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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#850: Newell VP of E-commerce Tambi Younes on expanding the operational limits of ecommerce capabilities
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Greg Kilstrom, your host of the Agile Brand and here's a question for you. What's the real cost of only having the bandwidth to focus on your top performing products? Agility requires systems and processes that not only respond to change, but also proactively manage complexity across an entire portfolio. It's about creating the capacity to act on every opportunity, not just the most obvious ones. Today we're going to talk about a critical breaking point for large consumer brands. The operational limits of E commerce execution. When you're managing thousands of products across countless digital shelves, manual processes don't just slow you down, they force you to leave opportunity on the table. We're going to explore how automation and AI are moving teams from being reactive firefighters on their top SKUs to strategic drivers of growth across their entire catalog. Welcome to season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind the brands you know and love. Again, I'm your host Greg Kilstrom and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of MarTech, AI and marketing ops. Hit, subscribe or follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And make sure you check out our sponsor, Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world adoption. For more information, go to techsystems.com now let's dive in. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Tambi Yunus, Vice President of E Commerce at Newell. Tambi, welcome to the show.
- [01:40]
B
Hey Greg, thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
- [01:42]
C
Yeah.
- [01:43]
A
Looking forward to talking about this topic with you. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Newell.
- [01:49]
B
Yeah, of course. I've been in the e commerce space for essentially my entire career. Almost 20 years at this point. Have covered various roles along the way from content management to Amazon Trade Marketing to digital product management, so have run the gamut. In my current role, I lead our central e commerce team here at Newell, which includes both our commercial businesses and direct to consumer and our 3Pmarketplaces and all of the digital capabilities that underpin those businesses, but as well as our cross channel retail.com efforts. So my team's responsible for everything from the on site experience for our brand sites to how our products show up across retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Target. And we're building those systems and capabilities to scale revenue growth across our top e commerce channels as a top priority for our organization and our path to growth. So my team cuts across digital experience, content, digital intelligence, and increasingly obviously AI. So a big part of my focus right now is how we use AI and automation to unlock that growth and scale that we're looking for as a team.
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A
Great, great. And for listeners that may not be quite as familiar with Newell as a brand, but most certainly are familiar with some of the brands that are part of the portfolio. Can you give us maybe an overview of the company and its key brand categories and some of the customers you serve?
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B
Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, not as many people are familiar with the Newell brand, but the brands within them everyone's familiar with. So Newell is a global consumer goods company behind a lot of amazing brands that people use every day. So we have more than 50 iconic brands, including Sharpie, Rubbermaid, Graco, Coleman, Oster, Yankee Candle, and many more. We're a global company with about 22,000 talented employees worldwide. We operate in 40 countries, selling over 150 markets around the world and playing a lot of different categories, as you can tell by the brands that I listed off there. So a wide variety of consumer needs across a broad set of categories and retail environments, from Amazon, Walmart, Target, to some of the direct transaction channels that we have in our own properties.
- [03:52]
A
Great, great. Well, let's dive in. I will say I don't know what I would do without my Sharpies. So I definitely a consumer of at least several of your brands. So let's start from the strategic level here. And I want to touch on something that I briefly introed in the intro of the show, and that's just this idea from manually scaling things is simply not feasible at this point in time with the demands that are needed. And so we need to focus on ways to scale in an automated fashion. So one of the things that Newell has done is implemented content agents with commerce iq. So want to hear a little bit about your experience there? Before you did that, what did the operational reality of managing product content at scale look like for your team? You know, what were some of the maybe bottlenecks or limitations that really signaled that you needed to make a change?
- [04:56]
B
Yeah, I think in my overview of Newell and you hear me talk through the different brands that we have, the different categories, and just the number of them you can imagine. For us, that equates to managing thousands of SKUs across a large swath of retailers with constantly changing algorithms that do anything but stay stagnant, especially in this Day and age. So that's optimizing product content, that's managing retail media, that's adjusting price and inventory, reporting on performance. And the expectation across all of that is that it happens in real time or near real time. Otherwise we lose that opportunity with our consumers in the moment. So that demand and that expectation, especially within the E commerce side, is difficult and really, I'd say impossible to cover through manual workflows. So even small changes like fixing or updating product content across a retailer or several retailers, it's time intensive. It's a manual process that involves a lot of cross functional stakeholders, a lot of touch points that a single person on my team would need to manage. So at the end of the day it limits focus. It takes a lot of time and there's missed opportunity there. So being able to scale that and do it in an automated fashion, we recognize there's this really, really big untapped opportunity.
