Pepperi CEO Ofer Yourvexel on B2B sales optimization
This was a ClubHouse interview with Pepperi CEO Ofer Yourvexel talking about B2B sales for brands and how they can be better optimized by making data in different silos talk to each other.
TRANSCRIPT:
Darius 0:02 Welcome to the retail tech podcast. My name is Darius Vasefi. And today I'm speaking with Ofer Yourvexcel, who's the CEO of a company called Perry. And Pepperi works with brands and companies to streamline their b2b sales process and connect the data that's in different silos traditionally. So I'm sure we're going to learn a lot more a better description as we talk to offer. So welcome to the podcast offer.
Ofer 0:43 Thank you very much for hosting me. great pleasure and honor.
Darius 0:46 Thank you Same here. So maybe we can start with a brief introduction of your own background, how you got to start this company or join it. And then what the company what Perry does.
Ofer 1:01 My background, I'm over 25 years as an executive in high tech companies region in Israel. Prior to that, I was a captain in the Navy, the Israeli Navy. And that's about it. In terms of background, companies, I was executive at like amdocs, if you're familiar with I was Vice President jacada, also traded in Aztec back then I was responsible for the international business. So the background in the high tech business.
Darius 1:40 Okay, great. And how did the papyri idea come around?
Ofer 1:48 it's evolved, it started this as a warranty in the cloud, like 12 years a bit less than 12 years ago. And, and then, like three years after we started, we changed it from the warranties in the cloud back then the name of the company was warranty. We changed it to audit taking on iPad when the iPad just came out. And three years after we decided to change it into a full blown b2b sales platform, which is what we are doing today since 2015.
Unknown Speaker 2:25 Okay, that's, these are really good examples of what's called pivots.
Unknown Speaker 2:30 Yep, the first one, I would call it pivot from warranty management, to audit taking app on iPad. But then the second one is just evolution have the vision to make it wider in order to survive wider and deeper in order to survive.
Unknown Speaker 2:49 Okay, so now let's, let's dig in a little bit deeper into what exactly peppery does right now.
Unknown Speaker 2:58 We are serving customers, which are typically their manufacturers or distributors from various industries, all of them are producing or distributing physical goods, mainly in consumer goods companies like Dermalogica and California, if you're familiar with from Unilever companies like any GM, the beverages and companies in the fashion industry is like ripcurl. And like the type of companies that all of them producing products, physical products, and we help them sell across older b2b channels, the main channels that you'll find our field channels in fast moving like food, it might be even through a fun one selling route accounting to b2b commerce as well as from the office meaning from the Support Center, where they typically both do the support and they do they are doing support as well as telesales in this type of companies. So we help them really combining all these different sales channels into one product into one. One business logic one database, one business process might have many business processes but all of them are connected.
Unknown Speaker 4:31 Okay, so I am familiar with several of the brands you mentioned, let's let's maybe use rip curl, which is almost almost local to me here in Southern California, a lot of the stores and customers are here. So what do you do for ribcor if we can, whatever you can,
Unknown Speaker 4:56 in ripcurl case we started in Europe and we are serving them All over Europe. So we are streamlining actually in their case, we started with older sales people all over Europe. And then, at the after, like two years old b2b sales, which were commerce sales, which were to two types. One is to distributor exclusive distributor in certain countries in Europe that were ordering through the ripcurl b2b ecommerce site, which is peppery. And, and then the, the stores all over Europe can order directly from the pepperberry portal from the b2b, temporary portal? So, actually, it's a great example of ordering from all different types of
Unknown Speaker 5:51 ways to different channels. Right. So So let's talk about the sales people by salespeople Do you mean sales people in the stores?
Unknown Speaker 6:03 No, I refer to sales people. When we talk about manufacturers and distributors, typically, they have a Field Sales team that will be visiting their customers which might be physical stores, might even online stores that they are visiting the these customers and mainly physical stores in order to replenish specially in fast moving items, foods, beverages where they really need to replenish quickly. So they might be visiting them understanding during the visit the their needs. Also tracking sell through to see what's the real sell through, which is something typically they cannot get unless they're tracking competitors over our application. And then place orders instead of the customer, obviously, it can be instead of the customer or together with the customer using the b2b e commerce sites. I hope I'm clear, because not not all people are familiar with all those expressions. Right? Right.
