The composable transformation journey, with 3 retail technology leaders

One of the striking trends of the composable era has actually played out on the customer side.

As deployments to full-stack composable commerce have become faster, brands have invested more heavily in the talent needed to lead digital efforts from inside, and command greater control of the data.

In this special episode of Martalks, we put three of those brand-side tech pioneers on the podium to discuss the roadmaps of their journeys to composable adoption. 

Speaking to…

• Fred Argir - formerly CIO  of Toys “R” Us and Barnes & Noble, and now CEO of The Argir Group
• Diane Randolph, a seasoned CIO on the board of Shoe Carnival, Former CIO Ulta Beauty, and who now advises technology companies such as Orium
• Stuart McKeachie, CTO at Serena & Lily, and formerly of Williams-Sonoma and Restoration Hardware.

…we investigated the marketing requirements and difficulties that provided the motivation for replatforming to composable platforms and the agility that the business gained as a result.

We also delved into the agents of change, and how that responsibility falls variously to vendors, integrators, and in-house personnel, and the cultural implications of transformation for the wider business.

Read a full summary of this podcast at Rosenstein Group.com.

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to our first Mar Talks webinar on composable digital transformation. And the reason that we're hosting this series with the leaders of technology departments within merchants in the United States is because there's a tremendous amount of confusion out there. And a lot of it has been propagated by the legacy monolith platform vendor community by adopting the terminology that's been created by the composable movement to, I think, obfuscate the shortcomings of their architecture for addressing modern e-commerce. And I'm going to try not to name names, but I think that I owed it to my community to bring some clarity that composable e-commerce is the best solution we yet have within the technology community to provide brands the opportunity to realize their best itself, their aspirations for customer engagement, customer experience management, for hyper-personalization, for real-time personalization, to leverage AI, to access their data, to do it better, stronger, faster, and yes, cheaper with fewer people. And that is the promise of composable and has been realized by many hundreds of merchants in Europe. It's been slower here in the United States. And I think that's because we've lacked a few independent voices that are authentic talking about their experiences with composable. So towards that end, uh you know, my thesis has been stated. Uh I'm joined by some wonderful leaders within the retail technology community. And again, I'm gonna thank you, thank them again right now. Uh, we're we're joined by Diane Rudolph, the former CTO uh and leader of companies such as Carnival, New Mine, and many, many more Ultimate Beauty, Reetman's NSB group, uh who's been through this, as well as Fred Arger, uh the chairman and CEO of the Arger Group, former CDO, chief digital officer, and CIO of Maurice's Barnes and Noble, Toys and Rod, Sports Authority, and we're gonna talk about composable digital transformation and roadmap. That is our first topic of this series. Uh so once again, thank you for joining us, Fred and Diane. Thank you, Daryl. Yeah, happy to be here. Well, I think we should start off with uh, you know, talking a little bit about the the platforms both of you have had a chance to wrangle during your tenures. And I guess we could we could start off with Fred. Fred, you know, tell us about the beasts that you've slain to bring your brands online.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Well, thank you, Daryl. Uh, beasts probably uh uh resemble what other people would say, but I would, you know, there's there's everything from um a business going through a massive transformation through MA, uh, which leads to um the realization of costs associated with archaic architecture, archaic solutions that um really limit the ability for a business to take advantage of opportunity. And if if we uh look through the years, I can say everything from uh you know, obviously SAP Oracle and all the Microsoft solutions, but but really it's it's about the change in the industry and the obstacles than the headwinds that we've faced throughout the years with the limited ability to react to the for to react to business opportunities. And that headwind is costly, uh, it is frustrating, and it tends to be um not just an IT function, but it's a way of thinking. So I won't go much further into that, but the culture of history has been uh complex systems, complex uh uh uh environments where things just can't happen. We've all heard of companies say, well, I can't I can't react to that because my quote unquote systems will not allow me to do that. Um that that's heart, that that's just that just kills me. Um it's like business is business, we must react. Business has changed so dramatically over the last 30 years. But our our our inability from an IT or a digital perspective to say, let's go make that happen, or what if, or have we thought about let's give it a try, is really unfortunate. I think the great companies out there have embraced newer technologies, newer ways of thinking and cultures, certainly like uh composable, uh, that allow them to really play to win all the time.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Diane, you've you've uh obviously been through your share of replatforms and uh reasons for those needing to take place. Where have uh you seen the real log jams in terms of uh making that decision and in terms of the capabilities of this of the solutions?

