Steve Clark: How to Solve Any E-commerce Inventory Problem

Transcript:

 

[00:00:00] STEVE CLARK: I often call ops the, uh, offensive lineman of a company. When everything's going well, you don't even know they're there. When something goes wrong, you're the first one. He is like freaking holding.

 

[00:00:09] JARED WARD: What's your advice to other operators who are learning to put their big boy pants on and let their voice be heard within the company?

 

[00:00:17] STEVE CLARK: If it were me, going back in time and doing it over again, you have to speak from a, a position of CFO or COO.

 

[00:00:25] STEVE CLARK: How is this system going to help me do my job better? How is it gonna, how can we leverage it?

 

[00:00:31] STEVE CLARK: Oh, that's a good word. Don't go in there like guns a blazing saying you guys are idiots.

 

[00:00:35] JARED WARD: Yeah, right, which a lot of operators do.

 

[00:00:37] STEVE CLARK: Yeah, and that doesn't work usually you get uh, not the title you want then that's what i'm offering right now. Basically, I can come in and I can.

 

[00:00:50] JARED WARD: All right. Welcome. Welcome to 'Ops unfiltered', STEVE CLARK Clark. Hahahaha.

 

[00:00:55] STEVE CLARK: Appreciate it. I'm happy to be here, JARED WARD.

 

[00:00:57] JARED WARD: Yeah, me too. All right. So before we [00:01:00] dive into things, I just want the angle I wanted to go out in this podcast, because you are an expert in demand planning forecasting. You've worked with a myriad of different brands ranging from like big, like Kodiak cakes, all the way to your startup, your startup, startup.

 

[00:01:16] STEVE CLARK: You're british now.

 

[00:01:17] JARED WARD: Ey, mate. Ey, mate.

 

[00:01:18] JARED WARD: Your startup, your startup odyssey bar, um, and tons of different other clients that you've worked for to help dial in forecasting, demand planning. So, um, yeah, could you just give like a really quick intro of what you do and we can dive into some of those questions.

 

[00:01:33] STEVE CLARK: Totally. Yeah. Uh, undergrad is it's not in operations supply chain. It's actually in finance and econ.

 

[00:01:39] JARED WARD: Like most people.

 

[00:01:40] STEVE CLARK: Yep.

 

[00:01:40] JARED WARD: In ops and supply chain.

 

[00:01:42] STEVE CLARK: So I started working for a oil company out in the Midwest. They thought that my finance and econ background was perfectly suited for supply chain management.

 

[00:01:52] JARED WARD: So that's what. A 40 billion business, right?

 

[00:01:54] STEVE CLARK: Yeah.

 

[00:01:54] JARED WARD: You've got a really big one.

 

[00:01:54] STEVE CLARK: 40 billion. They're called Koch Industries. I don't know if.

 

[00:01:58] JARED WARD: Oh well, it's that...

 

[00:01:59] STEVE CLARK: I don't know if [00:02:00] anyone's heard of them. Most people think it's, it's Coca Cola, but it's not. But anyway, so I started with them and that's where I kind of learned the basics. I was involved in a lot of like, um, implementations of ERPs while I was there.

 

[00:02:16] STEVE CLARK: And then I moved back to Utah where home is. And I worked for Kodiak Cakes as inventory manager. Then led up to, uh.

 

[00:02:24] JARED WARD: Kodiak Cakes at the time, probably like 30 million.

 

[00:02:26] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. Yep. Small.

 

[00:02:27] JARED WARD: Explosive growth at that time.

 

[00:02:29] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. Small for. small for really big brands, but for what it is now, um, and then I stayed with them for four years.

 

[00:02:36] STEVE CLARK: Uh, it was ended up, ended up becoming the director of operations when they were just so just south of 400 million in revenue, um, saw through an acquisition there. And then I, uh, leveraged that awesome opportunity and the experience that I had to, uh, find a partner and we launched our own CPG brand called Odyssey Snacks.

 

[00:02:58] STEVE CLARK: It's a brand of prebiotic [00:03:00] protein bars and we're just getting started, but it's been fun to kind of jump into the...

 

[00:03:04] JARED WARD: Yeah, and then also on the side you... You help brands dial in their demand planning and forecasting.

 

[00:03:10] STEVE CLARK: Yeah, so the things that I've learned in my supply chain roles leading up to this point, I've been able to really hone it in and help other people replicate what I did at these other companies and now do it for their own companies.

