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How WorkJam's CEO Is Transforming Retail Workforce Management · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to our pre NRF interview with Steve Kramer, CEO
• 0:06
  and founder of Work Jam Were sat actually lost out.
• 0:10
  We're stood in the very lovely location just round the corner
• 0:14
  from NRF Asia. Steve, I forgot before we go,
• 0:17
  are you actually expiring or are you here as a visitor?
• 0:19
  We are at Expo, we're speaking at the event, we have a booth at
• 0:21
  the event and we were really excited to be part of the first
• 0:25
  NRF in this region. Our fantastic.
• 0:27
  Well, listen, without Fergie, why don't we maybe start
• 0:31
  unpacking a little bit about who you are?
• 0:33
  How did you become a CEO, founder of Work Jam?
• 0:35
  Sure. And then we'll focus in on on
• 0:37
  Work Jam. OK, great.
• 0:38
  Well, I, I've been in the retail technology business for around
• 0:41
  25 years now. So we started our first company
• 0:44
  in 1999. It was an ecommerce software
• 0:48
  company called icongo based in Montreal, Canada.
• 0:51
  I'm, I'm from Montreal. Cool.
• 0:53
  And we grew that to become one of the global leaders both in
• 0:57
  retail ecommerce platforms as well as B2B commerce platforms.
• 1:02
  We learned that up merging in 2010 with our European
• 1:06
  competitor called Hybris. So icongo became Hybris.
• 1:09
  We went on to become the dominant player in the industry
• 1:14
  for enterprise commerce technology and ultimately landed
• 1:18
  up exiting test AP in 2013. OK, so I stayed on at SAP for
• 1:22
  two years, loved it. SAP is a phenomenal
• 1:25
  organisation. And, you know, after two years,
• 1:29
  I wanted to get back to something entrepreneurial.
• 1:32
  I missed being, you know, close to customers.
• 1:35
  I wasn't in that role anymore and building something.
• 1:38
  I couldn't do anything in ecommerce as a result of some
• 1:42
  non non competes that I had. So I started looking into what
• 1:45
  else was keeping executives up at night.
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  And as I spoke to a lot of retail executives, you know,
• 1:52
  people in the manufacturing distribution areas and so forth,
• 1:56
  I found that the workforce actually, this was like in 2014
• 2:00
  was a, was something that was causing a lot of anxiety.
• 2:04
  And you had millennials just starting to come into the
• 2:06
  workforce. Yeah.
• 2:07
  And people were were worried about that, how we gonna
• 2:10
  communicate with millennials. They're very different from, you
• 2:13
  know, from the traditional worker in the US You had
• 2:17
  President Obama that was starting to take notice around
• 2:21
  the social economic issues, around unfair scheduling
• 2:24
  practises for hourly workers. Yeah.
• 2:26
  So I noticed this. It was a it was an interesting
• 2:29
  time where there was a really a transformation that was needed
• 2:34
  around how organisations were communicating and managing with
• 2:38
  their frontline staff. Yeah.
• 2:40
  And, and as a result, we, we took the concepts of e-commerce
• 2:44
  and really applied it to workforce management to create a
• 2:47
  experiential platform, a transactional platform for
• 2:52
  frontline workers where a large organisation would be able to
• 2:56
  better manage their hourly staff, their non desk workers
• 3:00
  and and drive better results in their business.
• 3:02
  No. Well, fantastic.
• 3:03
  So you definitely have the entrepreneurial bug.
• 3:05
  You can't as as much as you try and work in the corporate world,
• 3:10
  it's durable, but not where where your heart is.
• 3:12
  So I mean, tell me something like what are the problems that
• 3:17
  when you're you must meet so many retailers and I'm sure you
• 3:19
  can meet a bunch of retailers here.
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  What's the thing that they come for you to solve?
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  They're, they're, they're solving business problems.
• 3:26
  They they're driving, they're trying to achieve operational
• 3:29
  efficiencies, they're trying to cut cost.
• 3:32
  That comes in the forms of either task management, where
• 3:35
  they have use cases around compliance in the field that
• 3:39
  they're trying to solve. They are predominantly right now
• 3:44
  also trying to communicate better with the field.
• 3:46
  That that was a factor that was like an impact effect of COVID.
• 3:49
  Yeah, right. Like when COVID happened, there
• 3:51
  were very few tools out there to be able to communicate with the
• 3:54
  frontline. On processes.
• 3:55
  And that's. Right.
