Summary
Episode 11: In this episode of the FourthSquare Solutions Podcast, Kerry Boudreaux and Jim Ray discuss the origins and mission of FourthSquare Solutions, a boutique consulting firm specializing in Oracle applications. They explore the company’s core competencies, market segments, and differentiators in the consulting landscape. The conversation highlights the importance of expertise, trust, and a client-centric approach in delivering successful projects. Additionally, they touch on the firm’s commitment to excellence in service delivery and upcoming conferences.
Chapters
00:25 Welcome and Guest Introduction
01:45 The Genesis of FourthSquare
04:42 Core Competencies and Market Segments
08:58 Differentiators in the Consulting Market
10:32 Expertise and Approach to Projects
13:57 Building Trust with Clients
17:08 Engagement and Client Relationships
21:31 Upcoming Conferences and Opportunities
23:28 Conclusion
Welcome and Guest Introduction
Kerry Boudreaux
Hi, and welcome to the FourthSquare Solutions Podcast. My name is Kerry Boudreaux. Let’s dig into this episode. This is what I call the Genesis episode. You know, to give you a little bit of background about FourthSquare, who we are, how we got started, and why we got started. Also to give you an understanding of that, I want to welcome our producer back into the studio with me today, Jim Ray. Jim welcome.
Jim Ray
Kerry, always good to be on with you, guy. Good to see you again.
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah, good to see you, my friend. We go way back, right?
Jim Ray
Way back, way back. I think this was a good idea. We’ve produced a number of episodes now that have talked about different core competencies in a piecemeal fashion. But this kind of really shows you, this is FourthSquare. This is what makes FourthSquare tick. This is what you’re trying to solve for your clients in the marketplace. So, I thought this was a well-timed effort. Let’s go ahead and just jump in if you’re comfortable already.
Kerry Boudreaux
Absolutely, absolutely.
Jim Ray
Ultimately, the core question is the Genesis question. It’s why was FourthSquare put together? There must have been a need out there that somebody said, “You know what I’m going to deliver a company and I’m going to call it FourthSquare, and this is what we’re going to do.”
The Genesis of FourthSquare
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah. You know, Jim, with the evolution of cloud technology and with Oracle developing their true cloud applications, Venkatash Kovela, our founder and our CEO, he really saw an uptick in demand for Oracle applications. These applications were natively built. They were built on cloud infrastructure. The demand for these just started soaring back around 2017 and 2018. So with Venkat, he has always been in Oracle consulting. He was a consultant. He led consulting groups and this has been his life. He’s a chartered accountant and, but he’s never practiced accounting. He’s always been an Oracle consultant. He’s always worked in the Oracle ecosphere. He has the expertise.
He and I joined together, back in 2021. My expertise, I was with Oracle selling their applications, specifically in the public sector. With my sales experience, my Oracle experience, it was just a perfect match and a perfect time to launch an Oracle consulting firm. So that’s where it started. That’s why it started.
Jim Ray
That’s fantastic. I like the fact that you brought up Venkat’s background, that he’s been with Oracle, for the better part of his career. He was in some different companies, but he was always kind of aligned with an Oracle product mix. And so at that point, does that give him a leg up, you think, from a leadership role in this type of business?
Kerry Boudreaux
Absolutely. With his experience knowing the consulting world and how it works and what you need to do to deliver a successful project, and having his network of consultants. You’ve got to have very, very bright people on these projects. So his network and then my understanding, keen understanding of the day in the life of a CFO, of somebody in procurement, an HR director, again, it was just a match made in heaven. So, again, with that uptick in demand, we just thought it’s time to go to market and deliver where other Oracle partners may not be delivering.
Core Competencies and Market Segments
Jim Ray
That makes sense and you guys are pretty visible in a number of different market segments. Let’s talk a little bit more about really those core competencies. You guys are in different sectors. You mentioned some of them such as finance, procurement, obviously HR and there’s a lot to this Oracle IT, you know the capabilities really span the gamut of opportunities out there. So talk a little bit about the core competencies, the industry segments the other areas that you guys play in very well.
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah, so Jim, we consider ourselves and we actually call ourselves, a global boutique firm. So what does that mean? First, that means we’re not trying to be everything to everybody. You mentioned the segments, the industries in which we work. First, we’re heavy into public sector and specifically we’re into local government (cities, counties, and municipalities).
