Episode 328: Hit Promo's Amy Rabideau and Jon Norris Are Making Big Changes
7 Nov 2024 · 30 min
In this Skucast episode, host Bobby Lehew interviews Amy Rabideau (Hit VP of Product) and Jon Norris (Hit Chief Strategy Officer) about Hit Promo’s new ConnectedPlus integration and its electronic purchase order (EPO) workflow. They explain how ConnectedPlus creates a unified data language between Commonsku and Hit, delivering real‑time pricing, decoration options, and inventory allocation, which cuts order‑entry communication by 50‑70%, reduces errors, and speeds order throughput by up to two days. The conversation moves to the scale challenges of handling over 5,000 daily decorated orders, the goal of achieving 95‑97% hands‑off processing, and the complexities of ship‑date calculations. The guests then update listeners on Promo Standards, noting a new website, an upcoming 2025 tech summit, and two draft standards—order‑status/shipment‑notification and remittance‑advice—aimed at moving the industry from basic transactional data to actionable workflow resolution. A substantial portion of the episode is devoted to change‑management philosophy. Amy shares that fear of the unknown, job security concerns, and lack of clear communication are the main barriers to technology adoption. She advocates for transparent, multi‑modal communication, listening, and “brutal honesty” about how roles will shift, drawing on Stoic ideas of courage and promptness. Jon adds that timing of communication and avoiding premature exposure to incomplete plans are critical. Both guests warn against over‑customization: just because a system can be tweaked doesn’t mean it should be, as excessive tailoring hampers integration and ROI. They also highlight Hit’s internal culture—deep expertise across functions, a strong sense of community, and collaborative “yes‑culture” that encourages curiosity while setting realistic expectations. Finally, Jon discusses AI’s emerging role in the promotional products space, citing low‑hanging‑fruit search improvements, AI‑assisted PO data processing, and especially dynamic, AI‑generated graphics that personalize marketing assets. Amy mentions her current reading of Ryan Holiday’s Discipline Is Destiny and Jon’s habit of listening to the AI Daily Brief. The episode wraps with promotional plugs for SKUCon and Commonsku.
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Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Commonsku. HitPromo is now a Connected Plus supplier on Commonsku. But what does that mean? A lightning-fast ordering process, securing inventory quicker, and the elimination of order entry errors by you and your team, and a whole lot more. Today we're talking with Amy Rabbidoux, Hit's VP of Product, and John Norris, Chief Strategy Officer at Hit. John, as you might know, is one of the founding thinkers behind the movement to modernize our industry through promo standards. And Amy is helping build even more tech proficiency at Hit. Amy is also an expert in change management. So we not only talk about what the Connected Plus story means for you, our customers, but even if you're not on Kominsky and you're listening because you're curious, Amy has some great advice on helping teams overcome big changes. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Kominsky's Chief Content Officer. We just opened up registration for SKUCon. For over a decade, SKUCon has been the gathering place for the industry's most forward-thinking minds. Each year, speakers are handpicked based on high-impact topics and current trends. Now, if you want to kick off your year with a healthy dose of optimism and inspiration, come learn how to be brilliant at a moment's notice with creative coach Todd Henry. He's the author of the bestselling book, The Accidental Creative. Join us to hear one of the fastest-rising experts on the economy, Kyla Scanlon. She's the author of the book In This Economy. And don't miss our amazing closing keynote, Ben Higgins from The Bachelor fame, as he shares how to build a generous business and how they are doing it through Generous Coffee. And of course, Industry know-how from the pros who do it best on topics from mergers and acquisitions to AI and more. SKUCon is held on Sunday, January 12th, or the day before the PPAI Expo. It's a perfect time for you and your team to hit SKUCon and then go to the expo. And SKUCon always sells out. There is limited seating. So if you want to secure your spot, don't wait. Register today at SKUCon.com. Today's episode is brought to you by CometSKU, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonsku.com. Now here's my chat with John and Amy. John and Amy, thanks for joining the SkuCast.
