Interview: New Research on Commerce Org Design, with Christina Vail, Director of Client Strategy at Profitero

SHOW NOTES

Link to the report

TRANSCRIPT

Peter:

Welcome to unpacking the digital shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the digital shelf Institute. The number one question on the minds of any commerce executive I've talked to is how should I organize my teams and processes to drive the right results in the right time? The actual answer is always, it depends, but there are clear guideposts and a maturity curve to consider along the way. I was lucky enough to chat with two people on this topic. Christina Vail, director of client strategy at Profitero who has just published a new research report on this topic entitled building a high-performance CPG e-commerce organization. And I'm joined by a guest co-host Lauren Livak who ran north American digital shelf strategy at Johnson and Johnson, and is now a commerce strategist for Salsify here's that conversation, Christina, thank you so much for joining us and for the terrific report.

Christina:

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you guys about this report. It's been a labor of love, so happy to dig into it.

Peter:

Usually when I, when I write sort of reports like this, it's it's love. It's also a little hate

Peter:

When you get, I didn't say it when

Peter:

You get to this part. It's it's, it's all love. And Lauren Lauren, thanks for sitting in the coast chair for the first time. Very excited,

Lauren:

Of course, super excited to be here. I love the topic so glad to participate. You spent

Peter:

A lot of time thinking about it as well on your side of the, of the pond. So, um, so with all of my time talking to brand leaders, this is the first question they ask, how should I organize my team and processes? Well, actually, that's kind of the second question. I think the first is why is this so hard? Christine? Maybe you can start out talking about that.

Christina:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, at Profitero we get the same question. We, you know, the first, the first questions we're normally tackling are all about data and we spend a lot of our time focused on digital shelf analytics and e-commerce analytics. But as we get to know these teams and you get to know the leaders of the teams, this has been the most common question, which is how should my team be organized. And when we think about why it's an even more prevalent question now then maybe, you know, Peter, if you think back a couple of years, I'm sure we were getting this question, but maybe it wasn't the first one of every conversation. And the reason I believe, and we'll talk about the report throughout this conversation. I interviewed over a dozen executives in CPG organizations. Just think about the pace of change in the last 12 to 18 months and what that's done for teams managing an e-commerce channel. If we think about FMCG, maybe e-commerce was five of sales, right? Which is meaningful, but not enough to kind of rally an entire organization when that doubles in 12 months or, you know, whatever the dynamic is in your organization. It prompts a question in a look at your team to say, do I have the right people in the right seats? And am I supporting this channel enough and in the right way. So just that the fundamental shifts in sales across channels, I think is the primary driver of these questions. Yeah. You know,

Peter:

The quote that I really loved that you included from one of your interviews was from Howard Friedman, who is the president CEO of post consumer brands. The sooner we stop talking about e-commerce as a sales channel or marketing tactic tactic, and talk about it as a business, the better off we're going to be, explain it to me in the language of profit and loss. Talk to me in the language of business before you talk to me in the language of the e-commerce dark hearts.

Christina:

I love that too. I, and I think, you know, Howard, you know, Howard has a great way of capturing things and just two sentences. And I think that sentiment came through in many of the conversations I had specifically for the report. And then just generally, as you talked to leaders about what it is going to take to continue to win in e-commerce and I always say, leave, leave the jargon behind. This is not rocket science. And if you're explaining it like it's rocket science, you need to simplify your language. Um, we don't, you don't want to scare people off about the channel. It's a business, right? It's not just a marketing tactic and it's not just the sales channel, right? There's a P and L that should be tied to these businesses and managing it as such is going to significantly enhance your ability to rally an organization around you.

Christina:

And there's a portion of the report. That's all about education and we weren't intending that to happen. But as we had many conversations with senior leaders, this became super apparent that a key way to drive your maturity and to really enhance your organizational structure is to educate everyone. And there's kind of two different ways to position it. One is how do you educate senior leaders and you know, the C-suite and then how do you educate everyone else? And so what Howard is speaking to, to me, it needs to be at the heart of how you educate, especially senior leaders. Talk about it in business terms. This is not a marketing play. It's not just a sales play. It's, it's a little bit of both and then much more. So the more you can talk in business terms, the better.

