What If? So What?
What If? So What? is the podcast where we discover what’s possible with digital and figure out how to make it real in your business. Join host Jim Hertzfeld, Vice President Strategy, as he interviews industry experts and veterans to dissect the buzz, challenge the status quo, and translate grand visions into tangible actions. Because it's not just about dreaming big, it's about asking the right questions: 'What If?' 'So What?’, and most importantly, “Now What?”
What If? So What?
What If Intuition Built Your Website? An Interview With Neelima Sharma of Lowe's
In this episode of "What If? So What?" Jim talks with Neelima Sharma, the Senior Vice President of Ecommerce, Digital, and Technology at Lowe’s. They discuss the challenges and successes of transforming the retail industry through digital innovation. Neelima highlights the importance of teamwork, trust, and a customer-centric approach in driving the company's growth. And also emphasizes the significance of personalization and building long-term relationships with customers, especially in the home improvement sector. The conversation touches on topics such as the impact of COVID-19 on retail, the role of AI and human intuition in decision-making, and the importance of accurate inventory management. Overall, the conversation provides valuable insights into the strategies and mindset required for successful digital transformation in the retail industry.
Connect with, Neelima Sharma, the Senior Vice President of Ecommerce, Digital, and Technology at Lowe’s
Connect with our host Jim Hertzfeld, Vice President, Strategy for Perficient
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Neelima Sharma: 0:05
So that is a concept that I really take it to heart and we've been working really hard on taking that personalization to the next level so that we can establish that relationship with our customer and that customer retention, that trust, that almost a partnership that comes along. You know, Jim, homes are so core and the more we understand the customer and their home, that partnership's got to get better and better. And that's our goal is to become that partner to our customer where they can live and they can manage their homes, because we understand them and their home better.
Jim Hertzfeld: 0:42
Welcome to what If so what, the podcast where we explore what's possible with digital and discover how to make it real in your business. I'm your host, Jim Hertzfeld, and we get shit done by asking digital leaders the right questions what if so what, and most importantly, now what? Hey, everyone, welcome back to what If so what. I'm really excited to have a great guest who's seen a lot in the industry and, I think, is doing a lot Neelima Sharma from Lowe's. Neelima, welcome, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here.
Neelima Sharma: 1:11
Hey, Jim, great to be here and thank you for having me. How I got here, you know, isn't that the biggest question? So you know, I would just say that I have now been in retail for about 17 years or so, which I just can't believe how long it has been. But I joined Lowe's now six and a half, almost seven years ago. Prior to that, I was at Staples for about 10. And then, prior to that, of course, consulting Deloitte, JP Morgan, so on and so forth.
Neelima Sharma: 1:43
And how did I get to retail? I didn't think one day I'd be at retail, but I am just having a time of my life. So I grew up, you know, as an engineer and just kind of had my first few years of my life just very much focused on software engineering. And then, you know, as Y2K happened and I'm dating myself now, but then you know, we were like, hey, the world's going to be different. Internet is here. And then, you know, of course, you know, at JP Morgan there was a lot of tax management and 401k management, sales management, client services, technologies that came about. And that's how I started getting into more and more of customer and also experiences, and then capabilities, and then platform thinking and then just being able to really help solve problems, and that started getting more and more into the product mindset as well. So platforms, cloud product and then ultimately experiences and then obsession of customer on top of that. That's how I started, you know, sort of forming my thought process and that's how I got here.
Jim Hertzfeld: 2:54
It sounds like just one big architectural pattern you know in your head, but yeah.
Neelima Sharma: 2:59
And it just incrementally, iteratively, kept building up.
Jim Hertzfeld: 3:02
It just grows. No, I love that and that's one of the things we were just chatting about retail and consumerism and it's interesting that you mapped some of your learnings to JP Morgan and, again, very consumer and user focused and years ago we did some research on, we tried to answer what is digital?
Neelima Sharma: 3:20
Yeah.
Jim Hertzfeld: 3:21
Because there's so many different answers.
Neelima Sharma: 3:23
Yeah.
