Supply Chain Now
Episode 292

Episode Summary

For Episode 292, Scott and Greg welcomed Tom Jones with Alloy to the Supply Chain Now Studio in Atlanta, Georgia.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:05] It’s time for Supply Chain Now Radio Broadcasting Life Supply chain capital of the country, Atlanta, Georgia. Supply Chain Now Radio spotlights the best in all things supply chain the people, the technology, the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

 

[00:00:29] Hey, good afternoon. Scott Luton here with you, Lavern Supply chain. Now welcome back to the show. On today’s show, we’re speaking with a Supply chain technology leader. We’re gonna be discussing big data transparency, visibility, better decision making, sooner decision making, you name it. So stay tuned as we look to increase your Supply chain Tech IQ. Two quick programing note. First, you can find Supply chain. Now wherever you get your podcast. Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, you name it. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing. Secondly, let’s think a few of our sponsors that allow us to bring these best practices and insights to you. Our audience. The Effective syndicate Vector Global Logistics. Cap Gemini, ProPurchaser.com, Talentstream and many others. You can check out each of our sponsors on the show notes of this episode. USO’s welcome in my fearless, esteemed co-host on today’s show. Greg White Serial Supply chain Tech Entrepeneur, trusted advisor and spirited lunch discussion facilitator. Greg.

 

[00:01:28] How are you doing? I’m doing great. Well, yeah, actually, I’m doing great.

 

[00:01:33] Hey, I want to give a shout out to a couple folks just real quick. Okay. Steve, okay.

 

[00:01:38] We’re big enough now that we can’t get people’s full names because people can find it. And, Kristie, be in love, our news segment. Okay. And we’ve, as people probably noticed, kind of deleted those from these in the spirit of not boring our guests to tears, but because you because we have done that, we have told you everything that you need to know about this week’s events. And Supply chain on Supply chain Budge Buzz Buzz, which is published every Monday. Ryan, early how early is it? Because it’s always there when I just.

 

[00:02:12] After midnight. Okay. No, no, no kidding. Early morning. Yeah. Because it is timely. Yeah. Timeliness. This is of the essence with that one, right? Yeah. Supply chain Buzz and its cousin series. Supply chain Budge. But at Syria. Yes. It helps you move forward in the day.

 

[00:02:28] So Stephen Christie can check that out. Supply chain buzz. Subscribe there. Subscribe here. Yeah, for that. And and that way we won’t burden our guests with every single news nugget every day we know with this guest here today and we’re gonna welcome him in momentarily.

 

[00:02:44] We of get two episodes, one with microphones, one is one without. So our guest today joined us at station side. Yeah. Awesome café here where our studio is located at King Plow in West Atlanta. And kind of unexpectedly, we all kind of met, had excellent food and retail driven to discussion.

 

[00:03:03] Have to confess, that’s the first time I’ve been recognized. Well, never. Thank you. You’ve captured in a whole new era. That’s right. Let’s meet this guy at this.

 

[00:03:15] That’s right. So our special guest today here is Tom Jones, regional sales director with Alloy. Tom, good afternoon. Afternoon. So glad to have you here in studio. We’ve had a, you know, going back to a webinar we did with Alloway several years back y’alls firms, but has been on our radar. And we’ve we’ve really enjoyed a collaboration since that point. Devoting a great blog article that you collaborated with Cindy Chao. Yes, right. Yeah, that was well received. So it’s great to have you here in the studio with us as we get to know you better. Your perspective and of course, find out what is going on. Alloy that’s driving all the growth. Yeah, no, I’m very excited to be here. Thanks for having me. All right. So, Tom, we want to start before we start talking shop and we start talking about all that really cool things that the Albertini team is up to these days is get to know Tom Jones better first. So tell us by yourself. Tell us about where you grew up and be sure to give us the skinny on your upbringing.

 

[00:04:13] All right. All right. Well, I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, just on the west side in a suburb called Minnetonka. Haven’t gone far from the tree there. Spent my whole life in the Twin Cities, both west and east side of Minneapolis and St. Paul, back on the west side. Now, I guess, you know, what was a little bit unique about me is I’ve always really been into the math, into the numbers. So I got into computers in an early age. I was part of that generation. I don’t know if many people were. But what was your first? What was your first computer? My first computer was Commodore 64. OK. So we had that was a 64 K of memory running off floppy disks. Five and a quarter inch floppy disk. Yeah. And yeah. No, it was a ton of fun. Started building up when we start when things got moved over to the Intel Pentium chips. You know, when we are so excited, we got our first city Raam. You know, they didn’t have speed. They had speeds and then they didn’t have speeds anymore because it was irrelevant. Yeah, but yeah. So we used to build computers and then we’d have our friends over that all look over their giant monitors and big towers and like Will Smith from that movie.

 

[00:05:20] What are you going to APC around?

 

[00:05:22] Yeah, that’s a bit of happiness. Yes, he was to go on medical devices.

 

[00:05:26] Right. And we get like five guys in the basement. We took them all out. War game is super nerdy and there’s a ton of fun. And half the time is just like trying to get them to work, like the other half trying to play a game. You know, what was super dirty then is super innovative now. I mean, that’s you look at the folks that that started and those hobbies and the huge things are doing now, much like ELO team you in ELO team are doing. Do you still tinker with computers and build your own stuff? No, it’s it’s funny.

 

[00:05:54] In the last few years, I for the first time, I went in. I don’t have a personal computer anymore. All right. Everything everything is moved. And I have a laptop for work. I have an iPad. And I can do the majority of all of my personal stuff just on my phone and my iPod.

 

[00:06:07] Yeah. So, you know, I stumbled a little brief departure here. I stumbled on a documentary on YouTube about fathers kind of in our general age that grew up playing video games like in the 80s in Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, all those. Right. And there evidently is a group is a very vibrant and growing community that still play those games, but they’ve got to build their own systems and and also so their kids can play it. And they’re passing it right down to their kids. Now, I know, Tom, you’ve got two young children. Maybe the youngest is too early to, you know, see maybe how they’re here. But the 5 year old has. Has he displayed he. Right. Displayed a passion for computing or all things electronics like his father?

 

[00:06:56] Oh, yeah, I know. He’s he’s so we we travel a fair amount and he is very excited to get on the plane because that means he gets to have a screen and he gets some screen time. So he’s devoted to that. And we recently added a console to the house. So he’s been playing a lot of Lego Ninja.

 

[00:07:14] Yes. Video. He’s very into the Ninjago game. And it’s amazing how quickly he went from not knowing how to use a joystick to being completely proficient with a controller. I mean, those are complicated controller with the the ability to learn and apply learn in a plan that vicious cycle is so compressed with with these young ones. These games are full of puzzles like the speed at which he developed. The ability to solve these pretty complicated puzzles on his own is astounding. So it’s it’s been really. And he can’t read anything in the game. Fives. He can’t. He can’t when the game’s telling him something to do. He’s got it figured on his own. I love it. It’s amazing. Love it. OK. So let’s switch gears now. Greg, we want to kind of dove into Tom’s professional journey, right?

 

[00:08:04] Yeah. So you grew up soon. You went to college, had to get a job. So tell us a little bit about that. So tell us a bit about kind of from college in and through to your professional journey until you until you landed at Alloway Sheer.

 

[00:08:21] Shrug of the CliffNotes I. So I was super geeky and computers loved. It seemed really natural to go into computer science. And I started at the computer science program at the University Minnesota. And I quickly understood that while I did love the program, I was not nearly as good as most of the people I was in class with. And so I kind of fell into this niche around database architecture and I got really heavy into kind of the science of information. OK. And how, you know, specifically this concept of normalizing information so that you can manage massive sets and harmonize it, make it make sense together when you were talking about millions, billions of records of information. So I ended up focusing on data architecture, got out of school and one of my first jobs was actually working for U.S. Banquo’s, doing automation around, pulling data from their corporate trust systems and then processing redemptions and some other things. But I was able to develop programs that automated all of this based on the data in the customer records. And they just kind of got hooked on it. So I started building an access start building an SQL server moved over.

 

[00:09:33] And then kind of the most relevant experience that was that a company called Pensione Software where we had a product dispatch office that was this back and management system as well as like a courier system that managed, you know, it would allow you to dispatch jobs, track packages. And it morphed over time into this warehouse management system. It would optimize picking it, packing and routing. It was a really amazing system. And while I was doing that, I started. Getting much more into, OK, the so-what like you’ve got all this information, what do you do with it? And I started, you know, working more and more closely with the business teams, with the finance teams realized I wanted to get that next layer. And so I went back to the university Minnesota, got an MBA, really focused the MBA on finance and came out and moved over into BestBuy. So I was on the finance team supporting the entertainment group. Got it. Which at the time was about fifteen billion dollar or four music, movies, video games and musical instruments, gadgets and e-readers.

 

[00:10:33] So roughly years. What years?

