Pre-Conference Workshop
Cross-Border Strategies and Tactics
As merchants look to global demand to grow their businesses, cross-border transactions represent a significant market opportunity. But delivering on the promise of a satisfying customer experience can be daunting. And while delivering on customer expectations, you also need to do it profitably.
The shopping habits of consumers around the world are constantly evolving, making it crucial for merchants selling internationally to stay up to date on market changes.
In this workshop you will learn:
- How to build your cross-border shipping strategy
- The best ways to source and vet local fulfillment and delivery partners
- Which marketplaces will help you find your cross-border audience
- How to protect your assets with proper fraud detection
- How to localize the cross-border customer experience
Workshop Leaders
Tim Sailor
Uwe Bald
Norman Katz
Pre-Conference Workshop
Negotiate Like the Pros – Parcel Contract Negotiations to Cut Your Shipping Costs 5%-25%
Does it feel like your carriers have all the leverage and your costs keep going up every year? Are you ready to finally GET A WIN in your next carrier contract negotiation? Don’t miss this workshop, consistently gaining “best-in-conference” evaluations. Led by one of the top consultants in the industry, it will give you valuable information to help you negotiate best-in-class pricing and reduce overall shipping costs 5%-25%. You will walk away from this half-day workshop with an in-depth understanding of parcel contracts terms and how to maximize pricing agreements with your parcel carriers.
Attend and learn how to:
- Gain leverage in your next carrier negotiation using dozens of successful strategies of leading professional consultants
- Identify and modify discount-mitigating language, hidden surcharges and other “gotchas” in your current carrier agreement
- Use parcel invoice data to better understand costs and identify savings opportunities
- Access pricing benchmarking data to compare discounts and terms with your own carrier agreements
- Maximize the use of RFPs and avoid common negotiating mistakes
- Modally optimize your parcel distribution with UPS/FedEx, regional carriers, parcel consolidators and the U.S. Postal Service
We will place particular emphasis on the carrier perspective including corporate objectives, cost drivers and pricing models. We encourage you to register early; seating is limited and this session is expected to sell out!
Workshop Leader
Rob Martinez
Pre-Conference Workshop
Increasing Performance and Profitability in Omnichannel Operations
Multichannel, omnichannel, unified commerce … whatever term we use, this is the new reality. It’s what you need to do to meet your customers’ expectations with the same seamless experience however they shop.
Yet a few years into the revolution, most retailers still struggle to make all the moving pieces of omnichannel sync smoothly, rendering profitability or even a break-even proposition difficult to achieve. This is caused by barriers like siloed data, systems and processes and a lack of real-time, holistic inventory visibility, leading to fulfillment issues that leave customers disappointed.
In this half-day workshop, we will bring together an expert panel of merchant practitioners who will guide you step-by-step through an “omnichannel journey.” It will provide practical insights to help you overcome barriers and increase the performance and profitability of your Omnichannel operations.
In this workshop you will learn:
- How to refine and reimagine your omnichannel strategy to meet rising expectations and market changes
- About the latest technologies, including pros and cons of best-of-breed vs. single platform approaches
- How to enable chain-wide inventory visibility
- How to gain a single view of the customer across channels to better anticipate and serve their needs
- About reimagining the supply chain to optimize product/order flow in an interconnected ecosystem
- Tactical tips and insights (ship to store, ship from store, buy online/pickup in store)
- How to tap vendors and drop shipping to bulk up inventory and decrease risk
- How to ensure orders are delivered to your customers quickly and efficiently
Workshop Leaders
Rhonda Lands
Megah Diehl
Ritch Haag
Tom Retz
Deanna Kaufman
Jim Barnes
Pre-Conference Workshop
Fundamentals of Operations and Fulfillment
Whether you’re someone who’s just starting out in direct-to-customer operations or you’ve been at it a while, this half-day workshop will go over the basics while also providing a review for experienced total operations management. Strategies and tactics in DTC and omnichannel operations will be covered in depth, giving you practical tools to help you deliver superior call center and fulfillment services as a competitive advantage. This workshop will place an emphasis on real-world examples as well as interaction and engagement with attendees.
The bottom line: You’ll come away with actionable ideas to maximize performance and operational efficiency throughout your front-end and back-end operations. This workshop is a must for anyone responsible for executing DTC or omnichannel fulfillment, from supervisors to executives.
In this workshop you will learn:
- How to set up and execute your operations organizational plan
- What delivery service level/speed is right for you and your customers
- How to make the returns process as clear and simple as possible
- How to set customer care expectations and measure the results
- How to establish levels of authority to handle customers more efficiently
- About different upselling approaches and finding ones that work
- Best practices in receiving, vendor management, QC and more
- How to turn your call center into a profit center
- About how pay for performance can reward your top performers AND reduce costs
Workshop Leader
Tim Holody
Pre-Conference Workshop
Creating an Exceptional Customer Experience
It’s been said that customer experience is the new currency in direct-to-consumer business, and that means you need to step up your game across multiple departments to stand out in the eye of the customer.
What does this mean and what does it look like? While the answers will vary across organizations, a couple basics apply universally: Making the cross-channel experience as seamless as possible, engaging with customers how, when and where they prefer; and connecting the dots across all interactions to understand a customer’s true value.
Leading merchant practitioners will share their expertise about their experiences in the trenches, working to align people, processes and technology in pursuit of the universal goal: Consistently delighting customers to win loyalty and drive sales.
In this Pre-Conference Workshop, you will learn how to:
- Communicate with your customer with shipping and delivery notifications
- Create an unboxing experience that your customers will find share-worthy
- Be social with your audience during both good times and bad
- Successfully solicit ratings and reviews that will help grow your customer base and assist with future merchandising
- Empower your call center employees to make things right for your customers
- Use contact center feedback to improve process and procedures across all departments
Workshop Leaders
Debra Ellis
Anglie Stocklin
Steven Waters
David Tull
