AI is compressing onboarding times, breaking down information silos, and elevating the need for human skillsets in interpersonal communication and process thinking across public sector and commercial organizations.

The conversation centers on turning hidden, undocumented know-how—tacit knowledge—into actionable processes, mitigating the risks of lost expertise, and transforming team effectiveness in an age of rapid AI-driven change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Upskilling and Onboarding: AI's Immediate Impact

• Acceleration of onboarding:

  • Eric describes AI's role in upskilling new employees, reducing ramp times that traditionally stretched to over a year in some tech companies.
  • “Our most recent person hit quota in five months. There’s a direct correlation to what we’ve implemented, how our solutions changed, and how they’re trained and onboarded.” (Eric Hugany, 07:57)

• Example:

  • AI tools now deliver context-rich, real-time answers during calls, eliminating repetitive training and empowering newer employees:
    • “You can do practice calls against any AI agent. I don’t have to do training calls anymore. Just those kinds of things are dramatically changing how quick you can onboard someone and how confident they feel.” (Eric, 07:57)

2. Extracting and Structuring Tacit Knowledge

• Getting information out of people's heads:

  • Italo reveals his method for rapidly transforming informal knowledge into formalized, accessible processes.
    • “Anybody that has a process in their brain, I say, ‘Please just send me an email, send me a Slack message, I need to put it in writing.’ Then I go with my agent directly... In my case, I use Claude.” (Italo Balandria, 10:11)
  • AI-assisted extraction turns a two-month process into a one-day task by drafting, reviewing, and refining process documentation collaboratively.

• Combining disparate sources:

  • AI excels at synthesizing information from conversations, emails, and private channels to create unified documentation:
    • “Go to this Slack convo, go to this email, go to this other private conversation... I need to combine everything into one source of truth. That for me is where I’m saving a ton of time.” (Italo, 13:53)

3. AI & Workforce Dynamics: Fear, Trust, and Productivity

• "Will AI replace me?" Concerns

  • The panel addresses resistance and anxiety over automation:
    • “You’re not going to be replaced by AI, you’re going to be replaced by somebody that uses AI.” (Italo, 12:24)
  • Productivity gains come from augmented, not replaced, human effort—especially where verification, correction, and context are required.

• Big Brother vs. Coaching Tool

  • Eric draws a clear cultural line:
    • “If you’re using [AI] for [surveillance], you’re using it incorrectly. This tool’s here to help you upskill, help you learn faster.” (Eric, 22:05)
  • Success depends on framing AI as a coaching and enablement tool rather than a monitoring device.

• Trust as a Prerequisite

  • “Everything goes with the trust within the team... The accountability we have is based on the trust we have in each other.” (Italo, 24:05)

4. Human Skills and AI: The New Differentiators

• Soft skills become vital as AI automates routine work:
  • “AI is actually making human-to-human interaction more important... People are going to value a handshake, value a dinner.” (Host & Eric, 16:18 – 16:24)
• Communication as a strategic skill:
  • “If I have a kid in college right now... I need to tell him, you need to take some interpersonal communication classes.” (Host, 17:00)
• Connecting tech to true pain points:
  • Italo urges engineers to interpret and address human needs, not just execute technical tasks:
    • “Your superpower is going to be to interpret before the feedback comes in... what is the human need for that, for whatever you’re building.” (Italo, 17:24)

5. Avoiding New Silos: Information vs. Raw Data

• AI can magnify both strengths and weaknesses:

  • “What I’m seeing is it’s not a leveling field—it’s a magnifying glass. It magnifies your strengths and your weaknesses… in sales, engineering, and finance.” (Host, 18:40)

• Overcoming siloed knowledge:

  • Italo shares operational stories about moving from spreadsheet-bound teams to shared, AI-updated knowledge bases:
    • “My porting team had their own system managed by just those people... Now, I built a dashboard. Everybody can see what’s going on.” (Italo, 28:33)
  • The focus is on surfacing actionable information, not just raw data.

• Seamless handoffs & continuity:

  • Eric gives a concrete customer example where AI enabled him to effortlessly pick up a complex deal in a colleague’s absence:
    • “I... ask [AI], ‘Go look in Salesforce, show me his last few calls, pricing, etc.’ It tells me all of that... I didn’t show up like an idiot. I knew where we were at.” (Eric, 31:01)

6. Learning, Experimentation & Organizational Growth

• Encouraging personal exploration:

  • “What are you doing in your personal time to learn about AI?” (Italo, 24:05)
  • Italo describes investing in paid AI tools as his “extra college degree.”

