Business Success Depends on Knowing Your Numbers with Allen Williams from Heartland Retail

It's time for episode number 281 with Heartland, formerly Springboard Retail. And if you guys like data and if you like the numbers, we're going to talk about all of them and how to process them in your boutique. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. As we get ready to launch our 2021 Boutique Boss Planner. You hear me talk a lot about one of the most important things we can do every week to be productive and be profitable is to really have a date with our numbers. And that's why the planner becomes so important, because it's meshing not just the to do list side and the creative side of our brain, but really the financial side of our brain as well. So today on the podcast, I want to talk about the numbers and specifically where to find them. We're going to dive into a conversation with Heartland, formerly Springboard Retail, and my friend Alan about where the numbers come from in our business and how to help them make you more creative and more profitable. Because every retailer has two sides of their brain. They have the art side of their brain, which is the creative, and the social media and the buying. And then there's the science side of our brain, which is the numbers and the analytics. But what we all have to understand is that it's the science side of our brain that can help the creative side find even more creativity. Because only when we understand the numbers can we allow the artistic side of our brain to really be creative in a way that drives profit. So today, let's talk about your reports, let's talk about the numbers, and let's talk about how to make you more profitable. Get ready to meet my friend Alan Williams from Heartland, formerly Springboard Retail. And we're talking all about the data. Hey, guys, welcome back to the podcast. And if you want to talk about data and technology and all the things related to your retail business today, this is going to be a really good episode for you, because I think so many times, you know, when it comes to growing the business, we talk about the things that are more external, social media, knowing your customers, buying, all the pretty things that you see others in the industry doing to succeed. But really, in my opinion, what makes a successful retailer isn't what you see on the outside, but it's what happens on the inside and what you're doing on a daily basis with data and technology. So today I'm really, really excited to have Alan Williams join me from Springboard Retail. Awesome member of the Boutique hub helps tons of our members on a regular basis. So Alan, thanks for joining the podcast.

Hey Ashley, thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here.

Awesome. Well, you know, I know your company has gone through a number of changes. I mean 2020 has been one big change as but you guys had a couple other things happening. So I'm really excited to just to tell the story of the evolution of Springboard and what it is today. So I'll toss it to you and let us hear the throwback of how things got started.

Yeah, it's really so true that 2020 has been a wild year for everybody. But even for me personally, beyond the global pandemic that we're in, our company was acquired. So Springboard was acquired in February by Heartland and right before really everything in the United States took off with COVID So we kind of snuck that in there before the world changed. And it was a culmination of several years. Originally what started as me working at a retailer in college actually and working for this retailer, we, you know, basically created Springboard from within a retail environment. And then earlier this year, you know, it's now known as Heartland Retail, but it was, we sold the company to Heartland and it, you know, capped really an incredible run of starting a company from scratch and building it into something. And so yeah, very, very interesting.

So talk to us about both companies in case anyone wasn't familiar with Springboard and who Springboard was. And now introduce us to Heartland for everyone who has not yet met Heartland.

Sure. So Springboard was a retail management platform built from retail. So our co founder owned a chain of women's clothing stores and a successful E commerce website. And back when he started that company and was running the retail company, we had trouble with the systems that were commercially available. They weren't Omnichannel, our co founder was very early to E Commerce. He opened his first E Commerce website in 2001 which was very well ahead of that being a popular thing to do. And the systems at that time were not supportive of Omni Channel at all really. And there were lots of other problems. Reporting was bad inventory control, wasn't real time across stores. So he was a multi store operator, you Wanted to sell across stores, couldn't do that easily. So that was really the genesis of Springboard was from within this retail company not being satisfied with the commercially available software and deciding to. And that's kind of like the classic entrepreneur story probably everywhere, right? Is you solve a problem that you have. And so Springboard was born out of that. Really built to natively support, multi channel, natively built to be a cloud system, be working across platforms, and obviously coming out of a clothing store, our bread and butter and who were really built to support best is boutiques and clothing stores, fashion. We do more than that, but that's who we're really, really good for. And so Heartland enters the picture. And they are classically known as a payment processor, actually. And really they're. That's when they were started, it was as a payments company. And they're still, I think, reputationally known as a payments company probably more than anything else. But they're pivoting into becoming a technology company. And that strategy is really driven by, I think, what we're seeing across the payments industry of that being commoditized a little bit. And payments are very often now being bundled into other software offerings. So in order to differentiate as a payments company, you really need to be technology first. And they realize that. And so we are part of an effort, a larger effort where they serve both restaurant and retail. And about 18 months ago, they acquired a restaurant solution that is now known as Heartland Restaurant, and they decided to acquire us to become their flagship retail solution. And so that's going to be known as Heartland Retail. And for us at Springboard, what we see that as is a huge validation of what we had done and really a huge investment in the company. So Springboard was bootstrapped. We hadn't ever taken in any external venture funding. There's limits to what you can do as a bootstrap company. There's only so far you can take things. And we were very scrappy and I'm proud of what we did. But to really go to the next level and to get to that level of distribution and scale that I think we wanted to do with the product we had built was to either take on funding or find a strategic acquirer. And that's what we did. And so that's now the path that we're on is really taking Heartland's scale and reach and taking this great product that we're proud of and making it available at a much larger scale.