The second vertical that we’re in is automotive. We’re heavy in automotive, we’re heavy into manufacturing, and we have some business in the financial-tech industry as well. So another area is nonprofit. We’ve done a lot of work in nonprofits.
Those are the industries, those are the segments where we work. And in drilling down even further in our business, Jim, we focus on what we call small to medium size business, SMBs, and then small to medium size government, SMGs.
So we’re not going after the big large scale organizations. You got to be scaled to be able to go in and meet those. So those are the markets. What competencies do we have? We cover the entire Oracle stack. We can assist organizations from their database to their middleware, to their hardware. We’ve got the Oracle cloud applications, the cloud infrastructure. So we can manage all of, you know, all of that.
We also have a data practice, which we are heavy into developing AI tools, specifically for organizations running their businesses. A lot of those AI tools are built specifically for a particular use case. We have a very, very strong AI team.
Jim Ray
I like that. In fact, I think it was Episode 2 or 3 when we had Sanjay Venkatraman who came on and really just talked to the surface level about AI for business. We’re going to have him back on for a little bit more deep dive discussion in that entire area. That’s a fascinating area. I think more and more people are becoming not only aware of it, but interested in it. How could that actually help us?
Kerry Boudreaux
Yes.
Jim Ray
You know, as I look back, we’ve done a lot of those different episodes that speak directly to it. We had a Valley Regional Transit Authority out in Boise, Idaho. We had the CFO at the time on the podcast. We talked about his experience with that. You guys have talked about supply chain. We had one of your, I guess, relationships who came in and did some handheld products for inventory control, which I thought was fascinating. We even had Glenn Seninger on from Oracle itself and talking how you guys are an authorized implementation partner and what that partnership means and how you guys take that forward.
I really like how we’ve slowly developed each of these episodes because I think we’re touching on individual opportunities. Because somebody over here in HR may not really care so much about what you do in FinTech. But here we are talking about ERP, and we’re talking about all those other products in parts of the Oracle stack. So congratulations to you guys.
Differentiators in the Consulting Market
Jim Ray
And again, I appreciate your wherewithal in terms of developing those individual episodes. So when you look at these capabilities, I mean, this immense amount of capabilities, having a behemoth like Oracle behind you, let’s now talk about core differentiators in the market. Because you’re not the only implementation partner out there. So if I’m looking at that, what do you think, what do you feel, what do you know actually gives FourthSquare that upper edge? Why should you be in consideration and in that conversation?
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah, you know, a great question, Jim. I think our core differentiators fall into three main buckets. First, it’s our EXPERTISE. We are running these mission critical projects and you don’t want a consultant on your job, that’s saying, “Well, I’ve never seen that before.” You’re not going to get that with FourthSquare.
It’s our APPROACH. You know, I often say we don’t take this “go live and go home approach.” And then lastly, it’s TRUST. You know, again, these are mission critical projects. And when you hire a consultant, you have to have just unbelievable trust. It’s almost like getting married. You know, when you get married, you’ve got to trust your spouse, right? Well, when you hire a consultant, you’ve got to have almost that same level of trust in them.
I often say we’re not delivering babies here, but we are darn close.
Expertise and Approach to Projects
Jim Ray
As I think through some of the types of projects that you all take on and just the scope across the broad organizations, you could make or break it right? I mean you could cripple it or you could vastly enhance it and you guys seem to have that. Let’s dig into some of that when you start talking about your expertise. You’ve mentioned that you don’t want a consultant in the middle of your project going, “Yeah, I’ve never seen that before,” so kind of walk us through the expertise that that FourthSquare has kind of brought together and taken to market.
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah. So, so in regards to our expertise, we don’t hire greenhorns to go on a project and start designing. All of our consultants, they have an average of 15-years of experience working with Oracle applications. So you’re not going to get a consultant coming in saying, wow, I’ve never seen that before.
Venkat leads all the consultants. Yeah, he’s our CEO and founder, but he takes a hands-on approach. He has 30 plus years of experience working in Oracle applications. You take our HCM architect, our lead HCM architect, you know, he has over 20 years of experience just working in the Oracle HCM applications. He goes all the way back to PeopleSoft, EBS, you know, and now he’s been on Oracle Cloud since its inception. I can go on and on about our practice leads, but in short, they have the experience to bring to the table. I mentioned our approach. We don’t take this go live and go home approach. We’re there with you when you start a project. You are just beginning that business transformation journey.