• Mentorship as a multiplier:

  • “Mentorship’s probably been the most important part of my career... Whether that’s someone trying to learn more about AI, or sales, or process.” (Eric, 34:26)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI replacing jobs:
  “Order takers will be replaced... But top salespeople, high-value sellers—nowhere near being replaced right now.”
  — Eric Hugany (14:27)

• On using AI for upskilling, not surveillance:
  “If you’re buying this to Big Brother your team... you’re gonna have high burnout and churn. Use this as a tool to upskill, help you learn faster.”
  — Eric Hugany (22:05)

• On speed and trust:
  “Speed matters, but only if it is paired with trust. If teams think AI is a surveillance layer, they will hide the very behaviors you want to improve. If they see it as a tool for coaching, reinforcement, and better decision making, adoption becomes much easier.”
  — Dr. Darren (Key Takeaways, 36:00 – 37:00)

• On knowledge as an asset:
  “If your knowledge cannot be reused, it is not yet an asset.”
  — Dr. Darren (Key Takeaways, 37:30)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [05:52] – Eric: How AI accelerates scaling and onboarding in SaaS
• [07:57] – Eric on tribal knowledge and AI as a knowledge capture tool
• [10:11] – Italo: How to extract and template undocumented processes with AI
• [12:24] – Debate: AI as a replacement vs. augmentation and productivity boost
• [14:27] – Roles at risk and roles enhanced by AI in sales organizations
• [16:18] – The rising importance of human-to-human interactions in a digitized world
• [18:40] – The “magnifier effect” of AI on both organizational strengths and weaknesses
• [24:05] – Training teams and encouraging AI upskilling, inside and outside work
• [28:33] – Combating data silos: sharing actionable information
• [31:01] – Customer story: AI enables seamless sales handoffs and continuity
• **[36:00]–37:30] – Dr. Darren’s closing synthesis on speed, trust, and reusable knowledge as corporate assets

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Practical Takeaways and Closing Thoughts

Dr. Darren’s Final Lessons (36:00–37:43):

• Operationalizing knowledge is the new AI frontier:
  Move beyond documentation—make expertise instantly accessible in context.

• Speed & trust must go together:
  AI works when teams see it as a personal coach/tool, not as surveillance.

• Focus on compressing ramp time:
  Use AI to deliver just-in-time knowledge; reduce dependence on repeating expert advice.

• AI magnifies your organizational strengths and exposes weaknesses:
  Use this visibility to standardize and scale good processes.

• Human judgment remains essential:
  The best results come when people review and improve what AI produces.

• AI’s competitive advantage is its ability to make knowledge reusable and process-driven. If your knowledge can’t be reused, it’s not an asset.

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Where to Connect & Learn More

• LinkedIn: Both guests recommend connecting professionally for more tips, conversations, and mentorship.
• Company: Ringover.com
• Tip: “Talk to people. Share knowledge.”
  – Italo Balandria (33:13)

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Summary prepared for listeners and leaders seeking actionable insights on leveraging AI to turn hidden, tribal knowledge into scalable, repeatable business processes.

Transcript

[Dr. Darren]

Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation. Before we dive in, I wanted to personally thank you for listening. Many of the ideas we discuss on this show inspired my new book, AI Augmented Teams. If you're looking for practical ways to combine human expertise and AI to achieve better outcomes, I think you'll find it valuable. Learn more at Paydar AI Books. That is P A I D A R AI Books. Now let's get started with the show.

[Eric Hugany]

Upskill people faster and retain staff. Right? Make the existing staff's job easier, make them produce more. And then also for new people, it's how can I get them up to speed faster and take less of my hours or my training person's hours? And so I think one way I look at it is that. And it's just been crazy seeing that evolve even in just the last year. Right? And what it took to even set it up a year ago versus now is dramatically different.

[Podcast Host]

Shh.

[Dr. Darren]

Why this matters to you? Every enterprise is sitting on knowledge it cannot find fast enough. That creates slow onboarding, inconsistent customer experiences, and expensive rework when teams change or people leave. AI now gives leaders a way to surface what is buried in conversations, documents and systems before it turns into lost time. The real opportunity is not experimentation, it is execution. If your organization depends on tribal knowledge, this episode will show why that is a risk you can no longer ignore. Let's get into the conversation. Welcome to Embracing Digital transformation. This is Dr. Darren. On this episode, AI is turning tacit knowledge into executable process. With Italo Balandria and Eric Hugany.

[Podcast Host]

Eric Ikelo, welcome to the show. Or Italo. Did I get it wrong?

[Italo Balandria]

Yeah, yeah. The second time was better.

[Podcast Host]

Italo. I'm horrible with names. My kids know that. I've got 10 kids and I can't remember any of their names. It's a little crazy, but. Hey guys, welcome to the show. I'm really excited about today. We're going to talk about AI and teaming and. And a whole bunch of really cool things. But before we get started, everyone that listens to my show knows that I only have superheroes on the show. I have the super power twins here today. You guys look like twins. Even so, I want you guys to give me your background story because every superhero has a background story. So let's start with you, Eric. What's your background story?