Lauren:

And I think the, the education side of things is really interesting because I think in addition to the two elements you just shared, there's also the element of educate people on what e-commerce is, what does it mean? Why are retailers asking for this? Why do we need to do this work, but also educating teams internally on the new processes that you're coming in to play and how you're thinking about things and how you need to operate. And that piece of education. And from my personal experience, I found was so critical. And I, and I love it. That's what came out in your interviews, because I think as people start to go through this process, that's one of the things that they realized the most. And it's really critical in the, in the change management of making this successful.

Christina:

Oh, I mean a hundred percent. And the we've all I'm sure been in situations where you're managing change. And if you haven't, where do you work? We should talk, but it's, you know, it, it, if you're any process where you're trying to get people to change, you want to orient them as to why I think, you know, I've led teams of analysts. And when you're asking them to do a rigorous analysis, you don't just say, get this to me tomorrow. It's wa here's why you're doing this. Here's the context. Here's why it matters. Here's how it fits into the, you know, the broader project or whatever it is. Same thing is true. When you think about e-commerce change management, if you're going to your supply chain counterpart and saying, I need or innovation or whatever, I need this package in frustration, free packaging. And I need it in two months, come back to me when you have it, right. That's just not gonna cut it, or they're not going to like you at minimum. They're really not going to like you. Right. So start from a place of let's educate. Let's talk about the channel. Let's talk about shifting consumer behavior. Let's talk about how retailers are changing and how a significant portion of sales are going through digital channels for your big click and collect customers. Right. And help them understand the why

Peter:

Let's talk about profitability,

Christina:

But it's a business. It's a business. Yeah. I love it.

Lauren:

And to the point of profit and loss and thinking about the business, right. It's joint accountability too. I think that's another piece, right? The example that you just gave Christina about supply chain, if the package is not e-commerce ready, that affects everyone that affects marketing, that affects sales. So how are you enabling that joint accountability through all of your functions so that everyone is marching towards the same goal. And I think as, as you think about organizational structure and change management and education, that's a really fundamental part from top down and bottoms up that that everyone needs to really kind of operationalize. Yeah.

Christina:

You hit the nail on the head. I think that's a reason, you know, when, uh, and I hope everyone, you know, go and download the report profitero.com, but you'll see a maturity curve that walks through six stages of maturity. That, and again, we were not going, we were not setting out to write a paper about e-commerce maturity. We set out to write a paper about organizational design and what became abundantly clear is that it directly maps maturity, and it makes logical sense, right. But I think it's helpful to spell it out. And just when teams are less mature and that can be a function of many things can be a function of your percent of sales going through e-commerce. It can be a function of internal capabilities or senior leadership excitement, right? There's multiple ways to look at maturity, but what if you're low on that scale?

Christina:

There's a certain model that's going to be most effective for you. And there's a reason in the middle of the maturity curve. And we characterize those stages is merchandise. And that the stages are based on kind of what you're focused on with the key objective of that stage one's merchandise. And then the fourth stage is growth. And what we mean by that is that's a lot of changes typically happening. So you've got these first three stages where you're kind of putting things in motion. You're educating organization, you're merchandising wins. You're kind of rallying the troops. When you get to grow, it's like, okay, we've got buy-in. We need to build a ton of capabilities so that we can really move in the space and we're going to pull together a lot of the functions. So again, Lauren, to your point, in order to be successful, it's a business. It is not just a marketing plan. It's not just a sales play. You need multiple functions that are part of this. We call it a sidecar, um, in, in the report. But it's, it's typically a separate business unit because you need those people kind of all together, rowing in the same direction and focus on solving a business problem, not just driving row as, or driving sales.