Unknown Speaker 7:13 Yeah, that's why I'm asking the question just to make sure that we get their clarity. So so those are the field sales agents, which is typical for, like manufacturers and distributors. Now ripcurl, for example, they have their own stores as well.
Unknown Speaker 7:35 You know, we're not, we have, we have an example where those stores will be using our b2b commerce. Really do not recall how it works in ripcurl. We do have customers where they have their own stores, where they might be ordering using our b2b e commerce as if they are a customer, although they belong to the same company. But our typical implementation is not for customers who have their own stores because then it's not a b2b sale. It's an internal replenishment process. Typically, implementation will be where they sell where our customer will sell to a third party, which is external storage.
Unknown Speaker 8:20 Okay, I see that in your solutions, you also have something called omni channel manager.
Unknown Speaker 8:27 Yep. Yeah, one of the things we are seeing in many of our implementations is, if you think about our this sales process evolved along the year, so most companies started with, just with Field Sales, and you know, with people going and selling physically by visiting. This is the traditional salesperson managed by the sales department. And then later on came the b2b e commerce which typically is served by a managed by the marketing department or by the sales department. So what we've seen is two separate products to two separate processes, two separate silos, I would call it a department that are selling to the same customers. And because it's two separate products, there might be a lot of inconsistencies in the experience in the data itself. And even competition in some cases between the two. And then when the guy from the office is calling the telesales, it might have even a separate third system that might typically be working directly from the MRP itself from the main back office system that might have a difference, different data from the previous year. This is mainly a parent the thing starts to get more complex Key that if you take the fast moving industries, the food, the beverages, you'll see that they have tons of promotions, what is called trade promotions, and then trying to manage those trade promotions between the three different system and making sure that it's consistent with the back office system. It's a real challenge, especially for mid market customers that do not have all the relevant infrastructure to ensure they don't have not just the infrastructure, but the resources, the they are not as reaches the multi billion dollar company and how to manage to really to streamline those processes through lengthy and very expensive projects. Right. So what what we are doing with peppery and this is quite unique to peppery is really doing all that from one product with one business logic, why it's unique, because when you look on the on the technology underneath, and typically for the field reps, and for the drivers, the logistic people, typically they will be using mobile devices, native mobile devices, and nowadays, they are still be using offline devices, meaning that they are not dependent on the quality of the internet. And this is a completely different type of technology than the technology that the b2b commerce typically will be using, which is a browser based web based web app. And so developing a product, both products with all the sophistication of business to business, promotions, and pricing, and history is kept in a consistent way is quite complex, when you're dealing with two or three products. And the beauty of February's that really everything is in one database, one business process, you define the process, and then you define whether you want to use it just for reps, or you want to use it for both reps and b2b commerce on the customer. Or just for customer you might want to have, you might want to publish a new promotion that is just for the business just for the b2b commerce and vice versa. So with pepper, it's much smoother and much easier to implement such multi omni channel sales. And then because everything is together, it's also easier to manage it. And this goes back to your question about the omni channel manager so he can give the full picture very easily using pepperberry.
Unknown Speaker 12:55 Okay, so to understand better, how, where does your technology sit in the stack? Is it like a middle wear layer?
Unknown Speaker 13:09 No, it's not a middle wear layer. Although we do have our own middleware layer. Because February is not a standalone product, we are always connected the backbone of the customer. Typically, the customer will not be keeping the basic pricing and the basic product information and peppery. Typically, we need to synchronize our system with a customer system. And for that we have our own IPS, which is a middleware as you just asked me. iPad stands for integration platform as a service that I forgot to mention that February is pure cloud player, we do not have any on premise solutions. Everything we do is only cloud. So we do have our own IPS, middleware technology to integrate to the backbone of the customer. But we are an application we are a solution. We are not a middleware. Okay, business solution.
