SavvyWise webinar: Walk the Dragon - Enterprise cognitive performance platform

Watch on SavvyWise YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZczLBmye8-4

[00:00:00] Good day, everyone. Thanks very much for joining us for today's webinar, uh, hosted by SavvyWise with our great guest from Walk the Dragon. Uh, I'll get you to introduce yourself in a moment, mate. Uh, I just wanted to obviously say thank you for, for coming along, uh, and also highlight at the, the, the top of this webinar, uh, that, uh, we've got some really exciting events coming up, uh, uh, that SavvyWise is putting on, so I wanted to make sure that everyone knows about these events so that you can come along to them, uh, and get great value from.

So I'll just quickly share, share my screen. So, uh, next week, uh, on Wednesday, uh, I'll be hosting another webinar and this time it's with, uh, Corinne Smith of Abby. Abby is, uh, compliance automation work papers for busy accountants. Now, so, uh, last time I spoke with, uh, Corinne, she said, uh, it can, uh, achieve 75% time savings for, for accounting [00:01:00] firms.

I went, "75%?" Now, that we need to hear about. So, uh, Corinne's gonna give us a rundown of that. So v- very much looking forward to that next, uh, next, uh, Wednesday. I'll share the, the link, uh, with everyone. And then on the 1st of October, I'll be joined by Adrian Cartland of Cartland Law and Michelle Stevens of Cartland AI, uh, for a very timely conversation.

What we have is, uh, just this week, Legora, who are a multi-billion dollar AI startup for the, for lawyers around the world, they announced that they're solving, uh, legal research. It requires two things, which is access to the law and also the ability to navigate it, so as in find what you need within a massive corpus, and it's the same challenges we have with AI and tax research.

So we're, we're gonna address the question, well, w- is this particular approach about just being able to utilize, [00:02:00] uh, a knowledge of the law, is that gonna be able to deliver 100% always accurate answers? Uh, spoiler alert, no. It's not. It's not enough. Can 100% always accurate answers happen, uh, particularly for tax research?

We believe it is. It's achievable, and it's not something that's theoretically achievable from two, three, five years' time. It's coming, and it's coming very soon, only months away. Uh, so we're gonna be talking about, uh, what, what that is and why the approach that SavvyWise are taking is just fundamentally different to what everyone else is doing.

And then for our audience that are in, uh, Perth and Western Australia, uh, very delighted to say that Andrew Cooke, uh, and I are gonna be hosting an AI accounting workshop over at the CPA office. This is gonna be on the, uh, 13th of October, and we're gonna be running through what are the leading Perth accounting firms doing and how they're doing...[00:03:00]

how they're adopting AI. So that's gonna be an incredible day to come along to. Highly encourage you to come along with team members as well, learn what the best practices are, how to adopt AI. So once you've then adopted the AI, it's important, uh, for us to make sure that, uh, us, us humans, uh, are well taken care of, and that's, uh, what today's conversation is about.

So Deepak, mate, introduce yourself to the audience, and then we'll start to have a look at, uh, Walk the Dragon. Well, absolutely. And, uh, Drew, first and foremost, thank you so much for inviting me to join this webinar. And this is such a topical issue that everybody's talking about. You can't just get away from AI.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go over a small pitch deck, and then I will jump into the demo. A little bit about myself. Uh, Deepak Nair. I'm the CEO of Walk the Dragon. So we are a Sydney-based startup, and we [00:04:00] started the journey around 10 months ago. Uh, and I must say that, uh, there is a need for a platform like ours, and especially when it comes to, uh, employees and for enterprises.

I'll talk about that. Uh, I'm gonna share my screen so that I can And while you're, while you're sharing your screen, uh, just also to mention, of course, uh, if you have any questions throughout, you are absolutely more than welcome to ask them. You can ask them within the chat, or you can use- utilize Zoom's, uh, Q&A feature.

So ask them away. Uh, the more the merrier. Let's dive into this, and I'll be taking on the role of essentially, uh, pretending that I'm back, back at Munro's, uh, the accounting firm where I used to be a director. Put on the hat, pretend I'm that, that director of the firm, and I will be querying, uh, about Walk the Dragon from that perspective.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it c- it, it'll be great if it's a [00:05:00] freewheeling conversation. Uh, so yeah, looking forward to it, to any questions that anybody has. So as I mentioned, we are a Sydney-based tech startup, and what we have developed is an enterprise cognitive performance platform, and the whole idea is how do we strengthen, and not only strengthen, but also measure the cognitive abilities of employees, and currently very few organizations have that ability.