Yes, glad to be here.
Glad to be here.
So, John, for Commonsku customers, what will the new ConnectedPlus integration allow for?
Yeah, I think it's had a long, you know, connected relationship with CommerceHQ customers where we've been passing over inventory data and order status data. But the Connected Plus integration, it's going to allow us to get that streamlined instant purchase order integration. You're going to get a more configured data set, meaning that you're going to, as you're walking through the ordering process, select our decoration methods, our decoration locations. Real-time build-out pricing. So what that allows for us is that we're now both speaking the same language, and we don't have to have human intervention to essentially figure out, you know, make that translation from what you call side one and we might call front. Now we're speaking the same language. And at the end of the day, what does that mean? It means speed, right? It means accuracy, speed, and just a better user and customer service experience. So I would say you— we've seen in the past a, you know, 50 to 70% reduction in communication that happens on orders that are integrated, meaning that the email back and forth is gone. The artwork gets passed along with the order and accurately with the line items. So, you know, there's just— I used to say that there was a— obviously all these things equal a cost savings, but everybody always writes off the QC elements and when things go wrong. So the second we start speaking the same language, We now start passing accurate data, we drive down costs, and we increase throughput of orders, which is what we're out here for.
You've done this before, but like upwards of 7 out of 10 orders today that a distributor places will be wrong because it has incorrect information or misinformation or something's wrong on the PO. And maybe those numbers are conservative, but can you walk us through how, like, what's it like on your, on the supplier side? So I get it from a distributor's perspective, how an EPO is going to radically accelerate their process. They can focus on other projects. It's far less communication for the distributor to have to get embroiled build in. What's it do on the supplier side? Can you walk us through how an EPO will accelerate on your end?
Yeah, and it, you know, you just mentioned there the distributor has a lot of pain points. Those don't happen in a vacuum, right? When a distributor has pain points in an order, the supplier also has equal amount of pain points. We're working those out together. But what— how does that EPO get priority? So every day Hit will process north of 5,000 decorated orders. So you have to figure we're not entering all of those instantly. There's a queue, there's humans getting involved. The biggest piece of an electronic PO is that your order skips the order entry queue, right? You go right in, you instantly allocate inventory, you're instantly— your artwork is being worked on above the other manual orders that are, you know, have to have some levels of human intervention. So there's an overall, I guess, timeliness, a stock allocation. I still focus on, you know, the accuracy, right? There's so many QC checks that happen with orders today because, you know, why do we have so much back and forth? Because we're— if we process 5,000 orders today, the 5,000 orders are fully customized, and there's a lot of things. There's 20 things that can go wrong and a few things that can go right. So there's so many extra checks to stop those things from going wrong. The EPO essentially skips the majority of that. And goes right into production, right? It hits the art channels where your art's being modified. If it's a repeat order, it just skips art in general, and the first place it shows up is into the production queue. So I mean, it's just— I would say you're taking one day, maybe a day and a half to two days off of your flow. And for us, that's just incredible.
Yeah, you've done this integration before with Starline. Um, how does the Hit integration differ? And I'm assuming magnitude is one, one area. How else does it differ?
Yeah, scale, right? It's the— we are putting a high degree of scrutiny on this integration because the sheer number of orders that it is. Uh, my past, we could afford to have more hands looking at, you know, kind of nudging along orders where if they were 85%, a human could get them the last 15%. Our goal here is to get these things 95 to 97% hands-off., right? We— where, you know, at the scale of which these things are coming in, we can't afford to have a decoration location mapped wrong or not communicate PMS colors properly or some ship— like, our biggest, uh, pain point when— with the onboarding process was just basic ship date math, right? I mean, you asked 12 people in the industry how they do transit time math and you probably get 11 different responses. So it's just, I think, aligning on speaking the same language between our tech teams is always a learning experience, but it's just magnitude of scale. And then getting out when, if a minor thing is wrong, it hit, it escalates quickly because the sheer number of orders.