- [06:08]
A
Yeah. And so part of that is, you know, the, the organization has moved towards what could be called a full catalog agency. So maybe if you could unpack, you know, what, what exactly that means. And also, you know, what, what's the business value of consistently executing across your entire portfolio rather than, you know, just kind of the, maybe the 8020 role, you know, focusing on the top 20%.
- [06:33]
B
Yeah. I think the big shift for us in terms of trying to force prioritization within our sales and brand teams to say we can only focus on a small set of priority SKUs as opposed to the broader set of the assortment just due to bandwidth. It was really a constraint around how much we could actually get done. And if we looked at automation and how AI could help us and the potential to get to 100% of something like our pimp compliance, to make sure that our content is at the very least representative of all the content that we have available within the organization, then you know, that's an incredible feat for us. So to be able to operate across that portfolio as initial brand rollout was, was a really great use case for us. And that is the full catalog agency kind of term that you referred to. That ability to drive consistent execution to unlock that growth across the entire business and not just the top 20% of products, you know, that 80% additional assortment, that's a huge amount of items. Yeah. And so there's always that potential. Right. That if you're treating them all with that same level of, of care and attention, then those items that are in the 80%, there's no reason why you can't see some of those start to pop up and have the same type of impact and sales drive that those top 20% do. So you know, obviously a really big opportunity and something that we identified as a very clear use case that we could tackle.
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A
Yeah, yeah. And so let's, let's talk about this from, from a tactical level then too. So you know, I mentioned the, the content agent from Commerce IQ was one of the things that you've deployed to help with this. Can you break down what exactly does this agent do? What tasks has it taken over from your team? How does that work?
- [08:16]
B
Yeah, the tool itself is amazing. The process that we went through to build it with Commerce IQ was also very eye opening for me. So we partnered with Commerce IQ to build this content agent that's really tailored to how we operate. It's designed to automate what has always been a highly manual process around pdp. So product detail, page optimization and compliance. So high level, it scans our product pages, identifies gaps and then recommends fixes to our team. So the fixes could be compliance related. So mismatches between what's on a retailer PDP versus what's in our pim, but also can go over and above and recommend content optimizations or fill in gaps that we have due to the intelligence that's within the tool. So as I mentioned, it's like missing content, like description text, non compliant content based off of our source of truth, any formatting issues, opportunities to improve how we show up in search using data that's built into the model. So obviously again, this was always very manual and time consuming and a lot of times you wouldn't be able to get to this level of detail as we go through auditing our catalog. So on average this could take 30 minutes or more for a single content update. And that's after evaluating all the systems that you need to dig into that's going on the site that's looking in the pim, that's coordinating with brand teams. So the options where you either made the time and go in and fix it or it just wouldn't get done consistently. So you end up falling behind in a lot of areas. So now with this content agent that happens in a more automated fashion and it's continuous. So you have that opportunity to go in, use the data at your disposal and then run through that automated sweep of the items that are there, get really quick recommendations and then have that approval workflow that can automatically syndicate out to retail. So the scale there and the ability for teams to focus on many more items at a greater Level of detail has been the big unlock.
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A
Yeah. And I think in addition to just that breadth, and I mean that, that alone is impressive to be able to manage, you know, that, that number of SKUs that effectively. I understand the solution was also deployed in under 80 days, which that's having worked with plenty of enterprise orgs like that, that alone is impressive. You know what was critical to getting this level of automation up and running without disrupting the business end in such a short period of time.