Unknown Speaker 14:08 Okay, so as I pass sort of like a like an API, REST API based technology that connects
Unknown Speaker 14:18 to the other systems. API technology is a must have in order to have a modern Ibis, but it's not the Ibis. It's just part of the it's one of the building blocks of our I pass. But if you mentioned it, so yes, we are completely open platforms in terms of having API to all the processes and both bulk API as well as real time API. so customers can really use our open technology as well. Develop on top of it.
Unknown Speaker 14:52 Okay, so on the back end, you pretty much connect to for example, the customer's ecommerce platform. And then their order management system and all their systems. So you're not really replaced, are you replacing any existing systems?
Unknown Speaker 15:13 If the customer already has a CRM, a b2b e commerce system, something that the sales rep we're using on the road, the driver using the merchandiser we're using, then we will be replacing it. In some cases, even today, we are replacing pen and papers, we're excels. But in most cases, nowadays, we are replacing competing products and typically competing products. So we will be replacing a typical b2b commerce system and the mobile system, two separate system that we will be replacing with ours as one system.
Unknown Speaker 16:01 Okay. All right. So So you mentioned something about the fact that, you know, you give customers one product are one platform that can replace multiple platforms or tools that they have to manage. And in, I've been involved in a lot of integrations. And I know that managing multiple tools can get pretty complicated and expensive. And it's an ongoing process. It doesn't just stop on the first implementation. So I'm interested to find out how important is that one solution package to customers when they decide to purchase peppery?
Unknown Speaker 16:50 I think what we are seeing is, is an education process that is taking place in the past, people did not even consider the possibility of serving the Field Sales and the b2b commerce on the same platforms, they typically would go through the typical commerce player, or the giants, you know, like the commerce player that I'm sure you can name them, the giants like the lsaps, and and the Salesforce of the worlds that they also have their commerce systems. And then they would go to a different player, and they will have two separate beads, in order to fulfill the requirements of the two different silos. Nowadays, we are seeing more and more beads and RFPs that read them and looking for one solution to serve both. But typically, we'll find it more on the mid market now. And this is I think, the proof of how important it is, as you just mentioned before, think about it, implementing two separate ones, and then synchronizing between them and synchronizing between them and the backbone and making sure that the data will be the same, that the experience will be the same, that there will be no inconsistencies. It's it's a painful process, not just lengthy and costly. And it really creates organizational silos, not just technical silos. So when you sum it all together, the cost to the organization, the time to market, the agility of the sales organization, the ability to really make quick changes in their processes, is really jeopardized when those are separate silos, and when it's all comes from the same workflow engine from the same rule engine, from the same product bottom line, the same platform, it gives the organization agility to really make quick changes to their operations. And nowadays, I would say that agility is the name of the game to win in order to create differentiating factor in their competitive advantage. So it's quite important in my mind, then the market is telling me that with the sales we are seeing, I would say that the COVID really emphasize that big time. During the COVID people that companies and industries and geographies we are serving like 70 different countries that were reluctant to move to omni channel from different reason I can name many of them. Suddenly, were forced to do that and then they needed to do it quickly. And a customer of ours that had only one of the channels, really were able to do it and of not exaggerating in two weeks, a process that if they needed to go choose a vendor or integrate, define the business processes, it would take them easily three to six months easily. So, this is this was a great testimonial to the agility we gave them just from the fact that it's all combined into one product.
Unknown Speaker 20:33 Yeah, I mean, that that is definitely the speed of move, you know, moving at providing new features and capabilities. Is, is worth a lot of capital. So, yep. So you mentioned COVID. Other than what you just mentioned, have you seen any other signals from not COVID itself, but just a sense of awareness that, you know, at least retailers have gained from COVID that you think is different from before COVID started?