I love that. I mean, coming from someone who's bootstrapped myself I completely understand that model and, and also someone from inside of the industry. I mean, I hear such great things about Springboard and the tech and the true need for Omnichannel today and the confusion around those who haven't quite figured that out yet. So I think, man, what a great opportunity for you guys and for our industry as well. So let's take it one step further. Ellen. I know a lot of people and you know this in our community use Shopify and they're still figuring out like, okay, I may be on this older point of sale system. I don't understand cloud based software. Like talk to me about kind of an idea setup of how we take our inventory. Say we're managing it in multiple locations and we also want to have an online presence now and get all the data and reporting that comes with it. What does an ideal kind of tech stack look like when you guys are looking at new customers?

Yeah, that's a great question. And Shopify is an amazing company and they got their start as an E commerce platform and that's probably the thing they do best still. And their model has evolved as they've grown, of course, and they've expanded into payments. They're much more aggressively involved in payments now and they're also expanded into point of sale. But their true core competency and what they're best at is as an E commerce platform and they really helped, I think democratize e commerce for most small to medium sized businesses. Prior to them, you really had to pay a lot of money for an enterprise grade e commerce system and it was largely inaccessible for a smaller retailer to deploy E commerce. There were challenges and there were some companies that had bundled it as part of a solution but that weren't very good. But Shopify was the first really good mainstream E commerce platform and I think it's why they've captured so much of that market. Where we come in, we integrate very deeply with Shopify. Our position is that Shopify from a point of sale perspective is not the same caliber as their e commerce product.

Agreed. And we take that stance too at the boutique. Hut too when we're coaching so completely on the same page.

Yeah. So if you're brand, brand new or you're maybe going to a farmer's market under a tent and you just need something to be able to sell things physically card present, I could see maybe starting with them. But if you're really serious and you need things like inventory management and purchase ordering and really good reporting and especially if you have multiple stores, if you have inventory that's moving between stores. It's just not the caliber of system that we think you need to run and grow a business. And our system was purpose built for that for someone who was multi channel and multi store. So I think we see a lot of people, we use the word graduate. You know, people will maybe graduate from Shopify because it is really easy to get into it because Shopify does the whole thing, you know. So it's, we'll see a lot of people on Shopify pos but it's kind of to go to that next level where you get that inventory and purchasing where with Shopify you need to solve that with external apps, you know, cross store ordering. But still you get that deep connection to E commerce where we're just going to be a step up. And I think, can I help take you from, you know, one store to multi store and even if you're still one store from you know, maybe a 200k store to a 500k store to a million store, you know, it's just you need more horsepower than I think you're going to get with Shopify.

Yeah, I love that. And I think that's something not many stores recognize. Like there's a difference in getting on E Comm or having a point of sale, like having the tool but then really maximizing the tool and going from, you know, just a retailer or a boutique owner to a real retail scientist and understanding the data and having the excess of reports available, I mean that's like next level, right? There's only so much you can do without the numbers to support you. So talk to me about this. Let's say you've got springboard, fully integrated, you're still on Shopify for E Comm but at least you've got some numbers now running through all of your inventory management. How do I sit down as a retailer on a weekly basis and run the right reports that are going to give me the information that I need to grow my business.