Jim Hertzfeld: 3:23
And the one common thread we found was that it's really driving a customer experience and it's just so true and people eventually come to that realization on their own. But that's great that you've had a chance to tie all that together. I'm a big DIYer so I'm very familiar with Lowe's. In fact, I think I know every bin, every aisle and I think they come to me to ask, when I go to Lowe's, where to find things.
Neelima Sharma: 3:52
Oh, my God, Jim. So you know. First of all, thank you for being Lowe's customer, and that's amazing. You know, I have a lot of respect for DIYers, because I'm one wannabe DIYer as well, although I tend to be. Do it for me a little bit more. Yeah yeah, but little things. I'm definitely tinkering around. So, Jim, any favorite DIY projects that you love doing.
Jim Hertzfeld: 4:17
Well, that's a great question. So my COVID project. A lot of people had COVID projects, right yeah? So mine was. I renovated my kitchen and I built all my own cabinets and did the whole job, which I thought was going to be about six months job and it was about two years. So I don't think I want to do it again. But you know, I'm also an engineer in Ilima and there's just that itch we build things right, we like to even build things.
Neelima Sharma: 4:49
So you know, I'll just go there and see what's new, you know. So that's a great. I mean I, like you said, everybody had COVID projects and we saw a surge in demand for home improvement during COVID. So yeah, so now, yours was a big one, Mine was a very tiny one. I will tell you that home improvement I got somebody else to do their backyard, but my personal one was paid by numbers, so we were all at home and everybody working and college and everybody doing every room.
Neelima Sharma: 5:12
people were on Zoom calls and then sometime during the day everybody would go down to grab something to eat to the kitchen, so on and so forth. And what we realized is so what we did is we took a big paint by number puzzle over there and whoever would come down to get lunch or water or coffee, they would just paint a little bit. So we actually have now a painting that got built during COVID.
Jim Hertzfeld: 5:37
That is a fantastic idea. I've never heard of that. I've heard of people doing renovations, learning how to bake sourdough bread, but that's the first time I've heard about the group project. That's a great idea and it's a memory of a time that, where you know, we were all together.
Neelima Sharma: 5:54
Right, we're all together. It's definitely memorable.
Jim Hertzfeld: 5:57
So you know, one of the things about the time was you know we, we moved. The way I described, or I've had customers described it is we had to spend about five years of IT budget in six months to keep it going right, curbside and everything you know. The e-commerce roadmaps were highly condensed, so I'm just curious like what tell me kind of what you learned coming out of that and how it really changed the trajectory of Lowe's.
Neelima Sharma: 6:22
Yeah, Jim, that's a. You know, covid was pivotal for all of us in so many ways. Of course it was pivotal for him. Home improvement and home became such center of our lives. You know, there were times where we thought we probably would never be. You know, in crowds again I mean, maybe this is the way the business will be, this is the way we're going to live. So everybody started you know, just all these pent-up projects painting the daughter's room to building a deck that somebody always wanted to, that extension and a home office. There was construction happening everywhere. So we started seeing some very early signs as COVID sort of started to become more real and we started to see Black Friday traffic on the site and we just couldn't quite initially figure out what was happening and we were actually checking to make sure it was valid traffic and the conversion was taking place, and so we started monitoring that and then we suddenly realized so we were already on a journey to migrate and build our own commerce on the cloud.
Neelima Sharma: 7:27
So we had migrated most of our commerce site onto cloud and we were still using a legacy checkout engine, but as COVID stuck, there was no way that that checkout engine would have sustained us. So we were having Black Friday traffic, actually 100 days consecutively, every single day, and during that peak traffic we actually changed the checkout engine to flowscom and I think our engineers and our tech teams are just amazing and we successfully did it without issues.
