Transcript

00:02.04
Natalija Pavic
All right, welcome in everybody. um So super excited ah for the guests that we have here today. um She’s from Kibo’s product team, super excited to talk about ah some of the advancements on on the products and the releases that we’ve ah we’ve been making there. So without further ado, i’m I’m gonna let her introduce herself. Please go ahead, who are you and and and what do you do?

00:24.21
Madhulika Saxena
Hey, Ty, thanks for having me here. um I’m Mathulika Saxena. I’m the product director at Kibo, and I work on the order management systems and e-commerce solutions here. um Just to add a little bit more to that, um in a significant part of my early experience was in retail planning solutions.

00:41.78
Madhulika Saxena
So it’s really been exciting for me for the past few years to be actually working on the execution side, which is the order management solutions. And happy to be here.

00:50.26
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, that’s exciting. i don’t know if you can see the the sign behind me, but it says I love order routing. Order routing is my favorite. So anybody who could speak OMS, I’m super excited about. ah Before we dive into what we’re here to talk about today, Matalika, we like to start the the conversation with something fun.

01:01.67
Madhulika Saxena
Mm-hmm.

01:06.68
Natalija Pavic
And so I’d kind of like to know what it is that you like to do outside of work for fun.

01:12.47
Madhulika Saxena
ah Actually, im i like cooking. I like eating, so therefore I also like to cook. And I mostly ah focus around dishes. i’m I’m originally from India, so I focus around dishes from the region I come from.

01:25.02
Madhulika Saxena
um Most of them are my mom’s recipes that have been handed down to me, but I also love to experiment with other cuisines. And it’s it’s so exciting at this time. I follow certain chefs, and they’re just blending um textures, spices, of cooking methods from all across the world. So think about harissa potatoes with tahini sauce, with a touch of maple syrup and soy sauce added to it which sounds, it’s very exciting to put together.

01:47.09
Natalija Pavic
Oh, man.

01:50.77
Madhulika Saxena
So it’s it’s really fun experimenting with that.

01:50.88
Natalija Pavic
um um You’re making me hungry already, Montalika. I don’t know if you can tell, but this guy likes to eat, you know, maybe not so much cook, but definitely likes to eat.

01:56.15
Madhulika Saxena
ah

01:59.42
Natalija Pavic
So, all right, let’s let’s jump into a little bit of the product. So um can you tell me about a recent feature that that that you’ve worked on that that that you’re super, super excited about?

02:10.84
Madhulika Saxena
Yeah, actually, there have been so many cool features we released this year. But the one I’m going to focus on, I think, is really critical for ah retailers. And that’s actually the concept of an estimated delivery date, also commonly known as promised date. And what that is, is basically being able to tell the shopper as to when they’re going to receive an item that they’ll but that they’re looking at.

02:31.19
Madhulika Saxena
So let’s just kind of illustrate through an example. um I have a weekend brunch that I’m hosting and my coffee maker got broken. ah When I’m shopping for a coffee maker, I need to know that I can get it in time for the weekend brunch.

02:43.66
Madhulika Saxena
And it doesn’t just apply to immediate needs. Also, I think even couches, furniture makers, even if I’m getting a couch delivered to my house, even if it’s one month later, I need to know that date.

02:54.66
Madhulika Saxena
um Think about back to school shopping. I’m shopping for backpacks. And I need to make sure even if I’m placing the order in advance, I need to know when I can get it. So that’s really, really critical, this feature, um which is pretty much can be presented throughout the shopper journey through the PDP cart and checkout.

03:10.87
Madhulika Saxena
It can be presented for all fulfillment types that the retailer is offering. If they’re offering BOPIS, need to know where the next day or today, can I get it within two hours? If it’s direct ship or delivery, still need to know those dates. So that’s what that feature is all about in a nutshell.

03:25.59
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, that’s all super exciting stuff. I know as a shopper, when I’m on a website, I mean, I really want to know when I’m ah i’m going to get my stuff. I’m excited about it, right? So it’s it’s, hey, how soon can I get that here?

03:35.69
Natalija Pavic
When can I expect it? And, and you know, making sure that that not only we’re presenting that data, but but presenting valid, accurate data, I think is is super important.

03:43.88
Madhulika Saxena
Mm-hmm.

