Thread by @ryan_caldbeck

1/ I saw an email from the person that helps to lead “ecommerce strategy” at a Fortune 500 consumer company. In it he talked about his task is to help build capabilities in the following areas (unedited):

2/ ......

A. Machine Learning Optimization
B. Next Gen Supply Chain Systems
C. Data engineering
D. Data Analytics
E. Software Development

3/ ".....with particular focus on"
i. Dynamic Pricing Analytics
ii. Marketing Automation
iii. Demand Planning
iv. Warehouse Management Software
v. Robotics
vi. Last mile delivery

[all unedited and direct quote]

4/ A few high level observations for the Twitterverse. First- holy wow that is a lot of stuff to cover for the “ecommerce strategy” lead. Talk about sending someone on a wild goose chase.

5/ The lack of clarity sets the company (and this person) up for failure. What problems are we solving and how are we trying to solve it.

6/ This person is spinning trying to send too many problems with too few resources and not enough clarity on priorities. That is big CPG trying to invest into technology without an understanding of how/what/when/why.

7/ Second- you can probably see that many of these topics have nothing to do with ecommerce or at least are not limited to only ecommerce.

8/ This is consistent with a problem I see throughout consumer which is that companies confuse anything related to technology and/or data with “ecommerce” or the vague term “digital”.

9/ So here you have someone tasked with a vague role and given a long list of things to build. The company is spinning wheels - not understanding the technology they are trying to build or what problems they are trying to solve with that tech.

10/ That's what's happening on the inside of the largest consumer companies in the world right now.

I cringed when I read that email.