Friction To Flow with James Davies, Kinetic Data

What if the fastest way to modernise HR isn’t ripping out systems or buying another mega-platform but connecting what you already have in a smarter way?

In this episode of the HRchat Podcast, Bill Banham sits down with James Davies, CEO of Kinetic Data, to explore how an agility layer can transform fragmented HR and enterprise processes into simple, human-centred workflows employees actually use.

James shares his journey from help desk technician to leading a platform trusted by the U.S. Department of Defense and Fortune 2000 organisations. Along the way, he explains why so many HR and digital transformation programmes stall in “upgrade purgatory”—and how starting with user experience, not technology, creates faster change, safer upgrades, and better adoption.

We explore how orchestration across HRIS, ITSM, ERP, and identity systems enables a single front door for employee requests—everything from access and time off to kudos and performance reviews—without adding platform bloat.

The conversation also dives into compliance in highly regulated environments. James explains how reading policy (instead of blindly following tradition) unlocks digitisation without weakening controls, enabling smarter renewals, integrated training records, and smoother first-day experiences.

Inside Kinetic Data, James outlines a four-pillar operating model—Growth, Product, Success, and Operations—and reflects on servant leadership, empathy built through doing the work, and how intentional culture has kept employee turnover close to zero.

If you’re wrestling with complex systems, slow upgrades, or HR processes that push employees back to manual work, this episode offers a practical blueprint for reducing friction, freeing up budget for innovation, and building durable software that works under pressure—with a memorable Toyota Land Cruiser analogy along the way.

Key topics include:

• Help desk roots and a service-first mindset
• Why modernisation is about coordination, not more tools
• The agility layer across HRIS, ITSM, ERP, and identity
• Designing employee experience before system architecture
• Compliance lessons from DoD and federal environments
• Reducing maintenance to fund innovation
• Servant leadership, introversion, and near-zero turnover
• Building “Land Cruiser” software that just works

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
• 1:32 James’s Early Help Desk Roots
• 3:20 From Contractor To CEO
• 5:32 Mission: Eliminate Friction, Enable Flow
• 6:53 The Agility Layer Explained
• 8:46 Four Strategic Pillars Structure
• 10:56 Modernization As Coordination
• 12:21 Compliance Lessons In Regulated Orgs
• 14:23 Funding Innovation By Reducing Maintenance
• 16:18 Introverted Leadership And Empathy
• 18:22 Land Cruiser Philosophy For Product
• 20:07 Connect With James And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts, and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com.

SPEAKER_03: 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Podcast. Hello, listeners. This is your host today, Bill Bannham. And in this episode, I'm joined by James Davies, CEO over at Kinetic Data, a Minneapolis-based software company reimagining business process management for the modern enterprise. So James is known for his people-first leadership style, systems-level thinking, and passion for simplifying the complex. Under his leadership, Kinetic has evolved into a trusted platform serving some of the world's most security-conscious organizations from the US Department of Defense to Fortune 2000 Enterprises. And in this episode, we're going to explore James's views on leadership, digital transformation, and how to balance innovation with operational excellence. James, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the show today. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00: 1:18

Thanks, Bill. Yeah, great to be here. I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21

Before we get into the meat of the conversation, why don't you just take a minute or two, James, and uh tell me what I missed there in the intro. Tell our listeners a bit about yourself, your career background, and what gets you up in the morning.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33