[Eric Hugany]

Yeah, thanks, Dr. Darren. Yeah. You know, I am 18 years in SaaS. I love joining fast growth SaaS companies. My specialty is coming in companies in that 2 to 5 million range and growing them to 20 million. So I Joined Ringover, which is already a big global organization, and it was. So do that in the US and it's. Do it as fast as possible. So it's quite the process. I kind of. It's like a glutton for punishment coming in and just trying to, like, totally flip things on their head. But it's something I love doing and love building teams and just seeing people be successful. So doing it here, new challenge, new place, a little different. Doing it for a French company. Learning curve there, first time doing that.

[Italo Balandria]

Yeah.

[Eric Hugany]

It's fortunate, though. I'm living in Italy for the summer, so advantage of working for a French company. I'm in Italy for the summer, so there is that part of it. So, you know. You know, catch 22, so to speak. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, that. That's awesome. There's so many questions I want to ask, but you can't ignore. Itello, what's your background story?

[Italo Balandria]

Yeah, no. Well, I grew up, raised, born and raised in Venezuela. Then I had the opportunity to move to Costa Rica on a job opportunity that then took me to Atlanta. Where is my. My home base now? Same as Eric. Right now. This summer I'm spending in France. I In Paris. In this case, like, working with the company directly. I'm not a developer. I'm not a technical person by learning or by going to college. I just had the opportunity to put myself out there with the technical people and learning and I think was kind of like the perfect mix between me wanting to learn and the technology kind of increasing with AI because I've been able to absorb a ton of. And yeah, I love just finding problems and kind of find a way to like, hey, how can we solve this with AI or at least help the team find a way to solve it with AI Much faster.

[Podcast Host]

All right. You guys really picked the wrong summer to be in it in.

[Eric Hugany]

Yes, it's been brutal, especially with the lack of AC as Americans get real accustomed to that. And yeah, lack of a.

[Italo Balandria]

And lack of ice in my drinks.

[Eric Hugany]

Yeah,

[Italo Balandria]

I have my eyes.

[Dr. Darren]

There you go.

[Italo Balandria]

Yeah, there you go.

[Podcast Host]

It's funny because we all know the World cup just finished up and a lot of people from Europe coming over here to the US Were like, there's so much ice

[Eric Hugany]

cold here.

[Italo Balandria]

Yeah, it's summer, but we need sweaters because everybody, everywhere you go is there is AC on it. So, like, yeah, that's.

[Eric Hugany]

That's the way.

[Podcast Host]

All right, so let's let. Let's move on, be beyond the cultural differences between Europe and us. And let's talk about about what, what we're talking, AI is changing the game for everything, I would guess, especially for SAS companies and what you guys do in helping organizations kind of grow, right? I mean, you get to that 2 to 5 million and then grow. How is AI changing that landscape? We'll throw that one to Eric.

[Eric Hugany]

Yeah, for sure. I think it's allowing us to scale, but it's also allowing you to upskill. So I often think about it, right? There's so many AI companies coming up every day. You go to a conference and it's 50% new companies that weren't there a year ago, right? And some of them are single point of solution ones that are doing it at one job. And I think we're seeing those pop up and go away really quickly. But also, like when I talk about, like how you should be using it, it's attrition is one of the biggest thing in sales organizations, right? In SaaS, something like 20% of your people leave. Either you got rid of them or you bring in somebody new. So what AI really allows you to do, a way we really talk a lot about it is it's how can you upscale faster, right? Because your biggest, one of your biggest costs, your organization is getting someone up to speed. Replacing someone, it can cost six to nine months to that person's quota. Every time, leave somebody a new one come in. And so how can you implement AI into your processes, into what you're doing to actually upskill people faster and retain staff, right? Make the existing staff's job easier, make them produce more. And then also for new people, it's how can I get them up to speed faster and take less of my hours or my training person's hours? And so I think one way I look at it is that. And it's just been crazy seeing that evolve even in just the last year, right? And what it took to even set it up a year ago versus now is dramatically different.

[Podcast Host]

You know, that's a really good point. I know one of my sons started working at Qualcomm and they said your ramp up is going to be 18 months. Can you imagine? I mean, that's amazing. That's amazing, right? And all the time and effort spent by senior engineers or, you know, whatever the case may be, that's a lot of time. And what they found, I had two boys that actually went through that same thing at Qualcomm. What they found was the reason it took so long was there was so much tribal knowledge, tacit knowledge in the organization, no one wrote anything down. Yep. I mean, and are you seeing the same thing? And AI can now kind of capture that tacit knowledge? Is that what you're, what you're thinking?

