Podcast
From Manual to Modern: Driving Efficiency with Smart Rules
About the Guest
Rutvee Shah is the Director of Product at Kibo. She has spent the past nine years driving innovation across the company’s eCommerce and Order Management solutions. She currently focuses on — Cart, Order, Payment, Subscriptions, and B2B. We discuss rules management and it’s benefits, applications, and the plan to evolve it further with AI. Hope you enjoy the interview.
Rutvee Shah, Director of Product at KIBO, discusses the exciting new rules management feature recently launched for KIBO’s order management platform. She emphasizes that this feature provides clients with enhanced control and agility, allowing them to define, configure, and enforce business logic without needing engineering changes. This means businesses can automate decisions, adapt quickly, and align with changing customer expectations more effectively.
The initial rollout of rules management focuses on three high-impact areas: customer return policy rules, safety stock management, and B2B purchase limits. Rutvee provides real-world scenarios for each. For instance, a fashion retailer can set stricter 30-day return windows for clearance items while offering VIP customers a more lenient 60-day window. An inventory planner can establish minimum stock thresholds for high-demand items or specific locations, even adjusting dynamically for seasonality. For wholesale account managers, the feature helps prevent large resellers from over-purchasing popular items or exceeding contractual limits.
Show Highlights:
Transcript
Ty Sweet
Welcome into the show, everybody. i’ve I’ve got a special guest today from Kibo’s product team. i’m Really excited to get her in and get some insights ah onto what Kibo’s talking about. So I’m going to let you introduce yourself, give you some give some back give us some background about yourself.
00:18.50
Ty Sweet
ah Let us learn more about who you are.
00:22.42
Rutvee Shah
Hello, I’m Rutvisha, Director of Product. I am very excited to be here and looking forward to sharing some of the stories and insights with you today. About myself, at Keevo, it has been an exciting nine-year long ride of solving real-world business problems.
00:42.72
Rutvee Shah
Currently, I work across some really impactful parts of e-commerce as well as order management. I help shape how customers shop and how business is run behind the scenes.
00:54.51
Rutvee Shah
Thank you.
00:54.68
Ty Sweet
Awesome. Yeah, that’s fantastic, Ruby. We, you know, we obviously know you pretty well. We work pretty closely with you on the product marketing side. we know how ah busy you stay, but all the exciting things that that you work on, which we’re going to touch on here momentarily. But what we like to do when we open the show is just do a quick icebreaker, quick icebreaker question to kind of get to know you a little bit better outside of the professional setting.
01:17.61
Ty Sweet
So what is a special talent or skill that you have that not a lot of people are aware of?
01:24.73
Rutvee Shah
Actually, that’s one of my favorite questions. Without even hearing rest of your questions, I will say that. yes I am passionate about singing. um If I were to leave my current job or the industry I am in, that’s what I would be doing.
01:43.51
Ty Sweet
Wow, that’s fantastic. I’m gonna assume the answer to this is no, but are we gonna get a little bit of Ruby singing today?
01:51.33
Rutvee Shah
I will pass on that for today.
01:52.77
Ty Sweet
ah that’s That’s what I figured. That’s what I, listen, I wouldn’t sing either. And I enjoy it as well, but it’s typically for for myself in the shower, and I think most people appreciate it that way. So let’s jump in.
02:02.50
Rutvee Shah
i then I tell you, if I sing right now, then everybody will like, keep singing. We don’t need to talk about that.
02:07.55
Ty Sweet
Yeah, see, and then we spend the rest of the time doing that wouldn’t talk about product.
02:11.44
Rutvee Shah
Right?
02:11.55
Ty Sweet
That’s very shrewd. Very shrewd, Ruby. I see what you’re doing there. Again, you’re integral to the product team, obviously, and and a lot of things that you guys are working on. You’re working on a lot of stuff.
02:22.57
Ty Sweet
It’s insane the amount of product that you guys are pushing out these days, ah but it’s very, very interesting and very critical to the success of Kibo moving forward. Tell me about ah the latest release you’ve worked on that that you’re the most passionate about.
02:37.46
Rutvee Shah
I am most excited about rules management. um ah We just went live recently. ah It is a very big step forward for Kibo in giving our clients more control and agility within our order management platform.
02:54.13
Ty Sweet
Awesome. Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen a little bit of that. um Tell me, what is exciting about the release?
03:00.41
Rutvee Shah
Great question. um Let me start with explaining, you know in general, what rules management is. um Talking about rules management, I look at it as the ability to define, configure, and enforce business logic.
03:15.52
Rutvee Shah
and um if you It basically provides businesses with the flexibility to automate decisions, ah adapt quickly, um and align with changing customer expectations.
