Unpacking the Digital Shelf

Welcome to episode 2 of Profitability Month! Today we are taking a deep dive into the best practices to drive opportunistic innovation in the supply chain, as Dana Peirson, supply chain consultant at The Partnering Group, puts it. She and her colleague Jamie Dooley from the digital commerce practice at TPG joined forces on the podcast to outline some significant opportunities for realizing growth and profit through deep cross-team collaboration in supply chain optimization.

As we begin the second decade of the digital shelf, focus has shifted from ecommerce and digital as a side experiment, to being a front and center part of the overall business. That means we must drive the process towards efficiency, cost control, and profitability for it to be sustainable. That’s why we have made April Profitability for the podcast, and Lauren Livak and I kick it off with analysis and insights from Jordan Jewell, former IDC commerce analyst and now analyst in residence at commerce platform provider VTEX.

It’s our favorite time of the quarter when Andrea Leigh from the Allume Group joins us to recap the consumer and industry data that you need to know to sharpen your strategies. In Q1, it was all about the Liberated Consumer, and the imperative to drive profitability with retailers. Andrea brought all the data and insights for you to feast on.

Scroll, see, click: in a time when consumer search and conversion is driven by their thumb, images have become ever more critical to driving performance on the digital shelf. That requires moving image creation and selection from a subjective guess to a data-driven, scalable process. Jehan Hamedi, founder and CEO of image analytics provider Vizit, joined the podcast to share detailed case studies on how brands are using AI to drive substantial performance improvements at scale on their PDPs through analytics.

The first 10 years of the Digital Shelf was about standing a program up on the side, seeing what would come of it. Now we know - and it's the main growth driver of virtually every brand. So now, the way we operate it must mature to be a profitable, reliable, measurable part of the business. That is why Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer and Oskar Kaszubski, Chief Growth Officer at commerce education and change management consultancy firstmovr, revised their Sheared report to a new edition for 2023, entitled Going Corporate Commando in the Clash for Commerce. Get ready for some sage advice for moving yourself along the commerce maturity curve.

As digital commerce enters its maturity phase, simply because it must, figuring out what the opportunities are to optimize and streamline key processes is a critical part of your growth strategy. Mert Damlapinar, Principal, CPG Digital Commerce Acceleration, EPAM Systems, lives on the front lines with his clients who are on that maturity path, and he joined the podcast to share insights and wise counsel from those experiences.

For 8 years Cara Wood, Salsify’s head of Brand Journalism has surveyed consumers across a growing list of countries to identify the shifting trends of consumer behavior on the digital shelf. 2022 was a year of shift from pandemic to inflation and recessionary fears. The results of the latest survey are now in, and Cara joined the podcast to lay out the chief takeaways, and what steps brands might take to drive discovery, conversion and loyalty based on how consumers are shopping today.

Growing ecommerce at a global brand from an idea to scale is an adventure only for the brave and very smart. Colette Richards, Director of Alternative Sales and Distribution at Barcel USA, the snack division of Grupo Bimbo, is one such person. And we were lucky enough to have her on the podcast to describe her journey, lessons learned, and what she sees ahead for the digital shelf in 2023. (Hint: it includes a shadow P&L.)

Zack Rubin, Director of Ecommerce and Marketplace at premium kitchen appliance manufacturer Zephyr, has been on a 3 year journey to build out their digital strategy. With a broad array of responsibilities and a very small team, Zephyr has managed to make their digital shelves gleam and earn the premium that their products deserve. A super power Zack brings to his role is digital retailer experience, as a category manager at Wayfair. Zack joined the podcast to share insights from both sides of the digital shelf equation.

Now in its 6th year and spanning the entire globe, the latest Ecommerce Organizational Benchmark Report from Profitero has hit the digital streets, and it is chock-full of insights on best practices in organizational design, capabilities development, and retailer-brand joint business planning. Andrew Pearl, VP Industry Insights at Profitero, joined the podcast to lay out the learnings, and the next steps to take to put every pixel to work.