SPEAKER_03 5:55

Well, I was fortunate. Um, you know, my two CIO roles, uh one you mentioned was in Reitman's, Reatman's, depending on where you live in the country, uh, it's pronounced differently, um, and then at Ulta Beauty. And it was interesting because, you know, Canada, Canadian retailers were slower to adopt e-commerce in general than pretty much anywhere else in the world, even though surprisingly enough, the infrastructure of broadband and everything was there. But the population is such that most live very close to an urban center. Shopping in stores was was easy, and Canada's a little more conservative. So, luckily, it was about 20 years ago where uh Wrightman's, which at the time had eight distinct divisions, operated across each one operating across the entire country of Canada, um, with different populations and different languages. Um, we were moving to a transactional website from our really marketing promotional sites, and realized that we faced a lot of the complexities that most of the platforms did not handle. You know, a cost-effective way to run eight sites, each running in two languages, um, and each having a different, you know, some had loyalty programs, some had CRM, others had, you know, they they were similar but different enough. So luckily, um, you know, the technology at that point was beginning to modernize. And again, you know, talking how Europe always leads in this space, we were able to find demandware as, you know, now Salesforce obviously acquired, acquired uh later by Salesforce, you know, as our choice of product. You know, they had the kind of expertise to help us figure out how to manage, you know, essentially 16 sites in a in a cost-effective way, and to really have a common foundation, but be able to have each brand have their own voice and differentiation. Because many Canadian consumers never actually realized uh for a long time that those eight brands were actually owned by the same company. Um, so I was fortunate in that. I I kind of didn't come in, I came in right at the cusp of, or we launched eComference right about the cusp of you know having those capabilities. Uh then I uh you know joined Ulta and saw, you know, a great site that had been uh developed on ATG, um, you know, a more monolithic platform. And its main goal was to be highly transactional, you know, efficient transactionally, right? Because the volume at Ulta was pretty staggering. Our year-over-year e-commerce growth was the envy of many. And especially on on you know Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it was just insane. Strap in and keep your fingers crossed. So um, but that was a commodity where transactions, yes, were important. We wanted people to be able to efficiently put things in their bags and buy them, but we were um really focusing on delivering a consistent customer experience that was similar in our stores to uh what they experienced online. And, you know, traditionally, you know, Ulta had always various creative promotions, gift with purchase, you know, uh buy this, get this type of event. And of course, our in-store systems had the history of being very flexible. You know, the the retail POS industry grew up that way, and that was not matched with the online version. So our customers couldn't relate or understand to why they couldn't get the same promotion. We had to invent and massage different kinds of things online, and and that really was not what we were about. We were about feeling the same whether you were in the store or experiencing us on the digital channel. There's also so much about beauty that's that's about building community and learning. You know, there's so many new products, there's so many uh trends and things you need to see from a video or you know, uh a different presentation perspective. And those are again not addressed by uh your traditional, you know, um monolithic platform, uh, as well as it being extremely expensive. And you know, when I think about having you know our own servers to s to run that site, you know, and what we would have to do every year uh to bulk up for holiday volume, you know, was just crazy and you know, pointed to the absolute need to be, you know, a cloud native solution that would take advantage of that kind of infrastructure.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Let me ask, what was it that what was the seminal event that led to you selecting composable architecture for your your last uh digital transformation?