03:27.29
Rutvee Shah
Now, what makes this release powerful um is that it enables our clients to configure and in enforce operational rules without relying on engineering changes.
03:40.87
Rutvee Shah
And I pause there because I want to highlight that you can do that with no code change. right um For this first rollout, we focused on three high impact areas, um customer rule return rule policies, safety stock management, and the third one is B2B purchase limits.
04:00.88
Rutvee Shah
ah What I absolutely love about this release is that it gives our users the ability to respond to the market dynamics in real time. Whether we talk today about limiting returns on clearance items or reacting to supply chain constraints,
04:19.36
Rutvee Shah
constraints This is a clear example of how smart rules can improve customer experiences all while reducing the manual work or the manual overhead head that the clients have to incur.
04:36.45
Ty Sweet
Yeah, that and I think that’s fantastic. You gave us three different examples of of of the new rules management that that that we’re releasing. um hate to put you on the spot here, but can we kind of cover some different scenarios and examples on each of those?
04:51.14
Rutvee Shah
Absolutely. um So walking you through a few, I’ll walk you through a few real world scenarios that we designed this feature for. Starting with return policy rules, let’s take someone like Jenny, um who manages post-purchase operations, I’m trying to pick an industry, at a mid-size fashion retailer.
05:15.34
Rutvee Shah
She needs to balance the lenient return policies for VIP customers with stricter ones for like her seasonal or clean clearance items. um With a simple UI in Kibo to set up these return policy rules, Jenny can configure multiple rules.
05:32.67
Rutvee Shah
ah Rule number one, seasonal or clear and eye clearance items have a shorter 30-day window to prevent excessive return abuse.
05:34.46
Ty Sweet
Thank you.
05:41.09
Rutvee Shah
um Rule number two would be um all Jenny’s VIP customers can return items within 60 days, and that would be a loyalty benefit to them. If you think about it, this empowers Jenny’s team to reduce abuse and create a very consistent, a very transparent experience for her customers. um Moving on to the next persona, um as an inventory planner who would be using safety stock rules,
06:10.07
Rutvee Shah
um I’ll pick on Carlos here. um Carlos who oversees inventory for global electronics. I recently bought a bunch of ah light bulbs for the house and so electric electronics is on my mind.
06:25.47
Rutvee Shah
um So we’ll go with the global electronics brand. He needs to ensure there is always a buffer stock reserved for high demand items or specific locations. So with safety stock rules in place, Carlos can set minimum stock thresholds per warehouse, ah product specific buffers. Recently, I was um actually this morning, I was reading that the demand for canned chicken has skyrocketed.
06:49.38
Rutvee Shah
so So maybe grocery stores want to maintain a safety stock for that. um ah Third one would be dynamic adjustments based on seasonality or velocity. This keeps the SLAs intact for the companies, um even during the demand spikes.
07:06.07
Rutvee Shah
um Moving on and lastly talking about B2B purchase limits. um Who will we pick? ah Let’s take Melissa. Finally, think about Melissa who manages wholesale customers as a wholesale account manager.
07:21.32
Rutvee Shah
She wants to prevent large resellers from overpurchasing high demand SKUs or buying um quantities beyond their enforced contractual limits.
07:31.92
Rutvee Shah
And contracts are a big thing in B2B, right? So with purchase limit rules, Melissa can enforce maximum quantity per SKU or even category per her customer tier or segment.
07:43.70
Rutvee Shah
um rules She can create rules that are scoped to specific customer groups or customers. And this will help her maintain inventory fairness um while also making sure that she’s supporting the revenue goals that the company has set for the year.
08:02.33
Ty Sweet
That’s great. That’s all great information. I like to say, poor Carlos. We’re always picking on Carlos. He just is always getting picked on. But ah no, that’s all great information. And I think that puts that in in some pretty great perspective. But I think it for me, it brings to mind kind of what is the idea, like what is the impact of these new features?
08:19.64
Ty Sweet
and And what do they allow us to do within Kibo that we weren’t able to do before? And i I apologize, that’s two different questions I’m asking you at the same time.
08:28.13
Rutvee Shah
No worries, I’m glad you asked. um This is one question we were really intentional about addressing with this release. ah What we are doing now as Kibo within our order management platform was not previously possible at this level of granularity or autonomy.
08:46.48
Rutvee Shah
that is a game changer for many of our clients. um The biggest impact is self-service. And touched upon this earlier, operational agility.
08:58.03
Rutvee Shah
i Previously, before this feature, if you had to make changes to business logic, like somebody wants to modify the return policies or enforce purchase limits, that required custom development.
