DCKAP eSessions with Moody Price L.L.C.
June 9, 2020
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM EST
Magento 2 Migration & P21 Integration For Business Transformation
Tim Diep:
- Magento 2 Migration & P21 Integration (00:00-01:01)
My name is Tim Diep, and I am the customer success manager for DCKAP. I have been with the company for eight years now and just doing a lot of coordinating events for the ecosystem. I work towards bringing a lot of the technology partners and merchants and distributors together, just so we could really iron out all the details of what it takes to be really successful for eCommerce.
So usually we have big events called the DCKAP summit. That’s when we bring the whole community together. But in regards to this one, this one is specifically called the e-session. So it’s more of a case study or a walkthrough today. You’re going to be hearing from Kendall and Alec in regards to what it said for them to migrate over to the Magento two website and also integrating P21 Epicor- the ace ERP system.
- Introducing the session and thanking our sponsors (01:02-02:09)
*Introducing the features of the eSession with the relevant hashtags*
I’d love to thank all the sponsors. So we have put together Nexcess- a hosting solution, for all the eCommerce platforms. So Nexcess will be here and then we have Punch out 2 go. So, you’ll be hearing from Brady on the discussion panel later today. And of course, DCKAP, you know, looking forward to it really showcasing some expertise and some knowledge for you guys for e-commerce. - Introducing the speakers (02:09-03:11)
So the first session that we have is called Magento 2 migration and the P 21 integration for business transformation. I want to bring up Alec Daniel from Moody Price and Kendall Ducote from, from Moody Price. So Alec, he’s a digital marketing designer with a Moody Price and has operated within that for about two years now, over two years now.
He has helped with the development and implementation of company-wide digital improvements, including email marketing, SEO, and local SEO, social media platforms. Data analytics and account specific targeting.
And then we also have Kendall Ducote. He’s the VP of technology at Moody Price, and he has been managing their profits as well as strategies for the last 12 years. Now, in that time he has implemented eCommerce platforms. Epicor is B2B seller, Amera commerce. Epicor is ECC on Magento one, and now Magento two with DCKAP.
So, I would like to bring to the stage- Alec and Kendall
- Insight into Moody Price (03:12- 06:20)
Kendall Ducote:
Thank you very much. Thanks for the introduction, Tim. Alright, well, this is a quick screenshot of our home page, and I appreciate the introduction as he mentioned, I’m the vice president of technology at Moody Price.
We’re an industrial distributor that focuses mainly on instrumentation products and we’re spread out across the Gulf region from Odessa, Texas to the panhandle of Florida. And up through Memphis, Tennessee, we went live on Epicor. B2B seller shortly after we went on P21. It was part of our installation package.
We went live with them back in 2008 in the middle of a hurricane. And that was an interesting scenario. And as I said, as part of our installation, we went live with a B2B seller. It was our first e-commerce attempt. Prior to that, it was just a simple single page website. We ran that for a few years, learned a lot. From there we moved on to Amera commerce, which was a disconnected eCommerce solution. Everything was moved back and forth through imports and exports. There was no integration, but it did allow us to create some things such as, search engine optimization.
Mainly to configure product group pages and more a marketing side for the website that the B2B seller just didn’t support at all. And then from there we got, we’d grown the business quite a bit from the commerce side and the imports and exports got a little bit too big to handle. So that’s when we started looking into options for going back to integrated ECC, which was a new product, from Epicor. We joined in then with the hopes of the, it was sold to us as one throat to choke. The problem was we ended up wanting to choke it quite a bit. We learned a lot with that integration as well. Web technologies have progressed quite a bit from.
When we initially went live with a B2B seller, we were able to get exposed to more of the modern web looking feel. And then we ran into the limitations of what ECC could do for us and the limitations of progressing our SEO footprint and the pain points of trying to make changes that were significant.
- Starting the journey with DCKAP (06:20-13:16)
So from there, we moved on to DCKAP and we went live in March of 2020. Moody Price.com is our domain. If you’d like to go check out our site after the presentation. So, we’d like to cover a few things for the group peer share, some of our experiences were work well. Things that we’ve learned and hopefully give some of you guys some insight on what you could expect.
If you chose to go down the same road that we did. I’m going to go over some of the motivations that we had for moving from ECC over to, to DCKAP by even going over some of the core requirements that we had for our site. So you get a look, a little bit of a feel for some of the things that we were looking for with DCKAP that we were struggling with with ECC.
Ultimately, while we chose DCKAP and I’ll give a brief overview of how our implementation, when it’s not going to be very detailed, more of a highlight of how this implementation differed from other implementations that we’ve done in the past. And I’ll let Alec go over some of the design and SEO aspects of our new website and the site performance.
The primary motivation to start looking for another eCommerce platform is the sunset of Magento. One which anyone who is on ECC is going to be faced with, or if you’re on budget, the one with a different integration,believe the sunset was supposed to be this month. I haven’t heard anything. Recently the latest COVID or anything has extended that, but that was one of our driving forces.
We knew we were going to have to move. And so we took a step back to make sure we were selecting the platform and the partners that were going to be the most effective and made the most sense for us. Another driver was the high cost of BCC subscription. We were sure every implementation is going to be different, but we were actually able to cover the cost of our Magento to build, with a ROI of just the savings from ECC to less than two years.
Another issue we’re having with ECC was the inefficient and expensive development cost. As many of you may or may not know,with Epicor, you’re usually tied in directly to a company called Silk that is responsible for all the design portion. But there’s no one at Epicor that understands design
So anything that you need to change or want to configure, you have to submit a case into Epicor who then turns around and rephrases that case to Silk after which somebody gets in touch with you from Silk, and then you give the requirements. And then they’re going to give a quote, but you can’t get the quote from Silk, the quote for the amount of hours.
And the amount of time and how much it’s going to call us as the funnel back through Epicor, because it’s ultimately built from Epicor. It was a very frustrating path to get support and enhancements done. Another large driver we have is something called punch out. If you’re not familiar with punch out catalogs, if you have large customers, it’s coming.
If it’s not already there, it is on it’s way. To leverage your website and tie into the customer’s procurement system. And I’ll give a little bit more information on that in just a second.Gist of it is it replaces the shopping cart on your website when the customer goes in and they throw items into their cart with the quantity item, price, and they go to checkout. Instead of it actually prompting me for a credit card, it returns all of those items and all the information and all the quantities and prices that are in the shopping cart, back into their procurement system.
Most commonly with us, it’s Reba and Coupa and SAP.
It looked just like our website. It works like our website, the search works like our website. It’s a tailored session for that customer. that changes up the checkout process for them. We have one of our largest customers, who had a requirement for us to begin using it. And up until this point, we had not embraced it fully.
