>> Live, from Las Vegas.
It's theCUBE, covering Adobe Summit 2019.
Brought to you by Adobe.
>> Hey welcome back everyone, this is CUBE's live coverage
at Adobe Summit here in Las Vegas.
I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with Jeff Frick,
co-host for the next two days' live coverage.
Our next guest is Amber Hameed,
vice-president of Information Systems
at the Dollar Shave Club. Welcome to theCUBE,
thanks for coming on.
>> It's great to be here.
>> So I love your title, we were talking about it
before the camera came on.
It's not, it's Information Systems.
Why is that different, tell us, what about the title.
>> I think, everything from a technology point of view,
there's no such thing as a purest anymore.
I think it's really important to understand
every aspect of the business as a technologist,
to really evolve with the technology itself.
I think, from a role that I play at Dollar Shave Club,
I have the fortune of actually working very closely
with all aspects of our business,
From marketing, to fintech, to data, to technology,
which is what our IT function is,
is essentially embedded and ingrained
within the entire holistic approach to technology.
So it's not isolated anymore.
And when we look at technologists,
we actually look at how they actually interface
with all of the aspects of business processes first.
That's how we actually understand
what the needs of the business are,
to then cater the innovation and the technology to it.
>> So is there a VP of IT, Information Technology?
'Cause IT is kind of a word that people think of
the data center or cloud or buying equipment.
It's a different role right, I mean that's not you.
>> It is, if you look at the Information Systems evolution,
you will see that, more and more systems
are geared towards business needs,
and less and less towards pure-play technology.
So back in the day, you had a CTO role in an organization,
which was focused on infrastructure, networks, technology,
as DevOps is considered to be.
Information Systems is actually focused more
on the business itself, how do we enable marketing,
how do we enable finance, how do we enable
digital technology as a platform.
But not so much as how do we develop a technology platform,
that's part and parcel of what
the business solution proposes,
that drives how the technology operates.
>> So what's old is new is coming back,
Jeff, remember MIS, Management Information Systems?
>> You don't want to remember this John.
(laughing)
>> Data Processing Systems Department.
But if you think about it,
we're doing Management Information Systems
and we're processing a lot of data, kind of just differently,
it's all with cloud now, so it's kind of important.
>> That's exactly right.
So technology's one aspect of bringing information together.
So data is one aspect of it,
business processes is another aspect of it
and your resources, the way your teams are structured,
are part and parcel of the strategy
of any technology platform.
>> Right, well what you're involved in,
the topic of this show, is really not using that
to so much support the business, but to be the business.
And to take it to another level,
to actually not support the product,
but support the experience of the customer with your brand
that happens to be built around some products,
some of which are used for Shaving.
So it's a really different way and I would imagine,
except for actually holding the products in their hands,
99% of the customer engagement
with your Dollar Shave Club is electronic.
>> Well I mean our customer experience
is a very, very unique combination within Dollar Shave Club.
And that makes it even more challenging
as a technologist to be able to cater,
and bring that experience to what we call our members.
So when we talk about a 360-degree approach
from a technology platform point of view,
we're taking into account,
the interaction with the customer
from the time we identify them, who they are,
who are segmented market is,
to the time they actually interact with us in any capacity,
whether that's looking at our content,
whether it's coming to our site,
whether it's looking at our app,
and then actually how we service them once we acquire them.
So there's a big focus, an arm of our customer strategy,
that's focused on the customer experience itself,
once they are acquired, once they become part of the club.
And it's that small community experience,
that we want to give them, that's integral to our brand.
>> You guys have all the elements
of what the CEO of Adobe said on stage,
we move from an old software model we're too slow,
now we're fast, new generation of users,
reimagining the product experience.
You guys did that, that was an innovation.
How do you keep that innovation going
because you're a direct-to-consumer,
but you got a club and a member model,
you've got to constantly be raising the bar
on capabilities and value to your members.
