WebProNews

Tag: Digitalization

  • Shopify: We Are Arming The Rebels

    Shopify: We Are Arming The Rebels

    “We are arming the rebels… the entrepreneurs, the small business owners, the independent brands, and the rebels are winning,” says Shopify President Harley Finkelstein. “It feels like the retail world that would have existed in 2030 was pulled back to 2020. We have seen this massive catalyst to an acceleration in digitalization in commerce and retail. We are writing the future of commerce and entrepreneurs are really the heroes of the Shopify story.”

    Shopify President Harley Finkelstein says the rebels―the entrepreneurs and the small business owners―are the heroes of the Shopify story… and the rebels are winning:

    We Are Arming The Rebels

    There’s a lot to be optimistic about even in the second half of 2021. It feels like the retail world that would have existed in 2030 was pulled back to 2020. We certainly have seen this massive catalyst to an acceleration in digitalization in commerce and retail. But actually, we are writing the future of commerce and entrepreneurs are really the heroes of the Shopify story. We are arming the rebels… the entrepreneurs, the small business owners, the independent brands, and the rebels are winning.

    Consumers have been voting with their wallets for the last ten months or so to buy from independent brands wherever possible. In 2020, 47 million consumers purchased from a Shopify merchant. That’s up 52 from 2019. Our merchant’s performance helped expand Shopify’s lead on an aggregated basis to be the second-largest e-commerce retailer in the U.S. Shopify is now about nine percent of all US ecom. If you think about it, Shopify is a proxy for independent retail and for direct-to-consumer retail.

    Shop Pay Launches Accelerated Checkout

    We only succeed when our merchants do. This has led to us having more than 1.7 million merchants on Shopify. This includes people from first-time entrepreneurs making their first sale every 28 seconds to the likes of O’Neill and Hallmark and Herman Miller and Purina. Diageo, who also just launched in Shopify and in Q4 alone revenue nearly doubled year over year to $978 million. There’s a lot to be optimistic about. Actually, the future of retail and commerce we think is going to look a lot more like these independent brands than these sort of department stores that existed in the past.

    Shop Pay is our accelerated checkout. We just announced it last week. We know that it not only helps merchants get more sales, it helps buyers convert better and much faster. Now we think that providing it to the Instagram and Facebook platforms means that our merchants can not only access new customers on those platforms, and frankly anywhere where customers are, but now can transact in a more efficient way. Shopify is becoming far more than an e-commerce provider.

    Future of Retail Is Wherever Consumers Are

    We are trying to build the world’s first retail operating system, which makes it as easy as possible and where the cost of failure is as low as possible, so more people can participate in entrepreneurship. We think the future retail is not online or offline or anywhere, in particular, it’s wherever consumers are. That’s what we’re trying to build. Seeing Shop Pay move into Facebook and Instagram is a really great way to demonstrate where the future of retail is happening.

    We are trying to get to a point where we completely democratize entrepreneurship. We use a 100-year perspective and we want to build a 100-year company. We’re about 15 years into our journey right now and we have 85 years left to go. In the long run, we’re happy where Shopify is but frankly, on the topic of more participation in the equity markets, we think that is also entrepreneurial and we think that’s also democratizing.

    Shopify CEO: We Are Arming The Rebels

  • Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs, Says Bill.com CEO

    Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs, Says Bill.com CEO

    “I believe SMBs deserve innovation,” says Bill.com CEO and founder Rene Lacarte. “That innovation that we focus on is around the digital processes that are lacking in the back office of SMBs. We’ve seen it in part with the pandemic showing that there’s a need for being digital and to be able to run your business from anywhere. It’s a requirement now. The pandemic reinvention is real and something that we think is going to stick around.”

    Rene Lacarte, CEO of Bill.com, says that the pandemic reinvention is real for small and medium-sized businesses and that they need to innovate and digitize the back office:

    SMBs Deserve Innovation

    At the core of why I started the company is that I believe SMBs deserve innovation. That innovation that we focus on that I really believe is missing out there is around the digital processes that are lacking. We digitize the back office. Then we connect that back office to the banking system so money can move, to the accounting system so records can be reported, and to the accounting firms that they’re involved with.