Moving away from ECC into another Magento implementation was going to give us the chance that we were looking for to integrate punch out from the ground up and not as an afterthought. Now here’s a slide from PunchOut2Go. They are the vendor that we use and you’ll hear from Brady in a little while that we use to help us configure the PunchOut integration with Prophet 21 for us.
You see, this is a little busy showing all the ins and outs and the, and the flows that go in. So I simplified this a little bit into a single slide. That may be a little bit easier to understand if you’re not familiar with Punch Out, the customer starts a session within their procurement system. And.
Within a Reba or Coupa or within SAP, they see a window that looks exactly like our website is our website. It’s a version of our website, but there’s enough customization within that session to control how the checkout works for that customer, those items in their cart. They check out, and return it back to their procurement systems, such as the Reba.
And then we received the PO from Reba. So it really streamlines the process for those larger customers that have this capability. And I think the price to entry on this has come down quite a bit where I think we’re going to start seeing this more and more with even smaller customers.
So that, that then one of the driving forces that we had here, that we wanted to integrate up front. Some of the other core requirements we have, obviously as the peak 21 in integration with our eCommerce site that we had without the integration was that it’s entirely too difficult to manage.
- Changes and migration (13:17-16:51)
It really was not an option for us at this point. With our growth of eCommerce business, another requirement we had was robust site search. It was a real limitation that we had with Magento one. And all of our earlier websites, the latest technology is called elastic search, which actually requires its own separate server instance with your hosting as very inexpensive.
I think we pay roughly around $20 a month. I think for the instance that we use for our elastic search. But it takes the search capabilities that most customers are used to with an Amazon experience with suggestions. This product goes with, and a complete customization of the, of the site search separate from Magento.
That was one of our core requirements that we had to make sure that our part numbers, which are. It can be very complicated with dashes and spaces and inch marks and so forth. To make sure customers could find the products that they were looking for, we had to have a system that was going to dynamically price for our customers that were registered on the website.
This could potentially be a big hurdle for any installation that does not have a dedicated middleware to talk with and to do it quickly, to calculate real time pricing for customers that are logged in with ECC. We had something similar except even the base pricing was being calculated real time, which was real drag on performance.
With the integration we did with DCKAP, we were able to go through the actual static price, all of our items based off of a pricing library. And then we have a job that runs once a week that goes back in and reprices those static prices based off of the current pricing library.
We wanted our customers to be able to go in and approve quotes. We wanted the integration to use our Avalara tax integration that we already had in . So we didn’t want to have to go back in and recreate all of our tax rules with the Avalara integration with Magento 2, we’re able to use our same Avalara account for all of our sales tax calculations on the website.
We wanted to make sure we could flag our customers that were already tax-exempt, onto the website. So we didn’t have to try and manage that process separately. And another issue we had run into with the last two or three years is customers who are checking out online or our website. That is tax exempt, but there’s no way other than a note on the order to say they’re tax exempt and then they would submit the online order.
We will receive it. And then after we would get it into and begin processing it, we would receive an email from them saying, Hey, we’re tax exempt, please remove the tax off of this order. So what we wanted to do with our new implementation was to. Implement some methodology to where customers could actually upload their tax exemption certificate. - Setting up the check out process (16:51-21:32)
Kendall Ducote:
As part of the checkout process, this just started off as an idea of what would work best for us. And it turned into a customization from DCKAP into Magento that works flawlessly. Now we receive probably two dozen orders in the last two months that are supplied with both the order information and the tax exemption certificate information, whenever it’s actually brought in.
So it skips that entire step of trying to fix an order after the fact. Wishlist item that we had that actually turned into more of a requirement, was the need for a product information manager or a PIM. If you’ve heard the term, it gives us a single point of management of all of our items that we have for sale, both on the website and within P 21. Some of these items are not even on our website, but there’s very limited storage by default for things such as attributes and a rich product data like PDF cut sheets or images or CAD drawings.
Anyone does not handle that very well natively. So the PIM gives us an intermediary step that loads the product data from to get things like part numbers, descriptions, weights. But then it also gives us another place where we can store these cut sheets in CAD drawings and attribute data such as, specific sizes or dimensions or pressure ratings that become searchable once they are inside of the Magento portal and our last.
Requirement was not only did we want to implement Punch Out but we wanted to implement it in a way that was going to work best for our customers natively. In most PunchOut integrations, you’re limited to the items that are on your website for the customer to choose from in order for them to use and their punch out integration.
Our businesses as such where we have a lot of one time purchase items that we call buyout. These are items that are not something we would normally stock or sometimes ever stop, but the customer’s requested it from us as part of a larger order. So we’ll take the task of procuring that item and adding it to the order for them.
But that item would never be on our website. Another instance of that would be engineered products where we have things such as radar level meters. These things are calibrated and have so many different possible configurations that an individual part for an individual customer is going to have an individual part number doesn’t lend itself to going through and adding it to our website because it would only ever be purchased by this one customer this one time.
So we needed a way for customers to be able to punch those out through the punch out process, without them being on the website. And what we came up with was a way for the punch out process to read a quote, instead of relying on the shopping cart itself.
This allowed us to present to the customer, any item that we have in P 21. And they could retrieve that item by retrieving the quote where that item lives and whenever they would click the punch out button, instead of using the shopping cart to transfer the list of items and quantities and prices, we’re actually using our quote to load that data back into their procurement system.
So we had all these requirements and wants and our wishlist, and now we had to find a vendor who could take care of all of it so we started down the path. We think we had a short list of about three to four, partners that we were looking to choose from. What set DCKAP apart from the others that we looked at, one, they had already had a solid base and the users group, the middleware that they were implementing in CLORAS.
- DCKAP demo and why they were set apart (21:33-28:01)
When we watched the demo with DCKAP, it was very robust. It was also very easy to use. It is much easier to understand than the native prophet 21 middleware. And it gives a nice web interface for moves, adds and changes. You don’t need to know how to program in and HTML or PHP or Javascript or any other language in order to make changes in configuration updates within the middleware, they looked at all of our customization wants that we had.
And come back to us with a commitment, some of these, they had actually never done, but they looked at it from a high level and made a commitment that they would make it work for us. And that was huge, especially with the punch out to go implementation. Because at this point, all we had was a concept of using a prophet 21 quote, and there was a big gap from me.
From a technology standpoint of a quote in prophet 21 and a requisition in the customer’s procurement system and how to make those, the bridge, that gap was beyond my skills from a technology standpoint, but they had the understanding and the partnership with punch out to go, where they were able to confidently take on the project.
Another benefit we have with them is that partnership with Nexcess. We did our own individual research, on hosting and Nexcess ranked up near the top for Magento hosting everywhere. We looked in surveys, and various user forums. And with them being tightly integrated with Nexcess. it took all the load off of us for having to create and set up our own hosting environments, the configuration for the hosting itself and also the configuration and set up of the elastic search instance.
