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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
You can check out our daily blog post and signup for our newsletter here https://talk-commerce.com
Brent Peterson (00:02.606)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Shannon Wu -LeBron. She is the vice president of retail industry strategy. Shannon, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day -to -day role and one of your passions in life.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (00:17.003)
Yeah, as you mentioned, I'm the leader of BlueYonder's global retail industry strategy team. Part of my scope here really involves keeping track of and interpreting all of the retail industry trends, challenges, and the market dynamics, and then using that information to inform our product roadmap and investment in supply chain software. And that's what BlueYonder primarily focuses on, supply chain software.
as well as multi -channel e -commerce fulfillment software as well. On a personal level, I have close to 25 years of experience in the retail industry, really covering all of the major functional domain areas. I worked both on a hands -on basis with a major global multi -channel retailer, as well as worked in consulting and also among different software vendors.
One of my main areas focus is digital and e -commerce. I led several of the e -commerce teams in both retail and consumer goods companies doing the day -to -day operational management of websites, mobile apps, as well as various digital channels. Plus, I've also been working as a part of or advising technology solution providers and consulting teams to help retailers and e -commerce companies improve.
and grow their digital business.
Brent Peterson (01:41.582)
Perfect, thank you so much for that. Did you tell us a passion? Was that?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (01:45.799)
No, you mean passion professionally or personally?
Brent Peterson (01:51.31)
Personally, yeah, what's your personal passion?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (01:54.123)
My personal passion, my recent one is travel. I have two young adult sons and I'm starting to do a lot more travel with them. It's a ton of fun. They're very energetic and loves outdoor things. Sometimes it's a little harder for me to keep up with them, but I try my best.
Brent Peterson (02:13.166)
That's great. Yeah, I actually have been doing a little traveling with my adult son and it's been very fun. It's good to, you know, sort of come back and reconnect and have some fun outside. So, all right. So before we get started, you have volunteered to be part of the free joke project. And all I'm going to do is tell you a joke and all you have to do is say, should the joke be free or do you think we should charge for it? So I've got a I've got a I've got a very good one today. Here we go.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (02:25.707)
for sure.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (02:37.355)
Okay, let's hear it. Okay.
Brent Peterson (02:41.294)
Before I die, I'm going to eat a whole bag of unpopped popcorn. That should make the cremation a little more interesting.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (02:50.027)
Okay, and the decision is should that be free or paid? Okay.
Brent Peterson (02:56.654)
Yeah, I like the fact that you gave me that good laugh right after. That was a good indication. Okay, good. That's awesome. Thank you. All right, good. Well, we're starting off well. All right. Yeah, it was a little dark, but yeah. There's a little bit of a kernel in there. Never mind. We'll keep going. All right.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (03:01.771)
Yeah, I'm gonna have to say that's worth some money, Brent. That's the worth of money. That's a good one. I have not heard that one.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (03:12.555)
Yeah, a little morbid, but a good one.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (03:23.307)
I get it, I get it.
Brent Peterson (03:25.198)
All right, so let's talk about Blue Yonder. So I mean, I think one thing that you mentioned earlier in your introduction about having solution integrators or solution, the solution integrators that helped put these things together. And a lot of times in my experience comes from the Adobe Commerce world before that was Magento. And we were a solution integrator for Magento slash Adobe, but we didn't always
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (03:41.707)
Yes.
Brent Peterson (03:55.566)
dive into the whole supply chain. Like our job was only the e -commerce portion, but there was also ERP and there's CRM and there's PIM and there's all the logistics that happened after that. Do you feel as though a lot of times maybe agencies forget about all those other pieces or they let too many agencies come in? Give me your opinion on that.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (04:17.483)
Yeah, I think of it as almost like the front of the house and the back of the house. Traditionally, as you mentioned, there's been a lot of focus and investment in directly customer facing technology components, things like mobile app, e -commerce platforms that power the websites and all that, that has a direct interaction and touch point with the consumer, with the shoppers.
Whereas when we talk about supply chain and a lot of it is also merchandising, right? Supply chain planning, inventory optimization and all that is back of the house. It's to some extent, it's invisible to the consumer. However, throughout the pandemic, all of us were, you know, became very well aware of the disruptions and the potential risk in supply chain and in merchandising with out of stock or...
excessive overstocking of goods and how that impacts what we can get and the assortment and the pricing, et cetera. So I think as we fast track to now, 2024, in the post -pandemic world, there are more and more people thinking that we really need to look at all of this holistically. No matter how beautiful your front end is, if you don't have the product on the shelf, you don't have the product to be fulfilled out of fulfillment center, that's going to be a terrible shopper experience.
