Organizational Evolution

Brian Beck:
Hello, everyone. Brian Beck here. I'm so excited to welcome you to session four of our virtual book tour series for my book Billion Dollar B2B Ecommerce. This is really a roadmap for B2B companies for their own digital transformation. You can get more information about Billion Dollar B2B Ecommerce by just putting a .com on the end and going on the web. You can also find the book on amazon.com, where it's available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook versions. Before we dive into the session today, I want to say thank you to our sponsors, particularly our platinum sponsor, Elastic Path, for making this session possible.

Brian Beck:
Here's the series at a glance, our virtual book tour series. Every session is going to be airing at 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, and will then be available on-demand for you after that original airing time. Our first three sessions are now available on-demand: Leadership and Alignment, Building an Ecommerce Foundation, and Revenue Drivers and Return on Investment. Today, we're going to talk about the organizational evolution. And I have some great folks joining me today, Rebecca Hicks from Pella and Jamus Driscoll from Elastic Path. I'm excited to welcome them in just a few minutes here. There are a bunch of additional sessions coming in the series. We cover a lot of topics in the book, really breaking them down and applying practical principles from awesome practitioners we have joining us on the series.

Brian Beck:
Today's agenda, we're going to be talking about organizational evolution. And of all the things that companies need to engage in digital transformation, perhaps the most important is the leadership and the organization behind that leadership to drive change within a company that maybe is doing business the same way for 100 or 200 years. So, we're going to have a lot of discussion about practical applications of these concepts to today. We're going to start with some context though, and I'm going to be breaking out some elements that are in chapter four of the book. I can't share everything; you have to get the book to read it, because it's a lot of information. But I'm going to share a little bit, and then we're going to get into a conversation and Q&A session with our guests.

Brian Beck:
So, why is there a bus here? Many of you haven't ridden on one of these for many years. Well, I love this book that I read a number of years ago called Good to Great, by Jim Collins. And in this book, he covers off on a number of important topics. One of the most important is get the right people on the bus. In other words, creating a great company takes the right people and resources. And that's one of his key points and key takeaways: not only getting the right people on, but getting the wrong people off of the bus. So, we'll talk a little bit more about how Pella's done some of this as we get into our session today.

Brian Beck:
What are the required roles for ecommerce? This is straight out of the book. There's really a whole set of roles that have been documented really well and effectively from our experience in 20 years of B2C ecommerce. And those roles also apply in a B2B setting; things like web merchandising, an entirely new concept to many B2B companies. These are things like bringing your products to life online, the right kind of content, the right kind of promotions and advertising and other things related to how you're speaking to your customers through your website. Digital marketing using Google and email and other things to drive traffic to your website. Ecommerce creative: you need to bring your brand to life through your website, and it's all about creative assets in order to do that in this area. Fulfillment and customer service: many companies in the B2B sector are not correctly set up to ship products in smaller quantities. That is often common in a B2B ecommerce setting. Inventory management: it's a different type of shipping, different types of demand planning that's necessary for ecommerce.

Brian Beck:
Site management and operations: this is your virtual four walls. If you're a distributor, for example, you might think about a branch and setting up a new branch and what happens as you go through that branch, and what kind of analytics you need to understand what's happening when the customers come through your physical store or branch. It's the same concept, but in this case, it's virtual. You need people to manage that. Content: product data needs to come to life on your website. And then technology, of course, is foundational to all of this. Below these elements, you also have shared functions within the organization that can be leveraged in an ecommerce environment. So, there's a lot of roles. And in early stages of development, these are often handled by just a couple of people and with outsourcing. We'll talk about that today.

Brian Beck:
So a few years ago, Korn Ferry, which is a leading executive search firm, did a survey of about 500 leading B2B executives. And they asked them, these were companies that had been down the digital transformation path, "What are the characteristics of a successful digital leader for B2B?" And they found six things in common that were really elements of success. And it's not necessarily what you think of. These are people who can manage ambiguity well. They don't need perfect information to make a decision. That's the nature of digital. They need to be adaptable. In other words, they need to adapt to different and new environments, different ways of thinking, and bring really a sales-like approach into the organization to talk about the vision of what ecommerce can be for a B2B company. They need to cultivate innovation. They need to help people think out of the box, move beyond the traditional process. They need a very healthy dose of emotional intelligence. In other words, understanding what other folks who are running other parts of the business need, what their goals are, and how you can help them and understand what their goals are, and align. This is perhaps the most important element.