What's the secret sauce how do you guys do that?
>> It's exactly right.
So as I mentioned it's an evolving challenge,
we have to keep our business very, very agile obviously,
'cause our time to market is essential.
How quickly the consumers actually change their minds,
you know, so we have to target them,
we have to be effective in that targeting.
And how quickly do we actually deliver
personalized content to them,
that they can relate to, is integral to it.
When we look at our our technology stack,
we consider ourselves to be, you know,
a cut above the others because we want to be on
the bleeding edge of technology stack no matter what we do.
We have an event-driven architecture.
We invested quite a bit in our data infrastructure.
I happen to be overseeing our data systems platform,
and when I started with the organization,
that was our central focus.
In fact, before we invested in Adobe as a stack,
which is helping us tremendously and drive some of the
360-degree view of customer centralization,
we actually built our entire data architecture first,
in order to make the Adobe products a success.
And it was that architecture and platform,
that then enabled a very successful implementation
of Adobe Audience Manager going forward.
>> How do you do that, because this is one of the things,
that keeps coming up on the themes of every event we cover,
all the different conversations with experts,
people are trying to crack the code
on the data architecture.
I've heard people say it's a moving train, it's really hard.
It is hard, how did you guys pull it off?
Did you take kind of a slow approach?
Was it targeted, was there a methodology to it?
Can you explain?
>> Yeah, so essentially, you know, as you can imagine,
being a consumer driven organization,
we have data coming out from all aspects.
From all of our applications what we call first party data.
We also have what we call second party data,
which is essentially with our external marketers,
information that we are using.
They're using our information to channel,
and we're using all of that channeled information back in,
to then use that and make other strategic decisions.
It was really, really important for us,
to set up an architecture that is the core foundation
of any sort of a data organization that you want to set.
The other big challenge is the resources, as you can imagine
this is a very competitive environment for data resources,
so how do you keep them interested,
how do you bring them to your brand,
to work on your data architecture,
is to make sure that you're providing them,
with them latest and greatest opportunities,
to take advantage of.
So we're actually a big data organization,
we run heavily on an AWS stack.
We have bleeding edge technology stacks,
that actually resources are interested
in getting their their hands into,
and learning and building on their skill sets.
So when you take that ingredient in, the biggest driver is
once you have that architecture set up,
how do you get your organization,
to be as a data-driven organization?
And that is when you start,
to start the adoption process slowly.
You start delivering the insights,
you start bringing your business along
and explaining what those insights look like.
>> I'm just curious, what are some of the KPIs
that you guys take a look at,
that probably a traditional marketer
that graduated from P&G, thirty years ago, you know,
wasn't really thinking about,
that are really fundamentally different than
just simply sales, and revenue,
and profitability, and some of those things.
>> Well I mean, I don't think there's a magic bullet,
but I think they're things,
that are key drivers in our business, obviously,
because we're a subscription model,
we are an industry disruptor there,
and we started out by really looking at what the value is,
that we can bring to our customers.
So when we put them on a subscription model,
it was very important for us to look at,
how much we're spending in the acquisition,
of that customer so our CPA
and what we call the Golden Rule,
and then how are we delivering on those.
And the key KPI there is the LTV the longevity,
which is the lifetime value of a customer.
So we're very proud to have
a pretty substantiated customer base,
these members they've been with us for over six years.
And the way we keep them interested,
is refreshing all of that information
that we're providing to them, in a very personalized way.
>> How much do you think in terms of the information
that they consume to stay engaged with the company,
is the actual, what percentage of the value, you know,
is the actual razor blade, or the actual product
and the use of that versus,
all the kind of ancillary material, the content,
the being part of a club, and there's other things.
I would imagine it's a much higher percentage
on the ladder, than most people think.
>> Exactly right, so our members are,
we get this feedback constantly.
I mean once they get into, usually a large customer base,
we have over three million subscribers of our mail magazine,
which is independent content delivery, from our site.