 

[00:10:37] So that was let’s see, that would have been 2010 to 2012. OK. So I was supporting the entertainment team for not that long, but it was phenomenal because we were building out all these really robust data tools to help them with promotional forecasting, understanding. You know, things like cannibalization as we launch new products and how that affects other items in the categories. Yeah. Dealing with demand constraints, supply constraints, store closures due to weather events and trying to understand every single day. OK. Now this happened. What does it mean? Now this happened. What does it mean? Is this a trend or is this a blip? Right. And if I pull this forward, you know, six months or to the end of the year, how materially is this going to affect my top line, my bottom line? And it was just this brand new modeling exercise every day. And while I was doing that, that’s when I got tapped on the shoulder.

 

[00:11:27] And I learned about this company called Anna Plan. Right. Which is where I got spend the next seven years of my life, which was phenomenal rocket ship startup out of San Francisco that has really taken the planning world by storm and really a platform play.

 

[00:11:42] I mean, very much so. I remember because we sort of peripherally competed with Anna playing at Blue Ridge, but really a very cool tool set in that it kind of allowed you as an as a individual company to take the core functionality in the data management of an airplane and turn it into. And I don’t want to say customized. Yeah. But it really kind of create an application for specifically for your environment. It was a great jumping off point and you could really serve sales.

 

[00:12:13] Finance, UPS. Supply chain marketing. Yeah. I mean, it was a tool that really could be position to serve a lot of different customers within the org. Very collaborative too. Yeah. So yeah. So very exciting to be a part of that rocket ship. I was an early employee. Twenty five and then I was there until they’re about thirteen hundred fourteen hundred people. Wow. Yeah. We went public. It was a great story as a ton of fun. I made some incredible friendships. It was an amazing story.

 

[00:12:40] So what is one thing when you’re employee number 25 and it grows in short order to that magnitude? What’s the one observation when I picture myself, you know, kind of know, one, what life is like in a team full of 25 folks and then when it’s overnight, fourteen hundred or whatever that number was, what was one take away from that experience kind of seeing and being a part of that that type of growth.

 

[00:13:09] The thing that took me by the most surprise, I think, was that like you meet some incredible people, amazing skill sets, and you find that these these approaches and these skill sets tend to be suited really well for specific stages of growth in a company. There are a lot of people that like to wear a ton of hats and do really well across a broad range of subjects, but they don’t want to go super deep, whereas you have other people that they get a lot of energy out of being the the best. They want to go the deepest. They want to be the expert and they want to find those opportunities that nobody else can find. And different skill sets are needed for different stages of growth. And you know, what I found personally was as we grew the company, I really got a lot of energy out of that early stage. I wanted to wear a lot of hats. I wanted to be able to play in a lot of different arenas. And, you know, the bigger you get, the more you have people specializing and focusing. And so, you know, I started out you know, when I moved from I was more of a sales engineer when I started, I moved into a field sales role. I had hundreds of accounts. And when I left, I had three ads, really specialized. Really specialized. I mean, it was tough to fun the customers. I had remaining customers. But, you know, I I took the leap and I joined Alloy and I went back to. You know, I own half the country for the Enterprise segment and I’m doing biz dev and strategic alliances work. And, you know, I’ve got a seat at the table where I get to work with a lot of the other people in the company really shaping the future. You know, I’d lost that ability and a plan, and that was something I really enjoyed. So now I have an opportunity to that again.

 

[00:14:48] I thought it was really interesting, your title, because the instant question that I had was what region? Because you’re in Mint, Minneapolis. But we’re in Atlanta. And this is also. Region. You met with a customer before you met with us. Correct. Greene prospect, right. So are you basically I mean, Minneapolis’s right at the right at the beginning of of the Mississippi River. So you can’t even say you are Mississippi, east or west because right there where. It’s a it’s a trickle.

 

[00:15:17] Right. So which part of the country is your part of the country?

 

[00:15:21] So, I mean, it is a trickle, but we do have a really high concentration of Fortune 500 CBG Ryder. Yeah. And it’s the home of the Post-it notes. That’s right. 3-0 are in our backyard. So. Yeah. I mean regional doesn’t mean as much as they used to, right. Yeah. It’s sure I’m in Minneapolis but if I were to cover Chicago or I cover San Francisco, you know, I get on a plane and I’m there. You know, I’m in Chicago in an hour or I’m in San Francisco in three. So it’s not it’s not that big of a difference anymore.

 

[00:15:50] But generally, are you pretty much east of Minneapolis?

 

[00:15:53] So, yeah, it keeps changing. So the faster we grow, the the more we hire into the enterprise team. Obviously, the smaller the region’s gonna get for me. Right now, I I’m mostly kind of north central and then I’ve got pockets. We just hired a new team, new member Melodee out of Philadelphia. And so she’s taken more of the northeast and we’re doing some round robin on the west. I’ve got a lot of the west to go. We’re how we’re gonna get somebody out in San Francisco, probably in three. I think the goal right now is to have six to eight by the end of the year. And so I’ll just keep getting circumscribes smaller. But I mean, it’s it’s the nature of the growth. And frankly, it’s hard to focus on more than, say, 20 to 40 accounts at any given time anyway. So it’s it’s it’s fun ’cause you get to pick your opportunities in a way that you really get to optimize for the types of businesses and kinds of customers that want to be leaders. Right. Yes. I saw on social media this morning, but this quote that really landed with me, which is to lead, means you can’t do something that other people are doing. So when you find a customer, that’s like, OK, well, who have you done this with before? Because I only want to do it. If you’ve done it with others, then by definition, they don’t want to be a leader in the space. So you’re finding those leaders that are ready to do something new in order to achieve something new.

 

[00:17:09] Is that where I mean, is that. So I think this is a good lesson for our our audience. Is that the kind of company that you’re landing with is is are early adopters or fast followers? Is that.

 

[00:17:20] I think that’s that’s true. I mean, we certainly have some of our platform is very tried, tested and true. We’ve been doing it for years and we’re continuing to build capability on top of that. And as we mature in the Supply chain space, where we’re going to be spending the most of our time with our enterprise customers, that product is innovating and rapidly. And it’s one of those things where it’s not even necessarily that the company is doing something very new for us. We’re a startup. So, you know, everything’s new for us. Yeah. But the big thing that we’re seeing is the enterprise consumer products companies, consumer tech, you know, even food. They’re not used to leveraging the granular daily information that we’re bringing to the fore. And so they see it. They know they want to do something with it, but they can’t quite make the connection. Okay. Here’s how I convert that into dollars on my bottom line.

 

[00:18:15] That’s how you that’s how they they can’t see how to get to the. So what? So. Right.

 

[00:18:19] So and then by definition, they don’t have teams that do it.

 

[00:18:22] So give us an idea of what Alloy Snow asked.

 

[00:18:26] You read my mind that something that’s perfect.

 

[00:18:28] Well, yeah, I think we have a good idea of who you’re approaching, but give us an idea of the application, the solution, the business problems that you’re attacking. Because I think that’ll help the audience tie it together. Who is early adopting her fast following on, you know, I mean, and what problems are they trying to solve? Sure.

 

[00:18:51] So the customers that are getting a ton of value out of our platform are customers that want to go out, you know, their brands that are typically selling their products on the shelf at retail. Right. They maybe they have e-commerce, maybe they have direct to consumer in some cases, maybe they just have a really strong B2B business. But essentially they have really, really robust retail sales and they’re getting information from their customers, the retailers, about what’s selling off the shelf by SKU, by store, by day. They’re getting retailer forecasts and they can see their inventory at the stores. They can see the inventory at the retail d.c’s. Obviously, they know their own inventories. They see the orders and the shipments flowing back and forth. They have all this transactional information and it’s just this mountain of data. And they know that they should be doing something with it. Right. They know sales uses it ad hoc. They they use it to analyze promotional effectiveness for specific promos that they’ve run or new products that they’ve launched. There’s some level of in-stock analytics where they’re trying to react when they see that a store is out of stock. An item you see Supply chain CPF, our teams, they’re working closely with the with the retail teams.

 

[00:20:07] So it’s going to ask you to define that outside.

 

[00:20:09] So far. Sun Some segment of our listeners, you know, we love our acronyms and supply chain. Yeah. So tell us.

 

[00:20:16] Yeah. Rain Man, Ramia. So CPF, our collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment. So these are, you know, the members of the Supply chain that are really working closely with the retailers to make sure that those shelves stateful.

 

[00:20:28] Yeah. Right. So this was a concept introduced to retail by Wal-Mart. Where are they? I think first with PMG, which is also one of your customers. But we can say that.

 

[00:20:37] I can say that maybe you can. And I actually have a public video. Yeah. Yeah.

 

[00:20:42] But the goal was to combine and share information, which seems so natural today. But in whatever the late 90s, early 2000s when Wal-Mart was doing this, this this concept of collaborating between companies was absolutely unheard of. You know, it was more trying to block your vendors from stealing your downstream customers. Your consumers and companies have finally realized that this sort of openness and sharing is really it’s really a creative to both.