Brian Beck:
Being able to change and do so in an agile manner. Shifting the approach is a common thing with digital. Testing and learning from data is very important. And engagement and persuasion; this is a really important one. Because remember, if you're in a B2B company, you're probably fairly conservative in how you make decisions, and you're also probably conservative about what's been successful for you in the past. Well, the person who comes in the digital leadership role needs to really be a sales function to align the organization. And we're going to hear from Rebecca a little bit later on some of these concepts at Pella. The partner that really led this study for Korn Ferry, her name is Melissa Swift, and I have her quoted in the book. She says it really well. This is from a LinkedIn post: "Great digital leaders have a 'pioneer mentality,' they excel at embracing ambiguity, power through an unstructured world, and--contrary to curmudgeonly 'move fast and break things' stereotypes--marshal the troops using a good deal of emotional intelligence." So, it's really critical to look for these things in the leader that you bring in for your digital efforts.

Brian Beck:
So beyond this, what are some of the key things you want to hire for in B2B ecommerce? Well first, you want to hire real experience and give them actual authority to make a difference in the organization, and you need to make it clear that they have the support of the top-level executive team. Too often, I find companies giving the management of digital efforts and digital transformation to lower-level employees, which there's nothing wrong with lower-level employees; they don't have enough girth or power or influence in the organization. They can't drive change. You need to look beyond your internal organization. And really, one of the things I've found is looking towards B2C ecommerce, and that's one of the reasons I am so thrilled to have Rebecca here because that is her story.

Brian Beck:
B2B insiders often don't have the skills in ecommerce or expertise. They may have industry knowledge, but it's hard to drive change with someone who's been in the organization for 20 or 30 years. There are exceptions, of course. But oftentimes, bringing in someone from outside the organization, particularly if they have B2C experience, can help. The soft skills I've highlighted are critical. You need to seek out someone who is a flexible visionary, someone who can sell and align.

Brian Beck:
They also need some hard skills, and these are areas where they've had the experience, particularly if they come from B2C ecommerce, things like website usability, digital experience, website merchandising, digital marketing, technologies, product and content, managing ecommerce teams. All those boxes I showed you earlier, they need to be filled and they need to know how to hire for them over time. Fulfillment, customer service, and operations, and finally, managing of P&L, because as we've discussed earlier in the series, it's important to have an accountability structure for ecommerce effectiveness in B2B. And a P&L helps you achieve that.

Brian Beck:
So, what are the stages of digital evolution? This is a rough framework that, based on my experience working with many different B2B companies, I've seen companies go through. It's kind of a crawl, walk, run, fly, right? So again, this is sort of a general paradigm, but it speaks to, where do you start? You start with a digital leader and a small team, two, three, four or five people, and outsourcing, leveraging agencies and other folks who have the experience, to get you started. You're launching ecommerce and you're less than $10 million in sales through the channel. But once you start gaining your footing and organizational knowledge about ecommerce, then you can move into the other phases. And again, if you think about it in the context of the roles I shared earlier, it's about filling in those roles. Initially, you've got just a few people doing all of those things. But over time, they become specialized, so when you reach the fly, you're $200 million or more in revenue through ecommerce, you've got 30 or 40 people in the organization, and all of those boxes have multiple people within them.

Brian Beck:
So, you all met me. Brian Beck is my name. I'm the author of the book. I'm also the managing partner of a company called Enceiba. At Enceiba, we help companies focus on building their Amazon presence, and we have a practice dedicated to B2B. So, I've lived this on the Amazon side as well as overall strategy with Beck Ecommerce. So, I am thrilled that Rebecca is joining us today. Rebecca Hicks, you want to introduce yourself from Pella?

Rebecca Hicks:
Hi. Thanks for welcoming us in. I'm thrilled to be here today. As you mentioned, I'm Senior Manager of Digital Experience at Pella. Super excited to dive in about my B2B experience and how I'm leveraging B2C.

Brian Beck:
Awesome. And Jamus, welcome.

Jamus Driscoll:
Thank you very much, Brian. I'm Jamus Driscoll. I'm Executive VP at Elastic Path. And for more years than I think we would care to count, I've been involved in retail technology from pricing and optimization through to ecommerce, predominantly on the B2C side, and then increasingly now, in a world where it's B2B and B2C and all things digital. So, it's wonderful to be here today.