Uh, so the whole idea here is to improve and strengthen an employee's cognitive skills, such as their m- attention, memory, focus, by offering personalized cognitive training.

Okay. So productivity has always been important for organizations, and this is not a new concept. But what has happened is with the pace of innovation and with all the technological advancement, there is now this, uh, expectation for, uh, companies to be even [00:06:00] more productive. And yes, technology does help in many ways, uh, but what doesn't change is the fact that the employee at the end of the day is a human being with emotions.

As we all know, our personal and professional lives are intertwined. So what happens at work, we bring it to home, and what happens at home, we bring it to work. So these are all interrelated. And a human being with emotion's biggest asset is their ability to think. Now, what you can see on the screen is a snapshot of the brain, and we should all aspire to be, uh, like clear superhighway where the cars or the vehicles are just passing by without much traffic.

But on the other hand, as we all know, because of the cognitive overload that we have to deal with, there's so much of... There's a deluge of information that comes our way, and there are competing priorities. We have to be, uh, you know, we have to completely, uh, switch [00:07:00] context, and all of that creates a congested mind

One of the... There are many reasons why today's employees feel overwhelmed, stressed, and under the pump, but there are three major reasons. And yes, AI has truly upended our world. While it is an amazing piece of technology, we at Walk the Dragon ourselves use it, uh, for building our platform. But what it has also done is it has actually created a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubts in the mind of employees when it comes to job security.

And as we routinely start delegating some of the basic cognitive skills to AI, human cognitive capabilities are gonna become more important and not less. Organizations are adapting to the changing, ever-changing realities, uh, because of, uh, the business dynamics, the change in the [00:08:00] environment. As a result of which, they have to constantly change their internal processes, which means an employee also has to keep up with all these changes.

We live in interesting times, but also uncertain times. So if you look around us, you know, there are two active wars that are being waged, and one has gone for more than five years, and the other, there, there's no end in sight. And also to compound to that, you know, the r- the cost of living has gone up. The interest rates are going up.

And all of this has an adverse effect to the wellbeing and wellness of employees So Walk the Dragon, as I mentioned, is an enterprise cognitive platform, and what it does is it offers cognitive assessment to employees. So as part of the onboarding process, the employees play a set of cognitive games, and there are 22 cognitive skills that gets tested.

So once they've gone through the assessment, which is a one-time, uh, 35 minutes, [00:09:00] uh, time that it takes, it baselines the employee's cognitive score. From there on, they only have to spend few minutes during the day, or it could be three times a week if they so wish to, where- whereby they will be offered personalized cognitive training.

So these are two set of cog- cognitive games that they will play, and they get their score right then and there. The platform is completely data-driven. So what it means is that the employee gets to see their own dashboard. So they can take a look at their own cognitive score, and they can also look at the different aspects of the cognitive skills such as attention focus, memory, so on and so forth.

In addition to the cognitive training, at Walk the Dragon, we also provide micro interventions in the po- in the form of mindfulness tools So this is how the employee dashboard's gonna look like. So assuming [00:10:00] that they've gone through the onboarding process, they are now truly doing the daily training, they get their cognitive score.

And will... along with that, they also have the ability to benchmark themselves against people in the same age group and also against their peers Now, a team manager or a people leader will get their own dashboard. Now, what they can see is the average cognitive score of all the employees in that particular team.

They can also look at how many mindfulness, mindfulness minutes have been clocked in by that particular employee, and it is really, uh... it has the ability to do a deep dive and then flag which are the areas which can be improved or strengthened. And I'll cover all of this during the demo We are very mindful of privacy protection.

So everything that we do at Walk the Dragon is keeping the [00:11:00] user's privacy in mind. So when I talk about team manager or people leader dashboard, they would never get to see the employee's, individual employee's cognitive score. All they can see is the aggregated, uh, team score, and the platform is intelligent enough to provide them with team-level insights.

And if the team comprises of less than five employees, then no dashboard is available to the team manager or the people leader We do adhere to the Australian privacy principles, which are quite stringent, uh, and just to protect the privacy of the employees. So at no point the cognitive score of an employee can be linked to the performance of that particular individual.

So how does this assessment work? So we are using a cognitive technology that's been around for more than 25 plus years, and the cognitive [00:12:00] assessment and the cognitive games have been developed by neuroscientists. And it's... As I said, you know, it's been used by worldwide, uh, across different verticals, be it professional services organizations, healthcare, so on and so forth.