[Eric Hugany]

Exactly. It's interesting. I just presented our sales kickoff two weeks ago, summer like or mid year kickoff. And one of the data I presented to the C suite where you have second half budgets, et cetera, was I showed all my senior AES that have been in the organization. One's been there the longest, like two years. And it was how long did it take them to 100% Dakota? It was nine months, nine months, seven months, seven months, six months. Most recent person, five months. There's a direct correlation to what we've implemented and how our solutions changed and how they're trained and onboarded and how their access to data is. Or before you had to have worked there to know that question to that customer. Now you can just go simply have your tool tied into an mcp, tied into our knowledge base. While you're on a call, you're asking a question and you get the answer almost immediately for that customer. And so you don't have to go, oh, let me get back to you. Oh, let me get back to you. Or do tons of these practice calls. Because you can do practice calls against any AI agent. I don't have to do training calls anymore. Doing fake sales calls. Like system can do that. Takes that off of me. Lets them do it training at their own pace. Like just those kinds of things are something that are dramatically changing how quick you can onboard someone and how confident they feel. Right. Because in the end, for a salesperson, confidence is everything. And, and, and then you don't oversell someone. You, you feel more successful, you get retention, you get success. Like that guy Corey I'm talking about. He was our top salesperson in June. He joined in June, in January, across our entire global organization. And it was just amazing to see that happen. And it wouldn't have happened for these tools that are, have evolved so quickly for him to get there. I mean it could, right. You land that lucky inbound deal. But it also comes from ability to upskill and train people faster.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so I have a big question. Well, we'll throw this one to Itello. How do you get all that information into AI? Because that's all proprietary information. A lot of it's in, in sales teams, heads or engineers heads, all that task and all. How in the world are you going to train up on all that? Am I going to have to spend a year doing that?

[Italo Balandria]

I mean, yeah, no, And I love you throw that to me. Because that's literally my daily, my daily bread at work. Now. There is so much information as a company with multiple offices, different time zones, different cultures, as we were mentioning before, there is so much information going between hallways, between offices that doesn't like land, you know, on a knowledge base on somewhere. So what I have implemented specifically is any, anybody that has a process in their brain as a, hey, please just send me an email, send me a slack message, I need to put it in writing. And then I go with my agent directly. In my case, I personally use Claude say, hey, I have this process, I have this email. Go read it. We have created internally a process template page. This way my agent goes with a template, goes with information, and fills all the needs to fill that process template. Now, of course, and this is the part I tell everybody, just because the agent did it doesn't mean it's gonna be perfect. Like, you still have to go and review that. But I don't know, the hour will have take me to, you know, put all that template in information. Kind of like put it back down into the conversation or into the page. It does it in five minutes. Then I just go review it. I even send it back to the person and say, hey, can you provide me feedback of the process based on this template page I'm creating for it? And they're like, oh, we're missing this. You can add this screenshot. You can do this, you can do this. And something that will have taken probably a couple months to like, let's meet to put the process together. Let me clean it up, let me build it, let me send you for you to feedback. Let me clean it up again. It takes me a day. So saving those 60 days to now only do it within a day has been a major chef because it has allowed me and my team to put a lot of processes into global knowledge base and getting it out of those local offices.

[Podcast Host]

Have you, have you had any pushback at all from people worried that you're just training an AI to replace them?

[Italo Balandria]

This is the thing for me and this is I used to use this phrase and now I did not invent this phrase. But now everybody's used. It's like, oh, you're not going to be replaced by AI, you're going to be replaced by somebody that uses, that uses AI.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Italo Balandria]

And that's. And that for me is 100% the truth. Because the thing is, when you're using AI, you're increasing your productivity at least that's how I see it on myself. Everybody tells, oh, we need multitask, people. And honestly, multitasking at some point is going to fail because you're not going to be able to finish a task if you're doing multiple at the time. But at least with me, for AI, I can like, hey, I need to work on this process. This is what needs to be done. This is my end goal. Go do it. And then I can jump in the next thing. And then when I finish my loop, I go back to the first one and then it's like, okay, let me review. Okay, we need to make this change, this thing, this change. Let's send it again. And then. And then let's move to the next one. So at least that's my. My style, my cycle. But I always review everything before I ship something, before I have my internal tools, before I create an update. I make sure that I have everything before we push anything to the, to the internal communication. I go with the teams, Hey, I need your vetting on this process.

[Podcast Host]

You're validating that the AI is not exactly making crap up, right? I mean, that's, that's what it does, right? If it doesn't know, it still provides you an answer.

[Italo Balandria]

And at least for me, the best part is I can say, hey, go to this conversation on a slack, Go to this email on my inbox and go to this other private conversation that we had and put it all together like these three different information sources are talking about the same process. I need to combine everything into one source of truth. And at least that for me is where I'm saving a ton of time.