Logged into Nexcess, created an account. We put in our billing information and we set up credentials for DCKAP and handed it over to them. And short of going in and reconciling my monthly billing. I don’t do anything at all with hosting, which is very nice for me. their flexi PIM product was very new when we first started looking at DCKAP and.
As limited as it was when we first looked, it was exactly what we were looking for. We had looked at other PMs that are on the market, even open source, such as a Keanio and some other PMs that are available. And they were just way overkill for what we wanted. We wanted a place to go in and house all of our product, data and information, and specifically the things that could not hold.
And the flexi PIM product does all of that. For us, it holds everything we need that we haven’t, we haven’t run into any limitation on what it can do for us. In fact, it can do a lot more than what we’re using it for. It’s grown into, and the product does more similar to some of the larger PIM products that are out there now.
But for us, we just needed something basic and easy and also had a direct tie into Magento 2 tp make the management is I want to say single pane of glass, but it’s all integrated in the flexi PM. Data is connected into our Magento site with their own plugin, and we will log into a portal. That’s outside of our website to manage all the product data, and all of our changes automatically flow back into Magento from the plugin.
And of course, as any company, we were looking for something that was going to be cost effective for us. We had three different partners that we were looking at. DCKAP was the only one that could bring in all of our wants. Could handle the customization and they were also the lowest price of the three that we looked at.
So it was the trifecta of easy decision making.
As far as our implementation goes, having been through B2B sellers, America, commerce, ECC. We had a pretty good feel on what to expect going in part of that. We’re much better organized for our implementation with DCKAP in the past. We learned lessons from, not having organized photos, not having organized categories, all those lessons we had learned prior, we were able to bring to the table with our implementation here.
So it made things a lot easier and smoother. But the one point I want to drive in is how organized the implementation is with DCKAP. So much more than any of the others that we had used in the past. They use a program called our a web portal called base camp. If you, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s a very easy to use almost user forum.
Like a feel to it that makes it very simple to go in and create a case or an instance, if you will, of an enhanced mint or a feature or a bug, and then you can follow the conversations all the way through. You can watch again yeah. Loop in the correct resources that are needed. What we’ll have, we’ll start in, a feature enhancement with one person at DCKAP.
That’ll get it to the point where maybe it needs data from CLORAS or we need to bring in a piece from flexiPIM and they loop in those resources real time seamlessly all within the. The instance of the request and you can follow it. There’s no need for status updates. There’s no need for wondering what’s going on. You can see what’s being done as it’s being done within the interface. So That was very nice. And, a welcome change from our experience in the past.
- Key differentiator with design (28:13-30:33)
Another key differentiator with this implementation was- Alex Decker, who is the UX designer for us, who was really able to take all of our list of wants and what we thought we wanted for our designs and was keeping the things we requested in the spirit that we were requesting them.
At the same time, he was able to bring in recommendations for best practices. We could do this, but if we shifted it one way or another, or we added this other piece of information, it would help with our SEO. He brings vast experience and knowledge for wholesale distributors and or distributors in general and knows.
Mostly in generic terms, what differentiates a distributor customer from say an Amazon customer and how, how they shop and what things are important and what things to prioritize in the design. And lastly, I would like to bring up that, I mean, I mentioned it’s efficient. We implemented our DCKAP Magento 2 with flexiPIM , probably in a span of three to four months. It may have taken a little bit longer than that. But anything that went over that was because of our customization that we have required with the tax exemption certificate and the PunchOut2Go. But the basic site itself was up and running in.
Probably about three months and that includes design everything from starting from wireframes to finish proof of design, comparing that with our implementation with ECC, I believe we were probably in the eight to nine month range for the same process. So I can’t say enough about the efficiency and the ease of the implementation process.
It was great for us. - Introducing Alec Daniel and his experience (30:34-34:51)
Alec Daniel:
Now, what I’d like to do is bring in Alec, Daniel, who is our digital marketing designer, who handles all things with our website, with design and SEO. And he had almost completely control over that process. And he can give you a little bit of insight on how that went for him and with working with DCKAP.
Thanks Kendall. And thanks Tim for the introduction. Good morning, everyone. I just kinda wanted to piggyback off of the previous implementation slide and talk about that from a design standpoint. This is my first site with Moody Price. However, I do have experience with a couple and websites and have worked as a project manager role.
So I’m familiar with the process. I had a lot of expectations. I knew that DCKAP would have us covered on the technical side. You know, they’re specialized in the middleware- CLORAS. The reason we went with them was because of the PunchOut integration and there were a lot of technical things they brought to the table, but I just, I have to brag on them.
I did not expect this pleasant of an experience when it came to our design on this website. So I really, when this all started, I expected to be given a list of templates. No they say here, pick a few of these,we’ll roll with this. That’s not what we got. What we got was we worked with Alex, we had a discussion, you know, goals.
Do you know where your customers are going? How do they get there? How can we improve this process through design? So in doing that, we got a data driven design and call to actions, using our previous websites, data and analytics. So we went through and we did this page by page for the entire site.
And the process was just incredible and a great experience. Not what I was expecting, but a lot better than I was expecting. We were able to use this method to meet any unfulfilled needs we had on our homepage with like in reference to call to actions and stuff. So we wanted to really focus on that data and in doing so we sort of came to the conclusion that we had three top sections of our site. We wanted to focus on that’s where our customers were going. We wanted to help them get there. So we went with, you know, requests for quotes, our locations, pages and our services pages, because that’s really our big fee yet and Moody Price. A lot of people ask me why as an eCommerce site,your main call to action is a request for a quote.
The reason is we looked at the data and, you know, a lot of our products are modular. They are project specific, they’re very specialized. So, that’s why we decided to go with our, request for request for quote is our main call to action. Again, a data-driven decision on that.
We get a dozen, sometimes two dozen requests for quotes on a good day with probably about a 50%. Conversion rates. So not a web sale per se, but a sale, which really is all Kendall and I care about at the end of the day is to convert those customers. So, that was the homepage location. Same thing. We went through the data with Alex.
We knew that for local SEO reasons, we wanted to create sub pages, which we did not have on our previous website. So each branch would get its own page that we could then. Talk about the service areas that we cover there. We want it to include, you know, those high quality photos, one of the shows off our inventories, our vehicle fleets and other capabilities we have at these branches that customers would otherwise not know about.
Have they not seen it? So that was a big thing for us. And that was something that we were really able to capitalize on. Another one was our services pages. Cause we’re not just, uh, a sales company, we’re, we’re big on services and just like locations. We wanted customers to be able to see the services we provide. - Design in detail and wrap up (34:51-42:00)
Alec Daniel:
If you go to our services pages, you will see that we actually took photos of a lot of our services and customers can go there and see, okay. These guys seem pretty proficient. They have, you know, they do this a lot. And so they were able to provide that with us. So that’s sort of the design.