Peter:

So Christina, let's step through this a little bit more in order and let's lay out that maturity curve. So, um, where do most organizations start? What is the structure that you saw coming together successfully during that period?

Christina:

Definitely. So, um, your six stages, the first one is evangelize, and then you moved to educate and I kind of put them together in my mind. It's, it's six stages. It's, it's really, you know, low maturity, middle maturity and high maturity. And so those first two in the early days, you're evangelizing, what does this look like? What does it feel like? It's probably you're on a small team. Maybe you're even a team of one, right? If you're at a smaller brand and you are keeping the ship afloat, right, you're probably focused on your Amazon business or maybe your Walmart Omni business, but you don't have much bandwidth beyond that. And so you're spending your time beyond just keeping the ship afloat and driving sales. You are evangelizing the good word about e-commerce and you're trying to, you know, gather some excitement and that's pretty much what you have bandwidth for the next stage is educate.

Christina:

And so that's when it becomes more formal. And that's where in the paper, I suggest reading through the pieces on educating the C-suite because it's really important. You're not moving to that next stage without some significant backing from senior leadership and then educating key functions. So again, if you're a team of one team of two, in order to make things happen, you are reliant upon designated resources in other functions. And so how do you, like we just talked about how do you educate supply chain? How do you educate your sales, finance team on why the traditional ways that you leveraged trade may or may not be applicable for amazon.com for example. And so those are in the early days, Peter, where teams should be focused. And again, if we take a step back, right, just to orient people, this whole concept of a maturity curve is how do you build sustainable growth and success in e-commerce?

Christina:

So we get the question and Peter, I'm sure you've gotten it, Lauren. I'm sure you've gotten it. How should my team be organized? What are the best teams doing? Okay, well, we can answer that question. We can tell you the best teams they have it, you know, they've got a COE that's handling capabilities and training, and then they've got it integrated into the business units. And e-commerce is just kind of fully embedded. If you're at stage one of maturity and you try and race to stage six, it's not sustainable because there you don't have enough internal capabilities developed. And so the reason it's broken out and kind of those six steps, and the reason you start with a heavy emphasis on education is so that you're incrementally building capabilities and sustainable. What processes to ensure that e-commerce has longterm success.

Lauren:

I think I love about the maturity curve too. Is you also talk about like, what are the jobs to be done to your point? You can't start at stage one and say, I want to be at the stage six and then jump all the way there. Like, what are the fundamental pieces that you need to think about and what are those building blocks? And I, and I would also agree when, when talking to customers sometimes it's like, okay, you want to be this large organization. You want to have this structure, but what are the jobs that you need to do to get done, to get to that point? So I love how that is kind of the building blocks that, that you share. And there's this one quote that I love from, from Gloria. Who's the director of, uh, omni-channel marketing at Nestle. And she says that they added a full-time employee to their team who is responsible for education. Like we talked about because the solutions really need to be bespoke to the organization and for someone to be successful in this role, they ideally have to experience in both the Nestle organization and in e-commerce since acting as the translator is so crucial. And I'd love to kind of talk about that because I think that balance of maybe bringing someone from the outside or working internally with your team is, is a really important balance.

Christina:

Aye. Aye. Yes. So let's talk about it. So I, when Gloria, when I was talking to Gloria and she told me that I was in some way, like, of course you did that. And on the other hand, I was blown away that, I mean, it takes a really effective leader to be able to advocate for that resource. Right? Think about that. You're in the relatively early days, the maturity Nestle's quite advanced in the work they're doing, right. We, the one thing to clarify there part just because the quote lives in a certain stage, it doesn't mean the organization is in that stage. But when Nestle, he was in early days, she fought for a full-time headcount to focus on education because she recognized that that was the key job to be done. So Warren, thank you for underscoring that, cause that's, what's key about this.

