Master B2B’s Brian Beck and VTEX’s Michael von Bodungen spoke with Rama Theekshidar, the Chief Digital Officer at US Electrical Services, Inc, about creating a world class digital experience at a traditional enterprise distributor.

In this new interview, Brian, Michael and Rama discuss:

• How a distributor’s offline strategy should impact its digital ambitions.
• Theekshidar’s philosophy that people create problems that people need to solve, and that people create products that people need to use.  And how those two facts drive technology decisions.
• The 3 questions you need to ask to determine your company’s digital maturity.
• How a digital team is like a basketball team.

TRANSCRIPT:

Brian Beck: Welcome to the Fireside Chat series with Master B2B. My name is Brian Beck. I’m the co-founder of Master B2B. In our Fireside Chat series, we talk about key issues for manufacturers and distributors with an industry practitioner and industry expert. Today’s session is brought to you in partnership with VTEX, a leading digital commerce platform. We’re going to be talking about glass breaking, creating a world class B2B digital experience at a traditional distributor. Let’s dive in. My co-host in our fireside chat is Michael. Now, let me see if I get this right, Michael. Michael Von Bodungen. Is that correct? Did I say it right? Yeah. von Bodungen. von Bodungen, that’s it. Thank you very much. He is the general manager North America for VTEX. And Michael comes from a 30 year career, leading digital across all different kinds of organizations. Michael, you were the VP of LiveArea, you were at PFSweb, you were the CEO of CrossView. My gosh, you’re an encyclopedia of knowledge and experience. Welcome to the fireside chat session today.

Michael von Bodungen: Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate it. We’re really looking forward to the topic today and very glad to have Rama here. And for those of you that aren’t familiar with VTEX, as Brian said, we are a leading digital commerce platform. One of the things that makes us unique is we are a multi-tenant platform that supports B2B order management and marketplace and single solution. So thanks again, appreciate it, Brian.

Brian:  Well, I’m excited to have your co-hosting and co-piloting with me today. So our topic today is the glass breaker, creating a world-class digital experience at a traditional enterprise distributor. And we have, Michael, a glass breaker here with us. Now this is Rama. Rama. I’m going to try to do your name right here. Theekshidar. Theekshidar. Did I say that right? All right. Rama is the Chief Digital Officer at U.S. Electrical Services, Inc. USESI, which is a leading distributor in the electrical product space. And Rama has a fantastic history of doing the same sort of digital transformation at companies like Rexall, where you were for over a decade. Tell us a little more about your background and welcome to the program today. 

Rama Theekshidar: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, Brian and Michael. Looking forward to this session. I come from U.S. Electrical Services, where I’m the Chief Digital Officer, so I’m responsible for the digital technology teams. ERP, data and AI. Prior to this, I was working for Rexall, another electrical distributor for over a decade, started in their headquarters in Paris, France, did digital transformation across Europe and North America. I’m very excited about being part of USESI. We are innovators, we don’t like status quo, we like to challenge the established order, we like to be creative and innovative. So I really love my job. I’m very happy to be here. 

Brian: A glass breaker – we’ll have to get into more of what that means as we go. But tell us, our theme today, Rama, is we’re talking about traditional distribution. And Andy Hoar and I, at Master B2B, in our community, in our Thought Leadership series, we hear a lot about traditional companies looking to evolve their business and to mature their business. Tell us about USCSI. It is a traditional distributor and electrical. Go a little deeper there and tell us about your role and what you’ve been charged with at the company. 