[Podcast Host]

No, no, that. That totally makes sense. Go ahead, Eric. I know you want to jump in. Yeah.

[Eric Hugany]

I think you have the interesting part, though. Like, will it replace people? Is there a fear of that? And the answer, though, is yes, right? I don't think it's going to be what we're seeing. Some of these tech companies that could bring Claude code in now, they're realizing their AI spend is more than what they spend on a developer in some cases because the developer is reviewing the code, like Itala said. But I think in salespeople, for example, in sales organizations, they. There are a lot of roles that we replace. And I can't remember if it's a Forbes article somebody read recently, and it talked about salespeople and inside sales order takers that are just processing an order, they will be replaced because that is a very, like, mundane task. You just took an inbound sales, you sent them a Price quote like that can be automated. AI can do that interaction. Your top sellers, the top 10% in SaaS at your company, people selling high dollar value stuff that takes a complex process that is nowhere near being replaced right now. Right. A human is still involved. I've ironically found the last year a huge shift to in person events being the most effective source for us right now. From a deal perspective. Our highest, our highest dollar value, our highest close ratio, shortest close time, people are actually valuing that because we're also all getting bombarded. I mean how many emails do you get a day on? My AI agent tool can bring you more leads. My AI agent tool can do this. Right. And I mean you like delete. It's like okay, cool, you're a new model. I can see you create your email.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I see you touched on something here. Really interesting Eric. And that is, I've always thought it would happen and we're starting to see it which is AI is actually bringing human to human interaction becoming more important because AI is handling all of the fluff.

[Eric Hugany]

Yes.

[Podcast Host]

Does that make sense? It's handling all that stuff and people are going to value a handshake.

[Eric Hugany]

They value, they value a dinner. Sitting down and knowing who you are, not these emails that AI might have drafted for you and sent to them, like are you the person who they actually talk to and actually follow and promise things? And I think that's where it goes back to trust human interaction. And why, why I got into sales, why I like it is that part building relationships. And so I think the people that like that part of sales or that part of joining tech company, those are the roles and the people that'll be successful and the ones that are afraid of that. It'll be interesting how that evolves and changes.

[Podcast Host]

Well what that tells me is if, if, if I have a, a kid that's in college right now or if I'm in college right now, I, I need to tell him you need to take some, some interpersonal communication classes.

[Italo Balandria]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

I'm the, the put the engineer in the closet with coke and pizza just isn't gonna fly anymore is what I'm hearing.

[Italo Balandria]

And I think that's a part of like I have friends that developers and they're incredible at what they do, super smart. And what I tell them is like your superpower is going to be to be able to interpret before the feedback comes in. What is like the human need for that, for whatever you're building. Because I think that's where people that have those social skill can Shine even more because you're going to say, hey, I know what they need, I know what they're looking for. I don't know how to build it or I don't know how to kind of like prototype it to my own team to hey, this is what, this is what I wanted to build. Now that you have all these tools that basically the majority of the AI system is coding is like, hey, I have this idea, this is the need, this is the issue that I need to solve. This is the pain point. The let me prototype something. That way I can say, hey, I need this. And I have done that with my team. It's like, give me 30 minutes, give me an hour and I will come up with what I'm looking for that I need to have. And I come up with that. That team is like, oh, that makes sense, perfect, let me build it. And they build it even faster than me. But I had that, you know, that, that social skill that understand was the pain that they are having and how we can solve it.

[Podcast Host]

So this is going to be really interesting for a lot of engineers and, and, or salespeople that might not have those skills, but they have other skills. So this is going to be a really interesting, a dilemma, I think, I guess that's the right word, right? Because I always thought that AI would be kind of a leveling field. And what I'm seeing is it's a magnifying glass. So it magnifies your strengths and also your weaknesses. So that happens on the sales side and the engineering side as well, and also in finance and everything. So how do you guys help people? Especially when we talk about ramping them up. In this new world of AI, there's new skills that have to be learned. How do you conquer that too? Do you guys have training programs or is it one on one? What's your approach? What's your approach to this?

