Welcome to today’s episode where we’re going to look at the strategies behind enhancing customer e-commerce engagement while streamlining business operations with Dani Jurado, Executive Vice President of North America at VTEX, a digital commerce platform.
About Dani Jurado
Daniela Jurado is currently VTEX’s Executive Vice President of North America. Throughout her digital career at VTEX, she has worked directly with brands such as Adidas, Whirlpool, Miriade, OBI, and others, accumulating experience in different verticals such as fashion, DIY, electronics, home appliances, etc, and in three different regions: Latin America, EMEA where performed as the GM for 3 years, and North America. Daniela has a specialization in Business Management and Internationalization from the FIA Business School in Brazil, mentors other women who seek insertion in the technology area through the Women in Tech program, and is also a guest lecturer for MBA formation programs for some top-level US universities, such as Northeastern University and the University of Louisville.
Resources
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Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
Today, we’re going to look at the strategies behind enhancing customer e-commerce engagement while streamlining business operations with Dani Jurado, Executive Vice President of North America at Vitex, a digital commerce platform known by being the complete and composable platform. Dani, welcome to the show.
Daniela Jurado: Thank you very much for having me here. It’s a honor. I’m very, very excited.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this. And, you know, before we dive in, why don’t you get why don’t we get started with you giving a little background on yourself and your role at VTechs. And, you know, just how it gives you some perspective on customer engagement and business efficiency.
Daniela Jurado: Yeah, absolutely, Greg. So, as you said, I’m the EVP for North America, which basically means I cover everything related to growth in the organization and in the region of North America. So basically, if I have to say it in a few words, sales, marketing, go-to-market strategy, that’s most of my job in VTechs. And covering the second part of your question, basically my position today gives me the chance to talk to all of the customers that we get in VTechs. And I’m not like exaggerating, actually all of them. I have the chance to understand why companies like brands, retailers, manufacturers are looking for an eco-platform or are looking to modernize the platform that they already have in place. And as you said in your question, this is completely connected to efficiency. I think that you know better than me, we’re in a world where the cost of money is not the same as before, cost of people is not the same as before. So I can tell you for sure, 100 of the prospects that are coming to us, the main reason or one of the top three reasons they’re looking for a new platform is cost. They really need to decrease the total cost of ownership and decrease the cost of technology that they have.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, great, great. Well, yeah, and I definitely appreciate the the value of having those conversations and, and being able to have, you know, so many, so many of those conversations, definitely. So yeah, let’s let’s dive in here. We’re going to talk about a few things, but want to start with talking about prioritizing business efficiency and ROI while balancing that and while growing customer loyalty. So Let’s start with, when you’re focusing on streamlining maintenance, optimizing efficiency within operations, how should business leaders look at and possibly rethink their e-commerce approach?
Daniela Jurado: So that’s a very good question because as I was mentioning before, because of the cost of money and everything else, I think that most of the companies have come to the conclusion that technology cannot be or it cannot consume like more than around 6% of your revenue. And that’s already a lot, right? When we’re talking about only online. And the thing is, until today, we still see many companies that are using legacy systems or that developed their own platforms a couple of years ago or many years ago, And today they understand, again, the cost of that inside the corporation itself. So I think there is a huge calling today to the leaders itself to take a look at the cost internally. First of all, it’s very hard to do that, right? Because when you have an internal solution, it’s very hard to understand how much you’re spending. Usually you have like transversal areas. So you have like an IT team that works not only for e-com, but also works for different areas. So it’s something very hard to do. But definitely the thing is, and the point is, there is a huge cost in technology today, especially those companies that have, again, internal systems or legacy systems. So there is a huge call on profitability. I think that we’re seeing this, it’s been a couple of years already. It’s not only increasing revenue, but it’s also increasing margin, it’s increasing profitability. That’s what’s going to make the difference. And there is something very interesting, but this right now was reading a paper from Andy Gore, the same one that does the B2B paradigm. And he was saying like most of the customers today are really focused on trying to increase their revenue from existing customers instead of just trying to get new customers. Because again, the cost of trying to get new customers is just crazily expensive. So there is no way to focus on that again. And also, Companies are being very, very pressured to increase the short-term results, especially companies that have private equity behind. You really need to start showing results in the short-term. Before, what we were seeing is you had five years planning, right? You have five years to show them a little bit of ROI. Today, that’s not a possibility anymore. We are definitely living in a different world in which, again, short-term results, profitability, that should be the focus. The other thing that I was going to mention, Greg, in something that you asked me is like maintenance, right? And I think this is a key thing. Companies came to the conclusion that the most expensive thing and the hardest thing to do is not to build, it’s to maintain. Especially when you have internal solutions and when you kind of depend upon developers. There is a lot of turnover in developers. And every time that developer leaves, you get a new one that wants to build from scratch because they always think they’re going to do better than the one before, which can be, which can be right. But at the same, it’s like you’re entering this endless cycle of technology coding that doesn’t really allow you to modernize and to bring innovation. So that’s the other kind of call out that I would make to these retailer leaders and these e-commerce leaders.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, there’s, as you just said, I mean, there’s so much revenue pressure and, you know, whether it’s short term, whether it’s growing, you know, how they’re growing, whether it’s existing new customers and all that. At the same time, there’s, you know, there’s the old saying, the customer’s always right, or, you know, something like that. And, you know, we could argue whether that’s actually true or not. But more importantly, I think it’s, you know, brands have to balance this idea of, you know, customer satisfaction and loyalty with what you’ve been talking about as well, which is this operational efficiency, total cost of ownership. So, you know, what’s the what’s the mindset for a brand to have? I mean, you, you can’t really have it all, you can have some of each, but you know, how should businesses think about balancing this?