Rama: Absolutely. So, US Electrical Services is a private electrical distributor. I won’t deep dive into the numbers, but we have over 150 locations, 2,000 plus employees, 12 different regional businesses. Just like a lot of distributors, we grew out of acquisitions, so M&A activity. The key thing is, at the end of the day, a distributor has to partner with your manufacturers. So think of big players like Eaton. So you procured electrical material from them, whether it is wiring, conduit fittings, whatever you’re thinking of from an electrical product category standpoint, and then getting it across to our customers in the residential, commercial, and industrial markets. It sounds very simple, but getting it to the door of the customer and to their job site is the toughest job because there’s a lot that goes into making a distributor’s job easier so we can service our customers better. It’s very complicated because you’re thinking about complex pricing, you’re thinking about complex customer service issues and constraints, you’re thinking about working with your manufacturers who are having their own supply chain issues and stuff. Then you’re working with inventory management, which is not always as simple as it seems, we’re not selling basketball shoes here. It’s much tougher than that. Let’s put it that way. I’m a fan of basketball, so I always draw the comparison. So when we are B2B, it’s not B2C, it’s not something selling fancy stuff, it’s selling something that is so important for building things, right? Whether it is construction, it has a huge impact, huge impact to the economy. So if you think about just distribution in general, you’re thinking of trillions of dollars, right? It’s a large market and there is no such thing as somebody just mastered it better than anybody else, right? As much as we are traditional, the key thing that I will tell you is I’m very happy to be part of the leadership and management team where they’re not traditional in our mindset and approach. We are traditional as an electrical distributor. We are traditional in the sense of customer service, so taking care of a customer is as traditional as it can get. That’s it. The traditional aspect of it ends right there. But how do we provide that customer service better than any other competitor or other distributor? There is a science to it, and we are as innovative as we can get in that space.

Brian: Rama, you have a C in your title, which is a fantastic indication of how elevated the role has become in digital. Tell us a little bit deeper about your role and your remit at the organization. 

Rama: Absolutely. In general, when I think about just that, I appreciate your comment there. I don’t go by the title or the C in front of it. I think as long as it’s all about the mindset – whether you’re a salesperson, a branch manager, you’re an IT analyst, you’re an eCommerce analyst, you’re a data analyst, or an AI programmer, as long as we understand what we are trying to do to provide value to whom, and we can be transformative about it. So we don’t go about it in the same fashion we’ve been doing over a decade, you know, and we are able to absorb like a sponge and be creative about it, and we’re always steps ahead of whether it is our competition or our customers. That’s all that matters. At that point, see you next time. and everything else is irrelevant. What matters is, are you thinking transformation? Do you want to make an impact? Do you want to influence in a positive way? So that’s just my take on just the title aspect of it and roles and responsibilities. But just speaking about myself when I came in, I don’t think digital is all about just eCommerce or website, there is more about digital transformation, digital transformation or eCommerce. The Digital officer role is more a strategic role. So how you can understand all aspects of the business end to end. If you’re looking at a distributor and you want to set up a branch, I need to understand how a branch is set up, not just about the digital and technology aspect of it, correct? So it’s understanding the whole aspect of end-to-end, how do we set up a branch all the way to, how do you procure material to a branch, all the way to what customers do we target? Why do we target them? Understanding the offline aspect of it is more important than understanding the digital aspect of it. Once you have mastered the offline aspect of the business, then digital and technology is just the easy part. So I have the easy job. I think it’s the regional leaders, the business commercial leaders who have a tougher job than I do. So I just make sure that I share the pain with them and make it easier for them to do their job. job. So that’s how I see my job. 

Michael: Rama, I have a question for you based on what you just said. What was the state of the business when you came into it from a digital journey perspective? Because you talked about mastering the offline process, but I’m curious in that view and analysis, did you actually get into the idea of – we can actually change some business processes as well?  Give us an idea about what the state of the business was like. 