Jim Hertzfeld: 8:03
I love that story because I still think one of the things I love about retail is and we were talking about automotive like we can all relate to it, you know, but there's there's a lot that because you know, as we're consumers and everyone's, everyone's been in a you know in the retail environment, but there's so much that happens that we don't know about. You know, you mentioned merchandising. I'm sorry, every once in a while I have to explain what merchandising is to people or what a buyer does, because I think that as consumers we don't realize the impact of that role, why that's important and how you work with suppliers and how you set pricing and markdown and allocation and available to promise. All these things are secrets of retail and every one of them matters right, and for you guys to pull that off is amazing.
Neelima Sharma: 8:51
It absolutely does. And you know, I do think that we have some amazing merchants. You know, here at Lowe's, you're right, I mean there's a lot of art along with a lot of science that goes with it, right? So you know, we have models, AI models that are helping our merchants, but then there's a lot of art supplier management. You know that they're doing things, they're projecting on a constant basis. Just navigating the COVID environment, where supply chain became so complicated, so complex and so unpredictable, I'll say that every AI model out there was failing because no AI model had actually predicted or been trained on an event like COVID. So a lot of it came down to the merchants, a lot of it came down to professionals, actually to the basics, to the basic human skillset, to the basic human intuition, to the basic new human knowledge. And it's just, you know, it's actually amazing to see how everybody rose to the occasion.
Jim Hertzfeld: 9:51
Wow, that's, that's inspiring actually, and you were we're doing an episode on change management coming up, and you know what, if you and, of course, we talk about AI and all kinds of situations now, could we, could we actually use all this technology without people? Of course not, you know. It's absurd. So, yeah, the intuition, the experience, is invaluable.
Neelima Sharma: 10:12
Totally. And, I think, change management. I'll just say this that we all I mean you know, Jim overnight everybody had to go home and Zoom and Teams became the channel through which we actually functioned. Could you imagine that if you had to do the change management and actually say I'm going to train everybody how to actually work in a completely, 100% remote environment, it would have taken a while Because we had pretty much been in the conference rooms together, whiteboarding together. How can that be possible? We were interviewing, you know, and never having met the person in three dimension, we were hiring and we were making some amazing hires. So I think change management, sometimes situation and adaptability, caution to change, just changes with changing circumstances. So humans are amazing. That's all I can say.
Jim Hertzfeld: 11:03
So you know a lot of consumer behaviors, of course, change rapidly, right? So people were you'd think that we were fully digitized, you know at that, but obviously we weren't. So you know we're a couple years out now but we are seeing some research we're doing is seeing more of an emphasis on retention share and, you know, focus on conversion, and do you feel like there's an emphasis with you guys on keeping the customers that you have? Do you have to work harder to keep them because there are so many choices? I'm just curious if you had a kind of a perspective on that from a, you know I'll call it not just a traditional loyalty perspective, but how did that change even the definition of loyalty going forward?
Neelima Sharma: 11:44
Totally, Jim, you know. First of all, let me just say that I love this question because we actually love our customers, right, so it's not a transactional relationship with us. We actually do believe in that relationship, commerce, we do believe in wanting to understand that customer better so that we can serve them better. So to us, the more interactions and the relationships that we have with our customers, it allows us to be able to really present ourselves to that customer in a most personalized fashion that works for them. I always talk about how the concept of personalization is so old but it's so powerful.
Neelima Sharma: 12:23
As a child I used to spend my summers with my grandparents many times and my grandparents, they had a shop nearby and he was like a small little grocery store and just carried all kinds of conveniences. But they had known each other for 40 years and my grandparents were old. But this guy really knew that you know the groceries, that my you know grandparents needed the toiletries they liked, the toothpaste they liked, and without them even ordering you know, calling him or something his guy would show up same day delivery, you know, with like, hey, this is what you're going to need. Think about the personalization anticipating and what is the need. And every single time he would drop a new soap or a new cookie and he'd just say you know what? I think you're going to like it. If you don't like it, it's on me. And every single time my grandparents kept it, they liked it and they paid him for it.