    All of that connection creates a connective tissue that operates and automates the financial operations. Because of that it’s driving demand, it’s driving opportunity, and it’s driving growth across our existing customers as well as the new customers coming in. That’s how we do it. That’s how we bring the back office into the back pocket.

    Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs

    Nobody gets into business to actually do the back office. I grew up in small businesses. My parents had small businesses. My grandparents had small businesses. A lot of our friends had small businesses. This was always the bane of existence. This is what people had to do on Friday night. Who wants to do this on a Friday night? That’s what people are doing when they’re trying to run their business from their back pocket when they don’t have the tools. They have to do it at night at home.

    We take care of that. We automate the processes. That’s what’s driving the demand, it’s the opportunity. We’ve seen it in part with the pandemic showing that there’s a need for being digital. This opportunity to be able to run your business from anywhere is a requirement now. The pandemic reinvention is real and something that we think is going to stick around.

    Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs, Says Bill.com CEO Rene Lacarte
  • Everything Can Be Digital At The End Of The Day, Says Wingstop CEO

    Everything Can Be Digital At The End Of The Day, Says Wingstop CEO

    “Everything can be digital at the end of the day,” says Wingstop CEO Charles Morrison. “We still take a lot of phone orders and a lot of people still walk. So every time somebody accesses us we want the opportunity to digitize that transaction. Why? Because the digital transaction tends to have almost a five-dollar higher average ticket and is more profitable for our franchisees which means a better return on investment and more new restaurants to grow on.”

    Charles Morrison, CEO of Wingstop, discusses how digitalization is powering their growth and profitability in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    Everything Can Be Digital At The End Of The Day

    We believe it’s a fantastic partnership with DoorDash. What they focus on is making merchants successful. As the merchant that’s exactly what we want. And they take care of the logistics. In our partnership, we’ve made sure that we are always working together to ensure that no matter how you access Wingstop, whether it be carryout or walk-in or through delivery, you’re going to get the same great experience. We believe they’re best positioned to provide that.

    Everything can be digital at the end of the day. We still take a lot of phone orders and a lot of people still walk. So every time somebody accesses us we want the opportunity to digitize that transaction. Why? Because the digital transaction tends to have almost a five-dollar higher average ticket and is more profitable for our franchisees which means a better return on investment and more new restaurants to grow on. I think people spend more time with the menu (on digital). They get to know the menu. They add a couple of items on to that and they’re not as intimidated by the phone call and the rush that they see at the front counter.

    Digital Technologies Create Efficiencies To Help Us Grow

    We’ve been a socially active brand as it relates to social media for many years. We’ve become large enough and have scaled to national advertising. Our franchisees generously added one percent to the advertising spend so they now spend four percent to a national fund. That has been redeployed into fantastic new media and new creative which is really helping drive that same point 7.1% comp that you saw in the first quarter.

    In our brand, we’re pretty well insulated (against labor shortages). We have a very small roster already, so in that small footprint, it doesn’t take a lot of people to operate a Wingstop. I don’t know that you’ll necessarily see us doing anything to remove the number of people in a restaurant. We do believe through digital technologies and further digitalization of our business that we can create efficiencies that create capacity that will help us to grow. This will take the pressure off the labor line.

    Everything Can Be Digital At The End Of The Day, Says Wingstop CEO Charles Morrison
  • Oil & Gas 4.0 – ADNOC Embracing Digitalization

    Oil & Gas 4.0 – ADNOC Embracing Digitalization

    The world of oil and gas in the Middle East, although very lucrative, still operates in a very traditional way. But that’s changing. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is the state-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates and holds the seventh-largest proven reserves of oil in the world at 97.8 billion barrels.

    ADNOC is embracing digitalization and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in a big way. They are calling it Oil & Gas 4.0.

    Abdul Nasser Al Mughairbi, Senior Vice President, Digital, ADNOC Group, tells the audience at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi that the oil and gas industry must embrace digitalization:

    We Have to Embrace Digitalization

    ADNOC is a national oil and gas company that has been in business for more than 45 years. We have been a solid and reliable provider of oil in the market, of energy, of refined products, and of petrochemicals. We are also a company that fueled the growth of the UAE. We are so proud of our company that we thought maybe we need to go to the next step. We are looking forward in how we are going to develop ADNOC to meet the challenges of the new and future demands.