Yeah. Amy, you have both, both you and John, everyone knows, of course, John has with promo standards has been integral in making that a priority. And it's really cool to finally see a lot of things happening with this. And John, don't slap my hand for that because there's always been things happening with Promo Standards, but we're seeing this acceleration from my perspective anyways. Amy, you've been on the board and you've served Promo Standards as well. And one CEO put it to me this year that this is the year where everyone's platforming up, if you will, like everyone's investing in tech in a big way. And Promo Standards deserves a ton of credit for rolling out a sea change of acceptance in our industry. And it's been a long road, but can you give us an update on Promo Standards and maybe just what have been some of the most significant advances lately? And Amy, whoever wants to field that first.
So first of all, I'm very proud of what Promo Standards has done in this industry. I mean, you think about 10 years ago and where we are today, and it's hard to find someone that is completing an integration that does not utilize Promo Standards in some way in our industry. It's just amazing to me. I'm proud of the work that everyone has done and the volunteers that have come and gone that are still with us. Or switch companies in between, we've really created a technology community that has sustained and driven the industry forward. I think without that community, it would have been really difficult to be where we are today. I'd say some of the things that we worked on specifically this year with this board is a new website. And some people are like, oh, well, what's a new website going to do? Well, it's going to increase and enhance the onboarding journey for our partners, whether you're a distributor, service provider, or a supplier. Yeah. And then create a community where you can get best practices and documentation and all those things that some people struggle with when they first sign up for Promo Standards. And of course, we're planning for a tech summit. Yeah. So that's going to be in February 2025, our third annual. It's hard to believe we've done it. Yeah, that we've made it this far. So it's pretty exciting. And then of course, we have two new standards that are in the under advisory review right now. And that's order status or shipment notification and remittance advice.
So a lot of good stuff happening. Yeah, I think, Bobby, what you're seeing on these new standards is we're kind of, we're taking the next leap. The first set of standards were basic transactional information, meaning what's your inventory, what's your order status, what's, you know, how do you pass an APO, how do you pass an invoice? And now we're moving into that actionable set of data, right? Is something's gone wrong, how do you resolve it? Something is, you know, it's more of, you know, the, the pieces of the workflow that we're trying to inject standards into now or where we see the future. And kind of you made the comment here earlier, you know, I guess intentionally said finally, and I think that's what it is, right? We have to have these standards in circulation, get mass adoption and get the groundwork laid to where the ROI makes sense for all companies, right? I think for a Hit and Sandmar and Comiskey to reach an ROI is one level, I guess, early in the adoption curve. It doesn't always— it's not always there for a smaller player in the industry. So, you know, I think the, you know, promo centers as an organization right now, it sees that the next jump has to be solving workflow issues, like when an order needs to be modified, when something is going wrong in the order, how do we quickly system to system, platform to platform, make changes midstream without blowing up the process?
So they're pointed— these new solutions are pointed at the more dynamic, fluid situations that happen with an order, probably once after a PO is submitted and, and things are moving.
And I think service providers played a big part in that. I mean, they were the ones that were mad doing all the standards, tried to create a service and a product to repackage to give back. And it was like, oh wow, let's combine 3 of these together and really make a really dynamic enhanced experience.
That's very cool. Amy, I, I know your expertise, but the audience doesn't yet know, and you have a big expertise in change management in tech. And one large part of your role at HIT is championing technology and integrations, including very large-scale integrations. And anytime you do that, You're working on massive changes that touch every aspect of the business. And so I want to talk about change management just for a minute because it affects everybody, whether you're a small distributor trying to implement CommerceHQ as your platform for the first time, or whether you're a large distributor trying to merge different teams. Change management is an ongoing part of our life. As you stress, it's really when we introduce and adopt tech, it's not about adopting tech, it's about change management. And since we're all human and we struggle with it, I thought I'd like to ask you to help us with this topic. So why are systems changes so hard for us to adopt besides the obvious fact that we don't like change.