Christina:

It's not just, we're a low maturity let's educate it's no, we're lower on the maturity curve. We need to get further along. And the key job that's going to, we're going to enable that is better education internally. And this concept of translation again, absolutely a through line in all of my conversations. And it goes back to Howard's quote, speak in business terms and don't talk to me in the e-commerce jargon and translate to me. Okay. You know, I always say I was in, I worked at PepsiCo for a number of years, had a lot of exposure to senior leaders in PepsiCo with another CPGs and, and kind of my role since these executives can talk IRI and Nielsen data all day long, they walk into a store, they know exactly what's off and what's right. And that same ease at which they can talk about the brick and mortar environment.

Christina:

They may or may not be there yet with e-commerce. And so an effective educator understands two things really well. They understand the internal dynamics and what is the baseline level of education and what are like the buzzwords of the terms to use internally to relate to those folks. And then they understand e-commerce well enough that they can explain it simply. I think that is a really powerful tool. If you consider yourself like an e-commerce expert, you know, all kind of the latest buzzwords, that's great. You need to break that down and explain it simply. And in a way that folks are going to be receptive and not just think like, okay, well there's Christina, I guess she's our e-commerce person. So I got an e-commerce questions. I'll email her at like, no, no, no, it's going to be an office job. Like we're going to help you out, help you understand this. So it's a really critical point.

Peter:

So, all right. So you you've gotten through this, this first low maturity, um, stage, and you've got your feet under you. Things are starting to hum. The brand supply chain and sales team. Uh, excuse me, I'm going to start that again. All right. So you get to this, this next stage. You're, you've got your feet under you. Things are starting to hum. The brand supply chain and sales teams are aware that an econ team exists and that a channel is important and growing, but they haven't yet gotten their hands dirty doing actual e-comm work. So in order to get the business results you want as your you've got to move on to the next stage, right?

Lauren:

Yeah, exactly. So you hang in educate all day long, it becomes a series of lunch and learns and it's still just like written goal and running e-commerce and I say three obviously expands for tracks based on your revenue, but yeah, a relatively small team. And you're just keeping people apprised of what you're doing, but what you ultimately again, keep the end in mind. This is a, this is a journey on how you kind of elevate in commerce in your organization. The end goal is that it is managed as a business and as a channel alongside all the energy. So the same way that you probably have robust, robust processes or innovation or marketing span, and you look across mass or convenience e-commerce needs to be in there too. So if that's the end goal where your brand teams are thinking about it comprehensively, you can't just linger and educate you.

Lauren:

Can't just be that company. So the next stage, and when you kind of enter into middle maturity is merchandise. And what we mean by merchandise is identify a team that you can start to pilot some of your test and learn ideas and then merchandise their success. It serves a couple purposes. I came from an organization that was super competitive and I'm sure many of your listeners are sitting in organizations that also get really competitive, especially if you're in a sales function, right? Like you are driven by your numbers. You hate the competition, right? And so if you start to merchandise the win, there's also some internal competition and say, Hey, you know, we worked with the, this is all hypothetical. The Doritos brand team of Pepsi-Co. We, you know, they invested early look at all the success we've had on Amazon put together a couple, you know, two pagers and share those out that is going to drive some internal competition that is going to encourage the other brand teams or leaders across business units say, Hey, wait, we need to do that.

Lauren:

We can't be behind, you know, the, the Lay's team needs to really step up, right. Again, I'll have a vertical, but you get the idea. If you're at a house of brands, it's kind of drive some, some good competition. The other thing it does is it just highlights the good work that the teams that are willing to invest early are doing, and it makes them look good. You, if you are an e-commerce, uh, dedicated head count and you're trying to rally an organization, you want the people who are willing to partner with you to look good, elevate them, make sure senior leaders know, Hey, they're willing to try things out and look at the success we realize. And maybe the learning is, you know, we invested $20,000 on this promotion on X, Y, Z website. And we think it did okay, but know how to optimize it.