So as part of the assessment, it looks at those different cognitive skills such as memory, processing speed, could be spatial awareness, motor skills, and then it provides a cognitive score. Now, what's unique about Walk the Dragon is that our platform also provides personalized training. So it's almost similar that to, uh, you going to a gym and where you have a personal trainer, and the personal trainer after baselining or looking at the certain KPIs might decide that, look, you got to strengthen your lower body, and, you know, then we'll be, uh, offering a set of exercises.

Now, similar to that, Walk the Dragon platform has the ability to understand and decipher which are the cognitive skills that needs to be [00:13:00] strengthening. And on a daily basis, it starts offering only those kind of cognitive games. And to keep it interesting, it also increases the level of difficulty. Now, the good news is it only takes few minutes during the day, so it does not require a lot of time, or it does not consume a lot of time of the employee who's already busy with their day-to-day work.

As far as the evaluation is concerned, you know, the platform reevaluates and reassesses the individual's performance based on their cognitive profile. So let me talk about mindfulness. So mindfulness is, uh, directly linked to cognitive performance, and the way we offer these mindfulness tools are in the form of one-minute or two-minute guided sessions.

And the whole idea here is for the employee or the user to have a mindful mo-minute... a mindful [00:14:00] moment for themselves. So they have the ability to switch off from their daily grind, and then have a moment of reflection, a moment to reset and refocus And it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that mindfulness tools can really improve the wellbeing and wellness of employees, not only in terms of, you know, greater self-awareness, but they can...

It can help with, uh, you know, improving, uh, or improving one's wellbeing and can also help reduce stress. And what's interesting about mindfulness is the founder's background, which will- I will also cover in a bit So Walk the Dragon creates values across the organization. For employee, this is the first time they might have the ability to baseline their own cognitive score in terms of their cognitive abilities.

And not only that, once the baseline is done, they can start strengthening it on a daily basis, [00:15:00] which means that they can focus more on what they need to do. And one thing that we are finding out, and I'm sure most of you will attest to it, is that somehow with AI, we are losing the ability to engage in deep work That's almost becoming like a lost art.

You know, uh, people don't generally want to go through the slog. Uh, for example, it could be as simple as drafting an email or doing research. So that's a very unique capability that we human beings have. Until AI develops consciousness, I think human capital will remain the biggest asset for any organization.

And at the Tax Institute, uh, where we were a sponsor and, uh, SavvyWise was the main sponsor, it became very apparent that even for tax professionals, you know, it's, it's a constant struggle to keep up with all the changes. Changes with the legislation, [00:16:00] changes in the customer's requirements, and you're constantly grappling with competing priorities.

So according to some research, cognitive reserve is actually shrinking, which is quite alarming. So it, it is re- it really becomes important for all of us, you know, as employee, as, uh, human beings, as users to keep up and to sharpen our cognitive skills. For people leaders, this is the first time, or the team manager, this is the first time they get a rare glimpse or team level insights into their own team's cognitive performance.

Of course, it's all privacy protected, but at least they can start seeing a trend, and I think that's going to be very important. And, uh, there are some startling facts. You know, in Australia, one out of two employees are reporting high levels of burnout, and one of the biggest issues that HR people are dealing with is disengagement.

You know how a few years ago there was this [00:17:00] notion of quiet quitting? Now there's a new thing called quiet disengagement. And with Walk the Dragon, if an employee's much more focused, much more productive, you know, just feels better about themselves, they would deliver more. You know, they will remain engaged with the organization, and the attrition rate can also drop.

For organizations, it, it, it really becomes an important platform. For the first time, they can look at human cognition as a KPI. They can look at the strengths of certain teams, so it could be a sales team, marketing team, operations team, and start making sense of the cognitive abilities of your employees We have customers, uh, across Australia.

Uh, and then I just wanted to share one of the testimonials that we've received from a marketing company that's based in Sydney. And what's imp- what's, uh, r- what's interesting to note is that in their organization, it's become a [00:18:00] daily ritual that once they log into work, they start off by doing some cognitive, by doing some personalized cognitive training in the form of cognitive games.

And, and there's also a competitive element now that's kicked in because people want to see how are they faring against others. And one thing I wanted to mention in terms of benchmarking, yes, an employee can benchmark against people in their same age group, against their peers, but very soon we are also going to introduce something called as industry benchmarking.

So if you're an accounting firm, you would really like to know how are... how is your organization, how are your employees faring, um, when they're benchmarked against people in the same industry or against a certain accounting firm. So that's a new feature that we're gonna be introducing. Now, I wanted to talk about the founder.

Uh, so the founder has a very unique background. He's an unconventional monk. He's an Australian citizen, and, uh, he [00:19:00] has the unique moniker of being an advanced living practitioner of meditation, somebody who has meditated for more than 15,000 hours. Uh, there's a research paper that's been written by neuroscientists.