- [10:44]
B
Yeah, this part to me was the tool itself is such an amazing unlock for the team. The process, as I mentioned earlier, was like just as cool of an experience on my end. The biggest thing for us was in the conversations that precluded us actually digging in and working, there was a huge amount of focus on driving a very, very clear and focused use case. So we weren't trying to do too much or going in a bit ambiguous so we could really start working from day one. So we picked this like high volume manual process that we knew needed to change and we're very, very clear on that between our teams and CIQ going into it. CIQ already had a lot of the infrastructure models built for retail, so we weren't starting from scratch either. And then the big unlock for me was the forward deploy engineer. So you know, they put a very strong engineer on site with us. So we work out of our Hoboken offices in New Jersey and they sat with us, we met with them frequently in person and so it was built together and I think that, you know, deploying that concept in terms of what we traditionally look at SaaS as, you know, the, the 95% built in a silo and then 5% of configurations that you have to work through versus this process being building together and really making a custom based off of what we need was such a big unlock for me and was was a great experience and really made this agent tailored to our workflows the way that our merchandisers want to operate combined with the technology that Commerce IQ is bringing forward. So that was the speed element I think it was, you know, being able to customize our workflows and brand requirements quickly because we were doing it iteratively together and then integrating it into how the team works instead of forcing a brand new process. So there wasn't this like change management or configuration step after technology was built that we had to go through. It was all a part of the process. So that allowed us to move really, really quickly and it, you know, wasn't a disruption to the business at all
- [12:37]
C
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- [13:41]
A
One more thing to talk through here is, and I know you touched on some of the time and efficiency savings, but you know, it's my understanding the results, there's a 40 times improvement in time saved. Again, not just deploying it quickly, but also in, you know, post deployment, you know, this is saving 40 times the amount of time. So you know, beyond that number even how do you measure ROI of an initiative like this? You know, are you looking at metrics like content compliance, some of the things you mentioned, error rates, incremental sales, you know, what is, how do you look at success here?
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B
Yeah, I mean we closely monitor our digital shelf analytics, which we get through commerce IQ as well.
- [14:29]
A
Yeah.
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B
So the compliance piece is huge. But compliance gets you to making sure that you've identified and adhered to retailer requirements. So we need to do that, we need to make sure we're playing within the space and then this actually allows us to put a lot of effort within the team on making sure that the content is the best that it can be. So it's not just about being there and having the right content. It's is it the best content that we can possibly have? But obviously the efficiency here is huge. So I know we touched on, you know, 30 plus minutes per content update and if you can get that down to less than a minute, because those recommendations are surfaced for you, that auditing is done for you. That's obviously just like the scale there and the productivity is a massive, massive increase that we're really excited about. So you think about before having to analyze reports, identify the gaps, check pim, consult the PDP page that swivel. Chairing and auditing on a human level is taxing and consuming. And then with the content agent, you're really just reviewing the report to spot an issue. Then you ask the content agent for a recommendation and all that heavy lifting is done at scale, within an automated fashion. So you just cover more of the catalog without adding more people. And that's a big deal for us with where we're at and our ability to scale. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we're tasked with growing our businesses and our brands. And we know that up to date relevant content impacts not only how our brands show up, but also conversion. So once, once we are considered by a consumer being able to answer those questions, show up with high quality content, that it does impact conversion at the end of the day. So that opportunity to drive better content at a faster cadence and be more relevant at the time that consumers interact with our products, it just puts us in a better position to win, share and ultimately grow our brands within the market.
- [16:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, well, and I think that that touches on something that I think, I'm sure all marketers know and are aware of, but it kind of, it kind of gets lost in, you know, with the race to make all those updates and make sure everything's in compliance. It's, there's such a focus on the operational part of, okay, let's just get it correct. And what you're touching on there is what we're really doing this for. I mean, in addition to compliance, what we're really doing this for is to, you know, engage customers and get them
- [16:47]
C
to buy the products.
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A
Right. Sometimes it's you, you, you can lose sight of, of, of that real true end goal because you're just racing to update all this information for all these SKUs and everything. So, you know, from, from my perspective at least it sounds like it gives back some of your team's time to be able to do just that to, you know, to think about what's, what is more compelling. Right.
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B
It's true. And I think, you know, the, the rules around content are changing very, very frequently and quickly. So trying to think about what that next generation of product content even looks like as we move forward to inform how we create content upstream. So a lot of these tools are meant to optimize content that exists today. But what we learn from Them we should be applying further upstream so that we're building the right content for the age of AI as we go forward. So freeing up the teams to be able to do that due diligence and help inform the teams and refine our process further upstream is kind of our next step. But you can't do that if you're bogged down with just that compliance effort in the day to day. So I think that freeing up of the team to really drive that strategic guidance as we go forward and how we think about content as an organization, it's a, it's a big one for us to be able to focus on.
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A
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I think that that also just speaks to how I think, I mean I'm an optimist when it comes to this stuff. I think it elevates the roles of the humans in, involved in this and you know, the, the agents are going to be great at, at doing those, those other tasks and but, but it does to me it gives a clear role for the humans in the equation, which I think is, is, is a good thing.