 

[00:03:23] JARED WARD: Yeah, so that's, that's kind of where I want to dive in. That's the angle I want to go in this podcast is, so you've You've dialed in demand planning, forecasting for massive brands. You've, you've ran ops from 30 million to 400 million and you know, you're, you're running your startup right now, uh, your, your small odyssey bars, uh, e commerce store.

 

[00:03:46] JARED WARD: So, so something that I'm curious to dive into first, why, why do brands. Always go back to spreadsheets, like people, most people who listen to like thread [00:04:00] or Kodiak cakes or anybody talking on podcasts, podcasts, they automatically assume like, man, they must be doing the like that forecasting. It's probably all automated.

 

[00:04:09] JARED WARD: All the replenishments totally automated. Um, and that's typically not the case. Normally everything is done in Google Sheets and Excel. Um, why? Why do you think that is?

 

[00:04:20] STEVE CLARK: Yeah, I'm gonna I'm going to open up the kimono a little bit for some of my experiences. So, um, so my, my biggest thing that I've noticed is that we still use spreadsheets, even in those big companies, because the ERPs that most companies use are not set up for operations, uh, tasks.

 

[00:04:42] STEVE CLARK: They are set up mostly to be an accounting system of record.

 

[00:04:45] JARED WARD: Oohhh.

 

[00:04:46] STEVE CLARK: And that's...

 

[00:04:47] JARED WARD: Oh that's, that's a great, so. Say that one more time for the people in the back.

 

[00:04:52] STEVE CLARK: So, brands will always, or not always, um, let me say this again. Brands will [00:05:00] most likely, when they're setting up their ERP, say they're just moving off of QuickBooks and it's their first ERP they're coming into, they will use that ERP as an accounting system of record and they will neglect all of the operations activities that it can do as well.

 

[00:05:13] JARED WARD: And I would add on top of that, typically the switch to an ERP is pushed by the finance person.

 

[00:05:20] STEVE CLARK: It is.

 

[00:05:20] JARED WARD: The company who's like, man, we can't just use QuickBooks. And that's, yeah, that's a whole nother discussion, but yeah. Great point.

 

[00:05:26] STEVE CLARK: Yes. So that's, that's where. Uh, it all started for me. So when I was at Koch Industries, um, I was put on the implementation team for, we were migrating from an old version.

 

[00:05:37] JARED WARD: Koch Industries, 40 billion company.

 

[00:05:39] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. Uh, huge oil industry.

 

[00:05:41] JARED WARD: Migrating to SAP, right?

 

[00:05:43] STEVE CLARK: Yep. We were migrating all of our international entities onto one SAP. And, uh, my division, I was put over the, the migration team, I was put over the master data team and master data, uh, for those who don't know that is like all of the little inputs, all the little information about every single SKU [00:06:00] that you need to know that's dimensions. So size, weight, height, everything.

 

[00:06:04] JARED WARD: Why, why do you need dimensions in a forecast?

 

[00:06:06] STEVE CLARK: So if you're. Well, the way we did it, we were all vertically integrated production and everything. So when it's, when you're, when it's coming down to a planning system, you want to know, okay, how much product fits weight wise on a pallet?

 

[00:06:20] STEVE CLARK: How much, how many of these units can fit on a pallet? If I have to like, mix and match them, the whole system will, will palatize things for you in a way. And you...

 

[00:06:30] JARED WARD: Got it, got it. That makes sense.

 

[00:06:31] STEVE CLARK: So dimensions work, but... for CPG brands, uh it's typically the master data that you really care about is, uh, it's your reorder point, your, your relatively time.

 

[00:06:42] STEVE CLARK: So how long does it take for you to place the PO and for that product to hit your doc, um, and your uh, and all of your inventory requirements and your minimum order quantities. Like those are the basics for, for brands. That's all, that's really all [00:07:00] they need right now. But you can get more granular, granular as you, you know, if you get into your own manufacturing and stuff.

 

[00:07:06] JARED WARD: And you experienced this at Koch Industries, at Kodiak Cakes. Uhm why is it so hard to gather this master data? Or, or, I don't, maybe not gather, but gather and also keep it up to date. Why, why isn't everybody living in SAP? If SAP could actually automate all of this stuff, like, then why isn't every single brand using SAP right now?