[Eric Hugany]

I think both of us can hit on this one, right? Like even though the implementations, I do the high level sales piece and I can probably do the high level, it's the ability for it to listen, join calls, look at your data, your emails, your communication. Like all omnichannel, like the AI can sit over top of that, right? And it's going to find the gaps, it finds what your top people are doing in which your worst people are doing and it can alert you as a sales leader. So say you're running a 20 person team, you're not joining all their calls. But if I got a report, what if I got a report when I came in, hey, these three people need improvement. And then you can go and you can create pitch rooms. You can create reports of what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong. Are they hitting methodology? Are they hitting the right sales points? What are they missing? Like, do you use Bant, do you use medpic? Like what do you use? And then you go to pitch room, hey, go practice calling against this score, their calls, things like that, that like before took a lot of. You had to sit in a pit. Right? That was the whole reason for these big sales pits. You sat by them so you can hear them. Oh, don't say that, don't say that. The AI can coach on that now, can get them up to speed quicker, can upskill them, or it can join your call. And if somebody goes, hey, how do you compare against XYZ company? Oh God, I've never even heard of them. It can answer, hey, here's how our solution compares against X XYZ and give you your top points of what you do better, what your strengths are against them. So again, that's that ability for someone to feel more confident on a call and get up to speed faster and then they're going to remember it. It's all repetition and sales. Right. And confidence.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Eric Hugany]

And I say in sales, but it's also customer service teams, all sorts of different teams across your organization that are using this. It's, are they following a script? Did they, did your onboarding team ask the right questions? Maybe they didn't. Why that customer have a horrible onboarding experience. You missed the script, you went way off the rails. And so there's a lot you can do there where it's not just for your sales org on how they can use these tools. You know, I can probably elaborate on that big time, but go ahead.

[Podcast Host]

Well, but before, before we elaborate, I got a couple questions and follow up questions on that. Do you have people that are scared, I guess is the right word scared that you're becoming even more of a Big Brother overlord.

[Eric Hugany]

Oh yeah. And I think yes.

[Podcast Host]

And how do you handle that? Right.

[Eric Hugany]

I think that's exactly. I say that to him. I was like, this tool is not meant for being a Big Brother. If you're using it for that, you're using it incorrectly. Right. There's a lot of these tools I can look at outputs, end results. It shouldn't be used for that. The whole goal. Right. Why are we in sales? We're trying to make it more successful. This is for upskilling. It's not for. Are you following a script. Script adherence is just one piece of it. And some of it's speech rate, filler words. I. I'm from Iowa. I use like a lot. I have changed that. And what I do, it was like, there you go. I used it one of every 20 words. I said, oh my gosh, I need to change that. So just those small things, right? And it's. But telling people, if you're buying this to Big Brother, what your team's doing and monitor exactly what they're doing, you, you're gonna have a horrible culture within the organization and you're gonna continue to have high burnout and high churn and high attrition. Use this as, hey, this tool's here to help you upskill, help you learn faster. You have a hard call. One of my guys said the other day, he's like, hey, he knew you got stumped on something. He can send me to that exact moment in his call. Hey, go listen at this point, what should I do right here? Or hey, I crushed it at this point. Go check that. So you can send me that exact word or go search for this word in a call and I can find that moment in their call and listen to it if I want to. And so that's the kind of piece like, that's the. Where you can use it to really coach upskill or reward people. Hey, question on this. And so it's not if you're using just Big Brother.

[Podcast Host]

That's a fine line, Eric.

[Italo Balandria]

It is.

[Podcast Host]

I, I love what you said, but it's a, it's a very fine line that you walk. And if you do have the right purpose, then I think I, I think you're right. If people could see this is going to make me better and then I, I think you got that. But that could be really hard. Tello what I mean, what, what do you think on this one? Are you seeing the same. Same sort of thing?

[Italo Balandria]

Yeah. And to. To just a quick comment on that one, that fine line. I think everything goes with the trust within the team. Like, Eric and his team are very tied up and send with sales with our CSM teams that are very tight. So even when we push back, we know, hey, we're not pushing back for this. Like, hey, can you tell me the customer is telling me that you promised, you know, the mood. Can you send me the recording and the sales? Like, yeah, of course. Here's the recording. Like, I did not say that this is what I promised. You can go to the minute this like the accountability that we have within each other is based on the trust that we have on each other. So even though that, yes, we had the Big Brother recordings and all this stuff is like, hey, this is going to make us better as a whole team. More than me seeing what you're doing is how we're doing. But to your original question on what we're doing to train our team, I personally have done a couple things. One, we are providing, of course, internally a ton of trainings with our AI tools that we're implementing. But one thing I ask the team, and I try to ask the team to do stuff that I'm willing to do as well, is what are you doing in your personal time to learn about AI, know about how you can implement AI Working is like, what are you doing to learn how to use AI to do whatever? I don't care if it's to, hey, I want to build, I don't know, a LED screen that I love airplanes and I love flying. And this guy created an LED screen where he can see all the airplanes flying around his house. I thought was amazing. So I'm like, what are you doing on your time? Because I personally spend, I started with like 20 bucks when ChatGPT started that nobody was using, I was like, I want to pay. As soon as they started with the payment membership, I was like, I'm paying my 20 bucks a month. Then I jumped to lovable. I was paying $50 a month. Then I jumped to clock code, paid $200 a month and then jumped to Corsair, $200 a month because I wanted to learn. And that was my mba, that was my, you know, my extra college degree. Whatever extra college I wanted to do. That was how I was seeing. It's like, well, I'm not paying for that mba, but I'm paying for this to learn how, how can I use this for my day to day, almost two years later, a year and a half later, at least using the, the tools to code. I'm really, oh, I have a Excel file that sucks. That is shouldn't exist, but I still have an Excel file. Let me make it as a web app. So it's so much better for me. I'm a big F1 fan from the 90s. It was a team that all, with all their money, all their technology, they were using Excel to track 20,000 different pieces for the F1 car. And I'm like, you have all the money and you still use an Excel to track every piece. And every time I'm finding like somebody, oh, this is how I track this. I'm like no, let me show you the new way to do it. And this literally happened on Monday. I met with an IT guy. He's like oh, I have to. This is how I onboard the people. This is my spreadsheet. I'm like dude, let me show you. And the next day he already have a dashboard. He will be able to see what's coming this week, next week, next month, everything. And I'm like this is the best way. But the thing is I want to ask the people go and explore outside work. Something that you're passionate about, something that you like it. Because when you know the pain, when you know, oh man, I wish something like this exists because now I don't have this pain. That's the easy way to learn how to, to implement AI because once you know to implement AI is basically copy paste. It's like, oh, you have this pain, this is how you can fix it. Oh, you have this other pain, this is how you can fix it.

