Eric:

“What's also interesting about the CEO job that I thought of is, you know, you have to be quote unquote decisive or provide a strong direction that everybody understands and everybody is sort of going towards, but at the same time, you have to be humble enough to listen to everybody. And know that you don't have all the answers, you coming up with your best answer at the time that you're doing it. But if you're humble enough to listen to others, even though you're setting a direction, you're willing to consider, hey, maybe this direction that we took on now based on these new facts and the thoughts that Jay brought to the table or whoever else. Might not be the best. Maybe we should be sort of recalibrating and going to another area. And I think, you know, that's, you mentally, you have to be strong and provide direction and feel pretty, you know, sure of yourself. But you you also have to know that you don't really know often, and you have to be willing to change and be flexible.”

Top(pers) Take: 

1. Be decisive but humble.
2. Don’t take yourself too seriously; take the business seriously.
3. Raise your hand first and figure out logistics later.

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Eric

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about ESW

Karen:

“ Relationships are key. You need to establish trust and you need to be trustworthy and you need to build those relationships at all different levels and throughout your career…So being around people that can help you make things happen, and being inspired by those around you, and exposing yourself to new things that you may be fearful of, but just going out there again and taking that risk. And, if you can do those things, I think that it rises you up to a method of leadership that you really start to appreciate.”

Top(pers) Take:

1. Speed-to-market: In a connected commerce world, thinking of how to go faster is critical.

2. The right foundation: Get your basics right before adding new technology.

3. Configuration over customization: Give power to your end users.

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Karen

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about Bealls, Inc.

Rich:

“All the customer wants is to hear you to say, as I hear you. I'm going to look into it and I will get back to you as soon as I can…They could be losing their job. They could be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every minute that website is down during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is real-life stuff…so, I think the important part was, for me, and it gave me an opportunity to get in front of my company, to train people, to share what I had learned. It created a really great culture for us. I mean, we were real, I don't know how else to put it.” 

Top(pers) Take:

1. Awareness: The more aware you are, the more choices you have.
2. Continuous learning: Learn from everyone around you.
3. Openness: Let people know who you are and let people in.

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Rich

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about Life is Sales

Mike:

“I always like to say as a consumer, I think all of us can relate to this is, commerce does not stop after checkout…And orchestrating that journey is more and more important. And again, this is orchestration I view as managing that flow, effectively, both operationally so that you can deliver on the costs that you need to do as well as deliver the customer experience no matter where they show up. So, this is not yesterday's order management system…Yesterday was about OMS. It was about control, financial control. Today is about servicing all these channels and doing it with the most impact to your customers, but also giving back to the bottom line of your company.”

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Mike

Learn more about fabric

Brent:

“I think the biggest thing that we talked about in the green room is the idea that everybody is using AI but not using AI. So a lot of merchants are using AI as generative, but they're not looking at it in terms of  analytical and really diving in and using it for those numbers. I'm not saying everybody, but the majority of the people that I talked to last year were not employing the analyticals, and the predictive analytics that you would want to use in AI for your marketing, for your numbers, for your KPI, for all those fun data points that you could be getting out of your E-commerce world.”

Top(pers) Take

What’s Coming in 2025: 

1. AI around analytics and predictive analytics.

2. Hyperpersonalization

3. Selling at the point of intent.

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Brent 

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about ContentBasis

Tune into Talk Commerce

Rachel: 

“When I think of my conversion rate online versus a store's conversion rate, I'm always trying to learn from them…the way they're talking about their product, and the chefs. It's a big focus for me for the next really three-year road map, is I'm always thinking about how can I bring more of that chef authoritative voice into my online channels just to drive that conversion, but really that understanding, get questions answered preemptively. So that's definitely what I'm trying to bring through to my channels as well.”

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Rachel

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about Sur La Table

Stephanie:

“ I think it comes down to sharing, working towards, and celebrating goals together. Having really clear expectations about who does what and making sure those lines are clear. I also think it requires leadership alignment from the top down as well. Making sure that if it's not one singular leader, then those two leaders are working really closely together on how are we going to develop the best experiences for our customers and make sure that we're meeting the expectations of both marketing and products, et cetera…And kind of walk through kind of what is every single step that a customer is seeing coming from every single different channel. And what are those silos and issues that we can kind of break down and improve? And what are the biggest issues that we can tackle most quickly to enhance the experience for our customers?”