Yeah, this is, you know, and it's hard to even know where to start there because there's so much, you know, with integrated E commerce and reporting that that's important. One of the things I would say that is that's a huge opportunity that we see. There's a lot of people that run, you know, that are maybe multi store and run Shopify separately to their retail system and they have a lot of inventory sitting in stores that they're not making available to sell online or they maybe have. And there's. You don't have to be multi store to have that problem. There's plenty of single store operators that maybe have a pool of inventory that feeds e commerce and a separate pool of inventory that feeds the store. And one of the biggest ways you can start selling more online is maximizing that inventory and making it available to sell in both directions. You know, having the website serve up the store inventory and vice versa really moves the needle for people. So I know that wasn't that, that's not exactly a report, but it's really like I guess back into reporting you demand planning is a big part of it. And understanding if you are pulling from the we from your store pool of inventory, understanding the demand flows from both channels from E commerce and from the web is critical and it's optimizing your inventory plan. So we actually, we have another mutual partner in management, one that's an open to buy planning company that works with a lot of our customers. And knowing how much inventory you have and really understanding that is like step one, I think. How much do I have on hand? A lot of our, a lot of customers will go out and start ordering without either realizing how much inventory they have on hand or how much inventory they already have on order, you know, which means these are orders that I've already placed with a vendor that are out there that I'm waiting on that product that I'm paying for. I've either already paid for it or I'm soon going to be paying for it. And if you're not accounting for that when you're placing new orders, you're really, you're operating blind to a certain extent. And, and you can get yourself into trouble if you have too much inventory. Because what happens is when you have, if you've overbought and you have 100 pairs of jeans and you're only going to sell 20 of them in a certain period of time, you end up having to mark it down. You don't make any money. You're holding all of this expense. Everyone says inventory is an asset, but it's really an expense at the end of the day. And if you're holding too much of it, you can get into trouble. I've been rambling a little bit, but does that make sense as a first start there?

Yeah, I think that's a really good first start. And just to clarify too, if you're on Shopify right now and you're like, but I can see my inventory in Shopify, the truth is you can see your inventory today, but there's no look back. I mean, there's really not a great way to get an accurate set of inventory for a specific period of time. So you can start to do that planning forward and that open to buy planning is so critical. You're absolutely right. So I do think that's a really good first step, Alan. Good place to start.

And that's a great call out too, with not just the. It's a multi dimensional thing. So, yes, you might be able to get what you have in your inventory right now, but I do know you need like a third party piece of technology to plug in to do the purchase ordering. And that's the key thing is just knowing what you have on hand plus what you have on order. And the other thing that you get with us that you can't get no matter how hard you try in that ecosystem, is historical inventory values. So from the moment you start using Heartland Retail, the historical inventory, we're capturing that. So just to go back to the jeans or the denim example, you can run a report in our system that says, okay, if I look back To June of 2019, how much did I have on hand in this particular vendor or this particular category or class of merchandise? And you can overlay that on selling trends that you saw last year and this year and understand, okay, I had a similar inventory position last year to what I have today. But sales, to be honest, right now, in this point in time, they're lighter because of COVID Right. So if you're probably overbought, if you have the same inventory position that you have in 2020 as you did in 2019, that's an opportunity to trim just because you're not going to see. So if you adjust based on historical data and current trends and what you've already committed to on purchase order, you can navigate maybe a leaner moment in time. Here you can navigate that effectively. But if you aren't using that data, you can just get yourself into a little bit of trouble.

Absolutely. So let's talk about next step. We've talked about managing or understanding inventory on hand at any historical point open to buy. What else do you suggest? Like, where's another good starting place? We'll kind of start from beginner to advanced on. I want to sit down. I'm going to make it financial Friday or whatever it's going to be. Where do I start looking each week?

So I think there's opportunities in several directions to help move the needle, you know, one or another one, I guess to kind of cap off the inventory reporting we were talking about would be around your vendors. So a thing that we can help you do really well is actually create it, like a vendor scorecard or a vendor performance report. And, you know, a lot of boutique owners and operators, and we were definitely, you know, guilty of this back in the retail days. You kind of have a gut for what you think is doing well. And that gut doesn't always line up with reality. So, like this vendor, for example, it's one of our best vendors. Her stuff always sells really well. We're going to keep buying it. But what happens is sometimes maybe sales start to slip, and maybe margin starts to slip too. Like, costs go up and sales go down, and then all of a sudden, the vendor that you think is an all star is underperforming. And so we have a lot of customers that use our reporting to identify that, because you can really just call it up and find it very quickly and start to hold some vendors accountable for things that they're seeing and maybe that, you know, on the next buy, for example, you say, listen, you know, I'm looking at last year versus this year. Margin's fallen. You know, the price points going up. You can give your vendors feedback about what you're seeing, and maybe you get a discount off of your next buy, for example. So that's a huge opportunity, for sure.

And that's so good. I mean, vendors need that information too. Like, they want to understand because obviously, if it's not working for you, it's not working for others. And so their sales are falling at the same time, and they don't know why unless you share it with them. But it's so easy. You know, when you go to market, you're like, gosh, I just. I'm gonna go shop with Cindy over there who feeds me margaritas all day long because it's fun. But until you really have a vendor scorecard, you don't know otherwise. So really great feedback.