Brian Beck:
Awesome. I'm so excited both of you are joining me because you have such great experience in this market. So, Rebecca, this is a fireside chat. We don't have a fire, but what we have, which is appropriate, is lots of windows. Right? So, Rebecca is sitting in her four-seasons room, which looks great. And a lot of folks, as they look through their windows, they may not realize they're looking through your products, in many cases. Pella's a leader in its category. Most people are familiar with Pella, but not everybody. So, would you tell us a little bit about the business, and who the customers are traditionally? Just give us a framework of the business, if you would.

Rebecca Hicks:
Absolutely. Pella's a window and door company that's been family-owned for 95 years, so a ton of robust history. We pride ourselves in inspired design and exceptional detail, driving that Pella passion. We serve homeowners and trade professionals through a variety of distribution channels. You can work through the sales network that may be local to you, you can buy through a pro dealer, or you can buy through Lowe's. We also work with some larger builders like Dreamstyle and/or Power Remodeling as a preferred brand. We have a ton of selection from a product perspective. We've got windows, entry doors, and patio doors, in addition to a variety of material types. We are the leader in wood windows, but we also showcase vinyl and fiberglass.

Brian Beck:
That's awesome.

Rebecca Hicks:
We're continuously driving product innovation through consumer insights. So, it's a fun place to be.

Brian Beck:
No, it sounds like it. I did a project at a house I own in New Jersey. I'm originally from New Jersey. I live in California now. And we replaced all the windows and put in beautiful Pella windows. They're all wood. It's just gorgeous. So yeah, I can speak to the quality of your product firsthand as a customer. So, awesome to hear that. And you guys have a lot of different channels you also sell to, it sounds like. We'll get into that a little bit later. The reason I'm so stoked that you're on this webinar today is you come from B2C. I mean, this is really the personification of the concepts I just went through. You have a long and successful career in B2C ecommerce. So, tell us how did you go from ... I'll let you spill the beans on where you were, to Pella, which is a traditional, sales-driven B2B company?

Rebecca Hicks:
Yeah. Right out of college, I started at Kohl's department store, so major B2C retailer, if you will. Ultimately, it was my dream to connect right with the customer, serve the customer, loved everything about it. I started out in the merchandising world, thought it would be a great opportunity to understand firsthand how the customer converts, what drives them, what gets them excited. Ultimately, I quickly saw that my mind was a little bit more global than specific to just juniors bottoms, which is where I started out.

Rebecca Hicks:
I moved over to the marketing side and I was doing print media. As we all know, it's a great place to start from a marketing perspective. One of my jobs was in managing and in allocating out the circular, so the tab, if you will, that gets inserted into the newspaper on a weekly basis. But as digital boom was happening, I saw that I could even propel further and connect to the customer even more intimately. So, I shifted into that ecommerce lens and supported the digital team; really became probably an addict to understanding where the customer was at and how they were interacting, and what we could instantaneously do to better serve them, see their problems, understand that journey. Did a lot with Kohl's for a long time from a personalization effort, from a calendar promotions perspective. But ultimately, as everyone comes, you hit a ceiling of what you can continue to drive for that company and what you can continue to contribute.

Rebecca Hicks:
I wanted to continue, and I saw, I was recruited through LinkedIn, an opportunity at Pella. Ultimately, they approached me with how they could get an ecommerce or digital-savvy business themself. So, there was a part of me that was incredibly energized by being able to transition to a 95-year-old company that was fully funded and fully supported from a leadership perspective, and thrive within an area of uncertainty, and have this startup. I mean, who can say, in the year 2020, that you're backed fully financially in a startup, essentially?

Brian Beck:
It really is a startup, right?

Rebecca Hicks:
It truly is a startup. How do you make that digital footprint? Don't get me wrong, Pella had a website and Pella had digital marketing, but it's that evolution of it. So, how can we continue to serve that customer from an expectations perspective, or that demand, if you will. So, I was excited to be a part of it.

Brian Beck:
Awesome. Well, that-

Rebecca Hicks:
So, I took the plunge and jumped in.

Brian Beck:
Yeah. Well, that's really cool. And I have the three or four case studies in the book about folks that did similar things. And just so appropriate.