So they actually put him under lab conditions. They looked at his brain tidal waves and the stillness that he can maintain. But prior to that, in Sydney, he was a very, uh, successful tech professional, a very senior professional who worked with organizations like General Motors, Deloitte, Barclays, and so on and so forth.

And very quickly, he, from there on, he became a tech entrepreneur. So he brought a lot of products to life, scaled it from zero to one, and had multiple successful exits, both in software and healthcare. So he's the visionary behind Walk the Dragon. Um, so Drew, we can take any questions if we may have, or I can jump directly [00:20:00] into the demo.

Yeah, let's, uh, let's jump into the demo, mate. Yep, let's do that.

I, I've wrote down a number of questions myself, so, but I'll, I'll hold off- Sure ... until we've got through the demo. Yep. All right, so this is Walk the Dragon, folks. And, uh, as I mentioned, it is a s- Well, I did not talk about it. It's actually a SaaS offering. So all you need to do is access the URL. We'll create a tenant for you, for your organization, and everybody in your organization will then have access to Walk the Dragon.

So the whole idea here is for the employee, once they've completed through their onboarding process. So in this case, the employee, Alex, you know, he's gone, he's got his cognitive score, which in this case is pretty good, 680 out of 800. Now the next thing what he needs to do is has to do his personalized daily training.

So I'm just gonna switch [00:21:00] context over here, and, uh, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you a glimpse on what are some of the games that, uh, the employee will be offered. So it's gonna come up

So you can see the game. So if you look at the screen, while yes, it is a game and this game is called Water Lilies, and the aim of the game is to remember the sequence in which these li- water lilies come up. And the basic idea behind this game is to train some of the cognitive skills pertaining to memory.

So you can look at the trained skills, so it could be your sh- it could be short-term memory, working memory, non-verbal memory, so on and so forth So I'm just gonna quickly play a game[00:22:00]

Like I said, we have to remember the sequence in which the beliefs kind of, uh, turn up

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So the whole idea was to give you a sense as to what these games look like. So we, we've done that. So Alex, the employee, he's completed with his training. He's played the two cognitive games that were offered to him. Uh, he can see that his score has actually gone up twenty-one percent compared [00:23:00] to, uh, what it was yesterday, and then he's on a certain streak.

Now, interestingly enough, the platform not only talks about cognitive training, but it also makes certain practical recommendations or suggestions. For example, it'll ask the employee to, you know, get up from their seat, you know, go for a walk, have a glass of water, breathe in a certain manner, so on and so forth.

Now, along with cognition, I talked about mindfulness tools and which has been developed by the founder himself. Uh, so there are... There's the plethora of mindfulness tools to choose from, and as I said, it only takes a minute or two minutes to play some of them. I'm gonna play one of them, which is, uh, the most popular one, and it has to do with breathing and listening to music, which is being played at a certain frequency.

So I'm gonna play it now[00:24:00]

Some people, you know, they just play this in the background. Just keeps them more focused and more mindful, and there are quite a few of them. Uh, something to center me or to clear my thoughts, to inspire me. Uh, you know, holding the flame is another popular one, where you look at the flame, and then you breathe in a certain manner, so on and so forth.

So once the employee's gone through the cognitive training, they've accessed the mindfulness tool, and this is where they get access to their scoreboard. [00:25:00] So this is what an employee would see. So Alex, in this case, can look at his overall cognitive score, which in this case is 518 out of 800, let's say. He can see how does he...

uh, how is he faring compared to the past seven days, and not only that, he can now do a deep dive into the different cognitive aspects. For example, the memory. How is he faring when it comes to his memory? Is it going up, or is it going down? In this case, he's actually doing quite well. The same thing with attention, perception, so on and so forth.

He can look at his performance, uh, cognitive profile on a weekly basis, monthly basis, yearly basis. And as I mentioned, you know, he can now compare himself against people in the same age group. Just some insight for him to have. And in this case, Alex is actually doing quite well. His cognitive age is two years younger compared to his actual [00:26:00] physical age.

And then there's some more stats that he can take a look into. Uh, now the team view is the interesting one where I mentioned that everything is anonymized. Uh, the team manager or the peopl- people leader can only look at the average cognitive score. So for example, in this case, uh, this team comprises of, uh, 24 members, and out of which 15 have been using Walk the Dragon.

So in that context, you can see how is the cognitive performance of that particular team in the last one week. Uh, how many mindfulness minutes have they clocked, so on and so forth. But that's not all. The platform is intelligent enough to also flag certain areas which need improvement. For example, if you look at this chart below, the team is doing really well when it comes to their reasoning ability.