Well, I think so many, so much of the focus is on, are we purchasing the right technology because it's so expensive, right? And is this going to fit, you know, our business? That I think the change management people process maybe is just assumed, oh, this will be better for us all, and you don't really take into account the individual whose job might be changing Who might be eliminated, the role might be eliminated and they have to learn something else. So I think, you know, change management comes down to just managing the fear, right? Fear of change, fear of the unknown. Will I be left behind? Will I have a job? You know, am I, can I learn my new role? Yeah. Can I be as important in my new role than I am now with knowledge that I have in this old way that we do things? And I think if you can manage that and meet people where they are in that process, explain the why, you know, the bigger picture, and get them to buy into the vision, then I think these changes become much easier.
I think as business people and entrepreneurs, we just feel like, hey, the ROI is there, this makes good sense, everybody should come along, right? But you mentioned something to me. You said sometimes an ERP or equivalent, or even if it's a CommsCue integration, a CommsCue integration, when you talk with customers, is fairly simple once they've converted, but it takes It can, some of these bigger projects especially can take a long time or even fail because you said, quote, we forgot to manage fear. And I thought that was a huge, important way of looking at it. We think about managing the systems change, but we don't think about managing the emotions that are coming with that.
Yeah. I think the way to combat that is to communicate. I mean, the more, and a lot of people say, well, it's overcommunicating. I think that it's important to communicate in different ways. Because people learn differently. Whether it's a meeting, it's a one-on-one, it's an email, it's sometimes saying the same thing over and over again and them hearing it from everybody in the same way. Sometimes in these large projects that take on, go to tackle silos in our business and it takes several months or a year, sometimes there can be built up animosities and maybe some sides. And it's important to keep communicating and making sure your leaders and your leadership team and your project team are all saying the same thing in managing that communication and being transparent. And I think listening is a big part of that. Does everyone feel hurt? At the end of the day, it may not matter and things change, right? But did you take the time to listen?
Something else, something else you said to me, and I thought this was really, really good. One truth that you said is that you have to be brutally honest to the point where you have to even say some people's jobs will be more difficult with this change and some people's jobs will have less difficulty to deal with. Like, it's just this brutal honesty about what the change is going to incur.
It is. And it's being transparent. It's all part of being transparent. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to hide anything. You don't want to— one of my favorite sayings from Stoicism is, you'll see, you'll hear me when hear me say a lot of things that relate back to stoicism or in some of my posts, I like to talk about courage and promptness, right? You have something that is an obstacle, right? You have to have courage to face it and you do it quickly. And it's the same when dealing with people and listening to them and their obstacles, right? You don't want anything to fester. Courageous and be prompt.
I love that we have a Marcus Aurelius, Seneca stoic fan on the podcast. That is awesome, Amy. All right. Yeah.
John, go ahead. Yeah, I think the important piece is, you know, on the community, Amy hit it right. It's a lot of communication. It's knowing when to start the communication, when you have enough of a story to not freak everybody out, right? And it's a fine balance. Like, you want to loop people in early, but if you loop them in too early before, like, you have all your ducks in a row, they're gonna be like, this is gonna be a disaster, right? So it's really, you know, it's a timeliness of, all right, like, having a plan. This is the essentially You know how this is going to work. This is where you're going to get involved. This is what we're going to do to mitigate risk and mitigate any sort of challenges. And yeah, but you know, it's overcommunication can be, I guess, damning to a degree, but it's just the right communication being concise. And like you said, like fear management, don't freak people out because it's, you're impacting what people have been doing for 25 years sometimes. They click the same button every day for 25 years. If you change that button, like That's a big deal. It might, for you, might be like, you know, I don't care, but like for them, that's a big deal. Yeah.