Jamus Driscoll:
Actually, to build on what you were saying, it would be really interesting to hear a little bit about, I don't know, your observations moving from first a B2C environment and then moving into a B2B world, where your vision is very much along sort of evolving the thinking of what's been classically B2B. I'd just love to hear a couple of comments, what your major observations were about what was different.

Rebecca Hicks:
Yeah, that's a great question. So I will tell you one of the things that excited me most was I had a ton of knowledge from a best practice perspective. I knew how the customer interacted. I knew how to build on those expectations. But ultimately, a window is not a pair of jeans. So, it's not an SKU-based catalog. There's a ton of complexity. Not only is there complexity in the products, but there's complexity in that journey. I was living in a world where there were impulse purchases. A customer would continually buy just quickly: add to cart, add to buy. It wasn't a question or a financial conversation. But ultimately, from the windows perspective, it's a highly considered purchase. And not only is it a highly considered purchase, but it's a highly complex product. It's going to transform the way that your house looks. It can provide energy efficiency. It can keep your family safer. It can do so much more for you. So, it's not a quick midnight purchase, if you will.

Jamus Driscoll:
Yeah, I can see that. But in hearing the story of Pella, too, and having had the pleasure of visiting your offices, and you've got such this wonderful, hundred-year-old history of ... I think first from screens to windows to doors. So, a very traditional built-up business. And now you're bringing in this view of digital as well, and sort of what is the B2C journey and how does that apply to a B2B world, as well. I suspect there's probably some education on both sides, education for you on the differences of B2B, which we talked about, and also education and awareness for some of the senior leadership of Pella as to what digital journeys could look like. Did you find you had to spend time with senior leadership melding that vision into one?

Rebecca Hicks:
Ultimately, at the end of the day, the leadership has completely bought into the value of digital at its highest level, which is why they have continually and heavily invested in building up that muscle. However, we do want to continue to build on that customer expectation. And we believe that this will drive competitive advantage. There's a lot of the times we need to make sure that from an education perspective, we're going back to leadership and making sure that we have the right priorities. It's not always doing about what's flashy, but there is some foundational investments that need to be made.

Rebecca Hicks:
So, while leadership understands the need for digital and understands even in the day-to-day expectations that in case studies, they know a customer wants to educate themselves. A customer wants to be able to find product, but it's making sure you get the right priority and you do it at the right time, essentially. Does that make sense?

Jamus Driscoll:
It does make sense.

Rebecca Hicks:
There's a lot of behind-the-scenes that needs to be done from a structure or a [inaudible 00:21:30].

Jamus Driscoll:
Yeah, and Pella had always ... At least through the time when we met you, you were considering ways to go with technology [inaudible 00:21:38] and also obviously now as we wanted to work with you, we've always been very impressed by the way Pella balances both the vision for the company and its business objectives and why, as well as the technology selections as well. And the thing that always struck me when we first met, and it's been consistent throughout, is how much Pella thinks about the journey, the customer's journey and the way that they're going to purchase and engage. And it's been consistent throughout all of our discussions. You touched on this a little bit a moment ago: how do you think about bringing a background of customer journeys from a B2C world, and now the complexities of the B2B world, how do you maintain that focus on what the customer journey should look like and drive a strategy from the journey down?

Rebecca Hicks:
Yeah. Ultimately, as you said, Pella is hyper-focused on filling that customer need. And the way we really attack it is under the problem to solve. What are the problems out there a customer might be facing, and how does Pella step in, and which segment does Pella help step in on? You could have a customer who truly just needs to fix a problem, it's functional, it's not an entire house. And on the other side of the spectrum, you have somebody who wants the most beautiful windows, cost isn't a consideration, they want style, they want innovation. So how do you understand where the customer is and ultimately provide them at that moment in time? So, it's going after the problems themselves.

Jamus Driscoll:
Yeah. There was always this focus on exactly just getting into the customer's shoes, proverbially, and understanding sort of what their frame is. And certainly, it opened my eyes into all the permutations in which that path could take someone. We've always historically as an industry thought about the path that starts online, ends online. And of course, that's no longer the way it is, and just great to hear how Pella was thinking about it in terms of all the permutations that were out there and, again, always looking at it from that customer viewpoint.

Rebecca Hicks:
Absolutely.