• 3:57
  They didn't have a process to actually talk to the frontline
• 3:59
  area managers maybe. Yeah, they had E-mail Manager
• 4:02
  might. Put yeah, because they had
• 4:04
  e-mail addresses, right. But frontline employees, they
• 4:06
  don't have e-mail. They don't have the tools that
• 4:08
  we have his desk workers. So it's operational efficiency,
• 4:12
  it's communication, it's learning comes in those forms.
• 4:15
  Flexible scheduling is another area where they're coming to us
• 4:18
  around solving business issues. Ultimately, as we get into
• 4:24
  conversations with prospects, we start unfolding other issues
• 4:28
  that are happening in the organisation.
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  And you know, the frontline is a underserved market right now.
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  75% of companies have not invested in and their frontline
• 4:40
  work tech and, and, and when they have, they've landed up
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  with a a disparate group of applications that a frontline
• 4:50
  employee needs to use. So on average, we did a study a
• 4:54
  couple years ago with Forrester Research.
• 4:55
  On average, companies around the world have 4:00 to 5:00 apps
• 5:00
  that are frontline employee needs to use in order to do
• 5:02
  their job. Wow.
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  And we've seen it up to 8 or 9 in some cases.
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  And it's hard enough being a frontline employee.
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  Imagine having to use so many applications on the floor of a
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  plant or an addition, you know, a distribution centre and a
• 5:15
  retail environment to do your job.
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  So consolidation of apps simplicity is a is a very big
• 5:23
  focus that we are seeing as well in the industry, right.
• 5:26
  Now that's fantastic. I mean, as I said, how do you
• 5:29
  find, do you get in terms of your, do you get to spend time
• 5:32
  with the store associates or the store managers as part?
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  We do, yeah. We'd love to visit stores, we
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  love to hear about, you know, what is important to them.
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  The reality is, is that the hourly workers know so much
• 5:46
  about the business. They know about the problems,
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  they have ideas on how to solve them.
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  So being able to speak to the hourly associates and our
• 5:56
  prospects or our customers is a is important to us to start, you
• 6:00
  know, to continue to innovate in our product to build these
• 6:03
  operational tools, but also to help organisations figure out
• 6:08
  the digital transformation that needs to drive these
• 6:11
  efficiencies that they're looking.
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  For and do you think retailers in terms of the outcomes can
• 6:16
  sort of focus in on some of the like real world examples where
• 6:20
  something that surprised you that you know, when we, one of
• 6:22
  your customers, you, you you saw went in to do one thing and you
• 6:26
  you came out with something. Else, I mean, one of our
• 6:29
  customers, JCPenney and in the US, they're large big box
• 6:33
  retailer, discount retailers, around 70,000 employees.
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  The project that we've started with them was really around
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  flexible scheduling and being able to have an open shift
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  workplace where employees are, they get their core schedule,
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  but they can pick up an extra shift, they can work at a
• 6:50
  different location than than their primary location.
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  We coupled that with communication tools and that
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  those communication tools had a profound impact on the culture
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  of JCPenney. Yeah, but also the level of
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  engagement and loyalty to the organisation.
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  I think it was. I think the impact was much
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  wider actually than JCPenney ever anticipated as well.
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  So in addition to labour optimization through flexible
• 7:20
  scheduling, JCPenney actually had almost a 10% reduction in
• 7:25
  attrition. Wow, that's a big number.
• 7:28
  You know, like in retail, on average in in many markets that
• 7:32
  cost anywhere between 4:00 to $5000 to recruit and train a new
• 7:36
  employee. Yeah, if you can reduce your
• 7:39
  your turnover by that those types of numbers.
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  A significant amount. Millions of dollars that scale
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  the number of referrals that they began to have from
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  employees telling other other friends or colleagues that they
• 7:52
  should join JCPenney tripled. Ohh wow.
• 7:55
  And an environment where there's still a labour shortage.
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  It's very difficult to find skilled workers.
• 8:01
  That's very important. So we see a lot of these things
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  where they're solving one business issue.
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  But when you give the voice to the employee and they feel, you
• 8:11
  know, part of the culture. Yeah and they feel like they
• 8:13
  understand the head offices goals has a big impact on on the
• 8:18
  business and and on those employees lives.
• 8:21
  Yeah, absolutely couldn't agree. And I I think, you know, Target
• 8:24
  used to talk about the number of devices that their colleagues or
• 8:28
  team members Adam belts, yes, you know, they have the walkie
• 8:31
  talkies, they had the the handles.
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  So just to focus in a little bit on the tech you what what device
• 8:37
  you see on your agnostic? It's it could be bring bring
• 8:40
  your own device. So a lot of our customers.