Lauren:

And now we're trying again, and look, look how quickly we're able to kind of be nimble and tested, learn and get smarter in the space and look at the partnership developed with, you know, this brand team or shopper marketing or whatever it is. So merchandising those wins. It can really have an impact beyond just the pilot group and to your point about the test and learn and being agile and nimble. I'm sure from your experience, from my experience, I've seen that being a really critical piece of understanding from all points of the business. This space is not something where you do something and it lasts for the next three years. It might not even last for the next three days. Right? So being able to be agile and to shift and to change, I think, as we're talking about this, that education piece then evolves to how do you think in a more agile way, how do you do test and learns? It's okay to fail. It's okay to try something new and differently. So I also love how, when you think about education throughout the stages of the maturity curve, it's defined very differently, but, but it enables that change within the organization. You're exactly

Christina:

Right. I, uh, one of the, uh, people I interviewed said to me, um, he wakes up every morning, scared he's no longer like an e-commerce expert and that drives him because it's changing so much. And when he looks for talent of kind of who makes a good e-commerce employee it's intellectual curiosity and being willing to say again, Lauren, to your point, Hey, this made sense, six months ago, we haven't rewritten this playbook. So we used to think, you know, new item launch, it was like these 10 things we need to get. Right. I think we need to take a close eye or to, you know, leverage some scrutiny on what we think is true and then update our playbook. Right. And, and having that level of intellectual curiosity and then educating based on it and starting from a place of this is what we know is true today. And what we definitely know is it's going to change and getting people comfortable with that.

Peter:

Yeah, Christina, that that really resonates with me because everyone is struggling with finding the right talent in this space because it either doesn't exist or it's super expensive. And you're competing, you know, especially when I think of our, our, uh, some of our, our, um, brands that are maybe not in the sexiest industries in the world. And so they're competing with every category of hiring, um, company, not just their own. And I think coming up with the qualities, like you said, intellectual curiosity, what did that list of qualities that the person needs and presume you can get them smart on the e-commerce stuff or even on the digital stuff? Is that, is that fair to say? I think it's

Christina:

Super fair. And actually it kind of plays well, Peter, the next stage of maturity has grow. And what that typically looks like is, like I said, a sidecar of varying sizes based on how large your organization is, but it should have P and L ownership and it should include multiple functions. And the reason I bring it up is when I was, I lived a lot of this journey, right? So I don't know. I have friends who are like researchers and scientists. They call it me-search search. You tend to focus on what you do or what, you know. And so in this case, that that played out and I went through these first four stages of maturity and we were building this sidecar at Pepsi-Co. It was very much a combination of internal talent. So that included me, right. I was, I went through a rotational program.

Christina:

I knew Pepsi-Co I knew the way things worked. And then we hired a bunch of external talent, right? Ex consultants, uh, digital marketers that came from totally different verticals, product content managers that came from totally different verticals because we needed that technical knowledge. But the leadership was a mix of both. And the teams were a mix of both. And I highlight that Peter, because you need, you need this and you can't, you don't necessarily need to go hire everyone externally through it. Your e-commerce experts look for people internally that one, like a challenge and are intellectually curious. And I think arguably most importantly, especially if you're in that middle stage of maturity, they don't navigate the organization because ultimately you want it to be folded back into the business units. At least I think you do. And you know, the people we interviewed would tell you that that's the way you make the sustainable.

Christina:

And if you are external and you come in, you know, we'd commerce super well. You're going to really thrive when you're in this sidecar model. But as soon as the conversations turned to say, okay, we need to pass this back and meet the process to these, to fold in to existing processes. So think about something like demand planning or working with sales, finance on your trade plans. If you don't know how it currently works, you can't just blow everything up and change the system for e-commerce. Sometimes you need to evolve it and that's great. You should, but knowing kind of how to play nice and how to have that organizational savvy is really critical. So I didn't Peter, as you have conversations and, you know, folks who are listening, it doesn't need to be just, you know, get the recruiter online and e-commerce talent. There is a way to elevate your internal teams if they have these qualities and are eager to learn and then pair them up with an e-commerce expert, right? Get them smart on some of the technical stuff. They can learn that it can be sometimes harder to learn how an organization runs outside of e-commerce, which ultimately means they're not going to be, they're not going to stick around for too long. They might be really successful for a year, but you want to bring in talent. That's going to stick with you for multiple years.