And when people come and read the magazine,
they automatically, they don't know at first,
that it's part of the Dollar Shave Club umbrella.
But once they get interested and they find out that it is,
they automatically are attracted to the site
and they land on it, so that's one arm
that essentially targets through original content.
The other aspect of it is, once you are a member,
every shipment that you receive,
actually has an original content insert in it.
So the idea is that when you're in the bathroom,
you're enjoying your products,
you're also enjoying something
that refreshes, keeps your mind,
just as healthy as your body.
>> So original content's critical to your strategy?
>> It is, yes.
>> On engagement and then getting that data.
So I got to ask you a question,
this is really an earned media kind of conversation,
in that it used the parlance of the industry.
Earning that trust is hard,
and I see people changing their strategies
from the old way of thinking of communities,
forum software, login be locked in to me being more open.
Communities' a hard nut to crack these days.
You got to earn it, you know, you can't buy community.
How is the community equation changing?
You guys are doing it really, well what's the formula,
obviously content's one piece.
How would you share, how someone should set up
their community strategy?
>> Well I think it's also a lot of personal interaction.
You know, we have club pros,
that are exclusively dedicated to our members,
and meeting our member needs.
And it's world-class customer service.
And from a technology point of view we have to make sure
that our club pros understand our customers holistically.
They understand how they've previously interacted with us.
They understand what they like.
We also do member surveys and profile reviews,
with our members on a regular basis.
We do what we call social scraping,
so we understand what they're talking about,
when they're talking about in social media, about our brand.
And all of that is part of the technology stack.
So we gather all this information, synthesize it,
and provide it to our club pros.
So when a member calls in,
that information needs to be available to them,
to interact properly and adequately.
>> So it's intimacy involved, I can get an alignment.
>> Absolutely yeah, it's hard core customer service,
like right information, at the right time,
in the right hands of our club pros.
>> So he's a trick question for you,
share a best practice in the industry.
>> I think the idea of best practices,
is sort of kind of on its way out.
I think it's what we call evolving practices.
I think that the cornerstone of every team,
every culture, every company,
is how you're learning constantly from the experiences,
that you're having with your customers.
And you bring a notion and it quickly goes out the door,
based on feedback that you've received from your customers,
or an interaction you've had.
So you have to constantly keep on evolving
on what are true and tested best practices.
>> And that begs a question then that,
if there's best practices used to be a term,
like boiler plate, standards, when you have personalization,
that's at the micro targeted level, personalization,
that's the best practice, but it's not a practice
it's unique to everybody.
>> That's true and I think it's sort of,
kind of a standing ground, it's a foundation.
It gives you somewhere to start,
but I think it would be you'd be hard-pressed,
to say that that, is going to be
the continuation of your experience.
I think it's going to change and evolve drastically,
especially in a world that we live in,
which is highly digitized.
Customer experiences and their attention span is so limited,
that you cannot give them stale best practices,
you have to keep changing.
>> So the other really key piece is the subscription piece.
A, it's cool that it's a club right,
it's not just a subscription you're part of the club,
but subscriptions are such a powerful tool,
to force you to continue to think about value,
continue to deliver value, to continue to innovate,
because you're taking money every month
and there's an there's an option for them
to opt out every month.
I wonder, how hard is that, to kind of get into people's heads
that have not worked in that way, you know,
I've worked in a product, we ship a new product once a year,
we send it out, you know,
okay we're working on the next PRD and MRD.
Versus, you guys are almost more like a video game.
Let's talk about video games,
because a competitor will come out with a feature,
suddenly, tomorrow and you're like, ah stop everything.
Now we need to, you know, we need to feature match that.
So it's a very different kind of
development cycle as you said, you've got to move.
>> Yeah exactly right.
So there's different things that we deliver
with every interaction with our customers.
So one of the key ingredients is,
is obviously we have an evolving brand
and the content, a physical product of our brand.