One of the things I also loved, and you both can speak to this because I think a lot of us in business do this. There are so many shiny things out there that we can implement, right? Whether it's for our stores, our shops, our platform, our team, a CRM, there are so many cool tools out there for us to use that can impact artwork, impact clients. But another statement you said to me, Amy, was, quote, just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. And I'm sure you've both dealt with some level of that before, but Amy, kind of what did you mean?
So I've seen, especially on the large ERP project migrations, that, you know, people get in there and, you know, that's part of, you know, the selection process of the right technology. Well, you can customize it, you can do this and you can do that. And I think what that allows is it allows for, I think, not just companies in our industry, but in the industry to recreate what they're already doing today, just in a new system that costs way more money, right?
Yeah.
Right. You forget why you're leaving your current system and business processes.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, well, we'll just recreate that. We'll customize it. And a lot of times it just slows it down. You don't get the benefit of the move. You know, there's different platforms have different business benefits. And if you don't take advantage and kind of surrender to those workflows, then you lose that. You know, everything that you're trying to accomplish 2 years later, you realize, oh, I had a failed implementation. It's like you just recreated your current one.
And so, yeah. I love that what you said, because we've, we've had that, we've had that happen with some customers at CommsCue, not many, thankfully, but the few that tried to layer their old methodology, their old way of doing business into with the new software. The new software was supposed to absolutely obliterate the old way and vastly improve the new way. So that's a good point. Before we move on. And John, any other comments on that one?
No, I mean, exactly. If you're— and we say this in the ERP selection process— if ERPs work great when you modify your business to do what the ERP was set out to be, you know, their workflows. If you try to modify the ERP to your 20-year-old subpar workflows, it's a recipe for failure, right? And it's balancing how much of your— how much of those customizations make your company unique, and that's your go-to-market, your strategic advantage, great, that needs to come in and be modified in your ERP. But if it's just, hey, we do this because we've always done this, and then you spend 2 years trying to modify your system to do that, just nothing but just headaches. And when you go to— if there's an upgrade in that system down the road, you're toast because you're left behind into some weird modification that you made because that's the way your business has always done it. So it's just selecting the things that you need in a system that are, I guess, game changers for your, for your business and your workflows?
Yeah. I would say too, you know, especially in one of the things you mentioned earlier on during the promo standards portion was this interconnectability and everyone platforming up. The more you customize, the more difficult you're making it on yourself to integrate with someone else. And to John's point, it's like, yes, is this something that's tied to our you know, our return on investment? Is this how we make revenue? Then you probably should let it go. If it's not making you money or just being competitive advantage, then let it go. Yeah, surrender to the new workflow.
Yeah, surrender to the new workflow. I think that's going to be a new slogan. I love that. Might need to be on a t-shirt. One last thing, Amy. You said that it's so important for us to sell people, what did you mean by that?
We spend so much time in our industry, you know, with our presentations and our quotes selling outward that when sometimes we have these big projects in terms, we forget to sell to ourselves and why we're making these changes. And like we mentioned earlier, yeah, it's about money, it's about efficiency, it's, you know, modernizing our systems, digital transformation, big words, you know, but a lot of times just selling the why to the individual will make such a big difference in their day-to-day life. They'll become a champion for the project. And I think so many times we introduce people to a new platform or a new process by setting them down and saying, here's your login or here's your documentation, go with God, right? And they don't, we forgot to sell why we're doing it and get the buy-in from them upfront on the big picture. If you see the big picture when you're in the weeds and you're struggling and you want to quit, you can remember why you're doing it in the first place.
Yeah, I love that. I really do love that because I think we, again, we take it for granted that we think ROI is the big decision maker and that should just put a silence to any other concerns or qualms. And yet, you know, we do need to sell our own team. Also, for many of us, if you, if you, if we understand the why, we can, we can figure out the how. We can adapt to the how a lot quicker. Let's talk about it. Go ahead. Oh yeah. As opposed to being passive, you could be active. Exactly. Yeah. About HIIT. So you're both newish to HIIT. And Amy, I don't know if John, we can say you're newish to HIIT still, but Amy, we're both newish to HIIT. And you said to me, Amy, that HIIT is a yes culture. What did you mean by that? What else have you been surprised to learn at HIIT?