Uh, they're not... They're actually doing g- quite well when it comes to memory as well. However, attention [00:27:00] is an area which needs improvement. So the platform, because it knows the cognitive profile of the employee, uh, overall employee or team member's cognitive profile, it has flagged that attention is an opportunity for improvement.

So, so that's your team manager. And as I mentioned, you know, very soon we're gonna do... we are gonna come up with the industry benchmark whereby an accounting company can benchmark themselves against somebody who's a peer, or it could even be a competitor So that's your team view over here. So overall, uh, with Walk the Dragon, what we are trying to achieve is to not only measure, but also strengthen basic cognitive abilities or skills of employees.

And as AI only gets more and more advanced, it'll become that much more important for people to sharpen their cognitive [00:28:00] skills. So with that, uh, Ju- uh, I just wanted to conclude my demo and take on any questions if anybody has. Yeah. Sorry. Uh, yes, if anyone's got any questions, please put them in the chat or the Q&A.

Um, I was thinking about this just now. Um, we've, at SavvyWise, we've got some strategic alliance partners we're working with to, to build AI accounting agents, and I just happened to be chatting with, uh, one of them, uh, yesterday and, uh, they were highlighting, uh, the quantum of write-offs that they've got within the business at the moment.

But to the point where, um, their words, they were like, it basically equates to two full-time people across a whole year that they could potentially get back in terms of productivity. So as you were talking, I was thinking about, well, I'm, I'm naturally gonna ask the question around, [00:29:00] okay, how much does this cost?

And then I was thinking like, you could... There's... If you just get, like, six minutes, 'cause accountants typically charge, you know, six-minute units. Uh, six minutes of more productive each day, and how much that compounds over the year, I imagine the return on investment, uh, would be, uh, far and above what you, what you charge.

So on that- What, what is the pricing model? Yeah. So, uh, uh, thank you for the question, Drew. So we are offering a SaaS platform, so the pricing is based on per user, or rather per seat per month. So the price is 39 Australian dollars per seat per month, but then it also depends on the cohort size. If the cohort size is large enough, then of course we can come up with special pricing, so on and so forth.

Uh, but in this pricing, we... it includes not only the cognitive assessment, the cognitive games, but also mindfulness minutes. And I must [00:30:00] mention this, that it is, uh, highly integrated with collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, because a lot of times what happens is people or employees don't remember, because they get so much caught up in the daily work.

So it, it, through Slack and through Microsoft Team, it gives a gentle nudge, saying that, "Hey, listen, why don't you access a one-minute mindfulness tools or just play a set of cognitive games?" And one thing that I did not mention, because, uh, because it's not a main feature, but it's very interesting, is the founder, he's an avid, he's a prolific writer.

He's written more than 19 bestsellers on various topics. And so you come across some amazing reading which is steeped in deep human philosophy. So it just provides a different perspective. See, day in and day out, employees are dealing with business applications, right? Which tend to be cut and dry, and, you know, they're very important.

Like, for tax accountants, they can't make [00:31:00] mistakes, right? Even a rounding error can cost the organization a lot of money. So it just provides a different, uh, perspective, different aspect, and that is why, that is where Walk the Dragon comes in as a welcome relief, a departure from your daily work, and to access something which is very different from other business applications.

And, and just one thing I wanted to mention is, because in my team, my developers use AI all the time. But one thing we have noticed is, and my senior developers always tell me that, yes, AI can do a lot of things dep- based on the prompts that we give, but it- you can also be s- you know, accruing technical debt if you don't know what the AI agents are doing.

And the other thing is AI agents have no emotions, right? They work round the clock. But for a developer or even for a tax professional, when they're doing context switching, it's not easy to come back to what you were working on earlier. So that really [00:32:00] adds to the cognitive overload. You know, one can be...

There's a, there's a term called cognitive surrender or cognitive offloading, and we will hear about this more and more because I was in a discussion with a very senior person with OpenAI in Sydney just two months ago, and I said, "Listen, you guys are working on something cutting edge, bleeding edge, but what about your own team's cognitive health?"

He said, "You know what? That's something that I'm grappling with." He said that the only things that they do is they say, "Friday, nobody works. You know, you all work on your passion projects. I don't wanna see emails from you at, late in the night," so on and so forth. So it's a big problem, and it's only gonna get exasperated Yeah, yeah.

