Anders Lillevik With Focal Point

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Atlanta Business Radio, we have Anders Lillevik with Focal Point. Welcome.

Anders Lillevik: [00:00:43] Welcome. Thanks for having me, Ali.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] So excited to learn what you’re up to. Can you update us a little bit about focal point? How are you serving folks?

Anders Lillevik: [00:00:50] Yeah, so focal point is A B to B SAS solution in the procurement space. What that means is we are facilitating the processes that are currently under served in the procurement space, specifically as it pertains to how selection processes and supplier management activities are done. And we’re basically our biggest competitor at the moment are Excel and Email, which is an exciting space for us to get into.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] So what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Anders Lillevik: [00:01:19] Well, I have been in procurement for 25 years. The last 20 or so I was leading large global and complex procurement organizations and I have implemented a slew of systems in my time. And the challenging part for me, like I said earlier, was that regardless of how much money I spent on procurement technology, my team and I were working predominantly in Excel and email to to facilitate things like collaborate, collect data, consolidate data and so on. And I had this epiphany that there’s a lot of good technology out there, but there’s a connective tissue that is missing, and that’s why I decided to build focal point, really to help bridge that gap.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:02] So were you the technologist who put the software together or did you partner with other folks?

Anders Lillevik: [00:02:07] No, no. So the origin story there is I created a wireframe and a PowerPoint deck, and I walk that around to a bunch of people in procurement, and we got our first two customers before we actually started developing the product. I’ve got two large global brands said, Yeah, we have this problem too, and if you build this, we sure would love to try it with that. I went to my wife, we just got married actually, and I said, Hey, I’ve got this crazy idea. I want to leave the corporate world and start my own company. So I guess you can say she was my first investor. So we bootstrapped the company on a higher set of Ukrainian developers to build a first prototype. Went live at the in December of 2020. So I’m not a technologist and I don’t pretend to be one either.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:51] So when you were making that transition, was it something that you had always wanted to be an entrepreneur and this was just the opportunity Was there or was this kind of a big, you know, map out the pros and cons of this decision and play out different scenarios? Was this really a hard choice for you or was this something like a calling that you were like, I got I’m the right person to do this.

Anders Lillevik: [00:03:12] It’s a it’s a mix of a few of those things. Like I never set out to be an entrepreneur. To me, it was always scary and always sort of, you know, I got my MBA, I, I was on the path of, you know, I was a senior vice president at a very large global organization. So for me, it certainly wasn’t a financial calling for me. It was a real problem that I think the industry needs to be solved. And I kind of sat down and looked at it and said, look, I’m not of a certain age now. I’ve been I’ve had a long career and if I don’t do this now, I will never do it. And, you know, having having done this for a very long time, I really felt that I was the right person to to solve the problems And certainly with the validation of having customers pre development was was also a good sort of benchmark for me to say, yeah, I got something here. And it wasn’t really until I went live with two national global brands where I realized like, holy smokes, now I have to build a company around this because it’s literally just me and a bunch of folks in the Ukraine on contract. And that’s when things started sort of really ramping up.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:22] Was that the point where you’re like, okay, this is real now? Like, this is I have to really start, you know, having systems and processes like I’m really running a business now. And this isn’t just like this clever idea that’s solving a problem. This is like now a complex business.

Anders Lillevik: [00:04:38] Yeah, absolutely. And that’s when I realized, like, I have to get some, some money to sort of fund the operation because the two first customers, when they sign up pre product, they’re not willing to pay a lot of money for this. Right. So in in 2021, it was kind of a pivotal year to to start dipping my toe into the venture capital arena, getting some some VC funding, hiring a CTO, bringing a team on site and not on site, but in the company. So when you have to stand up against things like security reviews and process mappings and so on, that it’s not just a bunch of outsource folks is literally we have a team we can, we can show them the team, we can show them our processes. So yeah, that’s when things really started getting real and it’s. It’s been a journey ever since.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:24] Now, has that part been as rewarding? Like to me having an idea and seeing it kind of bubble to life, that’s exciting. You know, a lot of the administrative side and operational side is the stuff that’s super important that makes, you know, the trains run on time, but that’s not as, you know, romanticized maybe as that aha moment and then making something come to life.

Anders Lillevik: [00:05:49] Well, having having been on the other side of of of buying technology, I knew this was a necessary evil so to speak. Right. So you don’t get into a Fortune 500 company and processing their data without having all these things buttoned up fairly tight. So I knew that all along that if I’m going to play in that arena, this is something that we needed to do. And it’s it’s kind of when all the trains come in, right? When you’re able to get in front of the customer, sell them on the value proposition, get them to see the vision. And then going through the security review, the legal review, the insurance review and all the other stuff they make you do. And when they finally go live, that’s that’s the thing that really makes me excited about it. Like one more customer. A couple of hundred people in procurement and in the organization using our solution. That’s really cool to me. And it’s all of it. Not just the epiphany moment where it’s like, Oh, someone should go fix this.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:48] So now you’re finding the joy in the actual kind of keeping everything, all those plates spinning at the same time. Now that’s the the rewarding part for you, knowing that you have a solution that is getting traction, that is providing value, and it’s just now a matter of just kind of scaling.