And like, the. I would love this versus the. Does the market love this is the other side of that, you know, like, it's. You're. And everybody is guilty of this. I am, too. Just because I love something doesn't mean it's the same thing. In software development, just because I think a feature or something is important, it doesn't mean that the world does. So you need that data to back up your opinions and assumptions, and you need to go deep where the customers are going to go deep with you at the end of the day.

Perfect. So you talked about. Did you list out everything that's on your vendor Scorecard. Did you say sales return rate?

Yeah, sales return rate, gross margin is a big one. So profitability of what you sold, cost of goods sold, average unit, sold price, even average transaction value, you could do at a vendor level. So monitoring those key metrics and then tracking historical performance and you can actually, if you get really sophisticated, you can start to break that down by category. So you can say, you know, if a vendor provides you many different types of products, like so tops versus dresses versus accessories, for example, if those are all coming from the same vendor, you can actually slice that down a level and see by category because you might have one winning category. They might be great at footwear and they might be horrible at accessories. So you can see at that level if you need to.

Hey guys, you know how much I love talking about knowing your numbers and the importance of great data and inventory management. And so when it comes to point of sale solutions, this is a huge topic here on the podcast and inside of the boutique because your numbers matter. So this week I'm really excited to let you know that this week's podcast was brought to you by a vetted partner of the boutique hub who we've seen in action and we know works. And that's our friends at Springboard. Springboard Retail is now officially known as Heartland Retail. So new name, same great product. And Heartland Retail is more than just a point of sale, but it's actually a full retail management platform with a cloud based point of sale and robust back office tools. Meaning it will integrate with the E commerce solutions and many other things you're working with right now. It includes real time inventory management, best in class custom reporting. Seriously, the reports are endless you guys. Plus purchase orders and receiving tools on the platform, physical counts, advanced coupons and promotions that you can actually report on too. Plus customer dashboards that allow you to collect any type of customer information you can dream of. And best of all, I think this is so cool. Heartland Retail was built by retailers for retailers. So the founders and the developers understand your pain points because they've had those same pain points themselves. When I think of words that members use to describe Heartland Retail, I hear easy to use, intuitive, flexible, customizable, powerful and great reporting. So if you would love more information or to schedule a quick demo and a personalized one on one with one of their retail experts, visit Heartland Retail US backslash BoutiqueHub and thank them for being a partner of the hub and sharing an awesome vetted platform with perks to all of our members. Perfect. So we're looking at that on, I mean, pretty much anyone nowadays. It's not that you're just prepping before market, but you're ordering on a weekly basis. So also something really important to look at. What other reports are you drilling down on a weekly basis?

Yeah. So let's change tack a little bit here and talk about customers. And this is again, this is a huge opportunity with integrated E commerce as well, where in heartland retail you can get the complete view of a customer across channels. You can see their brick and mortar spend and their online spend and a lot of, I think the boutiques and the retailers that are really doing it well right now are taking that customer data and using it to drive marketing so that you're really targeting the right customer and sending them things that are going to be relevant to them. So you can build reports in springboard that show you, or forgive me for saying springboard, I'm going to have to put a dollar in the swear jar every time I say springboard. But you can build reports that show you that customer performance and take a lot of those same metrics that you would look at for vendors, actually. So like look at margin, look at total sales dollars, look at units sold and average units per transaction. And there's, you know, I mentioned driving marketing, the other thing that you can do. And I know this is a little challenging now, but it's, you know, as retail comes back and customers come in store again, we give you what we call a customer dashboard or a clientele in dashboard that you can see in the product while the customer's in the store shopping with you. And if they're a big online spender. Right. Like if 80% of their sales with you are online, the store manager or the owner and the store really might not recognize that person when they walk through the door because they're maybe not a regular in the store, even though they were regular online. So having all of that data in front of you so you can know, wow, this customer actually does spend a lot and the margin's always high and they really like dresses. You can take that data in real time and react to it while the customer's in the store and drive a better experience for that customer when they're in the store. So it's really twofold. It's like taking better care of them while they're there with you and then also taking that data that you have about them and using that to drive segmentation and marketing campaigns to certain groups of customers that spend a certain way buy a certain thing.

Yes. Oh, man. We talked so much during the pandemic about client telling and just segmentation and how important it is to just take that to a whole nother level. And also for anyone listening that also listened to the episode with Dana Spinola, the founder of Fabric. It's about a 50 store franchise of boutiques. She talks a lot about, wow, customer service and how they have this integrated into their point of sale software that they're tracking, like, what great things their team is doing for customer service. Say, you know, sending a free gift or someone's lost a loved one, sending them flowers. Just like the things their staff is doing out of the goodness of their heart. To take customer service to the next level. I mean, exactly what you're saying, Alan, is the way to go about that. Like you've got the tools right there in your point of sale to track all of that information to take clientele and to take customer service to a whole new level, which is going to set you apart, especially in such a crowded boutique world that we're in right now and everyone's trying to survive the pandemic. I mean, that's just really a huge key to this whole scenario we're in today.