Think about this. I know everybody out there in the audience has probably touched spreadsheets, Microsoft Excel, right? Think about when you just started using Microsoft Excel for that very first time. That was just the beginning of your journey.
Think about where you are now using pivot tables and these complex computations, you know, with spreadsheets. You didn’t start doing that. Well, it’s the same thing with an Oracle application. That first go-live day, that’s just the beginning. And at FourthSquare, we’ve set up our model to where we want to walk alongside with you for years to come.
For example, part of our service is helping you with those quarterly updates. Oracle updates their applications on a quarterly basis. We are going to be there for you to help you implement those upgrades. We call them micro-upgrades. And you’re going to need somebody to help you manage that. You’re going to need ongoing training. You’re going to have users coming in. You’re going to need somebody to help train them. So, our approach is to stay with you throughout your entire journey.
Building Trust with Clients
Kerry Boudreaux
And then, the last thing that I mentioned is trust. Trust is, is a word that gets thrown around. We’re a trusted advisor. We’re a trusted partner and you can trust us. Well, I can say that when we enter into an engagement, when somebody’s looking to bring us on and hire us as consultants, don’t listen to me talk about trust and the trust that you can have. I’ll give you a long list of customers that are currently doing business with us. And I say, “Talk to them. I’ll give you their phone number. I’ll give you their email address. These people are willing to speak on our behalf.” So, that kind of wraps up those three pillars, right? You know, our expertise, our approach and our trust.
Jim Ray
Yeah, and I think for any project, there’s always that little bit of wariness at the beginning. We want confidence that we’ve made the right decision, we selected the right person, the right group to help with this, but it’s, wow, this is a big deal. So there might be a little apprehension. Maybe we didn’t want to give you all the opportunity. Start here, but because of your approach, I think you guys tend to grow into other areas and you’ve got such a broad spectrum of capabilities and competencies that I think once that trust is established and maintained, I think you guys are in a good position to actually leverage that with a client because again, they’ve learned to depend on you to a point.
We did an episode, you and I did an episode a while back with a project manager, AV. I looked back at how you guys were able to actually work together with the project manager. So it may not always be just you and the organization, there may be a third party in there.
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah.
Jim Ray
And you guys dovetailed really well with it. I thought that was a really good deep dive on that topic of the value of a project manager on an enterprise implementation like this. I think that goes back to your approach as well. You’re flexible. You’re open to that and you want to partner with it. It’s not, no, this is just how it’s going to be. Let’s figure out what’s best for you Mr. Client, Mrs. Client, and let’s go from there.
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah, absolutely. With us being a boutique firm and not being this massive consulting firm, like an Accenture or Deloitte, where every time your blood pressure changes, you get a change order. That’s part of this flexibility. But having that flexibility and being nimble, you know, we have made a conscious decision to be a boutique firm.
I’m here to say that we are not for everybody. Okay. Again, I’m going back. We are scaled for the SMB market and the SMG market. So yeah, we’re going to stay in our lane and whatever we do, we’re going to do with excellence.
Engagement and Client Relationships
Jim Ray
I find that refreshing. You’re the Senior Vice President of Sales. You’re touching a lot of these clients when they’re just prospects, when they’re when they have an interest, but they’re not totally committed yet. And so you’ve set across the table. You’ve sat there and worked with them to really tried to figure out what is the best way for us to partner up. And you guys have delivered. And that’s always refreshing knowing, OK, I hear the talk, but now I get to watch the walk. And you guys are doing that. And it’s just really fantastic.
We’ve talked to a couple of your clients on the podcast. Just to hear them talk about what that engagement was like in the end, best practices and, their willingness to actually trust you so much that really the candor is self-evident. It’s fantastic. They’re willing to say, “Well, we hadn’t really thought of it that way.” And then suddenly you guys are off to the races on a whole other tack that just makes a lot more sense than maybe what they thought of originally because, “That’s just the way we’ve always done it.”
When you’re bringing in this outside expertise, don’t be afraid to leverage it. I mean, there’s a lot, there’s a lot out there. With that being said, our most recent episode was you and I talking about the RFP process, right? That kind of gets this whole thing started. You want to talk about that just a little bit? We’ll pitch the previous episode just a bit. I’ll put a link in the show notes.