03:45.46
Natalija Pavic
I mean, this may be an obvious question, but but, you know, what is it that we were seeing in the market? Like, really, why did we build this feature?

03:53.91
Madhulika Saxena
Yeah, to me, that’s pretty much, when I look at this, it’s table stakes now. um Having when you can promise the product to the shopper. like It’s no longer enough in the early days, it’s no longer enough to just say that you have inventory and how much of inventory do you have and where is it located if you’re doing BOPIS.

04:11.81
Madhulika Saxena
But it’s really, really important to position as to when the shopper is going to get their product. And from our clients, we are also seeing this demand that they needed they needed this feature. Basically, because it can add to the add to cart rates, like if a shopper can know when they can get the product, they’ll be more likely to add to cart.

04:29.77
Madhulika Saxena
For retailers, it would increase their sales. And then the other thing is the sheer applicability. It pretty much applies across most retail verticals, whether you’re looking at apparel or grocery or home furnishings, beauty, health, anywhere you look at it, you always will need this promise date.

04:46.32
Madhulika Saxena
So that’s one of the big reasons why we built this feature.

04:50.03
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, totally agree. And that’s exciting. It’s exciting that that that this is something that that we have now. um You know, I’m sure there’s a lot of of data that that goes into kind of determining the the dates on this.

05:02.19
Natalija Pavic
um But really, I kind of like to look at it maybe from a retailer’s point of view. So what are some of those key elements that are critical for those retailers to consider ah when they want to display a promised date?

05:13.69
Madhulika Saxena
Yeah, I think the first thing that really comes to mind is it needs to be real time. Like no matter which solution you’re picking, you need to make sure that it’s real time because you’re positioning this on your storefront.

05:24.28
Madhulika Saxena
It cannot be old data. It cannot be historical report based data. Needs to be real time. The second thing really is accuracy. You need to make sure it’s accurate. There’s really no plot point displaying a promise date if it’s not accurate. Like imagine…

05:40.25
Madhulika Saxena
promising a date and then not being able to deliver to it. Early is not so bad, but if you deliver the item to the shopper later, they may not come back to your website. So it’s really important.

05:49.48
Natalija Pavic
Thank you.

05:49.68
Madhulika Saxena
And the other thing is earlier times retailers used to have a range. They wanted to be safe. So they would just give a range, but that’s not enough anymore. Shoppers need to know exactly which date they’re going to get the product. so really, that is one of the critical elements.

06:04.69
Madhulika Saxena
The other um thing that comes in is that the earlier that you can promise the date, the better it is as a shopping experience. Being known to that, even if I don’t need it immediately, it’s if i know i can get it soon it has that immediacy effect that surprise and delight effect that you can get it sooner so while you don’t want to jeopardize getting the wrong promise date in have being able to calculate something that’s accurate and something that can be delivered earlier is better and lastly i think the one thing that’s really important uh is also being able to give your shopper um you know control

06:40.13
Madhulika Saxena
and flexibility and choice. Even as you’re presenting this promised date, ah you may present something that makes, you know, like for standard shipping that would come in five to seven days, but you want to be able to give your shopper flexibility, not only in the in the fulfillment types that they’re picking, but can they get it earlier? Can I get it if I need it immediately? Can I get it in two days? So all these features, they’re really critical in order to make it successful for your for your website.

07:06.91
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, and I think that’s that’s all huge. you know you know You touched on it, you know the the the correct parameters for a promise date, right? Like I’ll always be willing to accept my stuff earlier, ah but you know once it starts running later and if it’s on a consistent basis that way, you know start to lose my trust a little bit on a lot of that stuff. So yeah, I think those are those are very important points.

07:28.66
Natalija Pavic
It leads me though to, you know, delivery date, yeah, this this this is… Such like a great thing. Like you talked about it being kind of table stakes at this point. So, but you know, why now? and And what I mean by why now is, you know, why didn’t we do this earlier? I’m i’ assuming there’s some sort of complexity to the build or or something like that. Like, could you speak to that?

07:51.66
Madhulika Saxena
Yeah, sure. um So if let’s say we imagine a world where I’m a retailer and I only have 10 stores and I carry all my inventory at those stores, In that case, the calculating the promised date would be easy or much easier than what it is. But what is really, I think, what is the most complex part in this? Then there are many other factors that play in.