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  Have Android enable. Yeah, yeah.
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  Android, Apple responsive on on web as well for both mobile and
• 8:49
  desktop use. We often sit on shared devices
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  in the stores as well. There we have a kiosk version of
• 8:56
  Work Jam as well that is kind of always on for our location.
• 9:01
  And so there's a lot of deployment optionality.
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  We're also able to sit inside of other collaboration tools.
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  So if you're using, you know, Teams as an example or your
• 9:13
  managers are in sales force, we can actually bring Work Jam to
• 9:17
  those users rather than bringing the users to Work Jam and having
• 9:21
  another app that they need to use.
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  And many of our customers tend to deploy in a hybrid model
• 9:26
  where corporate might be using Teams for their desk workers,
• 9:31
  which could go down to, let's say, manager level.
• 9:34
  Yeah, managers will use work Jam inside of Teams, but the field
• 9:38
  is using work Jam native. OK.
• 9:40
  Yeah, I think and I think that the the focus has to be for
• 9:43
  success on the experience. Yeah.
• 9:46
  Yeah, final two questions. In terms of obviously you, you
• 9:51
  hold the company. The company is 9 years.
• 9:53
  Old, so nine years old and you specifically just focus in on
• 9:57
  scheduling communication. I'm just curious, are you would
• 10:00
  you move into other areas like can't you do task management or
• 10:03
  we? Do yeah, we have 5 main pillars.
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  So the five main pillars are we have two way communication, head
• 10:10
  of communications. Here is that voice text.
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  That's everything from social network within the app to
• 10:19
  messaging, chat channels, OK digital doorways into other
• 10:24
  applications in the organisation.
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  We so so two way communication is pillar number one.
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  We do task management that goes well beyond just traditional
• 10:34
  task that goes into audit capability and and also being
• 10:39
  able to integrate with other applications for for task
• 10:43
  completion schedule management. So we tend to sit on top of core
• 10:47
  workforce management applications to expose
• 10:50
  self-service capabilities and open shift marketplace
• 10:54
  capabilities and then learning and lastly as earned wage
• 10:59
  access. So it is a modular system.
• 11:01
  Many of our customers will start their digital transformation
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  with let's say one or two modules.
• 11:07
  Yeah. And then they tend to grow into
• 11:08
  the rest of the application. This is quite comprehensive.
• 11:12
  The final question in terms of when you look to the future, not
• 11:16
  only where you want to be, but in terms of the future of the
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  store associate, how do you see that you have a a vision like
• 11:22
  what how how you see an empowered because I've saw see
• 11:25
  that's where you're about empowering the frontline.
• 11:27
  I'm just curious what how you see the future.
• 11:29
  Of well, I, I think that First off, I don't think AI is going
• 11:33
  to replace the frontline worker, but I believe that AI will have
• 11:37
  a profound impact on how organisations operate and how
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  the data that is being collected and the actionable insights that
• 11:47
  come out of AI can really elevate an organisation to the
• 11:51
  next level. Is for us as an organisation,
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  we're investing a lot in, in AI. We're constantly investing in
• 11:59
  the experience. I think the experience is what
• 12:02
  drives the type of adoption that we're seeing in our customers,
• 12:05
  which is typically around 80% daily active usage of the app.
• 12:09
  No, why? That's kind of like blowout
• 12:12
  numbers compared to an intranet, which is 20 and 25%.
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  And for us as an organisation, we're going global.
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  So we are a Canadian based organisation.
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  We have many customers, large customers in the US, in
• 12:25
  Australia, in the UK. Southeast Asia for us is a a new
• 12:30
  market that we're opening. We already have some large
• 12:32
  customers here. But you know, we feel as though
• 12:36
  the problems that we're solving, they're not regional.
• 12:39
  These are global issues. Yeah.
• 12:40
  In Singapore, where we are today, the retailers that we're
• 12:44
  speaking to have the same problems as the companies in New
• 12:46
  York and London, in Melbourne. It's a human.
• 12:50
  Problem. It's a human problem.
• 12:51
  Exactly. OK, so more humanistic there's I
• 12:54
  mean, we're going to go for a complete into but coming back
• 12:58
  from Shanghai and what what I learned there was it doesn't
• 13:01
  matter what technology can do, you're still gonna end up with
• 13:03
  human problems. Well, listen, it's been
• 13:05
  absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for allowing
• 13:08
  giving giving up some time before.
• 13:10
  That's great view here. Yeah, thank you.
• 13:13
  Hopefully I'll see you at the show.