Daniela Jurado: I don’t think these are things that go necessarily once against the other, you know? I think that’s the main thing. Again, the message would be how can you increase loyalty, how can you increase customer satisfaction without creating a huge gap in your P&L, without bringing a huge cost right now that you cannot sustain in terms of capex, for example. And there are many ways to do this, and I’m just going to give you a couple of examples that are coming to my mind. The first one, I just had the chance to do a presentation for an MBA group of students that came from the Vienna University to the BTEC soft field two days ago. And I was telling them how this idea of the concierge commerce, have you heard about that, Greg? Probably you have.
Greg Kihlstrom: For those listening, why don’t you explain a little bit what that is?
Daniela Jurado: Absolutely. So this idea of concierge commerce, where you have the physical world more connected to the online world through the figure of the sales associate, and I’m going to explain it better. Basically, you have all the sales associates in your physical stores or in your showrooms or whatever they’re selling, but these people can also be key pieces for the online operation. So what I was explaining to these students is how you can use the sales reps to help and serve clients that are navigating online and that eventually want to talk to someone. And they don’t want to go into a chat. They don’t want to go into a customer service. They’re navigating the website, and they would like to have the chance to, in the same moment that they have a question, they can get some help, real help and life help. That’s the concierge. So VTechs developed, in a very innovative way, a solution or a feature that we call the personal shopper or the commerce concierge. But basically, once you’re navigating in the website, you can press one button. The sales rep or the sales associate that is in the physical store will get an alert, saying basically someone needs or wants to talk to you. And they can just join a call live with camera, where the sales associate can show the product, can explain whatever the client is looking for, and can, of course, maximize the chances to convert to actually the customer placed that order. And the reason why I’m mentioning this is because when I was explaining this to the students, they were saying like, OK, but now you’re telling me you have to hire a lot of people to do that. So that’s a huge cost. And I said, no, that’s the point. You already have your sales associates that are already in the physical store. And probably there are some times in the day that you don’t have anyone in the store. So, there are some times that you can just get the same people, use the same people to do that, and to create this kind of exclusive experience, exclusive support, one-on-one support, and again, just help maximize the chances of converting. And by the way, you can tag that person, you can still pay commission to that sales rep or sales associate for helping convert that process. So that’s just one idea, you know, and there is no cost on that. There’s no additional cost. The feature for Vitex is a native feature for our customers, any kind of sales associate that they already have. The product is already in the store, so why not just try something like that? So this is just one example that I wanted to give to you that, again, keeps the focus on operational efficiency and at the same time on customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s so interesting to, yeah, to be able to use existing employees that are already trained already active, just not necessarily, you know, utilized at that moment and stuff. That’s, that’s really interesting. You know, another thing that comes up a lot these days, you know, it’s hard to escape the topic of AI. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna bring it up here. Where do you see, you know, the role of AI-based tools helping out here as well. You mentioned a great example of using real-life people to solve some of these problems, but what’s working today with AI? What maybe, amongst all the hype and all, what maybe needs a little more maturity before it’s rolled out?
