Step into the world of innovation and excellence with “Industry Champions”! Join us as we celebrate the trailblazers who are redefining success across diverse industries, sharing their journeys, strategies, and secrets to thriving in competitive landscapes. Today our host, Chris Budihas spoke with Asif Haider.
Asif Haider
Owner of COOPVA
Website Address: www.blue-mountain-capital.com
Short company description:
Strategy Consultant on AI ML Decision Science for companies investing in AI.
What’s The Biggest Challenge you are facing in your business or industry?
Too much noise.
What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?
Fortune 500 and US Department of War consultant.
How do you see your field evolving in the next 3-5 years?
Exponential Growth.
Who in your industry do you see as a trend setter and why
NVIDIA for Digital Twin.
Transcript:
Chris:
Welcome to Industry Champions. I’m your host, Chris Budihas, and I’m excited to have Asif with COOPVA on the line from Dallas, Texas. Asif, how are you?
Asif:
I’m doing very well. I’m very excited to be here.
Chris:
Yeah. Me too. You know this thing? Cause, like I was mentioning off camera, I was at Austin about a month ago for South by Southwest. And this thing called. I was brought up a lot. And then we start. So the humans responsibility as a result of planning, employing and then using AI in different industries. So I’m glad you’re on. So before we get into all that, let’s talk about what COOPVAdoes.
Asif:
So, background from the military. So COOPVA is something that we use in the military a lot, which is cost versus planning. You don’t start a day, you don’t start an operation without writing your a coop. Right. So that motivated me to go out there and do vulnerability assessment for what could go wrong. Right. The disruptions slowing down mean time to resolutions. These things are very fascinating to me. And I know this is not a favorite topic for everybody because everybody’s excited about AI. But one of the things that I focused on is what happens on day plus one. If you start on day minus one with AI and implement everything on day zero, day one, day two, everything is fine. Day 30, day 300 is what things start to slow down and start breaking. And how do I come in and help with that? Well, I have a group of independent consultants. We have all the top big four consulting backgrounds. So we come in and we identify those problems ahead of time and take measures to say if there’s any disruption, how do we minimize it from six months to maybe six hours, if not six minutes?
Chris:
Boy, there’s a lot I already see the return on investment. We’re going to pull that apart. But before you do that, what was your experience in the military? They got you into space.
Asif:
Well, it’s a tie. The whole story behind why I started as an ethical hacker outside of the military is because I saw a lot of bad guys trying to hack into the military bases, and that was my job is to do force protection and anti-terrorism. So what I thought was physical security, I thought I was going to be very good in digital security. But as you can imagine, digital security is a task of the world, not just mine. Right? Yeah. So I had to pick a specific niche line, which was data protection. And that data protection is ultimately where I started with machine learning, which is AI. And back in 2015, machine learning and AI was not a topic that you would talk about in public. Wow. Secret, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So these days everybody has a lot of excitement. But one of the things that I bring to the table for over ten years, I’ve known how things start and how things stop working right away. And when you stop, that’s about known in Gardner and Silicon Valley as 84% of the problem. 84% of you do not go anywhere with return on investment. It just doesn’t produce the return on investment that you started on day zero with. By day 300, everybody’s realizing that I haven’t really done much for anybody, anywhere, internally or externally.
Chris:
That’s amazing. So it’s funny, when you were talking earlier, I was visualizing you. You may not, you may or you may not remember. So, you know, you’re down here in Southeast Florida when the colonial Pipeline was shut down, supposedly that was, attributed to Russian, criminal agents. You know, it could be a government affiliate, but we just don’t know. But here’s the reality. When they shut down the, the, the ability for the Colonial Pipeline to deliver fuel had huge economic repercussions. So for any type of company, you know, even outside the government, most of us, if once automation shuts down, you’re, you’re you’re done, you’re you’re not making money, you’re actually losing money as a result of it. So having an expert like you come through and take a look at your policies, procedures and your standard operating procedures once you’re offline to get back online, I mean, that has a huge repercussion. I can’t imagine how many companies aren’t doing that, you know, looking at that day scenario, because as we learn in the military, you learn for, you know, for catastrophic, you had a plan for catastrophic success, but also cash strapped for failure. So, how do you do what you do? You know, is it your clients finding you or are you finding clients, or is it like my kids growing up, you know, that is broken. You fix it.