08:12.69
Madhulika Saxena
But the most complex part is that that’s not reality for most retailers. They have multiple stores.

08:17.78
Natalija Pavic
Thank

08:17.89
Madhulika Saxena
They have warehouses. They have regional DCs, DC stores, and they’re carrying inventory in multiple places. They’re not carrying all inventory in a single place. And so that brings in the concept that you have to transfer inventory from one company location to another.

08:32.41
Madhulika Saxena
And so that’s where it becomes complex. Because now when you’re looking at an item, and if it’s not really at the location that you’re going to ship from, you have to take in the transfer processing line, the transfer time that will come in.

08:43.91
Madhulika Saxena
Not only that, you could be getting multiple transfers. Like if it’s a large quantity, you could be getting multiple transfers of that item. And then you may also want to consolidate. The order, we might be shipping three or four items together. They could be coming in at different times.

08:57.09
Madhulika Saxena
have to consolidate that and send it out. So that, I think, is one of the critical pieces that makes it complex. The second thing really is um processing times have to be like a location. Let’s say for BOPIS, at a certain location, you could process it in six hours.

09:11.87
Madhulika Saxena
Another location, it could be 24 hours. And then you have different processing time for different fulfillment types. that That is still one of the critical factors that has to be factored in. And then the other thing that is ah that has sometimes prevented people from implementing this has been ah retailers typically use multiple carriers. Each of them have different shipping methods.

09:34.22
Madhulika Saxena
Similarly, they might have delivery providers, um which have ah different ah different ah methods and different times. So you have to get those carrier times and delivery times and factor those in and that that final leg, that last mile delivery, when is it really going to reach that shopper? So that makes it complex.

09:52.56
Madhulika Saxena
Other than that, there’s some other factors also that come into play. And one is, um you know, the fulfillment cutoff time. So you may be a retailer that’s not running 24 by seven, you may have

09:59.63
Natalija Pavic
Thank you.

10:03.45
Madhulika Saxena
because you don’t want to pay overtimes and you might have different hours on the weekends. If an um order drops in, if an a person is looking at an item and it’s 8 p.m., ah maybe there’s no one to fulfill it. So you have to decide that, OK, you can actually only start looking at this the next day.

10:20.05
Madhulika Saxena
And then some other features also that they’re not as important, but they all come into play because otherwise, you like I mentioned, it’s really important for it to be accurate. It’s not going to be accurate. Another one is if you’re using future inventory to fulfill an order.

10:32.50
Madhulika Saxena
Now you also have to look at future incoming dates. You’ve got remorse period if a you retailer is using that. And lastly, um you could be carrying ah complex products, like you could be carrying bundles, which is not just one product, but multiple products that make up the bundle.

10:48.43
Madhulika Saxena
So that’s where the complexity comes in. And it all needs to happen in real time to synthesize all these factors together and then present an accurate date that the shopper can rely on.

11:00.82
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, so my assumption was correct. there’s There’s definitely a lot of complexity that’s going into this. The fulfillment cutoff date honestly was something I hadn’t thought of. And so, ah you know, bundle that with everything else, like the future, you know, the future inventory date, like that just, I mean, splitting, consolidation, that’s,

11:18.45
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, there’s a lot going on there for sure. But so when you know when we’re talking about all of this and kind of how it comes together, again, kind of for retailers, do you have any tips or recommendation on how retailers can leverage um the ah delivery date for an optimized customer experience?

11:37.18
Madhulika Saxena
Yeah, so I’m not going to repeat some of the top, what I mentioned, the critical, real-time, accurate, all that needs to be in place. I think you just need those things. But in terms of how you want to use this feature for a retailer, I would say that ah from the product perspective, we want to be able to provide you the tools. And from the business perspective, you have to like take a look at what makes best sense for your business.

12:00.46
Madhulika Saxena
Like if you’re carrying products that have urgency, then you probably want to leverage a date that is of the fastest method that’s going to get it to the shopper earlier but if that is going to eat into your margins then you have to balance that that okay maybe that’s not the date that you want to position you may still want to provide the shopper the option to select the right a date if they want it earlier but you may want to position let’s say standard shipping most shoppers now want free shipping so you definitely don’t want it to eat into your margins so to figure out what works best for your business

12:24.12
Natalija Pavic
Thank you.