 

[00:07:25] STEVE CLARK: Yeah, so, I, to illustrate, or to illustrate my answer to your question, When I left Koch and came on to Kodiak, my first week I had a meeting with the CFO and the CFO was telling me that they were migrating from QuickBooks into NetSuite and I was ready to be like, Okay, cool. Let's go dive in. Let's find all the master data for for the ops side of things. And and he quickly took me off the team. He was like, We don't need this guy anymore. He's going to just make things way too long.

 

[00:07:54] JARED WARD: Why is that? Just like

 

[00:07:56] STEVE CLARK: What I was asking, he was not ready to answer. He [00:08:00] didn't think it was relevant for what we were doing.

 

[00:08:02] JARED WARD: So you were shining a light on like their...

 

[00:08:05] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. I don't think he understood what the importance of it was.

 

[00:08:08] STEVE CLARK: I think when he, when he was put on this task, he was like, oh, we just need something better than QuickBooks and all we were really focusing on were. You know, the financial side of things. All right. And when I was saying like, okay, well, we also need to put in like all of our, you know, all the master data that goes in for ops activities for demand planning and all that stuff.

 

[00:08:27] STEVE CLARK: And we just weren't ready at that time. Like Kodiak just wasn't ready. And so to your question, where do you find that master data? At that point, Kodiak had grown so fast and it added so many SKUs and it, you know, expanded into different categories so quickly that you sacrifice order and. And processes for speed and agility, and that's where I think a lot of brands get in trouble in the first place.

 

[00:08:51] JARED WARD: Yeah, so it sounds like the biggest problem with master data, especially at smaller companies, is the processes it takes to upkeep those.

 

[00:08:58] STEVE CLARK: Yeah.

 

[00:08:59] JARED WARD: And I, [00:09:00] I'd agree with you. I mean, so we, we also do basic forecasting for, for brands and yeah, same thing. We need, we need sales velocities, MOQs, general lead time. Um, maybe a buffer of stock and all of that, like at a SKU level.

 

[00:09:14] JARED WARD: And yeah, it's, it is, that's why people think they want automated purchasing and automating replenishment. But what I tell people is like, look, I mean, a software could do that for you, but you know, you're a two person ops team. Um, I'll be honest with you. I don't think you'll be able to upkeep the data so that you can like automate everything.

 

[00:09:38] JARED WARD: Um, So typically what people, it's funny for us, even for us, what people end up doing is like, we end up sort of like replicating a live Google sheet onto our, um, onto our software. And it, it works.

 

[00:09:51] STEVE CLARK: It's the most flexible way. I mean, with the data changing so much, I couldn't think of any other way to do it at Kodiak than through a [00:10:00] spreadsheet, because we were just, we were gathering all the input from all the sales reps, and we were gathering all the information from the marketing team.

 

[00:10:08] STEVE CLARK: And we were, I mean, I tried, I, I interviewed several companies that were going to try and streamline our demand planning process. And the implementation was just taking so long and it was so expensive. And we ultimately scrapped all of that and we just, they still use the spreadsheets that I built for them.

 

[00:10:25] JARED WARD: Yeah. That's totally nice.

 

[00:10:25] STEVE CLARK: They haven't gone for two years.

 

[00:10:27] JARED WARD: That's awesome. Now that's a testament to...

 

[00:10:30] STEVE CLARK: Either it's a testament to me or it's a testament to the fact that sales and marketing is still king.

 

[00:10:37] JARED WARD: Yeah, exactly. Um, so walk me through, I'm curious, since you have... Since you have this forecasting and ops experience at a variety of different sizes, companies, um, what, what advice would you give to startups?

 

[00:10:53] JARED WARD: Like the, if you had to. If you had to give one piece of advice on what is [00:11:00] generally off in a brand's ability to forecast, like, what is the one thing you would tell them to build a foundation of a good forecast?

 

[00:11:10] STEVE CLARK: Make sure it's, I'd start with, make sure you understand it by channel, right? So if you're, if you're selling in retail, brick and mortar, wholesale, right?

 

[00:11:21] STEVE CLARK: If that, Keep that separate from what you're doing on Shopify and then keep that separate from what you're doing on Amazon. Cause every, each channel has its own growth path, you know, like... hahahaha

 

[00:11:34] JARED WARD: For the scrappy brands or like maybe bring in some of your experience, for example, with Odyssey, where it's just a one person ops guy or girl and what. When you say forecast by channel, like, what do you mean, do you, are you talking like top down forecasting, bottom up, like, what is the simplest way that they can just extract all of the data from the channels and just [00:12:00] generally know?