We recently launched groundskeeper,
which is our deodorant brand,
and essentially we want to make sure, that the idea is that,
our consumers never actually have to leave their house.
So the idea is to provide cheaper products, right,
that a good quality, effective
and they are delivered to your door.
The idea of convenience is never outdated,
never goes out of practice.
But to your point, it's important to continue to listen
to what your customers are asking for.
So if they're asking, if they're bald,
you don't want to continue to market Boogie's products,
which is our hair care product to them.
But if they're shaving their heads we want to,
you know, evolve on our razors
to be able to give them that flexibility
so they have a holistic approach.
>> Get that data flywheel going,
see if the feedback loop coming in, lot of touch points.
I got to ask the question around your success in innovation,
which is awesome, congratulations.
>> Thank you.
>> There are a lot of people out there trying to get
to kind of where you're at,
maybe at the beginning of their journey,
let's just say you have an innovative marketer out there
or an IT, I mean a Information Systems person who says,
we have a lot of members but we don't have a membership.
We have a network, we have people, we're different content,
we're great at original content.
They have the piece parts,
but now everything's not pulled together.
What's your advice to that person watching,
because you start to see people start to develop
original content as an earned media strategy,
they have open network effective content flowing.
They might have members, do they do a membership?
What's the playbook?
>> Well I think the concept at the base of it all is,
how do we, we need to stay very true to our mission.
And I think that's the focal point,
that sort of brings everything together.
We never diverge too far away from that,
is for men to really be able to take care of
their minds and their bodies.
So the area where we focus in on a lot,
is that we can't just bombard you,
with products, after products, after products.
We have to be able to cater to your needs specifically.
So when we're listening in to people
and what they're talking about
in their own personal grooming, personal care needs,
we're also going out there and finding information
and content to constantly allow them,
to hear in on what their questions are all about.
What their needs are on a daily basis.
How do men interact with grooming products in general,
when they go into a retail brick-and-mortar environment,
versus when they are online.
So all of that is the core ingredient that when we are
actually positioning our technology around it.
When it comes to innovation,
my personal approach to innovation is,
the people that are working for you in your organization,
whether they're marketers, whether they're technologists,
it's very, very important to keep them intrigued.
So I personally have introduced
what we call an innovation plan.
And what that does,
is as part of our roadmap delivery for technology,
I allow my team members to think about,
what they would want to do in the next phase
of what they want to to deliver,
outside of what they do everyday as their main job.
That gets their creativity going
and it adds a lot of value to the brand itself.
>> And it's great for retention,
'cause innovative people want to solve hard problems,
they want to work with other innovative people.
So you got to kind of keep that going,
you know, so the company wins.
>> Exactly, and the company is very approachable
when it comes to lunch-and-learn opportunities
and essentially learning days.
So you keep your resources,
and your team's really, really invigorated
and working on core things,
that are important to the business.
>> Amber, thank you so much for coming on,
and sharing these amazing insights.
>> Thank you, I appreciate it.
>> I'll give you the final word, just a final parting word.
Share an experience of something,
that you've learned over your journey, as VP of Information.
Something that you, maybe some scar tissue,
something that was a bump in the road, that,
a failure that you overcame and you grew from.
>> I think as is as a female technologist,
I think I would say, and I would encourage
most women out there is that it's really important
to focus on your personal brand.
It's really important to understand what you stand for,
what your message is and one of the things
that I have learned is that takes a village,
it takes a community of people,
to really help you grow and really staying strong
and connected to your resources,
whether they are working with you directly,
whether they're reporting to you,
you learn constantly from them.
And just to be open and approachable,
and be able to be open to learning,
and then evolving as you grow.
>> Amber thank you for sharing. >> Great advice.
>> Thank you so much.
>> It's theCUBE live coverage here in Las Vegas,
for Adobe Summit 2019.
I'm John Furrier with Jeff Frick, stay with us.
After this short break we'll be right back.
(upbeat music)