Lauren:

I completely agree with that, Christina, because I also lived that w when I was at J and J I did not have previous e-commerce experience before I came into the role. And it was really about how do you operationalize the work that needs to get done? How do you work? Cross-functionally how do you navigate the organization? And you're right. All of the rest of the e-commerce knowledge with it, because you're learning as you're as you go, and you're figuring out what makes sense. And you're understanding those key tenants. And I think that's not a traditional way of looking at recruiting for roles. And so it is definitely challenging, but looking at those key tenants, I can say from my personal experience, from what you just shared, and also from working with other customers, that intellectual curiosity, the, the understanding the organization, organization cross-functionally and wanting to build something and being comfortable in white space. That's another thing I would add, because it might not be defined, right? You might understand the core tenants. You might have some structure around where you're, where you're thinking and the key buckets, but in an organization that's really new to this. You need to be able to kind of build something that might not exist. So looking for those key pieces outside of the e-commerce experience, I think will be helpful for listeners too, who are looking to build a team.

Peter:

So, um, Christina, before you, uh, I just want to make sure that we've described, um, in more detail, what the growth stage looks like. So you're, you're riding in your side car.

Peter:

I do, I do. I was a big Batman

Peter:

And Robin fan growing up. And, and to me, Robin's in the sidecar. And then at some point you need to become Batman, right? You need to really get it out into the organization and have the bam in the pile. So tell me what is happening, uh, that, that takes you to the stage. What does that look like?

Christina:

Yeah. And, and credit where credit's due Neil from, uh, from Nestle Purina gave me that, that descriptor. And as soon as he said it, I was like, oh, that's absolutely in the report. I love it. Um, so what does it, what does it look like? What does it feel like? So the sidecar and there's, um, um, models in the paper. So for visual learners out there, it kind of shows you what that work might look like. But the simplest way to think about it is when you're an early maturity, you're going to be embedded within a team. So you're likely reporting up through sales. You might be reporting up through marketing. Other than that, I haven't seen many variations. And then when you move to, um, merchandiser grow, usually it's just grow. You start to pull in folks that either were designated, or you maybe didn't have it all from enabling functions into your team.

Christina:

And you're reporting up. You could be reporting up to many different people. We've seen these teams report up through SVPs of sales. We've seen them report out to CFOs, right? Straights, chief digital officers, but it is a separate team. And there are resources at minimum from sales and marketing. And typically also from supply chain finance, and then like digital enablement college and things like product content, managing your tech stack, working with folks like salts, find Profitero right. Those teams, they tend to all be in one place. And what that enables Peter and what it feels like is instead of, you know, I want to run this promotion on Amazon, let me go talk to the brand team. And let me talk to my, you know, let me reach out to finance and figure out if I can get approvals. And, you know, three months later, prime day as well over all the decision makers are in that org.

Christina:

You have your own budget. You typically have a P and L you can move a lot faster. It also typically means there's a set of rules that govern that team. And there's a set of rules that govern everyone else. So organizations know that there's a reason, large CPG organizations need to move slow. They have a lot of processes and it takes a long time to turn the ship. They're really successful at that though, they have a command large market share. They have strong go to market strategies. If they were moving super nimble, they probably wouldn't be able to sustain their large market share and kind of large go to market system. And so in a smaller channel relative, right to total sales, e-commerce you want them to be more nimble because it's not set like exactly what Lauren was describing. This is going to change every few months, the best practice is going to evolve. So you need a team that can move quickly. And so the set of rules that governs that sidecar can and should be different if they were the same rules as everyone else, just having the brought up through sales and marketing, but you break it out so that you can incentivize them differently. You give them unique KPIs that frankly have very little to do with the rest of the organization. And you tell them, go grow sales, you know, whatever the number is double that every year and tell me what you need to make it happen.