SPEAKER_03 10:55

Well, we clearly realized that we were not able to deliver the experiences that we wanted to. Um sometimes not even without, you know, it wasn't even a cost cost constraint issue, you know, promotions, just that platform could not deal effectively with the promotions that we wanted to be able to deliver. Um, and we also realized that we were not as nimble as we needed and wanted to be. Um, you know, because we had to do a full end-to-end regression test on the entire stack, you know, before implementing a new release, you know, the best we could hope for was monthly uh releases and nothing even remotely resembling CICD and you know continuous improvements. So, you know, one was to be able to introduce more capabilities when we needed, as the market dictated, and also to further enable the digital team to be able to do more themselves and not always have IT be the keepers of all the unlock of all the capabilities. And we also recognized that it was time to work differently in a product type of mindset and more pods, pod-based, blending the digital teams, the marketing teams, and the technology teams as one cohesive work unit. So the technology was what supported that.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

You had you had several key objectives there to have to have true omni-channel experience, the ability to innovate, to have the ability to empower the business users within marketing to do their own thing in real time and not be totally reliant on programming and to uh alleviate the need to do uh testing of the entire stack to do anything. That that doesn't take a couple of minutes. That takes more that takes a little bit longer than that. Uh and uh those are those are the key goals uh that are shared by most folks that are looking at puzzle. Who was it that uh how did you first identify your key commerce platform vendor? Was it did did you do your own research? Did you were you did the uh platform vendor reach out to you and your team, or was it an agency?

SPEAKER_03 13:23

Um we basically Ulta is probably one of the key secrets to uh their success. And and I I I didn't mention I retired from there four years ago, but still stay very connected to to the team and everything that's happening there. But um it's it's probably the most uh collaborative, cross-functional organization I've ever been exposed to. And my years at a software vendor, I got exposed to a lot of different retailers, so I had a it wasn't just the two I was comparing. Um, so it really was uh a total team sport, if you will. We understood that this is what we needed and wanted to do. Uh, really, the person taking the top lead role was our chief digital officer. And but she worked, you know, I was involved heavily, uh, my head of uh enterprise architecture. We also have, or ELTA has a fantastic procurement team, which is much more about just pricing and contracts, they really understand the business needs. So we worked together as a group to isolate what our requirements were from what did the digital team need to achieve, what did we need from a technology infrastructure perspective, what were we looking for in partners? Um, and then we put out an RFP and we selected, you know, the group together came up with the candidate choices. This was back in 2019, so the number of players was even smaller. Um, but Commerce Tools was one of the ones that uh bubbled to the top relatively quickly. It it was clear that that they were the winder, that they really did have the true composable solution. Many were saying at that time that they did or were going there, but we needed somebody who could prove that they had delivered solutions at scale.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Well, we're we've been joined by Stuart McKee. Uh Stuart, wonderful to have you with us.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

It's uh Stuart, the Chief Technology Officer of Serena and Willie, formerly the VP of Technology at William Sonoma, formerly the VP of Business Applications at Restoration Hardware. I dare say you know uh a fine couch when you see one.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

I have seen a few.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

You've seen a few. Well, I I appreciate you joining us uh on our panel today. Uh we were just discussing uh with Diane and Fred in terms of roadmap. Uh, what was the seminal event that led to a your selecting composable architecture for your digital transformation? And uh I followed up with Diane with a question uh how did you find out about that core vendor?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

We were with a more legacy monolithic platform that really couldn't represent the products that the business wanted to present. So if you think of a couch, you can think of a lot of product variations associated with that 250 odd fabrics, cushion fill, leg colors, sizes. When you put all of those things together, it makes a lot of product variations. And due to limitations in the other platforms, we really couldn't present all of those limitations in a way we wanted to present them on the site. We also had an architecture that uh was being deprecated, so the the vendor that we had was uh moving to a different architecture. Uh and then I'd been following really composable commerce since the Williamsonoma days and just looking at you know what was happening in that space, uh, where it was going and where the industry was moving towards in each of these different vendors. So as you put all those things together, that's how we ended up needing to do a replatform for the website, move to something different. We're going to move to a different architecture. How do we have the flexibility really wanted by the business to do all the things they want it to do in the near future and hopefully not have to replatform again in any time soon?