I can definitely, uh, see that, yeah, being an issue going forward. Uh, we, we just had a, a, a question. It's more of a clarifying question. Was the price $39 per user per month? Yes. That was my understanding. Yeah. Was that, uh, you know, accountants are gonna ask it, does that include GST or is that after or exclude GST?[00:33:00]

That includes

GST. Um, and, uh, when you mentioned it, you said, uh, a bigger cohort you could potentially get, you know, a little bit of a discount. Uh, what's your definition of big? Is it 10, 20, 30, 50? Well, it, it depends, you know. Uh, so the whole idea for us is to make it available for enterprises, even though there was a lot of questions, you know, why don't you make it available for consumers as well?

You know, because the application is for daily users too. But we made a conscious choice because we see there is... this is a bigger problem to solve. So, uh, so the cohort size could range from 1 to 10, from 10 to 50, 50 to 100, 100 and above, so on and so forth. Yeah. Okay. And I, and I'm, you know, I'm having some real interesting conversations with accounting companies.

Some of them, I met them at the Tax Institute, whereby they immediately want us to talk and present to their head of people and culture and to, uh, different divisions. Because [00:34:00] today what, what's happening is organizations employ surveys to find out how is the employee doing. But as we all know, you know, employees are not very forthcoming in their responses because you don't know who's reading what, in some cases.

Uh, there are EAP programs, but EAP programs, again, they have a purpose to serve, but they're more reactive in nature. It's mostly after an incident has happened, then the employee can speak to somebody over the phone. But nobody's looking at human cognition as a risk. So if it's a CFO or a CTO or a CEO, this information becomes quite valuable, and it'll become even more valuable as we go along this journey, uh, because we really don't know how the future's gonna look like.

Forget about years from now, even from just three months or six months, because the pace of innovation is truly mind-boggling. Well, I can say that, uh, from an accountant's point of view, the, the next couple years, at the very [00:35:00] least, uh, just be thinking about it would be adding stress because, uh, we're in this post-budget world where the government's changing the law every freaking two seconds, and we've got a whole bunch of extra work that needs to get done.

Things were already that busy trying to get through the workload. Uh, so like, yeah, putting in place things to reduce that stress seems very much from my perspective a, a no-brainer. I'm sure if you c- if we can do that, our, our employees, our team members, uh, one, they're gonna h- live healthier lives, which is just something I think we should all try and aspire to.

And, a- a- and two, you get the financial benefit from better productivity. But I can relate to where this may have been really helpful for me just two days ago when I was sitting down, uh, at my desk and I had to... I was trying to come up with some creative thoughts around a particular, uh, matter, and it was just nothing, nothing was, like, coming to me, popping at me.

And I eventually decided, I, what I needed to do was, [00:36:00] like, hop up, go to a different space, walk around, allow the mind to, to, to think. So as an alternative to doing that, I... perhaps if I had Walk the Dragon, I could've used Walk the Dragon, use it for, for 10 minutes, and that might have helped, helped, uh, with the mind.

So I can see those applications, uh, that are there. On, you, you mentioned around, uh, these different, uh, resources, like EPAs and, and the like, um, one of my questions that I had was- If we get Walk the Dragon, does it work... Is it very complimentary to other things that accounting firms should be also thinking about, uh, at the t- at the same time?

Yeah. So it is absolutely complimentary and adjacent offering. So we not only integrate well with different EAP programs, uh, but we are also h- the... our platform is highly customizable. So for example, if [00:37:00] the accounting company has an HR platform already in place, you know, we can seamlessly integrate ourselves and become part of their overall offering.

So in terms of, uh, the usability of the platform itself, it's quite easy and highly integrated. So from an accounting firm's perspective, uh, you know, one thing is integrating with the HR system, yes, we can. Uh, but then we are working on something, uh, very exciting as well. We're gonna make it more personalized.

If you notice with Walk the Dragon, you know, we- we've gone with the mascot of dragon. A lot of the times, uh, I get asked this question, why the dragon, right? That's o- that's on my list to ask. Uh, so the- the- the reason being because, you know, you got to tame the mind, you got to tame the dragon, and, you know, dragon is this mythical cre- creature.

But the point I was trying to make is we're gonna make it highly personalized, whereby we will bring this dragon to life. [00:38:00] So it becomes a chatbot for the employee to talk about all things that has to do with cognition, cognitive performance, cognitive improvements, mindfulness, wellness, so on and so forth.

So that's, uh, that's coming. That's in our roadmap and should be out soon in-app. Yeah. Yeah. I- I particularly, I know from, uh, Munro's, uh, what would be lovely to see would be when you're talking about industry benchmarks- Mm-hmm ... yeah, we always held ourselves to a high standard and want to be in the sort of like top 20% of various benchmarks.