Lauren:

So now that it's clear that e-commerce is poised to become a large source of demand and growth for the company, and it simply can't just be a scrappy approach anymore. Uh, I really love the quote that Aliza Greenwood shared. Who's the head of global e-comm and insights and analytics at mandolins. And he said, it's important to maintain a continuous focus on e-commerce capabilities. If you look at brick and mortar stores around the world, they are more or less the same by channel from an e-commerce standpoint, retailer capabilities and websites, taxonomy, and functionality can be completely different because of this dynamic brands need to have a continual process of evaluation, tweak, and pivot. And so that also requires another approach, right? Christina?

Christina:

Yeah, exactly. So it's not, you know, it's never going to be as simple as okay. Dissolve the econ team full back into the business units and e-commerce is good to go. Exactly what Allister underscored is that the channel is going to continue to evolve at a pace that significantly, uh, or rather the channel will evolve in a way that outpaces other channels. So what you're going to see in mass and convenience, there's always changes in retailers, but if you look at e-commerce, it's going to be more. And so what that implies from an organizational design standpoint is yes, it's going to be, again, more, it's kind of proven out demand. Uh, it's going to be part of your go-forward strategic plan for many years. So it should be full into the business units. The business units need to be empowered to own the channel. However you want to have a team or at least a couple people that are owning kind of strategic priorities for e-commerce.

Christina:

And so what does that look like? And in, in the, in the paper, we talk about a center of excellence model and what that could look like. Um, we have actually a separate kind of shorter paper that outlines a couple of different, uh, views of what a center of excellence can and does look like some clients we work with. So feel free to reach out if anyone wants that, but basically it should be aligned to your needs. So say you can fall, you can really effectively fold in sales and marketing into the business units, but things like ownership of your tech stack, digital capabilities, education, maybe it makes sense to keep those in the center of excellence because they're, they're really easily scaled. So you don't need separate teams managing those things in different business units or brand teams. You really can consolidate those resources. The same could be said for something like managing product content. You can keep that you can keep that consolidated. So don't fold that back in.

Lauren:

I think another key element that I really loved in the report is talking about how not every single region has to have the same structure. So north America can be different than Europe. Then it can be different than Asia pack and that's okay. And that's the way it's supposed to be. And did you have a lot of those conversations during your interviews as well? I did.

Christina:

Yeah. It was something I was trying to pressure test because I think on its face, it feels obvious. Like, okay, you're going to have different models because different regions have different needs. But if you're a global leader of e-commerce, there can be this impulse to say, well, I want my teams to be uniform. Like the way I structure it in north America should be the same way structured in Europe, but it does not need to be true. You probably want some consistency in the second layer. So whoever's leading teams, right? You want their remit to be relatively similar. So if you have a head of north American e-commerce head of European e-commerce head of Asia pack, whatever that looks like, but what happens below them should be bespoke to the needs of the region and especially bespoke to the level of maturity. Um, I, you know, I work with global teams all the time. They have very different models and what they're doing here in the U S versus what they're doing overseas, that's intentional. You don't want to be over or under staff for a fairly arbitrary reason. You want it to be tied to the needs of the market.

Peter:

So I think, uh, just to, just to, this has this, um, this way of thinking this model that you've developed, Christine, I think is just really powerful and flexible that, uh, and, and so with that idea in mind, you know, there are a number of companies out there now he com has been around long enough that some of them are in this final stage, but I know Lauren and you talk to them every day as well, but it's still under constant change. And I, my guess is that this is not just, oh, now we're, we're in that final stage of maturity. We're fine at D tell me just as a, as you close out, you know, what are you seeing from these innovators that are continuing to modify their approach as the business, as the business continues to, to change any, any last takeaways?

