Podcasts about Gartner

Over the past year, we've seen more buzz develop around attack surface management. In fact, major analyst firms Forrester and Gartner recently released research about this topic. But what exactly is it? In this segment, join Mark St. John, LookingGlass's SVP of Product, to learn more about how to define your attack surface, how to manage it, and how it can help your organization improve its cybersecurity. This segment is sponsored by LookingGlass Cyber. Visit https://securityweekly.com/lookingglass to learn more about them!   As the push toward digital transformation continues, every organization is having to choose: Security or experience first? We are entering an era where Security and Identity professionals work together to eliminate tradeoffs and rapidly evolve from technical experts to experience artists. Using solutions that customize, code, and integrate for you while boosting security through MFA, passwordless logins, and risk modernizes your identity experience. This segment is sponsored by Ping. Visit https://securityweekly.com/ping to learn more about them!   Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw279

AMD Stock Price Down As PC Market Slows Down. Jose Najarro takes a look at two semiconductor stocks AMD Stock Price and Intel Stock Price are both down. Gartner research shows a huge slowdown in the PC market, which could be bad news for AMD Stock Price and INTC Stock Price*A portion of this video is sponsored by The Motley Fool. Visit https://fool.com/jose to get access to my special offer. The Motley Fool Stock Advisor returns are 319% as of 06/29/2022 and measured against the S&P 500 returns of 112% as of 06/29/2022. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. All investing involves a risk of loss. Individual investment results may vary, not all Motley Fool Stock Advisor picks have performed as well.I have a position in $NVDA $AMDNewsLetterhttps://www.fool.com/josenajarroDISCORD GROUP!! https://discord.gg/wbp2Z9STwitter: https://twitter.com/_JoseNajarroDISCLAIMER: I am not a financial advisor.  All content provided on this channel, and my other social media channels/videos/podcasts/posts, is for entertainment purposes only and reflects my personal opinions.  Please do your own research and talk with a financial advisor before making any investing decisions.

Two developers reflecting on Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in terms of Gartner's Hype Cycle--about getting enthused at the event and then reality settling in when the amount of work is realized. I reflect on the several trips I made in May and June in the same model. I'm not saying all I got was hype, but the trip from enthusiasm to realism is worth taking.

FOMO is dead. Are you ready to sell using Customer Value? Join us in the first of a two-part conversation with world-renowned sales expert Brent Adamson, the co-author of The Challenger Sale and a Gartner alum, as we discuss what it means to sell on Customer Value Creation and how to win over "rational buyers". Follow the Hosts on LinkedIn: Alastair Woolcock (CSO, Revenue.io) Howard Brown (CEO, Revenue.io) And our Special Guest: Brent Adamson (Global Head of Research & Communities, Ecosystems) Sponsored by: Revenue.io | Powering high-performing revenue teams with real-time guidance Explore the Revenue.io Podcast Universe: Sales Enablement Podcast Selling with Purpose Podcast RevOps Podcast

Do you think of yourself as a “choir leading business person?” I am going to guess that most of you don’t, and I’m going to suggest that maybe you should. There are aspects of leading any type of choral program that require business acumen in order to excel. This makes many of us bristle as … Continue reading "Episode 109: Doing the Business of Choir with Alex Gartner"

You've likely heard the phrase “enterprise value model,” but how many of us know exactly what it means — and how to use it to our organization's advantage? Especially in today's business environment, which is full of conflicting variables, discontinuity and disruption, we've discovered that traditional return-on-investment models fail to properly account for non-financial variables that are critical to value creation.   In this episode, Rita Sallam, a Distinguished VP Analyst and Gartner Fellow on the Data and Analytics team, and Donna Scott, a Distinguished VP Analyst in Gartner's Office of the CIO Research, join us to break down a new enterprise value equation that offers leaders a fresh way to view the decisions they make in terms of the impact those decisions deliver to various stakeholders and the value the organization realizes in return — not just in the here and now, but also so far as the long-term health of the business.   Dig Deeper   Download: 9 Rules for Demonstrating the Business Value of IT https://gtnr.it/3QESuZR   Download: 3 Strategic Actions for Success for Executives https://gtnr.it/3HdILnG   Read: Is Your Enterprise Value Model Undermining Your Ambitions? https://gtnr.it/3tOwP7G

Two things to know today Gartner's four predictions for cybersecurity AND Roe v Wade's impact on IT services   Do you want to get the show on your podcast app or the written versions of the stories? Subscribe to the Business of Tech: https://www.businessof.tech/   Support the show on Patreon:  https://patreon.com/mspradio/   Want our stuff?  Cool Merch?  Wear “Why Do We Care?” - Visit https://mspradio.myspreadshop.com   Follow us on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspradionews/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mspradionews/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspradio/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28908079/  

This week on the podcast, we discuss two recent security reports, one on the topic of open source software and the other on "insecure by design" in the Operational Technology (OT) space. We go through the key findings from each report and what our thoughts are on their accuracy within the real world. We end the week by covering Gartner's 8 security prediction from their Security and Risk Management summit last week and what we think their likelihood of hitting are in the years to come.

Sachin Raje is Director, Strategy Realization Office, MRL Global Medical and Scientific Affairs at Merck. He is an expert in mentoring on Project Management, complex program management, setting up PMOs, and establishing and managing Strategy Realization Offices. He has deep sector-wide experience, with a solid record of delivering value to a number of companies in the Life Sciences, Financial Services, Insurance, Retail, and Manufacturing industries. In this episode, Sachin Raje discusses: “How to Lead a Strategy Realization Office in Life Sciences”. Show Notes Connect with Sachin on LinkedIn here *Bonus* Project Management Paradise is brought to you by Cora Systems. Learn why Cora has been named in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management by accessing a complimentary copy at corasystems.com/magicpmpp

On the Constellations Podcast, we'll discuss the growth of LEO and how it is supporting a void 5G was meant to fill. You will learn about the surprising ways having reliable connectivity, even if it is really low bandwidth, can bring high rewards. During this episode, Bill Ray, VP Analyst for Gartner Research and part of Gartner's emerging technologies and trends office, will discuss topics his company has been following within the satellite market.  Launch capacity has increased, not just in the United States, but globally and has brought with it value even in areas like sub-Saharan Africa.  Phased array antennas are complicated, yet are considered an inexpensive innovation critical to this market. Hear Bill explain how several companies are starting to invest in the vertical markets rather than satellites, concentrating on the services available such as data and data analytics.  Finally, a short discussion on asset tracking – a capability offering greater efficiencies for many businesses around the globe.

Fortinet es reconocida por Gartner como la número uno en cuestión de uso de centro de datos, empresas distribuidoras y Pymes, el mismo se basa en el uso de FortiGate como la mejor solución en uso en la industria para cualquier borde a cualquier escala con visibilidad completa y protección contra amenazas.

This week, Adam and Andy talk about OMB procurement requirements changing due to increased cybersecurity defense, Gartner's thoughts on consolidated security platforms, and internal phishing campaigns. ------------------------------------------- Youtube Video Link: https://youtu.be/OZKS03pmk8M ------------------------------------------- Documentation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2022/03/07/omb-statement-on-enhancing-the-security-of-federally-procured-software/ https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-28F8N1LT&ct=211213&st=sb https://twitter.com/swiftonsecurity/status/1534762545524969473?s=21&t=zH3ZUwsZZVDH6ujtVtxTWw ------------------------------------------- Contact Us: Website: http://bluesecuritypod.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/bluesecuritypod Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bluesecpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BlueSecurityPodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluesecuritypodcast/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluesecpod Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/bluesecuritypod ------------------------------------------- Andy Jaw Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajawzero LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyjaw/ Email: andy@bluesecuritypod.com ------------------------------------------- Adam Brewer Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajbrewer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjbrewer/ Email: adam@bluesecuritypod.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/blue-security-podcast/message

Hyperautomation refers to the approach businesses can take to rapidly automate as many IT and business processes as possible.  Using RPA and low-code/no-code tools, the hyperautomation software market has exploded in the last few years as enterprises seek to streamline their internal processes - with Gartner expecting it to reach a value of $600 billion by the end of 2022. So just how is this automation philosophy gaining so much traction? And why do businesses need to care about it? In this episode of the https://em360tech.com/ (EM360) podcast, Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-harris-269bb7177/ (Matt Harris) speaks to https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-j-turner/ (Paul Turner), Automation Expert at https://em360tech.com/solution-providers/trayio (Tray.io), to discuss: The true definition of hyperautomation Shifting from a project mindset to a product mindset How to successfully implement hyperautomation

Was haben ein Arzt, ein Farmer und ein Richter gemeinsam?Richtig! - Decision Intelligence In unserer neuen Folge, haben wir euch dieses Thema etwas aufbereitet und Beispiele diskutiert. Hört gerne rein!

On today's episode, I'm talking with Rob Dickinson about APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Think of APIs as software tools that allow two applications to talk to each other. Rob has lots of experience working with APIs at several large technology companies. Even if you don't work with APIs, Rob will be discussing security issues that companies need to be aware of related to APIs. Rob will also share the story behind the idea for Resurface Labs, which he co-founded. There are many security threats facing companies today. Rob will explain the threats related to APIs and how to minimize those risks. “85% of worldwide traffic over the internet is through APIs according to Gartner.” – Rob Dickinson Today on the Tech Leader Talk podcast: - Why APIs are so important today- Security issues associated with APIs- How companies can prepare for coming API changes- APIs are changing your company boundaries- Tips for making important business decisions Connect with Rob Dickinson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robfromboulder/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/robfromboulder Website: https://resurface.io/ Thanks for listening! Be sure to get your free copy of Steve's latest book, Cracking the Patent Code, and discover his proven system for identifying and protecting your most valuable inventions. Get the book at https://stevesponseller.com/book.

William Glass is the co-founder & CEO of Ostrich, a financial fitness app that uses community and social accountability to help people achieve their financial goals. In addition, William is the host of the Silicon Alley Podcast which focuses on telling entrepreneurs' stories & learning from their experiences. His background is in software sales leading sales teams at Gartner and opening up a new vertical for an AI startup, Remesh. In 2014, Will was awarded a Fulbright scholarship through the U.S State Department where he taught English in rural Thailand for 14 months. Glass has his B.A. in International Relations from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. Will is originally from Alabama and now resides in Queens, New York. Contact William at the following links. https://linkedin.com/in/williampglass3 https://twitter.com/williampglass3 https://getostrich.com

In this episode of CISO Talks we discuss in depth about cybersecurity models. What are the challenges associated with the evolution threat landscape when designing your cybersecurity model? Market researchers, such as Gartner and Forrester are defining new models as Security Adaptive and Zero Trust. Should those options be considered to be implemented in every organization? Guest in this episode: Javier Diaz Evans - Chief Revenue Officer @ A3Sec https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-diaz-evans-2945272a/ Also available on: IGTV: www.instagram.com/instalepide SoundCloud: bit.ly/2MYHwxR Spotify: spoti.fi/2N0XGXR iTunes: apple.co/2N0sO9P Follow us on Social Media: LinkedIn - bit.ly/2FWHKoM Twitter - bit.ly/2FWNO0C Instagram - bit.ly/2FWMxXj Facebook - bit.ly/2FXb2Ue

  A new survey by consulting firm Gartner has found that the COVID-19 crisis has elevated people's values, driving them to find more purpose and meaning in their work and in their lives. As Americans reevaluate their relationships with work and their jobs, organizations will have to adjust to this new reality.   Dr. Jessica Grossmeier, PHD, MPH is an advisor, speaker, and the author of Reimagining Workplace Well-being: Fostering a Culture of Purpose, Connection, and Transcendence. She joined the podcast to discuss how the pandemic has shifted the way employees feel about work and life. *** Join GovExec Daily on Clubhouse! https://www.clubhouse.com/club/govexec-daily-group

It's book release time! That's right, you first heard about the book in Episode 74, then in the one-on-one interviews with collaborators in the book in Episodes 81, 82, 83, and 95, and then we shared our most recent soft launch of one of the book themes with a conference presentation replay in episode 90. But now, it's time to get your hands on it! The book is done, printed, and available! In this episode, co-authors and co-hosts, Dr. Emily Williams Burch and Alex Gartner talk everything about the book, specifically related to Advocacy & Collaboration in "The Business of Choir"Communicating value, building capacity, and measuring impact - the three major sections of the latest book released through GIA's Music Education series. In this episode, co-authors Alex Gartner and Emily Williams Burch explain the contents, how to use the resource, and relate it all back to the incredible power of advocacy and collaboration to keep our choral profession going strong.Check out the GIA website to get your copy: https://www.giamusic.com/store/resource/the-business-of-choir-book-g10713. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1aInLvSc6No Join us over at Patreon.com/MusicEdMatters for monthly meet-ups, monthly bonus episodes, special content and more!Support the companies that make The Music (ed) Matters Podcast possible: —Kaleidoscope Adventures - find your adventure today, kaleidoscopeadventures.com/.  Including the June 2023 Festival and PD Weekend in Myrtle Beach with Alex & Emmy and their choirs!— The Kinnison Choral Company - check out their quality resources - or get your tracks made today - at KinnisonChoralCo.com. **Show music originally written by Mr. Todd Monsell**Show photography provided by Dr. Dan Biggerstaff

According to our research, 76% of CIOs and 61% of CEOs believe that demand from machine customers will become significant in their industry by 2030. On average, these leaders predict that by that date, over 21% of their revenue will come from machine customers. This suggests a market shift twice as deep and twice as fast as the arrival of e-commerce has been.   In this episode, Senior Director Analyst Uma Challa and Director, Analyst Brian Weber, both of who sit in Gartner's customer service practice, join us to discuss the rapid rise of machine customers and how it will affect leaders across customer service, marketing, sales, data and analytics, IT, and more.   Dig Deeper   Download: The Future of Customer Service: 5 Emerging Trends To Watch https://gtnr.it/3zlyfKM   Watch: How the CMO Role is Changing to Be More Customer-Centric https://gtnr.it/38QZ5PS   Read: Are Machine Customers Better Than Human Customers? https://gtnr.it/394HGUb

Following record lows in 2021, how have marketing budgets recovered? Gartner's annual survey captures the state of marketing in 2022. With infographics. #marketing #2022budget This episode is also available as a multimedia blog post: https://evansonmarketing.com/2022/06/13/2022-marketing-budgets-back-on-the-upswing/

While addressing the 27th annual general meeting of Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Sons chairperson N Chandrasekaran recently warned of a “stagflationary impulse” in the backdrop of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, he said that TCS was well positioned to leverage the demand for digital solutions in the present environment and that the company was engaging in India and across the globe to tap opportunities.  Not everyone in the industry is so sanguine. In late May, Zoho Co-Founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu told a news channel that the prospect of a recession in Europe and the earnings misses by American retail giants like Target and Walmart should have Indian IT services firms worried. Vembu explained that since the IT industry was dependent on the US and European markets, it was very concerning to see recessionary winds. So, what is this exposure like? The US market contributes anywhere between 40 per cent to 78 per cent of the revenues earned by Indian IT companies. Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Tech Mahindra, which are the top five firms, have more than a 50 per cent exposure to it. On 19th May, JP Morgan downgraded the Indian IT sector to ‘underweight' as it believes that the sector's heydays are over. The report said that rising margin headwinds in the near-term and revenue headwinds in the medium-term due to a potential macro slowdown meant that the sector's earnings upgrade cycle was behind us. At the same time, Kotak Institutional Equities had suggested that the recent correction in the sector had been mostly driven by three factors, which were increase in interest rates, fears of recession in key client geographies, and the risk to margins. The Kotak Institutional Equities note had said that what was priced into stock was risk to margins, but what was not priced in was economic recession. The markets have also reacted. Indian IT stocks have seen a sharp correction in 2022, in part because of worries over the drawn out slowdown in IT spending in the US. In fact, the Nifty IT index has plunged around 25 per cent so far this year. In particular, May turned out to be bad for IT stocks.   Speaking to Business Standard, Omkar Tanksale, Senior Research Analyst, Axis Securities says Indian IT services don't have a problem on the revenue front due to the multi-year contracts they have signed. There has been a correction in the valuations of Indian IT firms. Correction in valuations is likely to continue with the falling markets unless there is stability in macro conditions. Investors should go for value investing instead of investing across the sector. He says, look at companies with higher revenue growth momentum, look at companies that are successful at execution, look at companies that are controlling the attrition rate and maintaining margins and look for stocks that are undervalued compared to peers) On their part, IT companies see the pipeline for digital transformation deals staying strong for several years. Note that these deals have been driving the order books since the Covid-19 pandemic began.  So, is the relatively strong 2022-23 growth guidance put forward by IT companies under threat now? DD Mishra, Sr Director Analyst, Gartner says Indian IT firms don't face US recession challenge in the short to medium term due to their pipeline being full. IT firms are not expressing significant concerns about a possible recession. He says, we need to keep a close watch on how things unfold. As of now we believe that a recession in the US would have a minimal impact on Indian IT firms. It will not significantly impact their guidance and forecast.  Gaurav Vasu, Founder & CEO, UnearthInsight says FY23 H1 will be robust and similar to what was seen last year. FY23 Q3 and Q4 might see some guidance revision by some players for the full year, and FY24 guidance will also see some revision at that time. He says, inflation-led wage-hike pr

Our guest on this week's episode is Jonathan Dawley, president and CEO of Kion North America, a leading manufacturer of forklifts and other material handling equipment. Dawley is also chair of this year's National Forklift Safety Day. Sponsored by the Industrial Truck Association (ITA), this is a day set aside each year to promote safe practices around forklift operations. ITA organization will be hosting a safety-focused program next Tuesday in Washington, D.C. that will also be live streamed. To register, check out this link. In addition, programs will be held at various forklift dealers nationwide. Dawley will talk about these initiatives for safety as well as how the industry is focusing around training and creating a culture of safety within warehouses, distribution center, and manufacturing facilities.Supply chains are getting more attention at the academic level, with many of North America's best universities offering outstanding programs in supply chain studies. Gartner's annual list of the Top 25 supply chain undergraduate programs is out. See who is tops the rankings and what makes them considered the best of the best. We have all seen the TV commercials hyping 5G technologies. They are supposed to be faster at transferring huge amounts of data. While they have benefits when it comes to the cell phones we all carry in our pockets, are there good applications for distribution operations? The answer is Yes, as shown in a demo that AT&T has conducted at a military warehouse on a naval base in San Diego. Find out what operations can be improved with 5G technologies. DC Velocity's sister publication CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly  offers a new podcast series called Supply Chain in the Fast Lane.  Co-produced with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, this series first focuses on an eight-part look at the State of Logistics. Go to your favorite podcast platform to subscribe.Articles and resources mentioned in this episode:KionIndustrial Truck AssociationUniversity of Arkansas tops list of best supply chain undergraduate programsUS Navy demonstrates smart warehouse based on 5G wireless techVisit DCVelocity.com for the latest news. Visit Supply Chain QuarterlyListen to Supply Chain Quarterly's Top 10 Supply Chain Threats podcastListen to CSCMP and Supply Chain Quarterly's Supply Chain in the Fast Lane podcastSend feedback about this podcast to podcast@dcvelocity.com.Podcast sponsored by: Rite-HiteOther linksAbout DC VELOCITYSubscribe to DC VELOCITYSign up for our FREE newslettersAdvertise with DC VELOCITYTop 10 Supply Chain Management Podcasts

SDxCentral 2-Minute Weekly Wrap Podcast for June 10, 2022 Plus, HPE claims victory over Cisco, and Arista launched new low-latency switches Gartner Crowns Amazon No. 1 Public Cloud As Microsoft, Google Gain Ground HPE Hit by Supply Chain, Takes Dig at Cisco Arista Lashes Latency From 7130 Lineup Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zach and Anthony recap Gartner conference findings, waning demand and host Dr. Dale and Zac Rogers who break down the current supply chain environment and the LMI.With more than 60 years of experience in logistics innovation, Dunavant is a family-owned business that has the knowledge to ensure global and domestic shipping practices are efficient and effective. Dunavant generates supply chain proficiency with outstanding, attentive, and expedient customer service. For more information, visit Dunavant.com.Follow Freightonomics on Apple PodcastsFollow Freightonomics on SpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

Zach and Anthony recap Gartner conference findings, waning demand and host Dr. Dale and Zac Rogers who break down the current supply chain environment and the LMI.Follow Freightonomics on Apple PodcastsFollow Freightonomics on SpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

So much of the focus of the analytics and vendor community today is on data. We have solutions for data visualization, warehousing, observability, cataloging, transformations, and more. But data is nothing without context. So why does metadata tend to draw the short straw? In this episode, Tim, Juan, and Sanjeev Mohan, former Gartner analyst and principal at SanjMo, explore how metadata acts as a proverbial travel guide for your data and analytics journey. This episode will also cover: Visions of a data catalog, the ordinary and profound Who needs lineage and why In the Magic Quadrant of summer foods, what goes in the leaders quadrant, and what's in niche?