 

[00:21:11] Of course, Wal-Mart was definitely on the vanguard in terms of sharing this type of information with their vendors earlier. Right. And what we’ve seen is that almost all of the major retailers have gotten on this bandwagon because a rising tide lifts all ships. They know that if they’re sharing this information with the vendors, the vendors are gonna use it to improve their business, which in turn improves the retailer’s business. Right. It’s not really at the expense of anybody.

 

[00:21:36] What’s interesting to me is you see the retailers getting more and more sophisticated with this data, too. There was there was recently an article in the journal about how grocery is now getting somewhat value out of this information that it’s there basically, you know, lessening the value of the category captain role in store. And they’re saying, I know that that you are giving us great advice as a partner. However, we are now really good at using this information, too. And we’re going to basically leverage our own insights and maybe it’s going to be at your expense.

 

[00:22:13] So the the so I’m sorry, another arm category, captain.

 

[00:22:17] So these are at least in my vernacular, these are the merchandisers from Frito-Lay or Coca-Cola or whomever who go in and say you need 50 of these and twenty eight of those and three thousand of these.

 

[00:22:28] So I think, you know, they’re going to play a really active role with the retailer and understanding. Here’s what the assortment should be. Right. Right. Not necessarily. These are the SKUs from my competitors you should carry. But, you know, this is how much product you should carry. Here are the price points where we’re expecting that the customers are going to want to be at for the different types of product. Right. You know, here is is the breadth that you want to carry. Right. Because these consumer products companies have such an enormous portfolio. They’re not really now. Yeah. Especially now, you know, and the brick and mortar is in a tough spot because the retail stores, they can’t carry that kind of variety that you can get online. So they have to compete in other ways. Right. But they also need to have the product. The customer is looking for. Yes. And so the category captains are gonna help in managing that for the retailer.

 

[00:23:19] But the retailers are taking more, more initiative in themselves and they have a closer tie to the data that enables them to do so today. They have. I mean, they can actually advise these big brands in the category captains. No, no, we don’t need 50 of those. We only need 37.

 

[00:23:38] Well, and they’re also often carrying their own brands. You know, they’re often selling their own products on the shelf next to the vendors. Right. So, I mean, ultimately, I think where this is going is for you to be a competitive vendor in that store and to get that retailer to say, you know, I really value the insights that you’re offering. You need to have better insights than you’ve ever needed to have before. Because you have to outdo the retailer who has way more data than you do. Yeah, but there’s a there’s a really key component of the information that you have that the retailer doesn’t have, and that’s what’s happening at other retailers. And so, you know, the foundation of alloy is essentially, hey, we can help you get all of this information from retail and we can get it from all your retailers and we can put it in one place for you. So now you have this comprehensive view of how your product is selling in all major channels.

 

[00:24:33] You can combine it with your director, consumer business, your e-commerce businesses. We’ve made it simple to take, you know, e-commerce data from an Amazon or a Shopify and look at that zip code level data and combine that with the zip code level brick and mortar sell through so you can see hyper local sales performance regardless of channel. And all of that’s phenomenal because now it gives the brand something that they can bring to the table that. Retailer cannot get on their own.

 

[00:25:01] Right. So when you’re making a case about why you want the retailer to behave differently, you have information that they need in order to run their business more effectively. And they have a reason to listen to you. That’s that’s beyond just I know they want to sell more of their products.

 

[00:25:17] Right. And you wanted what, you anonymize that data when you give them that analysis so that it’s not like they know this is Wal-Mart’s data or any of that. Right. It’s just they have they have the ability to assess a macro view of the marketplace and how they kind of land in the marketplace. Exactly. Fair estimation.

 

[00:25:36] Yeah. Yeah. That’s very fair. So we’re gonna make it easy for the the brand and the manufacturers to consume this information and present it back in an ethical way. That that’s not going to show one retailer how this product is performing in another retailer, because that would not be appropriate. However, when I’m looking at regional performance and I can see this product is performing at a certain level and it isn’t performing this way in your locations, and we have some theories about why. You know, I’ve got hard data that supports you. It should be doing better or, you know, gosh, you guys are doing something incredibly special here that I can’t replicate elsewhere. Help me understand what you’re doing differently. And then we can bring that either to other of your stores in different regions or we can bring that to bear, you know, to make this a stronger offering as a whole.

 

[00:26:24] So, Tom, let’s let’s talk about part of our pre-show discussion was around the need to respond sooner and faster, including I liked the quote you brought to the conversation, the right response the first time. Why is that important in today’s environment?

 

[00:26:43] So, yeah, so we get really excited about when we talk about the granular data that’s available. We’re not just talking about SKU and store level data, we’re talking about daily information. So for a lot of the major retailers, you can now get sell through an inventory refreshed as of the close of business yesterday. And what that allows you to do is allows you to start analyzing not just, hey, I’m out of stock and I’m losing sales. And here’s where let’s go try and force them to put more on the shelf. But it allows you to execute better in the middle of things like in the middle of promotions, for example. So if I’m running multiple promotions and I’m starting to run dangerously low on inventory in key areas or with key products, I have visibility in the middle of the promotion when I still have an opportunity to do something about it. Right, without having it have to be somebodies full time job to monitor that data. Right. Because now even though there’s reams and reams of information coming at me, I have basically machines that can go monitor all of this. I can give it some key insights about what to look for and find those signals that are on those signals.

 

[00:27:56] Exactly. Exactly. And it’s not just, you know, hey, I’m going to be out of stock in a couple of days. We’re talking about being able to see okay, here. Here’s how the top quartile of my stores are performing. Where are my bottom performers that I know are executing this promotion? And let’s send field agents out and arm them with the kind of information they need. Like they need to have displays up in the stores. They’ve been sent, the displays they were sent the product. I see that it was on hand two days ago, but they haven’t been showing the lift that our other stores are seeing. Did the display get set up? I can now give people specific stores. I can tell them which SKUs should be on those shelves. In what quantities? How many facings, how deep. You know, and I can start to diagnose problems. Like what? Maybe that product didn’t get to the store in time. Right. And I can try to troubleshoot that instead. So it just it gives the teams an ability to execute with the information that supports the action they’re trying to take in a way that they’ve never had before.

 

[00:28:59] What? So what is as far as I’m Parap in my head around what Allaway does is is the company in your solution a better fit for retailers with hundreds of stores or your work in it at folks with a handful of stores to, you know, the Fortune 500? What’s that customer profile likely to question?

 

[00:29:19] So, first of all, the retailers that we’re typically working with, you know, they’re not typically our end customer, but they are who we’re getting our information from the data that we’re getting. In fact, they’re the customers of your brands. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So you go out, you know, we’re gonna get the best data from your target’s, your Wal-Marts, your best buys, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, etc. So that that kind of top national retailers, North America and globally, they have the most robust information available at really good levels of granularity to action off of the customers of ours that are going to get the most value out of that.

 

[00:29:53] You know, we serve two segments of the industry. We serve kind of the mid-market. These are companies that are. Going to be doing anywhere from, say, you know, 5 million up to a few hundred million in sales. They are still relatively young companies often or at least relatively small companies.

 

[00:30:08] You’ve got teams that were a lot of hats for those companies. We’re going to work really well in the sales teams and helping them execute, working with buyers and managing the execution, the actual supply problems that sales has to deal with quite often in those orgs. When you move up into the enterprise level, companies are doing, you know, billion plus in sales. A lot of times you see those roles get split out. And so you have the sales teams very separate from marketing from. From the Supply chain. Supply chain is broken out between demand planning, supply planning CPF our teams. And so you end up with much more siloed solutions in those existing companies where we find the most opportunity. There is much more on the supply chain side. And so, you know, the offering there is kind of unique in that where we focus on the sales story, understanding leaders and leaders from a SKU perspective, top quartile performers and making sure we have high in-stock rates to capture all the growth that we’re seeing. Right. That’s the story on the mid-market. More so on the enterprise side. We’re selling the same products, the same razor to the same customers over and over and over again. Right. We’re innovating maybe annually or more often, but we’re rolling the SKUs over. And for the most part, I’m selling the same kinds of product repeatedly.

 

[00:31:23] So the opportunity there, even in the sales org’s of those businesses is to execute better. And a lot of times the room for better execution is in the supply chain. And so where we see the opportunity strictly in the supply chain for those enterprise customers is in visibility first. And then how do we drive action from the information we’re getting out of that visibility? So when I combine all this information I’m getting, I combined I take all this retail sell through information inventory. I start to look at, OK, what what is unconstrained demand look like? If I were in stock 100 percent of the time, how much would I sell? Therefore, how much opportunity is left on the table? And I translate that back to the retail d.c’s, to my d.c’s, my plans, my suppliers, and then I can synthesize all of that across my retailers into a view that shows me, OK, here’s my health at each node, right? Each point in the supply chain, I can judge its health by how much product do I have? How quickly is it moving? What does my forecast. All right. So basically, how long is it until? How long is going to last? Right. What is my risk and what’s my appetite for risk? Yeah, because, you know, maybe I want to have a hundred percent on shelf availability.

