Name: Retail Trends: Balancing Consumer Expectations and Emerging Tech | Episode 16
Start: 2023-05-29T16:00:00Z
End: 2023-05-29T16:00:13.000Z
Location: BrightTALK
Rating: 0

Digibee helps organizations modernize their legacy architectures by enabling frictionless connectivity between applications, unleashing digital experiences at scale.

The cloud means workflows, not better file shares. Digibee's innovative and flexible modern integration platform as a service (iPaaS) can dramatically expedite IT projects, reducing costs and technical debt while connecting applications, processes, and people for faster time-to-market without a major investment.

In this podcast episode, Cait Porte interviews Alicia Dixon, an experienced ecommerce product leader, about her favorite project and strategies for balancing innovation. Alicia shares the story of how she worked on a project that involved converting an application that ran on Windows Ce to an Android application, which was a gut project. She convinced her leadership to shift direction from using expensive handheld devices to using smartphones, which reduced costs significantly. The product was a success and was still being used by the company until a few years ago.

The conversation then shifts to how to stay connected and updated in the product community. Alicia emphasizes the importance of going back to basics and having intimate conversations with peers. With the explosion of courses and people trying to monetize product, Alicia actively stepped back from participating in Slack channels and social media. She instead committed herself to reconnecting with somebody else once or twice a week, who is doing similar work and could have challenges that she can relate to. This approach allows for more meaningful conversations, sharing of real-life experiences, and supporting each other's growth.

Finally, they discuss the importance of aligning with people to invest in your career. Alicia recommends finding a product leader whose thinking and style match your own and working for that person to learn from them. Companies are constantly changing, and what may be a good product organization this year might not be a good one next year. However, having a relationship with a product leader who invests in your career can be beneficial and can be carried to several different companies.

Overall, the conversation between Cait and Alicia provides valuable insights into product management, including the importance of balancing innovation and keeping the lights on, staying connected and updated in the product community, and investing in your career by aligning with the right people.

Staying Connected in the Ecommerce Product Community | Episode 15

Johnny Russo is interviewed by Cait - Chief Digital Officer at Lamour, he leads the Direct to Consumer division for six e-commerce brands including Crooks N Castles, Thorlos, and Within. Prior to joining Lamour, Johnny was the Vice President of E-commerce and Marketing at The Kersheh Group, where he was responsible for building the Direct to Consumer division for various brands. Before that, he was the Associate VP of Digital Marketing and E-commerce at Mark’s.

With over 16 years of experience in Digital Marketing and E-commerce, Johnny is passionate about digital transformation and leadership. Johnny often speaks at industry events and writes about it on his blog. He is a published author and an investor in INVICTA Commerce Ventures. He also serves on the Board of Advisors for Etail Canada, NRF’s Digital Council, RCC’s E-commerce Advisory Board, and the Board of Directors of the Calgary Marketing Association.

Mastering Mindful Leadership | Episode 14

Are you interested in learning more about the role of integration platforms in digital transformation? If so, this webinar is a must-watch!

Join the experts from Digibee as they discuss the findings of a survey conducted among technologists in finance, manufacturing, and retail. The survey revealed some interesting insights into the importance of integration support in IT projects, the increasing downtime resulting from implementation, and the growing importance of digital transformation initiatives.

During the webinar, the experts will delve into the role of cloud-native platforms in helping organizations minimize downtime and achieve their digital transformation goals more efficiently and effectively. You'll learn about the benefits of cloud-native platforms, including easy learning, reuse of integration components, and shorter implementation timelines.

If you're interested in staying ahead of the curve in the rapidly evolving business landscape, this webinar is a must-watch. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from the experts and gain valuable insights into the role of integration platforms in digital transformation.

Enterprise Integration: The Pain and the Prize

Cait interviews Chris Cortese who possesses an extensive engineering background as a leader for major retail companies such as GoDaddy, Chewy, and Gamestop. Chris's background covers an engineering career of just over two decades. Professionally, his early years focused on lean starts and pure research. After several successes (and failures), he moved in to leadership roles refocusing engineering groups and scaling with growing businesses in terms of people and technology. His most recent roles over the past third of his career have been focused on scaling e-commerce processes and technologies at various points in the customer's journey. A reoccurring theme with all three companies was transforming monolithic tech stacks into scalable, modern architecture’s that were setup for future success. 

During this episode, Cait and Chris dive into a multitude of topics including the challenges of legacy migration, digital transformation, what it takes to have successful customer engagement, and learnings along the way. Chris shares his insights working with older generation e-commerce stacks, their drawbacks, and navigating the “song and dance” of maintaining business continuity while making future improvements in their technology. He discusses the challenges of legacy migration, and how having a deep relationship between the engineering and product teams plays a critical role in a successful implementation - for internal teams and ultimately the customer. He also shares the lessons learned from a specific legacy migration project, and how having a holistic view of everything from the start would have ensured a smoother process.