In this episode, Tim, Juan, and Sanjeev Mohan, former Gartner analyst and principal at SanjMo, explore how metadata acts as a proverbial travel guide for your data and analytics journey. This Takeaway episode will feature the summary of the upcoming show.

Gartner defines business technologists as employees who report outside of IT departments (centralized or business unit IT) that create technology or analytics capabilities for internal or external business use. In the 2021 Gartner Reimagining Technology Work Survey, respondents indicated that, on average, business technologists make up 41% of their organization's workforce. About 80% of these users are citizen technologists who create technology output as part of (or in addition to) their full-time roles. Business technologists and other citizen personas play a key role in automation, application development, data science and many other roles. These personas are often referred to as citizen developers, citizen designers, citizen integrators, citizen data scientists and many other roles with the prefix “citizen.” When these non-IT users have access to intuitive, self-service tools, they are empowered to independently build solutions for their business unit.As low-code development technologies proliferate, more organizations are recognizing the value of empowering citizen technologists. These non-IT personas can independently use low-code and no-code technologies to improve business efficiency, efficacy and agility. Citizen technologists use a wide range of tools, and they need intuitive, flexible platforms to develop, automate and integrate their data, forms and workflows. In fact, citizen automation and development platforms (CADPs) have emerged as a new class of solutions that specifically target the needs of citizen technologists with an emphasis toward no-code builder experiences.Our host Dixie John is joined by our expert analyst, Jason Wong. Wong is a distinguished VP analyst on the Software Design and Development team helping CIOs, and IT, application and software engineering leaders. Wong's research focuses on enterprise strategies for “total experience,” low-code platforms, citizen development, mobile apps, progressive web apps and multiexperience development.

The global cybersecurity market size is forecast to grow to $345.4 billion by 2026 for obvious reasons … we're all online and so are the bad guys. Until now most people think of firewalls, passwords, biometrics (fingerprints & facial scans) and two-factor authentication when it comes to cybersecurity. And those are the dominant solutions today, the bad guys are winning the war right now when you consider the following: Cybercrime is expected to cost the world $6 trillion in 2021. By 2025, this figure will climb to $10.5 trillion Packet Labs PLURILOCK CYBERSECURITY USES YOUR KEYBOARD & MOUSE BEHAVIOR TO IDENTIFY YOUR MOVEMENTS VS THE BAD GUYS Plurilock brings an entirely different and exciting approach to cybersecurity - authenticating a person's identity using behavioral biometrics. What does that mean? Glad you asked. Behavioral biometric data is - for example - simply the way you type on your keyboard and move your mouse. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Plurilock creates an identity signature that is completely unique to you, like a digital key. Applying this to the actual but basic example of a keyboard, Plurilock's cyber security technology knows how you type on your keyboard and move your mouse. So EVEN if someone was able to physically get onto your laptop and start hacking away, Plurilock would recognize it in seconds and shut the intruder out. More than just lip service, here are some company highlights: 2021 Revenue ● 2021 revenue $36,624,610 vs. $479,329 for 2020 Q1-22 Revenue ● Revenue $6,953,052 vs $75,761 Q1-21 (+OVER 9,000%) CUSTOMER WINS Disclosed sales YTD from the likes of: o California state taxation o NASA o U.S. Air Force o U.S. Department of Commerce o U.S. Department of the Navy o California-Based Pension Fund o And many more AMAZON WORKSPACES INTEGRATION Release of DEFEND for Amazon WorkSpaces ● Virtual environments now able to be protected by Plurilock's cutting-edge behavioral biometrics technology ● This enhanced functionality supports Amazon WorkSpaces, providing continuous identity assurance using behavioral biometrics. The platform can terminate the virtual session if high-risk activity or potential credential compromise is detected, thereby eliminating the opportunity for an attacker to access sensitive information in the network or detonate a malicious payload. ● $PLUR and AWS hosted a live webinar titled, “4 Security Threats to Consider When Using Amazon WorkSpaces”on May 26 MAJOR 3RD PARTY VALIDATION VIA GARTNER REPORT INCLUSION With $USD 4.7 BILLION in 2021 revenue, Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, delivering technology-related insights to the world's biggest companies to help them make the right decisions. On May 19th Gartner announced that Plurilock Listed as Representative Vendor in 2022 Gartner® Innovation Insight for Biometric Authentication report. If you are looking for a great and fast-growing smallcap cybersecurity company, sit back, relax and watch this powerful interview with Plurilock CEO Ian L. Paterson

In this episode of Winning the Challenger Sale, Jen is joined by Brent Adamson, the Global Head of Research and Communities at Ecosystems and former Distinguished Vice President at Gartner. They discuss persuasive storytelling from the perspective of using emotional selling to start a conversation, pique interest, influence purchasing decisions, and build long-term relationships by focusing on a customer's feelings rather than logic or the product's features.

Pam Didner: Hey, big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing and More with Pam. Yay. Today I actually have a very, very good friend joining me, Robert Rose, Chief Strategist of Content Marketing Institute. And I have known Robert for at least, I would say, 10 years maybe. We have known each other for a long while.   Robert Rose: Yeah. It's been the better part of a decade, for sure. Yeah.   Pam Didner: Yeah, exactly. Welcome to my show and I have waited so long to actually have you. Shame on Pam! (laughs)   Robert Rose: I'm so excited to be here. I'm long time listener, first time guest. I'm super happy to be here. Thank you.   Pam Didner: Excellent. And today we are going to talk about our favorite topic, which is buyers, the B2B buyers. And obviously in the past several years, there's a term called empowered buyers, especially the B2B buyers. And they have all the information at their fingertips, AKA Google search, so they are armed with so much knowledge on hand. And many of them are very, very good at consuming, doing research on high quality content pieces, to make sure that they have enough knowledge to source the right technology. Does that mean they are totally in control and they are incredibly knowledgeable about the technology and the platforms they need to buy? What is your thought on that?   Robert Rose: Well it's something that we've been noticing more and more over the last few years because our business isn't the only one doing content marketing. Our competitors are doing it, everybody's doing it, in some cases. And what has come to pass is that in many ways, businesses have this belief that there's this asymmetric relationship between them and buyers and buyers are showing up on their door, and that's true. The stats that we see from Forrester or Gartner, the other research firms that say 70% of the buyer's journeys done before a sales person gets a call and people don't like cold calling and all that stuff. It's all true but the question underneath it is what's important, which is why. And the key there is there's research to actually to show this, which is buyers aren't feeling terribly empowered these days. And the question is because we have to remember that the selling and marketing process is not the only one that changed. The buying process changed as well. And in many cases, those buyers, they're not doing this because they love it. It's like asking me to go buy a new something for my car engine. I hate cars. I don't want to get into a car, but I'm going to go research it and learn about it so that I can actually buy the best one. In many cases for B2B, that's the exact same thing. One CMO told me one time, he said, "Look, we're going out and buying this enterprise marketing technology, but I got no interest in learning and becoming a subject matter expert in this stuff. I hate this. I don't want to do it, but I have to do it because my boss, the CEO, wants us to put this committee together so that we buy the best purchased product that we possibly can." And so many times what happens is that our buyers are showing up and all we're doing is pouring more research on them and basically not adding any value to their process because they're just trying to check a box that they did all this research. It's the equivalent of saying we've got buyers showing up on our doorstep and they want to learn how to play chess and we continually give them more research on why chess is such an important game and they'll have fun playing it. They're like, "Yeah, I get it, enough." And we just need to be more helpful. Instead of teaching buyers why to change, we need to be teaching them how they can change more easily.   Pam Didner: So with that being said, how do we know what they want and how can we be helpful to them in a way that they need it?   Robert Rose: We can start listening a lot more. Is what we can do.   Pam Didner: That is true. I 100% agree with that.   Robert Rose: Look, we're marketers, so we are trained. There's that wonderful, active listening idea. And the idea is that we're waiting to speak. Are we really listening or are we just waiting to speak? And most marketing or sales enablement teams, they're pretty much just waiting to speak. It's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear what you're saying, but how many licenses do you really need?" And so we can listen a lot more in terms of hearing what the intent is of the buyers that are showing up, what are they really looking for? When they ask or when they come in and download a piece of content, how many B2B companies do you know that treat every single download of every single piece of content exactly the same way?   Pam Didner: Same. They assign the score. You download this piece, you get 30 points, you download that piece, you get 40 points.   Robert Rose: Exactly MQL is triggered and all of a sudden it triggers an email saying, "How many licenses or what would you like to buy today and can I schedule a call with you?" And instead, if we start listening for the contextual signals, because what we're putting out with all of our thought leadership and with all of our marketing content are signals that can get tripped. And so if we look and say someone downloaded a White Paper entitled Everything, I Need to Learn About the Introduction of My Industry versus How Do I Implement the Best Solution for My Need, those are two very different signals and we can start responding in appropriate ways instead of treating both of those customers exactly the same.   Pam Didner: I completely can relate to what you are just sharing with us in terms of that the lead score or the content score related to the download, even you assign a specific point or a score associated with someone downloading it, but don't use that number as, "Oh, you got 85 point, therefore we should do this." Even though they download a specific piece of content and you have to do some research to understand where they're coming from, what else they do, try to identify their intent or possibly their interest before you actually determine how you want to respond to that, so that sounds like the automation workflow is not going to work very, very well or you have to use certain kind of algorithm to attest or discover what that intent is. Is that correct? You have to do it manually or you have to use some sort of tool to help you out.   Robert Rose: We all have a tendency to want to over automate things that don't necessarily need to be automated, but there are ways certainly to think about this from a marketing automation perspective. I think the key thing is not to just look, you said it very well, it's not just looking at how many things that they downloaded and assigning a score or even looking at exactly what they downloaded and assigning a score. One of the things that we need to look at is the context of how those things happen. In other words, the order is important. So if someone comes in and downloads the paper that I just mentioned that says, "How do I implement X kind of solution," and then goes and downloads the, "What do I need to learn about this particular industry?" well, that's two different ideas, rather than if they came in and did the reverse. One is I'm learning and then I need to know how, and then the other is maybe I need to just check off a box and get to the how, but then I'm really confused by everything and I'm coming back to learning the why. And so really understanding the context of what the customer is doing and what they're actually asked ... One of my favorite things to do, and so few B2B companies do it, is instead of gating a piece of content with your email address, why don't you gate a piece of content with just, "Why do you want this content?" Just ask. Just say, "What are you looking for?" "I'm just looking to learn. I'm trying to get as much research I'm trying to figure out what's best for me." Get insight and listen. Even if you only did that for one out of every five visitors, just start to get an insight and listen more than simply just waiting to speak.   Pam Didner: I like the idea, even if you gate the content, that you ask a very simple question. Obviously, everybody wants to get the first name, last name and email address.   Robert Rose: Right. Well, they want the email address, because that's, for some reason, we've started to equate that with value.   Pam Didner: I guess it's probably another thing to check off the box. Guess what? I got another lead.   Robert Rose: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So many companies, they have this algorithm set up to where somebody downloads something and immediately, trips up an email to say set up a thing with a... It happens to me all the time. I go to some site and I download a white paper.   Pam Didner: Oh yeah. Honestly, I'm the guilty one. I set up that process myself, somebody subscribe and I actually have a three email over three weeks. The first one you just welcome them and then share with them some contents. And the second one is basically say, "Hey, these are the top five popular most downloaded blog post." And then the other one-   Robert Rose: That's right. That's what you should be doing, but it's the company that I go to, I'm looking at you, Gartner, when I go and I download something that's available on Gartner and not five seconds later, do I get some sort of sales email saying basically-   Pam Didner: Sound like an automatic email, hundred percent.   Robert Rose: Automatic email saying basically. And if you think about it, the minute that I've downloaded a White Paper is actually the worst time to email me and actually try and sell me something. It's the worst time because I haven't even read the thing that I've downloaded yet. I haven't even experienced it yet. And you're already banging on my door saying, "Hey, can I sell you something?"   Pam Didner: Hello, I need to talk to you now.   Robert Rose: If you could pick the worst time to try and sell somebody something, it would be the 5 or 10 seconds after they've downloaded this thing you wanted them to download, but yet we do it. It's the first thing we want to do.   Pam Didner: Yeah. In general, I want to wait for a little bit, two or three days down the road, even when I do a workshop. Even for CMW, I will send a thank you note, but usually I send that right away, 24 hours, because I just say, "Hey, thank you so much for coming to my workshop," and that's about it. And then I have a call to action. "If you need to talk to me, feel free," and that's the end of the conversation. And I don't usually do a lot of pounding, like, "Hey, talk to me, talk to me, talk to me." But whenever I get a chance, I always have a call to action. "Yeah. It's a complimentary. Schedule a call with me," so yeah, but I hear you. You don't want to be right there that minute. Well, now we are looking ahead, which is the post-pandemic. Based on what you have seen, and also some of the research that's been conducted by Content Marketing Institute, what should marketers do differently, now it's completely different era?   Robert Rose: There are a couple of things, I think, that have been accelerated from the pandemic. And the first is we were just talking about is the need for different kinds of content. There's a statistic that I read. It was a few, maybe a month or two ago, that talked about how B2B organizations really pivoted and started doing much more of their sales enablement online and in live video versus getting on a plane and showing up and doing PowerPoint presentations at the foot of the table or taking their customers to golf or whatever it is. And what the report said was basically that companies have really found success with that. They've really found that it's better, in many ways. And so I think that's one of the things that's changed post-pandemic that will continue to be there, which is a real press on the need to create digital experiences that are video-based, that are sales-enablement oriented. And so I think there's a real opportunity for marketers and sales people to really work together to start to create these very interesting, engaging, and thoughtful video experiences that are really sales enablement practices over and over again. And I think a lot of that has to do with the real move here to create so much more digital content in a world, where the physical aspects of this, our attendance at conferences and our attendance at being able to see people in restaurants and being able to go and fly there and do all those things, right now is really limited. And so this move for a more direct to customer digital experience is such an important part of this. And so that means that content marketers, the thought leadership, the resources, all of those kinds of things, are starting to merge a lot with other elements of content that are more sales oriented. And so I think that expansion and that importance of that as a strategy is probably the biggest thing to come out for content out of the pandemic.   Pam Didner: When I was speaking, actually, at private events and they asked me a specific trends that they need to pay attention to, especially looking ahead for next two or three years, I say something similar, but use a slightly different term. It's the increased digital touchpoint. In the past, you can take care of that through any kind of physical interaction, but that is not just replaced, but also there's increased number of digital touchpoint that you have to add as a part of the purchase journey.   Robert Rose: That's a great point.   Pam Didner: And I agree with you. I have seen that as well. And I also have encouraged a lot of sales professionals. It's very interesting about sales people. When you put a salesperson in front of a prospect, they are charming, they know what to say, they know how to do it. But if you put the salesperson in front of a camera, they freeze. They're like, "I don't know what to say."   Robert Rose: That's such a great point. Yeah.   Pam Didner: And so one thing I feel that the sales professional that needs to possess in the future is the ability to look at a green dot, like green dot on that digital camera, and still feel incredibly comfortable in talking, just like you are talking to prospects.   Robert Rose: That's such a great point.   Pam Didner: Do you know there is a tool called Loom, L-O-O-M?   Robert Rose: I've heard of it. Yes.   Pam Didner: Loom. Yeah. Basically, it's a SaaS-based platform that you can download to your laptop and you can click on Loom and then you can do recording like this. You can say, "Hey. Hey, this is Pam. It's so good talking to you, blah, blah, blah," and then you can hit done. And then you can do a very quick trim in and you can trim the front, you can trim the end, and then once that's done, they give you a video link, very similar to YouTube. So you can just add that link or you can add that video directly to your email, a very quick download and it's readily available and if you don't want to add that video into your email, you can just add a video link and that people can watch it. It's wonderful. And it's also very, very good at doing a live demo. For example, I say, "Hey, Robert, you know what? I know you are interested about this. Let me show you how to do it." And then you do it and recording yourself. It was actually wonderful tool. Yeah.   Robert Rose: Yeah. I've seen a couple of it. Yeah. It's great for email. Yeah.   Pam Didner: Yeah, exactly. No, I 100% understand. And I do encourage a lot of sales professional. I say, "You know what? You look gorgeous. You know you are, so now you just get yourself comfortable in front of camera. Okay? Then you are perfect. All right?" Am I crazy?   Robert Rose: Yes, but we knew that already.   Pam Didner: All right. So this is wonderful and I actually have one last question. So what show are you binge watching right now?   Robert Rose: It's hard to binge watch anymore because they're all dropping once a week now, instead of dropping the whole season at a time.   Pam Didner: I know. That really just annoys the heck out of me. Yeah.   Robert Rose: Yeah. The last binge watch where we watched two seasons' worth of shows in two weeks was “Yellowstone.” I just finished all four seasons.   Pam Didner: Oh my God.   Robert Rose: It's so great.   Pam Didner: Is it by Kevin Costner? Yeah. I think that show is. Is it?   Robert Rose: Well, first of all, he's dreamy, but ...   Pam Didner: I know. That's why I say. He age so well. Oh my God. I love him. I love him. I have not watched that show. It's on my list.   Robert Rose: Oh, you should watch it. It's “The Sopranos” as cowboys is what it is. It's just so great.   Pam Didner: Really? Oh my God. What about the scenery? The Yellowstone, Grand Teton ...     Robert Rose: Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful to watch. And it's great. If you like cowboys and westerns it's really fun. And then of course, what I'm watching right now is all this new Star Trek stuff because, of course, I'm a nerd that way.   Pam Didner: “Picard,” are you watching the ...   Robert Rose: Oh yeah. I watched all of it. I watched all of “Picard.” I'm in the “Strange New World.” Anything Star Trek, I'm all over, so that's my favorite thing at the moment.   Pam Didner: Very good. Excellent. You know what, Robert? It's so good talking to you and I'm so happy that you finally came to my show and we talk about what empower buyers, how to be helpful to them. And also we talk about some of the digital touch points that is going to probably continue to increase post-pandemic and how to use video as a means to actually engage with your prospect. Very, very good. So happy to see you, Robert.   Robert Rose: Great to see you.   Pam Didner: Take care. Bye.  