[Podcast Host]

Is, is there. Because I'm, I'm, I'm a systems guy so I always look at top tops down systems with a whole bunch of people experimenting and things like that. Don't we start getting silos of data pockets throughout your organization and because I know that's what's happening right before it was more hidden because oh, it's just an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop. It might get saved up into a SharePoint or into One Cloud or Google Cloud or whatever. But that, that data is invisible to the organization really. So are we just creating like I said, he has a magnifier. We just magnifying that problem. Is it going to become.

[Italo Balandria]

Yeah, like, like if we're creating more silos instead of like demolishing the saddle, seems like we're creating more saddle. And that can happen and that can happen. But for at least for. This is my. I'm going to give you a quick, quick real example of my side. We were, we have on Ringover, we poured numbers from different providers into Ringover to so our clients can use our product. And then my small team of the porting team was having their own system managed by the people on that team and they were the only ones looking at that data. Even though that sales team was involved, CSM team was involved, they were the only ones with access to that data because they have their own system for that. So when I came on this position I was like okay, this is a very critical process in our onboarding process. This data is Siloed on this section. Let me add it to my overall system that I have. And now everybody not only can see when a company is going to. The numbers are going to move to ring over who's managing that portability, but we get automated notifications when the portability is about to happen. So I move from that silo process to like, hey, let me build you. And I've, I've coded that probably like 45 minutes, where now CSM can see what's going on, support can see what's going on, sales can see what's going on. We get notifications on Slack, we pin the CSM of that account, we pin the support. Support person that is doing that say, hey, remember this is happening tomorrow. Hey, this is happening 30 minutes, 15, 5. Now let's do it. Because we were silo on that communication. Now where things can happen and this is the struggle I'm working with, is when we have those different offices and we are implementing processes for office. I'm like, okay, let's go and put this in our notion. Let's create this page so everybody can have access to this data, so they can see what's going on.

[Podcast Host]

What you explained and then, Eric, I'll turn over to you was you're not sharing data, you're sharing information. Right? Where before I would have to get a data scientist involved and curate all the data and all that stuff. And instead you went right to, hey, this is valuable information I can make business decisions on. So, Eric, with that, I'll throw that over to you.

[Eric Hugany]

That was exactly it I was going say for us, right? Like we implemented a part of our sales tools within our stack, right? Of what we use some of our internal tools and so not all that data. Like I was saying, all communications pulled in. I had a sales guy, he had run France, his passport is expired. He's like, oh my God, I gotta fly in three weeks. My passport's expired. Expired. I have to go passport for office tomorrow. Can you take this demo? I've only ever. I talked to you for five minutes about this in your pipeline review yesterday. I know nothing about this customer. Right, Well, I use our AI. I go ask it, hey, go look in Salesforce. Show me his last few calls, where's emails, where's pricing. All right, I use our deal room tool and it looks all that up. I get on the call. Here's next steps for the call. Here's what they're at. Here's where the why the deal stalled and what he's trying to get done in this call. Right. And the likelihood of it. So it's telling me all of that going in it. So I joined. Hey, doctor, you know you're trying to be here to do this. It's like you and Jeremy last spoke about that. Does this sound right? And here's what we're going to go over today. Yep. I didn't show up with like an idiot. I, I knew where we were at. And I go, and by the way, I use our tool to look this all up. This is part of what Jeremy's pitching you on. It's. Oh, wow. You know, and he calls the guy. It worked. Right? And so that was amazing.

