Omni-Channel Part 2: Fulfillment

Once your customer has made a decision to purchase, she will expect the fulfillment process to be simple. She will expect flexibility with how and where she can purchase her items. She will also expect fast delivery, and straightforward return/exchange options. The days of forgiveness for slow or ineffective service have passed. Through advanced order fulfillment algorithms, you know how much product is in stock, at which warehouses, and how to ship it to the customer as quickly as possible. You know that there are no excuses for not fulfilling orders quickly—and so does your customer. Your customer expect to be able to:

• Buy online and pick up in the store.
• Try it on in the store and get it delivered at home (in a different size or color than was in stock at the store).
• Order on a mobile device and be able to choose among shipping options.
• Be able to track the shipping progress of her online orders.
• Return merchandise to a store, even if purchased in a different location or online.

Once you’ve become your consumer’s “best friend,” don’t mess up that new friendship by not fulfilling her order quickly. In the past, retailers would optimize for profitability. In today’s competitive landscape—fueled by the consumer’s demand for quick delivery—the game is all about the speed with which you get your product into your customer’s hands. In addition to quick delivery, the customer wants to know where their order is every step of the way before it arrives. Retailers that nail order fulfillment, provide visibility into the shipping process, and ensure speedy delivery will win this game, hands down. For this reason, both pure play e-commerce retailers and multi-channel retailers need to implement a robust supply chain system that is compatible with the legacy systems already in place. Features of a technologically advanced supply chain management system include the following:

• Vendor Management: Automated processes for vendor onboarding, contract management, product negotiations, defining compliance requirements and facilitating chargebacks.
• Content Management: Ability to create product SKUs, enter cost, and upload product descriptions, graphics, and other attributes.
• Inventory Management: Support for real-time inventory uploads, allocation across channels, and multi-sourcing capabilities.
• Order Lifecycle Management: Allows retail partners to upload and update inventory and manage orders, returns, and cancellations.
• Event Tracking: Provides full visibility to both the retailer and the customer of tracking information associated with an order.

Conclusion

The game has changed. In order to survive, you must implement technology that 1) optimizes the shopping experience and 2) delivers efficient, speedy fulfillment to your consumer. Consumers have never been more demanding or more powerful, but retailers who invest NOW in creating an omni-channel strategy will find themselves one step ahead. Even as new channels emerge and consumer demands grow, retailers who use technology wisely to continually improve will facilitate higher conversion rates, increase revenue, and improve margins in this strange new world.

Omni-Channel Part 1: Shopping

Remember checking your mailbox and finding some advertisement? Maybe even for an open house the following weekend in your community. You may think , “That looks like a place I would love?” That weekend, you would head over, meet some people, enjoy the open house, and the cycle would be over until that business reached out again via mail, or you decided you would like to try their Steak and Salad again, because it was so tantalizing. In the recent past, this was one channel of only a handful of channels consumers and retailers could interact—direct mail, TV/Radio broadcasts, and call centers among them. The communication was mostly one-way, from the business to the consumer. Things have drastically changed, don’t you agree?

This evolution includes e-commerce, social media, and smart devices, which means massive change in consumer behavior, and this is all during he past decade. The average 21^st century consumer can now access any brand from more than a dozen different channels—and they can talk back.

This new technology has made it difficult for retailers to keep up with the quickly expanding list of consumer demands, and the race is on to leverage technology to their advantage. Retailers have grappled for decades with multi-channel and cross-channel strategies.

Today, these approaches come together in what’s called the “omni-channel” strategy:

One consumer + One retailer = One set of consistent experiences.

The modern consumer expects a consistent experience from your brand, regardless of the channel. That means that you will not only recognize her when she shops with you, but will also provide the same inventory, promotions, and discounts, regardless of how she engages.

Retailers must rise to meet her expectations by using technology wisely in two main areas: 1) on the front end through site optimization and personalization to enhance the shopping experience, and 2) on the back end through sophisticated supply chain management systems to optimize fulfillment.

Shopping

How can you, as a retailer, optimize your customer’s shopping experience to drive sales?

Try to think of your customer as a “segment of one”—view each consumer as a singular person with unique interests, tastes, and affinities. It is your job to leverage website development technology to deliver an optimized experience, designed around the consumer as an individual.

Features of a technologically advanced site optimization system include:

• Landing Page Optimization: Dynamically generated landing pages driven by the search terms (or banner ad) that led her to your web or mobile site.
• One-to-One Personalization: Personalized recommendations based on her browsing history, previous purchases, and other recorded behaviors to offer content that aligns with her interests.
• Location-based Targeting: Content and products delivered based on her location, such as country, region/state, city, zip code, IP address, ISP or other criteria.
• Site Search: Search capability integrated into web or mobile sites that allows her specify the type of product she is looking for (and various search criteria to help her focus; for instance, in searching for a skirt, searching by size, color, style, etc.).
• A/B and Multivariate Testing: Technology that enables testing to determine which digital asset (ad, promo, button, banner, etc.) or combination thereof yields the best results (e.g. conversions, click throughs, etc.).