Hear how to really think about the conversations you're having What if you could see the world through a fresh lens? In today's podcast, I interview Rose Fass, an author, a business executive, and an inspiration to me and to you. Rose has written one book and is on her way with her next one. Her first book, The Chocolate Conversation, focuses on how our conversations become who we are, what we hear, and how we build relationships. Great conversations help us craft clear messages, build a shared worldview, uncover concerns and uncertainties, and help you and others move forward together. As you listen to Rose and her own personal journey, you are going to rethink your own conversations, paying attention to both what you say and what others reflect on your thoughts. Listen in because there is so much to learn! Watch and listen to our conversation here Learning the lesson of resilience from a dandelion Rose tells the story of being a nine-year-old girl, walking home from school with her friends, a bit frustrated like adolescents often are. Her father was a WWII marine and a poet. That day, she saw him picking dandelions out of the lawn. Seeing her, he turned around and smiled and showed her one of the flowers, asking, “Rose, what do you see?” Not knowing what answer he was looking for, she responded, “I don't know Dad. I see a dandelion.” He said, “Yes, but I want you to look deeper and wider. Look beyond the obvious.” Rose asked him: “What do you see?” He paused, looked at her, and said, “I see the end of a long winter. I see the dawning of a new season. I see lovers walking hand in hand exchanging silent expressions of their love. I see children picking these out of the lawns and handing them to their moms.” He went on: “Rose, we, like many homeowners, will use things to take these dandelions out of our lawns, like other weeds. And in their place will come beautiful flowers like irises and tulips and even roses. But the beauty of the dandelion is not in its first expression of spring. It's in the root, because it's resilient. And all of us know that no matter how much we try to get rid of them, they come back double fold.” The message for each one of us is that resilience. As you listen to Rose talk about the work she does with and for her business clients, you will be inspired to respect and expand your own resilience. These are fast-changing times, and resilience, personally and in business, is more essential than ever. Powerful advice for women, those in the C-suite or any leadership role As Rose tells us: How often we think we're having the same conversation — about dark chocolate, for instance — only to be referring to three different things: milk, white or bittersweet varieties. She shows us how to first establish common ground that leads to an effective discourse for addressing relevance, growth and scaling — the three most important issues she sees in business today. Judith Glaser, the great organizational anthropologist and change agent, once told me that all our lives are just conversations — good ones and not so good ones. Rose has amazing insights on this too, and all women in business should pay close attention to her ideas. Searching for your passion and purpose? Start here: Blog: For Women In Business, Now Is The Time To Achieve Your Dreams Podcast: Lisa McLeod—If You Want To Succeed, You Must Find Your Noble Purpose Podcast: Tony Martignetti—Are You Ready To Live A Life Of Inspired Purpose? Additional resources for you My award-winning second book: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business My award-winning first book: On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Simon Associates Management Consultants    Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi, I'm Andi Simon. As you know, I'm a corporate anthropologist, and my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. And for our podcast, I go looking for people who can help you do that as well. Our job is to get you off the brink. But unless you can see things through a fresh lens, begin to understand them in a new way, you get stuck, or stalled, or you know what you know, and your brain doesn't really want to change anyhow, thank you very much, please go away. I'm happy where I am. But today, the times are changing. We are in a world that is full of turmoil, everywhere, of all kinds. From COVID, to the Ukraine, to what's going on in corporations, everybody is having a challenging time talking to each other. And so I brought you today a wonderful woman who's going to help you think about the conversations that we're having, and how to turn them into really growth experiences. The whole world is a conversation. We're having a global conversation right now. So today, we have Rose Fass here. Rose and I met fortunately, serendipitously at the Westchester Business Council, where she was presenting an absolutely brilliant presentation. And she's going to share some of those insights with you. It was really so touching. I said, Wow, can I share her with our audience as well? Now, the Westchester Business Council is a marvelous organization. You have no idea how many people I've met there, it's a really cool place. But each time I meet somebody and want to share them, they add some dimension to our day today. Let me tell you a little bit about Rose and then she'll tell you about her own journey. Rose knows, as she says, how to use her unique gift to take a mess and quickly put it in place with effective steps to teach desired outcomes. Interesting, isn't it. So she loves to change as I do, and like me, is a culture change expert. She's a natural facilitator who connects with all types of people at all levels of an organization, from the C-suite to the people closest to the work. She has over 45 years of experience in technology and consumer-based industries. During her career, Rose has opened businesses in the United States, has been a general manager with full P&L responsibility and led major corporate transformations. She was a chief transformation officer at Xerox and she's going to tell you a lot about some of her learnings and why at this point she's ready to help others do all kinds of transformation. These times, they are a-changing as Bob Dylan told us in the 60s. Rose, thank you for being with me today. Rose Fass: Thank you, thank you so much. And it's interesting that whenever I hear my bio, I have to smile a little because I go back to being this little kid in a very small neighborhood with a group of young Italian girls like myself just walking around and trying to figure out what it was that we were going to do when we grew up. So the interesting part about all of this is, I run a company right now called fassforward Consulting Group. And it's probably the culmination of everything I ever did at Xerox. Later I went to Gartner with the now CEO of ServiceNow, Bill McDermott, and then met my colleague and partner there, Gavin McMahon, and we started this about 21 years ago. And I still feel like I'm a student of the subject that I talked about. So I want to bring myself into the room as little Rose, so you know who I am. Then we can decide whether any of us are a big piece of stuff, or we all buy into this world with our brilliance and our muddy shoes. So I used to live in East Utica, New York. That's where I was born, on Ruptor Street, and we had a four-room cold water flat that my dad worked very hard on, kind of getting it to where we would have hot water or mom wouldn't have to boil it on top of the stove. Believe it or not, I'm 72 years old and I can actually think back to those days very fondly. But my claim to fame was I lived down the street from Annette Funicello. All of you young women, she was on the Mouseketeers and we were just all a bunch of Italian girls who could dance and sing and we were all cute. And we just could not understand why Annette got discovered by Walt Disney and ended up in Hollywood and we were left in East Utica. So for many, many days, I walked with a group of Italian girls home, complaining, whining, saying bad things and being green with jealousy. I remember this one day, it was unusual because it was early spring, and if you know anything about upstate New York winters, they're horrible. But the weather was nice and I saw my dad picking dandelions out on the front lawn. I went up to him very quietly, because I just wanted to scoot by. My father was a World War II Marine, a published poet and conversant in all the Romance languages, so he was a very interesting guy. I remember walking by and him saying, Rose, and I halted. I turned around, this little nine-year-old looking at him, and he said, What do you see? And he held up the dandelion. And I thought, Oh, God, I don't want to do this. This philosopher, I don't want to do this. And I said, I don't know Dad, I see a dandelion. And he said, Yes, darling, but I want you to look wider. I want you to look deeper. I want you to look beyond just the dandelion. And he looked at me, and I said, I don't know Dad, what do you see? I think at that point, I had learned how to be very good at rhetorical responses, especially when I didn't have an idea of what to say. I was so down in the dumps that I just didn't have the energy to get into it. I usually did, because I think for my dad I was the one that appreciated poetry and philosophy. So he looked at me and he said, Darling, I see the end of a long winter. I see the dawning of a new season. I see lovers walking hand in hand exchanging silence. I see children picking these out of the lawns and handing them to their moms to put them in juice glasses on the sills as a means of saying I love you. And I looked at him. And I said, you see a lot, Dad. And he said, Rose, soon this dandelion, this beautiful expression of spring is going to become a weed, and we like many homeowners are going to go to the nurseries and we're going to get the stuff that will take it out of the lawn because we want to rid ourselves of this one beautiful expression of spring that's now an ugly reminder of cleaning up the yard. And I looked at him. He said, Because soon honey, the beautiful flowers are going to come along, the irises, the tulips, and yes, even the roses. But the beauty of the dandelion is not in its first expression of spring, it's in the root, because it's resilient. And all of us know that no matter how much we hack at them next year, they come back double fold. We named you Rose, but roses are fragile. In your heart, you need to be a dandelion. That is my signature story. I remember that day of standing there on that little patch of lawn and crying in the arms of the Marine and in the arms of the poet. And for whatever reason, letting it all out and feeling like I may be enough. I didn't think I was but maybe I'm enough. And I think we women struggle with that. And so for the rest of my journey, I have reminded myself that we get kicked around, and we get hacked at. And we just have to be resilient. And so today, I think that's probably more true than ever. And it has held me together for many, many years. Andi, so I want you know who I really am, the little rose, the woman who became who she is today, and that I am a combination of all of those beautiful moments when you learn through pain. Andi Simon: Now, by saying that, I guess I visualized that scene with your father was exhilarating, maybe painful. But he was imparting to you wisdom that's really hard to come by otherwise. Who else would you trust to listen to that way? So you may have cried but I have a hunch he had a long term impact on the way you see the world. It's all of the implications and the meaning that it has. Am I right? Rose Fass: The Marine, unlike the philosopher, said, one rule for my two brothers and me was to be up by 0600, ready for company. Every day of my life, I am out of bed by six o'clock and I get dressed no matter where I'm going. My hair is combed. I've showered and am presentable and so are my brothers. And in his mind, it was the "ready for company" meant a lot of things. Were you ready to be gracious? Were you ready to be approachable? Were you ready to be aware, conscious, willing to help? All those things culminated in that one little statement: be up at 0600 and ready for company. And I've kind of never forgotten that. Today, with people working remotely, I noticed they get on the camera, and oftentimes, they'll take the camera off because they're not camera ready or they're even in sweat pants, and they're looking draggy. And when you don't feel good about yourself, it's hard to feel good about life. Yes, and we're living in a time when I think more than ever we have to bring our best selves to whatever we're doing. Because it's going to get harder before it gets easier. I really believe that. Andi Simon: You're making the important point about our best selves. And I want you to talk a little bit about the career that you had because we could stay on your lessons learned in your youth a lot. But the best self is a very interesting concept. We are working with a lot of women as coaches, and they are successful, but not happy. They have a position or are partner in a firm. They've got degrees, are financially successful and they're asking, Isn't there more? We talk a lot about who am I? What's my purpose? What's my best self? So a little bit more about as you got into your career, you began to carve out an area around transformation. Sounds like your father became living in these companies a little bit further.  Rose Fass: By the way, Andi, you talk about youth. I often relate to men in the work that I do. I tell them there's no more important person in a young woman's life than their father. Mom plays a role but Father gives them the sense of validation and approval of who they are as women. And I think that's critical, just as mothers help their sons become more approachable and more yin and yang. So for me, my early career after I got out of Boston University, I started at Saks Fifth Avenue in an executive training program, and I had two mentors. I had Jan Edelstein, God rest her soul. She was very gypsy-ish, wore all these crazy skirts and crazy glasses and lots of bangles. But knew Judith Leiber, Bottega, every possible fashion brand you can think of in accessories. I was her assistant and I was also assistant to the blouse buyer, who was Miss Janet. And I'm not kidding. Little bow, little glasses like a librarian, always in the black pencil skirt, white blouse, buttoned to the teeth. They could not have been more different. Jan told me to have to learn how to be creative and every bit of data and information you need to make good sound decisions. But let that be one data point that I want you to go with your gut when you feel you know how your experience is and how something speaks to you. Then I went up toJudith and she taught me the process. And it was so procedural. I remember taking an inventory where every single blouse had to be counted. And in those days, these departments were massive. And I walked around and I was spinning. And I was trying to take a few little shortcuts. And she said to me, Miss Maysa (my maiden name), and I said, Yes. She said, You are not to take shortcuts. You will one day take shortcuts but that will be after you learn the long way home, and I'm going to teach you a long way home. The unique part about this was that Jan and Judith were really good friends. They could not have been more different. But they understood each other in their own way. And neither of them really took shortcuts. Most of them understood what it meant to take a long way home. Years later, working with young people and trying to get them to understand that there are steps to getting to an outcome that doesn't just happen because you wish it so, I would say to them, you are taking shortcuts. You can't do that either. You learn the long way home. And here's the long way. It's like doing math in classes, you do the long version, and then you can get to the quick answer. So for me, my whole career has been pretty much about working in data areas that required both my gut and my ability to be disciplined. Andi Simon: Very interesting. I grew up in the retail business. I was supposed to take over our family firm. A very big store in Manhattan, a department store in the old family for a model. And I was being trained to take it over. As I'm listening to you, I vividly remember trips to the market with my grandmother and my mother to go buy. I remember saying to my grandmother, How do you know what to buy? She said, "Well, Andrea," (I remember her voice so well) and she said to me, "1/3 will sell full price, 1/3 will sell on sale, and 1/3 will walk out the door. Now if we're good, we'll have enough money coming out of that to pay bills and do it again." And that's my vivid memory. I'm being taught that. I remember putting blouses on the hangers. You were counting the blouses. I was putting them on the hangers with Leo in the basement. Rose Fass: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We did it all. I remember Judy Garland coming in to buy a Rosanna sweater. Oh, no, I'm really dating myself here. But Rosanna sweaters were weaved in such a way that it was a staple in every woman's closet. And in those days, believe it or not, women wanted to be a size 12. They wanted to be curvy, and terrific. So she came in emaciated. And she insisted on the size 12 sweater and I thought, You need a size 6. We didn't have 2s and 4s and zeros. Six was the smallest size back then. So ladies, we actually did get to eat. She insisted. And then she called in my department manager and she said, I want to talk to her boss. And I'm like, Oh my God. And the whole thing was, you give her what she wants. She's a size 12 and in her mind she's that size. Well, later, I got a call from upstairs. They said, Wrap all of Ms. Garland's things up and we'll send them over to the hotel. And that was the end of the conversation. And I learned that being technically right wasn't necessarily socially effective. When I later put together the technical, social and political spheres, which are a big part of the book that I've written, called The Chocolate Conversation, and the book I'm writing now, The Leadership Conversation, making bold changes one conversation at a time. We live in this technically right space where we have the facts, we know what we're doing, we're going to say it the way we're going to say it, but sometimes we have to socially adjust to what a person is capable of experiencing in that moment. And getting somebody there by connecting with them, not through facts and through your technical expertise, but through that human connection, and then ultimately positioning it in a way that they feel like they came out of this a winner. Andi Simon: Being an anthropologist, my affection is with understanding women and people. We really intuitively watch what goes on and observe and listen. People can't really tell you what they're doing, to your point. And when you look at data that has no meaning out of context, I still hear my anthro 101 professor saying to me, There is no data that does not explain, does not exist out of context. Their meaning is set into the context. But the other thing that we've learned is that people decide with the heart, the gut, the eyes, and then the data in the brain begins to operate. And that means we have to experience each other. We've got to feel each other. We really don't know what it means. The reason I love my podcast to be video or audio is people see differently. But as you're thinking about it, the first book and the second book you're writing now are all about conversations. They are about your passion. Same thing. Rose Fass: I think for me, Andi, you put it perfectly. One of my dearest friends that I got to know when I first started at Xerox, then went to Palo Alto Research and then later came with her to Gartner and that my early days at fassforward, was an anthropologist, and I just loved Susan because she always said that to me. She said, Rose, there's their side, this side and somewhere in there there's the truth. And then there's the person who's observing the truth. We had a gig with Estée Lauder where they wanted to know what was important to women around mascara. And Susan just sat on trains and watched people put it on. And I was like, Oh my God. And she goes, Well, what's important to you? I said, Well, at night, when I want to give myself a refresh, you have to take it all off because it clumps when you put it all back on again. And later, they came out with a conditioner that you could literally put over a mascara and then put it on and we were part of that pattern. All in the conversations with women about what was important conversations. For me, the first and the most important one is the one you have with yourself. Yes. What's that conversation that's going on in your head? What's your head telling you? What have you done that maybe was right or wrong? So I'm going to take a little moment here. I have a colleague that works for me here, Liz works with me. And I adore her and she happens to live nearby. She put her car in park and realized she had forgotten two presents in the house. She left the dog in the car, her handbag, and just quickly, 30 seconds, ran to the apartment, grabbed this stuff, got back and the handbag was gone. And she beat herself up about that for three straight days in a row. "But I only left for 30 seconds." "But I only did"...is what we do to ourselves. We beat ourselves up over the mistakes that we made. And we don't celebrate the fact that we've learned something. You're parked by a bus stop, someone's riding a bus, so they're not doing as well as maybe you are in the car. They get out. They see an open door, they grab a handbag because it's something to get them by for whatever period of time. And whatever karma was involved in what you owed that individual from some other life, maybe it got taken care of at that moment. And no mistake, let's not worry about it. Let's not get ourselves all worked up. Yes, it's disturbing but at the end of the day, we are going to make mistakes. Our victories will keep us buoyant in life, but our mistakes are what are going to teach us in life. I really believe that. Andi Simon: Oh, I agree. I agree. Yeah, I'd like to add to that, that Liz had a damaged self. One of the things that we often say is, flip it around and begin to express. I think what you're saying is gratitude, what do we do, because it changes the whole, and we manage our minds, the mind does exactly what it thinks you want it to do. When you understand that you can be unhappy, or you can have a lesson learned, I'm grateful she showed me, I will never do that again. Right. I learned that the little time I took was really unnecessary to do it that way. I mean, all the things that turn negative lemons into lemonade, right out of that building that story. It's a little like your dad with his dandelion, and your answer, It's a dandelion, and he said, Push, go further. And so to your point, that self care that we need, and that self awareness comes from taking every experience and turning into something else. Rose Fass: Because nobody's perfect out there. I don't trust perfect people. I learned that in my first book. I think we're all a little messy. I kind of feel this way very strongly. I look at Golda Meir, and I think of what she went through when she became Prime Minister. And it was messy. But what an incredible character, right? Gandhi was messy. A lot of these incredible leaders that we knew about. Winston Churchill never got out of bed sober. Very messy guy. But leadership is messy. And if you are willing to take that on, you can obviously do something uniquely different in the world. I look at Steven Jobs as one of the great leaders of our time in innovation, not so much in leadership, but in innovation. And at the end of his life, he finally came to grips with the fact that I've lived this incredible life, but it's coming to a much shorter halt than I had anticipated. And yet he was very messy.  What I say to people in management is, it's something you can plan for. It's the management of work, it's the management of plans. It's all about the stuff that we get to look ahead and do but leadership happens in the moment. It happens when Rosa Parks gives up her seat on the bus. It happens when, at the worst moment in your life, you are going to have to have the courage to do something that you otherwise would be terrified to do. And yet you do it. That's leadership in the moment. We don't get to plan for that. And if we can accept the fact, as I said earlier, that we come into this world with our brilliance and our muddy shoes, and that life is messy, that we can't expect perfection, and we can't hold ourselves accountable to perfection, then we can do what we need to do as all individuals and just progress, one conversation at a time. And I do believe we're in a conversation right now. And we have had very different backgrounds, and yet some very common ground, both started our careers in retail. You went on to become an anthropologist. I got to work with one for a long time that I thoroughly enjoyed. I've taken my business career to heights I never dreamed I would be at. And I have the opportunity to work with C-level executives. And when they ask me how I think I know or why it is what I'm saying, I go, It's easy. I'm 72. I'm at least 20 years older than you and I made every damn mistake that I could possibly make up to this point. And I'm still making them. So I'm saving you the benefit of that. And in the book, it's a book of stories. It's a book of stories about different leaders, different experiences, my journey as a young woman to my business career, and all the different ways in which we sabotage what we are capable of. That phrase that came out very popular a few years back: Don't go there. I absolutely hated it, Andi. I'd be like, I'm packed and ready to go. I don't want someone to tell me, Don't go there. That means this conversation isn't safe, let's not have it. The conversation is as safe as you choose to make it if you can have a civil discourse. And so I have a chapter in the first book, Go there. Find a way to go there. So many times when you bring up the fact that women are unhappy in their current roles is because they have not expressed what they're distressed about. It's like Cassandra, Greek tragedy, the voice is trying to come out. And it's not. And we have to make ourselves known. And I don't mean in an alfa, overly feministic way, but to be real, to come out and say, look, this isn't working for me. I need other things. And today, these people in big positions within corporations, whether they're women or men, are willing to listen. They don't want the erosion of their diverse employees. They don't want that. They want you to stay. So if ever there's a time to express yourself, using the right way to speak. Andi Simon: So let's stay on that. This is a new book that Rose is working on for our listeners. She has a first book. Did you call it The Chocolate Conversation? Rose Fass: Yes, The Chocolate Conversation. Andi Simon: Yes, I do love chocolate. But The Chocolate Conversation has now led to a whole new book. What we're talking about is conversation. All of life is conversation. Yes, Lazer, the late organizational anthropologist, wrote great stuff about conversational intelligence and the power of we. And what we've learned from the neurosciences is that when you say in a conversation, the neurosciences, the brain goes, Ooh, run away. The amygdala hijacks it, it flees it, the cortisol said, This is going to be painful. Don't hang around, off you go. But when you say, We, the we brings out all kinds of good oxytocin or wonderful hormones that say, Oh, let's bond. This is the love that we feel. You, Rose, tell us about the book you're writing. Rose Fass: Well, it's a book of conversations. It's a book of conversations with myself with others. I think what you said earlier, I really care that somebody gets heard and gets acknowledged. I remember facilitating a very large group of different cultural people from Latin America, Portugal. People that were there from France. And we had these earphones on, because they were getting translated into English. And at the same time, we were facilitating all these different languages. There was this one little Portugese guy and he stood up and he was trying to explain something to his boss. And it was completely misinterpreted. One of the things that I call the chocolate conversation is just talking, right?, and the boss got very annoyed, and I said, Stop for a minute. And I kind of took off my earphones and I said, Can you just translate for me? Yes. And I said, this is what I think I heard you say, and he was, Si, si, si. And I said to him, And so I translated and took the whole thing, and I brought it back. And in that moment, there was such a relief. And I thought to myself, I teared up, because in my heart of hearts, the worst thing in the world is when you're standing there trying to express yourself in another language even, and someone is just not getting what you're saying. And completely misinterpreting, because we spend more time on our own point of view than trying to understand what it is that you're saying. So I think today, in business, we've got to start listening to people at the front of the business, the ones that are closest to the customers, it doesn't matter what age someone is, there's truth that is worth listening to. I feel that this is the last value added space right now because our institutions have failed us. People are looking at journalism, and they're saying, Where is it? Where is the unbiased truth? We're getting nothing but opinion and vitriol conversations. The public stage has become a boxing ring. Everybody is walking around that whole term of psychological safety. When I hear it, I think, Oh, my God, it sounds so clinical. What it really means is, Can I be comfortable here? Can I be in my own skin? Can I wake up in the morning and feel like it's going to be okay? And I think we owe that to each other. I think we need to become more human. We need to provide that peace of mind to our children, to our friends, to our family as much as we can. And we need to find a spiritual essence in all of us. And this has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with who are we, why are we here? It's not just about the momentary little things that we go through. It's really bigger than that. And so my books are about how do you have conversations that are inclusive, that shift people's points of view from a worldview they're stuck in, establish new standards, a lie, some concerns. The Chocolate Conversation is about worldviews, standards and concerns. The new book is about being bold with your conversation, saying what you mean, not what you think people want to hear but doing it in a way that you can get your point across in a loving and caring and compassionate way such that people feel touched. You saw me at the Westchester Business Council. I showed that wonderful little film of Mary Jackson, NASA engineer. And those of you who have seen Hidden Figures know what I'm talking about in the film. This was a woman who needed to go to a school to get an engineering degree so she could become a NASA engineer. She's brilliant. But she was a woman of color. Walking in at a time when the level of bias against people of color was so serious. And if she had gone up against that judge with hatred, resentment, vitriol, about something that was totally unfair, she would have been right. But she never would have been effective. But she went to that judge with a different heart, and she found common ground. You've been first in a lot of places. I need to be first going to that school, we can have this in common. And I shared that at the Business Council because that to me, was the combination of one of the better conversations I've been exposed to. Andi Simon: You have a passion and a purpose. You really do want to see change happen, and how we get along, how we listen to each other, how we learn from each other. And there's something more here in your life journey that really is transformational. You see that it's a time where we have to not simply accept the way we are but begin to change the way we go. I'm anxious to hear if you have any message in your little toolkit here to share or some ideas about how we can begin to multiply. A podcast is a podcast, but my whole purpose in life is to multiply it so that people take it and share it. And in the process, learn something they can actually do with it. Rose Fass: So I think one of the things that's helped me a lot, and I can't take credit for it, was given to me by a wonderful professor at MIT that I happen to be in touch with. When you want to have a conversation, particularly one that may have a little conflict associated with it, have the meta conversation, the conversation about the conversation, get permission to have it. That was very helpful to me, because I would be, Are you open to an alternative point of view? And yes, even if it's going to be very different from the one that you have. Yes. Do you mean it? Yes, I mean, okay, I'm going to take a risk here, and say something that really flies in the face of your experience, your lived experience, and what you've just shared with me, and I just want you to consider it. I don't want you to agree with me, I just want you to consider it. And that's helped me a lot to be able to have that kind of conversation. And I'll do it often with a CEO. And they're like, Okay, and they take a breath. I think also, when I'm getting feedback, I don't know about you, Andi, but I still lose, if it's not going to be good. You know, I still have that. And what I've learned from my years here is to stop feeling that I'm going to feel it initially no matter what I do, but to step back from it and say, this is just a data point. Not defining my entire persona. It's not defining my past, my future, my present. It's a data point. Let me take it in. Let me think about it. Let me try to get myself back centered. I think staying in the present, very important, stays in the conversation you're having, not the one you're tying yourself to. And you know, having a conversation is not waiting for your time to speak. Andi Simon: Well, these are important points. And as the listener is taking their notes, as I know you often do, there's some lessons here about navigating interpersonal relationships, having a permission conversation before you have the conversation levels the playing field. It's not adversarial, it's communication. It's sharing, it's a we, in a sense, it's that what Glaser spoke about, which opens your mind up to something I'm going to enjoy as opposed to flee in some fashion. The second thing is that as you're going through this, I learned a long time ago to say something like, It sounds like you are upset about something. And if I put it into their zone, it becomes a conversation of listening, as opposed to having a point of view about it. And I would say to my staff, I was an EVP of a bank, and I had lots of folks, and I would learn that and practice it because I didn't want to jump to any conclusions. It was easy to become a command and control leader, but I was very engaging. And I said, Sounds like you're having some difficulty with your manager? No, I see. Well, it sounds like you're unhappy with your job. I mean, you can really watch the responses come back as long as I kept it in their zone, as opposed to trying to take charge of it. And then my third point is that I often ask people, Yur feedback point is really important. I teach a Leadership Academy. And we teach feedback. Because every conversation is feedback. It's in the feedback loop. And I say to people, If you really want to get the right feedback, say to somebody, What's one thing you would like me to do differently? You'd be amazed at how interesting that goes. Rose Fass: Yes. Great question. Wonderful question. And most people are afraid to ask it. And afraid to hear, afraid to ask it and they're afraid to because they're afraid to hear it. Very often, and you may have found this too Andi, if you say to someone, I sense that you're upset about something, they might feel like, Oh, are you threatening me? But it's more along the line of just sort of stepping back from it and saying, you know, we all have concerns. Yeah, I know I have them. What might be one of your concerns? What are you feeling right now? What do you like about what you do? And what are the things that you could change if you had a magic wand? And you could just change this one thing? What might that be? Just giving people a chance to step outside of themselves and de-personalize a little. Sometimes if we can step out of ourselves. This is another anthropological method that Susan taught me: stand outside of yourself, just observe it. And it was a hard thing to learn to do. But it's an extraordinarily freeing. When you can sort of step outside, say what's really bothering me. Why am I so stressed about this? And we're going to be stressed, these are stressful times. I really felt bad about that poor tennis player, devoted to his healthy body, he's not anti-vax. He's come right out and said it, I'm not anti vaccinating, I just don't want to put any foreign things into my body. Now, whatever side of the argument you're on, the newscasters kept trying to pin him as an anti-vax. And he's the sweetest guy. And there's a sweetness about him. And I said, You know, he's probably a health nut. He believes in alternative medication. Have we tried to understand his point of view? Are we just throwing this out at him that he's now part of the anti-vaxx movement now? Andi Simon: But Rose, we have to wrap up, as much fun as we are having. It's really an honor and a privilege. We have a brilliant woman, Rose Fass. I want her to give you one or two things she doesn't want you to forget because we often remember the ending more than the beginning. Although her dandelion story is one that you're gonna hold on to. Some things Rose you want to leave with us. Rose Fass: Remember that everybody, everybody piles in with their brilliance and their muddy shoes. Take that away, nobody's perfect. That's something I want you to take away. The second thing is, remember the conversation you're having with yourself. That's the single most important conversation because that's the one that's going to shape the conversations you have with others. And when you do have a conversation with someone else, think about the context. You're in the social connection you need to make, how things need to be positioned. And think about having the conversation about the conversation before you jump right in. That would be the three things that I would say. And my dandelions story is just if you're another we'd be happy to have you in the field. Andi Simon: This has been such fun. So we have had Rose Fass here.  If they want to reach you, where can they do that? Rose Fass: They can do it at hello@fastforward.com. And I'm on LinkedIn, Rose Fass. Andi Simon: Yes, everybody's on LinkedIn. Thank you LinkedIn, it's a great place to find the world. Now, for my listeners. Thank you for coming. As always, our audience is wonderful. Rose has given you some great insights today about all kinds of things: not only growing up, but also really becoming who we are, listening to our conversations about who we are, and also finding a path to where we find purpose and passion. It comes down to conversations. All conversations are there. That's how we survive. Then the question is, who are we having conversations with and what are we listening to, and listening has become real important. Thank you for coming to our podcast. As you know, we're ranked in the top 5% of global podcasts, which is truly an honor and a privilege. It's wonderful. And I bring on guests who I think have ideas they want to share with you. My books are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local bookseller. My Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business, Rose could have been in there. And I have the stories of 11 women who have smashed the myths. They didn't listen to people who said, Oh, you shouldn't, and you can't and no, we don't, because they said, Of course we can. And they are really great role models for other women. AndOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights is about how a little anthropology can help your business grow. And as you know, we spend a lot of time consulting with clients and helping them see, feel and think in new ways like you.