SPEAKER_02 17:40

And how many countries are you currently live in?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Yeah, we're only in two. So we're North American, North American only in terms of selling. Uh, so it's just within the continent, within the US, sorry, and Canada. And and Diane, how many countries was was Ulta live in?

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Um Ulta actually, that's an interesting part of the journey because um, as I mentioned, we knew we wanted to go on this journey. Uh, but one of the things that sort of spurred us into action was because we were planning a launch into Canada at that time. And so, number one, we needed a solution to be able to do that, you know, uh, that wasn't easily supported by our monolithic platform. And we also saw that as a way to de-risk the mothership, if you will, by being able to launch the site in a smaller um, you know, volume market uh where we could tweak it, tune it, you know, because that was always one of our concerns was, you know, could we get composable to be as responsive and as fast as we needed it to be on Black Friday when the doors opened, if you will. So what happened was in we had leases signed, we were well on our way to getting ready to open uh those stores, and then COVID hit. And at that time, uh we decided I was still in my role, I hadn't retired yet, and we still we decided we were going to pull back and um not launch Canada. So then the the the roadmap actually had to pivot, and we went from what would have been a full, you know, launch everything that was part of the new experience in one shot with the launch of Canada to how are we going to phase it in to de-risk it um for the US business? So the short that was a long answer to say right now Canada opera Ulta operates only in one country. Um uh they have just announced that they're actually going into Mexico with a partner, uh, so it'll be a different business model. But uh when I was at uh at Reitman's again when I talked about using demandwork, we did have um uh some US presence for some of our divisions. So we had multi-language and multi-country um for that for that business. Stuart, back to you.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

When uh when you made the decision to to go with composable, uh was it was it the vendor, was it an agency, or was it your team that defined who you would be approaching?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Uh it was really a combination mostly of our integration partner um and some of our team. All right, so our integration partner, we brought in someone from our integration partner to do the RFP and to work through that. Uh, we had a fairly extensive uh RFP for you know, several thousand questions and areas that we worked through for a number of months, just in understanding what the business is really going after, what they wanted to do, what sort of capabilities they needed and wanted within the site, uh, and how to classify those, as well as exposing them to other pieces that are out there, right, to our business counterparts and exposing them to different thoughts and other ways of looking at things to see when they're interested in that and go through that education process uh as we started to build that out. We did that with a vendor, uh which is our integration partner, uh, and from that we chose the vendors that were uh invited to participate in the response.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

And in that core, in in your first RFP, in terms of how many core modules did you have, how many SLAs did you did you have that you put on your roadmap?

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Uh core modules being things like just the storefront, the presentation space, the back end, how to do the back end integration pieces, uh search, um, personalization is very, very important in both of those things. The dam, uh, content management systems, how those were the main. pieces that we had within that in terms of in terms of SLAs, I think of that slightly different because I tend to think in terms of response time and responsiveness and support within those things rather than necessarily functions or features that we want within the composing architectures.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Well it sounds like you had six different vendors.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

We ended up with three. You know, a lot of integration that has to be done to tie your your your compositions together. So the orchestration that sits in the middle turns out to be yeah very, very important in what you do and and how you go about it.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Now Fred I'm going to ask you what the most complicated roadmap you've had. And uh I'm looking for I'm thinking it's going to be a smaller number but go ahead and shock me.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