Unknown Speaker 21:18 Sure. What we are seeing, what we saw is, is actually what I mentioned before that they were forced, we've seen, they were, what COVID did, did not change conceptually, things, it just accelerated things. And what we've seen is that all these blockages that were there before, resistance to change, were removed due to the COVID. So COVID really accelerated the process of digitizing everything and combining everything into making, bringing marketing and sales together. And bringing, making our customer realize that they really need to accelerate their processes of adopting to the new world, new world in which the customer might their customer might want to buy from them in different ways. And actually, they need to adjust to that. I think it was quite reveal.
Unknown Speaker 22:39 Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Also, from what I'm seeing and experiencing myself, I think one of the major changes is just the priority level of what they thought they had a few years to play with and get implemented. This just like digitization just went to the top of the list.
Unknown Speaker 23:05 Yeah, it's reminding me, you know, in the old days, old days, I'm talking like 1015 years ago, when I met executives, that were reluctant to move to the intimates, and they say no, it will dilute our brand. We just want to be on the physical level. And during COVID,
Unknown Speaker 23:32 and obviously, I don't need to tell you that all those brands are now online, and would not survive, survive without it. And the COVID we've seen them many similar things, you know, like, all those parts, segments of customers telling us if we sell online, although it's cheaper for us, and it's way more efficient, our competitor will continue to sell in the field. And, and this way, we would lose our customers, we would lose, lose the touch, the order size will go smaller, and all those other things that they were telling us. And I think COVID forced them to change those partners and understand okay, because you need really to adjust and we haven't talked about it, it's not that you need to move with all your customers to omni channel. And it does not mean also that you need to serve all the customer in the same way. There might be customers that you want to continue to serve just in the field that might be customer that you want to serve only from commerce and not from the field and there might be customers that you want to create some sort of a mixture between the two. Typically what's driving the main factor is cost and the size of the customer but are many other factors, we build many models with our customers to optimize their, their channel sales to find the optimum level of how they want to serve different segments of their customers. Obviously, you need to have a very good segmentations of your customers as well and know your customer well.
Unknown Speaker 25:20 Okay, so just to reset the room I'm speaking with offer your vexcel, CEO of pepperberry. And we're going to do another maybe two, three questions, and then I'll open it up to the audience, if anybody wants to come up and ask questions. So what do you think about the role of the marketplaces like Amazon for b2b? Like, you know, wholesalers and manufacturers, should they join? Should they not join? How should they approach that? Like, always,
Unknown Speaker 25:57 the answer is mixed. Depends, depends on but I can maybe spot the different parameters that are important for them to consider. So if you're not selling on the price, and you're new, and you don't have resources, and you just want to get to go out there, so people do know you, I think Amazon is a great way of doing it. For the for the short periods just for the launching, and maybe to start with. However, the more you are selling on your brand, the more you are and you're not selling on price, then Amazon might be a very dangerous place for you to be from. First of all, because you do not have you don't have this walled garden where you can really protect your brand. And Amazon might be putting you on the same page with competitors that are simply just cheaper than you. And even worse than that, they can put you on the same page with their own products and promote their own product. And they can put ads there of your competitors on the same on the same page where you are. So if you have your own, if you have a strong brand, if you're building your brand, as a strong brand, I'm not sure its type of situation, you want to be it. Also very mind that when you put yourself in the marketplace, you lost your touch with the market. So when you're selling yourself, you gathered the information, you know, who visited how many clicks, whether they bought or not, what were they considering before they bought what Amazon is keeping all this information, not just Amazon, any marketplaces, keeping all this information for himself for itself, and then in the Amazon case, and you can check the figures every day that adding more and more of their own brands and have their own products. So they might be using this information against you. That just, you are helping them to gather information. And and then might use it to promote their own product and put together a better product at the right price point. And I think the best proof rate is that good brands are no longer selling direct in the Amazon, you can go into the internet and find out that Nike no longer selling there. And it's not by chance they really decided in a strategic level not to do that, and many other brands. So so as I started that, I will just recap, it depends where you are in your brand lifecycle and depends what type of company you want to be what type of brand you want to be whether you want to be on on the price, and even then you need to be careful or you want really to differentiate yourself.