Neelima Sharma: 13:20
Now I kind of always thought about it. Think about that personalization, the relationship of trust, understanding the customer, anticipating their needs and then making recommendations on top of it, knowing that this is what this person will like, right. So imagine being able to do that at scale. So that is a concept that I really take it to heart and we've been working really hard on taking that personalization to the next level so that we can establish that relationship with our customer and that customer retention, that trust, that almost a partnership that comes along. You know, Jim, homes are so core and the more we understand the customer and their home, that partnership's got to get better and better. And that's our goal is to become that partner to our customer where they can live and they can manage their homes, because we understand them and their home better.
Jim Hertzfeld: 14:15
I love that concept and it's something that we talk about, too in other categories. I'm an iPhone and a Mac user, and I because you buy into the ecosystem right.
Neelima Sharma: 14:24
Yeah.
Jim Hertzfeld: 14:25
If the ecosystem works and it does the right things for me, like you're describing, then I'll stick with it.
Neelima Sharma: 14:29
Absolutely.
Jim Hertzfeld: 14:30
And you think about, you know these lifelong relationships. I'm glad we're on this topic, Neelima, because as a consumer, like I want that ecosystem. My family's in there, we share the iCloud and all that stuff. I'm kind of loyal to an OEM up. I'm kind of loyal to an OEM an automotive mania because I like the dealer, I like the lineup, they know me, they take care of me. It's funny they give me the same. Jim, we just got this on the lot. Would you like to come look at it? Maybe, maybe not, but it's one less thing to think about Again, if the trust is there, which I'm glad you brought up trust because I think that's people talk about convenience a lot, you know like. Well, if it's convenient, if it makes my life easier, then I'll give up my privacy.
Neelima Sharma: 15:11
Yes.
Jim Hertzfeld: 15:11
But the trust is a really big part of it, and it's not trust that you'll entrust my data, but like I trust you to give me the right cookie.
Neelima Sharma: 15:19
Yes, I trust that the relationship we have, I trust that you understand me and my needs, right, yeah, and that's a big deal. So, and I think, Jim, convenience is something I mean you brought that up and I think that's also extremely important, and I think convenience is amazing at the transactional level and you've got to have convenience so that you can have multiple transactions, but then, ultimately, those should lead to better knowledge, better understanding and better relationship. Those should lead to better knowledge, better understanding and better relationship, and that is the virtuous cycle that ultimately creates that retention and customer lifetime value.
Jim Hertzfeld: 15:55
Right, well, I don't mind sharing them and you know my low is, you know, I mean I give that up because I want, I kind of look for first of all, I'd like to test different brands to see how they do it.
Neelima Sharma: 16:06
Yeah.
Jim Hertzfeld: 16:07
I'm one of those people. I sign up for everything because I want.
Neelima Sharma: 16:10
Well, thank you for joining the loyalty program.
Jim Hertzfeld: 16:12
Yes, yeah, but back to the home. You know the home is, you know it's your, it's your refuge. Now, some of us are spending all their time at home, most of the time at home. Here I am at my home. You know that concept and where you guys are focusing on the home and what we need Like it's a service, it's a lifelong partnership.
Neelima Sharma: 16:39
It's a life and, you know, as that relationship is formed, we want our customers to grow with their homes. I mean, you know, one of the other trends that is on the rise is that it's aging in place.
Neelima Sharma: 16:53
You know people are not moving out of their homes, but they need their homes to work for their needs or, you know, as their needs are evolving, so you know. So I think that's the other one right. So we are seeing a lot of trends out there, whether that is multi-generational homes, that multiple generations are living in a home, I mean, interest rates are higher, people are waiting on buying another house and you know multiple generations that are living under the same roof. Older generation is aging in place. Millennials are, of course, buying homes. Gen Zs are into, you know, buying homes, gen Xs are there. So, if you think about it, it's just become people are moving in the suburbs, people are in the cities, but suburban life has become, of course, even more stronger for millennials.