So that would be something that, uh, I know at least if I was wearing the hat again in the boardroom- That's right ... we would strive to achieve. Uh, that said, I th- I was also wondering, um, so with this, we can get insights around the team with, you know, on a holistic level. How do I- As the director in the firm know what to [00:39:00] do with those insights So, so, so that's- Do I need a, do I need a level of training?

Do I need more EQ, leadership management? Like, what... How can I best make sure we utilize them so- Right ... you know, 'cause, yeah. You know, as they say, you know, what you cannot measure, you cannot manage. So f- the first thing is for the team manager, the people leader to, uh, to come to know what are the insights that they can infer, draw from the platform.

A- and from there on, uh, this is all evidence-based, right? From there on, they can work with HR and develop a plan where they can look at improving the team's overall memory. You know, they could come up with certain programs. So we provide the diagnosis. We can also provide insights, but the information itself is something that the organization has to take a look at and come up with certain plans so that they can improve the productivity of employees and just make them, uh, you know, uh, i- in terms of their wellbeing and wellness.

Yeah. So is that [00:40:00] something that the platform can make suggestions of? Because think about it, if I'm a director in accounting firm, I'm, I'm super busy. I've got so much on, um, it's gonna be, uh, a cognitive workload for myself to, to look at the holistic numbers and work out, all right, is there something I need to do here?

And then if so, what do I need to do? Yeah. Is the platform providing suggestions for me? Yes, it is. So if you remember in the case of the team dashboard, uh, attention was an area of improvement, right? So the manager can take a look and say, okay, I don't have to go through all the stats, but the platform is telling me this is an area where the team can improve or strengthen.

So that evidence will be provided to the people leader or the team manager. From there on, they can come up with a certain plan, uh, in terms of maybe engaging an external consultant or, you know, devise a plan with the HR, CHRO or so on and so forth. So our first step is to provide the [00:41:00] diagnosis. There will be future releases where we will now get into becoming more prescriptive in terms of now you have this information, we made this suggestion, why don't we come up with a concrete plan?

We haven't thought it through yet, because right now our focus was to have the platform ready in terms of offering personalized daily training. And that's, that's critical, right? Because otherwise the platform could throw any game randomly, but that would not be of much use. But if you have somebody that can guide me, as I said to my example of having a personal trainer, you know, you've got to work on your lower body or you're gonna work on a certain mus- muscles, so on and so forth.

So this is nothing but you're actually strengthening your brain muscles. Right. And, uh, and I was just talking to the team today. We are devising or thinking of a strategy where we can look at what AI is doing to our own performance. What happens if somebody uses AI, and for the next 48 hours does [00:42:00] not How does that affect their cognitive abilities?

So on and so forth. So it's a fascinating- It's very, yeah, very fascinating. I, I think I, I really like the analogy of the, the, the gym, the personal trainer. You're going, you're working on different aspects. It's almost like you're working on different aspects of your mind. Uh, that's there. You're tracking it in terms of like, okay, well, I can track my weight loss, for example, as a kilograms, you can, you know, see what to work on.

And I also understand where you're coming from, going, we need to collect the data, uh, and get that working really well before the next step of, okay, this is a precise ways that you can now... Okay, activity is an area that needs to be improved on. These are, like, three things that you could do. It's similar to like with SavvyWise, how we're, we're with...

Well, we, we really need to make sure that the accuracy there is in the platform before we go out to the next part, which is, okay, create all the file notes from that. There's no point creating file notes if you've got junk data, so you, you focus on that as a beginning. So I can, uh, [00:43:00] definitely, uh, understand that.

I think is, uh, going into, into this, if we're making this investment, it's an investment into our people. Um, is there any solid ROI that, that you have, that you've, you've worked on or you've seen? 'Cause, you know, us, as accountants, we, we see dollars, right? So if you can... $39 in, what's it, what's it mean coming out?

Yeah. So that's a great question. And because, as I mentioned, we started the journey 10 months ago, so we are collecting that data from our customers. And of course, with their permission, you know, we will publish ROI case studies so that, you know, it's quantifiable, it's, uh, something that people can read and understand and look at the ROI itself.

So that's work in progress for sure. And I'll tell you something interesting. Uh, it's not just the accounting firms, by the way. Like, uh, I was mentioning last week, we were at a, a legal [00:44:00] event in Geelong where you have all the legal eagles descend in one location, and everybody, bar none, was like, yeah, completely overloaded.

You know, for them, uh, it's basically, uh, being billable at all times. But somebody made a great point, said, you know, people only talk about lawyers, but what about the supporting staff? People have no idea the amount of stress that they go through, junior lawyers or otherwise. So the problem is real.