Christina:

I think the biggest one for me, and it, it kinda sums up a couple of the themes. We talked about the most effective leaders that I know that are in the kind of highest stages of maturity. They very much take the opinion or the stance that I think this is the right model for now. We're going to revisit it in six months. So there's an organization that we interviewed for the report and they are, you know, they're very much in stage five or six, call it, they're folding things back into the business units. They've had their sidecar for a number of years. They've been super successful. And now they're saying, okay, we've reached a certain threshold, a certain percent of sales. It's just easy to fold it back in. And so this leader is still overseeing the center of excellence. And when I spoke with her, she basically said, these are the three functions I have in this center of excellence right now.

Christina:

I think this is right. Does it feel right to you? I, yeah. If it does, it feels right. She's like, okay, I'm going to revisit it in six months. And I'm going to make sure that because you need to do two things really well, when you're in that final stage, you need to own what's in the COE, right? So may say for example, capabilities, I mean to own capabilities really well, but you also need to drive connectivity because think about, imagine you're someone who is on the sidecar organization, when you're in the growth stage of maturity, and then you all get split apart, you know, end of the school year, everyone goes back to where they belong and you no longer have that sense of community or connectivity. So the COE should drive that. And that's why having kind of the diligent approach of saying, let's review this model.

Christina:

I know six months sounds aggressive. And if you're sitting in like a brick and mortar role, that probably sounds crazy, but the fast paced nature of the channel just demands that you take a close eye on what's doing, and it underscores the need to hire people that are intellectually curious that are flexible, because you may say, Hey, Lauren, you're going to go be my director of e-commerce and business unit X. And then six months later, I might say, Hey, Lauren actually needs you in marketing, right. Like, and shift you over. And that would be extreme, but it can, it should happen. You want people to be nimble. So, you know, Peter to directly answer your question, the best organizations. Yes. They're at that final stage of maturity. No. The final page of the report does not say job done close report, never look at it again. Right. You want to keep a pulse on how things are going and make changes as needed

Peter:

Lauren that resonates with you. Yes,

Lauren:

Definitely. I mean, I think the, this is a marathon, not a sprint is a really, really great way of describing it. And it's never going to have an end point. And I think that's a little bit different than the traditional model, right. So that continuous optimization. And I love that that also resonates at every aspect of e-commerce, right. It's your organization, it's your process? It's your content. It's how you engage with customers. Like every piece of the e-commerce journey is fundamentally changing. And the more you accept that and embrace that and build an organization to support that, the easier it will be.

Peter:

Well, it sounds exhausting,

Peter:

But exciting. So add

Christina:

For all the organizations that have open headcount to get them in.

Peter:

Exactly. Because it sounds thrilling. Um,

Peter:

So, uh, I would just want to say, um, you referred to the report a few times, of course, and we will have it in our show notes. When we promoted out on our, on our LinkedIn channel, we will also of course share the report because you have to read the report. Like there's so much more detail and color in there that, that I think everyone will really enjoy. And, um, and I just also wanted to say just what a pleasure it is to have, like you guys are so experienced and, and I just love being able to get, uh, your brains on this podcast. So, so thank you so much for joining us Lauren for co-hosting and Christina, thank you so much for, for sharing your thought leadership with us.

Christina:

Oh, thank you so much. It's been my pleasure. It's great. Catching up with you guys. And I hope the report is helpful. Um, I think, you know, some early, my early sense is that it's, it's helping to capture a lot of what people have been feeling or doing for the last couple of years. So any questions people can feel free to reach out directly to me on LinkedIn

Peter:

And Lauren, I threatened that you will, uh, you will be appearing in a co-host seat

Peter:

Again. Thank you.

Lauren:

Yes. I'm very excited to continue, continue doing this. And, and I love these conversations because I wish there was a lot of this when I was starting my journey. So really just hope that this can help anyone at any stage of their journey as they go through it. And it's been a pleasure to talk to you, Christina and Peter, you are the best host. So what's your Venmo again. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Peter:

Thanks again to Christina for joining me and Lauren for sitting in the co-host chair, please share this episode with your colleagues and leave one of those awesome reviews wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for being part of our community.