Navigating Legacy System Migration and Digital Transformation | Episode 13

As organizations continue to evolve and innovate, the need for agile integration solutions becomes increasingly important. In this webinar, Digibee’s CTO and Co-founder, Peter Kreslins, and Head of Market Strategy, Matt Durham, will share insights on modern integration architecture and its role in driving organizational agility.
Attendees will learn about the five key principles of modern integration architecture: decentralization, empowerment and enablement, low code, ecosystem-driven, and continuous activity. The session will also cover the importance of democratizing technology and empowering citizen developers while maintaining governance and guardrails.

To wrap up the conversation, Digibee leadership will delve into how an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) can help organizations achieve modern integration architecture and improve their agility.

Modern integration architecture: A new approach to unlock organizational agility

In this episode of the podcast, host Cait Porte is joined by Tam, the field CTO for North America, to discuss the topic of data decentralization. Tam starts by defining what decentralization of data means, which can differ depending on the industry or company. Centralizing data into a data warehouse or data lake strategy has been growing in popularity in recent years, but the rise of edge IoT and security privacy concerns have made decentralization an important issue. There are two main reasons for this push towards decentralization, including data that cannot be accessed due to regulatory security privacy concerns and data that is being produced in such high quantities that centralizing it is economically unfeasible. Tam explains how the Digibee platform can help companies access and utilize data no matter what source system it is in or where it needs to go to. Overall, having a strategy and technology in place to support data decentralization is crucial for companies facing regulatory and security concerns.

Data Decentralization | Episode 12

Cait is joined by Grant Holden, solutions architect at Digibee with over 15 years in the IT space to discuss the roadblocks and solutions for companies wanting to achieve cloud migration. They touch on the fears associated with moving from on premises to the cloud, as well as the technological advancements that make it easier than ever to do so. He walks through Digibee's specific six step methodology to cloud migration - making it a seamless process with Digibee's powerful platform. The key to success is Digibee's ability to run old and new systems in parellel until the enterprise is 100% ready to operate fully in the cloud.

Six Step Methodology for Cloud Migration | Episode 11

Cait and Tam dig into the importance of an integration strategy after Digibee's State of Enterprise Integration Report findings reveal only 7% of IT leaders have one in place for their enterprise. 

For Tam, choosing the right strategy when it comes to integration centers around three main principles: 

1) Evaluate the goals of the business before looking at the tech stack you're attempting to integrate
2) Enable your strategy to be as flexible as possible
3) Future-proof your strategy by adopting modern solutions that keep innovation at the forefront

Our State of Integration Report also shows people are constantly re-implementing integrations they put in place - but it doesn’t need to be that way. Tam encourages IT leaders to think about the future, not compromise for short-term wins.

How to Choose the Right Enterprise Integration Strategy | Episode 10

Cait Porte facilitates a roundtable discussion on the published Forrester Total Economic Impact report for Digibee, providing an unbiased view of value that the solution provides for customers. Findings such as payback period, speed to value, and efficiency are discussed amongst the group.

To accelerate the delivery of digital experiences moving forward, there must be an increase in productivity for IT and developers. The report highlights just how much this tool helps achieve this  - reducing time spent on integrations from 300 hours to less than 60 for a customer. 

Findings validate Digibee as the developer’s choice for integration - accomplishing the outcomes promised, delivering on value promised, and helping customers unlock even greater experiences in drastically shortened timelines with an effective full lifecycle integration solution.

Total Economic Impact of Digibee | Episode 9

In today’s reality, retail organizations need to be adaptable to change, but the complexity and interdependencies of the integrations connecting your systems, platforms and partners can be a major barrier to the agility you need. 

The concept of composable architecture promises to help with flexibility and scalability to better support your current infrastructure and to future-proof for continuous change. How do you infuse real composability in 2023?

Empowering Composable Architecture for Retailers through Modern Integration

Digibee field CTO Tam Ayers discusses the impact of the announcement that enterprises' using SAP ERP will have to migrate to SAP S4/HANA by 2027. This episode dives into variables, challenges, and benefits of the migration. 

He encourages technology leaders not to think of this as a mandatory or necessary evil - rather as an opportunity for modernization, unlocking a lot of benefits and potential for business. The solution was out there before mandated, meaning there’s value in it. Tapping into that sooner rather than later can be instrumental in your strategy.

Finding a framework that’s been tested and successful, such Digibee’s 6 step approach to migration, is critical to alleviate a lot of problems on the road to get there.

Planning for the SAP S/4HANA Migration | Episode 8

Cait Porte is joined by Digibee field CTO, Tam Ayers, to discuss Digibee’s published State of Enterprise Integration Report. The report surveyed 1,000 respondents of various roles including CIO’s, web developers, enterprise architects at organizations with an employee base of 500+ to gather insights on the direction of integration for enterprises’. 