That's a great example. And they actually, they do happen to be Springboard or Heartland Retail Customer Stop.

Really?

Yeah, they are.

I had no idea. I just used it as an example, so. Well, that's good to know. Perfect. All right. Any other reports you would suggest on a weekly basis?

So we've covered an inventory side of things, we've talked about customers. I think the last key highlight I would call out would be around selling. And really this is. It feeds into the inventory reporting to a certain extent. But there's. When you're looking at selling data, there's other factors to consider, like merchandising. Where is the item in my store? Do I have a merchandising problem? Do I have a fit problem where I maybe need to go back to the manufacturer or the vendor and say, listen, this shirt looks nice, but it fits weird. So we need to make a change here. So when you look at your selling reporting, we focus on a few metrics, typically at the style level. So if you look at style reporting, for example, and you're looking at things like net sales, you're looking at your sell through rate, which is the percentage of inventory that you sold through in a period of time. That's going to tell you like if you, if you've bought, let's say it's 30 days have gone by since a Shipment of inventory came in. That's a good period of time to look back on and say, okay, I've had this inventory for at least 30 days. I'm only 5% sold through. That's a problem. You know, that means you're gonna like, if that's 30 days, that means you have 20 months of that inventory. Essentially. That's like. So you're either gonna have to mark it down to move it or you have another problem. Like you, like I said, merchandising, maybe it's in a part of the store that isn't seeing enough traffic for whatever reason. So there's things you can look at there. The other thing we did, this goes like way back to the retail days was the. Our co founder and his stores would run these reports at the style level. And he would look for underperforming styles that he invested a lot in. So styles that we had pretty deep on hand, cost in and very low sell through. He would call that report Poorest, Deepest, and you can build this exact report in Heartland retail. And what he would do is actually have. Because the employees would always wear the clothes that you'd sell, he'd take those underperforming styles and actually have the staff wear them. And that would give a little bit of a lift in sales because all of a sudden people are like, oh, what's that shirt you're wearing that's so cute, I want to buy one. It maybe doesn't fully recover that style, but it's a tactic you can use to help move the needle. And if you don't have that data though, to look at, like sell through, you can't get sell through if you don't have historical inventory because you need to know past inventory to be able to calculate it. So just one of those things where you can't really get that level of detail in a lot of other systems.

Is your sell through report. Is that different than an aging report?

So it's very tightly related, actually, because it takes the aging of inventory. And what it does actually is it takes the average inventory that you had on hand over a certain period of time. So it does. So you do want to factor in aging into when you run it. Because if you just bought something and it just arrived yesterday, your sell through is going to be zero. So you want to exclude things that aren't at least a little bit old because you need to give the store time to sell it, so to speak. What sell through does is it takes your average inventory over a period of time. So like on any given day, how much inventory did you have on hand at the style level or maybe at a category level and it tells you the percentage of that that you've sold through. So what is a good sell through rate and what is a not good sell through rate really depends on how like how long the period of time is, you know, and a variety of other factors. A good example actually that our co founder used to use a lot was like for example, take Christmas trees on December 24th. You want to be 99% sold through. And bathing suits, you know, you want to get through before summer ends. You know what I mean? Like there's like that, that's kind of the way to think about it. But you'll know if a style is a dud, if you've had it for a certain period of time and just nothing is moving that you have to react to that.

Absolutely. And to your point you were saying, you know, the first response when we're looking at that report is not, okay, let's take the red pen out and slash the price. But let's ask ourselves some questions first. Why is this not working? Right, so if we're asking our team in the store like what are, what's the response when you try it on, when customers try it on, what are you hearing from them? And then the same on social media. Some items like you just can't demonstrate the value, the fit, the quality through a photo. So get a try on session going, restyle it, reshoot it, repost it, make it look new again. I mean there's so many things that we can do to increase, you know, our level of sell through, increase our turn without marking it down. So I think that's one of the most understated reports, like one of the most important but fewest people run it and really take into consideration before they're making some of those sale prices and adjustments. So I'm glad we talked about that one.