Anders Lillevik: [00:07:05] Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s, it’s never ending, right? Because what you realize is that your requirements are different for different industries. So, for example, we have a very large hotel brand that’s using our solution. And their complexity is very different than a pharmaceutical company that we’re just onboarded. And you kind of I never run out of things to do on the operational side that’s going to help us become stronger and be able to grow faster and scale faster. So I kind of lean into it. I think a lot of startups fight the the need to to build a robust operation and kind of deal with that as as they scale Eileen right into it and say, look, it’s better that we deal with these things upfront than try to kick the can down the road and deal with it two years from now. I’d rather fix it now then then when things go wrong. And I think that’s going to serve us well in this industry.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:59] So when you started, you focused on financial and then now have expanded to other verticals.

Anders Lillevik: [00:08:05] So it’s interesting. So our first two customers, one was a very large recruitment recruiting company based in Austin, Texas, and the second one was a gaming company in California. And now we have hotel chains, we have pharma companies, we have insurance companies. So it’s a bit of everything. But all of our customers have in common is that they are large and complex and they have legacy systems that are disconnected and and we bring that to the table and help them structure their their processes, structure how they work with their customers and become that connective tissue. So I wouldn’t say that we are specifically connected to verticals. We we deal with large, complex organizations and regardless of the vertical they’re in.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:54] So how quickly do they notice that things have improved?

Anders Lillevik: [00:09:00] Yeah, it’s an interesting question. A lot of these large companies are very resistant to change, right, because some of these folks have been in the company for 20 plus years and they love their Excel spreadsheets, for example. And some customers like are the recruiting company that I keep referencing. They went live globally and to end in two weeks and they saw they saw the benefits immediately. Some of the larger companies that are are on ramping in, say, 6 to 9 months. That’s when things are really coming to the forefront, when you can actually see everything in one spot. Hence the name of the company focal point. You can manage everything in one spot and that’s when things become real for them. So it really depends on your risk appetite and how much you’re willing to bite off.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:46] Now, how does the you know, I know you’re solving a problem with software. How is the change management part of this solved with the humans?

Anders Lillevik: [00:09:58] Yeah. Showing them how the new how the new thing can work in in the new environment is really, really helpful. So the software itself is fairly easy to use. It’s you get notifications, you get told what to do and how to do it, and it’s just a matter of following the prompts. It’s kind of like paint by numbers, right? So we demystify some complex processes by making them more accessible and user friendly for even non procurement practitioners. So the change management is kind of twofold. Like number one, you show them how to do it. Number two, you’re always available if and when they need help. And I think that helps a lot as well because we have a chat bot, for example, or a phone phone number, they can call and we’re always very responsive to make sure that if there is a need we can address it head on and very early so that it takes away the fear factor of trying something new.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:50] So they’re able to kind of ease into it. And then knowing that there’s always someone kind of watching their back.

Anders Lillevik: [00:10:58] Correct 100%. So again, back to our original question of having infrastructure, right? So our helpdesk can see which screens customers are on and sort of pick it up from there today. Or you should click here, click there, and it becomes easy to to to shepherd people through the process.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:14] So now when you’re selling this in, is this like you’re selling it into the C suite and they’re deploying it, or is it somebody that’s kind of the boots on the ground that’s kind of dealing with this day to day that’s like kind of pushing this from the bottom up and saying, hey, we need a better solution and here’s one.

Anders Lillevik: [00:11:33] It’s a mix. So I would say that the process owners are the folks that typically bring us in to say, Alright, there’s a better way of doing this process, whatever that process is, whether that is managing suppliers or managing projects in procurement or managing supplier risk or whatever. Right. And they will say, Well, we’re doing this manually today. This is something that we can use to create visibility and workflow and visibility to to the process, and they can bring us into the C-suite or the organization’s procurement office or head of procurement can bring us in and realize like I can manage my entire department with more visibility, more transparency and better customer service if I just implement something that can manage that. This process beginning from from beginning to end. Sorry.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:19] Now is there you know, people don’t like change and this sounds like something new. And like you said, some people’s identity are built on how good they know Excel. And that’s, you know, part of their brand is I’m the person to go to, you know, if you got a problem. Is that a difficult change to manage when it comes to, you know, just having a better mousetrap here that solves things better? But do you the emotional connection that people have to legacy systems and the fear of, you know, I don’t want to be the one that’s pulling the trigger on this, this thing explodes?

Anders Lillevik: [00:12:55] Yeah, it’s an interesting question because some of these larger organizations have those folks right, that I’m the gatekeeper of this particular information and making it visible to other folks is not necessarily a good thing for me. Those are not typically the people that are going to lead the change. But once the rest of the organization comes down the system and realize that there’s benefits to it, it’s hard to resist. Right. And I think ultimately it comes down to the leadership of the organizations we’re selling into. We need strong leaders to be able to, like you said, deal with the change management process and push the organization along. And if there’s not an impetus for change at the top, you know, this is probably not the solution for folks, right. If they want to if you want to keep doing the same thing over and over again, but this is not your type of solution.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:42] Now, do you think that you again, it seems like you were just at the right person at the right time for this type of solution, having kind of lived through all of this and knowing where all the landmines are, it helps you kind of communicate the value proposition more effectively and efficiently with more kind of street cred than maybe some technologists who develop the software know.