Brian Beck:
That's a great discussion, guys, because I think about ... We use the ultimate sort of success story in ecommerce, Amazon. I have a whole chapter about Amazon in the book. And one of the things that's always impressed me about that business, even at scale, with almost a million employees, they are so focused on the customer. That is what drives them and all their decisions, because I talk quite frequently with Amazon, and it's really amazing how that really does work. And I think that's just something else we can take from B2C. So Rebecca, so you're coming into this, you remember those boxes I shared at the beginning, all those roles?

Rebecca Hicks:
Yep.

Brian Beck:
Right. So now, you got to fill them. So, tell us about that journey. How are you doing? What roles have you found to be really important? How are you filling those boxes, as it were, and thinking about internal versus agencies to help you? Give us some context about your journey there.

Rebecca Hicks:
Yeah, absolutely. So Pella is heavily invested in supporting its digital team. So, if we just take a quick journey, back in fall of 2018, Pella had about three people on the digital team. Fast-forward to now, we have about 20. So, there is a significant shift in investment, if you will. Ultimately, the priority was in UX design. So again, looking at that customer-centricity, making sure it's a usable experience, making sure the content is focused on digital and that journey, if you will. We also needed an array of developers, and it was really looking at development from an API structure, so that modern architecture, if you will. The development team that we have is about six-deep. They are a vast talent. They specialize in both front-end and back-end development.

Rebecca Hicks:
The other thing we quickly went after, Brian, was having a scrum master. So, we practice the Agile philosophy on a day-in and day-out basis. We have a project management team who helps us really look at the goal of what we're trying to publish to the business and break it down into bite-sized pieces, prioritize it, and then push it out to the public. Often, specifically in a traditional B2B, you really make sure that you can get the product set perfect. Digital is not about producing perfect product. It's about producing products and getting feedback. It's championing progress over perfection.

Brian Beck:
I love that point. If I could interrupt you for a second, Rebecca, the first case study in the book is about that: acting when there's not perfect information, and it's about leadership, right? Anyway, go ahead. That was just a great point.

Rebecca Hicks:
No, absolutely. From there, we really took a look at SEO and personalization. So again, building that muscle from a site perspective. What did we need to gravitate the customer to pella.com? How was that architecture going to be structured? I will tell you that as we continue to invest and we continue to look forward, we're going to need help from a web merchandising perspective. We're going to need advancements from an inventory management standpoint. We're going to need digital merchandising needs. But as we'd look at what we could do from a single [inaudible 00:27:23] perspective, we thought that putting the emphasis on UX design and development and SEO and personalization would help advance us quick to win, to get something out there, and then we'll continue the journey forward through digital merchandising.

Brian Beck:
So, that's really how you prioritized, you looked for the quick wins.

Rebecca Hicks:
Yes.

Brian Beck:
And I wanted to ask you that question, but you captured it. So really, prioritization came from: what's the quickest impact on the business from your experience? The only way you would know that is because you've had all this experience in a B2C environment. Fantastic. And by the way, for our listeners who might not be familiar, UX stands for user experience. You used that term earlier. But no, great, great, great points. So, we talked about where and how to hire. We were talking about this in our pre-call, right, Jamus, about how do you get people in? You guys are not in New York City.

Jamus Driscoll:
No.

Rebecca Hicks:
We aren't. So Pella is based in Pella, Iowa. Who knew? Pella, Iowa is about an hour south of Des Moines. So, it's not necessarily a hot college town, if you will, that people want to gravitate towards. It's more family-oriented, a little bit slower pace. I like to call it Pleasantville, if you will. The term Iowa nice is a thing. But ultimately, Pella was really putting an emphasis on talent. And they built a satellite office. It's in Des Moines. Des Moines is one of the five up-and-coming cities. It's a great cost of living, great family orientation. It's a great place to be.

Rebecca Hicks:
So, they invested in a satellite office, but in addition, Pella is always willing to prioritize talent over location. So, there are key roles that are 100% remote. And again, they invest in the tools needed to stay connected. So as you can imagine, and I think we're going to get to this next, but in the era of COVID, it wasn't a problem for our teams to shift. There was not skip in any beat. So of the 20 people that we do have, we have about six people at Pella on a daily basis. We've got about 10 people in Johnson, or Des Moines, if you will. And then we've got three to four people that are constantly working remote. I don't do quick math, but I think that added up to 20 people.

Jamus Driscoll:
Well, how do you ... I mean, we're all learning this now, too. Some companies were certainly out front, and now all of us are learning it. How do you keep the team camaraderie? How do you stay in sync? Was this an adjustment, particularly for senior leadership, who's predominantly had an on-premise workforce, right, and now we're getting into a much more distributed workforce? Can you talk a little bit about how that has worked for you?