I kind of wanted to touch on SEO a little bit and that, and our previous site, I spent months working on our metadata, you know, our descriptions and page titles and stuff like that. We have over 5,000 product pages and that was something that I’d really worked on. And when we originally started looking into this migration, we were told that this is going to be wiped.
This is a complete rebuild. You’re not going to have this stuff well, that wasn’t the case for DCKAP. They went ahead and made that happen for us. They got all of that metadata that I had created and spent so much time on. And they were able to put that into our new site, which saved me.
I mean, hundreds of hours worth of work. So I was very appreciative of that. There was also an issue on our previous site, I guess it was a setting in Magento, one where every URL ended in dot HTML. And so what I was having to do was go through and 301, redirect all of these old pages ending and dot HTML to our new pages that didn’t have any and I spent a couple of weeks post-launch on our website on this, on this website. I was sort of mentioning it to DCKAP and they were like, well, we can write a script.
So they wrote a script for that and saved me again. I would have had to do this for five, 6,000 pages and a done deal. That was it. So, that was a great experience. Moving on to our site speed. This was a huge issue for us. Our previous site was so bloated. As you can see here, we had about a seven and a half seconds, second page load time. And that was our average. I mean, this thing was bloated. It was slow. Uh, currently with our new site, we’re at about one to two and a half seconds.
One of the reasons for that is that DCKAP came up with a design for us. We have a lot of products. I’m gonna use something called an FPC, for example which looks the exact same. There’s about, let’s say 10 variants of one FPC with a quarter inch difference or something like that. So they all look the exact same.
Just with minor, minor differences that vary from pro part number and our previous site, we were showing photos of every single one of these variants, which obviously slowed down our website massively. With this new one, they came up with a design, you know, I worked with Alex and I guess he was great and they basically showed the one at the top and then listed the part numbers underneath, which sounds simple.
But, you know we hadn’t thought of that and it just saved us so much time and it really retained a lot of who were exiting our site right there due to load speed. So, this has been a great experience for kennel and I, we’re very thankful that we found DCKAP and that we were able to work with them.
And we really look forward to this partnership moving forward. - WRAP UP
So if you’re not running e-commerce so let us know if we could do anything to help you. So we are. We are, you know, within the ecosystem and we have a lot of partnerships too. You know, there’s a lot of components to e-commerce. We have, you know, we have Nexcess for hosting. We have a PunchOut2Go for the, for the punch outs.
But as Alec and Kendall were talking about, we also partnered with Avalara, which was the tax company. We do a lot with search. So, you know, there’s a lot of companies out there for, in terms of e-commerce Daniel knows, we want to even think of you guys up with them. So if you have any questions or anything like that, just send me a direct chat or even email.
My email is timothyd@dckap.com. And just let me know, and I can think you up with the right partners or whatnot. So, so thank you so much for that. As of right now, actually we do have one question then me. So this is from Barry Holman.
Guest question.
Can DCKAP share how many P21 customers DCKAP serves?
So yeah, we can, we could definitely share.
So I’ll have one of my sales reps. They could even answer that. So yeah. Keep the questions coming. So, and then let’s see four from John for your non-punch out customers with terms where you are able to let customers check out without making a payment. Absolutely. we have. three different checkout channels, if you will.
We have different levels of customers. We have what we call anonymous, which are customers that do not exist, in our Magento site. And they do not exist in or anywhere. And those folks are limited strictly to credit card checkout. Then we have the next tier, what we call our Magento customers, which are folks who order online from us.
They have elected to save their account information in Magento, but they are not . These are customers typically from outside of our general sales area, but they come to us for items that they can’t find locally and repeat orders. Then we have what we call our customers. These are the customers that have an account on the website that is directly tied to an account or P21 contact, within their system.
Once you get to that level, we open up a second and third method of checkout, the second being, A Moody Price account. So if they have account terms with us, whenever they check out, it actually takes the order, brings it in and it is charged to them, their terms, their open account that they have with us.
Then, of course the third would be for the next tier of customers that are using punch out, which that order process actually doesn’t directly create a transaction on the website. It simply returns that information to their procurement system. And then we receive a purchase order from that customer, uh, via EDI or Reba or one other method that actually goes straight into P21.
And that transaction does not occur at all within the budget, the Magento space. Thank you Kendall. So, hopefully that answered your question. And then forBary you know, we just answered it too. So we have 20 plus customers. So we do a lot with the worldwide users group, you know, unfortunately, you know, the conference is going to be virtual now.
Right. We’re supposed to meet in Dallas, so yeah. And then we do a lot with the Lake Erie user group. So if you want even more information our last eSummit on April 28th was with the Lake Erie users group as well. So if you don’t have any information, just go ahead and send me, send me a check in and then we can even talk about that.
Insights on B2B eCommerce Hosting, Implementation, and Integration
1) Introduction for the panel discussion (00:00:01:23)
My name is Tim Diep, and I am the customer success manager for DCKAP. I have been with the company for eight years now and just doing a lot of coordinating events for the ecosystem. I work towards bringing a lot of the technology partners and merchants and distributors together.
So usually we have big events called the DCKAP summit. That’s when we bring the whole community. But in regards to this one, this one is specifically called the E-session. So it’s more of a case study for a walkthrough today. You’re going to be hearing from Kendall and Alec in regards to what it took for them to migrate over to the Magento 2 website, also integrating with the Epicor, ERP system.
If you guys want to do any sharing or anything, the official hashtag for this session will be called DCKAP sessions. So it is very, very simple and straightforward. So. And first off, I’d love to thank all the sponsors. So we have Nexcess, a hosting solution, for all the eCommerce platforms.
So Nexcess will be here and then PunchOut2Go. So Brady, you know, you’ll be hearing from Brady on the discussion panel later today. And of course, DCKAP, looking forward to really showcasing some expertise and some knowledge for you guys in terms of e-commerce. So right now, I’d like to bring up Karthik Chidambaram.
2) Karthik Chidambaram Spearheading the Discussion (01:23-04:01)
He’s the founder and CEO of DCKAP. We just reached a milestone of 15 years with the company. And do you want to be in the eCommerce space and really looking to be innovative and doing a lot of things for the ecosystem. So Karthik, I like to bring you up on, on to the stage and then you can even introduce the rest of the panelists.
Thank you, Tim. That was a great and insightful presentation. Really enjoyed it. Hello, thanks to all the audience for joining this first-ever E Session. We had a new summit last month.
Really excited just to give you a little bit of background about DCKAP like dimension, we just celebrated our 15th anniversary, either bootstrap with just two desks, two computers, and two people, and give you room along the way. And we specialize in B2B and we work a lot with the people, and our ecosystems really exert that.
And before I begin, I would like to thank all the panelists for joining me on this panel discussion today. Kendall, thank you. Who’s the VP of technology at Moody Price, which is here in my talk. We also have Daniel, a digital marketing designer with Moody Price. Thank you. That was a great presentation.
