The document discusses the new retail reality where retailers must focus on providing seamless commerce experiences for customers across all channels. It highlights the story of Rural King, which adapted to this new reality by creating a commerce hub team, migrating to new commerce technologies from Magento, and addressing key challenges like operational weaknesses and managing large amounts of customer data. The main lessons discussed are bringing all departments together focused on the customer experience, preparing for changes through training, taking time to process customer data properly, and decoupling large projects into smaller changes.

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Straight Talk Sessions

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It’s Just Commerce:
How One Retailer is Addressing
the New Retail Reality

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CEO, Creatuity Corp
@JoshuaSWarren / @Creatuity
Joshua Warren

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It’s Just Commerce!

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Why are you at the Internet Retailer Conference?
• To chat with some of the 600+ vendors
• Digital commerce
• eCommerce
• Voice commerce
• Personalized commerce

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Why are you at the Internet Retailer Conference?
• Mobile commerce
• Multichannel commerce
• Omnichannel commerce
• International commerce
• AR/VR commerce

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Why are you at the Internet Retailer Conference?
• It’s all a bit overwhelming…

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In the Words of Bob Newhart…

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In the Words of Bob Newhart…
STOP IT!

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It’s Just Commerce
• Meet the new retail reality – it’s all just commerce.

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The New Retail Reality

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Times Have Changed
• Consumers don’t think in terms of “online shopping” or “ecommerce”
or “brick and mortar” any longer – it’s just commerce
• The retailers that succeed are the retailers that make the right
product available to the right consumer, at the right price and the
right time.
• We are moving beyond ‘omnichannel’ to a world where the channel
disappears and becomes irrelevant

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Ignore These Changes At Your Own Peril
• ‘Retailgeddon’ – overhyped, but we have seen a number of major
retailers fail due to failing to adapt
• Most retailers aren’t folding – they’re just sliding into mediocrity
• Consumers and employees are drawn to exciting, growing brands,
not those that are just barely keeping the lights on

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Surviving The New Retail Reality
• Stop thinking in terms of channels or even ‘omnichannel’
• Fire your Director of Ecommerce*
• Make peace between your teams – customer service, technology,
stores and web

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Thriving in The New Retail Reality
• Build a cross-functional team that covers key leaders in fulfillment,
product data, store operations, customer service, marketing, web
• This team becomes the commerce hub that leads all consumer-
impacting decisions
• Your commerce hub educates and serves all of the other
departments
• Job #1 for this hub – get your technology in order

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The Rural King Story

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Rural King’s History
• Founded by two farmers in Mattoon, Illinois in 1960 to serve the
rural customer
• Currently at 110 stores across 13 states and growing
• Over $1 billion in sales
• 8,000 associates

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Rural King’s History
• RuralKing.com was launched many years ago by two associates
who saw a need to better serve the rural customer
• Used Magento Enterprise v1 for over six years
• Worked with Creatuity for three years to improve the customer
experience, which led to a major new commerce technology
initiative

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Rural King’s Goals
• Laser-focus on serving the rural customer through commerce and
commerce technologies
• Targeting 250 store locations, 15,000 associates and being the
employer of choice in each community

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Rural King’s Challenges
• Inventory can come from hundreds of sources
• Order can be shipped from a store, from a vendor or from a Rural
King warehouse
• Orders can be delivered to a customer’s home or to a store
• Constant aggressive growth means a relentless need for
improvement to continue to offer the best customer experience

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How We Addressed Those Challenges
• Migrated to Magento Commerce Cloud with a new design
• Launched Magento Order Management
• Launched Magento Business Intelligence
• Launched Akeneo PIM
• Deployed new solutions from ShipStation, Signifyd, ShipperHQ and
PayPal

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How’s Things?
• We did all this in one project of 9 months
• Implementation cost less than the average implementation cost for
competing enterprise-grade commerce platforms
• It’s been the most challenging, most interesting, and most
intellectually rewarding project of my career
• We’ve learned a few lessons of what to do – and what not to do – to
adapt to the new retail reality

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Lesson #1 – Weakest Link
• Bringing all of your departments together with a focus on delivering
a delightful commerce experience will quickly and painfully show the
weakest links in your organization
• Teams no longer work in isolation, so small problems that an
individual team used to just work around can quickly become a
major distraction for your commerce team
• Identify the weakest areas in your operations and resolve those
before moving forward

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Lesson #1 – Resolving Operational Weaknesses
• Do you have enough people?
• Do you have the right people?
• Are your people motivated and incentivized towards a common
goal?
• Are you solving the right problem? Sometimes the solution to a
weakness is to openly acknowledge it and admit it’s not a priority to
solve

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Lesson #2 – Change Management & Training
• The new retail reality is all about change. This isn’t a one time
change you make, it’s about orienting your company around
constant change.
• Change is scary. Unexpected change without proper training is
doubly so.
• Take the time to prepare your entire company for the upcoming
changes. It’s scary and it’s expensive, but it’s worthwhile.