Unknown Speaker 29:17 Okay, yeah, that that makes sense. I mean, it seems like both of the options that we see is either going all in on Amazon, and marketplace strategy, or all in on building your own brand. These are the two major formats that have formed and it seems like they're both gaining growth. They're both growing. But the combination of both is actually the separation is becoming more pronounced. It seems like you said, Yeah, I think
Unknown Speaker 29:58 it's one it's The business needs to make his own consideration. Just be aware, and I'm sure people are aware nowadays, you know, the pros and cons of which option,
Unknown Speaker 30:11 right? What do you think about the role of a company like Shopify? in what's happening in retail and Amazon? I mean, Shopify is really probably the the next biggest competitor to well, other than Walmart, of course, and you know, some of the brands, like, you know, the retailer's themselves. But as far as horizontal competitor, I think Shopify is probably the largest one that is gaining a lot of traction.
Unknown Speaker 30:42 Shopify is, is a solution, actually, like peppery, just that it is B to B to C provides also B to C, not just B to B, actually, the main, I believe their main business is B to C. I think it's a great tool from what I've seen. And but but I'm not sure you can compare it to Amazon, because it's, it's a completely different concept. As you just mentioned yourself, you know, if you want to sell by yourself, then you might want to use a tool like Shopify, if you're selling direct to consumer, or if you sell b2b, you might want to consider Shopify bigcommerce, as well as Becker. And actually, we are running into these guys. day to day. So I think it's whether you want a tool or you want a marketplace, it's, which is Amazon, Amazon is not pretending to be a tool. an enterprise software.
Unknown Speaker 31:48 Yeah. So I mean, one of the things that I've learned is that even like what we see right now, it doesn't mean it's going to be the same in a year or two years. I mean, as you know, Amazon has its arms in many different places, right? And they are constantly experimenting. And Shopify is doing the same. So like Shopify is right now looking at setting up their own distribution centers and helping with delivery and that kind of like going trying to at least explore the you know, the fact you know, what do you call it the fulfilled by Amazon FBA model? Yeah. So, so I think they're always there, they are looking in how to get into each each other's business. So
Unknown Speaker 32:41 you know, what, you bringing a new angle I didn't think about, to be honest. I didn't consider Shopify as a competitor to Amazon in that respect in trying to provide a full vertical solution. I,
Unknown Speaker 32:57 it remains to be seen. Yeah, I'm
Unknown Speaker 32:59 learning.
Unknown Speaker 33:01 Well, it you know, I mean, they're, they're making moves. And it's just natural, I think, because you have to keep growing, not just vertically, but horizontally. Right. So Shopify, when you have millions of brands, retailers, or brands and the Shopify, we call it the Pro is definitely growing. And there is like an even a tool ecosystem built on top of Shopify, which is really, you know, interesting. So these are all of the things that Amazon wants. I mean, Amazon is, you know, if there is one thing you know, about Amazon is that they're never satisfied with what they have. And that's what's gotten them to this point. So
Unknown Speaker 33:48 yeah, amazing company.
Unknown Speaker 33:50 Yeah. They're not afraid. They're not afraid of anything. And that's, that's a dangerous competitor to So, yeah. So it's interesting how things are gonna, you know, shape up in the next, you know, 235 years. You know, we It used to be that you we could think, like, what's retail going to be like, in five years? And we could come up with some reasonable, you know, you know, projections, but right now, it's like, really difficult to even look ahead for two years.
Unknown Speaker 34:27 Yeah. Especially with the COVID which has not yet ended. I think retail changed a lot at least, we we are feeling it from, from our customer, we are hearing it from our customer. As mentioned before, it's accelerated the those changes. So I think you're right, in one or two years, retail might look completely different than it used to, you know, not as early in five years.
Unknown Speaker 34:59 Yeah. Alright, so last question is, what's next for peccary? I guess this year? Are these are you working on some some things that you can share with us? Or are you Would you like anything that what what is it that you would like to see for February this year.