We also have Miguel Balprada, the product manager at Nexcess. We also have Alex Deckard, designer at DCKAP. A big, thank you to both Kendall and Alec. Again, really enjoyed the session and vividly remember meeting you guys at the group.
A couple of years ago, we just chatted and built a relationship. Last year we met again in Louisiana. Then you decided to come on board with DCKAP. Thank you so much for your trust. It means a lot to us. I appreciate it. So maybe let me just kick start this panel with Kendall.
Thank you again.
And really the question is more well, common, 19, right? So with COVID-19, how has it really impacted your business? What changes are you seeing in the industry?
3) Insight into impact of COVID 19 on business (04:02-05:21)
Kendall Ducote speaking
Thanks Karthik. It was always fun to hang out. I’m going to miss getting a chance to be at this user group for now that it’s moved virtual.
I see. So we’ll have to, we’ll have to hook up for dinner, maybe next year without COVID. So, outside sales representatives are our primary sales and marketing channel. So with all the distancing measures that were in place, we had to shift to doing virtual meetings with our customers. Of course like most people have, a large portion of our workforce working from home.
But one of the things that paradigm shift kind of brought to the forefront for us was reliance on our website. As a tool for our sales staff, which, was, it was a bit of a shift for us that they typically have. Rely more on their interpersonal relationships and haven’t had to leverage our website much with their direct contacts and they were finding themselves directing them to technical resources, documentation, line sheets, and so forth, and was able to distribute information to them without having to meeting in person as they typically have in the past.
Thank you for the call. I think that’s awesome. Right? I’m really glad that you shifted to, he covers that shift. I’m sure it’s helping quite a bit like you rightly pointed out. So thanks for those insights and learnings.
4) Introducing Brady Behrman and his insights (05:33-10:57)
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
So let me bring on Brady Behrman. You have helped a lot of distributors and manufacturers and all of the world. The punch outs and sayings on automation. And you’re also one of the pioneers in the B2B e-procurement space. Kendall. I thought about it a little bit. One of the slides explaining about punch outs and how you’re helping the price, but for the larger audience, can you please explain what the potential is. And also talk about the relationship with Moody Price.
Brady Behrman speaking
Thank you so much for having PunchOut2Go and myself too. I appreciate it very much. So what’s going to Brady Berman. I’m the CEO at PunchOut2Go. I think Kendall already actually did most of my job here.
He really simplified, I sent him over a complex diagram and he simplified it, but maybe I’ll expand upon, uh, a couple of areas, right?
So, uh, the e-procurement market is a massive market, right? Over 50% of organizations globally leverage e-procurement systems, right? These may be systems such as Coupa, Riba, SAP, which have e-procurement tech analogies as well. Oracle software, there are many, right? We actually worked with over 200 different e-procurement systems around the globe in over 40 countries.
So what’s happening is these organizations are adopting these e-procurement technologies, and they need to transact with their vendors, right? Distributors and manufacturers, service providers, and such through these procurement technologies. It’s a long and kind of daunting process to try to do these things on your own.
Without real expertise, right? We’ve talked a lot about partners and ecosystem and DCKAP has been a great part of PunchOut2Go, but they align very well with many different partners, right?
Partners that excel in different areas is where Punch2Go shines. We are agnostic to commerce and agnostic to e-procurement.
We’re a hundred percent focused on mitigating the gaps that exist between procurement and commerce activities. These procurement technologies consist of punch out, which is really just one piece of the puzzle, but then you talk about orders and ship those acknowledgments and invoicing, right? Those are the five kinds of core transactions that we see across the e-procurement landscape. So what we are doing at PunchOut2Go is just really laser-focused on helping companies like Moody Price leverage e-commerce infrastructure of their choosing, right.
Magento is a great selection for them aligning with DCKAP to connect all the dots, but leveraging Magento to not only, you know, not only address them, or allowing their users across the anonymous, the customers, and so forth.
So leverage Magento, but use Magento to connect also to the e-procurement customers. So that’s what we’re doing at PunchOut2Go. We’re helping companies leverage our eCommerce infrastructure while we connect to over 200 different e-procurement systems. On one side of the fence, we also support over 50 different e-commerce technologies as well.
What we do is mitigate the gaps and harmonize the transactions between commerce and procurement to create a more digitized effect just as distributors manufacturers around the world today are adopting commerce technologies. The buying customers, the organizations on these e-procurement systems are doing more to digitize their efforts as well.
So while 50% already use it, we’re going to see enhanced usages of those. They’re scoping at 30% of additional companies. I think Kendall touched upon that. They’re going to use that his customer base is looking at e-procurement technologies because it is becoming more cost-effective for them to manage their spend through these e-procurement technologies.
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Makes sense. No, it makes a lot of sense. Also, your background is pretty cool and quite nice.
Brady Behrman speaking
I painted it for us last week. I don’t know if you noticed the USB when marker report came out, last week and they have 17.5 trillion in total sales for distributors and manufacturers. 1.3 trillion through e-commerce through www uh, obviously massive growth, still 20% there.
E-procurement was almost 1 trillion with almost 20% growth. Then we looked at EDI one point or I’m sorry, 7 trillion. We are trying to do this at PunchOut2Go and we’ve helped a lot of customers do EDI e-procurement and drive them back through commerce. Right? Commerce is this modular component that does sit on top. All the hooks are in place between Magento and P21, we like to leverage Magento because it’s modular, right. We can help. We can help, you know, kind of make it easy to transition customers, automate the transactions from not only punch out but purchase orders, invoices, whether they derive through commerce or not.
We’d like to drive back through commerce because it really is a commerce activity. Thanks.
5) Introducing Miguel Balprada, Nexcess and his insights (10:58- 13:36)
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Let me bring on Miguel, Product Manager at Nexcess. We also have an extra guest in the panel. I just saw it. So maybe. What do you talk as well downstairs? What’s his or her name?
Miguel Balprada speaking
Great. Yeah. Now the dog is covered. He was, but he is now sleeping. So I think we say he’s not going to eat me during this stream, so yeah, we are saved. No worries. No worries. It was fun.
So, good to see you again. And you are the one traveler you traveled many times to every park.
Next I’ve seen your punch in service across the globe.
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
So how are things like Nexcess and how are the common circumstances different for you?
Miguel Balprada speaking
I think it’s very good right now. Nobody really travels these days. It’s true that I used to travel a lot this year. I went to like mid gentle India in January or February, and then I ended up in Iceland, but it’s like, you know, never really traveled these days, which is good because I get, I get to have some time to actually sit down and work instead of like sitting on a plane, like crossing the ocean.
So it’s, it’s really nice. It’s a terrible situation for everybody, but at least I get to, I get to do some work, you know, I get to spend more time at home and get to spend more time with my dogs. So it’s, it’s been nice. I’m missing the travel, but I don’t miss it that much. I couldn’t agree more. Thank you, Miguel.
