The CIO of Polaris explains how a manufacturer successfully works remotely

(watch this episode here)

Brad Anderson: Polaris is synonymous with all-terrain vehicles. Between the 12,000 employees you have, the constant R&D, and the factories and dealerships all over the world, there's a lot of infrastructure required to make Polaris work.

Matt Emmerich: We have about 14,000 employees at Polaris, and they're spread out in many different geographies, doing many different types of jobs. We’ve put a really big focus on communication and collaboration.

Brad Anderson: What was it like when Polaris had to, because of the pandemic, work from home?

Matt Emmerich: We started seeing restrictions and knew that our employees were going to have to work from home. We immediately turned on and activated all the capabilities we had for them. So, in a matter of about two days, we went from having 4,500 office employees working in our buildings to having those people remote. We didn't miss a beat. I don't know that we would’ve been able to make such a seamless transition without the investments and partnership we've had with Microsoft over the last two to three years.

Our employees are running purely on Office 365. Our files and shares are in OneDrive and Azure, and we've made a big investment in the Power Platform including Power BI. Microsoft Teams is a growing and important platform for us, becoming the hub of how we're collaborating together as a team. To be frank, as I spoke with our CEO, he gave us a ton of credit and commented on how seamless and effective the transition from office to working remote has been.

Brad Anderson: For most manufacturers, quarantine has wreaked havoc on the supply chain. How can technology help close these gaps with things like automation, AI, and cloud-based tools?

Matt Emmerich: We used a lot of technology trying to figure out the status of our supply chain and distribution channels, and a lot of those tools ended up being low-code and automation-based. We used RPA and bots to figure out not only what was open and which suppliers were able to provide parts to our factories, but also what we needed to build versus what our suppliers needed to build for us—those tools helped substantially.

Of course, the data analytics was the other piece. Using Azure and Power BI, we were able to tweak a lot of our bricks and analytical models to help with sensitivities, which then helps with variances and making new predictions in the COVID environment. 

Brad Anderson: I think there are two big meta trends we're going to see coming out of the pandemic. The first is remote everything. The second is the optimization of everything we do. Most of us have seen where we have constriction points and where to optimize, and I think these low-code, no-code solutions are going to be core to that.

Matt Emmerich: I think the other thing is being agile and iterative. The pandemic, and where we're at right now, has really forced all of us to go there. You have to work in smaller increments. You have to be able to learn rapidly and zig zag your way to success.

Brad Anderson: When it comes to leading your team and bringing technology into the organization, how do you do it in a way that helps accelerate culture and innovation?

Matt Emmerich: If we’d been talking about culture four or five years ago, I would’ve described it as “we want to get it right, and we want to make sure that we're hitting the mark.” And maybe even using words like “perfection.” Fast forward to now, we've really pivoted our culture within the IT department to be thinking a lot more about speed and agility. And that looks more like, "Hey, let's talk about how do we do things in smaller increments? How do we make sure that we're listening, not only to the customers and to the stakeholders, but then progressing in smaller increments?" And when you add the technology tools on top of it, that allow us to work in smaller increments – it has really transformed how we do our work.

Brad Anderson: You've been using technology in an interesting way to support the people working outside of the office. It's a Power app that you created to schedule who's in and who's out of the building. Can you tell us a little more about that?

Matt Emmerich: As the restrictions were happening with COVID, we quickly knew that our employees were going to be working remote. We also knew that as an essential business, we needed to have some employees coming into our offices. So, we decided that we needed an app to help us focus on employee safety and health. We were looking for the ability to know who’s coming in, when they’re going to be in the office, and if they’re healthy. And, additionally, can we teach them best practices? The information that we're using out of the app is allowing us to understand building occupancy, deploy the right social distancing measures, and help our employees stay safe and healthy.

Brad Anderson: I admire the work that you do and the technology, transformation, and culture that you drive. If people wanted to learn more about Polaris and about you, where would they go?

Matt Emmerich: Visit polaris.com and find me on LinkedIn.