Yeah, it's um well, good to be here. So yeah, I'm James Davies and I'm I'm now CEO of Kinetic Data, which is a business process management company or workflow company. Uh I I got my start kind of early on. I think uh I think our careers helped to shape where we are today. So uh early on when I was about 15 or 16 years old, I come from a big family and I got my first job uh actually on the help desk of our local telephone company. Uh I grew up in New York. And uh so I would be answering questions for customers that called and their dial up wasn't working or their DSL wasn't working uh back in the day. And that's where I really where I learned about customer experience, um, how to overcome upset customers or challenges that they were having. And that's really what set up my career in kind of the service management space. And so at Kinetic Data, we we help organizations streamline service management. Uh, we provide web portals uh for our customers, customers to be able to engage with them. Uh so uh in working at that telephone company, uh I just I found found myself grounded in that self-service uh space. And I really loved that and excelled, uh, excelled there. And then I went up went off to college. And after college, one of my first jobs was actually working at the US State Department. Uh, I worked for a systems integrator, a contracting company that was managing a help desk. Um, so kind of it's it's funny how your origins wind up becoming part of your career journey. And uh that helped the State Department actually had purchased our software, and I was the lucky guy that was assigned to help implement it. And so what they were trying to do is is enable um US State Department employees and even the general public to um make it easier for them to self-serve. So instead of picking up the phone, waiting on hold or sending an email and waiting days for the help desk to get back, um, provide a portal that constituents or US State Department employees could could come in and say, here's what I need. And then a workflow engine would actually either automate certain processes or get it to the right person and provide visibility. So um that was my start, uh my first interaction with kinetic. Uh when I decided to leave the State Department, Kinetic gave me a call and they said, Hey, we need a we need someone on the East Coast to help us with implementations, and you were quite good at it, good with it as a contractor. So um I signed up to do that. And then just throughout the last 11 years at the company, uh wore many hats. I led our engineering team for a number of years, uh, became the CEO or sorry, COO. And then last year the founder uh asked me to take the CEO position as he took us a step back to become chairman of the board. So uh it's been a it's been a great run, a great experience so far. We're growing and we're we're excited about what we're doing in the BPM space, specifically as it relates to HR.

SPEAKER_02: 4:19

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at HRGazette.com. And now back to the show.

SPEAKER_03: 4:35

All right, thank you very much. And just briefly, James, what what does that say about the the company culture at kinetic that uh a guy can come in um on the back of being a contractor and and rise all the way to to CEO?

SPEAKER_00: 4:47

Uh it's I mean, it it's funny. I I typically for at least for key positions within the company, I'm I'm kind of the final say uh on the interview process. And I like to just vet people out. I typically will share my story. Um, and it's really how we feel is that you know, when you join kinetic, um, we put a we give our employees uh a lot of bandwidth and a lot of uh a lot of leeway to kind of make their own path. So they could start in one side of the company and move to the other side of the company as part of their career path. And I think that that's excellent. We can help help steer them to where their skill sets lie and where their passions lie. And uh that was certainly the case for me. And you know, the in the case in the course of you know 10, 11 years, I was able to go from, I'll say, you know, an entry-level position to to CEO.

SPEAKER_03: 5:32

Let's talk a bit about kinetic data's mission then. So you've described it as eliminating friction and enabling flow. What does that mean in practice, James? And how does it translate into the way that your customers experience process management and what?

SPEAKER_00: 5:49

For sure. Over the last over the last 20 years, what what I've kind of seen in the in the tech landscape is organizations shifting from I'll say bespoke systems that handle you know one or two specific things and many of them. Um, and then the pendulum has kind of shifted towards consolidation. And in the name of digital transformation, we're consolidating into these mega platforms. And I've kind of observed that, and the companies observe that from afar. And we've always felt that that can be a bit risky. So, for instance, you know, taking all of your different, you know, side your different departmental systems and consolidating them those into one platform, because at the end of the day, then you're beholden to the roadmap of the vendor that you're with, um, and also their pricing model. And so what we decided to do is come up with this concept of what we call an agility layer that's effectively an experience layer that sits on top of systems of record. And that's what your users can interact with. Those users could be employees, they could be customers, they could be vendors, um, and they can effectively go into these portals and then initiate a workflow. So if it's an employee, they might say, Um, hey, I want to um send a kudos to someone else, or I want to request time off, or you know, or I would need to do a review of someone. Um, and then there's workflows that can then interact with source of truth systems behind the scenes. And that may be many different systems. And so we're typically not a source of truth system, but we're really this orchestration glue uh that has a good mix of both low-code features and then pro code features to enable the best experience possible. So we we really center in on human-centered workflows. So think of things where there's approvals in the loop, and we really try to think about how can we make that user experience best for the user, regardless of how systems work behind the scenes. And then we'll map the complexity to those systems, but let's let's think about how users want to use the system so that they'll actually use the system and won't revert back to manual processes.

SPEAKER_03: 7:45

Okay, thank you very much. So, as CEO and now as CEO, uh, part of you what you've brought in is you've reorganized kinetic around four strategic pillars growth, product, success, and operations, building on what you just told us a moment ago, James. What prompted that structural change and how has it improved collaboration and decision making across the business?