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Appreciate that. Maybe let me ask you a hosting question. So what are your top two recommendations for high performance and events?
Miguel Balprada speaking
I’m going to divide this into two different answers. I’m going to start with backend services. So I would say everybody should be using elastic search and maybe readies mostly because those are like really low hanging fruits.
You can just integrate with a couple of places in Magento too. And then I’m going to move real quick to the front end. And I would say everybody should be using a JavaScript tool? You can use it to actually make your sermon faster, be more in line with the current best practice in the front end.
That’s a really nice tool from a Polish developer. It’s great. It’s open-source and it’s really, really easy to use. It’s basically you building your stir and then displaying that to them, but they changed some stuff like the order. Which chemistry was being loaded. I think image preload in that kind of front and good practices.
And I think it’s, it’s something everybody should be using these days, mostly because it’s really simple and the cooler Magento wants to be, it is really not the fastest out there. This model and, this tool, really helps to make your star way, way faster.
6) Alec Daniel on design (13:40-15:36)
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
So appreciate those insights. So let me bring along Alec Daniel, there’s one marketing designer at when you price. Hey, Alec, it was a great presentation. Thanks for joining us. Yeah. Thanks again. We talked to you again and you led on multiple hats and Moody Price as a digital marketing designer.
Alec Daniel speaking
And so what is your primary focus and how does that translate into business? So I think overall my focus is on improving our digital footprint and just making sure that we don’t get left behind, you know, as that landscape evolves, which it always is awesome. No, I think that’s great. Right. A followup question to that.
So how do you really measure, so how do you measure the marketing impact? Uh, what do you measure the one being done with respect to digital marketing? Do you use any tools or any thoughts? So I think really any digital marketer can tell you that sometimes it’s really difficult to quantify or measure the impact per se.
And that’s really in regard to SEO specifically. To me, the impact of my work. It’s really not a defined conversion, like a web sale. We are a sales and service company. So I think just getting our website in front of customers and potential customers is a win for us. I know that, by ushering those people into our funnel, and just getting them on the phone or speaking with a Moody Price representative- they’re going to see how great that experience can be.
And working with our team. So basketball analogy, my goal really is to pass the ball to our sales team. They’re going to slam dunk, give them a great experience. That’s really how I measure the impact of my work.
6) Bringing on Alex Deckard for more design insights (15:37- 22:49)
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Thank you. Like I think I said all, always everyone needs more leads and the whole phone call training. That’s great. So thanks for sharing those insights. Let me bring on Alex Deckard, director of design at DCKAP. Hey, Alex, great to see you again. Thanks. Yeah, I’m expanding out a couple of questions for you. So you work with a lot of customers that you help design the new iPhone experience. What exactly is the low effort experience and how do you create them?
Alex Deckard speaking
Hi everyone. And thanks again to Alec and Kendall for the kind words there. In terms of low effort experiences, I think there’s often a disconnect between customers once and by customers. I mean, no web users and you know, what day I think they want, often we get caught up trying to cram as many options or bells and whistles possible.
Yeah. In an attempt to create a wow factor. So to speak when, you know, really often was all they really want is the simplest way to get from point a to point B. You know, there’s data that shows that customers are up to 94% more likely to repurchase a product or service that yielded a low effort experience, you know, in comparison to experience experiences that had additional options features or, or strived for customer delight over simplicity.
You know, additionally, 88% of those customers increased spending as a result of a low effort experience. So, back to your original question, what is a low effort experience? It’s simply a low effort experience is one in which, you know, the customer doesn’t have to think about it. And, you know, I think there are few hallmarks that are common here with low effort experiences.
You know, the first would be it’s simply doing what it says. It’s going to, in other words, that, it works as expected. So for example, when you order through Amazon prime, you know, you’re confident that the item is going to arrive quickly, typically within a day or so. And then the condition that you expected would, and if it doesn’t arrive quickly or, or if it arrives damaged or something, you know that they’re going to get a replacement out to you as soon as possible, or, you know, refund the purchase without much hassle.
So you’re confident in that experience and you have an expectation that’s typically met when you order it through. Amazon, no. Additionally using Amazon as an example, again, now they’ve created a system that does the thinking for you. Now, when was the last time he couldn’t quickly find something you were looking for on Amazon?
You know, it almost never happened. You know they’ve even made it so products you, uh, repeatedly or frequently purchase. It’s just simply showing up at the door. You may even have to like a log on to a website and order them. So again, to kind of summarize what is a low effort experience, it’s one that’s, you know, you don’t have to think about it, does what it says it’s going to, and you can be confident in the expectation.
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
All right. So yeah, so don’t make users think, right? So that’s it. And how do you create these different experiences? Right. So can you share, how do you work with the customer to create different experiences? Like maybe we can even take the only prime example.
Alex Deckard speaking
I think this varies depending on the customer and the market, but as you know, Kendall spoke to earlier a big priority for Moody Price was the request to quote.
So. No, when you arrive on the home page, the customer doesn’t have to look for that it’s right front and center in the main banner, there’s a link in the header. So even if they arrived through a product page or, or some sort of, sub page that they are still quickly able to get to their request to quote page, you know, again, it goes to just set the appropriate expectation, ahead of time.
Now going back to Amazon, we don’t all have the capacity to deliver an item the next day. So if that’s the expectation that we’re sending with the customer and we can’t deliver on it, it’s going to lead to a frustrating experience, even though we might capture that initial sale.
You know, the cost-benefit is not going to be worth it in the long run. You know, similarly, if we’re not adequately communicating what the product is that they’re buying and what they receive is different than their perceived value or expectation for that, for what that product is, you know, it’s going to lead to a bad experience.
Using that last example, within the econ, within the college detective e-commerce. I think both of them can be achieved and overcome by insurance that you have proper messaging throughout the site. So for instance of Moody price, they’re clearly stating their shipping and returns policies throughout their site.
So people know when they order exactly what to expect and when to expect it. And also, you know, Moody Price does a really good job with their product information. So their images, description, and anything else that is relevant to that purchasing decision, that’s going to help inform people what to expect upon arrival.
So I think, in addition to setting appropriate expectations, you know, another cornerstone of these low, low effort experiences is reducing cognitive load on part of the customer. You know, again, this can take several forms, but I think in an area that often has several low-hanging fruits and they’re typically overlooked is the main menu, you know, ensuring that the navigation is easy to use.
You know, it was clearly labeled and organized and it’s easy for users to understand and anticipate can make a world of difference in terms of the usability of the site. You know, as we mentioned earlier, another really low hanging fruit is site search, ensuring number one, that it works as expected.
And secondly, that it’s delivering relevant results that are both easy to refine and don’t overwhelm the customer with options, you know? Well, it greatly decreased the amount of thought that your customers have to put into selecting or finding a product. So, you know, those are a few places I would recommend starting, but, again, I think the list goes on, in summary, the most important thing you can do to deliver a low effort experience quickly is accurately setting that initial expectation with the customer.