Rama: Great question. Before I answer the question, you need to understand how I think. That’s what is important more than the question and the answer itself. So you can understand, I believe in the concept of concrete reasoning, correct? When it comes to concrete reasoning, I try not to come to a conclusion first, then convince myself I came to the right conclusion. So I like to think about all the data points and examples and premise I’m thinking of and collect all the data from all the data points. sources, and then go through a process of analytical data -minded approach to it, so then the conclusion can be, with a higher confidence level, the right conclusion, correct? And when you think about technology and everything, we are – at the end of the day – dealing with people. So I’ll answer your question in a second, but more than technology, digital and everything, it’s people creating problems that people need to solve. People create problems that people need to solve. People create products that people need to use. It’s that simple. So when I came in here, I wanted to make sure I did not have any pre-conceived notions. So whatever I had learned previously from my prior experiences is great. We all need to learn from our past, but we always need to start tomorrow or today as a new day where we can start from scratch, right? Keep in mind, past and experience is good, but intuition is so important, right? The one way for the management team or leaders to build intuition is being very open, being open-minded. Don’t come to a conclusion before you get started. So why did I explain this? So when I came and I made sure that I did not say like we need an eCommerce site, we need PIM, this or that. I didn’t make any decision when I came in. When I came in, the first month was just asking questions, whether it is for the CEO, the CFO, the VP of operations, pricing, inventory. inventory, the branch leaders and all of that. And it helped me understand what I was thinking was the maturity level. Then within the maturity level when it comes to digital strategy and transformation, I like to break it down into three buckets. One is everything to do with digital. When it comes to digital is understanding both the customer experience and the employee experience. Second, and I’m not saying second in that order, it’s equally important, is how mature are we when it comes to data, analytics, AI, all aspects of it. Third is how innovative can we be? So when I had to understand the maturity level, it’s three things that I had to understand. Digital maturity, data and analytics maturity, and then the innovation maturity. And in order to come to the conclusion as to what the maturity was with the organization, I didn’t say we were eight out of ten or ten out of ten. We have 2,000 + employees. I didn’t come to the conclusion that all of them hate this or love that. What I did was very simple. I started with a survey, which had three different buckets. And I went with: What do you think about our current eCommerce capabilities? Do we have the best way to sell an item to our customers? What do you think about the tools that we provide for our customers? And from a  digital and technology standpoint do you have what you need to do your job, whether you’re in a branch or you’re a functional team, whether you’re in the finance team or the HR team? So that is kind of like a high level on how I went about the survey. The minute it came to data, the same thing. How easy is it for you to get the data that you need, whether you’re thinking of employee data, whether you’re thinking about job location, all the information that you need to do your job, whether it’s employee experience or customer experience, right? But then when it comes to a product item, understanding the pricing and inventory aspect of it, then came innovation, right? You don’t want to innovate if you have a foundation that is leaking. I always say that if you’re a plumber, the pipe is broken and it is leaking. Fix the pipe. Don’t color the pipe and make it look great, correct? So for me, this aspect of it was understanding the foundation. Before I could start doing innovative stuff so I can say “look how creative we are.” So that’s how we approached it. So when I did the survey, I got answers from the organization as to where they thought we are with our journey, not what I thought. So once I understood that from the lens of the people who matter, the stakeholders and the end users, then I map it out to the notes that I have around what do I think about where we are with respect to the maturity level. 

Brian: That’s really interesting, Rama. I love what you talked about regarding not making any assumptions because it’s human behavior to do that particularly coming out of a digitally advanced company like Rexall where you broke the glass and you had good success. Step us back to when you were first exploring the opportunity with USCSI, how did you know the company was ready really to make the kinds of decisions or do a self-evaluation? What you’re talking about really is a reflection, looking back at the company and understanding where are we truly, internally? How do you know the company is ready for all this introspection and then subsequent investments and advancing the company digitally? 

Rama: The number one thing that I understood in talking to the C level executives going through the process, the journey of joining a company was very simple – the culture. We have what we truly believe is the best culture and not only do we have it, we actually have the best way to measure it in terms of what’s the best culture we need to build and there is a quantitative aspect of it. We have a lot of, of surveys on a half yearly and a yearly basis that we do to understand, not just the digital and the technology team, the functional teams, including the sales teams and the branch managers. We have what we call a culture value assessment survey that is done by everyone in the organization to make sure we have the right qualities, right ethics, values and principles. That’s where we start. So once I understood that, everything  else is the easy part. When it comes to the maturity, you’re going to understand – do they have an eCommerce platform, a PIM, a CRM? Those are the easy parts. Once I understood that the foundation and the culture, then you can build upon the culture, correct? So that was the number one thing which helped me understand – okay, this organization is ready for transformation. For example, I know that VTEX can. do their job, otherwise I’m not going to pick VTEX, right? It’s not how great VTEX is, it is how great we can partner with VTEX to bring about change, that’s what matters, correct? In order to bring about change, you need to have the principles of culture, transformation. The mindset is what is important, and it starts with the C level, correct? Whether it’s the CEO, the CFO, we had great alignment, even before I joined as to how they think about the vision for the organization, where do we want to be, and we spend like quality time to discussing debating. And not a lot of these conversations were just like okay I like your qualities and competencies and here you go. That’s not the discussions we had. It was more challenging having a very healthy debate as to how do we need to move the needle.