Rebecca Hicks:
Yeah, pre-COVID, there definitely was a need to make sure that we were connecting. There will be and always has been that need for making sure that you do have a physical impact, right? You get to know people, you build relationships better when you are working hand-in-hand. Conversations flow differently. But Pella did understand that talent isn't always going to shift. And as the customer expectation changes, priorities are different for different people. They might want to work from home. They might need to manage childcare or different responsibilities that they have. As we shifted into COVID though, Jamus, again, leadership has just been leaps and bounds supportive. Everything has shifted digitally. They're really prioritizing individuals' safety and comfort levels. It's been great to see.

Rebecca Hicks:
At the end of the day, you've got tools, from a WebEx perspective, you've got IM, you've got email. Everybody's accessible at any point in the day. And we've shown as a digital team and as a Pella team, that whether I'm sitting at a desk in an office or I'm sitting on the sidelines of a baseball game, I can be just as reachable and accessible and productive. It's been really fun to see, but we shifted COVID. We shifted inside. That was right around the middle of March. And since then, we've had 12 major launches. So, we launched a national product catalog. We migrated a significant amount of sites. We completely did an overhaul on pella.com to be customer-centric. So, there has been no shortage of deliverables from the team.

Brian Beck:
That is awesome that you've managed to accomplish that, and with everyone remote. I guess one other question I had around that as you were talking, I was thinking ... I've worked and built organizations like you're doing, Rebecca, and I always thought about culture of the team as being really important, too, like how people interact and the camaraderie, and we're marching to the goal and setting the vision and reaching it. How do you maintain that kind of culture or build the culture when people are remote like that?

Rebecca Hicks:
There's a couple things that we do. There's some fun. Every Wednesday, we have a game together in the morning. We share coffee, still. We have that water cooler talk, if you will. But from a culture perspective, Brian, it's been really interesting because it's enabled us as leaders to really lean into our team and empower that best practice or empower them to help make decisions. And it's been fun to see how energized and how fueled the team can be by getting that opportunity. So I will say individually as a leader, it has broken barriers, enabling the team to really just feel empowered and to make those decisions. And it's been fun.

Rebecca Hicks:
People are stepping up.

Brian Beck:
That's really great. I'm sure you celebrate them, and you do things like this, virtual meetings. I spend my life on these things these days.

Rebecca Hicks:
Absolutely.

Brian Beck:
So, you came from the retail world. You were at Kohl's, and now you're in the B2B setting. If you had to pick one or two things that would be sort of the most valuable things you've brought into the setting, what's been most helpful to you from your B2C experience in this role?

Rebecca Hicks:
There is a significant set, as you talk about in your book, of just best practices for B2C. There is 20 years of a game plan that's out there, and the best thing that you can do is not reinvent the wheel, but apply that to your own business. So often, companies get excited about creating a competitive advantage through differentiation or through innovation. And I like to say that innovation is just the best copycat. How do you apply that to your business? How do you fuel it differently? It's not coming up with a new way to drive the bus. It's coming up with a more efficient way to drive the bus, if you will.

Brian Beck:
No, that's great. And I know you think about there are differences between where you were, certainly, and where you are today. What do you think's been the most challenging or different or most surprising, maybe, thing about your role at Pella and differences from the retail world?

Rebecca Hicks:
As we mentioned earlier, Pella is 95 years old, and we've got a lot of existing technologies. As we look to bring in emerging technologies, how do you synergize those together and make sure that you're not creating an immense amount of technical debt? You need to be effective and still reach the customer, but you can't throw out some of those existing technologies. From the manufacturing perspective, we need to look at how we can take digital and merge it into that system. How do we take that existing ordering system and bring it online? Thankfully, with the progression of technology and with our partnership with Elastic Path, we've figured out how to bring those together through modern technology and architectures and APIs.

Brian Beck:
That's a great point. Jamus, maybe you can weigh in on that a little bit, because obviously, you're with Elastic Path. So in thinking about that approach, so you're dealing with a hundred-year-old company, they have investments in technology. This is a very common story. Some of them may be 30 years old or more, how do you slot into that, and when you think about creating flexibility for the business going forward? Any thoughts on that?