Brent Peterson (05:38.798)
Yeah, and I can now say after I did a short fractional role as a CTO in a larger retail company that I have a better picture of that holistic view and how those pieces now fit together where in the past, if you only focused on one part, there's a possibility as a consultant, if you don't take that everything into account that you may lack a area or you may...
miss out on something that's maybe more important than just your front end. What is, like, tell us a little bit about Blue Yonder and how it helps the clients get that supply chain all put together.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (06:12.587)
Yeah, that's right.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (06:22.827)
Yeah, so BlueYonder focuses on supply chain software as well as commerce or just multi -channel retail fulfillment as well. At a high level, how it applies to retail and e -commerce business is roughly two sides. One is on the planning side with merchandising, right? It starts with assortment. The company is deciding what are you going to sell? What is in the whole?
scope of all of the different kinds of product that you wanted to carry. So that's the assortment planning aspect. And if you have physical brick and mortar stores, now more and more companies have that. Even the companies that started out as pure play online only are seeing the value of some kind of physical presence, even if it's pop -up stores or actual physical brick and mortar stores. If you have stores, then you have your space planning and
planning out the shelves with planograms and all of that stuff. That's also part of the planning. As well as your overarching financial goals, at the end of the day, no matter what you sell, you're trying to make money. So what are the margins? What are the anticipated revenues? And from there, you kind of work backwards to figure out, well, if these are the goods I'm going to sell, these are the locations I'm going to sell them at or fulfill them out of these distribution center or fulfillment center.
How much inventory, how much inventory do I need to carry in what quantity, in what locations? How often do I need to replenish the inventory? And if you are a soft line, like a department store, a fashion apparel retailer, most of your products or a lot of your products are very seasonal. They're good for this year because of the fashion trends or what have you. And they may be of little value a year from now because it's very seasonal and trend based.
then you have to figure out how much do I plan on carrying at what price point so that ideally at the end of the season, I will sell everything out with very little leftover and I would have made the maximum amount of revenue and margin on that before I start the next season. So those are all considerations for the planning side. And once you've done that, you start to sending the product into these various locations for sale and you monitor the sales trajectory.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (08:44.491)
and you have your execution half of the supply chain, which is what we traditionally think of as the supply chain. It's the big warehouse, it's the transportation, it's the fleas and the trucks, and it's the last mile deliveries from these different fulfillment centers. And more and more increasingly, we're also seeing a lot of fulfillment coming out of stores. Deliver from store, people go to store for.
pick up or curbside and all of that. So stores are really, really evolving from traditionally just a place where people buy things. Now it's also a show, a place where people get to feel and touch kind of like a showroom, as well as another fulfillment node where water is getting fulfilled. So getting all of that orchestrated and working seamlessly and have the ability to deal with unforeseen disruptions.
whether it's things coming over on the ocean liners, coming from another continent or disruptions domestically through your transportation network or even between your stores and your warehouse, things like that. So have the ability to first have visibility to any disruptions, potentially to be able to forecast or have some kind of look ahead of potential disruption. And then when disruptions happen,
have the agility and capability to be able to deal with them quickly and effectively.
Brent Peterson (10:13.486)
Do you feel as though some of the disruptions, I know we talked about the pandemic disruptions and supply chain disruptions, but the bigger disruptions in the past were Amazon coming in and delivering everything in a day or two. And then you also mentioned that a lot of companies are going back to brick and mortar or digital companies are opening their first brick and mortar store.
Do you think that's a disruption opposite? And I know that Amazon is also experimenting with actual walk -in stores. Does a disruption go both ways?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (10:44.395)
Yeah, I think of that more as the competitive landscape change, right? Obviously, Amazon's been around for quite some time now. Their effect continue to be very, very noticeable in retail. But if you think about more recent entrants like Xi Yan and Tmoo, right? They're putting in huge amount of.
advertising dollars to get consumers to buy from them. And a lot of those goods are directly shipped in small parcel directly from overseas. That's also causing retailers and e -commerce companies to rethink their model. At the end of the day, it's changing how consumers shop and what their expectations are. I think Amazon at one point has set kind of the table stake or the foundational expectation.
where a consumer are used to getting two day delivery and then one day delivery, right? Overnight and same day. I think Ti, Mu and Xi Yan are setting some of those expectations in terms of the price points of products and the assortment. How many different things can you find? And all of that is, I wouldn't necessarily call it disruption, but it's certainly competitive landscape that adding more pressure to the retailers and the e -commerce operators.