Yeah, that's a great example. And markdowns and trying to avoid them. Markdowns are necessary but sometimes this is that old analogy of like when you have a hammer, sometimes everything looks like a nail. And markdowns can be treated that way sometimes. And they're really, they're, they're kind of the last, that's the last thing you do because you can't really come back from it after you've done it. And there's other things you can try that will preserve margin. You know, like another thing is for a multi store retailer, our co founder, we used to do this back in our retail stores. You know, if one store was selling it really well, sell through was high in one store and it was low in another store. We just, we'd move the inventory, we'd move that from one store to another and instead of marking it down in store B, we'd sell it at full price in store A and move on to another style that was better in store A. So I get that only multi store operators can do that particular thing, but there's just, there's other stuff you can try before you go right to the markdown.

Perfect. So I have a question because I know there's going to be a lot of people listening that are just e commerce stores only. And I don't know why I've never asked you this question before outside of the podcast. We should have asked you this, but do you have or do you supply Heartland? I was gonna say Springboard. I would have put a dollar in the swear jar too. Does Heartland work with just online e commerce stores only or do you have to have a brick and mortar to use the platform?

So it is possible for us to work with an online only store, but I will say that generally you're going to get the most value out of our system if you do have a store just because there's certain things that we're built to do that you're not going to use. And just to be totally brutally honest, I guess I don't want to mislead anybody. We do have customers that are online only because our reporting is fantastic. There's people who really like to just hook up shopify to our reporting and then also some of the inventory management that I mentioned like plugins that in so we can do it and we do do it, but we're not, it's not what we're built for. Just to, just to be honest.

I appreciate that. Yeah, appreciate the honesty. And so I'll then go into my shameless plug of if you ever decide to make a Heartland light version for E commerce only with warehouse management and barcoding. I mean I think there's like a whole sea of retailers that would cheer you on because a lot of them I'm just thinking about like markdowns, for example. Their strategy of markdown is by walking around the warehouse and identifying what they feel has been sitting there for a while. So there's so much opportunity for improvement in these e commerce businesses and there isn't a point of sale or there isn't a platform that has really served them yet because shopify isn't serving them with the level of data that they need.

Well, so for anybody who's listening that feels that way, you should definitely take a look at us because it's. And you're not going to get a high pressure. We'll take care of you and really work with you to find out if that's a fit. But it's really not the level of expense where it's inaccessible to look at it for that purpose. You know what I mean? So it's worth a look. If you're in that camp where you really want better inventory management, you want the reporting that we've been talking about, we can do that without you having point of sale stations. And it's like, like totally worth a look. I think if you're in that spot, perfect.

And I'm sure you'll, you'll hear some feedback on that as well. Question, when someone signs up with Heartland, do you, and I'm sure there's people feeling like, oh my gosh, you're these reports I'm trying to jot notes, I'm going to forget them. Do you have like an onboarding specialist or someone that helps walk through and create some of those customizations and really help everyone get used to the reporting features that are available?

Yeah, absolutely. So it's really important in retail software, I think and the type of software that we do, it's not something that we recommend to be totally self service because there's just, it's complex, there's a lot of moving parts. So we take very good care of our customers. During onboarding there are a few things that we do. One is that in the product a lot of these reports are already baked in actually. So it's easy to get up and running and then just immediately get access to those. The reporting is very customizable though, so you also have an opportunity to work with your onboarding specialist. You'll have a person that is, you know, that is your assigned person on our team that's going to help you get live and you can work with them to get any reports that you need just to make sure those are set up, you know, beyond the ones that are standard that are already included. For example, we also have great, we do group webinars and video content. There's like a, a totally dedicated one hour session on reporting that you can run through, for example, where you'll get a lot of the basics and you're able to just any of that video webinar content we make available to our customers continuously like for all time. So if you have new employees that join and you want to bring them through training, it's actually very easy to just get them ramped up through a lot of those webinars that we run continuously. So it's a combination of things. It's like stuff being built in the product, the video and webinar content I mentioned, and also that one on one specialist who's going to be assigned to your success when you sign up with us and walk you through it.

When you look out across all of your customer base, is there anything you would say that your most successful retailers have in common?