They reflect on findings such as the impact of lacking integration strategies, what poor integrations can cost the business, and the need for 96% of respondents to spend on re-implementation of integration strategies within one year. 

Living in an era of digital innovation with a plethora of new solutions, Tam encourages IT leaders to ask themselves if they are building integrations the way they want, or according to what they have in place. The solution should work for you, not have employees working for it!

The Digibee 2022 Enterprise Integration Report | Episode 7

Listen to field CTO Tam Ayers and CTO Peter Kreslins discuss where integration stands today and what the future holds.

While digital experiences come with higher than ever standards from customers and employees, good integrations prove to be the backbone for creating great ones. They discuss how IT leaders are forced to adapt to changing technologies in days and weeks, not years and months to keep with competition - making integration a critical centerpiece for future enterprise IT strategies. 

As systems continue becoming overwhelming in number, critical data is left unaccounted for, and silos between work groups increasingly grow - integration must be considered as a centerpiece to the solution for business’. The emphasis for enterprise becomes not only tools that improve collaboration through communication, but collaboration through integration.

What is the Future of Integration? | Episode 6

Our host, CMO at Digibee Cait Porte, is joined for a discussion with Customer Success Manager Paula Arencibia, to discuss speed of integrations and Digibee’s differentiated delivery model. Integrations occur in as little as three weeks with Digibee - attributed to superb technology and a highly skilled delivery team according to Paula.

She dives into the three stages of onboarding for customers - where Digibee will work for you, work with you, and work to empower you for your own projects. There are no integration limits for enabled customers! 

She overviews the comprehensive team services included with Digibee’s product to make this possible - including access to functional analysts, solution architects, and developers in addition to beloved customer success managers.

Is the World Ready for How Fast Digibee Can Deliver? | Episode 5

Hear from Andre Campos, field CTO at Digibee, on his career journey from a 16-year-old working in IT to CIO. Get an idea of lessons he’s learned along the way including strategy, costs, execution, leadership, and employee engagement.

Andre discusses strategy vs. execution pertaining to digital transformation - its values and challenges. The value - ensuring the business’ growth by reducing the effort and maximizing results with technology. The challenges - no one technology will solve all the issues. 

His philosophy centers around engaging and enabling users - customers, employees, and vendors - with the effective tools that work for them, not have them work for your technology.

A CIOs Challenge - Strategy vs Execution | Episode 4

Joined by Digibee founding CEO and CTO, they discuss a particularly proud accomplishment - Digibee’s uniquely crafted core values. The values were developed by the organization and for the organization, a true reflection of what’s important at Digibee - the people. Hear both of their favorite values and why!

How We Chose Our Values | Episode 3

Founders Rodrigo Bernardinelli and Peter Kreslins discuss the importance of integration and how it is critical to enterprises’ ultimate success in today’s digital age. 

While acknowledging integration issues are not new - what is new are the thousands of services and mediums businesses must navigate while meeting high consumer expectations for seamless digital experiences. 

Digibee was built to solve the modern integration challenge: giving organizations’ adaptability and flexibility to connect, reconnect, and build repeatable integrations at scale to compete in the new era. Not nine months from now, but today.

Why We Care About Enterprise Integration | Episode 2

In this episode of Integration Redesigned, Cait Porte interviews Chris Muscat, an ecommerce executive, on the latest trends in retail and how businesses can navigate the ever-changing technological landscape to meet consumer demands.

One of the key challenges discussed in the conversation is the need to balance consumer expectations with the limitations of current technology and infrastructure. Muscut suggests that businesses can soften the blow by investigating new technologies that can help move things along, and keep up with the rapidly changing technological landscape so they don’t get left behind.  He also advises businesses to prioritize the needs of their customers and to choose new technologies that will help solve the customers pain point.

Another important topic they touched on is the importance of data-driven decision making in today's market. Muscut emphasizes the need for businesses to streamline their reporting and use data to drive insights and make informed decisions. He also notes that while having data in multiple systems can be problematic, it is essential to present data in a format that can be used to make decisions.

The conversation also touched on the difficulties of upgrading legacy systems that have been in place for years. Muscut acknowledges that legacy systems can cause bottlenecks and increase additional spend, but upgrading those systems is a massive project that could take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. He suggests that businesses need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of upgrading legacy systems, as they are the basis of their business and pulling away from them can be a difficult feat.

Overall, the conversation provides valuable insights into the challenges facing businesses in the retail industry and highlights the importance of staying up-to-date with new technologies and data-driven decision making to remain competitive.

Retail Trends: Balancing Consumer Expectations and Emerging Tech | Episode 16

Integrated Marketing

Integration

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Ecommerce

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Retail Trends: Balancing Consumer Expectations and Emerging Tech | Episode 16

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