Michael: So, Rama, one more question in that area. Obviously, you come with a background that’s done this kind of digital transformation before. When you come into an organization, do you look for certain other people or roles that are part of the team that you feel like need to be there to be successful? I’m curious just for other people that might be listening to this talk and are thinking about doing a similar role, what do you feel like? What is really important to have from a team perspective, skill set perspective, to be able to be successful in this kind of transformation that you’re responsible for? 

Rama: I love basketball, I’m not a basketball player, but it’s just like in basketball, you can’t have a center try to shoot three pointers all the time unless you’re thinking of someone like Jokic who can do things like that, but everyone has a role to play, correct? correct? Whether you’re a center or a point guard, a shooting guard. Building teams, digital teams or any company, it’s not different than sports, especially if you like sports. Again, the soccer analogy is you need to have the midfield, you need to have the defense, you need to have the shooter, right? It’s so important that we understand when it comes to – when I said three buckets, within digital, we need to have the right people with the right skillset around who can understand customer, customer experience, employee experience, then a level of business analysis, who can understand business processes. Everything we try to build is around a business process. So somebody who has the process mindset, somebody who can empathize with the customer, somebody who can understand persona-based skills, capabilities, and all of that. And again, understanding not everyone – everyone is smart, correct? At the same time there are people who can be a visionary, there are people who can be strategic, there are people who are more focused on the tactical execution side of things. If you have some strengths around tactical execution, you need both strategic and tactical, you always need a blend. I don’t like to build a team where everyone looks the same or thinks the same way. Then we’d fail. So the way I have my leaders – let’s say for example, my data leader, he’s been in the company and the industry more than me. He knows about the industry and the company better than I do. My digital transformation leader, he has been in the industry more than me and he knows about processes better than I do. When it comes to my innovation and digital team, they are far more technical than I am. So I have a team where they’re all better than me in different aspects. That makes my job as a leader better. I like to not be the smartest guy in the room. I like to have a team where they are what we call centers of excellence and the leaders who have the center of excellence are the best. So then my job is more like a coach. I don’t need to go play the game. If I played the game every single time, it’s not good. But I can be the coach for the basketball team. Now again, I started my career being the basketball player before I became the coach. So that’s a little bit of the analogy right there. 

Brian: Rama, a question for you on this topic, related to what Michael was asking you about. You were describing the kinds of players you need on your team, meaning in your digital organization. When you think about digital experience, you need on your team the kind of players you need on your team, how important is that, and how do you sell that the digital experience and easing friction and other things are important to those folks? Tell us a little bit more about that. How did you align those parts of the organization? 