 

[00:32:36] And so I’m going to carry 50 weeks of supply no matter what. All right. But finally, the retailer. That’s OK with that. Yeah. Right. That’s got room in the back to let you have 10 times what they would let any other brand have.

 

[00:32:46] Because that’s an exponential curve. Right. I mean, if you if you want to look, let’s say you want to be in stock 97 percent of the time, it’s an exponential change in inventory and cost. Yeah. Right. Not not incremental. Now you look at you could you will more than triple your inventory usually to get from 97 to 100 or even ninety nine point nine.

 

[00:33:08] Well and you look at like a Wal-Mart, they’re going to manage you to a you know, a ninety eight percent. They don’t if you’re over that number, that means they’re spending too much. That’s right. That’s the way they’re gonna see it. Right. But, you know, oftentimes you get you fall into this trap, right. Where I’m not able to keep it on the shelf, which depresses myself. Yeah. My depressed sales cause their algorithms to forecast that they need to buy less product. They buy less product. My sales go down further. Yeah, because I have empty shelves. Yeah. And so if you’re going to make profits. Exactly. And if you want to break out of that, you need really strong data to go to these retailers and say, listen, I understand why your algorithms are saying what they’re saying here is data that supports what I’m saying. Let’s try it. And if it works, then we’ve proven the premise. And by the way, we both benefit.

 

[00:33:54] Yeah. Yeah, that that’s powerful. Right. And it’s powerful to be. I think the greatest power that you guys deliver is the macro knowledge of the marketplace. It because a retailer can only see if the possibility of their sales in terms of their perspective. But when you give them an additional perspective that says somebody selling 40 percent more than you are. Whatever that number is, that suddenly opens their eyes to a greater possibility for that for that product than that. Again, as you said, all with all boats rise with the tides.

 

[00:34:28] Well, a lot of times we’ll have customers that have their own retail. So we have customers like Bose or Valvoline that have their own channel to sell through. And it’s not even necessarily I can show you, you know, I’m never going to go to a target and say, here’s how is performing to make my case, because not only is it unethical, but you’re gonna get door slammed in your face. Yeah, right. You need to be able to present a nuanced message in a appropriate way. And what you’re trying to say is, listen, I know that this product can perform better. We’ve seen it. Here’s aggregated information that supports my point. Your specific information that supports my point right here is something very targeted that I’m saying. My hypothesis is if we can push product to these stores in these quantities, you’re going to see this. You’re gonna see this result. You know, we’re going to increase our sell through by X is going to pay for it. It’s going to justify it. You know, whether it’s because we’ve identified those locations, have phantom inventory, whether it’s that we’ve identified that the DC isn’t replenishing correctly. Regardless, you know, we have a hypothesis. We have a way to test it. We have a way to manage it and measure it in order to determine was it successful? Are you gonna trust me next time I say this?

 

[00:35:38] Yeah. All right. So before we take it, you know, take the conversation a little more broadly. Broadly, right. I always will say broader, but that’s not it. Broadly, let’s talk about where you spend your time. Clearly, strategic alliances are her business development. Clearly, spend a lot of your time with current customers, prospective customers. What where else? What it what it will. What are we not thinking about? Where where Tom Jones spends a lot of his time.

 

[00:36:07] So, you know, I was savin to try and spend as much time as I can with my customers. And basically, you know, maybe it’s not great word for it, but evangelizing this message on the road. Right. I want I want brands to understand that you can change retailer behavior as long as you have a message that resonates with the retailer. Right. They want people that can give them something new. Right. They’ll give you the time of day as long as they feel like you’re bringing something to the table. And that’s what Allawi’s doing, is it’s giving you the information that lets them do their job better. Because now you can do a big part of their job for them and they trust you to do it.

 

[00:36:45] It’s a defensible business case. Look, I’ve been a merchant at a retailer, right? A vendor that was valuable to me was not one who said, I know you can sell more. They were the ones who said, I can prove you can sell more. And what you’re enabling those those suppliers to do is create that defensible business case that says, I can prove that you can sell more. And that is so incredibly valuable to a retailer, because even P and GS SKUs are just a handful of the SKUs that any merchant is managing.

 

[00:37:14] I mean, I manage 4000 SKUs in seven hundred stores and SKUs sorry, stock keeping units, different items, SKU, SKU, you refer to folks like that that are listening and not watching this on you.

 

[00:37:31] Yeah, that’s right. Greg was just picking up all kinds of devices.

 

[00:37:33] Yeah. Yeah. Right. So. So that that’s valuable to me because I can’t focus enough. I personally and even a retailer can’t focus enough on any vendor’s particular product line because we have you know, among among the 4000 SKUs, we might have a thousand vendors. So it enables a level of effectiveness that is impossible, literally impossible for a retailer to to achieve. But it does so in a scientific way by presenting this sound business case that allows me to have the confidence or at least start with a level of confidence that I can build on to to see that there is opportunity greater than what I see today.

 

[00:38:16] I think, you know, one of the other things that we’re doing that is, is really a big challenge on the market right now is convincing customers that our brand, the brands, companies that are selling at retail, that they can do this, not just that the retailers will listen to them, but for a lot of our customers. When you come at them with this massive amount of data and you’re saying, listen, I can synthesize this and I can give you insights, I can tell you exactly how to act on them and how to make money doing it. I can tell you what the what the demand side of the supply chain with the supply side of the supply chain should be doing how they should be interacting with sales. This this isn’t a muscle that they have, how they can leverage this SKU store day data in an effective way that allows these teams to collaborate daily on this information. Right. I’m not saying that they don’t have access to the daily information. I’m not saying that the teams haven’t developed their own processes to use the daily SKU information. What we’re doing that’s different is giving them an ability for all of these teams to do it in the same place at the same time and act faster because they’re not all coming to the table with their own report.

 

[00:39:25] Right. So coming back to the question you asked earlier, this was, you know, how do you react faster and how do you act the right way the first time? How do you react with the correct response? Right. It’s you got to have the most granular data. You have to have had it crunched before you start using it. Right. It’s not enough to just run a report. Then I’m going to process my pivot tables and then I’m going to run my my analytics on top of that. It’s going to spit out some answers that I’m and try to understand them. No, you you should come in in the morning. And the insights are there for you to go through. Right. And then it’s a matter of prioritizing, it’s triaging the information because I guarantee you you’re a big company like you don’t like a P and you’re a Unilever and you produce this report that says, OK, I want to see my auto stocks. Right. And I’m selling in 20000 locations and I have a skew portfolio in the tens of thousands. That’s gonna be a lot of intersections. It’s not really a tweet. No. Like I can’t act on that. Right. So what you need is you need that second question.

 

[00:40:27] The second question is, OK, well, I want to narrow it down to the ones that are actually losing me the most money. Yeah. Start somewhere. Right. What are the ones? Not only that are that are presenting the greatest lost sales issue. And I want to prioritize by lost sales, but also the ones I can do something about. Right. If I’m if I’m losing sales because I have phantom inventory. OK. I need to send somebody that store or I need to pick up the phone and I need to make my case that that store is incorrectly counting the product in the back and on the shelf. If I’m telling them that it shows that they have 0 and there should be one, they’re not going to care. But if I can show them that they are losing $10000 a week in sales because it won’t replenish their attention. Exactly. Exactly. If I have a team of field agents that are going out and doing in-store visits and they have a prioritized list of actions to take based on the amount of value each action creates, then I am all of a sudden using these field teams multiple times more efficiently than I was before when they had a static list of action. Right.

 

[00:41:30] You know, I heard, I think, helpful context for some our listeners that may not be familiar with the retail environment. One of the world’s leading beverage producers, I’ll call it, went in and heard their one of their continuous improvement leaders speaking. And he mentioned how, you know, when a customer goes into a store and doesn’t find the God, they’re gonna do with my typical terminology. All right. We call all soft drinks the S Coke, right? ABC Cola. Right. And if the customer on their mind wants, you know, an ABC Cola today. But to your point that the aisle is empty. All right. That is a sale. They’ll never get back. Right. Is lost for good.

 

[00:42:18] And I think that’s that’s important context for. It’s not like they can come. They can rely on that customer coming back the next day when they’ve got product or three days later, that’s just completely lost revenue. That s an important thing to embrace when we’re talking retail. Right. Yeah.

 

[00:42:35] You know, I was reading one of the the summaries that actually you wrote earlier, Greg. You know, demand is not just what’s purchased. It’s also what’s desired and not purchased. Right.

 

[00:42:45] Right. And it’s a Sheer words. Those are your words. It’s Greg.

 

[00:42:50] It’s lost sales. Yeah. Right. It’s not just the sales you made. It’s the sales you lost.