Neelima Sharma: 17:43
We do see a lot of migration to the rural areas as well. People are buying large, you know, acreage and they're just kind of building the house, you know, and kind of a new lifestyle that they want for them, their families, and we're seeing that the digital capabilities are also really working for the rural customer. You know the nearest store might be 25 minutes away. They really want to be able to place the order digitally and go pick it up on the run, as they make the run to the town, they're using more and more of same-day delivery. They are using capabilities such that you know products are getting shipped to them and then, of course, they want to make sure that they first they're using digital channels to check inventory, because they don't want to go drive for 25 minutes only to find something is out of stock. So we're just seeing a trend and you know, and I think, home migration, home usage, is actually driving some of these behaviors.
Jim Hertzfeld: 18:40
Yeah, I remember it was. This has been a while, by the way, and I remember checking. I want to say it was the mobile web. But I went into my Lowe's and I was looking for very specific screws. They're Craig screws, pocket hole screws and I checked it and I had the inventory but I didn't believe it. I'm like no, I'm not going to believe it. I go to the store and I find the associate and the numbers all matched up and then we counted the boxes. Yeah, that was funny. I tell that story all the time because I thought, man, now this is how it has to be.
Neelima Sharma: 19:13
Yeah, Jim, I think this is so important and I'm so glad you actually brought up our store managers may decide to move the product just so that it works just a little bit different for that store, different for that store then, how that actually gets back into it and how the same data is used to plan future planograms but also is made available at the island bay level to the customer on our apps as well. Right, so it's actually the same data set.
Jim Hertzfeld: 20:01
Yeah, well, that's how I had a single version of the truth. So, yeah, this is great and I love you. Know, again, a lot of people who don't know they've been in a store, but they don't they. They really. These details are exciting to me because you don't know what's going on around you, like you know you yeah, you hear things here and there like why is that end cap here?
Neelima Sharma: 20:19
you know, but yeah but you know that flexibility there's a factor to the madness oh yeah, oh yeah and I think inventory levels matter ofers. But you know, think about a pro customer. So, Jim, 30% of our customers are pro customers roughly, and for them having the product in the right quantities is'll go to the store I needed 19 of these.
Neelima Sharma: 20:48
I can find 19. That means I don't have to do store hopping. That means I can get to my job on time or sooner, and I can get the job done and that's what pays. So this is really important to them.
Jim Hertzfeld: 21:00
Yeah, so we're going to do another industry crossover in Ilima because we work with some other retailers who have very big commercial businesses and we work with some other retailers who have very big commercial businesses and we work with companies, other manufacturers, that are in the construction business and so, yeah, the job site owning the job site, owning the construction site, that's another world. So it's really exciting to hear you guys get into that, because I don't think that's where you guys got started right. You had to learn that space. Right, you had to learn that audience.
Neelima Sharma: 21:48
I mean we're largely a DIY shop. You had to learn that space right. I'm not that good at it, but I always found the store to be very easy. I always found the store to be not daunting and we tend to see, you know, a lot of homeowner DIY, do it for me customers and of course now you know, with all the progress that we've made and the associates, the relationship that we have with the pro customers, we are becoming very destinational for pros. In fact, you know one side of the store you know is very, very catered to the pro and the other side of the store, if you enter from the other door, it feels very homeowner and I think the same type of a concept. You know, lowes.com is just one site. We don't have a separate site for the pros. We don't have a separate site for homeowners. Depending on who you are, the site actually morphs itself into a pro site or a DIYer or a homeowner right.
Neelima Sharma: 22:36
So for us, we've taken that concept and the personalization at that level, at the overarching segment level, is when we get started and then we'll continue to hyper-personalize to the person.
Jim Hertzfeld: 22:47
Well, I like that model. I know we run into that with other brands who have and I'm always surprised how many how some large, well-known brands have 30, 40 sub-brands.
Neelima Sharma: 22:57
Oh yeah.
Jim Hertzfeld: 22:58
And you're just surprised. Well, I didn't even. I didn't know they had this. You know, I know there's a manufacturer that has 200 stores that are commercially oriented. Like I didn't even know they had stores.
Neelima Sharma: 23:10
So I like the idea of like focusing and just maintaining the brand, building the brand, building the brand, and that allows us to be able to really, you know, as we're launching new experiences and new capabilities. You just do it once.