Daniela Jurado: Yeah, well, it’s a trend, right? And I really trust in the power of AI. I think there are some areas where it’s still like an experimental, let’s say, phase, and we still need some time to actually, again, get data and get ROI on this. But I definitely think like, and I’m going to speak first on the case of BTECs and like software, and then I’ll go more to the customer side. But from a BTEC perspective, where we see the value of AI is, for example, search. So that’s already something we’re using for a couple of years. So having some artificial intelligence on the synonyms, for example, that you can apply to a word while the client is looking for something in the website. The other area where we’re investing in AI is returns. There is some very, very nice app that we developed that basically allows you to kind of check the picture that the client is sending for the return with the real product that they bought. So basically just to minimize the chance of fraud. And that’s made through AI. And lastly, we just announced a couple of weeks ago, like a huge partnership with a Poland company that is called Sennheiser, that is one of the best AI basically modeling companies. And the main objective of BTECs at least is to apply all these AI on the infrastructure level. So it’s more for us to kind of, again, get efficiency in terms of infrastructure, how we use the infrastructure, where do we need more infrastructure, and when do we need more infrastructure, scalability, and so on. At the end, this generates a benefit like immediately on our customers itself, so on the retailers and the brands that are using VTX. So that’s from a software perspective. Now from a more like retailer or brand perspective, I think we have many examples, right? Like one example is inventory, like inventory management, inventory tracking, inventory optimization. I know there are brands such as American Eagle, for example, that have been using these for a couple of years already, actually. Like most of us think this is a 2024 thing and it’s not, right? Like it is actually coming up a couple of years ago. It’s just, it’s just this matter of the wave. You know, there’s always a wave. In the same way we had a wave on SaaS a couple of years ago, now we’re having the AI wave. So yeah, American Eagle, some other retailers are using this for inventory tracking, basically to be able to keep leaner stocks. And this is all at the end related to cost. No one wants to have huge levels of stock because of the cost that generates for you as a company just to keep the products there. So that’s one very cool example of application of AI. And just to finish this, by the way, I recently heard and read a report from McKinsey where they were saying by 2025, 80% of the retail executives will be using AI somehow. So definitely something that is going to happen whether we like it or not.
Greg Kihlstrom: So I want to switch gears a little bit here and talk about something else, and that’s managing diverse retail models. So integrating B2B, B2C, marketplace capabilities, you know, all of this stuff for those relatively new to retail, you know, it can seem a little bit daunting, but how can doing all of these help businesses rapidly adapt to shifts in the retail market?
Daniela Jurado: Yeah, so I think, first of all, it’s not like all brands need to have it all, right? I think that’s the first point. It’s understanding where, for example, the marketplace model makes sense to you. That’s a very particular model. And we were talking about waves before. We’re also seeing a wave about marketplace, which doesn’t necessarily mean this is going to be successful for all the ones that are trying the marketplace, right? That’s, that’s kind of the main point. But I think the marketplace model specifically, gives you a lot of value in the way that helps you increase your portfolio, your catalog, without having the cost of manufacturing products, of shipping products, of stocking products, because at the end you’re just getting the products from someone else. And what I think that a platform like Vitex can really add on this, is the fact that you can become a marketplace very, very fast in terms of features itself. Of course, you need the business side and you need the products and you need the agreements with the centers and so on. But from a platform and software perspective, it’s just one feature already natively connected to the B2C. So this is the reason why many of our customers that start as B2C, they are already marketplaces, which means they have at least one product that they don’t manufacture. they don’t produce and they don’t ship. And it’s coming from someone else that can be an external brand, that can be a drop shipper or whatever. So I think at the end, the message is you really need to be prepared to switch whenever you need it. And the other reason is talking about B2B and B2C, we hear more and more B2B businesses telling us like B2B needs to be much more similar to B2C than ever before. Yeah. Which kind of brings this idea that you cannot think on separate products. You cannot think on separate softwares to manage B2C and B2B. It should be easier than that. It should give you the possibility to, again, change if you need to from one to the other in an easy way and in a very cheap way as well. And I’ll give you just a last example to finish on this, but we recently closed a client on the home improvements kind of vertical. And it was very kind of funny because we ran a process, a sales process for like six months, completely focused on B2C. And the last one was like, okay, we just presented the project to our private equity fund and now we’re going for B2B. And I was like, what? And they were like, yeah, because you know what? We don’t have a lot of room to grow in the B2C. That’s what the whole world is experiencing right now. So the private equity is putting some pressure on us and showing long-hanging fruit. So Let’s do B2B. That’s something we don’t have right now. We only do it offline. So let’s go for B2B. And again, like from a software perspective, we were ready because the platform came to B2C or B2B natively and from the same kind of product. So that’s one example I wanted to share with you, Greg.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. So from the brand perspective, I mean, definitely it sounds like having the flexibility is key. And as you said, starting with the mindset of, okay, we’re a B2C company or something like that is not necessarily the right way to start either. What should an organization, how should they start? If it’s not necessarily kind of pigeonholing themselves into a specific B2B, B2C marketplace, whatever that may be, what should they start like, what kind of strategies or ideas should they should they be thinking of first?