Rama: That’s a great question. I think there is the traditional way to look at it and there is the not -so -traditional way to look at it. If you think about the traditional way to look at it, most organizations, whether it is the functional teams like HR, operations, sales, marketing, finance, how they think about digital and technology teams. In the past, there used to be an IT team where somebody would submit a request, came to the IT team, they took care of something and then they didn’t like it and they blame the IT team. That’s not the world we live in. Digital transformation and strategy is actually the core of how a business should be run nowadays. It’s not an afterthought or a fact that somebody thinks about when they have a problem. So that helps because when we have a digital team – if you think about how I have centers of excellence within the team, everybody knows the business. Their strength and skill set is not everybody understands technology. That’s the second part I look at. So what happens is when somebody can understand, so if we are working with our VP of supply chain pricing or operations and inventory, we can at the same time understand what problems they are trying to solve. And the fact that we have solved that in the past by picking the right solutions, thinking about the value we need to provide. If you’re thinking about pricing, understanding whether it’s a customer class or price class and stuff around it, whether it’s inventory and procurement, understanding the safety stock, all aspects of procurement, replenishment that we need to understand. If you’re trying to do a cycle count, understanding the whole aspect of it, correct? Then what happens is they don’t see us as someone who are just order takers. They see us as problem solvers and strategic thought leaders who should be helping them move the journey along with them, correct, and move the needle. And what happens is when they see us as someone who can get there, help them with their objectives, KPIs and metrics faster than they can themselves, then they know we are going to be winners together. It’s called what I call a symbiotic relationship, correct. I did a different podcast and I said  we’ve got to operate like a transformer. The operating principle of a transformer is mutual induction. That’s how we kind of generate between the primary coil and the secondary coil, the power. So think of the functional teams, the sales, the branch teams as the primary coil or the secondary coil, then you see the digital teams as the other one. Mutual induction happens, then the transformer can do its job. That’s just how we think about it. It’s like a hybrid approach to problem solving, thought process and everything. So we are not seen as just the IT team or systems and everything. All of those aspects are also important, but it’s more being strategic about it, understanding the problem, understanding the customer, understanding a buyer, a procurement person. It’s not understanding the technology. That’s the easy part. That’s why we have technology providers like VTEX who can make things easier for us so we don’t have to break our head over it. 

Brian: Right, so it’s less about breaking glass and more about sort of collaborating, right? It’s what you’re saying. So breaking glass is important, I think, to some degree, because you have to bring new concepts, but at the same token, it sounds like a lot more about the collaboration side of things. 

Michael: When you think about change management, in terms of how much time you spend on it compared to the technology side of it, or what you think the customer experience is going to be, what would you say is the right percentage that you devote to something like this? Because we know it’s great if you build something, but if nobody uses it, or nobody thought it met the expectation, it goes nowhere. So curious from your perspective on that part. 

Rama: I will not give you a percentage, because it has to be a hundred percent, and that sounds impossible if you’re a digital and technology leader, but I say that because we live and breathe what we do, not just in the digital and the technology world. By the way, I don’t call meetings that we have meetings. It’s a brainstorming session or problem-solving session or war room. What happens is, part of our day has to be spent in building technology solutions.  Part of the same day has to be spent in working with the CFO and his team or working with the VP of supply chain and his team whether it is the branch managers and their teams. So in instead of giving the percentage I wouldn’t say like it’s a 30% or 50% It’s it’s a daily job for the digital team to be collaborating on a regular fashion, frequent fashion, right? Now you can ask the question like how is that possible because they’re all going to be busy doing their job. But it is possible because if you have 2,000 plus employees, you don’t need to go to the same person every single time. You can go to different branch managers to understand their pain points and then make sure when you solve the problem you can go back and understand if you were able to solve it. So it’s engaging with them on a daily, frequent basis is very important. And when it comes to transformation, the  transformation journey happens when everybody understands why something is urgent. It’s almost like going to an ER or an urgent care is not different. It’s completely different than if you went to a doctor. If you have an urgent crisis situation, you go to an ER, correct? If the organization together understands we have an ER situation then everyone will act on it. So as digital and technology leaders, we shouldn’t be acting like firefighters for every topic.  But it’s understanding what’s happening if you are losing business. If we get a sense of urgency people are going to listen, right? It’s understanding when do we approach them. How frequently and with what intensity and passion. People are going to act on it together as a team. But if you’re just going to go on something that is not going to move the needle or not going to get your margins up. Or it’s not going to help you with your inventory – that’s where nobody’s going to listen and nobody’s going to care. 

Brian: How do you measure success or create the urgency and then know you’re making progress against some of those goals that you’ve set? Could you speak to that a little bit? What kind of metrics do you use? 