June 6, 2022: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattiperilsteinburnett/ (Matti (Perilstein) Burnett), Co-Founder of https://www.myeternally.com/ (Eternally) joins Bill for the news. Eternally https://www.myeternally.com/ (www.myeternally.com) is a personalized service providing advanced care planning support for patients of hospital systems. A Gartner report states that the annual quit rate will jump up nearly 20 percent from annual pre pandemic levels. Healthcare organizations should prepare themselves as this new culture of quitting becomes the norm. With more than two years having passed since the pandemic began, questions are being raised about when to end the public health emergency declarations made by the federal government. There are numerous implications of course. And Greg Till, EVP, Chief People Officer at Providence says “Workforce strategy doesn't just ‘support' business strategy. It IS a business strategy. That's never been more apparent or important.” Key Points: We will have a nursing shortage for the next 30 years. Reducing administrative burden is essential. Healthcare workers should spend their time with patients and building relationships with their colleagues. The importance of employee polls and surveys https://www.linkedin.com/company/myeternallyio/ (Eternally LinkedIn)

Two things to know today Gartner's 5 privacy trends by 2024 AND Google and Microsoft collaboration moves   Want to get the show on your podcast app or get the written versions of the stories? Subscribe to the Business of Tech: https://www.businessof.tech/   Support the show on Patreon:  https://patreon.com/mspradio/   Want our stuff?  Cool Merch?  Wear “Why Do We Care?” - Visit https://mspradio.myspreadshop.com   Follow us on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspradionews/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mspradionews/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspradio/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28908079/

Our guest in this week's episode is Alex Saric, chief marketing officer at Ivalua. He is here to share about new research that has just come out that shows how better collaboration with suppliers can help to minimize supply disruptions, improve sustainability efforts, and promote innovation. He shares details on these findings and more.Gartner's annual list of the Global Supply Chain Top 25 is out. See who is tops the rankings and what other companies have highly respected supply chain operations. We also discuss the best practices that these companies have in common which makes them supply chain winners. Drayage rates continue to rise, especially in connection with the nation's busiest ports. What is causing the latest increases and what's the outlook for rates for the rest of 2022? DC Velocity's sister publication CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly  offers a new podcast series called Supply Chain in the Fast Lane.  Co-produced with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, this series first focuses on an eight-part look at the State of Logistics. Go to your favorite podcast platform to subscribe.Articles and resources mentioned in this episode:IvaluaCisco tops Gartner supply chain ranking for third straight yearReport: Drayage rates will continue to surge in 2022Visit DCVelocity.com for the latest news. Visit Supply Chain QuarterlyListen to Supply Chain Quarterly's Top 10 Supply Chain Threats podcastListen to CSCMP and Supply Chain Quarterly's Supply Chain in the Fast Lane podcastSend feedback about this podcast to podcast@dcvelocity.com.Podcast sponsored by: Rite-HiteOther linksAbout DC VELOCITYSubscribe to DC VELOCITYSign up for our FREE newslettersAdvertise with DC VELOCITYTop 10 Supply Chain Management Podcasts

Sergey Doshchenko has more than 25 years of experience in the field of corporate and freelance management consulting, research, and implementation of information technologies (IT) for business automation and digitalization, launching new businesses and delivering strategic changes in large international and Russian companies. Sergey graduated from the RUDN University in Moscow, Russia with the qualification of a teacher of physics and an interpreter English/Russian. Sergey grew up professionally from a software developer in Andersen Consulting in London, UK to the head of major projects implementation of IT for large‐scale business transformation at Accenture in Moscow. As an investor launched a number of startups in the field of retail payments, IT products and services in business and operating models of commercial open source and managed IT services. As a Gartner executive partner in Russia, Sergey was responsible for the strategic advisory service for a portfolio of 25 companies in the financial, transport and telecommunications sectors and retail, including e‑com. FIND SERGEY ON SOCIAL MEDIA LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | VKontakte | Telegram ================================ SUPPORT & CONNECT: Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/denofrich Twitter: https://twitter.com/denofrich Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/denofrich YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/denofrich Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/den_of_rich/ Hashtag: #denofrich © Copyright 2022 Den of Rich. All rights reserved.

Help file: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/GKSCZ5A9SEBFVQHGTicket: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/support/INTENT_CTI_Amazon_Business_Selling_Seller_Credentials_and_Certifications 00:00 How to Get an Amazon Small Business Badge (NEW)00:15 The Help files00:57 Do the emojis and badges attract Amazon buyers?01:43 The "Made in America" tag01:54 The Amazon's Choice badge02:27 How to enroll in Amazon's Small Business Badge program03:15 Filing a ticket on a broken Amazon link04:59 The US-based badgeSmall Business products FAQ1. What is a Small Business in Amazon's store?In the US, we follow Gartner's definition of small business. Small businesses are eligible for this badge if they are registered with Brand Registry or participate in the Handmade program. The specific products that receive the badge are from small business brands and artisans based in the US. We are currently testing the Small Business badge and not all customers will see the badge on all eligible small business products during this test.2. What are the benefits of being identified as a Small Business in Amazon's store?The badge will indicate to customers that the products they are viewing are from a Small Business. In addition, Small Businesses will have the opportunity to be included in special events, and promotions in the Amazon store.3. How do I know if my business is enrolled as a Small Business?If your branded products have the Small Business badge on their product detail page in the Amazon store where your business is based, this means that your business is enrolled in the program.4. Is there a cost to be identified as a Small Business in Amazon's store?No, participation is completely free for eligible businesses.5. Are all my products enrolled in this program?If your business meets the eligibility criteria to be identified as a Small Business in Amazon's store, all products within your registered brands will be enrolled.6. Can I remove products from my Small Business brand from participation in this programAt this time, we do not allow the exclusion of specific products. If you don't want to participate, you may choose to have your business removed from the program completely by contacting Selling Partner Support (it may take up to two business days to reflect on the store).7. I believe my business qualifies, what is the process to confirm that I own a Brand Registred Small Business?You can contact Selling Partner Support, provide the name of your brand and company, business address, and your merchant token ID, and our team will review your eligibility in the program. You can expect a reply within 10 business days from your initial request.8. How long will my Small Business be included in this program?As long as your business meets our eligibility criteria, products within your brand will remain featured in the Amazon store where your business is based.9. I have selling accounts with Amazon in multiple countries. Will my products be part of this program in all stores where my products are sold?We will showcase the Small Business badge in the Amazon store where your business is based.10. How can I report a potential error, such as a large business that is mistakenly identified as a Small Business?You can contact Selling Partner Support and report the business in question, and we will investigate.11. Is this program only launched for a limited time or event, such as Prime Day?We are currently testing this program, and we will share further updates in the future.Support the show

Our guest in this week's episode is Jim Carlisle, the head of the technology and business solutions vertical and the automation fund at Thomas H. Lee Partners. TH Lee has recently acquired or been a major investor in some of the supply chain industry's biggest names, including AutoStore, Fortna, MHS, FourKites, and RightHand Robotics. He speaks to why supply chain companies are so attractive to the investment community. He describes the types of investments made into companies and what the investors hope will result from the input of their funds to grow these firms.While supply chains have historically been very male-dominated fields, women have been steadily growing in numbers over the past few decades. The latest report from Gartner and AWESOME reveals how many women are in leadership positions and what are some of the issues that take women out of the industry. Walmart has chosen a robotics partner to add a great deal of automation to its current distribution facilities. Partnered with Symbotic, the mega retailer hopes to speed its distribution operations to make store shelves easier to stock while saving costs. Find out just how much Walmart is counting on this technology. DC Velocity's sister publication CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly  offers a new podcast series called Supply Chain in the Fast Lane.  Co-produced with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, this series first focuses on an eight-part look at the State of Logistics. Go to your favorite podcast platform to subscribe.Articles and resources mentioned in this episode:Thomas H. Lee PartnersResearch finds more women in supply chain leadership rolesWalmart expands orders for warehouse robotics from SymboticVisit DCVelocity.com for the latest news. Visit Supply Chain QuarterlyListen to Supply Chain Quarterly's Top 10 Supply Chain Threats podcastListen to CSCMP and Supply Chain Quarterly's Supply Chain in the Fast Lane podcastSend feedback about this podcast to podcast@dcvelocity.com.Podcast sponsored by: Yale Materials HandlingOther linksAbout DC VELOCITYSubscribe to DC VELOCITYSign up for our FREE newslettersAdvertise with DC VELOCITYTop 10 Supply Chain Management Podcasts

Staying ahead of the curve and the competition is the key to getting ahead as a seller. In today's episode of the Sales Evangelist, Donald discusses some of his top social selling strategies and current selling trends as we enter the second half of 2022. By definition, “modern” selling is always changing. Modern selling is the ability to use new tools, modern techniques, and social selling strategies to find and engage with prospects.  In 2022, post-pandemic sales strategies largely revolve around social selling strategies geared toward a remote audience. Modern sellers use tools like Zoom and have mastered how to work with people, even if you can't see them on the screen. Modern tools for a modern seller: Tools like Gong and Fathom help you conduct meetings that prompt sellers to better engage with the prospect. Modern sellers are used to remote work, which means a microphone like the ATR2100 or Yeti helps you take advantage of your environment.  Gone are the days you could send a blank phone call or email. Instead, use platforms like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to engage with prospects, giving thoughtful comments on their content to be a part of their community. Your organization can have the opportunity to use AI to know what buyers want before they buy, and you can use that information to do personal follow-ups.  Modern sellers take advantage of digital tools. 44% of millennials prefer purchasing without a sales rep in B2B purchase scenarios.  While the sales rep position is still necessary, it might look drastically different than what was initially considered.  We must adapt to these types of buyers, engaging with them through LinkedIn or automation to help them guide themselves through the process. For more stats about selling in 2022, download Gartner's 2022 Sales Transformation report. This upcoming series is all about building rapport in the modern environment - find out how to find out more about your ideal seller and become a modern seller. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The Great Resignation has become the Great Reshuffle, meaning it can be difficult for sales professionals like you to find leads and close deals. Luckily, Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is here for you! Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is the only tool that uses real-time alerts and up-to-date insights to help you know when prospects are ready to buy. And, with over 30 advanced filters, sales professionals can quickly find genuine leads with the intent to purchase. Gain the advantage of accurate, quality lead generation data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can get a 60-day free trial of Sales Navigator at www.LinkedIn.com/TSE.  This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This episode is brought to you in part by Closers.io. Closers.io helps sales reps land their dream remote sales gig, where they can set their own hours, work from anywhere, and make six or even multi-6 figures per year. That sure sounds good to us! Committed to helping sales reps make a shift, Closers.io will place you in an available sales role that will increase your commissions and help you live the life you want. Apply for free now at go.closers.io/TSE. This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad. Are you tired of a digital workspace cluttered with notes, folders, files, and half-filled spreadsheets? (Not that we're speaking from personal experience.) Luckily, we've found the solution. Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson's workflow, so you don't have to change your habits. Scratchpad creates a streamlined workflow that allows everyone to be a little more productive each day without the hassle of updating a database with whatever info you can find. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com.  As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