Daniela Jurado: So I really feel like it’s, it’s taken into consideration what makes sense to you right into your business. And I’ll talk more about the marketplace because I think that’s the more tricky one, like usually b2c, b2b, it’s easier to know, you already do it offline, but the marketplace usually like a new channel. And the way for you to track if you really have the let’s say, of the capabilities to become a marketplace, I would say are like two or three. The first one is search. If you’re noticing in your website, and again, this can be B2C or B2B, that your clients are looking for something constantly and they don’t find it because you don’t sell this, that’s the first kind of trigger, you know, like understanding, okay, if my clients are looking for something, I don’t produce that, I don’t manufacture it, but there is a demand, maybe I have an opportunity here to bring those products actually and sell them. And again, the point here is you don’t need to manufacture that. It’s not like you need to create a new line of production and start actually making those products. You can just, again, do business with someone else and plant those products and get a commission on those orders. So that’s the first factor. The second one is traffic. You really need to get traffic. You really need to be able to sell your marketplace to the brands. Why would a brand want to separate or allocate some inventory to your marketplace? What is it that you need to offer in exchange? And that’s basically traffic. And to give you an example, we have Hearst as a client in the US. And what they’re doing today is transforming the magazines into marketplaces. And they have a huge asset to do that, traffic. All the traffic comes from the magazine itself, from people that subscribe to those magazines. So that’s the best thing they can sell to brands such as GNC, Nike, or whoever, to basically plug their products into their marketplace. And the third one is branding, right? You really need to feel like you’re connected to a marketplace because of the brand. There must be a niche, for example, or something that connects you to that marketplace. It’s not like if you sell home improvement, you’re going to want to sell your products in a fashion marketplace or something like that. So a little bit of coherence on that. So yeah, that’s what I would say on the marketplace model itself.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, yeah, and I mean, that’s that seems so definitely there needs to be traffic. And you one thing you touched on that I want to talk about a little bit more is just that idea of, you know, I think consumers are very used to e commerce at this point, they they’re kind of a, they see it all the time. But to drive that loyalty and drive that brand experience. It’s got to feel like the brand. You mentioned the Hearst example a little bit. Can you talk a little bit more about just, you know, what do operators need to take into account to really make a great experience that people want to come back to and not just feel like it’s commoditized?
Daniela Jurado: Yeah, I feel like the support, that’s something people are really expecting to have some added value in the support. And again, going back to what I mentioned, the Concierge is one feature that can help you on that. I think people just don’t want to open a ticket, you know, and wait a couple of days to get an answer or call someone and being on hold for a couple of minutes with some music in the background, talking to someone that has no idea about the product that you bought, right? So I think support definitely is still a differentiator. And then I think that policies, like returns and so on, like people are really, we kind of got used to these, you know, us, and I’m talking right now as a customer, we got used to just being well served. Yeah. So brands, it’s very tough for brands, because they need to serve customers. But there are also a lot of costs behind this, like getting a return for free. And then, um, You know, like a refund in one day or you want the refund today, so I have to figure out how to do it. So it’s a lot of things, but I would say definitely support needs to be the first one. And the second one is content. People are more and more looking for content. If you take a look at most of the websites today in the search itself, You don’t only index catalogs, you also index content, because people are looking to understand reviews, to understand what are the people doing with, what are people doing with one product specifically, how they are using it, what are the many usages that a product can have. So I think content and support are definitely two of the things that I would focus on this.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, great. Well, Dani, thanks so much for joining today. One more question before we wrap up here, just to talk about you know, some future trends and what you’re seeing. Looking forward, you know, what trends are you seeing that are shaping retail and e-commerce? And, you know, what are we going to be seeing in the near future?
Daniela Jurado: I wish we had like 10 minutes just to talk about it. Right, right. I know that it is 10 minutes, sorry. I think the first one is definitely conversational commerce. I think we have a great example in front of us that is Asia and China. And again, as I said with AI, I think whether we like it or not, that something is going to come as well here. So having like WhatsApp, SMS in the U.S. that is stronger than WhatsApp itself, running the e-comm itself, I think that’s one thing. There is this possibility of no browser, right? Like we really talk about this, like probably in the future, and that’s not a very far future, people won’t be browsing anymore. People will be using just voice and again, conversational commerce to buy. I would say the other thing is That’s a kind of question mark because of all these kind of security alerts and warnings that people are kind of raising around us. But definitely live shopping. I think definitely live shopping is going to be, it’s already a reality again in China, Latin America. We have many clients doing live shopping in Latin America and just a few starting to do it in the US. So I think that definitely will be a trend. And lastly, sustainability. I don’t know if you have heard about this new term, re-commerce. It’s all about like recycling, repairing, reselling. So I think there is a huge opportunity as well for brands that want to invest on sustainability products.