Brent Peterson (12:07.15)
Yeah, and I suppose it does add price pressure to a local vendor who's selling something and then somebody goes to Timo and then it gets shipped directly from China, say to the US. How do those, I mean, I know they can compete then with returns and how do you get something back and, you know, there's so many different other aspects to it that maybe consumers aren't aware of. How does...
Tell us a little bit about how that's being positioned in the market by the retailer compared to how the consumer sees it.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (12:42.923)
Yeah, I think as we work in the supply chain area, we see retailers continue to focus on that holistic shopper experience. That's more than now, assortment price are very important elements of it, but there's also brand and trust. And one of the things that we see, for example, is sustainability. Consumers are increasingly more aware and also care about sustainability, especially some of the younger generations and demographic shoppers.
and for retailers to be able to be transparent and showcase what is their position, how do they deal with sustainability issues, and also just visibility. If we talk about grocery retail, for example, we do a huge amount of business with food services and grocery retailers. The ability to show that they have initiatives to minimize food waste.
that's very important that contributes to sustainability, the ability to monitor food safety and things like that. And if we go over to some of the fashion apparel side or hard line like electronics and things like that, again, is being able to trace back to where the material come from, what is the sustainability impact of the material and some of those practice.
Now the tricky part is consumers say that they absolutely care about that, but some of them are also not necessarily willing to pay a premium. So that goes back to the retailer. It might put you in a better competitive position, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you can command a higher margin or higher price.
Brent Peterson (14:25.71)
Yeah, I think traditionally the overseas vendors are at a very, very slim margin with maybe the idea that it wouldn't even get returned and somebody's just going to eat it. And I guess my experience too has been that I've ordered it and maybe it's wrong and they just sent me something new and tell me to keep the other one.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (14:43.691)
Exactly, exactly. So that's another area, right? Returns management to your point. People have been conditioned, shoppers to some extent, been conditioned to just buy, buy, buy. And then if you don't like it, just free return, free to the consumer, not free to the company. Or like you said, a lot of the really low price providers, they would just say, go ahead and keep it. So how do we work together to...
minimize the financial impact of returns and also the environmental impact of returns. Not just packaging, I think a lot of companies have already done work around changing the packaging, maybe consolidating orders in delivery to reduce the carbon footprint. But how do we reduce returns to begin with? It's really a changing mindset for consumers to maybe not buy as much as they possibly can.
Brent Peterson (15:40.238)
You mentioned earlier the one and two day delivery and even if you're in a big enough city, it's same day delivery. If we talk about rural consumers and even Alaska, Hawaii, sometimes it's a seven year, your prime delivery is seven days. And even if you're in very rural parts of the US, they can't deliver it in, they don't deliver it in two days. Is there a big, is there a growing gap between what somebody...
in a rural area should expect from an e -commerce retailer compared to somebody in a big city.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (16:18.891)
Yeah, I think that's probably the case and that will continue to be the case in addition to what you had just mentioned, some of the rural areas in the US, if you think about Canada as a country, right? Even though it's also in North America, but the way that Canada has organized their population concentration, it's a huge country, but majority of the population are in big metropolitan area and vast part of the country is just takes a long time to get to.
I think what we're seeing retailers do is, number one, set the right expectations so consumers in those areas know what they can realistically expect. And the other thing is to leverage the existing transportation network, carrier network. And to that extent, we do a lot of work in transportation management. That's one of the key areas that we work on for supply chain software. And more recently, we're also working more
with other vendors and we have a company where in the process of trying to acquire, right, it's still going through regulatory approval, but we're about to acquire a company, their whole business focuses on network, is the supply chain transportation carrier network and supplier network to be able to allow company not to just utilize their own fleet, but tap into other companies fleets and the carrier network.
to allow them to have better options and better service level to those locations.
Brent Peterson (17:49.902)
Blue Yonder has AI driven supply chain software. Tell us, I mean, I know that's a buzzword nowadays and I'm sure there's been machine learning embedded in that for years. And, you know, I think machine learning has been around a long, long time and now suddenly it's everybody knows about it. Tell us a little bit about how that helps the merchants connect all those dots.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (17:57.803)
Yes.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (18:04.203)
Yes. Yes.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (18:13.931)
Yeah.