 

[00:12:00] STEVE CLARK: Yeah, that's tough, it's so hard, because, and by the way, I'm not ever, like, don't ever think that I've figured the system out and I've got a crystal ball now.

 

[00:12:11] JARED WARD: You'd be a billionaire.

 

[00:12:12] STEVE CLARK: I know I would. What I, what I feel like I've done better is using statistics to help with my forecasting.

 

[00:12:18] JARED WARD: How so?

 

[00:12:19] STEVE CLARK: Um, just using exponential smoothing and historical data to help forecast out, uh, you know, track seasonality, figure out where seasonality exists in your historical data to then put it.

 

[00:12:31] JARED WARD: So walk me through that because this is really interesting to me because like these are. Yeah, I'm super interested. How do you do that? Like, just take a SKU from a brand that you've helped before and walk me through how you've done that.

 

[00:12:44] STEVE CLARK: So we'll take, uh, let's say we'll take a, we'll take Kodiak's best selling pancake SKU. Okay. So this is going to be different than a startup. So bear with me. I'll get to a startup example here in a minute.

 

[00:12:57] JARED WARD: Yeah, we'll start with the complex and we'll get to the really [00:13:00] simple.

 

[00:13:00] STEVE CLARK: So with Kodiak's best selling SKU, I mean, we had five years of monthly sales data. Okay. But retail sales data, and so it was easy for me to just take this model that I built and just take, let's say I took two years of sales history and in the Excel formula that Excel made.

 

[00:13:19] STEVE CLARK: I'm not didn't make this Excel formula. This is all in Excel. Everybody, anybody can do this, but you just take however much historical data you want and the formula then takes whatever historical data you put in and it will find. Seasonality in the data for you, and then you can project it out to us.

 

[00:13:39] STEVE CLARK: I've done it as far as five years. It's, it obviously gets really inaccurate after you get past, you know, eight months, but anyway, you can use this formula to just, uh, it'll, it'll project the seasonality that you want. It will project the growth. It'll see the growth rate in your historical data as well and project that [00:14:00] forward as well.

 

[00:14:01] STEVE CLARK: And so it just gives you kind of a stat baseline. Right. And so I use that to help. Kodiak understand, okay, this is our best selling SKU at the growth rate it's had during our most consistent period. This is what we should expect to see. Plus the, you know, the down times during December, the up times again, when back to school comes back in and, and then add a growth factor on top of that.

 

[00:14:23] JARED WARD: Yeah. So how would, uh, for example, how would a brand get that formula? Do you have like a website that where you share that out as the YouTube video out there?

 

[00:14:32] STEVE CLARK: So I'll tell you right now, all you gotta do is just Google: "exponential smoothing formula in Excel", and it will do it for you. My quite candidly, if you hired me to do it for your brand, that's what I would be doing to build out your demand planning model.

 

[00:14:48] JARED WARD: I love that, I love that you're sharing that.

 

[00:14:49] STEVE CLARK: I don't claim to know something that or have a proprietary formula or anything.

 

[00:14:55] JARED WARD: Yeah.

 

[00:14:55] STEVE CLARK: It's, it's...

 

[00:14:56] JARED WARD: At least people appreciate that.

 

[00:14:57] STEVE CLARK: Hopefully you want to stick with me longer because I'm [00:15:00] honest.

 

[00:15:00] JARED WARD: Yeah.

 

[00:15:00] STEVE CLARK: But...

 

[00:15:02] JARED WARD: So now let's do the most simple, like the simplest of brands doing like two million a year.

 

[00:15:06] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. So it's hard. So if you're a legit startup in the true sense of the word, where do you only have maybe, let's say a year or two years worth of historical data, that same exponential smoothing, uh, formula that I just said, it probably won't work very well for you *laughs* because you're, you're just, you're in a weird state.

 

[00:15:27] STEVE CLARK: You don't have recurring revenue. It's, it's a lot of it's contingent on what ads you're running.

 

[00:15:33] JARED WARD: Yup.

 

[00:15:33] STEVE CLARK: How effective those ads are. And so...

 

[00:15:36] JARED WARD: Or if you're wholesale, it's like the, the next biggest PO that you're going to get, like...

 

[00:15:40] STEVE CLARK: Exactly.

 

[00:15:41] JARED WARD: You have no clue.

 

[00:15:42] STEVE CLARK: Exactly. And who knows how long it takes for them to sell through their palette that they just bought from you.