I mean, it is amazing to me. It's like I, to be surrounded by people that are so curious. And so, yes, hey, we've never done that before. We're going to try it. We're going to figure it out. That is so challenging and inspiring. And you wake up every day and it's like, okay, how are we going to do this? Well, it's okay because we're going to do it together. Yeah, we're going to figure it out. And I love that about HIIT and that yes culture. It's like what goes hand in hand with a yes culture is setting expectations, right? Right. Like, hey, this is great, fantastic, yes, we've done it before versus yes, this is great, we haven't done it before, we're going to need a little time to figure it out.
Right.
You got to set the expectations. But I think that there is a curiosity of the whole technology team and other, other teams too that bring these together where we can work together and create something that's really cool and innovative and solves needs. Everyday needs of our partners, our distributors, our suppliers, right?
Our other business partners. Yeah. The reason I ask, I love asking about what's going on in the core supplier's businesses because I think we take it for granted once we've been working with supplier partner for a while. But, but Hit particularly is very dynamic. There have been lots of changes. Hit has always been a very fast-moving, forward-thinking company. And so I'd love to know what's kind of top of mind. John, you've been there a bit now, but what have you appreciated about Hit that you probably saw on the outside, maybe even as a competitor, but surprised you on the inside?
Yeah, so first of all, it's a machine, right? Like, there's 5,000+ orders a day. And I think my biggest appreciation coming in was that there's knowledge experts all throughout the company, right? You know, in a small company, you have to be the kind of knowledge expert in a lot of different fields, and What I like here is like, if I have a, just, you know, I thought I was great at Excel. I found a handful of people here who are just Excel gurus and where, you know, there's just people you can turn to in accounting and manufacturing and IT and sales that are just experts in their field. And you don't, you no longer have to be the knowledge expert in all those places and being able to lean on them and just the trust factor that you're surrounded by, you know, from ownership down, experts in their field. It's reassuring and allows you to kind of focus on your day-to-day and not have to worry about if somebody else is going to pick up the, the pieces on their end and drive a project forward. It's the pace at which things happen. There's so much happening in here because it's— there's such a knowledgeable team and experts in their field that you no longer have to handhold things. I I oversee a lot of our operations in Ohio. If I'm gone for a week, I'll come back and those things are vastly different. The layouts have changed, systems have been deployed, and you don't have to have your hands in all of these because you can trust that the machine has a process and has the way to drive these projects and implement them quickly and accurately.
So I love it. I'm sort of stunned by the speed and complexity. I mean, you take how HITS catalog has grown so much in terms of variety of product, then you add the complexity of those 5,000 orders a day and then the speed on top of it. I mean, CommerceQ has 800 distributor customers putting in thousands of orders. So the complexity and the speed and what we're talking about here today with promo standards and then mapping that all to EPOs, plus it's absolutely amazing. Anything else you want to talk about with HIT before I leave that part of the conversation?
I would say that yes, HIT is a machine. And I think one of the things that I was also surprised about was the sense of togetherness and community. Yeah. I mean, it's like how, you know, it is so big and like all these things get done and everyone's running and making things happen. But yet there's still the time to, you know, attend a golf charity event for Clearwater Aquarium or, hey, everyone shows up Saturday morning for a beach cleanup after a storm. There's these things that happen outside and bust, you know, like what you would think were traditional silos at a large company where there's a sense of togetherness and community that's happening outside of the four walls or the multiple factory locations. It's very rewarding.
I'm so glad you said that. Again, I think it has become this behemoth that we tend to not put those personal touches to, and you've just really personalized that, you know, the business that operates with people who care, just like any other small business, in this case, HIP being a very large business. All right, I'm going to ask you both the same last question and we can wrap this up, but I wanted to ask you, Amy, let's start with you since you're the stoic. Best book, a movie, article, podcast episode that has made an impact on you that you think we should read or listen to or watch?