Yeah, so it's one. And I'll kind of tie it to the current moment in time too with, with COVID 19 and how people are reacting and responding to that. I'd say people that were omnichannel were way ahead of the game in March of 2020. And people that were on a cloud system that you could access. We had customers call us kind of in a panic because they didn't have a cloud system. They couldn't even access it remotely and they weren't connected to E Commerce. So they were locked out of their store and not able to use their system. We didn't. I honestly didn't really think that that was going to happen. I didn't expect that. But when you look back at it now, it makes perfect sense why it happened. But so that, that's like a really simple thing. But just if you're, if you're, not, you're not omni, you're not fully in control of where the customer is and how they shop with you. So that's like the number one opportunity that everybody has. If you're listening to this, and I have a feeling that most of your customers are, I think, because you've probably been saying this for years anyway, so. But if you, if you're listening to this and you haven't set up that website yet, it's such an opportunity to just insulate yourself from challenges like we've gone through this year and just give your customers another way to shop with you so that you're not relying on foot traffic going by the door to drive business. You can build a following, you can build marketing. So I'd say people that are connected to E Commerce, that's the number one thing that would differentiate. That's the first line of. I think success versus not as successful is the ability to sell on multiple channels. And then a close second would be digging into the reporting because it's sort of like going to the gym, you have to put time into it and to get the results. You can't just sign up for the gym membership and then not use it.

Absolutely.

So that's the other. The more you put in and invest, I think in yourself and, you know, learning about your business and we're going to help you do that, but you still, there's stuff you have to do, you know, and the more, the more people that invest in that, really understanding inventory or working with a partner and an expert that can help with that, the better they're going to be. So combining those two things, if you're really good at digging into the numbers and optimizing your inventory and like looking at what's selling and knowing your customers, and then you combine that with being omnichannel and being able to sell on multiple channels, you'll be able to weather the storms here.

So helpful. I couldn't agree. Sometimes I feel like I speak that till I'm blue in the face. Like, you have to be online. You have to be online. And some people are like, nah, I'm fine. I've made it this far. But it's so true. I mean, in order to bridge what's happening in the world today, and online doesn't necessarily have to mean a huge e commerce presence. It could be social selling, it could be a number of things. But. But to have multiple sources of revenue, multiple revenue streams is critical to any business. Not retail or not. So completely agree with that. How else did you see through the pandemic? Did you feel like you saw success stories among your customer base of what worked really well for sim stores?

Yeah, it hasn't all been bad, thankfully. I think we were prepared for the worst. Nobody really knew. Everybody in the entire world really is going through something right now that no one has ever gone through before. It's really remarkable. This is just our like generational defining moment here that's happening and we're still in the middle of it, but people are really rising to the occasion and getting creative. And I think that's people that are resilient and that are creative and those are the ones that are really thriving. So things like, I've heard stories of people taking iPads around in their cars with merchandise and just like selling where they can, when they can, on a beach, in a parking lot, doing a socially distanced trunk show. There's so many little stories of that that are, I think, inspiring and examples of how if you have the right technology to support you, you can, you can go out and do things like that. And I think we're helping people in enabling that. And we've just seen, I think, at a higher level, like a business level, we expected, I think, activity to really drop, and it hasn't. And I think the big reason is because there are still a lot of people out there that are on what I would call legacy systems that are not supporting omnichannel, that are not supporting inventory and accessibility on multiple devices. So we've seen a lot of people realize pretty quickly that they needed a more modern solution and they're implementing and they're able to take what they have and maximize it and still put up pretty good numbers. I don't think it helps anybody to say we're still way off from last year. And it's. And that's just, I think, impossible to avoid. But it's come back a lot. And I think the people, like I said, that are getting creative and really working with what they have and are the ones that are doing well.

Absolutely. All right, in your final thoughts. Thank you, by the way, for all of this. I think everyone's probably got a ton of notes as we're listening, talking about all the reports and data and all the opportunity that's out there. I'd love to know, kind of in your parting thoughts, Alan, about the future of retail. Where do we go from here? What are you most excited about as, like, this huge shift is upon us and our entire industry?

Yeah. So the big thing, and you know, we've been saying it so just to crystallize it, is that, you know, E commerce is now. My view was that it was already mainstream, but from just a total, as a total percentage of retail, it really wasn't yet. It was still, I think, like, you know, I forget the exact numbers, but it was maybe like, let's just say 15% of total retail revenue was E commerce prior to the pandemic. And that's, you know, that has now just changed forever. People who were not shopping online are now shopping online because they have to. So that really is the. Like, we have a new baseline that we're working from, and. If you're not on board that train, you're just not going to make it, I think is really, at the end of the day, if you're not able to adapt to the new normal and to the new baseline, I just think you'll have. It'll be insurmountable, the challenges that you'll face. So that's the biggest thing is, you know, and it's funny because we actually don't, we don't have an E Commerce product, but we integrate to all the popular ones, you know, so it's. And having a system that allows you to do that, but also, you know, still manage your store well, that's, that's the big gap here to close because there's systems out there that are really built very well to manage stores that don't go online, that people are hanging onto because they're very functionally deep and rich and. And then you have the other group that are on maybe the functionally inferior cloud systems that are, but that are either part of the E commerce systems or that are tightly integrated with them. And I think we're a nice balance in between where we give you that feature depth, but the ability to sell online and really maximize that inventory online. And that's the key is really, from what we see is to. If you're not getting online, you're going to be in trouble.