Unknown Speaker 35:20 This year, we are improving some of the things that we are doing within the b2b space, like dramatically improving our analytics capabilities to make the system smarter than it used to be up till now, helping our customers to make decision on the go and on the buying process. So this is a big area of focus for us. As well as one of the things that makes peppery unique is the flexibility the configurability of the system. So we are adding another layer of configuration. But this is too complex to explain. But it will enable our customers to do even more flexible things without the need to use programmers in order to do them. So these are the two areas next year, we are already working on it, we will have a surprise in terms of what we are offering to our customers, which is outside of the boundaries of what we are doing right now. But I cannot elaborate on that.
Unknown Speaker 36:28 Okay, well, you know where to go when you're ready to an answer?
Unknown Speaker 36:35 Sure.
Unknown Speaker 36:37 All right. Well, I'm going to open it up to the audience. If anybody has any questions for offer, feel free to raise your hand. And in the meantime, we'll just continue talking. So over where is your team? Is your team distributed?
Unknown Speaker 37:00 Yeah, actually, we are around the world. We have people in Europe, we have people in New York and us with people, not just New York. But in the US. We have people in Australia. We have people in Israel, the the headquarter in terms of r&d centers in Israel.
Unknown Speaker 37:22 Okay. Now has has this work from home model? Do you like that? Or what? What are your thoughts about that as a company?
Unknown Speaker 37:35 I have mixed feelings. In general, I think there's, there's a lot of pros to that. I think eventually we will need to judge it. I'm not sure it will be a company policy eventually. But more of by individuals. Because of the flexibility that it gives us, for example, to recruit remote people that we couldn't be for now that we are
Unknown Speaker 38:04 enabling that. So if we are recruiting remote people, obviously there's no reason for them to come to the office.
Unknown Speaker 38:11 When I say remote, even if it's two, three hours drive to get to the office, why waste the time for that?
Unknown Speaker 38:18 Yeah. Are there specific roles that you think are better suited for remote than others?
Unknown Speaker 38:28 I think developers I prefer that they will be working from from the office. Because they need to be they need to be working as team in many cases. But
Unknown Speaker 38:47 if we are talking about sales people, for example, customer service, I'm not sure they need to work from the office.
Unknown Speaker 38:58 Okay, that's interesting. A lot of companies that I talked to and ourselves, we actually also have our developers all remote. So product developers. So I mean, I'm, I'm personally a big proponent of it, but I also think that just working remote and talking once in a while, you know, is not enough, you have to actually add other things to build a community for remote teams. So
Unknown Speaker 39:32 yeah, for sure, even if the people will work remote. You do need to build a community remotely and you need to, to make the meats from time to time. It's important, you know, February actually is is quite unique in that respect that our employee typically are working for quite a long period of time already. Tension rate is very high. And I think it's part of it is the feeling of the family feeling of home, you know, not just the place you work at. You cannot create two things if you just work remote leave without doing anything on top of it.
Unknown Speaker 40:17 That is another thing
Unknown Speaker 40:18 that we will need to think about how to do this.
Unknown Speaker 40:21 Yeah, well, that's just
Unknown Speaker 40:22 to work only from the offices.
Unknown Speaker 40:25 That's really good to have that kind of a long retention. That's, that's very, very helpful. valuable.
Unknown Speaker 40:33 Great.
Unknown Speaker 40:36 Yeah, so Well, thank you so much offer. It was a pleasure meeting you and speaking and best of luck for preparing.
Unknown Speaker 40:46 Thank you very, very much. It was pleasure. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank
Unknown Speaker 40:51 you. So this interview is going to be posted on the retail tech podcast.com in the next week or two. And thank you everybody for listening in. If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me on retail tech podcast or in on my profile here. My DMS are open and look forward to seeing you. I've got a couple of really interesting interviews short ones tomorrow morning. So if you guys are interested. Have a great day everybody. Bye bye.
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