 

[00:15:46] JARED WARD: So how, how does a startup actually effectively forecast? Cause like, I've been there with small companies, and it just, it seems like the best way to do it is just to do it ad hoc, [00:16:00] top down, channel by channel. That, that's what it feels like to me, but like, I don't...

 

[00:16:05] STEVE CLARK: No, you're absolutely right. So that's exactly what I do for Odyssey. Like, I'm, I'm looking at... My Shopify sales data. And I'm like, okay, we did this. We we've done X last month. And this is how much we did. This is how much we did in paid ads. This was the conversion rate of the painted paid ads. Um, we're going to do this much more in paid ads next month. And I just have like some back of the napkin, weird math of like, okay, if I, my, my increase of ad spend equates to X amount of, of revenue. And that's how I, that's how I do my forecasting based on ad spend right now.

 

[00:16:38] JARED WARD: Got it. Okay. Well, that's interesting.

 

[00:16:40] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. And it's...

 

[00:16:41] JARED WARD: It's all based on add spent.

 

[00:16:42] STEVE CLARK: It is. And it all, and let's be real too, like the pro, the problems that I run into with running a startup is that my volumes aren't very big. And so it's hard for brands to hit scale, right?

 

[00:16:57] STEVE CLARK: If you're at scale, great. That's cool. My problems were not [00:17:00] that I've, my problems are that I'll place my minimum order quantity with my manufacturer and that product will last me two to three months. Whereas at Kodiak, I was used to reordering, like Every three weeks, it was like it was placing a PO every three weeks and that's just, that's what you want.

 

[00:17:16] JARED WARD: Okay. So what are my next question would be, what are some issues that I know there's a lot of brands that listen, who they, they do wholesale and they do, um, direct to consumer sales.

 

[00:17:30] STEVE CLARK: Yep.

 

[00:17:31] JARED WARD: So obviously you're going to divide out those channels, wholesale forecasting, and I guess you classify like big box retail, um, What's the best way to forecast that as, say, a brand doing 10 million or more, so it's still, they're almost like, and they're just now branching into big box retail and specialty wholesale. How do you, how do you not have that break your forecast? And what do you do with that?

 

[00:17:57] STEVE CLARK: I deal in a lot of [00:18:00] probabilities as well.

 

[00:18:01] JARED WARD: Okay.

 

[00:18:01] STEVE CLARK: So I, you, you're right. So breaking apart, like wholesale, so let's say you've got like a, an account on fair.com or something right.

 

[00:18:08] JARED WARD: Yep. Very common. Yep.

 

[00:18:10] STEVE CLARK: And so that, that kind of demand is sparse and it can be... Uh, it's not going to be as consistent as big as big box as a grocery store or best buy or something like that.

 

[00:18:23] STEVE CLARK: So I would still keep those two separate in different channels um The best way when you're getting into big box or in any kind of retail store is to put all your whole list of all of your potential customers and I always assign a probability of them coming in at that, that month and I do kind of like a, a risk adjusted.

 

[00:18:45] JARED WARD: Ohh okay.

 

[00:18:46] STEVE CLARK: Total demand view, right? Cause there's going to be times where you're like, okay, let's say...

 

[00:18:50] JARED WARD: Put that in layman's term.

 

[00:18:51] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. *laughs*

 

[00:18:52] JARED WARD: You're, okay, you have your top selling SKU, and it says it's supposed to get in time for the warehouse for this big [00:19:00] sale. But like, there's a probability that it might not. So, how do you take account for that?

 

[00:19:05] STEVE CLARK: So, you're gonna have buyers that tell you a date? And the buyers will say, Hey, we're going to, we're going to purchase this on this date to be ready for, you know, uh, like a month in advance, it's going to be on shelf in a month, but, and this is, if this is their first order, chances are it's going to be on time, but that next, that reorder, you don't know if it's going to, if they're going to burn through that in a month, you don't know if you're going to burn through it in a month and a half. And so I always put some kind of risk adjustment. So a probability that's where risk adjusted means. Um if I say i've got a hundred a hundred units that are going to get sold, but I assign it a 70 probability, it's really my risk adjust adjusted is 70 units.

 

[00:19:51] JARED WARD: Oh.

 

[00:19:52] STEVE CLARK: Got it?

 

[00:19:52] JARED WARD: Got it!