SPEAKER_00: 8:10

Yeah, it's a it's a good question. You know, there's a couple of factors that went into those. Um, one of them being, you know, how many direct reports that I have, um, and then also the need to formulate kind of a senior leadership team. So ever since I started at the company, we've been a very flat organization. We're only about 30 people, um, which is it's kind of funny because we have really, really big customers and we're able to do that because of our partner ecosystem. Um, and so we really focus on the technology and the our platform itself. And so when I think about the value streams that we deliver, um, well, growth is one of them. So that's sales and marketing effectively. Um, and so I've got a leader that that that leads up that team. And I think, you know, from a software company perspective, having sales and marketing tightly integrated under a single leader makes a lot of sense, especially at our stage. So that's the growth pillar. Um, and then you know, the the primary business that we're in is developing software. Um and so that I have a product team and a single leader over the product team, and that's where our engineering lives, that's where you know our dev secops people live. Um, and so so I've got a leader there. Um, and then uh customer success. So that's really everything after we we have a new customer lives under our success leader. And she's really responsible for making sure you know implementations go smoothly, making sure our customers feel supported and heard. Um, and then finally operations. I'll say that's kind of more back office stuff. Um, and what I've been able to do by I'll say creating those four organizations is I've got this leadership team that's really interconnected because each of those different pillars, they they need to talk to each other. Our success team needs to be giving feedback to our product team, which needs to be you know working with our sales team on you know how we how we pitch our product and how customers get value out of it. So um it's really helped to simplify things, and then I've kind of got four people that I can go to. So at our stage, um, our size of company, it just that made the most sense for us. I'm sure that org chart will evolve over time as we continue to grow.

SPEAKER_03: 10:08

Okay, thank you. You often describe modernization not as a technology problem, but as a coordination problem, James, between people, processes, and platforms. Can you maybe unpack that for us a bit more?

SPEAKER_00: 10:21

Yeah, I think a lot of a lot of the organizations we work with, like again, they're typically Fortune 2000 and larger or federal government organizations. Um we've just seen many times uh those organizations attack, attack business process problems start by starting with technology. Um, and so they'll say, you know what, it's it's uh this ERP system or this HR system or this ITSM system is the problem. And we found that's typically not that. And so our whole approach is to really go in to an organization and start with what does the user need to get done? How are they going to be most satisfied in their job? So if I'm a, you know, if I'm a if I'm a recruiter within an organization, I need to be able to see my recruitment pipeline, I need to be able to quickly schedule interviews with people, et cetera. And so we formulate or start with the user experience, and then we again map that back into the different systems that need to be involved in that user experience. And it doesn't need to just be one system. Where I think organizations get stuck is they do like a feature feature for feature comparison within one technology area. Um, and then what they wind up getting is a generic tool that can't really do anything well. And so if there's, for instance, an interview scheduling tool that's really, really good, you can pair that with your applicant tracking system and use kinetic as this layer to bring it together to provide a great user experience for your recruiters or for your applicants.

SPEAKER_03: 11:43

Okay. Uh this is an HR show. So it's okay to talk about compliance, James. Let's do that now. Um kinetic supports organizations like the US Department of Defense, as you've mentioned, and the the US DA. Uh clients where security and compliance are not negotiable. What lessons have you learned leading digital transformation in such highly regulated environments?

SPEAKER_00: 12:07

Um, I think one is to really truly understand the policy. Sometimes uh culture uh says here's the way that we have to do it because this is how we've always done it. But sometimes you can question that and look at the original policy. Um, so so for instance, in the US government, when you're onboarding new employees, they actually have to fill out a form every time they want to access a new system. And it's a PDF that then gets emailed around to four different approvers effectively to say, hey, I need access to this system to do my job. And by the way, you have to repeat that process every single year. And it's got to be done in an Adobe and it's got to have a digital signature, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and so I asked kind of, well, why? And they said, well, that's how we've always done it, and that's what auditors look look for. So we went back and actually looked at the real policy, and it basically if if you know, they have to do that process, but it could be digitized, um, and then you can put processes in place to make sure that it's not uh a hindrance. What we were finding is you know, people would show up their first day on the job or they get moved to a different job and they'd have to wait six weeks before they could access their the the network or get on their computer. Um, and so if if we had a system like kinetic that could interact with you know the identity management system alongside with the actual applications they need access to, and we knew, hey, they already have their training, so let's not let that make them upload their training certificates, um, then uh we could streamline that process. And you know, when it got to be a year in, instead of them refilling out that form, we could pre-populate it, have them just quickly sign it and move it to the next step. So um, you know, I think that uh compliance and security are are of utmost importance within organizations. And I think there's many ways to achieve the controls that they're trying, they're trying to achieve and thinking outside the box a bit uh and not not always thinking about, well, here's how we've always done it is a way to to really streamline things and and help to digitize them.