In the first episode of season two of the HR Trends podcast, Clare Morin speaks to Brian Kropp, Chief of Research and Distinguished Vice President at Gartner, and Polly Nicholas, Senior Vice President and Head of Solutions at Unum Group, about the fundamental shifts happening in HR and how business leaders who respond to the holistic needs of their employees will win the talent and retention game. Key takeawaysAs the line between work and home have become blurred, it's caused a reconsideration of the place of work in an employee's life.  (7:55)This requires a different approach and a new type of leader.  (9:35)This shift can also be seen in what employers and employees want in terms of benefits. (11:40)Supporting employees in this broader, more holistic way is also better for business. “When organizations are more effective at meeting the mental health needs, the family needs, the community needs of their employees,” says Kropp, “Those employees perform at a higher level, are less likely to quit, they are more engaged with their work, they sleep better at night, and the list goes on and on.  By improving the lives of our employees, we help the performance of our organizations.” (13:15)Employee leave programs are becoming focused around personas. “Even the leave and time off conversation used to be this big block of people who just needed to take time off. And tomorrow, it's about a persona,” says Nicholas. “And it's how we begin to shift thinking about leave policies and compliance, to what does a person need who's planning a leave? What does a person need when they have a very unplanned event and there's an emergent moment happening? How are those needs different? And how are we surrounding them, and back to Corey Barret's sort of scaffolding, how are we surrounding them because there's this opportunity to offer solutions that do just that.” (28:20) External shocks -- the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and the war in Ukraine -- have turned ideas about good management on their head. “The focus up to now has been on efficiency, on stripping costs as much as possible,” explains Kropp. “When we have a management strategy that is maximizing efficiency, we also have a strategy that is unwittingly maximizing fragility. It's like inflating a balloon with as much air as possible right up to the point where it breaks. That strategy is fine if there's nothing in the environment that can cause a balloon to break. What we've realized is there's lots of things in the environment that can cause the balloon to break.” (31:00)Featured speakers: Brian Kropp Chief of Research and Distinguished Vice President, GartnerBrian Kropp oversees the lines of business that support Chief Human Resources Officers and their leadership teams. He works with this cadre of leaders to develop strategic plans that will attract and retain top talent. Dr. Kropp has authored more than 40 research studies at Gartner, led more than 200 strategy sessions with executive teams at Fortune 100 companies and more than 300 Executive Education sessions across the globe.  Polly NicholasSenior Vice President and Head of Solutions, Unum GroupPolly Nicholas is the Senior Vice President and Head of Solutions at Unum Group. With more than 20 years of experience driving growth and operational improvement and a passion for connecting people, purpose and results, Nicholas leads Unum's rapidly expanding solutions businesses, attracting new clients and expanding the support provided through a suite of technology-first solutions including Unum Total Leave™, Behavioral Health and Unum HR Connect solutions. Prior to Unum, Nicholas held leadership roles at global firms Alight Solutions and Aon Hewitt.

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series I have talked to vendors who get all excited about Gartner opening up a new category for them. All I can think is uggh, something new to confuse the security marketplace. I know there's a need to label products in categories to simplify sales. But the complexity is driving buyers nuts. This week's episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and Andy Ellis (@csoandy), operating partner, YL Ventures. Our sponsored guest is RJ Friedman, CISO, Buchanan Technologies. Thanks to our podcast sponsor, Buchanan Technologies Short staffed and overworked IT groups can be overwhelmed by the massive scope of a comprehensive cybersecurity program. Buchanan Technologies makes the complex simple with our twenty-four by seven, customized, vetted strategies that identify risks, detect threats, implement security controls, and protect the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of your data. Discover more. In this episode:  Do we need another industry-produced acronym? How can a vendor better demonstrate they can become a partner? With the list of security “minimum requirements” constantly growing, do you believe more and more organizations are falling below the security poverty line? And we ask how best to reduce the amount of false positives?

Jen Allen is the Chief Evangelist at Challenger and Host of the Winning The Challenger Sale Podcast. Prior to that, she spent 14 years selling at CEB and Gartner. In this episode, we discuss: How Jen got into sales after graduating from Penn State Jen's struggles with imposter syndrome How sales is like dating And much more... If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to grow this show and find the best guests possible for you. Follow The Podcast: Apple/Spotify: Millennial Sales Twitter: TommyTahoe Instagram: TommyTahoe YouTube: TommyTahoe Website: Millennialmomentum.net

Today's guest is Andrew Peck, co-CIO for Baron Capital, which is known for its long-term, fundamental, active approach to growth investing. In today's episode, we're talking to a growth manager to hear how he's handling the volatility in 2022. Andrew shares his framework for looking at the markets, the importance for a growth manager to have the fortitude to let your winners run, and what leads him to sell a name from the portfolio. Then we get into what he sees in the market today and how he's adjusting his portfolio. We touch on names like CoStar, Gartner, StubHub, and even a private investment in a little company named SpaceX. We talk a lot on this show about being willing to look different, stick with a strategy over the long-run, and remain disciplined during volatile times, and it was great to talk to a manager doing just that. ----- Follow Meb on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube For detailed show notes, click here To learn more about our funds and follow us, subscribe to our mailing list or visit us at cambriainvestments.com ----- Today's episode is sponsored by The Idea Farm. The Idea Farm gives you access to over $100,000 worth of investing research, the kind usually read by only the world's largest institutions, funds, and money managers.  Subscribe for free here. ----- Interested in sponsoring the show? Email us at Feedback@TheMebFaberShow.com ----- Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, Aswath Damodaran, Howard Marks, Tom Barton, and many more.  ----- Meb's invested in some awesome startups that have passed along discounts to our listeners. Check them out here! 

The COVID-19 pandemic created a host of new communication pressures on company leaders, so they, in turn, leaned on their communicators, who evidently came through for them in a big way. The result: increased influence in the C-suite, according to a Gartner survey. Neville and Shel have questions.Continue Reading → The post FIR #256: Comms Influence in the C-Suite appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a host of new communication pressures on company leaders, so they, in turn, leaned on their communicators, who evidently came through for them in a big way. The result: increased influence in the C-suite, according to a Gartner survey. Neville and Shel have questions.Continue Reading → The post FIR #256: Comms Influence in the C-Suite appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

This year's Gartner's CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey reveals that environmental sustainability has become a top-10 business priority for the first time ever with more than triple the CEOs citing it than just one year prior. Meanwhile, social responsibility and ESG emerged as the second-largest contributor to CEO focus on corporate issues, increasing 50% year over year.    Here to analyze why sustainability has come to the forefront, how business leaders can advance their sustainability strategies and common pitfalls to avoid are Kristin Moyer, a Distinguished VP Analyst in Gartner's Executive Leadership of Digital Business Growth Strategies practice, and Sarah Watt, a Research Vice President on the Talent and Sustainability team.    Dig Deeper Explore: Sustainable Business Strategy for a Positive Social and Environmental Impact https://gtnr.it/3N7XovQ   Watch: Progress from Strategy to Action on Sustainability https://gtnr.it/3w34dcB   Watch: Sustainable Agriculture: A View From Bayer's Supply Chain https://gtnr.it/38m5faz