You need to think of yourself as the consumer’s best friend. If she feels like you have taken the time to “get to know” her, she will want to spend more time with your company. This will result in higher conversion rates and ultimately improve customer retention.

Introducing... The Product Management Rockstar!

Constantly staying cutting edge is the only thing one of these dudes needs to focus on as they are running from one piece of the massive project puzzle to the next. From product development to message seeding, team management to strategy maintenance, corporate needs to front line execution. Today’s product managers need to possess a wide range of skills to be successful in a rapidly evolving technology landscape. And, it has been increasingly important for them to bridge the customer’s needs with the product that is being engineered, while defining the go-to-market strategy in a landscape that spans dozens of channels. Turning customer requirements into a product roadmap is not a revolutionary idea. Nevertheless, it’s hard to find individuals who can effectively communicate product value, quickly become a subject matter expert in the business, AND speak the language of engineers.

Why not reevaluate the job requirements of our product managers to cope with the pressures of a new world? Have one person who can master the full gamut of tasks from product inception to product delivery.

Introducing the Product Management Rockstar!

He’s overseeing the product’s developmental lifecycle while he’s seeding the market with compelling messages of the product’s arrival; he’s training and creating materials for sales teams; he’s approving ad copy and overseeing the PR, social media, and analyst relations strategies; he’s working with demand generation teams and generally making everything about that product, and its success, his top priority.

Combining the product manager and marketer removes friction from the product development, marketing, and sales cycle.

Years ago, start-ups had to hire one person to do both jobs out of necessity (budget constraints and all that), but it quickly became apparent that this new type of product manager thrived. This newfound efficiency allowed them to iterate quickly during the development cycle and launch products to the market with speed and agility.

Here is a list of things that Rockstar should be doing:

Technical Requirements

• Analyze market and customer needs
• Define product requirements
• Create user interface mock-ups
• Understand technical details around integrations with third-party systems
• Understand enough about technology, programming languages, databases, and system architecture to know why technologies are leveraged
• Work in lock-step with engineering as products are being built.

Marketing Requirements

• Analyze market needs and define value proposition and key positioning
• Create/write product collateral, white papers, presentations
• Work in lock-step with sales and provide sales tools and sales support
• Act as liaison to creative, press relations, analyst relations teams
• Help drive demand for products
• Work with events teams on content and provide support at trade shows

It will be vastly more efficient for technology companies to hire a few rock stars to fill their product management positions and staff assistants under them. Allow that one person to own strategy and development start-to-finish, and I guarantee you will see the impact on your bottom line. By removing friction from the equation, you’ll make the development, marketing, and management processes faster and get products to your consumers faster—products they’ll love.

Rejecting Mediocrity: The Pursuit of Excellence

What is mediocrity? It is the state of being ordinary or unremarkable. Among people it is to be “average;” in business it is to be “adequate.” It is what happens when one lives without expectations, perseverance, or passion.

You, however, are not willing to fade into the background, to stand quietly by while others take the spotlight. You want to be seen. That is why mediocrity will never be enough for you. Unfortunately, our society seems set up to encourage mediocrity; many parents unwittingly teach their kids to settle for being “good enough” to avoid the risks associated with trying too hard. It is difficult to get past this willingness to settle if you don’t encounter situations that will push you to change early enough in life. In today’s world, where mediocrity will always be a step backward, how do you stay ahead of the curve? Excellence is your only option. Being excellent means being different, thinking outside the box, and not being afraid to be called “crazy.” Here are my six tenants of excellence to move you out of the audience and into the spotlight.

Six Tenants of Excellence:

1. Approach Business with Love, Passion, and Humility

You legitimately love your business; your enchantment with it remains, despite knowing its flaws. You also have a passion for it—you want to spend your life doing it, and doing it well. Lastly, you are humble enough to recognize that the thing itself is more important than your personal contribution to it. You love it enough to “let it go”; this transforms it from a selfish pursuit to one meant to enhance the lives of others and indeed the craft itself. A humble business person sees challenges as mere hurdles to be conquered in pursuit of a higher goal.

2. Detail-Oriented

Your passion drives you to be uncompromising; successful people don’t settle for imperfection. “As Is” work just won’t cut it, even if it is easier, faster, and requires less of you. Excellence means that every diamond you cut is perfect—at least to you. Your reputation for uncompromising standards will catch their attention, and then your passion will convert them. The fusion of raw passion and perfect execution creates irresistible businesses.