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Lesson #2 – Change Management & Training
• A key team member on your commerce hub should be your head of
training.
• Train before launching. Use initial training to uncover which changes
different teams weren’t expecting.
• Launch internally first, and require your teams to use and
understand the new systems before launching to the public.
• Consider successful training just as critical to determining your
launch readiness as successful user acceptance testing

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Lesson #3 – All About Data
• The amount of data is overwhelming
• Design systems and processes that can not only cope with the
volume of data, but make it easy to utilize the data to drive growth
• 100,000 SKUs * 500 inventory sources = 50 million inventory
records
• That data can either overwhelm your systems and your analysts or it
can power better purchasing decisions than ever before

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Lesson #3 – All About Data
• Remember you’re merging data from so many different channels
and sources to provide an all-around view of the customer and your
commerce operations. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.
• This will take time – double your estimates for how long it will take to
physically load all of the data into your new systems and to process
it properly

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Lesson #4 – Decouple Large Projects
• Changing one piece of your technology stack (i.e., your OMS)
means re-integrating it with all the other pieces of your tech stack
• When changing multiple pieces, it can seem faster and less
expensive to change everything at once to reduce rework
• This is often only true on paper
• Changing multiple systems at once increases risk, uncertainty,
change management and training time – often exponentially

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Lesson #4 – Decouple Large Projects
• Build a culture of constant change, where training and change
management become second nature
• Start with the smallest change first
• Use the lessons from this change to then change out the next
system
• Don’t stop until everything is completed

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Lesson #5 – It’s All About the Customer
• The one shining beacon throughout the entire Rural King project has
been the customer
• Loyal customers that see that you’re constantly striving to provide a
better commerce experience can be surprisingly resilient and patient
• Make all of your decisions, from platform and technology partner
decisions to policy decisions through the lens of what provides the
best commerce experience for your customer

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Lesson #5 – It’s All About the Customer
• Keep your commerce hub focused on the customer
• This customer-centered focus extends beyond the traditional areas
like user experience and should be a core part of all policies. Not
just the website.
• Communicate about upcoming changes to the commerce
experience with your customers
• Your customers can be the best source of data and feedback as you
improve the commerce experience

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Your Story

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How Will You Thrive in the New Retail Reality?
• Each successful retailer has something unique to offer their
customers
• What do you have to offer?
• How can you improve the commerce experience to delight your
customers and keep them coming back?
• What outdated channel-specific or channel-related thinking do you
need to disrupt in your organization?

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Right Now – Stop It!
• Stop thinking in terms of online and offline/brick and mortar sales.
It’s just commerce.
• Stop thinking of improvements as ecommerce expenditures or store
expenses
• Even if you can’t create change immediately in your organization,
change your own thinking to think of everything your company does
as one unified commerce interaction with your customers

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At IRCE
• Don’t chase the latest and greatest technical solutions just because
they are the latest and greatest
• Ask each vendor – how does your solution help me delight my
customers? How does it help me provide a commerce experience
when, where and how our customers want it?
• Find agile solutions. The new retail reality is constant change. Don’t
get tied down to a system, platform or integration that resists or
delays change. Find partners that are also oriented towards change.

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Throughout 2018
• Find any place your organization is currently thinking “stores” versus
“web” or other channels – those are key areas for improvement
• Brainstorm unique ways to break down those distinctions and use
data from different departments to create new experiences for your
customers
• Ensure you have the right technology to enable you to move quickly
• Ensure you have the right team and the right way of thinking within
your organization

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Every Single Day
• Don’t ever forget that it’s just commerce
• Every day, build a better commerce experience for your customer
• That’s how you thrive in the new retail reality.

39. © 2018 Magento, Inc.
Questions?
• Keep in touch with questions or updates on how your business is
thriving in the new retail reality.
• @JoshuaSWarren on Twitter
• 214-810-5005
• IRCE Booth 862