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah. We’ve actually had a lot of very favorable responses from our previous episode. It was just digging into that RFP process, but you know, going beyond the RFP process. Once we’re awarded the project and we kick that project off and we see this transformation starting. I’ve been there on those go live days and we’ve gone back two and three years later as we move into the managed services phase where we’re just walking along with them. They’ve started to use the application and to see that whole process. To see a customer through that whole process and to watch them as an organization grow. And it’s not so much the organization grew, but it’s making that organization sustainable. That’s a big key.
In the early days of an organization or an agency, whether it’s a government agency that was founded in 1876 and here they are today. You know what those founding fathers did to put in place to ensure that that city was still surviving in 2025. You know what we’re doing today with these with these projects is making sure that that city or that organization is going to be thriving in 2125. Right? So you know that’s it’s fun to be part of that.
And again, these are big projects. They are mission critical projects. There is little to no room for error. And I just love it. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a risk taker or what, but I just love being part of these projects because I know that not everybody can do these, but we do have the expertise to do it.
Jim Ray
Well, anytime you drive home from the office, from the client, and you know you’ve had a positive impact, that’s rewarding. At the end of the day, you’re impacting people’s lives. You’ve made their job easier, more efficient, a little bit less stressful. You know it’s got to be a good feeling. Congratulations to you. You and the rest of the team, obviously, the rest of the FourthSquare organization.
Let me wrap up with this if you don’t mind. There are a couple of big trade conferences coming up in June and you guys are going to be there. It’d be a good opportunity if you want to engage with these guys directly. The first one is Ascend, right?
Upcoming Conferences and Opportunities
Kerry Boudreaux
Yeah. Ascend is down in Orlando, Florida. I believe it starts on June 8th-11th, at Rosen Shingle Creek. And this is the one big Oracle user conference of the year. It’s not the only one, but it’s the big one. It’s a big Oracle user conference and we do have a booth down there. So if you’re, if you’re listening to this episode, you’re an Oracle user and you’re going to Ascend, I highly encourage you just drop by the booth 705 and introduce yourself.
If you’re not planning on going to Ascend, you haven’t heard of it. I encourage you to go get registered and go because you’re going to be interacting with your peers, with other people that are using Oracle products, whether it’s infrastructure, whether it’s applications, databases, whatever the case may be.
The other conference we’re going to be attending June 29th through July 2nd is the GFOA conference. That’s the government finance officers conference. It’s out in Washington, DC. This is the big conference for government finance officers. So this is geared towards finance directors, finance managers, CFOs, budget directors, budget managers, financial analysts. We’ll see some folks from the tech departments that are working in the public sector and cities, counties, municipalities, state and local government, et cetera. So we’re going to have a booth there. I believe our booth is 644.
Conclusion
Jim Ray
To make it easy, I’m going to put the information about each of these shows and the proper booth location along, with the dates, in the show notes. So if you’re watching this, there’s a whole bunch of information just below the video that you’re watching. It’ll be right there for you. So we’ll make it easy. We’ll maybe be able to actually embed a link that’ll allow you to go and learn a little bit more about the show so that you can attend. By all means, if you show up at the Fourth Square booth, make sure you let them know you heard about them on the podcast. We’d really appreciate that as well. Kerry, any closing thoughts, my friend?
Kerry Boudreaux
Absolutely. FourthSquare is a boutique firm. I know a lot of companies that try and be everything to everybody because that means revenue. But we’re more interested in making sure that we get things right and that we deliver with excellence. And if we do that, then the revenue follows.
So first and foremost, we’ve got to make sure that we can meet your needs and that we’re the best firm to meet your needs. And if we’re not, I’m going to be the first one to tell you that we’re not the best fit for you. We are not the best fit for everybody. So with that, what we do, if we’re there and we’re talking to you, and if you hear me say, “Hey, we can do this.” You can rest assured and trust that we can do it.
Those are my closing thoughts and I appreciate everybody attending today. Jim, I appreciate your time and helping lead and have this discussion. Until next time, we’re going to be next up in two weeks, until then, always be asking yourself, how can you be transforming your business through technology and innovation?
Jim Ray
Thanks a lot, Kerry.
Kerry Boudreaux
Thank you.
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