Jamus Driscoll:
Certainly, but I would also, just to open, I think the way that Pella thinks about it and has talked about it, really from the first time that we met, and it's why we've continued to be so impressed with what they're doing, and excited to be a part of it, but genuinely as both practitioners in the industry and suppliers of technology, also really learning from Pella as well ... That while we've done a lot of great things as an industry in B2C, the pattern on B2C predominantly has been well-paved. We understand how to deliver and sell and engage a customer on a traditional website experience.

Jamus Driscoll:
B2B is such an open frontier right now. And it brings with it such a different use case that maybe hasn't always existed on the B2C side. These companies, just like Rebecca mentioned, where you've built some core intellectual property, there's something about a business process that you do that's uniquely different and uniquely yours, and now we're trying to figure out how to make that work in the digital world. Just really focusing in on how do we just drive the bus more efficiently in areas where we know how to drive the bus? And then also figure out how to flavor in the things that make the company uniquely positioned in the market. Those seem to be the conversations that we're having most now, which is optimize what can be optimized and we know how to optimize it, and just do that as quickly as possible so that the maximum amount of our effort can be put into areas of innovation, exploration, where companies have an opportunity to really differentiate. And ultimately, that's a business strategy, an approach, that drives the technology selection. So, I would just encore everything that's been said here about that type of thinking in B2B, it's what makes it so exciting these days.

Brian Beck:
Yeah. I mean, it's amazing to see. And there was another session we did, actually it was the one before this one, where we talked about ROI. When you do this and do it well, I mean, gosh, it can be so amazing what happens in a business. So Rebecca, I'm so excited for you. Part of what this all is though, I mean, when you think about ecommerce and digital, there is so much you can do. I mean, you look at Kohl's which is probably, what, 20 years down the path of ecommerce, and Pella's just getting started. When you think about your roadmap, how do you decide what's next, or how do you prioritize those things?

Rebecca Hicks:
This has been my favorite challenge. But ultimately, what we've done or how we've prioritized it is what are the things that we can learn from to ultimately enable or accelerate the next piece of it? So, we took a step back and said, "We need to put a product catalog out there, understand how the customer's interacting with the product catalog. Do they understand how to configure a window? What parts of configuring a window are they doing, are they interacting with, are they engaging with?" From there, we fix any mistakes that we have, enhance it, optimize it. Then you start to create a transaction around that. From there, you start understanding: are customers not transacting, are they transacting? If they're not, why? Have they not figured out how to measure it? Do they need help installing it? Do they need more color options? Do they need different options?

Rebecca Hicks:
So really, Brian, it comes down to what can you do to enable the continuation of learning? What's that first piece you can put out there, and then how do you evolve from it? If we went out and put all of these really cool things out there from a technology perspective right away, cool Pinterest integrations or social integrations or measuring tools, you wouldn't know which one's working. You couldn't put a value behind the technology. You couldn't create optimal paths for the customer. So again, it's taking that building block structure, progress over perfection, and getting customer interaction instantaneously.

Brian Beck:
I'm going to quote you on that. I love that, progress over perfection. That should be the name of the book. Seriously. I mean, you think about it, and oftentimes what I've found, and Jamus, I'm sure you've seen this too, when you go in and talk to companies, that they want to oftentimes get all the information and make a decision. And it's about testing. I mean, you said it Rebecca, perfectly. It's about learning from what you're testing and incrementally building and growing the business. Jamus, you were talking about this when we were having a pre-call for this, and I think that's really appropriate, a good approach.

Jamus Driscoll:
Yeah, and we definitely see it a lot. Everybody would like to move quickly, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and adjust them. The trick is the moving quickly part, because if you don't move quickly, then you're spending a long time and a lot of money, and those mistakes get very, very expensive. So, it's really about having, I think, leadership. And what we see time and time again is companies who have the right leadership up and down, who celebrate ... Well, we really think about mistakes is tuition, right, the way we learn in business. We move them, we do them quickly. We structure our experiments. We celebrate them when they don't work and we celebrate them when they win. And that's been certainly something that we've heard again and again out of the way that Pella's been thinking about this: "How do we try something new? How do we test it? How do we see if it works? Let's learn from it. Let's evolve." And there's so much of that happening right now in the B2B world. So, it's [crosstalk 00:42:27]

Brian Beck:
That's exciting.

Rebecca Hicks:
I would like-

Brian Beck:
You sounded like Jeff Bezos there, for a second. Go ahead, Rebecca.