SPEAKER_03: 13:59

Yeah, that's the worst when you when you hear, well, it's just the way we've always done it. Yeah. Um which is a nice lead on to my next question, which is around innovation. Uh you've you've spoken about balancing operational excellence with innovation, the two forces that often compete for resources and attention, James. How do you ensure both thrive inside kinetic data?

SPEAKER_00: 14:20

Yeah, well, I'll I'll give one example. You know, I talked a little bit earlier about how organizations have been consolidating into single platforms. Well, it in that case, you wind up having to customize these platforms. So let's just say it's your HRIS system you buy, you buy, and then you customize it to meet your needs. Well, what winds up happening is every time you make those customizations, you have to revisit them when you go to upgrade. And so one of the ways that Kinetic can kind of help with that is by leaving your HR system out of the box. And then anything that's specific to your organization, your specific business processes, your specific user experience, implement something like that in the agility layer or something like Kinetic, which will allow you to spend less time on maintenance. Like I talk to organizations and sometimes they have to bring in a team from you know Deloitte or one of the big consulting firms, you know, and it's a two-year project just to upgrade their HR systems. Um, well, if you're not spending as much money on just keeping the lights on, you can invest more in innovation and in driving your you know your processes forward, becoming more efficient, et cetera. So that's that's one of the ways that we help out. Um another way is just frankly, it's cost. Um there's many processes, especially on the HR side of organizations, where your the business processes will touch all employees. And there's a lot of platforms out there that they show they they they choose to license their platform per user or per employee, which becomes extremely expensive to automate processes that might touch every single employee. Um and so we've also come up with a business model that's not based on a per user license. Um and so if all of your employees are interacting with this agility layer or user experience layer, uh, i.e., you know, our a platform like ours, um then they don't have to license all of those users in these back-end systems. Um, you know, we can write to those systems on their behalf and drastically save money, which allows them to then invest more in innovation.

SPEAKER_03: 16:14

Okay, thank you. I I just want to understand a bit more about you. Uh, you describe yourself as an introverted leader. I'm I'm not getting that today. I'm getting I'm getting a humble guy, but I'm someone who's um uh good communicator, uh gregarious with me anyway. Um but as an introverted leader who's learned to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, what advice do you have for other leaders who may not fit that stereotypical outgoing CEO mold?

SPEAKER_00: 16:40

Yeah, this is uh this is definitely a stretch for me to go on a podcast or do something like this. It's it stretches me, but I it's it's good to be stretched, it's good to feel uncomfortable and and grow. Um, you know, but my biggest piece of advice is you know, before asking someone to do something, I think walking in their shoes a bit uh is is really helpful because then you can you can approach them with empathy for the job that they're actually trying to do. So for instance, you know, before you know asking a new salesperson to go and sell our product, I think it's really important that I've tried to sell our product and I understand um you know what customers are looking for and what they're asking for. And then what as I'm coaching them, I can coach them from experience. And so um I call that, you know, in many ways, servant leadership as well, um, you know, being able to circle back and really support them. I'm a big fan of the inverted org chart um where you know, I'm supporting my senior leaders, my senior leaders are supporting their employees. Um and so we that's how we run the company, and it's it seemed to work quite well. Um, we just we try to lead with transparency and and humility so that everyone's on the same page, they know where we're going, um, and helps us achieve our goals. But yeah, I'm not I'm not your typical um outgoing CEO. Uh just it's just not my personality type, but I've had to learn to get uncomfortable and to be able to get the word out there about what we do. I think what we're doing is is quite novel and innovative, um, and the world should hear it.