You go across your brand’s presence, whether that’s your shipping policy, main menu or product pages, and then, you know, delivering upon that expectation. Thank you, Alexa. Thanks for introducing more good experiences for us and your audience. It’s awesome. And great to hear the stories here.
7) Cost Savings during COVID (22:41-25:00)
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Hey, do you have any cost-saving offerings during the current period for merchants? Right. So do you have the pandemic? Are you offering any cost savings for customers?
Brady Behrman speaking
I think I can guess I can go first. So. Because we support every e-commerce technology out there. There’s a couple of different pricing models, but absolutely we have a number of different areas that we’re driving value to, to help our customers achieve results, whether they’re new customers or existing customers that may need to integrate quickly and do different things and a number of different kind of tiered pricing or deferred payments, whatever we need to do to, uh, to help the global economy and help digitize efforts on with buy side sell side.
So. reach out if there’s anything that we can do, to assist. But, yeah so I mean, there’s, there’s a number of different programs available.
Miguel Balprada speaking
For us, it’s pretty much the same. We are a hosting company and we’ve seen a really big increase in people asking us to host their site mostly because of the current situation.
Everything is moving online, which is great for us. But it’s still, it’s still a really complicated situation. So I have several plants that depend on the side you’re trying to will, but most of it, we are trying to help. We are trying to help merchants as much as we can because he sends a like everybody’s trying to sell online to build a really know how that works and we are right in the middle.
So I think we sat having offers. We are really trying to help people more than we usually do, because everybody’s afraid everybody’s trying to sell online. And those two things, they don’t combine worlds. So we are where we tend to be as helpful as we can. What are some of the rates of feed reduction, like if you do auto-scaling, we won’t charge you.
We do migrations for free. We have a bunch of stuff going on now, but again, most of all, we are trying to help you. Thank you, Brady.
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
And one thing I do recommend more changes, like ask for help. Cool. I think it’s really good. And let me be not, Johnny the movie price, right? So what is one thing that one should be focused on?
8) Alec Daniel on Design Strategy during COVID (25:01-27:12)
Or what are you focused on during a pandemic like this? Yes. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Karthik. Uh, so this break really allowed me to take some time and get back to what I consider the digital marketing basics. Our sales team wasn’t out, they weren’t making sales calls. They weren’t going to trade shows.
Everybody’s working from home. So that took the load off of me and I needed to provide them their print and digital resources for all of those things. So in and removing that load for me, I was really able to. Focus on things like our local SEO initiatives, enriching our content on our Google.
My business locations, created a social media schedule for posting stuff like that. We went through and worked on our meta descriptions, our page titles, stuff like that for, I think I knocked out about 70% of our website during this downtime. So it was, it was very beneficial. Yeah. Those are really practical tips.
Right. I’ll also call them low hanging fruits. And are you doing anything specific on the B2B landscape specifically for B2B? Yeah. so one strategy to be focused on during this pandemic was we went ahead and reached out to our smaller accounts. So customers who spend less than 10,000 a year with us, and we really encourage them to create web accounts.
The reason being was we sort of wanted to take the load off of our sales team. And so we, you know, made them or asked them to create web accounts so that they could make those purchases through the website and take that load off the sales team. So it worked out well, had about 50 to 60 creations so far that number is still rising, but, um, you know, it was one of our initiatives and one of our strategies during this time, medical advice and reaching out to customers and opiates.
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
So that’s something they can definitely learn from. Another question I had for you is I understand you also use rentals and only price. So do you use any other printer ERP or are you just managing there’ll be 21? Just curious.
Alec Daniel speaking
No, we actually handle all of our rentals through as well so it’s all consolidated there.
9) Insights on Integration for Moody Price ( 27:13-29:58)
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Bring on Kendall, Kendall. I mean, you already, briefly touched upon it on your presentation. But can you talk about your own experience or integration of using clueless? How does integration help and how does it easy business?
Kendall Ducote speaking
Um, and it was a relief if you will. It was one of the web technologies that is probably not my strongest, suitor skills. I’m more on the server and SQL side of things. Really have never had a need to deep dive into the web technologies. So, when we set up the florist middleware to sit in between Magento and, I provided DCKAP with a virtual machine running AIS.
They remoted in, took care of all the initial setup and configuration. And then once that was done, all the management from that point forward was done through the floor’s web portal, which is very simple. It’s almost dragging and dropping you. You see a list of fields. On one side, you see a list of Magento fields on the other.
You connect the dots saying, I want this class three ID to be, you know, some type of short marketing description on an item. And Magento, you create the link and then set up the replication schedule. I want this to refresh, hourly, weekly, or in the case of some items. We actually even have those loading real-time in the cases of things like tax exemptions and things that are critical real-time for the transactions.
Um, so it was, it was pretty easy to set up and set it and forget it kind of thing. After the initial setup and configuration, I don’t think that I’ve actually logged into our course portal and probably the last two or three months, because once, it’s where it needs to be, it just runs. We haven’t had any issues with stability. No scheduled reboots or anything like that.
It’s been very stable, more stable than the Epicor. The Epicor middleware that ships with ECC would require, sometimes daily reboots. They take to keep the recycler refreshed and, and emptied. So it’s, it’s been very nice. It was a nice shift.
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Thank you, Kendall. It means a lot to us, and we’re really glad that you don’t have to log in again to close once it was set up.
I’m really excited about everything other times, a lot for the product feedback you’ve given us.
10) Alex Deckard on site redesign for better project success( 29:58-35:11)
Karthik Chidambaram speaking
Let me bring on Alex Deckard, the director of the design of DCKAP again. Yeah. Alex. So the question for you is, how can they prepare it for a new site redesign to increase project success?
There are a lot of options here. So do you have any advice on those lines? Uh, yeah. Sure. So. You know, part of our job on the services side? No, especially at the beginning of the project is to ask the right questions or help you approach the project from an angle that might not have otherwise been considered sometimes.
Well, three artists, something, you know, the harder, the harder it is for us to see the entirety of it. We also have a lot of experience in this space, which, you know, has given us perspective for. And what tends to work versus what doesn’t, you know, especially within the context of eCommerce.
Now with that said, you know, there are always details that I tend to seek out before the project starts, that helps to provide some context and a start to define the constraints for the project. And, you know, I think it’s helpful to approach a project. You know, within, you know, one of the following examples.
So, the first example would be a client who knows exactly what they want, you know, and they’re ready to bring their vision, so to speak. So, you know, with this type of client, you know, the more specific you can be and more prepared you can be with such as brand guidelines or sketches or wireframes, you know, as well as any, you know, metrics or data to, you know, inform or support, the objectives or decisions that we would make.