Rama:  Before we define any metrics, I always like to state where we are today.  If you think about how many customers we have, how many customers, how much are they doing, what are they doing month by month. It’s understanding where are we today – is it a six million dollar branch or a ten million dollar branch? What does their margin look like? What kind of inventory do they have? If they’re not making money are they not able to make money why they’re not making money. Is it because they have too much spending with respect to cost and expenses that is operational in nature? Is it because they are spending more time with how they are moving items and transferring stock between a DC and a branch? Des it mean they are having the right stock in their location to meet the demands of their customer who is going to their counter? So defining today is more important before we get to the future. Now, how do we define the KPIs? Again, what is important is who are we defining the KPIs for? I mean thinking about the customer, I mean thinking about revenue, I mean thinking about margin. So it’s defining all aspects of it, then deciding for example, I think in today’s world, especially with the digital native players, you think about the Amazon’s of the world, it’s easier for us to understand that if somebody is doing business with us online from an eCommerce or digital standpoint, it’s less customer service and time than you need to spend with them compared to if you have to manage them every single time at a counter at a branch offline. So math will tell you, using AI models and everything, you may be able to do X percentage, for example, a 10 percentage increase in customer share of wallet by transacting online or digital. So it’s kind of defining the KPIs and metrics by showing and comparing, how did they do prior to engaging with the digital channels? How are they doing after the fact they engage with the digital channels? And then showing progress, compared to where they were day one, day 30, 60, 90. So it’s, but it’s important that we have the data for day one. If you don’t have the data for day one, you can’t measure anything. 

Brian: It’s so interesting to talk to you too, because you’re talking about technology investments following the goals. But technology is also important. You ended up on the VTEX platform now, and in Europe, you have a long accomplished career, Rama. You’ve done this before, you’ve digitally advanced companies significantly, and as a glass breaker, someone who’s making change and bringing these new concepts and new business models into traditional companies. How did you end up on VTEX? Is it the choice of the glass breaker? 

Rama: Yes, 100% there’s no doubt about it. So when it comes to VTEX, I will answer it in two parts. It’s super easy for me to answer this question. One is for me, if you think about it, the emphasis is always about the mindset. Everybody has to have a transformation mindset. They have to think outside the box, be creative, innovative, then comes everything else. VTEX, if you think about Michael here, you think about Mariano, you think about Santi, the whole leadership team I can go on, right? Geraldo, they’re all visionaries. They want to make an impact in what they are building. They’re not building for today, they’re building for tomorrow, the future. Number one, for me, if I want to have a vision, I want to make sure the product or the technology I’m going to buy is as visionary or more visionary than I can be. That’s number one. So when I can look at leaders who are being visionaries and building for the future, that’s the number one important thing. Another part is pace is everything. I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t like to play catch up, right? So it’s a very fast moving– even though we are a traditional distributor, customers are not going to wait. If you have a customer who is showing up at your counter and they are the 12th person in that line and they want some material andit you’re going to close and it’s 5 pm or something. You want to take care of the customer so pace is everything because then they’re going to go to competition. So when I look at VTEX, it’s the questions are very simple. Are they going to help me move fast? Are they going to provide me quality? Are they going to provide me where they’re not going to break the bank, right? They can be a glass breake. I don’t want it to be the most expensive solution. Correct. So the other thing is, are they going to partner with me, right? And true partnership is what is more important than, yes, technology is important. I’ll come to the technology part in a little bit. But true partnership is when Michael can empathize with where I want to be, not today, five years from now, seven years from now, and they are open to providing capabilities that are kind of like end -to -end. It’s not just an eCommerce site. So, Michael was talking about B2B, order management system, marketplace, and you take VTEX, they have the I/O platform as well, the MACH-based architecture, microservices, you know, composable architecture, API-based, cloud native, headless commerce, separate the front-end and the back-end. What happens is that makes my job easier, then it provides the modularity that provides me the hybrid way  to approach the business. I can have business teams or business analysts work with my team to build stuff for the future on a VTEX platform. And how VTEX integrates with whether it is a PIM or a CRM, it makes the whole job easier. So that is a technology aspect of that as well. So I think it’s more moving fast, quality, cost, being a true partner and being part of the same journey. right? When we are working with the VTEX team, the digital team and the VTEX team is one team. It’s not two different teams, right? So that makes it where we are collaborating as the same team towards the same end goal and vision.