So I would say the most complicated uh situation I've been in was recently we went into a retailer who was purchased out of a holding company and in that purchase they received some some information uh some data some client lists some inventory and a little bit of code but the but the retailer needed to stand itself up as a standalone retailer and we had 36 months to get it done. So as a $1.2 billion dollar apparel business with uh international sourcing and so we had to start from scratch there so in our particular case we were given the uh the the value added opportunity to say wait a minute let's start with composable how can we think about this so we build an infrastructure uh a a uh total infrastructure from scratch which is something I thought I would never be able to see in my career but I had no legacy folks I mean I had nothing I had to look back on I could only look forward so in our case we brought in a total of about 12 vendors but we had everything you guys um in terms of the sort of core composable piece though ours tended to be in that three to four range because remember we're we're doing we're creating everything how we found that is we traveled we went and spoke to people all over the world and uh specifically in the in the Middle East and and the uh uh Indian area and as well as some some Europe uh uh friends and then came back and sat down um I will add not only was this timely in terms of getting a 36 month effort done but the company had no IT team so we had to build the team at the same time we're building the strategy at the same time that we're actually executing so I was really afforded the great opportunity to go hire people that were smart about this that we could then lever into our our vendors in a smart way to say let's build this from the onset and then build that efficiency in for our business. And then lastly would be the business component right because the business has to be integral in these kind of conversations. So if you look at even on the digital side you know we want as a matter of fact we want our website to look like uh let's say we had a registry let's say we had an app let's say we had a POS system you know Diane you mentioned earlier POS is not caught up to that absolutely I mean we were living in the archaic age at that time um and so the ability to build those modules those those consumable modules uh was a great opportunity for us to limit the time for development to deliver to what the business needed in order from for the business to be strategic and to get there from a costly manner right um but also to go back to the PL of IT where the PL of IT was fantastically impacted by these approaches because we we were able to streamline everything we had negotiate accordingly and then build the right team there's there's certainly when you start to look at deploying composable there is there are certain strategic roles within the organization that are higher level that may not exist in an existing IT team and being able to determine that is a critical part of roadmap.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

So when you were building from scratch obviously you had the opportunity to go I'm gonna create the ultimate developer playground so that anybody that comes into this organization is going to have a magnificent developer experience because they're going to be working with the latest and greatest solutions within composable and they're not going to have any limitations in terms of what they can create.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

But when you were developing your roadmap and I'll go back to Stewart and you said okay this is this is the the architecture that we're going to build when you looked at your team did you have all the pieces there that you needed no certainly not uh we we certainly needed better upskilling in architecture uh and particularly around the integrations you know I I can't emphasize enough how important getting that data integration and orchestration done right was in our particular project and probably the hardest part of it was that data orchestration uh in there so so getting the skills that understood the architectures could think in those ways and bring them in was something that we didn't have in the team at the time and needed to bring in.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Was that process fun? Did you enjoy going out and finding that person?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Well we had a little complication in our project at the same time that our primary vendor um had decided to change their business model and go to product development and no longer be in staff augmentation. So I had to swap out about 30 people at the same time as we started doing this project. So it had a little complication to it that uh was interesting.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

I I'm sure that you had a rich full head of hair before you began a project. So you know kudos to you for for surviving and for being with us today. I mean you're a remarkably resilient individual 30. Okay great.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