Wherever you're using human brain, you know, this becomes more and more relevant. And I hope this catches on, because we need an antidote to some of, uh, you know, some of the, uh, issues that AI can create in the shorter term and longer term. But having said that, AI is amazing. We use it all the time ourselves, and we are going to infuse AI as part of our offering.

Uh, but this is gonna be more of an issue, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. G- get [00:45:00] that balance right, uh, and look after ourselves, our humans, you know, wellbeing. We've all got one life. I, I always come back to that. We've all got one life. We all- we got family, friends. We love coming to work, but it's got to be a nice place to, to work and, and not creep into the personal life.

And if we've got trouble in our personal life, help so that it's alleviated, um, and you can work effectively, uh, within work. So coming to that, if people are like, "Okay, this sounds great, um, what do I do to get started, to give it a go?" And out of that, like I presume that there's a, there's a trial period, what would be the best practices of doing a trial successfully?

Uh, to... Because I can give, relate to with SavvyWise, right? We... People ask about trial, and then they talk about, oh, maybe just the partners and the managers. Generally, we're like, you should give it to everyone, or at least have a, a special committee representative of everyone so you can get all different views.

Yeah. What, what's, uh, been your experience of [00:46:00] best practices? Right. So, uh, we can offer a one-month free trial, no obligations. And we have a very structured process where the product manager will go through an onboarding session so that everybody's aware on what's the best usage of the platform itself.

From there on, once the cognitive assessment is done, the, the team at the customer site or the management, they can look at the data, and they can start deciphering data in terms of team-level insights. Employees can look at their own cognitive profile, the areas where they can improve, or are they seeing a discernible improvement in their cognitive abilities, so on and so forth.

So then that becomes quite valuable to the organization. So we will have a discussion during the trial period as to how are they looking at the data, how are they inferring the data, how are they deciphering it, and what are the next steps for them in terms of improving, uh, people's cognitive abilities.[00:47:00]

And then, then we also solicit feedback all the time. Uh, because, you know, one thing I think Mike Tyson said, right, everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face. So our point being that we can't be building things in isolation. So my team is quite well aware of it, so we listen very carefully to our customers, the feedback that we're getting, if there's a pattern that's emerging.

So I would say that those would be the different steps as part of the trial period. Excellent. So, uh, after today's webinar, we'll make sure that, uh, everyone has, uh, the, the details in order to- Yeah ... to know where to go. Uh, yeah, when, when they do have questions, are you the, the best man to go to? That's right.

At the beginning. Perfect. Excellent. So, uh, we have recorded today, so if people wanna, um, look back at it, we'll, we'll be sharing that recording as well. Um, there's, uh, a reminder I need to do, which is, of course, [00:48:00] about, um, the events that we have coming up, uh, with SavvyWise. So again, uh, if you're based in Perth, do get along to the AI Accounting Workshop.

Um, it's really gonna supercharge, uh, your firm. And I think, uh, probably for s- future these AI accounting workshops, uh, we should, uh, include Walk the Dragon in them, uh, 'cause you get to the stage where, all right, now we know how to best utilize the AI, let's make sure, uh, everyone's got the, the, their cognition, uh, mindfulness, uh, intact.

Um, that's it. Uh, and then if you, if you do happen to not be in Perth and, and can't make it along, you're in another state, just let us know, and, um, we'll, we can, uh, look at the, uh, bringing it to other areas around the country. Uh- Yeah ... we've got the, the webinar with, uh, Cartland about the 100% accurate AI for tax research, is it possible?

That's on the, the 1st of October. And then next week, the one about, uh, Abby and the compliance automation. So I do have to thank everyone for, for attending today. [00:49:00] And Deepak, thank you very much, uh, for showing us the platform. Uh, it's great to know that there's, uh, a solid research and experience behind this.

Um, and good to know that people are, are making sure that, um, us humans are, are looked after in this ever-changing world. Um, we've, uh, we've got to, to see each other recently in Sydney- Yeah ... at the, at the Tech Summit. Uh, we first met over in Sydney again, uh, at the Accounting Conference and Expo. Uh, so I'm sure I'll be seeing you soon at another conference, uh, in person.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I just want to take the opportunity to thank you too for bringing me on this webinar and, uh, giving me the opportunity to showcase Walk the Dragon and, uh, yeah, as always, it's a pleasure meeting you in person, and I'm looking forward to the next Excellent. Cheers, mate, and thank you very much everyone- Thank you for, for coming along. Thank you.