    Global energy demand is growing and is fueled by a bigger middle class coming on the market with more consumers. To understand this and to become an oil company of the future we have to change. We have to embrace innovation. We have to embrace change. We have to embrace digitalization. We look at this as our way of fueling Future Industry 4.0, the future revolution. We call it Oil & Gas 4.0.

    Digitalization Starts With Big Data

    We see this as a methodology for us to be agile, to be flexible, and to impact and speed up the decision making process. In this day and age of information superhighways that are changing and social media everything gets impacted by everything. You hear people in the East impacted by people in the West. Where does an oil and gas company fit into this? Do we transform ourselves into just an energy company? Are we a product company?

    Regardless of where we go and regardless of our smart growth strategy and how we want to be a reliable supplier, digitalization fits right in the center of this. Where does our digitalization start? Our digitalization starts with our big data. Everybody says it’s culture. Yes, but the foundation is big data.

    The Foundation is Connectivity

    The foundation is connectivity. We have 14 operating companies that are all connected. In reality, we are operating in one geographical location. On the ground we are connected through pipelines throughout our facilities. We share facilities and products. We supply and give to each other and we do a lot of work together. Yet, our decision making process was not compliant. It was silo-based because we are 14 operating companies. Upstream and downstream.

    All of you know the difference in culture between upstream and downstream, between manufacturing and the cowboys of the upstream. They make so much money, and we need them definitely, but digitalization has always been a part of the downstream. Remember, we are the original IoT. We had sensors everywhere. We were operating the plants using sensors in a closed network. We were doing this for such a long time. Now, this has moved out.

    Real-Time Data Screen Like the Star Trek Enterprise

    What did we do in ADNOC? Based on our big data and our connectivity that was already there, a lot of subsurface activity in data, we collected all this in one location. We did this through a fiber optic network, through 4G wifi, and made this connection is a secure closed network. We brought all the data in real-time to ADNOC’s head office.

    We put this screen (below) on one floor as a panorama. It was an exciting journey to build that place. It’s a 50-meter screen and beautiful. The place looks like the Enterprise on Star Trek and it will help ADNOC to go where no other company has gone before!

    Real-Time 50-Meter Data Screen Like the Star Trek Enterprise

    Oil & Gas 4.0

    The way see it is data is there. We collaborate with people in the oil and gas industry but we are looking beyond that. The new technology of artificial intelligence, algorithm, and data analytics, are much more advanced in other industries such as social, marketing, sales, and everywhere else. Yet, we in oil and gas have always been very traditional. In the beginning of the 20th Century and beyond we were the innovators. We drilled where nobody could go. We led the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions. We were fueling it.

    Now how do we fuel the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Oil & Gas 4.0? We do this by harnessing our big data and by putting together connectivity. But what’s more important I think is changing our culture. The culture that we have currently is still a very traditional culture. Our decision-making process takes a very long time. A company of the future needs to take decisions very fast. They have to be accurate. They have to de-risk their investment and understand how to de-risk it.

    Oil & Gas Coping with Technology Moving at Warp Speed

    Things are moving at light speed, at warp speed. We really have to cope with this. To do this we need the information readily available for our management, for our leadership, for our engineers. At the same time, we need to allow these decision processes to go fluidly into the business process. That means we have to reduce costs. We have to look up how we optimize. It’s not oil and gas at any cost. It’s oil and gas at a cost. The cost is very important in the future because that’s sustainability.

    Digitalization will help reduce the environmental impact of our facility. At the initial stage, it’s measurement, monitoring, knowing what we are producing, knowing what we are wasting, and knowing how we impact our environment. How do we do it? We do it through measurement, through optimization, reducing our energy footprint, doing a lot more carbon capturing, and doing less with more. Digitalization helps with that.

    Easy oil is over. Now we have to go with very difficult to extract oil and gas which are very unsafe. Some of our oil reservoirs have 25 percent H2S. It’s a very poisonous gas that can kill. How do we reduce the impact on the environment and the impact on the people? We do this by going into remote operations, by doing a lot more with robotics, drones, all the new technology that is used everywhere else. We need to start adapting it.