 

[00:42:53] Right. And we refer to that as true demand. If unconstrained demand and I mean, certainly you need to make some adjustments. Right.

 

[00:43:00] Sometimes if I can’t find the six pack, I’m going to buy the 24 pack, or I might buy a new leader or a different brand or I might buy a different brand. Brand. Yes. Right. But you can make some assumptions based on, for instance, if you have SKUs, store day level data. And I can see that I was out of stock on an item. I can also see how the rest of my items in that category performed when I was out of stock. Right. And you can make some extrapolations from that. Right. And I can do that in aggregate, because now all of a sudden, I have a very instant way of saying, OK, how did this category perform at all stores that were out of stock in this item? And so my sample set isn’t one. My sample set could be dozens or hundreds. Right. And I can say, OK, I want to check that on this day, but maybe I want to check it on all Tuesdays over the last four weeks. Yeah. Like I have this immense ability to pore through the data that I never had before. Yeah. Right.

 

[00:43:53] All right. So now let’s get a bigger picture. Right. As we start to wind down the interview with Tom Jones, regional sales director with Alloy. All right. So if you think of the global in Supply chain community, although we’ve been told that in the end Supply chain is dead, all things are circular economy, which which we’re big fans of. But speaking, speaking, losing terminology, I’m upset in the end, just about a million times my life, I’m have to strike that that it’s not right for that long.

 

[00:44:19] Right. It hasn’t even been the end to end supply chain for that.

 

[00:44:22] That’s an excellent point. So when you think about the global supply chain industry, what one or two trends or topics or challenges or issues are you tracking more than it looks right now, Tom?

 

[00:44:36] So, I mean, some of the things that we’re really focused on is how much the retailers are sharing with the brands. Right. So the trend has been that retail is providing more and more data back to the brands to help them basically do the work that the retailers used to have to do. Right. So they’re they’re essentially outsourcing. A lot of their supply and demand planning to the brands and they’re saying you get to do it as long as you do a better job than we can. But now we have incredibly good tools to measure whether or not you can actually do a better job than we can. You’re seeing retailers not only share information about sell through, but you’re you’re they’re sharing information about did you deliver this to me on time? Did you deliver it to me in full? Right. Did you short ship me? Did you give me what I asked for? That’s really important because as that access to information has increased, so has the penalties that are levied on the companies that aren’t able to serve. According to the benchmarks these retailers have set up. Right. So you’re seeing increasingly more retailers levy these fines on brands that are unable to meet the requirements laid out by the retailers. So now all of a sudden, it’s not enough that I anticipate what demand is going to be. I have to do that in concert with meeting the very rigorous demands of the retailer or my margins get even lower regardless of what I was going to sell it for on shelf. And then we’re seeing the continued globalization of this. So North America certainly has been leading the charge in terms of sharing this kind of data with their vendors.

 

[00:46:12] But more and more, you’re seeing the other regions catch up. Europe is is very far ahead in this as well. And as the other global retailers kind of get up to speed with sharing, making it very easy to access this information and use it, you’re going to see. But enormous flood of data compared to even what we have now. Come on the market and you’re going to see these global retailers trying to leverage it all together and you’re going to see these global brands leverage it together as well to keep pace. So, you know, right now you have a lot of different business models, depending on which region you’re going to market in, whether you’re operating through wholesalers, distributors, whether you’re replenishing direct a store where you have a direct consumer business. And, you know, you’re going to see over time more standardization of these models as globalization continues, which is going to require a whole lot more power behind it to make it effective. But it also means there’s a lot more opportunity to standardize, develop best practices and scale it up super efficiently. So I think you’re going to see more data, which is a prediction anybody can make. That’s not going to be unique, but you’re going to see even more opportunity come out of that as long as you’re leveraging the kind of tools that can turn that data into not just insights. Right. It’s not just a reporting exercise, but really focused on, OK. It’s not enough to know it. I have to know what to do with it. And then I have to be able to do it. So how do I prioritize against where I can actually move the needle?

 

[00:47:43] Well put.

 

[00:47:45] Right. They’re begging for me to say so. Well, after. Look, look. I think ya like second cousins or third cousins. Espace at Tom speaking to is one your areas of passion and expertise.

 

[00:48:01] You know, four down one layer. Right. They work with the brands and and the manufacturers. Right. If you move down one layer to have distributors and retailers. This this is precisely the solution that my company, Blue Ridge delivered and delivers to to that tier of the enterprise and business problems. You know, I’m probably look like a I’m thinking because I am. I’m thinking I’m taking notes here. But, you know, the the business problems are not the same. The access to the consumer is vastly different. That’s that’s the differentiating factor, by the way, that you stay on. And that and the difference is that the the retailer and the distributor have the transaction. You have P.O.S., which is only slightly different. Right. At point of sale. Point of sale. Thank you.

 

[00:48:51] Sorry. But the problems are remarkably similar in it. And this goes to a philosophy that I have is and we talk about here frequently is that I think retailers should spend more time focusing on what they’re really, really good at. And that is the interaction vis-a-vis marketing and merchandising and and product mix management. And and leave the back office things that most core leadership entities or leadership teams of most retailers really don’t have that much interest in until Supply chain has got a seat at the table. Right. They really are really very good at marketing and sales and and merchandising. Right. And and category management. But this allows them to put more and more responsibility on someone who not only has their best interest at heart. I mean, arguably, you could say most vendors do nowadays that wasn’t always the case, but also has a larger viewpoint on the market as a whole. So it’s interesting, this dynamic. And. How it impacts and I think also you. To your final point, which is, you know, take the data and and do something with it, not just present it. I think that I know that that can go a lot farther. You guys are well equipped to be able to do that, to not just take the data and say bluh. Here’s what we found. Right. But take the data and say, here’s what we recommend. Or even, you know, with the advent of of RPA, which is automated process, you know, write about a process, automatic process automation.

 

[00:50:38] Right. So is like you. I couldn’t remember what the RR was. That’s embarrassing. But to take that and actually do it because you’ve got the parameters, you understand the business rules of the of the business partner or the company that you’re working with. Well, that will be coming very, very quickly.

 

[00:50:55] Well, I think you bring up a really important point, right, because we are vertically specific. Basically, we’re super focused on on brands and manufacturing. It allows us to build into our foundation, basically the platform itself, the the viewpoints and the way that you need to look at a business for this specific vertical. Yeah. When you are a general purpose be-I tool, for example, it’s you’re you’re reinventing the wheel over and over and every single customer.

 

[00:51:24] And one of the interesting things that we heard back to kind of responding faster is the marketplace place is changing rapidly. What we’re hearing and you know, we had a great customer, one of our best customers that we’re talking to recently, and they said, you know, before Alloway, we were really planning based on sell in the product that we were selling to a retailer. And that’s that’s what we based our planning on. We placed it on the orders that they placed and we want to make sure that they were filled. And we you know, basically we had to trust that they were gonna get it out to the shelves the way that they do, which is their core competency. Right. Getting the products on the shelves. Yeah. And they said that when we were doing that, it was we were too late. When customers patterns and behaviors were changing, we were we would be able to see them on the shelf. Once we had Eloi, we were able to see that behavior shifting, the demand patterns changing. And we can react now when customers buy differently instead of waiting until it flows through in an order which could be weeks or months after the fact, depending on how much inventory a given retailers carrying on shelf or in the D.C..

 

[00:52:25] All right. So Malcolm shopman, you got. Already we have 17 folks lined up waiting to speak with you about their retail woes before you even leave Atlanta. So, Tom, this is clearly what I admire about this.

 

[00:52:38] 15 of them are consumers. True. That’s right. Right. They’re not they’re not even just the brand retailers.

 

[00:52:45] What my what I like about this is you can tell and listeners might not be able to see it as much, but get the bill to hear it. This is your passion about this stuff. You’re on a mission and you are. This will help. This will help arm you with the data that you need to grow your company and grow your sales. And and we’ll get a million stories that I want to share. Yeah. I mean, we’ve got so many glub customers that are doing just amazing things with this information. All right. Let’s do this. Let’s make sure our audience knows how to find those stores. We’ll find Alloy, which is getting less and less difficult these days as we all continue to to take over the world, but less. How can they find Alloway and how can they connect with you?

 

[00:53:29] So definitely come to our Web site, Eloi Dot a–i. We are we’ve got a great site that I’m looking to use put together, obviously lots of case studies, lots of information about how the product works and who we best serve to get in contact with me. You can reach me at on my LinkedIn profile, connect with me. I would love to. I’d love to share more of the story.

 

[00:53:50] Tom Jones, regional sales director, Eloi. And I think you’re going to mention you’re going to be at a big event.