The North American inbound supply chain was well-run and extremely cheap before the pandemic brought disruption to the logistics and transportation space. Since the pandemic, the shipping industry had to adapt and is still adapting to this uncertainty. Prices are going up, congestion is at an all-time high, and these we won't recover from these challenges overnight. Join Joe Lynch as he talks to John Murnane about the disruption in container logistics. John is a senior partner at McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey, he is the leader of the logistics sector. So he covers everything from air & ocean carriers to warehousing & fulfillment. Listen and learn more about the shipping industry, shipper & carrier relationships, sustainability, end-to-end shipping, and much more. Find out about the disruption in container logistics and how it can be solved. Disruption In Container Logistics With John Murnane Thank you so much for joining us. Our topic is disruption and container logistics with my friend, John Murnane. How is it going, John.  I am doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you? Excellent. I am glad we are talking about this topic. Please introduce yourself, your company, and where you are? I am a Senior Partner at McKinsey. I am based in Atlanta. I lead McKinsey's Logistics Sector globally with a colleague named Martin Joerss, who is based in Hamburg. Tell us what you guys do over in that McKinsey's Logistics Practice. We call it a sector, but we serve the logistics industry. For us, that is all the different, interesting, fascinating parts of logistics throughout the global supply chain, ocean and air carriers, forwarders, folks doing container leasing, and Marine services. We do a lot of work in ground handling and transport, terminal operators, and rail trucks, both asset-based and brokerage. We also do a lot of work in the warehouse and fulfillment. I serve companies that operate fulfillment, real estate, and industrial developer. We also do Last Mile post and parcel returns, plus all the folks that are in and around that space doing data, transparency, tech, robotics, and all the fascinating, fun companies that are trying to knit it all together. Do you work more with shippers or the actual logistics providers? We work with both. In the group I lead, the logistics sector, we serve companies that make a living in moving stuff around. I have got a number of colleagues in a practice that is adjacent to ours that are in manufacturing and supply chain. Those consultants and partners serve the big retailers and manufacturers who pay to have the goods moved. I do not know what you guys did at McKinsey but it was not so long ago that there was no logistics practice. It was logistics and supply chain or supply chain and logistics or manufacturing supply chain and logistics. It was always the tail end of something else. We have arrived because we have a McKinsey partner who is responsible for watching over us. We have got 100 McKenzie partners that I do not know if we are responsible for it. [caption id="attachment_7990" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Container Logistics Disruption: The pandemic hit the shipping industry in many ways. People started buying a lot more, which meant more containers being moved while the staff was low. There was just a lot of congestion.[/caption]   The business needs some babysitters. Tell us a little bit about you. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? Give us some career highlights before you joined McKinsey. I grew up in California, pretty close to the ports of LA and Long Beach, but did not get into logistics. At a young age, I was a Mechanical Engineer at Duke. I worked in entertainment for many years at Disney and the NBA in finance and design roles, which was a lot of fun. It is not as entertaining as logistics. When I got into logistics, it was at McKinsey. I went to Business School at Michigan and then I joined McKinsey. You joke about logistics being the end. I got recruited into the travel and logistics practice because I knew a thing or two about travel. I started serving logistics companies back in the day. This is 2003 or 2004. It was not sexy. Logistics was not quite as hot as it is now, but I found the work fascinating. I liked the people. I got into rail, parcel, and trucking, and then I moved to South America to lead our logistics practice. I was in Chile for three years and then I got into the ocean space and Marine terminals. I have been hooked ever since. It has become more fascinating given all the things that we have seen in the last years, from the eCommerce boom to automation to the push for sustainability and what happened with the pandemic. It is fantastic that you have got that South America experience because I feel like we have had so much stuff in China for so long. I have nothing against China, but it makes more sense to ship stuff from Mexico or South America in general. We do not do nearly that much business with our South American partners who we fully understand compared to China. There are lots of bags coming in and out in a lot of air freight. I was in Chile, which does a lot of flowers and salmon, and exports a ton of copper and minerals. Let's talk about our topic, which is the disruption in container logistics. Why don't you take us back to before there was this disruption? Talk about what was going on in the space back in the day? You hear a lot about underinvestment in infrastructure and “failing” logistics infrastructure in the US. Many years ago, things were working well. If you were a manufacturer or a consumer, you probably had the lowest cost supply chain in the world that was able to get you products from anywhere in the world any time. The cost was quite low and the supply chain runs very well. It is smooth. As such, it was something that a lot of people took for granted. It seemed very opaque compared to now. Many years ago, if you were moving freight, your stuff disappeared into the ocean for three weeks or a month. There is also opaque because no one has looked into it. We have all learned how important it is. I used to serve clients and I did a lot of marketing and sales work, helping people with sales and pricing. I serve clients in logistics. I remember hearing sales executives complain to me. I can't make these value-based arguments. I can't talk about our value prop because I can't get access to anyone that matters. Ten years ago, people had a well-ran, extremely cheap North American inbound supply chain. And they took it for granted. I am talking to a procurement leader four levels down and they do not care about our value. It was opaque because, to some extent, there was not engagement on this topic at the highest levels, and certainly, there is now. Many years ago, you had a well-run, extremely cheap North American inbound supply chain. The infrastructure did not get bad overnight. The pandemic hit us in three ways. One is we all started buying a lot more stuff. We did not spend any less. We stopped spending on travel and restaurants. No new car, no vacation, but I can buy crap online. I can upgrade my house. I did some of that myself. I am in the house more and I invest in doing some things around the house. I got an indoor bike to stay in shape, but we spent 20% more money on stuff. I always call it not your grandparents or great-grandparents pandemic. In the 1920 pandemic, 50 million people died worldwide and there was poverty. We joke that the COVID-19 or 20 that we gained from sitting around eating and buying stuff. That is not to discount all of the misery that it brought, but most of the misery was isolation for us. When you have a situation where there is more volume being purchased, that means more containers and more trucks move. At the same time, global capacity fell by about 14% or 15% over a similar timeframe. If you have been paying attention, that probably feels intuitive. We had people that were sick so we could not stack. We had operations that were shut down at times. We had congestion because people were stacking and storing containers because they could not get them to the next place and they were waiting and also every stage in the value chain. We all saw the earnings releases that talked about, “I am 65% short of the team. I need to operate these warehouses.” They are open, but they are not running anywhere near full capacity. If it is 20% up in demand and 15% down in supply, you have got a congestion problem. On top of it, those increases weren't smooth. If those increases were smooth, our logistics industry might have had a chance, but it was overnight, then it stopped and started again. That made for some challenging times, and you ended up getting what you got, which is pretty poor service, long lines, congestion, delays, and uncertainty where things were. You also have price increases because the companies that were moving the goods were trying to manage to make sure that they were at least taking good care of the clients that were willing to pay the most. It became challenging for our shippers. I do not think it hit the biggest shippers, the Home Depots or the Lowe's. Those guys had contracted rates. They call them the bat phone when they call the shipping companies. They did not all of a sudden get double or triple the cost of a container. They were okay. It was a lot of the other smaller players. You mentioned this spike 20% up in demand, 15% less in capacity, but if you were 20% or 30% off in your headcount in your consulting practice, you could address that internally because you are all a team. This was across a whole bunch of supply chains that are spread out across the world. Communication was always difficult given time zones, languages, and the lack of computer systems. The coordination and fixes were all slow. I was talking to my daughter and she is in Portland. She was excited. She called and said, “The couch that I ordered in October 2021 is going to be here. I forgot what it looks like.” We are all getting used to waiting a little longer than we used to, but it is nice when they arrive.   We still seem to have these shocks every once in a while. Shanghai had more COVID. In the US, we are seeing shortages of headcount in a lot of places, especially in warehousing, dock workers, and trucking. There is a lack of capacity when it comes down to it. [caption id="attachment_7991" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Container Logistics Disruption: The two things to watch to know when congestion and prices will moderate are consumer spending on goods in North America and labor availability.[/caption]   I know everyone wants to know and figure out when this is going to be over. I do not think it is going to be overnight, partially because I do not think that the disruption is going to be over soon. The fact that we have got basically almost no trucking going on in China despite the manufacturing plants being open, but the trucking operation is pretty much ground to a halt. It means we have got days of inventory that are going to stack up and then need to be pushed through the system. The disruption and uncertainty are going to be a part of our new normal. With regard to when the average demand and supply get back closer to where they used to be, it is going to be a matter of consumer spending and labor. We love the idea of things normalizing and getting to a new normal, but we are seeing inflation and other problems. We see the war in Ukraine and the recurrence of issues in China with COVID. We have trade issues with China. In a lot of ways, the new normal is not normal. The new normal is going to change because of events outside of our control of weather or geopolitical. Change is going to be more prevalent in the coming decade than it was in the last few, which is why to some extent, I think we did have that false sense of security that everything was working. We did have a period of relative sanity, which allowed us to fine-tune the system despite its insufficient infrastructure. We talked about the way it used to be pre-COVID years ago and what happened. What is next? What is next is recovery. I think that, in time, we would expect to see supply improve and consumer spending on goods moderate a little bit. We are seeing an increase in consumption of services, which makes sense because there is the ability to do that. My wife works in travel and she has never been busier. People are eager to get back out and travel again. I do not think we are going to see the end of events and discontinuities. Those are two things to watch to tell us when congestion and prices are going to moderate are going to be consumer spending on goods in North America and labor availability. Talk about those shocks. There are many ways we can describe this. We could say our supply chains got a little brittle, meaning they broke rather than being bent. Another way to describe it is we have too many risks in there and a lack of resiliency, depending on how you want to talk about it. We know we are going to have some more shocks in this system. How do we deal with all that? There are a few things. A lot of this is ongoing. It is already happening. We need to stop looking at the supply chain as a simple commoditized part of the operation. It is not a simple call center. It is not something that should be managed by a small team in procurement focused on the cost lever. This is a C-level topic. The supply chain is and forever will be a C-level topic. Shippers need to be thinking about all the things that they can do to accept the fact that the logistics industry will always be more complicated than it used to be. Part of that is more safety stock. I know you are an auto guy. The old just-in-time Math assumed simple, easy commodity-priced trucking and logistics operation. The world is more complicated than that. Certainly, some companies are looking at how I can think about de-risking my supply chain, both in terms of the number of locations that I sourced from, to increase the number so I have more flexibility. If I lose one node, they will be looking at nearshoring and reshoring. The math on those deals is never easy, but they are certainly spending time thinking through that, especially thinking about that in light of new sustainability targets. All of my clients are hearing calls from their clients who are hearing calls from their customers to say, “How can I be more sustainable? How can I meet the new carbon aspirations?” You hit a whole bunch of topics. I want to break them down a little bit. It speaks to where we are at in this business. The first thing you said is this is no longer a small decision. When I used to sell logistics and supply chain services, the way I sold mostly less than truckload in some truckloads, but we had the technology. I remember I would call and say, “I want to talk to the owner, the CEO, the head of operations, or a general manager.” We impact finance because we are going to take some of those functions away. We do it as part of our service. We interface with the sales guys because they are the ones who are always saying, “Where is my stuff?” We work with your ops team on the inbound and we work with your logistics team. A lot of times, when I would call that C-level guy, they would say, “Talk to Tony in the back.” The disruption and uncertainty in the shipping industry will be a part of the new normal. It's not changing overnight. I would go see Tony and back, and he did not want to have a strategic discussion. He did not care if the finance guys had to audit the bills. I said, “We audit the bills because we have a TMS,” and I start my whole spiel. I am going to parody this a little bit. He was like, “Those guys got me Kid Rock tickets.” That is why he bought from that logistics company. He did not have that strategic focus that I wanted my customer to have. One of the things we have all been through is when you call that guy and say, “I want to manage all your freight. I want you to use our technology and you are going to see all of your shipments there. He says "I will give you an Excel spreadsheet with all our loads in it. You put your price in and if you are cheaper, I will give you those lanes tomorrow.” I was like, “I do not want to save you $50 on tomorrow's load. I want to save 10% on your annual spend.” It would be like, “What are you talking about?” The number might have been used to bend. We spend $500,000 a year, which is bad enough to leave it to somebody who does not care about the strategic function of logistics. Now that number got to $5 million, you go, “What the hell, guys?” There is a lot of change on both sides of that transaction that we are going to go through over the next few years. I have a good friend who is a former CEO of one of the container lines. He says, “Enough with this value base. I lose customers for $50 a box. It does not matter how much better we are.” That was the history. In that world, you do not have the right executives in the decision on the shipper side. You do not have the head of sales, marketing, or operations. You have someone in procurement. When you have someone in procurement, they have one metric, which is how they can get the unit costs down. You also need to get better on the sales side. The guys that I work with, the carriers, trucking companies, and railroads, now have an opening to say, “It was not so commodity-based,” but they have got to be able to deliver. They got to be able to go and articulate what they do that is different than the next guy and why that is worth it. I always use the same analogy back in the olden days when we had stockbrokers. They are transactional. You would always hear the term churn. They wanted to churn your account, “I want to sell your Dell stock and move you over to Apple.” They make money on both of those transactions. Those guys did not care about your overall financial picture. They cared about what you had in your investment account. Now we have moved to financial planners. You do not hear anybody say in their stockbroker. Financial planners are aligned with their clients. They say, “We are going to get paid 1% or 1.5% of what you have in your account. I want to make you rich so I can get 1% or 1.5% of that every year.” It is the same thing in this business. We have to switch out of this transactional thinking and move to that financial planner. A lot of companies want to do that. They do not want to be ringing the bell and having the siren go off that they made $1,000 on a transaction and celebrating at the office that day. That is a lack of alignment and it is yesterday's news. You will see more gain share partnerships and relationships like that between carriers and shippers. It takes real change on both sides. This will be the shock that gets the awareness to a place where those things are pursued. Not just between carriers and shippers, but to some extent, between different players in the logistics chains, carriers and ocean terminals, railroads and trucking lines, warehouse fulfillment operators and last-mile parcels. One of the things I want to touch on briefly is the timeout containers. We will get more back to the containers for a second. We started using containers a lot in the late ‘50s and ‘60s. There is a book, The Box That Changed the World. Prior to that, we could not even do global trade because the cost of logistics was so high. That was a tremendous innovation. We have seen this change the world. We would not be doing nearly the global trade we do now without it, but we have not seen a lot of innovation in that space. Now we are starting to see information technology. That is another piece of that. Speak to that and the sustainability that is important to us. The technology has come along in terms of tracking. It is available. You will see more adoption of that, especially in the reefer space, but also in dry boxes. I have seen a lot of startups and investments in foldable boxes and alternative equipment. The main way we are going to get better sustainability on our container fleet is by finding better ways to extend their lives.   I never heard that. We are throwing a lot of those out. [caption id="attachment_7992" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Container Logistics Disruption: 75-80% of containers are leaving LA empty so they can be filled up in China with more goods while there is a shortage. That's because the supply chain has always been an afterthought.[/caption]   We lose track of a lot of them because we do not know quite where they were. Telematics, tracking, and things like that will help there. How long does a container last? There are containers out there that have been in the fleet for twenty-some-odd years. The average is probably closer to 12 to 15. There are all sorts of uses. One of them is use for alternative storage. If anybody from the container ship lines is reading, give me a call and I will deliver you 50 containers. I live about 25 minutes out of Ann Arbor. There are some farms and not quite rural, but I always drive by and think, “What are you doing with that container?” They only need them where they need them. Our supply chain is imbalanced. They need them to pick up soybeans and send those to São Paulo. The fact that they are in Ann Arbor does not help them a whole lot because of the amount of money and time spent to get them down there. Managing that global fleet better and extending its life would be great from a sustainability standpoint. It comes up a little bit on my show about sustainability. Some people might be shaking their heads and say, “I do not believe that the man is causing global warming.” I always say, “I do not care what you think. It does not matter what I think.” This is what consumers and brands are asking for it. When one of those big brands says, “What are you doing?” you better have an answer. It is too late to do anything at that point. You do have to embrace it now. There are a lot of small ways. When it is over the road, we are trying to get rid of empty miles. That starts with measuring the empty miles, which brings me to another point. We were saying that 75% to 80% of containers are leaving LA and Long Beach empty so they can go be filled up in China with more goods for us. Meanwhile, we have a shortage and we have gone mad. It is illogical, but the understandable conclusion from the supply chain is an afterthought. The supply chain has always been an afterthought. It is not designed. It just happened. There are many forces well beyond the global supply chain that decide what is our import and export balance with China and where do we manufacture intermediate goods for auto? There is nothing logistics can do to account for the fact that there is that much import-export balance on goods. With empty backhaul and empty miles within the US, there are a lot of things that the logistics industry can do to help. There are smarter ways to reroute though there are still a lot of empty miles even in the US. I have become more aware of this. There is the empty truck that is moving from LA to New York, and you go, “That should never ever happen.” I do not think that happens nearly as often as it used to, but what is becoming more of a concern is the half-empty trucks and you go, “I had 10,000 half-empty trucks leave this location. Is there a way?” I know there are technologies and the guys over at flock freight and others are saying, “We can do something about it.” The main way of getting better sustainability on container fleets is by finding better ways to extend their lives. We will see more shared loads and multi loads where everyone will call multi-stop, where we are going to say, “That truck is full.” That is good for the environment and truckers. For the shippers, we are going to have to figure that out. We do not want to put I-can't-move-your-food onto a truck with auto parts. We have to be careful about how we manage it with the shippers but I think it is going to lower the price of shipping. Once we are fully loaded with the real cost of all of this stuff, whether it be the drivers, assets, new vehicles, or the autonomous and electric vehicles that we bring in to make a more sustainable fleet, the cost per unit is going to be higher. It is going to put the burden on us to figure out how we can make better use of each of the units. Maybe it is two hours later, but that allows me to share a load and double my density on the chunk move. All of those things can happen in time, but it takes great collaboration between carriers and shippers to make it work. The transparency and tools of the data exist to be able to do it, but it takes tremendous collaboration and trust to get it done. I am going to put you on the spot here. I know you work with a lot of different companies. I want to tick off some standard categories and what kind of work you are doing for these companies. Let's say an over-the-road carrier calls you. What do you tell them these days? What would be a typical project you would work on with them? Over the road, carriers were doing a lot of work and helping them think about how their network is going to change as manufacturers figure out a new supply chain or as we try to start to think about electric vehicles and ultimately autonomous vehicles. Not just how should you think about the timing of those technologies, but what are the network decisions you are making now that will feel sub-optimal in 5 or 10 years because the investments that those companies make in assets and infrastructure are not short-term. We are helping them think about sustainability in terms of how they can help their shippers with their sustainability targets. Those are some of the big themes. Do you talk to any brokers, 3PLs, and non-asset-based? What are you doing for them? Sustainability is a topic for them in terms of how I can provide. I am already helping them knit together. A lot of them are trying to figure out, “How can I knit together solutions across modes? How can I optimize those around sustainability targets?” We are doing a lot of work almost across the board in growth. How do companies find growth? There are a lot of new freight flows that are coming, not just because there are always new freight flows that are coming, but sustainability and the targets that all these companies are taking on are creating a whole lot of new goods to move. We are working with a lot of companies, whether they be asset-light, asset-heavy, broker, truckload, but also parcel and the like. It is like, “Where do you find freight? How do you get it? How do you leverage the tools today to find those companies?” Do you work with Final Mile or Last Mile guys? We do. We work with from a pallet and LTL Final Mile, and heavy goods Final Mile. We do a lot of post and parcel work. We have got a huge practice globally that has done tremendous work in helping drive efficiency in the postal space and parcel as well. They need it.   Those companies are struggling. [caption id="attachment_7993" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Container Logistics Disruption: Once the real cost of all these new things comes, the cost per unit will increase. It's going to take time to manage that. There needs to be a great collaboration between carriers and shippers to make it work.[/caption]   From what I understand, the Final Mile for home delivery to goods is the most expensive part of the journey. I was not being critical of the post office. We want it to be better, but we put a lot of constraints on it, and I think it is the hard part. I do not want a pallet delivered to my house and then distributed all of those parcels to my neighbors. I would like just my piece delivered to my house. Getting my piece delivered to my house is expensive. The costs are getting better relative to the pallet moves because the density of residential delivery has come up so much. Many years ago, the density of residential delivery was terrible. It was hard to make the economics work for the big parcel companies. As our volumes have gone up, that has improved the relative density, but it is still tough. What about warehousing and fulfillment? We have seen so much change in that space. What is going on when you work with them? First of all, permitting and getting sites are extremely challenging. The sites have to be closer to current consumers. If you want a site or the old model of three sites in the middle of nowhere, you can still get that. If you want the sites that people want now, which is one hour or maybe even less outside of every resident in the country, those sites are hard to come by. We do work with developers on construction and permitting on how to do that well and how to forecast and identify where the sites are going and where you need to be. We are also working with operators on how to drive productivity in those sites. We are doing a lot of work on how to refine, recruit, train and retain talent. That is a theme across all logistics. I was talking to somebody about a paint company and they said, “We do not have anyone retire from this location.” It was their DC. The reason they had no one retired from there is because it was a young man's game. He did not want to walk 10 miles picking stuff up and moving stuff around. We have to make that job in the warehouse easier so you are not breaking your back. If you walked by an auto assembly plant and walked through it, you would see that nobody was doing a job that was backbreaking or that required excessive strength, crouching, or reaching. We have eliminated those and we see that same mindset move into fulfillment. Those guys are going to become technicians rather than strong backs. We have had conversations for years about technology in the fulfillment space. Now it is happening. They made fun of us many years ago because it was early and no one had proven all the economics. It was whizzbang cool stuff, but is it having an impact now. There are certain functions that are being largely automated and you are seeing high ROIs. Also, you have got a lot of technology now that is more flexible than it used to be. Building the $10 million conveyance system just for this client and then hoping you retain them is a scary proposition for a fulfillment operator. Having flexible, robotic assets that can move seasonally or move to a new facility if you lose a client. We are also seeing longer contracts which helps. Fulfillment operators are saying, “I do not want to do a three-year deal.” You can't facilities for that and build a location if necessary for a bigger customer. We are trying robots now. This is becoming somewhat like automotive. In automotive, what we learned is if you give me one year, I am not going to invest in it. From a container line standpoint, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to facilitate end-to-end shipping better. The payback cycles on some of those technologies are getting shorter, but it is hard to make many of them work on a three-year contract. We are seeing a lot of fulfillment players and manufacturers agreeing to 5 or 7-year deals or agreeing to co-invest in the technology that they want to offer something that customers can't get elsewhere. Let's circle back to the beginning. What do you talk to about the container people, the guys with the ships, the rail, drayage, and the modal? From a container line standpoint, a lot of them are trying to figure out, “How can I better facilitate end-to-end shipping? I do not know if I want to own all those pieces of the operation.” It does not do me a whole lot of good to get it to the port if it sits in the port. Much worse is it does not do me a whole lot of good if I am sitting at the pilot station waiting to get into the port. A lot of the conversation and work in the container space is, “How do you collaborate with the terminal, the rail operation, and the consolidation or deconsolidation facility to get boxes and get them back?” The whole concept of end-to-end is probably the strongest when you think about container terminals, dray, rail, or trucks. Figuring out how to create more seamless, more partnerships, and share data to do that. In some of those, you see the metrics and the CMAs of the world that are investing quite a bit in buying companies to knit together that offering, They are buying over the road companies here. They made an extra $100 billion or something in those ship lines during COVID. To your point, they are investing in that end-to-end solution. Somebody said this to me and they work closely with one of these companies. They said, “Do not be surprised if we see single-use containers because we do have a trade imbalance with China.” If that container is only going one way and I have to ship it back on a boat that is filled with containers that are empty, somebody might say, “Why am I shipping it back there?” “It is because these are expensive containers.” Do they need to be expensive containers? Could they be less expensive and single-use? I know somebody is going to say, “What about recycling and all that?” There is a design that has to happen here. We got people like John and his team there. They will figure it out. From my perspective, we see it in automotive. Sometimes, you ship back the containers that brought your stuff. Sometimes, you do not because it does not make sense because it is one way. Do you guys work with air freight companies? We do but it has been a challenging and rewarding a couple of years for air freight. The belly players have been tough because they have not had the majority of their capacity with many of the passenger lines, much of the passenger capacity down. The pure freight players have done extremely well. Airfreight was a key enabler and one of the early winners in the pandemic and continues to be. I think the questions on air freight are how can they use advanced analytics to drive even better forecasting of volumes and, therefore, even better service levels and yield management? We think there is a lot of opportunity in the air freight space around advanced analytics and pricing. I heard it from Flexport and the guys over freight ways. One percent of all overseas volume is on air freight, but it is 30% of the revenue. What it speaks to is you are not shipping auto parts, usually on a plane. You are shipping electronics, chips, medicines, and stuff like that that is high value and small. Mostly high density. Value per cubic foot is off the charts. That ratio feels approximately right. I also heard that 50% of the air freight is passenger planes.   That is why air freight prices absolutely skyrocketed. [caption id="attachment_7994" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Container Logistics Disruption: A lot of the work in the container space today is how do you collaborate with the terminal, the rail operation, the consolidation & deconsolidation facilities? It's all about creating partnerships.[/caption]   They were flying anywhere. They moved up first. Ocean container rates have skyrocketed too, but in the air cargo, when your supply chain breaks down at some point, the only option you have is to get it there. It is the last resort for a lot of things and the first resort for high-value cargo. A lot of companies, for the release of the phone, will send enough phones for the first couple of months via air, and then they will send the backup to refill stock via ocean. In a pandemic, it was the first choice. The majority of the global air freight capacity is the belly of the passenger. When so much of our passenger fleet was grounded without anyone to pay for the international passenger move, you lost the belly cargo. I heard somebody use the term preighter, which is passenger freighter. They sometimes took the seats out of planes and filled them up. Other times, they put stuff on the seat that you might have been flying to a conference on. Now, it has got a stack of mobile phones on it. I am going to try and summarize all this and then I want to get some final thoughts before you go into what is new over at McKinsey. The topic is disruption and container logistics. John talked about the steady-state. We will talk about many years ago, pre-COVID, and what happened during COVID, that horrible time with demand spike, capacity down, sick people, and broken supply chains. We learned how brittle our supply chains were. You talked a little bit about what is next and where consumer spending is going. We are spending more on services and a little less on products. We are going to see how the industry reacts to what are still shocks and aftershocks of what happened. We do not even know the implications of the conflict in the Ukraine and inflation. We are better, but we will see. Lastly, we talked about what we learned during this time that logistics is not a commodity and that we have to insist on a seat at the table. We no longer be just a commodity service. John took us through all of the different things he and his team do with their clients. Any final thoughts on this big topic, John? A few final thoughts, two things we did not talk about and one thing I wanted to reinforce. We did not talk about the war in Ukraine. The near-term impact of that has not been huge on the global logistics industry. Carriers have pretty quickly rebalanced their networks in response to that. The long-term impacts could be significant. Ukraine and Russia are large exporters of commodities like wheat, oil and gas. I think we will see a lot of those supply chains shift around. While we are all watching the human tragedy and suffering through it, the near-term impact from a logistics standpoint has not been significant. We have been talking so much about eCommerce. It is going to be omni commerce. You have seen a bit of a drawdown and a correction back. We talked about ten years of eCommerce acceleration in two months. That was true. You have seen brick and mortar make a comeback. Some things are better are bought in person. My kids bought mattresses online and they are like, “We love it.” I was like, “I am going to have that mattress for ten years. I have to lay down on it.” I am not going to look at 5,000 reviews. I love eCommerce, but to your point, some of those shopping experiences are going to have to become experiences, not a pain in the ass experiences. Everyone wants to go to the Farmer's Market or a cool boutique. We have to get back to a cool experience if I am willing to leave the house. For shippers, many of them want to get to a place where they are managing more on Omni channel commerce supply chain. One of the most frustrating parts of the pandemic was when we had out-of-stock items on the website and obsolete items sitting in storerooms in the retail centers. That was painful and was a function of having two supply chains, which is the case for many shippers. They built their old brick and mortar supply chain, then they added a supply attender to eCommerce, and they did not talk to each other. You will see companies now figure out, “How do I have one more flexible Omni commerce supply chain?” There are going to be some variations. There will be times and products where you want to buy online or in-store. Certain companies will have a blend of the two. That is where we are going on that front, which we did not talk about but I think is important. It also needs to be designed. It has to be created. It can't be a bolt-on because we bolted on the gig economy and thought that, “We got an eCommerce solution.” Instacart, Shipt, and some of those solutions for grocery, from what I understand, the grocery store companies are losing money on those and they obviously do not like that. The gig economy stepped up. It is great. We are always going to have it. There's a lot of opportunity in the air freight space around advanced analytics and pricing. We are always going to use it in logistics, but it needs to be managed by logistics guys who are operational experts and good at routing and technology. It can't just be, “Bob down the street buys groceries for the neighborhood. It does not work as the way it needs to.” We are going to see those grocery stores become grocery store/fulfillment centers in some cases or maybe one fulfillment center in the Detroit Metro area that serves all of the eCommerce. Some of those business models will evolve. Even a company as great as Instacart or some of the early applications is adding cost on the top of the already existing flow and retail, brick and mortar, and all that stuff. The ideal way of doing that is to have dark stores that are designed for efficiency and pick, pack, and ship, not for the grocery experience that we have all grown to love. Tell us what is new over at McKinsey and how do we reach out? Do you have any webinars coming up or case studies? We love to have conversations. The best way to get in touch with us is on our website. It is easy to find me or any number of colleagues. You can send an email and we will respond. I will probably get the email. If I am not the right person to talk to, I will find someone else. On the site, we have got an interview with Sanne Manders, the COO of Flexport, which is great. We are putting up content all the time. What conferences are you guy going to?  I know we are excited about TPM in 2023. When is that? TPM is in Long Beach in the early spring every year. It is still a long way away. I do not know what the next conference we have got. We have coming up in May 2022 in Northwest Arkansas. I interviewed a professor from the University of Arkansas, the number one supply chain school carrying Gartner. John, thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure talking to you. I look forward to keeping in touch. It was my pleasure.    Important Links John Murnane The Box That Changed the World Flexport Sanne Manders https://www.LinkedIn.com/In/JohnPMurnane/  – John Murnane https://www.LinkedIn.com/Company/Mcinsey/ – McKinsey & Company   About John Murnane John advises companies across a variety of industries and continents on their transformation and growth efforts. His broad cross-sector experience ranges from hospitality to global transport—including hotels and airlines, ocean and air freight, and trucking and distribution—and spans the value chain from capital-intensive real estate development to asset-light brokerage and distribution. He advises clients on growth at both a strategic and tactical level including M&A, new product development, value-based pricing, digital sales, and sales force effectiveness.  