3. Aren’t Afraid to Start Over

If you discovered a flaw in a house you were building for your children, you wouldn’t let it slide. If necessary, you would tear the entire structure down and ensure its perfection before trusting the lives of your children to it. You treat every idea, model, press release, and marketing strategy as if you are trusting your very life to it—because you are. Every aspect of your business is a reflection of your standards of excellence. That’s why flaws must be eradicated, not just improved—adding extra wings to a house with an unstable foundation would only cause it to cave in faster. You know how to start at the root of the problem. You habitually remove the imperfections in your business before they spread like a mold and compromise even your most brilliant ideas. Remember—people aren’t perfect, but businesses can be.

4. Stop, Listen, and Learn

There is no such thing as a “new” idea anymore. “Invention” is a thing of the past. Other minds can argue whether any invention has been entirely original since the wheel; every “new” idea since then has just been building on existing foundations. You know how to embrace the contributions of others. You value the contributions of others to your models and strategies. You don’t feel the need to feign originality just to appear brilliant. You are willing to sacrifice your pride for the sake of excellence in your business.

5. Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

At the same time, however, you recognize that your business is a reflection of YOU—your goals, desires, and drive. The contributions of others are valuable, but will never replace your passion and knowledge. You dismiss ideas that conflict with your gut; you don’t need them. You are under no obligation to accommodate the desires and input of those who have no stake in your business’s success or failure.

6. Learn to Love Discomfort

You’ve learned that comfort is the enemy of success. Endurance is only built through pain, courage through fear, strength through weakness. You are not in business for comfort—you are there because you have an uncontrollable passion for something and you want to see it grow into something greater. You can be comfortable on your weekends, and with your vacation time. But every hour you spend at work should be an hour of stretching, pushing, and ultimately demolishing your boundaries. And when you feel the discomfort start to pass, as you slowly begin to excel at what used to scare you, you know that’s not a good enough excuse to stop working. So you pat yourself on the back and plunge headfirst into something else that terrifies you.

You have your whole retirement to rest. NOW is the time to get shit done.

A Bit of Back Story

Wow, it’s 2014 already, and here I am writing my first blog post during my family vacation in Turks & Caicos (have to take advantage of this time as my wife and kids are all sleeping). I am finally kicking off this blog, after years of wanting to get it started (life gets busy, and this always seemed to fall off ‘the list’). As my father always told me, “be patient, things will come to you when the time is right.” So, it looks like the time has come, and the timing is just right. This blog will be like my public diary, where I will share the many ventures, adventures, mistakes, mistakes, and more mistakes (did I say mistakes?) that I have made (and learned from) in my short life. In addition, I will share how the various paths I’ve chosen have enabled me to meet some incredibly interesting people, who have helped shape who I am today. It is the collection of these life experiences that have given me the the tools to become an entrepreneur, which fuels my passion for everything I do and is a role that I truly love.

Here’s the rundown of who the heck I am:

• Born in Buga, small city located in the Valle del Cauca department of Colombia. This city is famous for its Basilica del Señor de los Milagros, which houses an image of Christ called el Señor de los Milagros ("the Lord of the Miracles"). • Migrated to the to US in 1984 at age seven • Grew up in San Fernando Valley in Southern California • Started my first business at age ten • Married with two boys, Camilo and Sebastian • Live in Salt Lake City, Utah • Run a VC firm, Zerimar Ventures • Love all kinds of music, including R&B, hip-hop, salsa, and flamenco • Fluent in both English and Spanish; pretend to know Italian and some French ;)

As you can see, I started my first business at age ten, so my entrepreneurial spirit is about twenty-six years old. You’ll see more about the different businesses I was involved in growing up and how these small ventures taught me some of my most valuable lessons in business and life: lessons that I would later validate as I met some amazing individuals, who shaped me into the person I am today.

There are many, many books, documentaries, articles, and blogs written by hundreds of successful business people sharing how they got to where they are. This blog is not one of those. I am still writing my story and have lessons to learn. I strongly believe that we all have something to share with the world and others can learn from my successes, failures, and bumps along the way.

With social media, it is easy to be well connected, and information can spread very rapidly through this channel. Somewhere in Latin America -- or anywhere else in the world for that matter -- there is a young buck that will hopefully read my posts, relate their current situation to mine, and feel motivated because they know they can do anything they set out to achieve. My hope is to deliver real, practical advice that can be digested in small quantities. Some of the books on achieving entrepreneurial success are simply too complex and time intensive to get through; I want to create something these young cats can relate to and apply to their lives.

My advice to any young, budding entrepreneur is to find an opportunity -- any opportunity -- and use it as a foundation to define and achieve success. Building a business can be a daunting task, but I truly believe anyone with love, passion, and humility can and will find a way to make it happen. It takes courage, and a lot of motivation to get going. Read the words, use this blog as a source of motivation as a new entrepreneur, and also find some practical advice for yourself, not matter your experience level.