Anders Lillevik: [00:14:03] Absolutely right. And you find as I’m as I’m starting to navigate the startup community and also the procurement startup community, there’s a lot of technologists that have developed a thing that solves a problem, a very specific problem, and they leverage the heck out of it and they start scaling it. And that’s kind of the the anti focal point solution. They essentially they’re building a point solution that does one thing and does it really well, and it’s disconnected from the rest of the systems that are in the organization. We we bring this together end to end and we’re looking at things more holistically rather than just a point solution. And this is probably why I took we have 30 engineers working on the solution and it’s been quite a while now and we’re very development focused and product focused. So yeah, I believe you’re right. It’s the right person solving the right problem at the right time and also the advent of and the normalization of using APIs to push and pull data is necessary for us to do what we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:10] Now with the recent supply chain issues and logistics issues, does your solution have made things better or more efficient or made things more obvious, like where the problems were? Like, How would your solution impact any of that stuff or would it?

Anders Lillevik: [00:15:27] It would, but it necessitates you from actually doing the work, right? So we can say, let’s call it aluminum. Let’s say a category of spend is aluminum, and your organization is critically dependent on the supply of aluminum using using focal point. You can drill down to say, how many aluminum providers do I have and where in the world are they? And am I am I covered? Like if, for example, if you have two providers that are both in the same geographical location. Then you potentially could have risk there. So what we do helps organizations map out where they have problems or where the potential problems could be. And if they have, if the, God forbid, something happens, you can very quickly respond to and say, all right, I only had one provider. They went down, how can I find another one? So but it necessitates you from doing the work you actually actually have to do the work or else is not. That’s no good, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] Right. But it it kind of gives you a view of things maybe more holistically and where you can see where there might be a potential problem down the road a lot more efficiently than a huge spreadsheet.

Anders Lillevik: [00:16:35] Exactly right. Exactly right.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:37] Now, are there any kind of trends in procurement that we should be keeping our eyes on in 2023 that you you all are well positioned to leverage.

Anders Lillevik: [00:16:49] Right? So, I mean, procurement is a is a is a discipline that continues to evolve, right? So 20 years ago, it was all about saving money and trying to negotiate the best deals possible. Ten years ago it became save money while reducing supply risk. Make sure that they have a secure environment, make sure that they can handle your data properly. And now I would like to say a procurement is also trying to save the world. So it’s not just the best price with less risk, but also with the least amount of carbon footprint, least amount of waste and energy usage and so on. So so now procurement is really getting into the ESG space, getting into the supplier diversity space. So you have to make sure that a certain percentage of your spend goes to diverse suppliers and that that continues to reflect the environment that you’re in. So focal point can can now start measuring and tracking supplier diversity as well as supplier ESG initiative. So, for example, if you’re looking for a ways to reduce your carbon footprint, we can benchmark your current footprint and come up with solutions for how you can reduce that carbon footprint either through supplier innovation or through switching to closer supplier, for example.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:12] Now, as you grow, are you finding that you’re kind of developing a marketplace of suppliers that focal point will have knowledge about?

Anders Lillevik: [00:18:24] Absolutely. So we because we are connecting to so many different, you know, different supply chain partners. So we connect with the large organizations like SAP or Oracle, but also the smaller startups that provide data services, for example. And we’re becoming, like I said, the focal point for all these things where the processes kind of come together. And it’s it’s kind of intimidating about all of the data connections and APIs that we have to build and maintain. But it’s it’s really exciting stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:56] But it becomes a situation where you’re solving a problem for an individual company, but you’re also have the opportunity to build a marketplace for all people within that industry at some point.

Anders Lillevik: [00:19:08] Correct? I mean, obviously downstream we’re looking at crowdsourcing a lot of these different data sources and figuring out what are the best suppliers in a specific field, in a specific region, for example. And I think that’s going to become even more valuable than than what we imagine it is today.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:27] So what do you need more of? How can we help? Do you need I would imagine talent is near the near the top of your list, but also customers, maybe customers in certain industries. I know you said your industry agnostic, but there’s probably some places that are more available than others.

Anders Lillevik: [00:19:45] Yeah, large services organizations are prime or prime leaves for us always looking for more customers to deploy technology to. We love helping people save money and reduce risk while making better customer service and the organization talents. We’ve been very lucky. We found really good talent here in Atlanta. We have a team of 12 people here now, plus our development staff offshore. So we’ve been very lucky, but we’re continuing to grow and we’re probably going to be racing an around later on this year. So a lot of things happening.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:25] So if somebody wants to learn more, maybe get on your calendar or maybe somebody on your teams, is there a website.

Anders Lillevik: [00:20:31] Yeah, get focal point dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:33] And that’s get focal point dot com.

Anders Lillevik: [00:20:38] You got it.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:39] Well thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Anders Lillevik: [00:20:44] Thank you, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:45] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.