Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre-Conference Workshop:

Negotiate Like the Pros – Parcel Contract Negotiations & Other Real World Strategies to Cut Your Shipping Costs 5-25%

Shipping costs too high? Then you cannot afford to miss this workshop!  Led by one of the top consultants in the industry, gain valuable information to negotiate best-in-class pricing and reduce overall shipping costs 5-25%. You will walk away from this half-day session with an in-depth understanding of parcel contracts terms and how to maximize pricing agreements with your parcel carriers.

Using actual shipping data, you will learn:

• How to establish shipping baselines and requirements prior to beginning any carrier negotiations
• Different ways to reduce the impact of accessorial charges and other contract “gotchas”
• How to use your weekly parcel invoice data to generate powerful information to lower costs

We will place particular emphasis on how to gain leverage during contract negotiations, and using benchmarking (provided) to your advantage. You’ll also learn additional strategies used by other shippers to reduce delivery costs, how to offer “free” shipping and make delivery a competitive differentiator in your business. We encourage you to register early; seating is limited and this session is expected to sell out!

Pre-Conference Workshop:

The Accelerating Pace of Change in the Contact Center, and How to Prepare For It

It’s been said that the customer experience is the new currency in direct-to-consumer business, and that means you need to step up your contact center game in order to stand out – exploring new avenues and tactics, without abandoning tried-and-true methods.

What does this mean and what does it look like? While the answers will vary across organizations, a couple basics apply universally: Making the cross-channel experience as seamless as possible, engaging with customers how, when and where they prefer; and connecting the dots across all interactions to understand a customer’s true value.

In this Pre-Conference Workshop, hear from leading merchant practitioners about their experiences in the trenches, working to align systems, people and processes in pursuit of the universal goal: Consistently delighting customers to win loyalty, elevate the brand and drive sales.

And in keeping with last year’s popular workshop, a theme that traces the “tale of two companies” – an ecommerce pure play with a startup mindset, and an established brick-and-mortar retailer – will be woven throughout the sessions, providing valuable insights from both perspectives.

Other takeaways from these highly informative and interactive sessions will include:

• Sharing Voice of the Customer (VOC) insights across business units
• Understanding and addressing rapidly evolving customer expectations
• Gaining a single view of the customer across channels
• The right mix of technology and tools – and their costs – for your size operation
• Recruitment, hiring and training best practices
• The most critical KPIs for success, and how to track and manage them
• Improving cross-sell and upsell
• Finding the right mix of live contact and customer self-service

Pre-Conference Workshop:

How to Up Your Game in Omnichannel Operations

Whether you’ve gone omnichannel, or are in the process of doing so – in fact, wherever you fall in that spectrum – shoppers not only expect but demand flexibility and freedom to buy at their total convenience. This creates supply chain complexity around synchronizing inventory and orders coming from stores, websites, mobile, catalogs, etc. It also involves logistical issues around tactics like ship to store, ship from store and in-store pickup.

So how do you rise to meet these challenges? It involves a number of initiatives happening in concert: Connecting and sharing data across channels, training staff for new roles, setting expectations, breaking down established silos and redesigning fulfillment structures and processes, to name a few.

This informative workshop will tap the experience of experts from both top retailers and solution providers to help you create an effective omnichannel strategy – or improve upon your existing one.

Topics covered will include:

• Technology, systems and integration
• Infrastructure, including space utilization – in the store and the DC
• Workforce, culture and training
• Tactical approaches: ship to store, ship from store, in-store pickup
• Cross-channel sales allocation
• The impact on manufacturers and brands
• Achieving cross-channel inventory accuracy

Pre-Conference Workshop:

Fundamentals of Operations & Fulfillment

This half-day workshop will teach the beginner or provide a review for experienced operations management.  We’ll cover the tactics and strategies of direct-to-customer and omnichannel operations in a single session.

The session will provide a comprehensive and practical look at what it takes to deliver superior fulfillment as a competitive advantage.  We’ll have examples and lots of interaction among attendees.

The focus will be on maximizing service performance and operational efficiency. This workshop is a ‘must’ if you are responsible for the direct-to-customer or omnichannel fulfillment process, from supervisors to executives.