Yeah, so again, as you mentioned, AI has been a hot topic for quite some time, especially when chat GPT came out in late 2022. But if we really talk about AI, artificial intelligence, as you mentioned, there's roughly two kinds of AI. The chat GPT kind is the generative AI, right? Gen AI. But in actuality, there's also the predictive AI, also known as machine learning. Those are the models and algorithms.
that really is an advanced form from those traditional statistic models and linear regression type of things. We use a lot of that in our software, in machine learning. And that's primarily dealing with structured data, right? Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allow computer system to automatically improve its performance on the particular task by learning from data.
without explicitly being programmed to do that. And it really involves building sophisticated algorithms that can learn patterns and relationships from data and make predictions and decisions. And most of what we're doing here is focusing on predicting inventory related things and the commerce fulfillment. So one example I'll call out is we have something called a Commerce Machine Learning Service.
And this particular set of services really to help retailers and e -commerce companies answer questions related to inventory availability and order fulfillment before, during, and after a shopper would place an order on the website. And for example, some of the questions that this can answer include, can the water be fulfilled from a particular store or warehouse?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (20:05.163)
Maybe the system says there are three units on hand. Can I trust that availability number? Or if a water is supposed to be fulfilled from a particular store, how long will it take to reach that customer? So we answer these questions through machine learning models and algorithms in a number of aspects. In order to do that, we have to really understand and predict things like stock out, things like dynamic safety stock.
And we look at fill rate, historical fill rate. And we also look at patterns of markdown, as I mentioned about markdown pricing, as well as we have this concept called autonomous delivery date, as well as doing a ton of forecasting related to sales and returns like we talked about. So those are some of the ways that we're leveraging machine learning, which is predictive AI. And then we also starting to build out use cases to help
on the generative AI part mostly is within our own software. Our software is typically used by retail employees in merchandising and supply chain organizations. Their day -to -day work traditionally involves a lot of copy and paste data coordinating with other teams and analyzing the data in a spreadsheet and then moving them into software and getting them out of the software. A lot of that is really not high value.
is coordination, is moving data around. We're using Gen .AI as a way for them to ask questions in a conversational manner and then leveraging the software behind the scenes to be able to answer that so that they can focus their time on truly making business decisions. Should I carry this new variation of a product? What is the best promotion that we can run to maximize revenue and things like that and minimize the...
kind of the moving data back and forth type of work.
Brent Peterson (22:04.718)
And I suppose a good use case for what you're talking about is maybe 10 or 15 years ago, the website would have had the ability to pick from a warehouse and a customer may want three things. Two things are in Oklahoma city and one thing is in Milwaukee. Now we can let them order it and let the system figure out later where the most cost effective way to deliver to that customer.
Would that be a good, maybe a good use case for what we're talking about where before it would have only, it may not even have given the customer the option because they didn't want to split the shipment, but this way it bundles that together.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (22:29.931)
Yes, correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (22:42.539)
Yeah, and also exposing some of this fulfillment options sooner in the shopping journey. For example, a lot of our customers, upon using our water fulfillment modules, they're able to show the number of units available in your closest store versus the closest warehouse. And they can tell you, if you go pick it up in the store, we can have it ready to you in two hours. If you want to deliver it to you, you can get it in two days.
Now that's your choice. But in a way, you might say, you know what? I'll get in the car and go pick it up two hours from now. And guess what? That's actually more profitable for the retailer too. It costs them less comparing to shipping it to you from a warehouse. So in a way, to expose these kind of data and information and options, but to also help nudge the consumer in terms of their behavior.
Brent Peterson (23:36.334)
Yeah, and I think there's an advantage to getting the customer into the store because just like you go to Costco to buy a bag of raisins, you end up spending $700 because you need everything else that you see. There's always an opportunity to get them in front of other things that they can purchase while they're there.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (23:56.683)
Yeah, and similarly for returns, right? One OIL equal is probably advantageous for the customer to return something to the store rather than dropping it off to UPS, you know, return it for free.