Asif:
Well, you know, because I started with the data side of things, I was with SAP, which is the ERP and supply chain, manufacturing lots of different types of intelligence using data so that SAP is worldwide known. But mostly it’s not at the enterprise level. So, I do have a siloed approach. Because people from silos come to me because of SAP. But, you know, I’m expanding my services these days beyond SAP, beyond just that, companies that are enterprise level companies. So, you know, how do I reach those $25 million revenue companies? Yeah. How do I reach those teams that only have 10 or 15 people or 100 people? Because if you know anything about SAP, SAP works with thousands plus companies, sorry, thousand plus employee headcount companies, in order to provide them with the ERP solutions. So one of the things that I really want to emphasize is that if you are starting on day zero and you are in a small team, one of the things that you will see is how easy it is to adopt AI. The problem is how it is that you will maintain that solution, right? So you mentioned procedures and processes while we talk about people, process and technology. If you have the process and technology is working, it works just fine. But at one time, the process stops working and the people are not ready. Technology is not going to help you with that. Process is the people that have to jump in and reduce that time of entity, right? Like that lean times and resolution or how do you get it? Get back your production online and how do you get your revenue back on track for the next three months? Right. So the way people find me most of the time is to come in and fix the problem. So what I’m trying to do is diagnose the problem ahead of time, sort of like a doctor, a patient, say, you know, this is what you want to do, and this is the process that you have right now. But your people really need to understand some things that other people don’t understand. And that’s why when their system goes down, it takes a long time to bring it back on line. But with artificial intelligence, one of the main capabilities that everybody knows about is that you can tell an AI what to do, and it will fix it on your behalf. So people don’t understand that the process can be fixed using an AI. All of a sudden you have a disconnect because you have a lot of AI technology. But you know, people are not familiar with how to use this technology to fix the process.
Chris:
It’s funny. You know, people can either be the critical capability that, yeah, you know, you have success, you’re you’re profitable, you’re moving in the right direction, or he’d be your critical vulnerability. You know what? I took a look at cyber attacks. I found that the people were many cases, the ones who allow that penetration, whether as a phishing attack or some other cyber attack that they burrowed in, you know, through the people, you know, and through their interactions on the system. And that’s pretty huge. So. Right. So, so as of, what area are you covering? You have, you know, are you willing to work with clients nationally? Are you concentrated more in the Texas area right now?
Asif:
Well, I think Texas is too big for me. And the whole world is bigger than that, right? Yeah. But you know, the silos that I’ve worked in, they’re all over the world. Okay. So when I was a consultant that I consulted with other companies, I would have to fly in and out. So I work with AWS, Amazon, Cisco, and Nvidia 4500. Those companies now all of them stay in Dallas and live in Dallas and. Okay. Right. So the joy of the work is flying. I like to do things in person, but one of the things that I especially emphasize these days is that if you want to say 4 or 5 months of just sitting there and not making a decision, let me come in and let’s do a breakfast and lunch session. Wherever in the world you are, let’s meet for breakfast. Let’s meet for lunch. Between that eight hours, I can save you probably 2 to 4 months of not getting anything done. The reason that’s important is not because of how much money and time you’re saving, but because in those eight hours, you can decide how much data you will start collecting in the next 24 hours. That means on day one, your job is to start collecting data rather than sitting there trying to make decisions about AI. Yeah, it’s not. Your problem is that you lost four months of data because you started four months late. Okay. So that data loss is not just something that you can calculate and you can say everybody in the industry, IBM, we’ll call it AI years. AI years means that between breakfast and lunch, if you haven’t collected data, that’s how much data you have lost out. Right? Okay. This data to re manufacture them is not a headache. It’s almost impossible.
Chris:
Right? I can’t imagine.
Asif:
Anomalies. You can not recreate anomalies that have happened and you know even catch it. So this eight hour session saves you time and money. But within those eight hours you can decide that if you don’t start in the next three days to start collecting those data, these AI conversations are going to take longer and longer and it’s never going to get anywhere.
Chris:
Not thanks for that. So also, as we close out, how do people find COOPVA and how do they find you?
Asif:
Well, obviously, my email is a thief at Kubwa Dot solutions. Okay. Solutions are the domain. So cube what that solution is. Yeah. LinkedIn is the best place to find me because that’s where I do the majority of my interactions because of my clearance. I don’t just talk to people on email. They have to have some phase. They have to have some company behind them. Yeah. So, you know, everything needs to be visible and transparent on LinkedIn.
Chris:
That’s wonderful. Okay. So we’re gonna take that contact information or put it on our show notes. I highly encourage folks that, you know, share our content, you know, connect with you, through LinkedIn. And, I appreciate you coming on the show today. So thanks a lot.
Asif:
Thank you. Thanks for having.
Chris:
Me. I folks, you know, connect with myself on LinkedIn. I love to continue the conversation. If you have a need, reach out to him. He loves to talk to you. We’ll see you next segment. And live with gratitude.
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