SPEAKER_03: 18:03

And that piece where you mentioned, uh putting yourself in other people's shoes. Uh so I guess that leads to an ability to have better empathy with your employees and also with your clients, right? And then what does that mean in terms of, for example, retention rates within the organization? Do you do you guys see people just like yourself sticking around for the long term because they have relatable leaders?

SPEAKER_00: 18:24

It's it's funny. I think it's uh our we we really don't have any turnover within the company. There's a couple of people that um started here over 20 years ago. Um, some of them, it was their first job and they're still with us. And so I think the the way that we lead uh and and create an environment where we're friends, you know, outside of work, but you know, also get stuff done and have accountability inside the office speaks to that and and the reason they stay. And I think um, you know, we we just we try to take good people care of our our our folks, our employees, um, because in turn they'll they'll drive to to do every anything that we need them to do to meet objectives with the organization.

SPEAKER_03: 19:03

And as a follow-on to that, you you draw parallels between restoring classic Toyota land cruisers about this, and running a resilient company, durable design, reliability under stress, and respect for for craft. Can you maybe expand on that metaphor and how it influences your your leadership style?

SPEAKER_00: 19:21

Yeah, I didn't I didn't really get into this in my intro, but before working at the State Department, I actually I worked for Toyota for a number of years, had an amazing opportunity um to work for a couple of local Toyota dealerships uh in New York where I grew up. And I fell in love with the Toyota Land Cruiser and I promised myself one day I'll get one. It's it's an old one. And uh and so during COVID, I got rid of my my daily driver because I wasn't driving anywhere, and I found a 1982 Land Cruiser. And I just I love them just because of the reliability of them, the utilitarianism of them. You know, like to turn on the heat, you pull a lever, you know, it's not some electric switch. Um I kind of I usually translate, you know, the how that applies to our company as it relates to product. You know, there's so many products out there that are that have what I call feature bloat. You know, there's a toggle for for a million different things you go through, and it's just like a this huge menu of settings when you're setting it up. And how we approach product is is less is more. Let's give like the fundamental building blocks to create great workflows, great experiences. Um, is super extendable. And then anything that needs to be built can be built with them. So we'll rarely rarely have um customers come to us and say, hey, we need this new feature, and then we're rushing to get it in. Our customers can kind of just build that feature within the framework that they've we've provided. So that's typically how I relate it back to the to the Land Cruiser. But um, yeah, they're just they're super reliable cars, and we try to build super reliable um software.

SPEAKER_03: 20:49

Okay, I I think I know what we're gonna go with for the image for the uh for the podcast promos, then it's gonna be you and Land Cruiser.

SPEAKER_00: 20:56

That sounds good.

SPEAKER_03: 20:57

There's some happy employees around you or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 20:59

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun to land that that year Land Cruiser, the tops come off. And so I've got two young girls and they they ride around it in it with huge smiles. It's it's it's so much fun.

SPEAKER_03: 21:10

Just finally for today, James, and I will be pestering you to come back on the show because I've enjoyed this chat for today. But um, in terms of the final question for this particular episode, how can our listeners connect with you? So is that LinkedIn? Uh, do you want to share your email address? Are you all over other socials? And of course, how can listeners learn more about kinetic data?

SPEAKER_00: 21:29

Yeah, absolutely. There's a number of ways. I am active on LinkedIn. So you can find me, just look up James Davies Kinetic Data. Um, and you'll find me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect and uh and chat with you if you have any questions. Uh, our website is kineticdata.com, k-in e t i c data.com. Um, and there you can learn more about our software, what we do, our philosophies, our approach um to streamlining workflows and reimagining business process management.

SPEAKER_03: 21:57

Rock and roll. Um, before I wrap I just want to say, James, um, I've only got an opportunity to speak with you today for about half an hour. Um, but you said something earlier with me that to me, which was um you feel like the colleagues that you work with are also your friends. I I can see why. You're you're you're a nice guy, you're you're relatable, I can see it being a pretty fun place to work. So kudos to you, sir, and thank you very much for being my guest today.

SPEAKER_00: 22:23

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Bill.

SPEAKER_03: 22:25

And listeners, as always, until next time, happy working.

SPEAKER_01: 22:31

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette? And remember, for what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com.