Brent Peterson (24:10.222)
The other buzzword that's happened, I hate to say buzzword, but supply chain orchestration has been now an up and coming term, I'll use the word term that people like to use. Tell us about how Blue Yonder solves or does some of that orchestration in terms of supply chains.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (24:31.659)
Yeah, so traditionally supply chain is handled in very siloed matters. And we see this across our customer base as well as the broader retail industry. When we talked about planning and execution, planning are typically done by the merchandising people, the planners. And they historically would look at transaction histories and...
some of the inventory turns and things like that and from last year, last season to inform the future. Whereas execution, people in the warehouse and transportation area or fulfillment centers, they are the one that gets whatever they get, right? They're coming in, they're just trying to receive the goods and manage them within the warehouse. There's not a lot of cross -functional discussion.
whether it's planning or during execution, everybody is optimizing their own functional area. Whether you're planning it out or you're doing replenishment on a weekly or daily basis or you're managing the warehouse, there are a lot of silos. And the technologies themselves are also somewhat siloed. We sell a huge portfolio of various software products. And based on who the buyers are, the buyers that we're positioning different software to them,
and then we work with our own system integration team, our services team, to integrate the system to make them work together. What we're seeing now is this need to bring everyone together, not only the employees and the decision makers, but all the systems and the software together. And that's the idea of orchestration, because planning should not be done in the vacuum without considering the constraint of what a warehouse and transportation team can do.
on the execution side. At the same time, when you're executing on something, you need to be aware of what they have planned out in the future of coming. So that's, I think, the value of orchestration. And the good news is, given the rise of machine learning and even Gen .AI and also data management, we talked about partnering with different companies within the ecosystem. BlueYonder has a very strategic and important partnership with Snowflake.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (26:50.443)
And they specialize in managing all of the data and putting all of different kinds of data and putting them in one place, making it available as one single data cloud. So all of the different functional areas and different kinds of software products can access the single version of that data to be able to not only communicate, but also start to get to that real -time decision -making. That's another important aspect of orchestration.
Brent Peterson (27:18.51)
Some of the SaaS platforms for e -commerce have, I'll say democratized the way merchants have access to both data and they have tools to sell. Are there other things that you see coming that are helping small medium -sized merchants compete with enterprise level merchants and taking generative AI aside, but...
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (27:31.627)
Okay.
Brent Peterson (27:44.014)
Do you feel as though now is the time where we're going to see more democratization among small, medium and enterprise level businesses?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (27:52.971)
Yeah, I think we do. I think with the rise of both gen AI and predictive AI, right, some of these machine learning algorithms, medium size and smaller companies can leverage similar capabilities to data, especially external market data. In addition to just having internal data, they can now also incorporate data like weather events, right, even social media data in their decision making.
and then be able to kind of participate in this broader marketplace utilizing technology to be able to optimize their supply chain as well. And this concept of microservices. So when we talk about, we have all of this capability end to end that covers planning to execution to commerce fulfillment. It doesn't mean that it's all one big.
that you have to plop down a huge amount of capital investment and take three to five years to make it happen. What we're really increasingly to do, and this is a conscious investment decision on our part too, is to architect these things in a way that are microservices, small bite -sized chunks of capabilities that could be leveraged by a variety of companies. And every company have different...
different priorities or different journey in terms of where they think they want to invest and start first. Some of them wants to start from the beginning, from financial planning to demand planning to for cash replenishment. Others are saying, hey, I have a burning platform in the particular area of supply chain. That's where I need to really solve that problem first to give my team and my people some relief. And that's where they start. So as a technology provider,
I think it's our job to give people the options, give company the options, whether they're large or small or in different stages of maturity and where they want to start their investment.
Brent Peterson (29:50.382)
What sort of trends do you see now coming in this coming up holiday season? And everybody should be planning now for their Black Friday. What do you see happening this year that may be a little different than last year?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (30:08.907)
Yeah, I think it's really, I hate to be cliche about this, but it's like to anticipate the unknown, the disruptions. It's here to stay. There's always the unknown. Here in the US market in particular, I think there's a number of macroeconomic and socioeconomic factors at play that makes demand a little bit volatile or unpredictable.
which obviously means how much inventory that retailers and e -commerce companies will plan for the holidays and what people will buy, where they will buy it from, how much they will pay for that. I think it's all kind of hard to predict and let's see what happens. And one thing I will say for sure as a continuing trend even started before the pandemic is the extension of the holiday period.
And I'm sure you've seen this too, right? Traditionally, holiday shopping starts with Black Friday. Now it's like, no, it's in November and it spills into October even. And then we also have additional shopping holidays like the Amazon Prime Day and other days. So it feels like it's becoming not an event, not a once a year kind of shopping event becomes almost a continuous promotional period that could run even.
you know, starting in Q3.