 

[00:53:55] Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So at the beginning of May, we are going to be in Orlando with the Gartner Supply chain Symposium. And we’re going to have one of our amazing customers, Ferraro, V.P. of Supply chain. Ferraro is going to be speaking yummy with our with our CEO Joel Biehl onstage Monday afternoon. And we would really encourage people that are interested in looking at, you know, how does a company like Ferraro use a tool like Alloy to combine their inventory data with their distributors data and the retail data to tell a picture that’s there, to tell a story that says, you know, here’s where the product needs to be. How much of it needs to be there when it’s going to sell? Because they’ve got you know, when you’ve got a consumable, they are paying extremely close attention at inventory to make sure that it doesn’t spoil and get thrown out in the trash. So huge value story then. Definitely. And that’s got me in Orlando, right? That’s right.

 

[00:54:51] All right. As a hyper focused supply chain show by my Griswald AGA.

 

[00:54:57] Yeah. Even more focused than the old supply chain exact. Live conference in in Phenix. So it’s a great place for practitioners as well, a leader theoreticians. Yeah, yeah. And leaders to me.

 

[00:55:12] Yeah, I think they changed it to the symposium so that they could have a bigger format. And they’re just getting oversubscribed. Yeah. That’s right.

 

[00:55:19] Yeah. OK. Tom Jones, regional sales director with Alloy Alloy Dot A.

 

[00:55:23] And of course, Phon Tommo linked in or at the Gartner Supply chain Symposium in Florida. Coming up in April. Right. First week of May for with, say, urban. Yeah. Secondly. All right. Good stuff, Tom.

 

[00:55:35] We’ll played it on. It’s a pleasure to have you here in studio.

 

[00:55:40] And looking forward to checking back in on the Alloa team as we continue to. It’s hard to believe. Or where will Bob Thomas publishes? It’ll be March 2020. Yeah. Seems like it just the calendar. Just flip. But nevertheless, a pleasure to have you here. Thanks so much for having me. You bet. All right. So to our audience, be sure to check out our events and webinar tabs we’ve got at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com. Greg, we’ve got a variety of in-person and virtual events in a few places. That’s right. Really appreciate all of our partners around the world. If he orders events. Automotive Industry Action Group George Logistics Summit, DHL resiliant 360, Moto X and many more, including our stand up and sound off event where we’re flipping the the tables a this after a little bit.

 

[00:56:24] Yeah. Where the panel moderators won’t say as much and just kind of facilitate. Think of it as I mean seriously think of it as a as a town hall. Yeah. Except that you don’t have to ask a question that a politician is going to answer. You can answer the question form.

 

[00:56:43] That’s right. That’s right. We might bring for both of us some 3M tapes that Sheer from Minnesota with 3M in their little bit to keep us focused on Orvell through. We’re talking 3M that way. At least we have Flix. There you go. Yeah. But yeah. Checks out at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com for these events, including this interactive global forum that we are hosting. I’m facilitating. And if you can’t find something that we talked about here today, shoot a note to our CMO Amanda at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com or hit us up on Twitter at Gregory S. White and at Scott W. Lewton. We like our middle initials. For some reason, my parents gave him, too. That’s right. I guess. Big thanks to, I guess, your day on Supply chain. Now, Tom Jones with Allaway Farseeing. See what they’re doing. Lots of passion. Big mission. Their own and yet. And as we mentioned, they’re getting easier and easier to find. They’re everywhere. They’re taken over. Yeah. Invading Atlanta. As we as we speak to our audience, be sure to check out other upcoming events, replays of our interviews, other resources at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com. Find us and subscribe wherever you get your podcast from. On behalf of the entire team, Scott Luton here wishing you a wonderful week ahead. And we will see you next time on supply chain now. Thanks everyone.

Featured Guests

Tom Jones leads enterprise sales, alliances, and business development for Alloy Technologies out of Minneapolis, MN. With a BS in Computer Science, and an MBA, from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Business, Tom has spent more than 12 years in roles spanning Transportation Logistics w/ Penchant Software (purchased by 3PD, then XPO Logistics), Retail Finance with Best Buy, and nearly 7 years focused on the Consumer Products vertical with Anaplan, before joining Alloy as Regional Sales Director in 2019. Tom works with Alloy’s largest enterprise customers in developing the platform for the Supply Chain and Sales teams to improve transparency, response times, forecast accuracy, and better understand their go-to-market effectiveness at retail. Alloy leverages the most current data available to brands, at the most granular levels, to weave a comprehensive and harmonized story out of the data that accelerates the insight-to-action cycle for all teams dependent on sell-through success.

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Mary Kate Love

VP, Marketing

Mary Kate Love is currently the VP of marketing at Supply Chain Now focused on brand strategy and audience + revenue growth. Mary Kate’s career is a testament to her versatility and innovative spirit: she has experience in start-ups, venture capital, and building innovation initiatives from the ground up: she previously helped lead the build-out of the Supply Chain Innovation Center at Georgia-Pacific and before that, MxD (Manufacturing times Digital): the Department of Defense’s digital manufacturing innovation center. Mary Kate has a passion for taking complicated ideas and turning them into reality: she was one of the first team members at MxD and the first team member at the Supply Chain Innovation Center at Georgia-Pacific.

Mary Kate dedicates her extra time to education and mentorship: she was one of the founding Board Members for Women Influence Chicago and led an initiative for a city-wide job shadow day for young women across Chicago tech companies and was previously on the Board of Directors at St. Laurence High School in Chicago, Young Irish Fellowship Board and the UN Committee for Women. Mary Kate is the founder of National Supply Chain Day and enjoys co-hosting podcasts at Supply Chain Now. Mary Kate is from the south side of Chicago, a mom of two baby boys, and an avid 16-inch softball player. She holds a BS in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Joshua Miranda

Marketing Specialist

Joshua is a student from Institute of Technology and Higher Education of Monterrey Campus Guadalajara in Communication and Digital Media. His experience ranges from Plug and Play México, DearDoc, and Nissan México creating unique social media marketing campaigns and graphics design. Joshua helps to amplify the voice of supply chain here at Supply Chain Now by assisting in graphic design, content creation, asset logistics, and more.  In his free time he likes to read and write short stories as well as watch movies and television series.

Donna Krache

Director of Communications and Executive Producer

Donna Krache is a former CNN executive producer who has won several awards in journalism and communication, including three Peabodys.  She has 30 years’ experience in broadcast and digital journalism. She led the first production team at CNN to convert its show to a digital platform. She has authored many articles for CNN and other media outlets. She taught digital journalism at Georgia State University and Arizona State University. Krache holds a bachelor’s degree in government from the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of New Orleans. She is a serious sports fan who loves the Braves. She is president of the Dave Krache Foundation. Named in honor of her late husband, this non-profit pays fees for kids who want to play sports but whose parents are facing economic challenges.

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Vicki White

Controller

Vicki has a long history of rising to challenges and keeping things up and running. First, she supported her family’s multi-million dollar business as controller for 12 years, beginning at the age of 17. Then, she worked as an office manager and controller for a wholesale food broker. But her biggest feat? Serving as the chief executive officer of her household, while her entrepreneur husband travelled the world extensively. She fed, nurtured, chaperoned, and chauffeured three daughters all while running a newsletter publishing business and remaining active in her community as a Stephen’s Minister, Sunday school teacher, school volunteer, licensed realtor and POA Board president (a title she holds to this day). A force to be reckoned with in the office, you might think twice before you meet Vicki on the tennis court! When she’s not keeping the books balanced at Supply Chain Now or playing tennis matches, you can find Vicki spending time with her husband Greg, her 4 fur babies, gardening, cleaning (yes, she loves to clean!) and learning new things.

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Katherine Hintz

Creative Director, Producer, Host

Katherine Hintz, MBA is a marketing professional who strives to unite her love of people with a passion for positive experiences. Having a diverse background, which includes nonprofit work with digital marketing and start-ups, she serves as a leader who helps people live their most creative lives by cultivating community, order, collaboration, and respect. With equal parts creativity and analytics, she brings a unique skill set which fosters refining, problem solving, and connecting organizations with their true vision. In her free time, you can usually find her looking for her cup of coffee, playing with her puppy Charlie, and dreaming of her next road trip.

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Kim Reuter

Host, The Freight Insider

From humble beginnings working the import docks, representing Fortune 500 giants, Ford, Michelin Tire, and Black & Decker; to Amazon technology patent holder and Nordstrom Change Leader, Kimberly Reuter has designed, implemented, and optimized best-in-class, highly scalable global logistics and retail operations all over the world. Kimberly’s ability to set strategic vision supported by bomb-proof processes, built on decades of hands-on experience, has elevated her to legendary status. Sought after by her peers and executives for her intellectual capital and keen insights, Kimberly is a thought leader in the retail logistics industry.

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Kristi Porter

Host, Logistics with Purpose

Kristi Porter is VP of Sales and Marketing at Vector Global Logistics, a company that is changing the world through supply chain. In her role, she oversees all marketing efforts and supports the sales team in doing what they do best. In addition to this role, she is the Chief Do-Gooder at Signify, which assists nonprofits and social impact companies through copywriting and marketing strategy consulting. She has almost 20 years of professional experience, and loves every opportunity to help people do more good.