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Stephanie

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about Steph’s work

Prashant:

“We are always forecasting. As people, we're always trying to see what's going to happen tomorrow. And we use yesterday, right? That is the basis generally of what you do and what's the data out there. Now in retail before COVID, we were basically just using some kind of time series. Last year was X and we're going to go up a little or down a little. Now the challenge with that is that there is so many SKUs, so many stores potentially, you kind of just peanut butter spread it, right? What AI ML forecasting can do is give you a better first draft. So instead of actually having to manipulate this in Excel in any way, you can actually get a good first draft that is at a SKU level and then hone your intuition, your experience around that.”

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Prashant

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about Impact Analytics

Jenna:

“I think every CDO in any organization, a big part of the responsibility is understanding what's coming. And the more forward-looking and innovative you can be the better. And so a big part of my self-prescribed responsibilities was making sure that I stayed very close to technology that can help drive value back to the business. And so as we found,  and experienced, the democratization of AI through leveraging ChatGPT, I think we all kind of got to play with it and realized that there were some real efficiencies and value to generate.”

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Jenna

Learn more about fabric

Su Li:

“So before we can even take advantage of data and utilize it for things like insights or personalization, we really need to make sure that the level of data we have in house is readily available, but also clean enough to use, right? Like many organizations, I think the past probably four or five years in terms of transformation data and its core of being able to have one single source of truth, making sure that everybody agrees on it, no matter what team, and then being able to access that in a fluid way has been a core area of development."

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Su Li

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about Rakuten

Learn more about Women at Rakuten

Derek:

“ I think ultimately I was grounded in the customer, and I think that's the reality of a lot of ecommerce leaders is you're really grounded in customer data on a day to day basis, just to do your job. So you're really looking at, okay, what is the customer doing? How are they converting? How are they behaving? Are they coming back? And I think when you're really grounded first and foremost in what's happening with the customer, both from a quantitative and qualitative perspective, you're naturally doing the role of marketing."
 

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Derek

Learn more about fabric

As a two-time Chief Digital Officer and three-time Chief Technical Officer, Jay helps us understand what it means to raise our digital IQs. This episode covers Jay's diverse career journey, the evolving role of the CDO, and his insights on modern commerce. Jay also shares his top ten principles for CDOs, what we are affectionately calling the 'Topper's 10,' emphasizing the importance of understanding data, fostering a hero culture, and taking calculated risks.

Jay:

“ I believe in data simplicity, certainly you have to architect it smartly and that can be complex, so you have to house it intelligently so you can get at it and do all the things you want to do and that's a very technical exercise, but as far as the delivery of data simple is usually good, and if I can understand it and my staff can understand it, and then I can get people that maybe are less technically proficient to understand and go, my gosh, this is amazing, then it can all of a sudden become a Bible of a particular area. And I've done that time and time again. And so I think data, from a simplistic standpoint, so people can make rapid decisions, and if those decisions don't pan out by continually measuring, back out and try something else really quickly instead of just taking months to come up with plans to try something and then months to see whether or not  they bear fruit or not. So, data is everything in this world.”

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay on LinkedIn

Learn more about fabric

Today’s consumer expects a buying experience that’s nothing short of perfect. 

Whether that’s how you market to them, your interactions with them across an ever-growing number of selling channels, or the value you bring at every other stage of their journey, your company’s “digital IQ” has quickly become a new standard that drives growth and loyalty.

No matter where you are on your digital journey, the most forward-thinking organizations are embracing a new role responsible for delivering these connected experiences: The Chief Digital Officer.  

Join host Jay Topper, CCO at fabric, and 2x CDO, as he dives into what it takes to help transform a retail organization into a digital powerhouse. This podcast is the CDO’s playbook: a go-to roadmap for defining and driving a transformative shift in modern commerce. 

Listen in on conversations with leading CDOs and other retail executives at the forefront of this revolution. They’ll discuss the emergence of the CDO role and how the most cutting-edge leaders are navigating their biggest challenges – and opportunities – in the retail industry today. 

Welcome to Chiefly Digital: The Digital Leader’s Guide to Modern Commerce.

Powered by the team at fabric.