Well Diane let's let's uh let's uh I I'm gonna take it you haven't been through that that much of a the uh of a game change but when you looked at your team and were saying all right this is the architecture we're selecting what did you do what did you have all the pieces that you needed and if you needed new pieces who were they well we had already in anticipation of this set up a cloud engineering team within our infrastructure group so they were the ones to determine the tool set and you know the infrastructure as Stuart talks about the data integration all of that where we uh you know we did at the end of the journey want to be autonomous and be able to do um our own development from that point on so we relied on both the design studio and the system integrator we chose uh to do that knowledge transfer as as well as additional education we did have we had already expand uh experimented with API microservices um development uh triggered by uh some of our top you know e-com and digital architects uh encouraging us to do that so in our app which we developed ourselves and others areas of the experience we did have some of that experience so we were able to build on that with the help of the partners that we chose so in terms of I I want to talk a little bit about timeline here and and compare and contrast the timeline to go live with all these components versus uh a typical uh legacy monolith solution now I'm not gonna say that there's been endless implementations of some of the legacy solutions I'm familiar with but there have let's talk first we'll go to Stuart now Stuart how long did you budget from a timeline just the commerce portion of your transformation so so once all the contracts are signed and the teams assembled we were budgeting at the time about 12 to 13 months did that was that realistic was that realistic no we uh we missed it by about two months so it was really you know about 14 months you hired you had 30 people that you had to hire and you missed it by two months.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah okay I hope you got a really nice bonus I mean I'm just saying that's kind thank you a a Christmas card something I mean I feel like I should send you flowers myself but you're you know but Fred when you for this for this new billion dollar retailer what it what did you budget just for the commerce engine the poor the commerce uh site itself Daryl was in the the 12 to 14 months range as well however because we were also bringing up supply chain and ERP and everything else at the same time we needed to be very sensitive of that architecture platform. So we were constantly being thoughtful as we were building so that we were contributing to the culture or to the uh to the platform. So in our case we we did it in 12 months but it took us another year almost a year and a half to react to the other things that were going on around it. We had an agreement with the original holding company so we were actually coding our site with the old supply chain in mind as we were then pivoting to the new supply chain up after we actually launched so the efficiencies of that of that of the of the enterprise architecture was absolutely critical for us because we had we could not afford downtime and as it turned out COVID hit so our stores closed and our only way of income was ecom. So it turned out that fortunately we did that first we hit our timeline and we were able to smooth smooth out the uh the uh the revenue side of the business appropriately well you know I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you a follow-up question here Fred uh Diane mentioned earlier that at Ulta it was the chief digital officer who really had ownership for this entire transition this transformation this project at your client who who really internally who was the internal champion and owner of that process well I I served for them as their CIO and CDO so and I partnered very closely with the CEO the CFO but with the equity firm and the equity firm was obviously very invested in our success and so we had you know meetings weekly we had meetings monthly the board meetings this was always a topic where are we today so the that that was critical what I would say though is in the world of change like this other business partners really needed to be with us and so I give a lot of credit to the rest of the the executive leadership team because they had to invest to get smart quickly to help us understand the direction that they wanted to see this the this go. So in a way everyone was a stakeholder around that ELT team because the amount of change that the company was going through. But but they I meant but I would say it didn't go without many conversations with the equity firm saying can we pull this off or not? So uh you know I I have fantastic partnerships uh with the peers in the company and fantastic partnership with with that equity firm and together we made good decisions and there were a lot of learnings along the way but but we did pull it off we actually uh implemented rebuilt the retailer in 28 months so it it worked very well got it and and Stuart i'm I'm just gonna say I hope the heck you were in charge because having our thirty people and not being in charge would I just I'm in awe of you already okay I'm a fan what can I say thank you I I had a fabulous partner in the CMO who was in charge of e-commerce as well we were hand in hand if we went through this she's a very very bright individual and uh did a lovely job in in actually setting up the changes we want we also went through you know a third party um design firm so we changed the look and feel of the site as well at the same time as we're going through that and she led all of those efforts.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

So it was really important to have a partnership with the business and have the business buying into what we were doing. And I don't think you can really be successful unless you have that.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

But well there's two critical questions that I I I'm looking at time here and I want to be respectful of everyone's but uh I really want to know uh you know in the in the roadmap process first off what you wish the agencies were able to the the key integrators were able to contribute in each of your cases uh in particular about how to construct this roadmap that's the first question I'm gonna ask you H.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

And then the second one is what do you think the vendors could have done differently or better in terms of helping you with your roadmap so we'll start off with uh from the agency perspective you've made the choice what do you what do you wish they could have shared or known or had an expertise in or what did they do that you thought was phenomenal uh in terms of constructing your roadmap and we'll start with Brett yeah so we we didn't use an agency um but our business teams were highly involved in and uh helping us understand their their direction I would say I I wouldn't I wouldn't change anything of what our business partners did. I I think they were great they tolerated you know in some cases 40 50 six per 60% of their team's time dedicated to this work without really understanding the bits and bytes and then nor did they need to but really say if we don't get this right we don't have a business so you know failure was not an option and um everyone's contribution support was was very very critical and I would I would say there's not much I would ask differently of them today.