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Sofia Rivas Herrera

Host, Supply Chain Now en Espanol

Sofia Rivas Herrera is a Mexican Industrial Engineer from Tecnologico de Monterrey class 2019. Upon graduation, she earned a scholarship to study MIT’s Graduate Certificate in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and graduated as one of the Top 3 performers of her class in 2020. She also has a multicultural background due to her international academic experiences at Singapore Management University and Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg. Sofia self-identifies as a Supply Chain enthusiast & ambassador sharing her passion for the field in her daily life.

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Katherine Hintz

Sales and Marketing Coordinator

Katherine is a marketing professional and MBA candidate who strives to unite her love of people with a passion for positive experiences. Having a diverse background, which includes nonprofit work with digital marketing and start-ups, she serves as a leader who helps people live their most creative lives by cultivating community, order, collaboration, and respect. With equal parts creativity and analytics, she brings a unique skill set which fosters refining, problem solving, and connecting organizations with their true vision. In her free time, you can usually find her looking for her cup of coffee, playing with her puppy Charlie, and dreaming of her next road trip.

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Kim Winter

Host, Supply Chain Now

The founder of Logistics Executive Group, Kim Winter delivers 40 years of executive leadership experience spanning Executive Search & Recruitment, Leadership Development, Executive Coaching, Corporate Advisory, Motivational Speaking, Trade Facilitation and across the Supply Chain, Logistics, 3PL, E-commerce, Life Science, Cold Chain, FMCG, Retail, Maritime, Defence, Aviation, Resources, and Industrial sectors. Operating from the company’s global offices, he is a regular contributor of thought leadership to industry and media, is a professional Master of Ceremonies, and is frequently invited to chair international events.

He is a Board member of over a dozen companies throughout APAC, India, and the Middle East, a New Zealand citizen, he holds formal resident status in Australia and the UAE, and is the Australia & New Zealand representative for the UAE Government-owned Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA), the Middle East’s largest Economic Free Zone.

A triathlete and ex-professional rugby player, Kim is a qualified (IECL Sydney) executive coach and the Founder / Chairman of the successful not for profit humanitarian organization, Oasis Africa (www. oasisafrica.org.au), which has provided freedom from poverty through education to over 8000 mainly orphaned children in East Africa’s slums. Kim holds an MBA and BA from Massey & Victoria Universities (NZ).

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Adrian Purtill

Host, Logistics with Purpose

Adrian Purtill serves as Business Development Manager at Vector Global Logistics, where he consults with importers and exporters in various industries to match their specific shipping requirements with the most effective supply chain solutions. Vector Global Logistics is an asset-free, multi-modal logistics company that provides exceptional sea freight, air freight, truck, rail, general logistic services and consulting for our clients. Our highly trained and professional team is committed to providing creative and effective solutions, always exceeding our customer’s expectations and fostering long-term relationships. With more than 20+ years of experience in both strategy consulting and logistics, Vector Global Logistics is your best choice to proactively minimize costs while having an exceptional service level.

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Kevin Brown

Host, Logistics with Purpose

Kevin Brown is the Director of Business Development for Vector Global Logistics.  He has a dedicated interest in Major Account Management, Enterprise Sales, and Corporate Leadership. He offers 25 years of exceptional experience and superior performance in the sales of Logistics, Supply Chain, and Transportation Management. Kevin is a dynamic, high-impact, sales executive and corporate leader who has consistently exceeded corporate goals. He effectively coordinates multiple resources to solution sell large complex opportunities while focusing on corporate level contacts across the enterprise. His specialties include targeting and securing key accounts by analyzing customer’s current business processes and developing solutions to meet their corporate goals. Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn.

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Jose Miguel Irarrazaval

Host, Logistics with Purpose

Jose Manuel Irarrazaval es parte del equipo de Vector Global Logistics Chile. José Manuel es un gerente experimentado con experiencia en finanzas corporativas, fusiones y adquisiciones, financiamiento y reestructuración, inversión directa y financiera, tanto en Chile como en el exterior. José Manuel tiene su MBA de la Universidad de Pennsylvania- The Wharton School. Conéctese con Jose Manuel en LinkedIn.

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Nick Roemer

Host, Logistics with Purpose

Nick Roemer has had a very diverse and extensive career within design and sales over the last 15 years stretching from China, Dubai, Germany, Holland, UK, and the USA. In the last 5 years, Nick has developed a hawk's eye for sustainable tech and the human-centric marketing and sales procedures that come with it. With his far-reaching and strong network within the logistics industry, Nick has been able to open new avenues and routes to market within major industries in the USA and the UAE. Nick lives by the ethos, “Give more than you take." His professional mission is to make the logistics industry leaner, cleaner and greener.

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Allison Giddens

Host, Logistics with Purpose

Allison Krache Giddens has been with Win-Tech, a veteran-owned small business and aerospace precision machine shop, for 15 years, recently buying the company from her mentor and Win-Tech’s Founder, Dennis Winslow. She and her business partner, John Hudson now serve as Co-Presidents, leading the 33-year old company through the pandemic.

She holds undergraduate degrees in psychology and criminal justice from the University of Georgia, a Masters in Conflict Management from Kennesaw State University, a Masters in Manufacturing from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Certificate of Finance from the University of Georgia. She also holds certificates in Google Analytics, event planning, and Cybersecurity Risk Management from Harvard online. Allison founded the Georgia Chapter of Women in Manufacturing and currently serves as Treasurer. She serves on the Chattahoochee Technical College Foundation Board as its Secretary, the liveSAFE Resources Board of Directors as Resource Development Co-Chair, and on the Leadership Cobb Alumni Association Board as Membership Chair and is also a member of Cobb Executive Women. She is on the Board for the Cobb Chamber of Commerce’s Northwest Area Councils. Allison runs The Dave Krache Foundation, a non-profit that helps pay sports fees for local kids in need.

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Billy Taylor

Host of Dial P for Procurement

Billy Taylor is a Proven Business Excellence Practitioner and Leadership Guru with over 25 years leading operations for a Fortune 500 company, Goodyear. He is also the CEO of LinkedXL (Excellence), a Business Operating Systems Architecting Firm dedicated to implementing sustainable operating systems that drive sustainable results. Taylor’s achievements in the industry have made him a Next Generational Lean pacesetter with significant contributions.

An American business executive, Taylor has made a name for himself as an innovative and energetic industry professional with an indispensable passion for his craft of operational excellence. His journey started many years ago and has worked with renowned corporations such as The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (GT) leading multi-site operations. With over 3 decades of service leading North America operations, he is experienced in a deeply rooted process driven approach in customer service, process integrity for sustainability.

A disciple of continuous improvement, Taylor’s love for people inspires commitment to helping others achieve their full potential. He is a dynamic speaker and hosts "The Winning Link," a popular podcast centered on business and leadership excellence with the #1 rated Supply Chain Now Network. As a leadership guru, Taylor has earned several invitations to universities, international conferences, global publications, and the U.S. Army to demonstrate how to achieve and sustain effective results through cultural acceptance and employee ownership. Leveraging the wisdom of his business acumen, strong influence as a speaker and podcaster Taylor is set to release "The Winning Link" book under McGraw Hill publishing in 2022. The book is a how-to manual to help readers understand the management of business interactions while teaching them how to Deine, Align, and Execute Winning in Business.

A servant leader, Taylor, was named by The National Diversity Council as one of the Top 100 Diversity Officers in the country in 2021. He features among Oklahoma's Most Admired CEOs and maintains key leadership roles with the Executive Advisory Board for The Shingo Institute "The Nobel Prize of Operations" and The Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME); two world-leading organizations for operational excellence, business development, and cultural learning.  He is also an Independent Director for the M-D Building Products Board, a proud American manufacturer of quality products since 1920.

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Lori Sofian

Marketing Coordinator

Lori is currently completing a degree in marketing with an emphasis in digital marketing at the University of Georgia. When she’s not supporting the marketing efforts at Supply Chain Now, you can find her at music festivals – or working toward her dream goal of a fashion career. Lori is involved in many extracurricular activities and appreciates all the learning experiences UGA has brought her.

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Chantel King

Social Media Manager

My name is Chantel King and I am the Social Media Specialist at Supply Chain Now. My job is to make sure our audience is engaged and educated on the abundant amount of information the supply chain industry has to offer.

Social Media and Communications has been my niche ever since I graduated from college at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. No, I am not a West Coast girl. I was born and raised in New Jersey, but my travel experience goes way beyond the garden state. My true passion is in creating editorial and graphic content that influences others to be great in whatever industry they are in. I’ve done this by working with lifestyle, financial, and editorial companies by providing resources to enhance their businesses.

Another passion of mine is trying new things. Whether it’s food, an activity, or a sport. I would like to say that I am an adventurous Taurus that never shies away from a new quest or challenge.