09:21.34
Rutvee Shah
um With rules management capabilities, now our clients can configure these policies on their own. A simple UI that business users can use directly within our platform and configure rules based on product, customer, location, or a combination.
09:39.69
Rutvee Shah
all alright um I look at it as a very scalable way to automate return policies, protect inventory, and prevent B2B order abuse. right In short, you’re we’re basically putting the power in the hands of the business user, which I think is amazing.
09:58.34
Ty Sweet
Yeah, and I would agree. I think that’s amazing as well. and And one of the questions I typically like to ask when we’re talking about new releases like this, especially something that’s it’s kind of brand new to us, is is ah why did we build it?
10:07.21
Rutvee Shah
Mm-hmm.
10:09.52
Ty Sweet
But I think you answered that a little bit with the previous answer. So I’m going to rephrase it a little bit and say, what exactly, what are what were we seeing within the markets that kind of led us down this path to want to move in this direction and build these at this point?
10:25.15
Rutvee Shah
Yeah, I’ll start with our own clients, right? um ah Because we want to make sure that their businesses can run smoothly. And we kept hearing from our customers, um we need to make quick business decisions without waiting for development cycles.
10:42.55
Rutvee Shah
i And the reality is that modern commerce is unpredictable. right So businesses are dealing with constant changes in customer expectations. There is increased pressure to reduce cost and fraud.
10:56.94
Rutvee Shah
So we build a configurable rules engine designed to be intuitive for our business users.
11:02.83
Ty Sweet
Yeah, I think it’s great. And I’m i’m a huge a fan of of being able to do things for business users because I think that’s that’s a big differentiator for us to be able to allow business users to be able to go in and do things on their own.
11:15.91
Ty Sweet
They’re not waiting for for you know IT t or or their tech department to come in and and handle that stuff for them.
11:19.88
Rutvee Shah
For sure. And we are all about for sure.
11:22.55
Ty Sweet
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I totally agree with that, Ruby. I didn’t mean to cut you off there. um I’m going to ask you a hot button issue, though, because or not issue, but a hot button in question, ah because it’s everywhere right now.
11:32.14
Rutvee Shah
Mm-hmm.
11:34.34
Ty Sweet
It’s just something we we’re going to have to ask. Are we are we looking to AI this at some point?
11:40.29
Rutvee Shah
So the roadmap for this is extensive. We will definitely look at AI. We see a future where you don’t have to build every rule manually. ah Instead, you can just tell AI what outcomes you want.
11:52.92
Rutvee Shah
ah For example, hey, help me reduce return of abuse or protect high demand inventory and have it generate the appropriate rules for you. i But additionally,
12:04.82
Rutvee Shah
We are also looking at building more bringing more flexibility by supporting rules for peak waves and other areas in the platform as an immediate action.
12:17.06
Ty Sweet
Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. This is, this has been really enlightening and eyeopening Rupi. really appreciate you coming on today to to to discuss this because I think it’s, it’s very important to to get into some of this rules ah management stuff and and really how it complements ah what business users are doing, the self-service capability and and how it complements other pieces of ah the platform, you know, returns and B2B and the, um,
12:42.38
Ty Sweet
The safety stock, man, it was right there, safety stock.
12:46.60
Rutvee Shah
so
12:46.70
Ty Sweet
So those are all important. And and i’m I’m so glad that you came on today. gonna ask you one final question. And it’ll be as about as serious as the first question I asked you.
12:52.36
Rutvee Shah
Okay.
12:55.43
Ty Sweet
But inquiring minds want to know, and I hope I’m not dating myself by saying that, what is the last thing that you bought online?
12:56.19
Rutvee Shah
Okay.
13:03.51
Rutvee Shah
ah Oh man. I’d have to think about that, but thank you very much. This was an amazing conversation. All great questions. I enjoyed talking with you. So thanks again. um Last thing I bought online. um It’s a self-watering system um because apparently i am still holding on to the dream of being someone who cooks with fresh herbs. So yeah my last ah plant is basil. It’s still sitting on my dining table.
13:31.85
Rutvee Shah
But with I want to do this without the actual responsibility of remembering to water it. So it’s kind of what is that screams I want to thrive, but effortlessly.
13:38.23
Ty Sweet
a
13:42.39
Ty Sweet
i I totally get it. I don’t have plants that are alive. These plants that are behind me on the window seal are fake. So yeah, I don’t have live plants in my place just because I would either over or underwater and it would be it would be an absolute mess. And then I feel bad when when when plants are dying on my watch.
13:58.14
Ty Sweet
ah Thanks again, Root V, for joining us today. That’s it for the show today. Tune in next time and we’ll see you then.
14:06.58
Rutvee Shah
Awesome. Thank you, Dai.