12:31.72
Madhulika Saxena
Outside of that, I’ll say there are some other features that you can build, you can use that ah that to enhance this experience. One is you know time windows. You can, along with just the date with delivery, you can say, OK, I want to pick up between 1 and 3 p.m. or 5 to 7 p.m. Give your shoppers that choice.

12:50.13
Madhulika Saxena
Or you can leverage um order by date um that comes out of the box with this feature and say and which creates that sense of urgency and call to action, order by this date in order to get it by then. So those are some of the features that leery retailers can leverage.

13:04.76
Madhulika Saxena
But the end of the day, it really is that what makes sense for their business. And what we want to provide from Kibo is essentially a solution that will give you that flexibility to tune it to your business.

13:17.10
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s all great information and and very relevant to, to you know the delivery date, you know, kind of putting that all together and and and kind of understanding how that all works.

13:29.27
Natalija Pavic
You know, one of the you know very popular topics, especially right now is AI. and And it seems like I’m asking this question all the time. So of course, I’m going to ask it to you as well, especially when it comes to these new ah features and releases that we’re doing. But are we planning to add AI to generate the the delivery dates at some point?

13:48.46
Madhulika Saxena
Yes, absolutely. That would be really the next step that we would be looking at Because while I talked about a number of factors that come into play, that that’s probably not all those factors. But then you can get, you can really make it far more powerful and far more granular. You can get more historical data and real-time data.

14:07.08
Madhulika Saxena
use machine learning models and come up with even better accuracy, accuracy even better granularity.

14:09.75
Natalija Pavic
Thank you.

14:12.78
Madhulika Saxena
I’ll just take an example. You could be using last mile delivery, but then you can build in maybe traffic patterns at a certain point in the day and then make your delivery far more accurate, maybe bring it down to closer to the hour.

14:27.45
Madhulika Saxena
um Maybe that’s an extreme, but I think that is something that would be useful and definitely be the next step for this feature.

14:34.51
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, absolutely. And that would be really cool if we can start real timing some data in like that, looking at traffic patterns or is there an accident or a road closure or something like that to start to generate that would be obviously hugely helpful to to the customer, but but the retailer as well as well.

14:44.46
Madhulika Saxena
Mm-hmm.

14:51.44
Natalija Pavic
So um So yeah, that’s that’s that sounds like exciting stuff. Honestly, the entire ah you know promise date, you know delivery date ah feature sounds sounds super, super interesting. And I’m so glad that that that we’re including that um you know within Kibo now.

15:09.84
Natalija Pavic
um um Thank you for coming on and talking about this today, Modalika. I’m going to follow up with one more kind of fun question. We started with a fun one. We’ll end with a fun one. And it’s one I like to ask a lot, but I’m going to do a little twist for you on this one.

15:24.26
Natalija Pavic
So what’s a recent online purchase that you’ve done? and did EDD have an impact on that purchase decision?

15:32.48
Madhulika Saxena
Yeah, surprisingly enough, this was fairly recent. I was invited to a wedding. And as usual, I procrastinated on ordering shoes or sandals that I needed. and um And soon it was the weekend just before the wedding. And I went to, I have a favorite retailer where shop for shoes.

15:47.91
Madhulika Saxena
But unfortunately, I found my size, ah found the right sandal. And then ah the only option they gave me was standard shipping. There was no way I could expedite it. And I knew that would be too late.

16:00.48
Madhulika Saxena
Found the same shoe at another retailer and I got it in two days. So that’s where, you know, I could really see that in action that, you know, they lost that sale at that point, just because they didn’t give me, they had an, they had an EDD, but they didn’t give me the option to change it.

16:17.50
Natalija Pavic
Yeah. And now we’re demonstrating how important all of that is. That’s that’s a great example and a great story, Matalika. ah Thanks again so much for for coming on the podcast today and and talking a little bit about it EDD. I think it helps to to kind of understand that. so so thank you so much for being here today, Matalika.

16:35.07
Natalija Pavic
All right.

16:35.57
Madhulika Saxena
Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

16:37.39
Natalija Pavic
Thank you so much. And all right, everybody, that’s it for today. We’ll see you next time.

16:41.89
Madhulika Saxena
Thank you. Take care.