Rebecca Hicks:
I was going to say, Jamus, though, a lot of that is done with investments from an analytics perspective, right?

Rebecca Hicks:
We could put something out there, but again, it's that foundational work that needs to be done and put in place in order to create the learning. [crosstalk 00:42:48] You said it well.

Jamus Driscoll:
Yeah, and also, I mean, there's a key point there that you just made, too, which is sometimes there is foundational work that's required that may not be the glamorous, super exciting things. And without them, you won't know if your glamorous, exciting things are really having the impact you'd like them to do. So as you've always pointed out, there is an element of just making sure that your foundation is set. And if your foundation is set, then you can go on and do and test and learn on the great things.

Rebecca Hicks:
Then it's a flywheel of just motivation and momentum.

Brian Beck:
I love it. You guys are going to write the next chapter here, or the next book. I love it. So Rebecca, I ask this of every person who is a guest on our series here. So, we've got folks listening in who are brand new to digital, ecommerce, all of this, and it can be scary. It's something that they may not be familiar with. They might be a CEO of a hundred-year-old company that's saying, "Where do I start?" So I pose the question to you: what advice would you give to a CEO, maybe one piece or two pieces of advice, who is just starting the journey, who hasn't really taken any real action yet? Maybe they have a content site, but that's about it.

Rebecca Hicks:
Focus on the customer. The customer is going to be your driving force for success. I often joke that sometimes brands get in their own head of what they perceive the customer thinks about them, what they perceive the customer feels about them. One of the quickest ways to do this, Brian, if you've got the time and investment to do focus groups, awesome. But you can find a lot through your own search functions. I joke with a couple people, but the term onesie was built out of search. People didn't know what those baby things were called. They were [crosstalk 00:44:51]

Brian Beck:
You're not talking about Pella, right? You're talking about Kohl's.

Rebecca Hicks:
I'm not talking about Pella right now. I'm talking about Kohl's. But it's amazing to understand how the customer perceives you and what you perceive for yourself, right? So at Pella, we pride ourselves in the product lines, but the average customer might not know what lifestyle windows are, but they want some good wood windows. So, how do you learn from that and evolve your brand based on the customer's help?

Brian Beck:
I love that. So it's not your vernacular. It's the customer's vernacular. And the Kohl's example's great. Onesies, what the heck are onesies? They're showing up in your search results. You go, "Oh, that's what they are." Then you start linking it together and providing a better digital experience. Awesome. Jamus, what about you? If you were talking to the CEO of a company, what would you say? What would be your advice?

Jamus Driscoll:
Well, I think actually, the way you started with some of the research regarding what makes a great digital leader has certainly been my experience as well when I speak with leadership like that. We're all obviously moving at a very fast pace, ever-changing world. And if you think you have everything buttoned down, you're probably behind the curve. So, that means that pioneering mentality and being really comfortable in the unknown are really important things. Definitely always try to empower the team as much as possible. We look for humble leadership that's really comfortable in ambiguity. Be really comfortable saying, "I don't know. What do you think?" because there's just so much to learn in a market that's just going so quick, that the only way that we can really take advantage of this is go for the ride.

Brian Beck:
And the point you just made is so right-on, and it's about being comfortable admitting you don't know something. That could be hard for a CEO who's running a $2 billion company, right? But the most successful understand that this is a new area and, another Jim Collins reference, they confront the brutal reality of their situation, and the world is changing. So guys, listen, this has been an awesome discussion. Thank you, both. You both have so much great experience, and you really brought some of these things to life. So guys, here is some contact information for myself. There's my email and cell phone number. You can also, again, go to the website BillionDollarB2BeCommerce.com to learn more about the book and to buy it. And Rebecca's contact, her LinkedIn information, and Jamus's as well. Again, guys, I want to say thank you to both of you. You've been tremendous through this.

Brian Beck:
And don't miss our next session. We're going to be talking about aligning sales channels and managing channel conflict with Georgia-Pacific, which is a big company that sells through a lot of channels, and they have some really compelling information to share. All sessions are going to air at 8:00 AM Eastern Standard, and there's our schedule here. July 22nd, the next session will go live. If you have questions, my email, again, is at the bottom, and Meg from Elastic Path, who's been a tremendous partner through this content, thank you, Meg; her email's there, as well. Feel free to please email either of us. Thank you so much, and we will see you next time.