 

[00:19:52] STEVE CLARK: And risk adjusted forecasting is hard because it's hard if you only have one, one customer, but if you've got like, you know, 10, [00:20:00] 15 customers that you think are going to come in and in a certain month, you assign a probability to them and you apply that to the quantities he thinks coming in, you can get pretty close to what's actually going to happen.

 

[00:20:10] JARED WARD: That's awesome. Now let's, uh, couple like rapid fire questions here near the end. Um, you came into Kodiak Cakes and they were switching from QuickBooks to NetSuite, correct? Walk me through that. How is. How was switching systems? Was it, was it a massive pain? Why?

 

[00:20:31] STEVE CLARK: Yeah, it was a massive pain. So, just the overall just learning, like you feel foreign in a new system. Like QuickBooks, I knew, you know exactly where to click, you know exactly where to go. Um, and we didn't hire a consultant to coach us, at least on the ops side. I think accounting did, but ops didn't get a, a consultant to teach us how to write POs, how to reconcile inventory.

 

[00:20:54] JARED WARD: Why, why, why is that? Why do you think ops are forgotten in companies?

 

[00:20:58] STEVE CLARK: I often call ops, [00:21:00] the offensive linemen of a company when everything's going well, you don't even know they're there when something goes wrong. You're the first one. He's like freaking holding.

 

[00:21:07] JARED WARD: Gosh, exactly.

 

[00:21:09] STEVE CLARK: So. Uh, you know, it also probably was we didn't make a big enough deal about it. Had we had a vocal, um, a voice kind of saying, Hey, we need to make sure that the, all these other intangibles about how ops gets their job done in the system is just as important as accounting does, then we probably would have been fine.

 

[00:21:31] JARED WARD: And what's, so like, what's your stance on an alternative? So like at the time you didn't speak up or, you know, whoever leadership didn't speak up. Um, What do you think there's an alternative to like NetSuite or Acumen, like the big ERPs? Is it, could you scrap around on spreadsheets?

 

[00:21:49] STEVE CLARK: So my experience, I would literally, I was in a 30 million company that was doing spreadsheets and was doing just fine with it. And we had several opportunities. From 30 million to [00:22:00] 350 million to jump in and buy a really expensive third party add on to NetSuite to help us do all of the stuff that our spreadsheets were doing. And we never found a better solution than what we were doing on our own. And so, yes, quite frankly, I think brands do not need to jump in, uh, into a big ERP as fast as they think I think they could do exactly what they could do with QuickBooks. I don't think Kodiak what we were doing on the at least on the opposite of things that I can't speak for accounting, but I think we could have done well with QuickBooks Enterprise for a lot longer.

 

[00:22:39] JARED WARD: Yeah, obviously that's why Luminous exists. Uh, yeah, we're trying to fill that gap in the market. You know, you don't have to jump to NetSuite. In fact, when you dissect the reasons why brands do it, it's typically pushed by a financial reason. And even, even QuickBooks, quote unquote, not working for bigger brands, it normally has to do [00:23:00] with how, how cogs and financials are pushed to QuickBooks.

 

[00:23:03] STEVE CLARK: Yep.

 

[00:23:04] JARED WARD: Um... Less so, like, QuickBooks sucks and you can't grow with it, uhm, yeah, it's...

 

[00:23:11] STEVE CLARK: I'll even give you another plug for why I think, uh, why I think Luminous is a good option for brands. Um, if you're, if you're, if you are a brand, if you are a company, and your exit strategy is to get acquired by another company, they already have their own ERP system. And you're going to have to go through another migration once you get acquired. So you spend all that money to, you know, jump from QuickBooks into Oracle or...

 

[00:23:38] JARED WARD: That's a good point.

 

[00:23:39] STEVE CLARK: Or whatever, right?

 

[00:23:40] JARED WARD: You're going to get gobbled up by somebody that is not NetSuite.

 

[00:23:42] STEVE CLARK: Yeah, you hope it is, right? That's the hope. And so, like, the easier it is for you to transition over into whatever they're using, it's better.

 

[00:23:51] JARED WARD: So, last rapid fire question, um... What's your advice to other operators, um, who are learning to, [00:24:00] I don't know, put their big boy pants on and let their voice be heard within the company? Because I, I agree with you.

 

[00:24:09] JARED WARD: It's, it's hard to speak up in situations like this where, you know, at Kodiak Cakes, like, you guys were in pain. You were like scrapping with spreadsheets and managing a NetSuite implementation. Like, that sucks. And it's typically just because these decisions are made. Where you don't have a voice at the table and you're left implementing all of it and running the company.