- [18:27]
B
So yeah, there were, there were like a few examples of that that I thought were like, they were like hopeful for me in terms of, you know, all the stories you hear about impacts to the, the humans and all of this and, and one of them is, you know, enabling actually more impactful work for the people on our teams to be engaged in, but also the process, like the concept of that for deploy engineer we actually spent. There was a lot more human to human connectivity in the build than actually you traditionally see in a process like that. So I brought teams together to have conversations on how are we doing things today versus how should we be doing them going forward and how can this help us do that? So it was more than just emails and messages and going off and doing your work, but it was getting people in a room to say how can we make this better? Which I didn't think of as we were going into it, but as an output I was like that's a very positive output as far as our connectivity within the organization is concerned.
- [19:21]
A
Yeah, love to hear that. So let's talk a little bit about the future on the AI side as well. And so you've successfully automated the product content and compliance that we talked about. What do you see as the next frontier for AI driven execution at Newell? Are you looking in other areas to do agent based models? What's on the horizon?
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B
Yeah, so right now as we roll out the content agent, we want to roll this out to other business units and ultimately additional channels as well. So it's a more of a holistic approach for us and how we think about content and then the broader opportunity from my perspective is this end to end content supply chain incorporating this approach. So I think content was the starting point for us because it's high volume, it's manual, we had a clear need for it. So the, those same challenges though they exist in many other areas within our world. So if you think about the broader shifts in retail and how that impacts retail media pricing, inventory anywhere that there are these constant decisions that need to be made and acted on quickly, there's an opportunity to incorporate the same thought process against those. So I think it's the same type of model more broadly, not just identifying what to do, but actually executing on it in a continuous way that is scalable. So that's really how we're thinking about it. It's less about it being a single use case and more of a shift in how E commerce gets managed day to day and then ultimately stitching those things together. So we've identified these solutions that exist for specific use cases, but then what's the opportunity to kind of stitch those together in a way that is more end to end in the way that we manage E commerce?
- [21:03]
A
Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, looking forward to seeing, seeing how all that comes together as well. Well Tambi, thanks so much for, for joining today and sharing your insights. I've got two, two last questions for you as we wrap up here. The first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
- [21:23]
B
Yeah, it's like, it's crazy to think like there are a lot of things that I've thought about as far as being a year away and then within a few months they're here. So we'll see. But I think one is I touched on that idea of autonomous orchestration for some of these cross functional workflows. So I guess something like we think about an open cloud but embedded within an enterprise. So right now we're building AI applications and agents to solve these individual use cases. But the real unlock is in linking these solutions together, almost like an autonomous team. So why can't an agent that's doing data analysis not flag an item to the content agent who can pull insights from a consumer sentiment and inform that agent on how best to update and enrich product content and then syndicating that out to a retailer? So I think it's like that we've thought about the individual solutions that would happen within each of those steps and then you know, what would stop us from linking those together to have a more end to end loop. Obviously governance and humans being considered as a part of that process. But I think that's ultimately, you know, where we're headed.
- [22:24]
A
Nice, nice. And last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [22:33]
B
Yeah, I think for me that boils down to two main things, which is curiosity and humility. I think I've heard a few other people that you've talked to mention curiosity as well. In terms of just being open to learning and trying new things, it's just a non starter. Things are moving too fast in the space to stand still. So you have to be open to new trends, new ways of going about operating and being open to trying them and learning through that. And then all these tools are enabling us to just get quickly knowledgeable in a multitude of different areas, which is great because that means that ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. So that's the humility side to me is that I've been in this space for so long and I know traditionally within an organization like ours there it's very structured in terms of, you know, this team owns E commerce, this team owns media, this team owns product. But those walls aren't feeling as like solid as they used to before because you can have insights into other worlds and they can be more informed now. So you have to be open to other folks having ideas that you may be able to run with. And so I think that's one as well is just like being able to learn from others. Being able to be open to ideas and solutions that come from teams that may not directly manage the worlds that you live in, but that access to information and solutions is becoming more broad. And so like opening that up across the organization is a big one that I try to follow and preach with my team as well.
- [23:56]
A
Yeah, love it. Well again I'd like to thank Tambi Yunus, Vice President of E Commerce at Newell, for joining the show. You can learn more about Tambi and Newell by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@techsystems.com that's teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode hit subscribe
- [24:27]
C
and drop a rating.
- [24:28]
A
So others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K-I H L S T R O M.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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B
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