Want to know how you can deploy a smart warehouse for your business? Today's guest is Dan Gilmore of Softeon, a company that provides a full suite of flexible and robust end-to-end supply chain software solutions to deliver success. He joins Joe Lynch to talk about the idea and technology behind their system. They discuss some of the big trends impacting warehouses, e-commerce, and retail. From labor shortages to automation, Dan enlightens on the benefits of WMS and WES for any business. Tune in to better understand the perks of this new smart technology for optimizing your business! The Smart Warehouse With Dan Gilmore Our topic is the smart warehouse with my friend Dan Gilmore. How's it going, Dan? It's great. I'm happy to be here. I'm glad I'm finally getting to interview you. Please introduce yourself, your company, and where you are calling from. I'm a Chief Marketing Officer of a supply chain software company called Softeon. Our company is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, outside of Dallas Airport. I happen to be in the Dayton/Cincinnati, Ohio area. What does Softeon do? It's a supply chain software company, primarily a supply chain execution. The company was founded in 1999. Our first customer all the way back then was the L'Oreal, and we proceeded to build out a suite of solutions that were brought in deep capability. That includes warehouse management systems, and all the stuff that goes around warehouse management systems including labor and resource management, slotting optimization, and yard management. A newer thing which we will get into because it's critical to what's happening in terms of the smart warehouse is something called warehouse execution systems, which have been around for a while but gained prominence in the last couple of years as a way to optimize and orchestrate order fulfillment level at a capability that's beyond even very good tier ones. This category of stuff is called distributed order management, which has to do with the optimal sourcing of products based on customer commitments as well as network capacities constraints in how do I get the lowest cost alternative that meets the customer needs? It's a very prominent in omnichannel commerce. It is almost essential in retail but we are having a lot of B2B type of successes in distributed order management as well. There are some other things that could give a flavor to what we do. You started well before eCommerce was a thing. Do you still support stores and that kind of warehousing? Traditional WMS type of capabilities for retailers, would largely be store replenishment. Now, we are moving into eCommerce fulfillment. Many retailers are also looking to have a lot of activity at the store level, whether that's buying online, pick up in-store, curbside pickup or store fulfillment. We've got some solutions there, both in terms of the distributed order management that I referenced. It is the tool going that says, “The best place to fulfill this order from based on the time commitments as well as inventory availability, labor availability, etc. is store 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,” and then have the ability to first identify where it's the right location. That could be obviously a DC, a third-party facility or something like that. The first word is the best place to source it from, and if it's a store, we have a store module that facilitates the inventory transactions, picking transactions, and shipping at a store level. That became a thing. Target is one of those companies that if you buy something online from them, they are more likely to ship from their stores these days. I have seen and the figure keeps rising. The whole market has changed. The more high-tech feel and touch, the less back-breaking work and less bending over and lifting heavy cases. It's like 80% or 90%. Let's say 90%. That's the number I had in my mind too. They are doing them from the store, which is incredible. Before we get into all that, tell us a little bit about you. Where did you grow up and go to school? Give us some career highlights and bullet points before you join Softeon. I'm an Ohio guy. My whole life, I grew up in Akron, Cleveland area, and then got a job with NCR after grad school. I got an MBA from the University of Akron. I got a job at NCR that was here in Dayton. I was a Product Manager in charge of barcode and data collection. The way serendipity works, I moved from barcode data collection systems to wireless systems and then got into WMS. I was into consulting for a while. I have done a lot of marketing in the space. I was also Chief Marketing Officer at the Red Prairie before it got acquired by JDA and became ultimately Blue Yonder. Earlier in my life, I spent a couple of years implementing WMS, a couple of major projects down here in the Cincinnati area that helped me learn a lot about how the technology works and what's good and less good. Notably, in 2003, I started a publication called Supply Chain Digest, which changed the face of online supply chain and logistics, news, and coverage. I still keep a light hand on it. I still write a column once a week still for Supply Chain Digest. I have read that. I wrote a lot of blog posts in the past. When you are a writer, I have joked that “My research is a little different than a professor's research, I Google.” You start to realize which publications have good content when you are a blogger. The bar is a little lower for a blogger than it is for somebody who is writing in a publication. I would say, “Supply Chain Digest always had good stuff.” When and why did you join Softeon? It has been a few years now. I had done a little bit of side consulting with Softeon before joining, and I was impressed with the breadth and depth of the software and the number of innovative capabilities, but as important as that is, lots of companies have good software. We think we've got leading-edge software but the approach to customers and success - I have never seen a company that consistently puts its own interests behind its customers on a regular basis. We are not going to let anything get in the way of a successful implementation. That's a direct record that's unequal in the marketplace. It's the care and concern for success at the customer level and not looking at everything through a lens of only professional services hours if I can sell or something like that. It was a different attitude. It intrigued me, and plus, the company needed some help in the marketing area to get that message out. The combination of those factors led me to join Softeon. Our topic is the smart warehouse. Obviously, things have changed quite a bit in this business. Talk about some of the big trends that are out there that are impacting warehousing, eCommerce, and retail. It impacts everybody. Most of the audience is going to say they are living this or these are big surprises but it's nice to still put it all in context, the growing distribution labor shortage and there's a shortage of manufacturing. It's very acute. Everywhere you go, that's what you hear about the turnover levels, retention, and even with the greatest rising substantially. That's everyone's concern. After about a decade of very flat wage growth in warehousing and distribution until a few years ago, now, all of a sudden, the costs are taken off. Amazon has over $20 an hour with attractive signing bonuses in many parts of the country. They now offer parental leave for twenty weeks. I saw it on TV. That would be a very attractive benefit. That's the advantage. Target announced that they were raising their wage in both stores and distribution centers, not all markets but in some markets, by $24 an hour. That's $48,000 a year, and assume there's probably some overtime in there, whatever husband and wife are making up, for example. They are working at a Target DC in those markets, you could be pulling in $100,000 a year for a family, which is not bad money. [caption id="attachment_7940" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Smart Warehouse: With the e-commerce-driven cycle time pressure, it's unbelievable how fast you can get products these days.[/caption]   This has come up on my show a few times. I'm getting too old for that kind of work, and I can't walk 10 miles a day but if I had a choice, we need to make that job easier. We are going to get to that because this is what technology does. It also makes the job more attractive when they can say, “I go to that job, and I'm learning all this cool technology.” If you can bring somebody in, there's a different feeling when I get to wear all that high-tech gear and use high-tech systems and say, “I'm part of the supply chain,” as opposed to, “I'm a strong back, walk 5 miles a day and nobody gives a crap about me.” There are no questions about that. It's going to be both in terms of the shortage of labor and, second, building to attract people into this career. Now the whole market has changed, that more high-tech feel and touch, less back-breaking work, less bending over and lifting heavy cases, and all the kinds of things to go on and work for a long time. You are spot-on on that dynamic. If we have a shortage, that means the people we do have to be more efficient. The way they can be more efficient is with tech. That's one big trend going on. What's another big trend? There's a bunch in there that interrelated as well. Obviously, the eCommerce-driven cycle time pressure. If you look ay Amazon over your tablet, it's unbelievable how fast you can get products these days, even somewhat obscure products not that long ago, I need a new power cord for my HP computer. Somehow Amazon was able to deliver that the next day. I'm like, “Probably, they have this cable in someplace that they can get it to me one day.” Think of all the thousands of cables that are out there, and they've got mine. The cycle time pressure in that both are in terms of getting the order process from when it drops into the DC and out the door. Obviously, companies are also moving distribution facilities closer to the customer, so the transportation part of the journey is cut down as well. They will remember the specific numbers. It's Home Depot that is building 170 or 180 different local fulfillment centers that are being the largely cross-dock type of facilities that bring bulky items in and get them right to the customer in addition to the big giant warehouses that they already have. It's a fact of life. Eventually, we will teleport or whatever the product from the warehouse because it seems like we are reaching the Laws of Physics there that it can't be here any faster but maybe we will find a way. I remember, many years ago, I was working on a digital marketing project. I was helping this distribution center, nice, concise in Chicago land Peoria. They said we are one-day shipping to 65% of the population of the US. That was always what Indiana, Illinois, and there are so many DCs down in Ohio can always make that claim, and that was good enough. If you said, “I have a DC in the Midwest that can get me to the Eastern Coast, and I have one out West, that was good enough.” We are not seeing that anymore. We are going to get increasingly where same-day delivery becomes a fact of life rather incredible. Amazon and others talk about getting it down to 2 hours or 30 minutes. That's what Target is doing, not with those DCs. We think we will get to Walmart doing some of the same. What's another trend? Obviously, because we are calling the session, we are going to talk about the smart and also the future but it's largely here nowadays. We've got smart everything. We've got smart houses, cars, refrigerators, and toothbrushes even. I saw that a couple of years ago. I'm not sure if it's exactly taken off the map but to monitor how often you brush your teeth. What does it mean? Primarily, it's talked about internet connectivity and some analytics around that. The least examples are John Deere, Caterpillar or companies of that kind, putting sensors and other IoT types of devices on their equipment out in the field so they can get a sense of how people are actually using it. They can do predictive maintenance on it. They could say, “Your guys aren't using the equipment as effectively as they could if they changed their techniques.” It's certainly timely. If we are going to almost start things where it's time for the smart warehouse too but we will get into for the rest of the broadcast era left different than more internet connectivity, sensors, and things like that. That can be part of it but it is a small part of it. The bottom line of it is we are entering a new era of where all soccer technologies that are, in fact, much smarter than we have ever had before. I have argued publicly for a couple of years now that we had about twenty years of relatively incremental progress in WMS technology. I used this in speeches before but a few years ago, I was cleaning up my office and running the holidays as I often do when I found an RFP from a major food company for a WMS circuit in 2003. I looked through that and I thought, “This doesn't look all that different than the RFPs we are seeing in 2019, 2020 or whatever year we are looking at that.” I looked at it and said, “The big difference is not in the functionality being asked for. It's that now, a lot of that functionality is, in fact, core product, configurable product than maybe a lot of it had to be achieved through customizations.” That's probably true. Same-day delivery has just become a fact of life. The fundamental way of where WMS operates didn't change all that much give or take from 2000 to 2020 or somewhere in that range. Now, with the smart technologies that we are talking about, they are brought by the world's execution systems in working with WMS, I talked about before. This is a new ball game, and it was going to be fun for the rest of the people here to talk about this. You throw in a new term there. You said warehouse execution system. Those have been around for a while but they are now becoming the norm. It's becoming very prominent, and then the value is starting to be recognized. What is it? A couple of three companies had the belief and correctly, for most of the WMS systems did not care enough about equipment throughput and utilization. We wound up with big peaks and valleys, and anybody have been in a district distribution center, even a busy one. You have seen it where there are all kinds of activity at the beginning and the middle of the wave, then as the wave starts to dissipate even on a big, expensive, huge sortation system, you've got a relatively small number of boxes moving around, waiting for that wave and everything to close out. You said wave. Does that mean the orders come in waves? Yeah. The work is released in what is called pick waves. That's based on any number of different attributes. It could be the carrier schedule, value-added processing that needs to be done or workload balancing across the different pick areas of the company. You organize the work against various attributes that constitute a block of work that's typically referred to as a wave. I know I've got all these trucks that are going to show up and they are taking different orders, so maybe I'm working to that order that's going to fill up that truck. The problem, to your point, is we've got already may be a shortage of headcount in there. Now when we have waves, I'm not being efficient because I've got too much work at one moment and then not enough at another. The whole goal of WMS of what we're talking about with the smart warehouse is overcoming, I mean, obviously, you've got to plan and execute based on the workforce that you have here, and we will talk about that. Having a warehouse management system that gives me stuff was great in the past but you are saying, “I will help you with a WES or Warehouse Execution System. I'm going to help you manage the flow.” Manage the flow work and the resource utilization, and then new ways. Part of that still ties into that interest in level loading or making the flow of goods across an automation system more smooth and consistent because if you can do that, there are a couple of things. First off, the total throughput of the system is likely to be better. Second, if it's a new facility, you could probably get by with a smaller sorter because you are going to be able to utilize it more consistently over a block of time, a shift or over what you want to look at it there. The other breakthrough that Softeon said is that the WES tends its roots and level loading of the automation and better utilization there. The WES works extremely well, even in non-automated facilities or lightly automated facilities. [caption id="attachment_7941" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Smart Warehouse: The fundamental way a warehouse operates didn't change all that much from 2000 to 2020. But now, with smart technologies, this is a new ball game.[/caption]   As a matter of fact, one of our leading customers did a press release a couple of years back that talked about 50% productivity gain from implementing WES or Warehouse Execution Systems on top of existing Softeon WMS, and doing that in a totally manual environment. Everything is part of a system. You can have a sortation system, goods to person system or put wall system or whatever. It's got a certain capacity, throughputs, inputs, and outputs. Twenty workers walked around on a three-level case pick module. There are systems too. They have inputs, outputs, throughput, and expectations. The one big difference is that with a more manual system, you can throw more bodies at it up to the point of diminishing returns and gain through the port from that area, whereas a heavily automated system is rate as its rating. You are not going to do a whole lot to affect that. Throughput is everything, whether you are a plant, a freight broker or a warehouse. The stuff that goes out the door and that we can charge for is what we want to do. Having a warehouse management system is great. I know there are certain warehouses. Probably the old ones still don't even have that. You are saying to be as efficient and effective as you need to be in the market, you need a warehouse execution system that gets me the flow and that throughput. It may not be for everybody, and there are certain things you can do. We could take your core WMS and add some select capabilities from a full-blown WES if a modest level of that kind of automation is necessary. It's not necessarily for one, and I don't want to position it that way but it's certainly something that you want to take a look at as you get to where you've got a significant number of workers. Even smaller operations, things like the automated release of work to the floor without the human being need needing to be involved, that's going to be attractive even for a mid-size operation. The first thing we need is we need to get into this. WMS is given. You said that there was an incremental improvement for many years. Now, you are starting to see big improvements that may be driven by the market that needed big improvements in recent years. Part of that is this WES. What else is there that's part of that smart warehouse? There's a whole bunch of stuff. First, as a reminder, the automation because automation is tied to the labor shortage. Even a couple of years ago, it was very common to talk to DC managers or logistics executives, and automation wasn't necessarily very high on the radar. Nowadays, almost close to 100% of the companies we talked to, even smaller companies, are looking at automation of some kind. That could be big automation where you've got traditional sortation systems but can be very large, goods to person systems, those kinds of things. There's also a lot of interest in lighter, more flexible, and less expensive technology things like what are called put walls. What's a put wall? In great simplicity, it is a technique or a structure, which is a module with a series of cubby holes or slots. In one of these modules, we have 1 customer that has 80 of these modules. What you do is you pick the orders, then when you come to the put wall, you distribute the order to the different orders that need that product. I batch pick the product. I bring it either mechanically or manually to the put wall. Typically, a series of lights says, “This company wall number 3 here and needs 1 of the skews. Put wall in. This one needs 2 that skew you put two in. This one needs 1 put 1 in.” That process repeats itself until all of the items for a given order are complete within that cubbyhole. That's called putting. That's why it's called a put wall because you are taking the order in back, and then you are putting it into the put wall. Around the backside, lights will turn on that indicate, “This cubbyhole is now complete.” The operator comes up and touches a button typically. That starts the printing of the label in any shipping documentation that's required in the orders packed, shipped, and off you go. It provides a tremendous amount of productivity. It's very flexible. You can start small. We had one customer that started with a 1-foot wall module, then added 8 or 9 more because they liked it, then they added 20 more because they really liked it, and did this all over a couple of three-year types of the period there. For any kind of piece picking, especially of soft goods but other types of products as well but often driven not only by eCommerce with any kind of heavy piece picking operation can be a great solution but you've got to have the right software to do it. You've got that big like almost a shelf you said like cubbies on that I'm putting a product through it. Maybe I walked over, and I got 10 different sweaters, 10 sweaters that are all the same, and this cubby gets one. As I do that, I'm scanning it or it recognizes that it's in there. It's informing the other side of the cubby when the order is complete. It needs two sweaters and a pair of shoes. That's just one more way. What do you call this? Technology is only part of it. The other piece of the cubby that walking up to that, I could be putting those in bins in the old days but this is putting that on steroids. The bottom line is we are entering a new era where all technologies are, in fact, much smarter than we've ever had before. It was just a new way of doing it. There are a lot of people who talk about this in terms of optimizing materials and handling systems because getting this right is not a trivial task. I don't want to steal all my thunder from later on but the ability to rapidly turn these put walls and cubbyholes are the whole key to the success. If it's taking you a long time to do that, you are not getting the throughput that you required and probably wasting your time and money but if you can rapidly turn those by making sure the inventory gets there on time and efficient execution on both sides of the wall, then you've got something that can drive a lot of productivity. I don't know what the number is. There are quite a few customers now that are using put walls. When we would go out to some new customers, we've got some videos to show them an operation, and they are interested in seeing how this works. It's the technology along with mobile robots that you are going to see, any eCommerce but any kind of piece picking as well, you are going to see a lot of adoption. I'm an automotive guy originally. When you used to go through a plant, you would see people doing lifting heavy things when I first started, crouching down and doing functions that were hard on the body. Maybe it's not hard on 1 day, 1 week or 1 month but over 1 year, you are going to have a bad back, shoulders or knees. The same thing happens in these DCS or the warehousing. This automation you are talking about is making it easier on the workers, which means, “Hopefully, I will be able to keep my workers healthy and make that job again more attractive.” One time, I talked to a VP of logistics at Sherwin-Williams, the paint company. He noted that on the manufacturing side of the operation, they were always having people retire, and during retirement, little parties were almost taken. He said, “There was no one that ever retired from the distribution side.” That's because the heavy worker is picking cases of paint as a young man's job. As people got older, they couldn't do that work anymore. People are obviously rethinking that for the aging factor, and then there's another factor, “How do I make the work easier so I can have somebody in their 50s and 60s continuing to do this at distribution center job?” If you gave me a choice to go work in an old school warehouse, go deliver food or deliver groceries, I'm going to do the grocery delivery. I can make decent money, sit in my car, and I don't have to hurt my back, or knees or walk 5 miles a day. We have to make these jobs more attractive or we are not going to be able to keep and get good people. This automation is of such interest to the jobs now that we become more technicians and less of an order pickers. Besides a put wall, what's some other automation you are seeing out there? The automated mobile robots, economists mobile robots or AMRs. There's a huge interest in that. One of the interesting things is that in both put walls and mobile robots, you are seeing a lot of adoption and interest by a third-party logistics companies. This makes the point. In the past, 3PLs were very reluctant to do any kind of heavy automation because they couldn't sync the return on investment with the contracts that they had from the shipper. If the shipper can pay off that equipment, it's going to take 5, 7 or whatever years, and the shippers only keep you where 2 or 3-year contract, the risk of automation is too great in these other kinds of systems. It includes things like voice, picks the lights, and smart cards. They are all connected in some ways. Those kinds of systems can be put in for much less expense, much lower risk, and be incrementally adapted. You can start with three mobile robots and see how you like it, then we have seven more later on or whatever until you get to the optimal point for your operation. The fact that 3PLs are making this kind of investment as a whole new phenomenon and it speaks to the way you can incrementally get into the technology and the high level of payback that they are seeing because we were very strong in the third-party logistics arena, as an aside, so we are seeing it very closely. The number of 3PLs that are interested in this mid-range of lighter picking systems, not heavy automation but it's often somewhat newer technologies. It speaks to the changes we are seeing out there in the marketplace. Those are robots. Depending on the facility, they are not necessarily always replacing people. I talked to the CEO or president of DHL. He says, “We thought we would be replacing people with robots. The more robots we add to a facility, the more work we end up getting for that facility. We ended up hiring more people.” Everyone has a shortage. Job is going unfilled. If the robots are taking some of that slack but very few case studies of people that are adopting these technologies, they are still looking for people who have been able to be on. [caption id="attachment_7942" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Smart Warehouse: WES (Warehouse Execution System) will help manage the flow of work and resource utilization.