Absolutely. Alan, one thing I realized as you were speaking that I did not ask you about, and I think it's important to add to the conversation because of Heartland is we really didn't talk about payment processing through this whole conversation either. I mean, kind of important. Kind of important when it comes down to it. So let's jump back to that for a quick second. So through the pandemic, everyone went lean, right? Everyone started to dig into their numbers and figure out where am I spending a lot of money and you can have a lot of money wrapped up in fees in payment processing. Talk to me more about Heartland for those who are not familiar and how to optimize that process as well.

Yeah, so it's, you know, it's been very refreshing since joining Heartland, actually, the approach I find that they take with payment processing, know if I'm talking the company line, you know, the company line here, but like, you know, people. I feel like people get, you know, kind of a defense barrier goes up when you start talking about payments with people, because it's just a very touchy subject. The fees that you pay are very opaque, hard to understand, and people just generally have a negative view of payments. Like it's like one of those necessary evils. I'm really refreshed and, you know, and I didn't really know coming into Heartland when the acquisition happened and what the culture around payments was going to be like. I had heard things and mostly good things, but I wasn't really sure. And I'm very refreshed that they're, you know, for one, they're not mandating that all of our customers use Heartland for processing. That's just one thing that maybe would be a benefit for people to hear they are open to. If you have an existing processor that you're really happy with, that you love. We're not. No one is required to switch. I do think of the other payment providers in the industry that Heartland is really known for being transparent about fees where a lot of other companies are not. And there's also a big thing happening right now where a lot of our competitors and Shopify would be included in this. They just charge a flat percent of revenue for the payment processing. So you might, when you're doing the apples to apples comparison of the software, like, oh, I pay x per month vs y per month on the software. Shopify is cheaper. They're really not because they're taking a significant piece of that revenue and payments. And so we don't do that here. It's a distinct business unit, I guess. Right. So payment processing is separate from the software and it's very transparent how it's priced. It's very competitive and it's fair and they do a great job of supporting our customers. That's the other thing is when you have trouble with a payment terminal, like, they're just. They're very good. So I've been very pleased so far. You know, not coming really from a payments background, coming more from a retail and a software background, you know, culturally. Culturally with how they're handling it for our customers.

Awesome. Well, good to know. And definitely something as we again talked about through the pandemic and managing a lean business. Something to definitely look into. And I think so many times it feels like, oh, this is going to be a big conversation or a long conversation or it's really going to require a lot of work to dig into the numbers. It is worth it. It's a worthwhile conversation to look at what you're paying on all fronts, for sure. Very good.

Absolutely. Yep.

Awesome. Well, Alan, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to get to know you over the last couple of years and get to work with you. We run in the same retail circle, so to speak. And I love everything about the software I hear raving radio inside of our community. So I'm really excited about the new opportunities for both Heartland and for Springboard. And if anyone wants to get ahold of you, we'll put your information inside of the show notes. Or is there any other way you prefer our community to get in touch with you?

No, that sounds great. Yeah, we'll put in the show notes a way to get in touch with me if anyone personally wants to email me. I'm happy to receive those. So my email is just Allen WilliamsHeartland us and we'll put that in the show notes. But and of course you can see our website as well at heartlandretail us and we'll put that in the show notes.

Awesome. Very good. Well, thanks so much for your time today, Alan and thanks everyone listening. I hope you got tons of notes today. Are you a planner snob? I mean really? Like, do you get excited about opening a new planner and the possibility of not writing like a 12 year old boy and keeping yourself organized in ways that I mean like and let's face it, 2020 really didn't allow us to do? I know I am. And I don't know if I'm more excited about the fact that 2020 is almost over or that a new year is going to begin and I'm going to start fresh with new goals and new ideas. Guys, this week we launched the 2021 version of the Boutique Boss Planner and it couldn't come at a better time. Not only are we launching the most beautiful version of the planner, I do not even say that lightly. I'm serious about this. It is the most beautiful version of the planner we've ever launched with a brand new hardcover, brand new tabbing, elastic new resource section and tons more inventory and social media tracking and ideas inside. But also an entire line of paper products we've never done before from notebooks built just for the boutique owner with kitschy sayings on them. Plus tear off sheets to help keep you more productive every single day, a kudos sheet for your team, a daily gratitude list and a productivity four part to do list list. Guys, check it all out. The entire line of new products@boutiquebossplanner.com.