 

[00:24:31] JARED WARD: So obviously you're a lot more seasoned now. What advice do you give to operators to speak up to their leadership, to let their voice be known? Um, what research should they be doing online to, to make sure they have a good voice?

 

[00:24:46] STEVE CLARK: If it were me going back in time and doing it over again, you have to speak from a position of, of understanding. Like you have to understand why they're choosing to do what they're doing, why the, why [00:25:00] the leadership team is doing what they're doing and, and, and understand that. Don't go in there like guns ablaze you guys are idiots.

 

[00:25:07] JARED WARD: Which a lot of operators do.

 

[00:25:08] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. And that doesn't work. Usually you get, uh, not the title you want. *laughs*

 

[00:25:13] JARED WARD: Yeah, that's right.

 

[00:25:14] STEVE CLARK: Um, so my, my advice would be understand, master data, like understand what, what is required when if your company is moving into an ERP, just understand like, Hey, CFO or COO, how is this system going to help me do my job better? How is it going to, how can we leverage it? Oh, that's a good word. How can we leverage this?

 

[00:25:39] STEVE CLARK: To make the capabilities of our team so much better and so that we don't have to keep adding headcount because that was what we always, we covered a band aid, a band aid for not investing in our master data and our ERP on the upside was to hire somebody else.

 

[00:25:52] JARED WARD: Ohhh. That's such a good point. And, and being, see, being, you can articulate that now where you could sit in front of a CEO or a VP of [00:26:00] ops or something and be like, Hey man. We can either keep adding headcount and have really complicated software to manage that headcount or you know we could actually simplify and put some better SOPs in and a much simpler software could do this.

 

[00:26:12] STEVE CLARK: Yes. Absolutely.

 

[00:26:13] JARED WARD: Yeah. Hey being able to articulate that Not being overly aggressive, like you guys suck, you just don't get this, I'm on the ground, it's like, no, like, understand why they're doing what they're doing. They're doing this because they want to scale, and they see the current solution, not able to scale, so, yeah, articulate your reasons why that doesn't work for Ops.

 

[00:26:34] STEVE CLARK: Absolutely.

 

[00:26:35] JARED WARD: And, and that's also a reason why Luminous, like, that's why I'm making content, you'll see a lot of themes in our podcast, you know. You know, finance people choosing big ERPs or, you know, why big ERPs aren't necessarily the best fit, how to better forecast, like we hit some of the same themes that a bunch of brands are going through.

 

[00:26:54] JARED WARD: So hopefully by watching this podcast and luminous content, a bunch like it'll equip [00:27:00] operations with some, some more high level knowledge on how to approach these conversations, but...

 

[00:27:05] STEVE CLARK: Totally.

 

[00:27:06] JARED WARD: Um, so last thing, can you, can you plug your services? Um, cause I know you, you help dial in demand planning, forecasting for a bunch of brands. Um, and I know there's a lot of brands that could potentially use your services.

 

[00:27:17] STEVE CLARK: Oh, thank you. Yeah. So basically what it is right now is I'm offering a very a la carte menu at this point. So if your company is missing, uh, demand planning solutions, supply planning solutions, uh, or just general, they need help setting up an SNOP process, then that's what I'm offering right now.

 

[00:27:35] STEVE CLARK: Basically, I can come in and I can, I can either look at your current tools and help consult on how to make them better, or I have my own templates that I brought with me along my career that we can just plug and play into your business, customize them to fit their supply chain. And, um, what I think is, is great about what I'm offering is that you can either pick and choose what services you want. And you can also hire me to train your current [00:28:00] team to use them. And then you don't have...

 

[00:28:02] JARED WARD: To keep it updated.

 

[00:28:03] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. So you're not dependent on me. Like you don't, nobody wants to be dependent on me or a consultant. You want to be able to teach your team and let, let the consultant go. And that's my whole plan.

 

[00:28:13] JARED WARD: Love it. That's awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming in today. I feel like that was a good, quick, concise podcast. Lots of value.

 

[00:28:20] STEVE CLARK: Love it.

 

[00:28:21] JARED WARD: Thanks, STEVE CLARK.

 

[00:28:21] STEVE CLARK: Yeah. Thanks man.

 

[00:28:22] JARED WARD: See ya.

 

[00:28:23] STEVE CLARK: Good luck.