[/caption]   What's another thing we need for that smart warehouse? Let's get into it in some more detail. We talked about some of the core software components, things like warehouse management systems and warehouse execution systems. A platform for integrating this automation with both heavy and/or traditional and newer age capabilities. There are some enabling technologies, things like rules engines, simulation and some other things. The core world's operations excellence is still the foundation. How do I get that right? That typically involves traditional WMS-type capabilities. What does that mean? What defines a warehouse management system versus an inventory system is the pervasive use of mobile terminals, barcode scanning, wireless RF devices or whatever term you want to use there, and then a lot of system directed activity, this whole notion of task management and task monitoring, where the system is orchestrating the different traditional paths of put away, receiving put away, picking replenishment, etc., and support for multiple strategies around that. We have lots of different picking method options, different replenishment strategies that I can use, and things that have been around for a while like slotting optimization, detailed labor management, labor reporting, and things like that. The foundation is core operations excellence. That's what everyone should strive to get to but nowadays, there's no ability to take that even further in terms of different types of capabilities that we think are defining what we are calling the smart warehouse. You used a term there that was an integration platform. What am I integrating? You were integrating primarily different materials handling technologies. That can be things we have had for a wall that conveyor transport and sortation. It can be some of these newer technologies like robots and put walls. The key is, “How do I optimize the flow so I don't have these islands of automation that are all doing their own thing.” I talked to somebody in the apparel industry. They have a very large and highly automated facility somewhere down in the Atlanta area. It's 1 million or 2 million square feet. They are seeing their throughput from that building after huge investments over the years and over time. They are seeing the throughput decline. What's happening, he believed, is that the business keeps changing. They keep having all these new requirements in terms of how an order needs to be processed. What they do is they keep building new wave types. We talked about wave planning before. Now they are up to like 70 or 80 different wave types. Every time there's another problem, wave fight number 82 if that solves our problem, it's not solving the problem. Part of the reason is that the system is not looking holistically across the facility and seeing how I can optimize the flow of work as a whole, not as an individual subsystem. That's part of what we are talking about here with the smart warehouse. That's the thing that traditional WMS has not done. That integration platform means I can connect all the tools and all the different systems I'm using all connect easily through that integration as opposed to the old way, which is a standalone $100,000 integration with expensive people who have to code. That's certainly part of it. It's managing the flow of work across that. I'm getting hit myself again but for example, you can have some scenarios where I have different paths for an order to be fulfilled. One of the paths and the most efficient for certain orders is maybe a group of put wall models. Let's say put wall area, for whatever reason, starts to be congested. All of a sudden, there's a big backup on the conveyor feeding into the put wall area. The system is going to automatically recognize that. For some time, route orders away from the put wall into manual cart picking, which takes them to the packing station, the same packing area where the put wall automotive leads. When the congestion is clear, then the system automatically reroutes that work back to the put walls again. Now you are looking at only the plain integration but in monitoring the flow of work that's happening and making real-time decisions accordingly. I'm an automotive guy, and we had all of those years. We used the term smart factories, and it was the same thing. How do we increase throughput? What can happen is you can end up with a local optimum where some guys are building a big stack of inventory and does nobody any good? What does all that excess inventory doing for me? What makes more sense is to say, “We are going to get this, so there's a flow to it. We are not building up too much inventory. There are no bottlenecks.” This is the same thing. What you are talking about here is, “How do I arrange my people so I don't have these guys sitting around because they already finished while these guys are in a congested area?” The core world's operations excellence is still the foundation. The term flow manufacturing came out of exactly what you are talking about there and was largely developed initially in the automotive industry. We are talking about the same thing. Now we are talking about flow distribution instead of flow manufacturing but the fundamental concepts, more of a pull-based system were being worked on capacities and constraints, more concerned with the total flow of goods and not what's happening in one individual area. All those are very consistent, whether you're looking at the principles that were established earlier in manufacturing or what's being applied here in distribution. I'm going to assume that at one time, the WMS, a big selling point would be, “We will tell you where your inventory is at,” That was probably a big step up. You go, “It does that. Now I'm going to tell you how that inventory moves off of your shelves and out the door and how you bring new inventory.” It's amazing. We still see quite a few every week, we see somebody that's a calling or emailing in, and then we talked to him. It turns out they don't have that real-time visibility of the inventory because they are using some kind of paper-based system or something, and sometimes these are even good size companies. In general, anybody that's implemented a tier-1 or tier-2 level, even WMS shouldn't have that real-time inventory visibility in doing that. It gets into that operations excellence and problem but that's the foundation, “I got to know what I got and where it is by lot, batch, serial number or whatever attribute is important for your operation or combination of attributes.” That's the foundation, but now, we are saying, “How do we optimize on top of that and get more product out the door and lower cost?” It requires investment. Having a WMS tell me, “Here is the information but it's not enough anymore.” To your point, we need all of this to get there. You asked me about some of the components of the smart warehouse, and I talked about it from a product category perspective, but now, I'm talking about it more from a philosophical or a functional view. One of the key foundations is constraining condition awareness, “What's happening in my building? What's happening with the flow of goods?” One of the things that first got me to understand WES in a deeper way is this notion that it's always-on listening and monitoring the environment. If you think about a traditional WMS, it's more sequential-oriented, “I receive the product. I put it away. I replenished pick sites. I do the picking. I take it to pack or evaluated services. I put it in this receiving staging. I get it shipping staging. I get it out the door all very good then the delivered.” A lot of companies don't have that. Organizing and automating all of that are big steps forward but we need to take it to the next level. If you think about this notion, the system is always on monitoring throughput and flow. There are certain rates and throughput that I'm expecting. I need to be able to have a flexible set of dashboards supported by event alerts and notifications. If there's a problem that says, “Here's what's happening across.” However, I wanted to find it in the area, I can define an area as a case picking module or as a whole three-level case pick module. I see that as one unit, and I want to know what the throughput is there. Maybe I want to see it at each level of that pick module. I can see it more gradually. What's nifty about this is that new level of visibility, the activity, throughput, bottlenecks, alerts, and corrective action automated, increasingly automated, if there are bottlenecks. That provides a nice set of real-time dashboards of looking stuff where people can see what's happening, “I have these many orders pending here that's already been completed. Here's how many are in picking,” or all of that level of detail. To understand what's going on here with the smart warehouse is, the system is using that same data that's being exposed to managers and supervisors that's what it's using to make decisions as well. I decided that example of being aware of the backup that's happening in the put wall and automatically, for some time, routing work around that until the congestion is cleared. That's what's different now about this visibility and activity monitoring. Being able to flexibly do that however you want to define a processing area could be evaluated services. It could be peace picking and all these things. Obviously, now the design is at these different flows throughout the facility are in sync. I'm not getting old backed up and packing, which is causing problems way back, picking and replenishment because I haven't automated the visibility and the flow, release in a way that's going to be cognizant and aware that I've got a problem here and, “Here's what I need to do about it for some time until we are adjusting. We are just taking action to solve the problem.” You sent me a PowerPoint and I have this here. It's got that real-time configurable dashboard. It's been a while since I have seen somebody had me a piece of paper but somebody handed me a piece of paper that had 40 columns. It was like an Excel spreadsheet or something, maybe a spin out of a system. It had so much, I looked at it and I was like, “What am I supposed to do with this?” I liked the idea of being able to configure it for those KPIs that I care about. [caption id="attachment_7943" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Smart Warehouse: One of the things that got me to understand WES in a deeper way is this notion that it's always on, listening and monitoring the environment.[/caption]   I don't want to measure everything. That's just me. Tell me the 4, 5 or 7 things that matter that tells me my warehouse is moving in the right direction, and that things are working well. It says, “Orders with issues.” I also love the idea that I don't find out about the issues in next week's report. I find out about them in real-time. The point that you made is a nice transition to this notion of another component. We talked about the real-time visibility of capacities, constraints, the conditions up there, and the always-on nature of the WES. Now, we have talked about looking at a table of 40 rows of information or whatever. It's all in the past. It brings up a point there, which is even with higher-end WMS, this is one of the learnings and insights that we have. There's still a tremendous amount of decision-making that is being done by human beings. As the manager, whoever you were talking about there in your example, staring at a 40-row spreadsheet or whatever, you see the same thing nowadays of managers and supervisors staring at computer screens, trying to figure out what the right thing to do next. Here's the reality. Every time you do that, first off, you introduce some latency into the system because it takes time to look at those different screens, think about it, make decisions, and scribble some things down on a piece of paper to remind you this needs to be taken care of or whatever. In most cases, there's no way a human being can make the optimal decision in the same way that a computer can. Even if you are a smart guy or girl, there's just too much data and too much to try to process at one time. Part of the capabilities of the smart WMS is the much more advanced software-based decision-making. Things like order batch optimization, given block of orders, “What's the best way to most effectively execute that on the software floor?” What we think is absolutely huge is this notion of the autonomous warehouse, as a term of Gartner is used, and others have used it as well but it talks about being able to automatically release work without the need for a wave planner, inventory expediters or all the kind of people that you see often involved in these decisions about what work to do when. Work relation on a variety of attributes, things like the order of priority, the inventory and resource availability, what kind of optimization opportunities are there? The bigger the order pool and more optimization opportunities you have because they are more data or conditions to be optimized but you can't hold on so long. You are not getting the throughput out through your cutoff time. This is a huge one. It's sophisticated. Whereas now, at 4:00 or 5:00, when the UPS, FedEx or whatever truck is leaving, you often see, and we have made commitments to the eCommerce is going to ship, you see a certain amount of chaos going around, trying to figure out all the orders that need to go on that truck, have been on the trucking and what to do about it. What we are talking about here is we are saying, “This is the work. We know how long it's going to take to pick and transport those orders to the shipping dock.” The work is going to automatically release itself. At the beginning of the day, we are more concerned about optimization. We still got a lot of decent amount of time, so we can focus on doing it the most efficient we can but as you go throughout the day, that needle starts to change from the focus on efficiency and cost to efficiency on customer service and making sure that those items are on there. The system does that automatically. It's configured to take those into consideration. Now those orders are getting on the trucks automatically without the chaos and the difficulty that's going on out there. This is a step-change capability here. We are talking about a system that is self-learning and in optimal how releases work. This is another concept we have had in distribution software before, and this is what defines what works on the smart warehouse. I had a boss in the past when I was young, I remember I sent an Excel spreadsheet to him, and it told a story. He's pulled me into his office and said, “This is a great Excel spreadsheet. I have to go through here and come to the same conclusion you did.” I go, “It's easy.” He goes, “No. When you send me this Excel spreadsheet, send me a recommendation. I don't want to have to come to a conclusion. That's your job. Show me that you attach the data back up but give me a recommendation.” I feel the same take way about running a warehouse, “Don't make me figure it out myself. Give me an alert that says, ‘This is a problem. This is how many orders are at risk. This is how many orders need to get on that truck that isn't done yet.'” To show you a simple example. Still, a lot of people, especially for eCommerce, are doing manual cart picking. I may have a cart that's got a certain configuration 3x3 or 4x4. What I mean by a 3x3 would be 3 shelves that each have room for 3 cartons each. I have nine total orders that I'm working on there. Most companies that we see do that are doing it with paper picking or pick by label or something. There's some attempt to do that more efficiently but something as simple as cart picking. The smart warehouse can take it to a whole new level. First off, you've got to get this order pool that's out there and at any one period. I'm probably going to have done some cartonization logic there to determine what should go in what box, especially with a multi carton order. In most cases, there's no way a human being can make the optimal decision in the same way that a computer can. Even if you're really smart, there's just too much data to process at one time. If you are shipping, for example, you don't want to put perfume in the same carton as payroll because of the obvious contamination that can happen there. When a picker comes up and scans a barcode on that cart, the system is going to automatically know it's this configuration, 3x3, 4x4 or whatever. It will have done some optimization typically in terms of what's called cluster picking were, “I'm going to take that cart to one location. I will put as many orders as I can on the cart that is signed to that cart that has the same set of skews so I can minimize my travel distance. Hopefully, I'm being clear on what that means.” Now I get to that location that can be done with lights or it can be done with barcode scanning. It says, “Take one of these from this location, put it in the carton slot 3'1, which is the 3rd shelf and the first location. The next one is 3'2. 2'3, 2'1 or whatever that sequence. I'm doing that in a way that makes it very efficient but we can take it even still beyond that. What if a high-priority order comes on? The pickers walk along as long as there's a location on that cart, whether it's a carton or a tote they are picking into. If it hasn't been started, we can remove automatically a lower priority order and insert a higher priority order that has come down onto that card as long as we would typically do it. The picker doesn't have to turn around and go backward as long as it picks for the new order or ahead of that picker. We do that without the picker, even being aware that it happened. You can expedite automatically like, “I got a truck that's going to be here one hour. We haven't even started yet. Let's get this going.” We say, “If you get an order in by 2:00, we will ship it that day. If it's 1: 58, all of a sudden, an order drops. I got two minutes.” This isn't going to automatically insert a higher priority order possible. I like something you said in there that we talked about the labor problem with these guys walking around maybe 5 or 10 miles in a day. One of the reasons we are going to quit, especially if you are me, is I don't want that many steps. When I walk over there, all my orders are in the same area, then I walk over here, and all my orders are there, as opposed to one side of the warehouse, and another order on the other side or I'm walking and go, “What has my life become where I walk back and like this?” Order pool optimization as well because the bigger the batch that I'm working with, the more opportunities I have to gain those picks together. On a given card, I'm maybe walking a very few feet. To your point, and this is where you get into the whole notion of mobile robots because now, perhaps that, “I go to the pick location, I pick the order but I'm putting it on a pick card. I'm putting it on a mobile robot, and the mobile robots can move on to the next location or on the packing of the orders completed. I'm walking very little at that point or comparatively little, which is one of the attractiveness of mobile robot technology.” Hopefully, it's becoming clearer. The nature of the warehouse is changing, and a part of that's going to have to be to not only be more cost-efficient and get more out the door with the staff that I've got but it's making sure that people have a less miserable work experience and hence hopefully going to stay with this a lot longer. This is not your grandpa's warehouse anymore. To be competitive, it used to be like, “These guys are high tech because they have a WMS.” Now we are starting to spin out the automation, the warehouse execution, and the integration platform. This is all getting really high-tech. Do you think this is probably the lowest-tech business there was many years ago? House is all going to play out. It's going to be interesting to see but the lighter automation techniques, including the robots and the put walls, are so attractive in terms of their flexibility and expandability. There are machine learning, artificial intelligence, and all kinds of things going to be involved here. The warehouses are becoming technology centers. If you see the private equity money that's flowing into robotics firms, AI firms, and others, in a lot of the smart money, it's the work that they do. Companies, retailers, and other eCommerce companies are starting to realize the importance of a well-run warehouse. Was this guy's quiet logistics? They've got bought by American Eagle. That was American Eagle recognizing the traditional retailer, the same thing we're going to buy ourselves a warehousing company because that's how important this business is. The force behind what has become locus robots. We will move our vendors that happened because Amazon had bought key assist systems right before that and left a quiet without a partner for automation they were building the business on. They invented their own robot. [caption id="attachment_7944" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Smart Warehouse: What's really different now about this kind of visibility and activity monitoring is being able to flexibly do that however you want to define a processing area.[/caption]   Bruce Welty was at my show. He's the Founder of Quiet. He said he got a phone call saying, “Are you guys using those Locus robots?” He says, “Yeah, how do you like them?” “We like them a lot. Can we come to visit?” “Sure.” It was Amazon. Amazon looked around and said, “We love this.” They bought Locus. A couple of other things I would like to bring up. First, broader use of some automation ideas or IoT type devices. RFID is starting to make something of a comeback years after Walmart tried back in 2003 or 2004. Generally, you are going to see many manual scanning activities that are going to disappear or if I need to move this way back now from being implemented at the store level by customers concerned with the eCommerce fulfillment for inventory equity purposes, you are going to see a move back up into the distribution operations. That will certainly be a big part of it. We were already doing things like, for example, we are a broker with a pick cart. Picker with a pick cart can walk up to a fixed zone. The IoT automatically recognizes that this person is on. It automatically turns on the pick lights that are on those four pick locations. It's a minor thing there but that's an advancement we are going to see. We have even done some stuff with congestion management and COVID, where we can tell exactly where somebody is in the I or using IoT and being able to assign work based on real-time visibility to who's closest to that work, but also when the COVID area being able to space people apart so that they don't get to say within 8 feet of each other, whatever that happens to be, whatever your metric you want to use, therefore that group constraint. There are some various things that can happen there. This is still slow going. It hasn't taken off as fast as many people think but you are going to see RFID and IoT start to make some mural inroads over the next years. We have this follow the notion of Gartner and what's considered to be called a conversational voice. The transactional voice is doing the picking, pallet build or something using voice technologies. Typically, reading in a location check digit and doing a hands-free pick, replenishment or whatever the task might be but we're starting to get now into more of a dialogue. We are all ready to the point now where we can have a supervisor take a smartphone and say, “Show me how I'm doing on wave number 235,” over a smartphone. That's going to bring back exactly what's happening now or, “Where's the replenishment for location on 3652?” We are still early in this game here but certainly, we will move to more of a dialogue going on with the WMS and WES than just playing transactional voice-type of technology. We ended with a very exciting where the future interface of the software is going to had. This is where that integration platform you talked about comes in handy. I can connect to all this stuff. The new killer app that comes out, I can get it. We have been left there. Automation and optimization of materials handling systems is certainly a key part of this. We refer to it, not just as a smart warehouse's the future but as the smart automated across to the future due to the interest in the technologies we have talked about several times already. We can directly connect with these picking assistance, like walls, pick the light or voice without the need for third-party software. Everyone else uses some kind of software from the put wall vendor, pixelate vendor or voice vendor, which adds another layer of integration and costs. It often results in people operating silos. We can directly control a lot of these materials handling technologies. It allows you to operate and optimize those in the context of everything that's happening in the world and all the information that's available, which provides you a lot of benefits over time because you are not just trying to operate in silos. I talked to somebody that was using a pick-to-light system. They talked about how at the end of every week, they've got to go in and clean up all these pics that some of them never were executed in the pick-to-light system. I'm not quite sure why that is but it wouldn't happen with the way we are approaching things because we would be aware of that. It probably has to wait on a real punishment. The problem is the pixelate vendor doesn't do replenishment the documents. You've got these silos going on here and there are a lot of opportunities. In terms of that integration platform, we think this is especially true for mobile robots, people are using the mobile software of the mobile robots. What that does is it limits the total optimization that can be achieved but more importantly, you are now totally dependent on that robot software. What if you want to add different robots or change horses three years from now? There's a better mousetrap that works faster or whatever that happens to be. Now you have become locked in. We refer to it not just as smart but the smart automated across to the future. We think the market needs a mobile robot and a broader automation integration platform. It's almost like an operating system for automation in the warehouse that's going to allow you to have visibility to optimization of robots of different kinds from the same manufacturer of different types for different manufacturers. You are not locked in. It's like a plug-and-play type of environment here three years from now. You can keep the robots or keep dependent you bought, but now, you want to add five more from a different vendor, plug them into this operating system, and have instant connectivity and the ability to optimize the performance. We think that's a much more low-risk approach going forward than locking yourself into a vendor that's coming to the software that's coming from the robot vendor. Get back to the idea of a smart warehouse. It's all about throughput. If I have different systems that are connecting, that are doing local optimums, that's a problem because it's not supporting throughput. I always need that one source of truth. That's the main system that says, “This is all about getting stuff out the door here.” I wanted to bring up one. Earlier, I talked about wanting to give an example of what the put wall. I referenced that as the cubbyholes in put walls. Here's the scenario we are seeing. Let's say there are three line items eCommerce order. Two of those line items in the order come from a carton flow rec area, that's very close to packing. I mean those orders are efficient to pick, in short distance to transport. The third line item is actually coming from a slow-moving mezzanine pick area that's farther away and is less efficient to pick. If you don't do anything, otherwise what's going to happen in those first two items from that order are going to show up rather quickly, then they are going to sit and wait for 10, 15, 20, 45 minutes or whatever it happens to be for that third item on the pick, the order to finally show up. The cubbyhole has been tied up that entire time. What's the smarter warehouse way of doing it? What's the WES way of doing it? Let's say it's 25% slower to go through the mezzanine or whatever the number you want to use it. We would release that third line item in effect 25% or 30% earlier. After the time it takes to pick and transport that as it's on its way to the pack station, now we release the other two orders line items in the carton flow rack. They show up at the put wall for processing at relatively the same time, and now I'm able to turn that wall without the latency that would occur i