Jim Hertzfeld: 23:19
Yeah, and that's the other thing people don't hear about. I mean, there's an engineering you know tremendous amount of engineering. We have a lot of shared acquaintances, yes, and I know friends who've been in very large retail organizations and the amount of engineering and I mentioned automotive there are some, I will say, traditional companies that have extremely mature software engineering disciplines. People have no idea. I mean again, the complexity of the techniques and there's some real cutting-edge things.
Neelima Sharma: 23:52
Yeah, because we've built the entire software stack ourselves right and that allows us to be able to have the amount of flexibility that we have in turning ourselves into a truly omni-channel unified commerce destination. And you know, in customer experience, associate experience, speed matters to us, performance matters to us. Experience, associate experience, speed matters to us, performance matters to us. So we're engineering things and at the same time, you know, our performance testing is showing. You know, we give ourselves the budget of X number of milliseconds for a response, right. So you've got to architect things and engineer things very, very differently.
Jim Hertzfeld: 24:26
Right, right. So I just have a final question here. I mean obviously I've followed you. I've been a final question here. I mean obviously I've followed you. I've been a customer for years and I really appreciate you guys sharing what you've had to go through and what you've had to encounter, because you just had to do it. But what was the challenging part? If somebody else is not quite, you know they're thinking about their brand or they're thinking about their organization. You know I wouldn't say what would you do differently, but like, what should people think about and who are facing? They want to get to that, they want to accomplish the same goals, right? So, as you look back on the last few years, what do you think really made it work? What was your? I don't want to say secret sauce, but what is the thing that you really as an organization, as a team, you know what would really work and you know, and how would you sort of give that as advice to others?
Neelima Sharma: 25:13
You know, Jim, I think that's actually, you know, that's a really good question and as I'm thinking through this and I definitely, you know, will talk about you know the approach and what was the thinking and how do we approach to solve the problem and the complexity of it. But I think so and that absolutely is extremely important. But I think what is really important is the right set of people coming together, forming a team, establishing a trust. We are talking about relationship, commerce with the customer and you know and retention and understanding and so on and so forth. Never underestimate the power of a team that thinks together, that is rowing together, of a team that thinks together, that is rowing together, that believes in each other, has the trust and actually is together trying to solve a problem. And I think to me that is step number one and I feel personally very fortunate to be working alongside just amazing, amazing talented people.
Neelima Sharma: 26:13
We have a lot of fun. I mean it's a lot of work, don't get me wrong. We're very busy, but it's a lot of fun and there is just the shared joy of accomplishments. You know our CIO, you know Samantha Nengor-Bole. She's extremely knowledgeable, at the same time just so easy to work with. So we work really well with you know, together, you know, and we actually do believe in the power of learning and the power of experimentation and the power of incrementality, in the power of foundations and platforms and starting from ground up and incrementally, you know, and just checking ourself, testing is our hypothesis right. So it's the core engineering mindset that comes into play. So, even as we are managing P&Ls and as we are drawing this business, that philosophy hasn't changed.
Jim Hertzfeld: 27:02
That's great to hear. And you I'm going to go back to trust again. Again, you mentioned experimentation and increment. When you have a team and you build the trust, you can learn as you go, and it's so powerful the concept, if anybody thinks that you can imagine what the future is and every step to get there and you're just going to go down the path. I mean, we all know that's called waterfall, but it does rely on teamwork and trust and having that faith. So that's a great way to end this conversation. We're a little bit out of time here, so thank you so much for joining and sharing your story and personality. I just I'm feeling pretty inspired today, so I needed this, so I really appreciate it.
Neelima Sharma: 27:42
Thank you so much, Jim. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3: 27:47
All right, thank you. You've been listening to what? If so, what A digital strategy podcast from Perficient with Jim Hertzfeld. We want to thank our Perficient colleagues JD Norman and Rick Bauer for our music. Subscribe to the podcast and don't miss a single episode. You can find this season, along with show notes, at Perficient.com. Thanks for listening.
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