Brent Peterson (31:39.598)
Yeah, the riot in the Walmart store is probably a relic of the past, hopefully.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (31:46.155)
Right. Yeah. Hopefully that means less stampede and things like those crazy things for Black Friday. Right.
Brent Peterson (31:53.198)
How about as we have, we talk a lot about the U S but integrating you either Canada and Mexico into the U S frame, the North American framework of, of, economics. Do you feel as though, and I, I think Canada is sort of already inter intermixed with the U S but Mexico is still not to the level of technology across the entire country, but it, it has a lot of potential. Do you think there's a potential that Mexico?
will be again a neighbor like Canada where the products are similarly priced and there's over border. There's already trading but the economics of Mexico are still a little bit behind.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (32:41.643)
I think so, but we also see pretty robust investment from Mexico as well. And then even beyond Mexico, if you look at the rest of kind of Caribbean, Latin America and South America, which we also do business in, there are still companies that are investing. They're investing more cautiously, which means their expectation of technology vendors and consulting firms are higher. They wanted to see...
a very tangible return on that investment from a business value perspective, whether that's revenue or margins or inventory terms or efficiency gains or with their labor productivity, we have to be a lot more crisp in what are we offering or what is the anticipated return on that investment.
Brent Peterson (33:29.646)
Do you see the enterprise level companies that have the amount of money to spend on their infrastructure that are equal to the US having a large advantage over their competitors within that same region? Let's just say there's a company that's selling across all of South America and they can do that investment like an American company could do. They have a bigger advantage over their competitors because of that.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (33:58.347)
I think so. I think so. Just by virtue of the size and the amount of investment that they can make on the technology.
Brent Peterson (34:05.998)
So we have a few minutes. What do you think is the most important part of the supply chain now that merchants should be looking at to enhance?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (34:24.523)
I would say some of the things that we touched on during our discussion here is really thinking of supply chain in a more holistic way and not just warehouse or transportation or planning. It's all of those elements and how they come together to be the backbone of that optimized shopping experience. And the other thing is we talked about the AI and machine learning.
putting in a billion dollar worth of investment into our product is to make all of our solutions work together on a single platform that utilize a single set of data, data cloud, and making them cognitive, meaning all of the different parts can talk to each other, can exchange data near real time or in real time to be able to inform all of the decision makers to be able to deal with the
the uncertainties and disruptions throughout the supply chain.
Brent Peterson (35:23.598)
Is there education that's still needed from the enterprise level for executives to understand the version of a private machine learning environment or generative AI as opposed to the public one like chat GPT and vice versa where people don't understand that chat GPT is public?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (35:44.395)
Yeah, I think a lot of the executives and decision makers within retail and e -commerce companies, they do understand that now. We have done surveys, and during our survey, we can see that many of them are now very well aware of not only the value of AI, but also what it means to be able to adopt it and
and add business value to their business directly.
Brent Peterson (36:17.55)
Last question, deploying the public and private clouds, do you feel as though more and more companies are going to be deploying these private machine learning models within their organizations to help them to deliver better results as opposed to using some of the public ones?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (36:44.555)
Yeah, I hope so. We're certainly working with a lot of companies to help them understand. As I mentioned, at the end of the day, they're looking for business value, whether they build it themselves or they get enterprise software such as what we have or they partner with somebody. At the end of the day, they're looking for that return on the investment. The quicker the better and bigger the value, the better. Right.
Brent Peterson (37:10.51)
Perfect. Shannon, we have a few minutes left and I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug at the end of the podcast. What would you like to plug today?
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (37:19.659)
I would say encourage all of your listeners to take a look at BlueYonder as a supply chain and commerce fulfillment company. We are going through our own transformation and with a very exciting roadmap. We recently had our company conference called Icon and where we announced our next generation of our supply chain platform. And we've received very positive feedback from our customers and from the
broader supply chain community. So love to get more people to come on board with us and take a look at what we're building for the future.
Brent Peterson (37:56.206)
That's perfect. Thank you so much. Shannon Wu -Lebron is the Vice President of Industry Strategy for Blue Yonder. Thank you so much for being here. Yep.
Shannon Wu-Lebron( Blue Yonder) (38:05.803)
Thank you, Brett. Thank you for having me.