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Trisha Cordes

Administrative Assistant

Trisha is new to the supply chain industry – but not to podcasting. She’s an experienced podcast manager and virtual assistant who also happens to have 20 years of experience as an elementary school teacher. It’s safe to say, she’s passionate about helping people, and she lives out that passion every day with the Supply Chain Now team, contributing to scheduling and podcast production.

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Clay Phillips

Business Development Manager

Clay is passionate about two things: supply chain and the marketing that goes into it. Recently graduated with a degree in marketing at the University of Georgia, Clay got his start as a journalism major and inaugural member of the Owl’s football team at Kennesaw State University – but quickly saw tremendous opportunity in the Terry College of Business. He’s already putting his education to great use at Supply Chain Now, assisting with everything from sales and brand strategy to media production. Clay has contributed to initiatives such as our leap into video production, the guest blog series, and boosting social media presence, and after nearly two years in Supply Chain Now’s Marketing Department, Clay now heads up partnership and sales initiatives with the help of the rest of the Supply Chain Now sales team.

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Amanda Luton

Vice President, Production

Amanda is a production and marketing veteran and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience across a variety of industries and organizations including Von Maur, Anthropologie, AmericasMart Atlanta, and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Amanda currently manages, produces, and develops modern digital content for Supply Chain Now and their clients. Amanda has previously served as the VP of Information Systems and Webmaster on the Board of Directors for APICS Savannah, and founded and managed her own successful digital marketing firm, Magnolia Marketing Group. When she’s not leading the Supply Chain Now production team, you can find Amanda in the kitchen, reading, listening to podcasts, or enjoying time with family.

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Constantine Limberakis

Host

Constantine Limberakis is a thought leader in the area of procurement and supply management. He has over 20 years of international experience, playing strategic roles in a wide spectrum of organizations related to analyst advisory, consulting, product marketing, product development, and market research.Throughout his career, he's been passionate about engaging global business leaders and the broader analyst and technology community with strategic content, speaking engagements, podcasts, research, webinars, and industry articles.Constantine holds a BA in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA in Finance & Marketing / Masters in Public & International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.

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Mary Kate Soliva

Host, Veteran Voices

Mary Kate Soliva is a veteran of the US Army and cofounder of the Guam Human Rights Initiative. She is currently in the Doctor of Criminal Justice program at Saint Leo University. She is passionate about combating human trafficking and has spent the last decade conducting training for military personnel and the local community.

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Kelly Barner

Host of Dial P for Procurement

Kelly is the Owner and Managing Director of Buyers Meeting Point and MyPurchasingCenter. She has been in procurement since 2003, starting as a practitioner and then as the Associate Director of Consulting at Emptoris. She has covered procurement news, events, publications, solutions, trends, and relevant economics at Buyers Meeting Point since 2009. Kelly is also the General Manager at Art of Procurement and Business Survey Chair for the ISM-New York Report on Business. Kelly has her MBA from Babson College as well as an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and she has co-authored three books: ‘Supply Market Intelligence for Procurement Professionals’, ‘Procurement at a Crossroads’, and ‘Finance Unleashed’.

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Enrique Alvarez

Host of Logistics with Purpose and Supply Chain Now en Español

Enrique serves as Managing Director at Vector Global Logistics and believes we all have a personal responsibility to change the world. He is hard working, relationship minded and pro-active. Enrique trusts that the key to logistics is having a good and responsible team that truly partners with the clients and does whatever is necessary to see them succeed. He is a proud sponsor of Vector’s unique results-based work environment and before venturing into logistics he worked for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). During his time at BCG, he worked in different industries such as Telecommunications, Energy, Industrial Goods, Building Materials, and Private Banking. His main focus was always on the operations, sales, and supply chain processes, with case focus on, logistics, growth strategy, and cost reduction. Prior to joining BCG, Enrique worked for Grupo Vitro, a Mexican glass manufacturer, for five years holding different positions from sales and logistics manager to supply chain project leader in charge of five warehouses in Colombia.

He has an MBA from The Wharton School of Business and a BS, in Mechanical Engineer from the Technologico de Monterrey in Mexico. Enrique’s passions are soccer and the ocean, and he also enjoys traveling, getting to know new people, and spending time with his wife and two kids, Emma and Enrique.

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Kevin L. Jackson

Host of Digital Transformers

Kevin L. Jackson is a globally recognized Thought Leader, Industry Influencer and Founder/Author of the award winning “Cloud Musings” blog.  He has also been recognized as a “Top 5G Influencer” (Onalytica 2019, Radar 2020), a “Top 50 Global Digital Transformation Thought Leader” (Thinkers 360 2019) and provides strategic consulting and integrated social media services to AT&T, Intel, Broadcom, Ericsson and other leading companies. Mr. Jackson’s commercial experience includes Vice President J.P. Morgan Chase, Worldwide Sales Executive for IBM and SAIC (Engility) Director Cloud Solutions. He has served on teams that have supported digital transformation projects for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the US Intelligence Community.  Kevin’s formal education includes a MS Computer Engineering from Naval Postgraduate School; MA National Security & Strategic Studies from Naval War College; and a BS Aerospace Engineering from the United States Naval Academy. Internationally recognizable firms that have sponsored articles authored by him include CiscoMicrosoft, Citrix and IBM.  Books include “Click to Transform” (Leaders Press, 2020), “Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions” (Packt, 2018), and “Practical Cloud Security: A Cross Industry View” (Taylor & Francis, 2016). He also delivers online training through Tulane UniversityO’Reilly MediaLinkedIn Learning, and Pluralsight.  Mr. Jackson retired from the U.S. Navy in 1994, earning specialties in Space Systems EngineeringCarrier Onboard Delivery Logistics and carrier-based Airborne Early Warning and Control. While active, he also served with the National Reconnaissance Office, Operational Support Office, providing tactical support to Navy and Marine Corps forces worldwide.

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Tyler Ward

Director of Sales

Tyler Ward serves as Supply Chain Now's Director of Sales. Born and raised in Mid-Atlantic, Tyler is a proud graduate of Shippensburg University where he earned his degree in Communications. After college, he made his way to the beautiful state of Oregon, where he now lives with his wife and daughter.

With over a decade of experience in sales, Tyler has a proven track record of exceeding targets and leading high-performing teams. He credits his success to his ability to communicate effectively with customers and team members alike, as well as his strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.

When he's not closing deals, you can find Tyler on the links or cheering on his favorite football and basketball teams. He also enjoys spending time with his family, playing pick-up basketball, and traveling back to Ocean City, Maryland, his favorite place!

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Chris Barnes

Principal, Supply Chain Now
Host of Supply Chain is Boring

Talk about world-class: Chris is one of the few professionals in the world to hold CPIM-F, CLTD-F and CSCP-F designations from ASCM/APICS. He’s also the APICS coach – and our resident Supply Chain Doctor. When he’s not hosting programs with Supply Chain Now, he’s sharing supply chain knowledge on the APICS Coach Youtube channel or serving as a professional education instructor for the Georgia Tech Supply Chain & Logistic Institute’s Supply Chain Management (SCM) program and University of Tennessee-Chattanooga Center for Professional Education courses.

Chris earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from Bradley University, an MBA with emphasis in Industrial Psychology from the University of West Florida, and is a Doctoral in Supply Chain Management candidate.

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Greg White

Principal & CMO, Supply Chain Now
Host of Supply Chain Now and TECHquila Sunrise

When rapid-growth technology companies, venture capital and private equity firms are looking for advisory, they call Greg – a founder, board director, advisor and catalyst of disruptive B2B technology and supply chain. An insightful visionary, Greg guides founders, investors and leadership teams in creating breakthroughs to gain market exposure and momentum – increasing overall company esteem and valuation.

Greg is a founder himself, creating Blue Ridge Solutions, a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader in cloud-native supply chain applications, and bringing to market Curo, a field service management solution. He has also held leadership roles with Servigistics (PTC) and E3 Corporation (JDA/Blue Yonder). As a principal and host at Supply Chain Now, Greg helps guide the company’s strategic direction, hosts industry leader discussions, community livestreams, and all in addition to executive producing and hosting his original YouTube channel and podcast, TEChquila Sunrise.

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Scott W. Luton

Founder, CEO, & Host

As the founder and CEO of Supply Chain Now, you might say Scott is the voice of supply chain – but he’s too much of a team player to ever claim such a title. One thing’s for sure: he’s a tried and true supply chain expert. With over 15 years of experience in the end-to-end supply chain, Scott’s insights have appeared in major publications including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and CNN. He has also been named a top industry influencer by Thinkers360, ISCEA and more.

From 2009-2011, Scott was president of APICS Atlanta, and he continues to lead initiatives that support both the local business community and global industry. A United States Air Force Veteran, Scott has also regularly led efforts to give back to his fellow veteran community since his departure from active duty in 2002.

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