Michael: One of the things that he does very well with us is, he shows us his vision and where he wants to go in the roadmap, not just immediately for the first project, but where he’s trying to get to three and four years down the road. And I think that’s one of the things that’s very helpful for us because we like customers that think the same way we do. And to his point earlier, I think we also have to listen and take our product where our customers want to go in addition to the innovation and the thing that we do. But Rama has been very transparent with us in that space. And I think the follow on I had for Rama was – we are a pragmatic, composable platform, meaning that we do have a full stack, but we’re also capable of plugging in different components. And maybe Rama, you can talk a little bit about just some of the areas where you feel like that came into play in your decision. And why VTEX was a fit in that area.

Rama: So I think for me, when I look at VTEX, it’s not an e-commerce solution, it’s a true digital end-to-end platform, correct? On top of it, the fact that VTEX allows me to kind of plug and play. So the fact that I can completely differentiate between the back end and the front end, it helps me. The other part is VTEX, if you think about their pick and pack solution, it’s easy to configure, correct? And easy to configure, I can create value faster through the VTEX platform. So I don’t have to end up getting a full WMS solution if it solves for my needs for today. At the same time, if I have to be open to changing to a different solution, if I need to, VTEX provides that option with their composable architecture to plug and play and move things faster. So I think the platform and the architecture is such that you don’t have to worry today about the decisions you’re making. It is important, but at the same time, it is so flexible. It’s like Michael said, it’s pragmatic. It provides the modularity. It provides integration. So VTEX I/O platform allows integration. So not a lot of digital commerce platforms allow this – they have an integration layer through APIs that makes it easier to connect between different systems and applications. So even if you’re having an old fashioned traditional ERP system, VTEX allows us to kind of like, whether it is caching, synchronization, make things faster from a performance standpoint with their integration layer. So I think it’s the MACH architecture that VTEX has that comes to our kind of a rescue from a performance stability modularity standpoint. 

Brian: I have a follow on question there, Rama. One of the common concerns companies might have about a composable approach is that it requires a significant team. You talked a lot about flexibility, you also talked about moving quickly. One of the common concerns companies have that Andy and I hear often in our Master B2B series is, “Hey, do I need an entire team of developers to do a lot of the things, to really bring the value to life of the composability, of the flexibility it offers you know in a VTEX platform and the MACH architecture.” Any thoughts on that? Is that just a fear that’s overblown? 

Rama: No, no, no, it’s not a fear that is overblown at all. I won’t talk about the competitors that I considered before I picked VTEX, but the ones that I considered were all part of MACH-based architecture alliance, which is important to me, being cloud-native, headless commerce, API-driven and everything. But the key thing to keep in mind is to your point, there could be platforms that are so API-driven that when we went through this whole journey in evaluation, if the platform provider is always talking about – when we are asking about a problem and the solution is, well, we have an API for it, that’s the wrong platform. That doesn’t mean even if if they are part of a MACH-based architecture solution, if their answer to a customer’s experience or feature functionality for B2B especially –  I’m not talking B2C right – if they don’t have a set of functionalities we can use out of the box from a B2B standpoint – think of like an online quotation feature or something like that – what happens is then I’m going to have to your point a large development team to build APIs and do all of those customizations at my end. What VTEX provides is, yes, they have an integration platform, they are part of the MACH-based architecture, they have the APIs and everything. But what VTEX provides is a set of functionalities and features for B2B out of the box, upon which you can build for the future if you need to enhance and customize. So it’s not like I need to start from scratch. That’s when you need a crazy big development team with everyone who are API experts and everything and it can get expensive. And your total cost of ownership with those platforms is going to be significantly higher. VTEX solves that problem for me by providing what I need for today, then I can build upon it for the future. 