This might be surprising, but I'm currently reading Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control by Ryan Holiday.
Wow. Okay.
Now I know where the stoicism comes from.
So it. It's actually, he does a whole series on values and morals and that's his latest one that I'm reading. One that I always go back to of his is Obstacle is the Way, right? And I continuously read that and I find it so fascinating, especially with project management. You know, it's like, oh yeah, you can go so many different ways, but really what's your biggest obstacle? Because it makes it easy. That's the way you go. You go through it. You don't go around it. You just go through it. It, you know, and find that one that I go back repeatedly.
Cool. Thank you for that.
John, how about you? Yeah, I've been addicted to the AI Daily Brief. It's a podcast. I start every morning listening to about 10 to 11 minutes of it. It's a great way to freak yourself out every morning. It's such an ever-evolving field that you have to— and it changes every single day. There's a new functionality, there's a new hot button, there's new privacy issues. There's just new technology coming out and I have to immerse myself in it every morning. And then, but that kind of sets you off, kind of gets to the kind of, I guess, mental juices flowing. Because a lot of times I'm like, hey Raj, CIO, like check this out, like we should be looking at this. And then, you know, the next morning is completely different technology. It's like this crazy thing. Now the problem is you can get yourself into this downward spiral of chasing these AI technologies that'll never be fully implemented. But I kind of put it for us as internet circa like 1989, and that's kind of where we're at on this verge. And I just, I don't want to be left behind in terms of the knowledge base of what's happening in that front. So it's just an important piece that I start my day with of what's going on in the AI world today.
John, since you're known as someone who's always been a high technology thinker for our industry, I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you, since you're going going through that daily brief and you're looking at things, where do you see AI has the biggest chance to optimize the business with distributors, suppliers, or in the industry in general? Is it with product search? Is it with, you know, how we, how we get smarter about data helping clients? Like, where do you see the biggest changes and disruption occurring, if you can even share it, in case it's something you're working on you don't want to talk about?
So I think the— there's a lot of people chasing a more intuitive search because I think that's like easy, low-hanging fruit. There's another, I guess, initiative that people are chasing is AI-assisted data processing, you know, like kind of helping the PO entry process to be a little smoother, right? There's bits and pieces of that are on POs that we don't collect that we can then, you know, subsidize with AI. I think one of the more applicable pieces is, you know, look at what the Photoshops of the world are doing with AI, you know, creating better targeted images and dynamic images. I think this is where AI struggled in the, for the last 18 months, right? It's like creating a sixth thumb, a seventh finger, right? And, but the simple pieces of creating dynamic ads, right? You're seeing a lot of online digital advertisers. Instead of you, me, all three of us getting the same ad, there's one specifically dynamically using AI created for Bobby, one specifically created for Amy., right? So it's no longer this one-size-fits-all. I think that's probably where we're going to see some pretty big disruption on the graphics targeted processing. It's not— it's no longer a, a calculation of human hours to create a digital piece of advertising or a, you know, a graphic for a flyer. And now it's, do I have the right data sets to— and pieces of, you know, subsequent information to create one that I know Bobby has a 97% chance of clicking on or catching his attention, right? It's— the game has flipped, and it's— that's where I see it, kind of a—
the new frontier. They're saying that same in the scientific community too, in terms of diagnosis, like medical diagnosis, that they're going to have more— far more precision in figuring that out. So it's a very, very parallel course there. John, Amy, thank you both for joining us today. Amy, I was so glad you walked us through the Stoic way of handling change. That was really awesome. I love that. And John, thank you as always for the work. Both of you, thank you for the work that you've done with Promo Standards and really helping lead this industry forward. Great to be here. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKUcast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKUcast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commonskeew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.