SPEAKER_02 36:41

So you're essentially saying that your vendors your software vendors essentially co-developed with you for your the entirety of your commerce project without the requirement of an integrations agency.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

That is that is correct now we we hired key people to do some of these roles that we wouldn't typically hire you know given 30 plus 30 plus years in retail I sort of got the opportunity because I was employee number one in IT so I had the opportunity to pick up the phone and call the best and I I really got a a CTO that I think was he reported to me at Target way back in the years that the the guy was brilliant he had the right vision and he came in and really I gave him the authority to just go and uh he was much smarter about me smarter than me in a lot of these things but but that with keeping our business well informed along the way and then holding our our vendors accountable uh was critical. I I will say uh it was a difficult time because it was in COVID and 90% of our vendor force was was overseas. And a really a terrible difficult time for the businesses. I spoke at seven funerals of people that were working for us. So we were losing people people were scared companies it was a really difficult difficult time but collectively everybody rallied because the mission was clear we knew where we wanted to go we didn't know how to get there but we welcomed we embraced good ideas we made the decisions quickly and we moved outstanding.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

Well I I love hearing the support that you received from the composable community community because they were that was a variety of vendors having to do that and uh I love the fact that even though they were remote for the most part and dealing with unprecedented circumstances they hung in there they got it done. Diane how many Diane how about yourself what do you what do you wish the agency or did you use an agency could have done differently better what did they do that was fabulous?

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Well we we used an agency we used an SI both of whom had experience with composable and with commerce tools uh I'd say the roadmap was really developed collaboratively you know we knew what we needed and wanted to do and there were a few tweaks along the way um I would say you know one of the things that I see now and you know I I'm I'm a board advisor for a company called Orium that you know it really helps when there are accelerators right so I think that's a question I would have asked differently is we didn't want to recreate the exact experience right so we were changing the experience at the same time while maintaining the you know performance but you know having something to start with would have been a and had we known to ask we we may have you know potentially chosen some different partners right so Stuart how about yourself what do you think the agency did right it uh could it uh wish you'd known better about in terms of building a roadmap and understanding you know in terms of roadmap for me uh I think the thing we underestimated was data orchestration and the difficulty in actually getting data from third party systems right our legacy RP also works as our PIM so our product information inventory you know all of that setup and orchestration as it comes through I think was underestimated and not that well understood right so I think that's an area just to focus on and get better.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Um I think in any of these things it all comes down to the people that you have and your selection of the people so if you've got an agency that's just throwing bodies at you it's not going to work. You need the right people that are going to be there for your team in your situation. And that's where I I I I think we did fairly well we didn't hit on everyone all right um but we did fairly well the agency did well for us as we went through that so that was good to see.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Well thank you Stuart well actually uh you know I'm looking we're 45 minutes past the hour here so uh we didn't get to the most important questions that I had for you all which are you know primarily around fashion choices uh lunch uh preferences and your favorite cocktails we're not gonna be able to get to those today thank you so much for for giving us some time today to start to peel the onion that is composable digital transformation I hope that uh you enjoyed it um and I hope that you join us again sounds great thank you Daryl thank you Darrell thank you thank you Darrell all right thank you and good afternoon to you all thanks for listening to Mar Talks please leave a review and a rating on your platform of choice we're available on Spotify Apple Podcasts and all major podcast platforms to find out more about how the Rosenstein group can help you find the right leaders for your client development teams in Martech and e commerce please visit our website rosenstein group.com