Brian: Interesting. So the head is not dead. It’s only partially dead, right? Headless commerce, right? That’s interesting. So it’s kind of a best of both worlds. That’s awesome. We talked a lot about what you’re doing. How do you determine and prioritize what’s next? 

Rama: That’s a great question. For me, there’s one problem I have with Agile product management as to how we have all interpreted it. I think full credit to Agile and product management methodology and everyone talks about voice of the customer and everything. But I think we took it to a very strong level that we’re always waiting for the customer to tell us what we need to be doing. So what has happened is you have a lot of the product teams, whether it is the distributor product teams or product teams that we are working with technology partners where we go have a chat with the customer and we are hoping that the customer will tell us exactly what we need to build for them. I think that’s the wrong approach, right? I’m not a big fan of that approach. So yes, we need to have a voice of a customer. Yes, we need to have iterative ways to build products and features. I think the next generation of products, when we are looking at what we need to build next or what we need to provide next, has to come from us, understanding and empathizing with the customer where it’s not for the customer to tell us what we need to build. If you take all the great products, nobody asked for it – whether it is an Apple or Amazon or you can go on, nobody asked for it, right? But they came up with a product understanding the customer behavior by being 10 steps ahead of the customer and not ask them what we need to be doing for them. It’s understanding what are they trying to do, but based on it, provide a service based on three things, right? Whether you’re finding there is a gap in the marketplace that we can do better than other competition or observing trends, whether it is using AI or sustainability, there are different trends that are happening. Understanding what are the trends that are going on around AI, automation. Then the other part is how do we understand what is the problem that we need to be solving for them. And again, sometimes we underestimate change and transformation. I 100 percent agree that change and transformation is painful. It is not an easy job. But sometimes we tend to underestimate the fact that human beings, if you think about it, we’ve gone through evolution. We keep changing. We are not the same as we were a decade back. All of us included. Nowadays, you have all these apps, whether it is an Uber Eats or you’re not requesting for a taxi anymore like you used to. You have an Uber for it. You’re requesting food in a different way. You know where your personal shoppers is trying to get groceries for you and you know exactly when they’re going to come to your neighborhood, open the gate and it’s at your front door. That’s the world we live in. Correct? Is it all a change for us? 100 % Is it all convenience for us? 100 percent. Are people paying for it? 100 percent. So we underestimate the fact that human beings can actually take change more than we think, and the fact that we have messaging apps and everything. Now I’m not saying you know I’m for it or against it. Human beings will evolve because of trust but how do we walk them through the journey of change and transformation? It’s on us, not the customer. 

Michael: One final question, thinking about the prioritization of things. I think B2B is often about efficiency, right? You have people that know they need something. They want to get it quickly at the end of the day. Distribution obviously too is price competitive, right? You’re selling other people’s products as well. So I’m just curious, in the levers you look at when you’re thinking about what we’re going to do. for our end customer, are there times where you say, you know what, this will make their job easier, but it also doesn’t have to be that we’re the cheapest solution or the cheapest price in the marketplace. They’ll come to us because we have a better solution that makes their job easier at the end of the day. Could you could you just speak to that maybe briefly in terms of when you’re prioritizing capabilities? 

Rama: If you think about our customers, whether it is, and I’m just naming someone like ABC Electric. Someone who’s had a job site trying to take care of a Walgreens pharmacy construction and they’re an electrical contractor working there they want their material when they need it so they can take care of their job. At that point they’re not looking at “am I going to save like three dollars on this?” That’s not their question. It’s that getting their job done is more important. Everyone will pay if you provide the best customer service because everyone loves productivity, everybody loves to be efficient, everybody loves to be faster, everybody wants to spend more time with their family or home and elsewhere. So how do we get them to spend less time on their job site and more time elsewhere? We don’t need to be the cheapest. I don’t look at it as we’ve got to be cheap or we’ve got to provide a cheap solution. Like I said, when I picked VTEX, VTEX is not cheap, but you provide quality as well. So you’ve got to take all aspects of the solution that you’re looking at, not just the cost aspect of it. So every customer is thinking the same way.