This allows us to quickly and efficiently create an end product that matches that initial vision and business objectives. No, secondly, you know, there might be a case. So, a client may not have a refined vision, but you know, they know what they like and in the beginning of that project, we’ll, we’ll focus more on the discovery.
In this case,it’s great to come prepared with examples or references for, the type of functionality you’re looking for or the type of content that you’re likely to have as well as like any sort of,style references that, resonate with the brand or business having a strong sense for what the objective or reason behind the build or a redesign, you know, really helps us with the approach.
Um, you know, the last example or bucket or client type is someone who might not necessarily know what they want or what it looks like, but they know what it needs to do.
So for instance, you know, there’s some sort of state change that should take place in the audience. So it should either inspire trust or communicate urgency or educator form, you know, in these cases, it’s really important that we know.
As much about who it’s for and, and the kind of the competition is in the space as possible. In addition to the above, examples, one element that I think is often overlooked at the beginning of the project that’s critical to both, and the design as well as the bill is the content and creative assets that you’ll have.
So things like a page copy and text. Images, you know, including product images, category images, and any sort of promotional images, um, important, you know, marketing messaging, and call to action. These things are important because they not only informed the design, but you know, the shape of the site.
But if we also think of, you know, within the context of an effortless experience, which we talked about earlier is really these elements of the content, the images, the text, and the site that serves to set that. First, an initial expectation with the customer. So for example, if, if a customer were to land, probably a page that has a low resolution or out of date, product image, and then how does that reflect on the brand and business?
And is that going to inspire the customer to purchase that product if the product details aren’t up to date and they order the wrong item? Well then suddenly that effort required on part of the book with the customer and the merchant has greatly increased. You know, furthermore, I’ve, you know, I’ve seen it over and over again where there really isn’t a content strategy in place to gather or even tougher yet produce the content first.
You know in either case the amount of resources this takes is typically not greatly underestimated. And the outcome is generally either a delayed launch because we’re waiting on content assets to be delivered, to build the pages out with, or it gets launched on time. And, you know, the overall quality end-user experience suffers as a result of a rushed or neglected content strategy, so to speak.
Karthik:
Cool. Thank you, Alex. You ask a lot of questions and collect strategy. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense.
10) Partner ecosystem and wrap up (35:12-42:11)
Karthik:
Thank you. Now, let me ask the question to Brady. Can you talk about the ecosystem partners and why is it so important?
Brady Behrman:
Absolutely. You know, no one company can do it. All right. It really takes the collection of identifying, you know, the right SSI, right? Like DCKAP. Identifying all the pieces of the puzzle you’re gonna need PIM and, you know, ERP, connectivity, and marketplaces, perhaps payment type of technologies and tax technologies. The list goes on, right? So not one, if you go to any SSI and they say, Oh, we can do all that in house. Run as fast as possible because it takes, the best of breed technologies, the best of breed service providers that perfect the commerce experiences.
Right? So, identify the right partners. I’m glad that you gave me that question cause we work with so many different SIS around the world. I think in DCKAP, you guys do a fantastic job of identifying the subject matter experts, the right partners to work with. That will drive value to your customers and ultimately to their customers.
So thank you for asking me that question. Thank you really.
Karthik:
And, just tell one last question. I’ve known Samir, a couple of questions from the audience. Maybe be printed on as well. So many. Can you, it’s a question to all the panelists here. And so can you talk about one thing? What is one thing that you’re reading right now?
Or learning or anything that you’re going from doing this kind of pandemic in the content. So, yeah. So can you understand?
Kendall Ducote:
Oh, sure. I’ve gotten involved with the Nelson Jameel’s, John Corey series, for books just fiction it’s we’ll bring popcorn. It makes it easy to unwind at the end of the day.
And then, well, I haven’t been forced into learning it. I have taken an initiative to start learning some more of the deeper web technologies. P21 is moving to the web-based application, running on IIS. So some architecture that I’ve avoided all the way up to this point in my career. I’m now having to Cannonball into the deep end of the pool.
Thank you, Kendall.
Karthik:
Brady, do you want to go next?
Brady Behrman:
Yeah, I mean, besides my day to day of reading everything, I can wrap the markets and trends and keep my hand on the pulse there. I have a hobby of auto racing, and, right now I’m going through getting my competition license, with a group called, NASA.
Uh, National iceberg or other Sports Association. So a lot of reading, a lot of testing, so that I can get out there and be safe and have some fun. Awesome.. Thank you.
Karthik:
Yeah, Miguel.
Miguel Balprada:
Yeah. I’m not as interesting as these guys. I’ve been reading mostly PCI documentation for the magenta one end of life, which is terrible.
Nobody wants to do that. So, yeah, I do have some new experience building raspberry bias with my own hands. Durant is quarantine, which is good because I really liked retro gaming and Harwood in particular. But it’s been, it’s been not the best season to read for me mostly because all the documentation I have to read all day long.
Karthik:
No, that’s awesome. Oh my God. That’s always nice to upgrade your skills by learning a lot of technicals So it’s awesome. So Alec Daniels…anything fun?
Alec Daniel:
Yeah, sure. I’ve been reading a book called building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. Uh, it talks about using the elements of storytelling to sort of position yourself in the customer’s journey.
One of the biggest takeaways I think I had from this book is that you have somewhere between five to 10 seconds to answer two questions, a customer’s going to have when they land on your site. And that is what are you selling? And how does it benefit me? So there are a lot more tidbits in here, but I don’t know.
It’s taught me a lot of design and the psychology behind that. So yeah.
Karthik:
Thank you Alec, It’s always more storytelling. And the book I’m reading right now is the light of the lifetime of the Disney CEO or executive chairman. How we started really small in the company, went on to become a CEO, inspiring me.
So I definitely highly recommend I do that as well. So we have a couple of questions from the audience as well. So we have a question from Patty. So, for a company that was never ventured into e-commerce. What is the realistic expectation of how long it would take to be functional on the back? So maybe I can answer that question.
So in terms of timeline, I think Moody Price is a great example. Kendall, talk to him about it. Three to four months, you know, so we can keep it simple. So I thought about the data for months, I knew I was being too aggressive. I mean, I would say anywhere from three to six months, right? So you can get something simple up and running in three to four months.
Karthik:
All right. Thank you really again, you know, we have pretty much come to the end of this session from this account. We understand that there are a lot of webinars going on and it’s been really, really great learning for us to be in the audiences.
And to me personally, as well. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for those great questions. That was great insights, Kendall. Thank you for your business. We really appreciate it. And it’s awesome to be partnering with you and appreciate you joining us today. Yeah. All right. Thanks everyone.
Our Speakers
Karthik Chidambaram
Kendall Ducote
Alec Daniel
Miguel Balparda
Brady Behrman
Alex Deckard
Timothy Diep
Agenda
Our eSession Partners
Organizer
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