[Podcast Host]

Incredible. Because it makes you as a company look like you guys all talk to each other. You look cohesive instead of, oh, dude, the guy, the guy had to travel. Sorry, we'll get back to you in a month. Right.

[Eric Hugany]

Literally.

[Italo Balandria]

I was on that end with a provider that we're looking at and I was working with this guy for like 2 months and then he ghosted me. And then another person was like, hey, he's important to leave. I'm so sorry. Let's jump on this. Do you have this information? I was like, well, I sent that information two months ago, but here you go again. And we have to like restart the whole sales process. I'm like, why? You guys don't have something that can tell you what has been talked, what is missing and what's the next step?

[Podcast Host]

So that's incredible, guys. Hey, guys, this has been, this has been great, but we're out of time. If people want to learn more about what you guys do and the impact it's having, where do they reach out?

[Italo Balandria]

Well, they can go to our LinkedIn. That's the first one that's more than, more personal as. As well ring over that calm. I try to, I try to push a lot of posts on LinkedIn. I haven't been quiet for like the past three weeks traveling, but I'm very reachable on LinkedIn. I love talking to these. There is one, one tip that I want to leave for everybody because I forgot to mention is talk to people. Like, share knowledge. Like Every Monday at 7:30pm I meet with this guy that I met back in 2011 when I was living in Venezuela and when I moved to Costa Rica, he was the one that gave me a job offer to move to Atlanta. So from almost 25 years, or no, 15 years, sorry, not 25, 15 years, we have been friends and now every Monday, 7:30pm we meet to just talk about what we are doing. Hey, what are you learning about AI? How you have implemented and from those conversations amazing ideas have come out that I was like I haven't thought about this. So that's definitely something that I love doing with people, is just sharing ideas. So LinkedIn is a great way to reach out. Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

Eric, what about you?

[Eric Hugany]

LinkedIn for me as well. Once you get to know me, text me. It's probably the fastest way I respond. And I think the same thing, like I had a friend tell me back in January 25th, if you're not spending at least an hour a day improving what and how you're using AI in your processes, Eric, you're going to be pats by your peers. And so I've really just forced that. Besides like recipes for cooking and traveling and arguments with my wife not using it for that, like actually using it. Right. For real things. It's something I've done. And I think to Elo's point is just remember that while someone maybe hasn't used it to your level, you know, I still work with a mentor of mine, 75 years old, he worked at Sequence. If anybody knows who that company was, you can tell inside we're going to throw back. And his still knowledge on sales and what he's done, that information doesn't exist out in the AI world. Right. And so some of those things like also take a step back and like look at your process, your pain and see what resource you can go to. Mentorship's probably been the most important part of my career and so I try to be a mentor for people as well as I really encourage people to do that to be successful. Whether that's somebody trying to learn more about AI, like each of those who can teach on how to do it. It's just I think for careers and for growth and success and happiness, mentorship probably the best thing to see your success with any of these things we've talked about today.

[Podcast Host]

Hey guys, this has been wonderful. Thanks for coming on the show today.

[Italo Balandria]

Thanks Erin.

[Eric Hugany]

Thank you very much. Appreciate the time.

[Dr. Darren]

This is what I take away from this interview. The broader trend here is not simply AI adoption. It is the operationalization of knowledge. Leaders are moving from static documentation and tribal memory towards systems that can surface context in the moment of work that changes onboarding, sales coaching, customer handoffs and cross functional execution. The first lesson is that speed matters, but only if it is paired with trust. If teams think AI is a surveillance layer, they will hide the very behaviors you want to improve. If they see it as a tool for coaching, reinforcement and better decision making, adoption becomes much easier. The second lesson is that AI should compress ramp time by exposing the right information at the right moment. Executives should ask, where do our people lose time because knowledge is buried, duplicated or stale? Where are we forcing experts to repeat what should already be captured? The third lesson is that AI magnifies organizational design. Good processes become more scalable, bad process, hidden knowledge and weak handoffs become more visible. That is uncomfortable, but it is also useful. Leaders should use that visibility to standardize, not just to automate. The fourth lesson is that human judgment remains the control point. The best AI systems are still reviewed, corrected and improved by people who understand the business over the next several years. The winners will not be the companies that use AI the most, they will be the companies that use it to turn expertise into a repeatable operating advantage. The memorable insight is if your knowledge cannot be reused, it is not yet an asset.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks for listening to Embracing Digital Transformation if you enjoyed today's conversation, give us five stars on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube. It really helps others discover the show. If you want to go deeper, join our exclusive [e-mail]

[Dr. Darren]

where we share bonus

[Podcast Host]

content and you can always connect with other change makers like yourself. You can always find more [e-mail] until next time, keep embracing the Digital Transformation.