WBSRocks: Scaling Growth with AI, Enterprise Software, and Digital Transformation

Send us Fan Mail Irrespective of whether you are integrating two hardware components or software products, the challenges are similar. You need to understand the current state of the integrated components, but the future state is equally important, especially if the future state may not be in your control. For example, if you aim to integrate an e-commerce platform with an ERP, the only piece you...

Send us Fan Mail Marketers tend to offer sitewide discounts to their entire audience without considering where visitors are in the buyer's journey. Sure, that might drum up more sales, but it can hurt your bottom line in the long run. They also use discounts to attract the top of a funnel audience. Sure that's effective in the retail world? But does that work in every single situation? S...

Send us Fan Mail When it comes to automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS), there are several choices available. You have regular ASRS systems that will require changes to your facility and processes as they are designed to be more of the conveyor belts. Mobile ASRS, on the other hand, don't have to travel in a fixed path. Instead, they can travel to a predetermined location or work cen...

Send us Fan Mail Strategic placement of complementary products and personalized recommendations can help increase revenue from each transaction and the lifetime value of each customer. But strategic placement is art and science and requires you to understand customer behavior at a deeper level. If you go overboard with your suggestions, the customers may bounce from your site. And if you underserv...

Send us Fan Mail As a procurement leader, if you are too focused on seeking discounts, sometimes you might lose sight that the cost of spend could be higher than the discount you might be seeking. Also, as the number of SKUs increases in your organization, the SG&A costs rise at an increasing rate than your top line because of increased marginal overhead with each SKU. The cost of spend is a k...

Send us Fan Mail Cybersecurity issues are becoming more and more common. As the adversaries and state-funded agencies get sophisticated in their capabilities, most businesses will need to rethink their cybersecurity strategy. It will be even more critical for regulated companies such as aerospace and defense and medical devices. Also, as we advance with our capabilities with industry4.0, OT securi...

Send us Fan Mail For e-commerce sites, the conversion rate is perhaps the most critical metric. Many sites focus on getting tons of traffic, but what is the point in having that traffic if they don't convert. When it comes to improving conversion rate, various factors drive the conversion rate, including page speed, expectations of your users, and flow or navigation. In today's episode,...

Send us Fan Mail The most critical factor in winning or losing a deal is always timing. And the faster you convert your customer, the faster you answer all of their questions, and the faster you ship it to them, you can outrun your competition. To do so, you need to think about the speed to your customers and suppliers. This speed requires cross-functional alignment and everyone operating on one s...

Send us Fan Mail Balancing your day job and executing a transformation project in parallel could be frustrating. Your team might look up to you to make the most crucial decisions when you might not fully understand the implications of those decisions. To avoid this uncomfortable situation, you might want to outsource your role as a sponsor to a third party. But this approach typically fires back a...

Send us Fan Mail As a plant manager or an executive responsible for the P&L of a manufacturing plant, you will need to make several decisions to improve your internal capacity. They could be adding more bodies, equipment or adding a new location. Unfortunately, if you don't have data to substantiate them, it may feel as if you are investing money in improving your capacity but not realizi...

Send us Fan Mail If you are a growing siloed organization, you will have puddles of data sitting inside every department. You could also have hundreds of unused reports on top of your ERP system that you might not even be aware of. If you want to avoid growing pains because of data, you need centralized ownership and strategy with clearly identified systems for their roles and responsibilities. In...

Send us Fan Mail Mastering SEO is no longer optional for ecommerce companies and manufacturers. If you are starting on your SEO journey, you will need to make decisions between SEO and PPC strategies. You will also need to understand the nuances of keyword strategies to identify the right targets that will help you meet your goals. Finally, you need to understand how to compare various channels su...

Send us Fan Mail If you are ready to expand your e-commerce footprint, you have several choices. For example, suppose you have been selling to the most popular channels, such as Amazon in North America. In that case, you might want to explore other channels such as Walmart, Alibaba, or Etsy. Or you might want to explore some of the international markets such as the UK, India, or Brazil. But the de...

Send us Fan Mail The journey of ISO could feel overwhelming with the amount of standardization and documentation required. But if your machine shop never served a regulated industry, it could be a great start as you expand your market to other sectors such as aerospace, defense, or automotive. You will not only be required to change your processes and procedures, but you need to game up on trainin...

Send us Fan Mail Due to how companies function in the startup phase and evolve, most of them operate in silos because it's hard to find cross-functional talent. In addition, the cross-functional processes are perceived to be slow. It's also tough to train people in multiple disciplines. As a result, most SMBs will have one person responsible for each function: sales, purchasing, AR, AP,...

Send us Fan Mail Managing digital projects have never been easier. While there have been tons of attempts to improve the process with Agile methodologies, the timeline, budget, and scope are still tough to manage. There are several explanations as to why digital projects are harder. For example, each digital project is fairly unique, even if it is repeatable ERP implementation. Then you have the p...

Send us Fan Mail E-commerce opportunity is highly lucrative. As an executive responsible for e-commerce success, you will come across several options and opportunities. But if you don't know how to plan for e-commerce, you might be out of cash without knowing what went wrong. For example, it could happen as you overcommitted in channels that didn't perform to your expectations. Or you st...

Send us Fan Mail If you are a small business operating as a single entity with one warehouse and site, most of your suppliers will have a handshake relationship. But as you grow, you are going to add more sites. Each site may have its procurement functions and may manage its supply chain. This is where having accurate supplier intelligence and a comprehensive risk profile of suppliers becomes impo...

Send us Fan Mail Every user in a company has different needs when it comes to completing their jobs. The warehouse users, in particular, are worried about how fast they can move the goods and organize accordingly. Therefore, to be effective with warehousing operations and organization, you need tons of data that can help you analyze the most efficient way of running them.  In today's episode,...

Send us Fan Mail Automation technologies are advancing at a rapid pace. There are tons of options available whether you are looking to automate some of the operations of your production process. Or you may be automating process steps such as trailer unloading that are essential but may not be billable. And the more repeatable tasks you can automate in your facility, the better quality products you...

Send us Fan Mail To understand the total cost of ownership of software, one of the critical pieces that you need to understand would be the software license and pricing. There are several nuances of the licensing model with several variables that could impact your total costs. The licensing and pricing nuances could be as simple as whether you are buying a single-user or multi-user license, or it...

Send us Fan Mail The game has completely changed when it comes to serving customers in the new world of e-commerce. The personal touch that existed in the traditional world may not exist in the e-commerce world. The customers also operate in self-serve mode, so they need a lot of information to research and make decisions. You might think that the role of salespeople may not be relevant in the new...

Send us Fan Mail How vital could bookkeeping be? Isn't it all about capturing all the transactions and creating a bunch of statements to file taxes? Well, strategic financial planning is where your real opportunities reside. If you are not strategic about it, you may be chasing wrong opportunities that may not have as much financial value as you would if you were strategic with your bookkeepi...

Send us Fan Mail Today's consumer requires most stores to provide the same experience that they will get from larger brands. These experiences could include click-and-collect, also known as buy-online-pick-up-at-store, integrated loyalty across channels, and omnichannel experience across all the channels. These experiences require you to have your inventory centralized and reconciled across c...

Send us Fan Mail Managing aerospace projects is just like solving puzzles. You have many moving pieces, including managing your customers' expectations, coordinating with your supply chain, and meeting the specification requirements. But when it comes to the NPD process, a project manager's job is even harder due to increased risk and the lack of available data to estimate accurately. Es...