{"id":53580,"date":"2017-11-08T18:27:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T23:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mytotalretail.com\/post\/?p=53580"},"modified":"2017-11-08T18:27:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T23:27:27","slug":"a-chat-with-tom-ebling-former-demandware-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mytotalretail.com\/a-chat-with-tom-ebling-former-demandware-ceo\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chat With Tom Ebling, Former Demandware CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was excited to interview <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomebling.com\/\">Tom Ebling<\/a> last week, a true retail technology leader whose stint as CEO of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.demandware.com\">Demandware<\/a> from 2010-2016 included growing the software company into a $300 million public company that was <a href=\"http:\/\/investor.salesforce.com\/about-us\/investor\/investor-news\/investor-news-details\/2016\/Salesforce-Signs-Definitive-Agreement-to-Acquire-Demandware\/default.aspx\">acquired by Salesforce for $2.8 billion in 2016<\/a>. Prior to Demandware, Ebling was the CEO of Lattice Engines, ProfitLogic and Torrent Systems. In September, he joined the board of directors for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.custora.com\">Custora<\/a>, a customer segmentation platform for retailers. Here are some highlights from our discussion:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Melissa Campanelli:<\/strong> You have a lot of experience in retail technology, so let&#8217;s start there. What do you like most about the retail industry? What excites you about it?<br \/>\n<strong>Tom Ebling:<\/strong> Retail technology is so dynamic. Change happens so frequently and it&#8217;s exciting to watch our customers constantly deal with change and work with them to support them.<\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s also refreshing that when your customers are in retail and you mention them and what they&#8217;re doing, everyone feels they can relate because everyone is a consumer. It makes what I&#8217;m doing very real to my entire network, my children, everyone. It&#8217;s cool.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MC: <\/strong>You&#8217;ve had great success in your professional life, so I&#8217;m sure our readers would like to hear about your leadership skills. Can you tell us what kind of a leader you are? What are some of your leadership mantras?<br \/>\n<strong>TE:<\/strong> To be a great leader, you have to have a great team. It&#8217;s very important that your team is comprised of talented people who are capable for their roles and team players. It&#8217;s also important for a leader to work with [his or her] team to create a common vision and a common strategy for the team. Once that&#8217;s created, a good leader should empower the team to execute the vision without constantly looking over their shoulders. This requires a lot of time together as a team and a lot of communication. I like to think that was my style. I think I did a good job of creating a team, and creating a common vision and common strategy for the team.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MC: <\/strong>Any hiring tips?<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>TE:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t trust my own judgment. I really try to have people with different backgrounds and personalities from mine meet with [prospective] candidates. Then, I make a point to really listen carefully to all of their observations, and then I form a total picture rather than simply relying on my maybe too qualitative approach to doing it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MC: <\/strong>What are some retail tech trends you&#8217;re most interested in right now?<strong><br \/>\nTE:<\/strong> One trend is around retailers being consumer and customer focused. Of course, successful retailers have always been consumer focused, but I think the concept of consumer focus has become so much more important now. Retailers aren&#8217;t just thinking about how to get customers, but how do you keep them, nurture them, get the most lifetime value out of them, and retain their loyalty. It&#8217;s so much easier to lose them now than in the past, and the disruption caused by Amazon.com is certainly feeding into that. So, I think being consumer focused has become an obsession with retailers. It&#8217;s been building, but it&#8217;s really building even faster now and gaining more momentum.<\/p>\n<p>Another trend is around predictive intelligence, or basically leveraging data and things like machine learning to help companies do a better job of being consumer focused. There are many companies using technologies to do this today, and big retailers are hiring people to do this directly as well. I think this is a trend because even though there&#8217;s a lot of talk about it, it&#8217;s just in its infancy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MC:<\/strong> Finally, what attracted you to Custora, and what are you looking most forward to as a board member?<br \/>\n<strong>TE:<\/strong> Custora is right at the intersection of everything I&#8217;ve talked about around where retail tech and retail is going &#8212; leveraging big data and predictive intelligence to help drive consumer centricity. And it has a very impressive list of customers for an early-stage company. Where Custora is going with its technologies and solutions for customers is where I believe all of retail needs to go.<\/p>\n<p>Also, over the months before I joined, I got to know Corey [Pierson] and Jon [Pospischil], Custora&#8217;s founders, and really liked them and believed I could add value. Some of the experiences I went through at the companies I led, grew and ramped up will be experiences that\u00a0 Custora will probably go through, and I can hopefully help and guide it on the journey.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was excited to interview Tom Ebling last week, a true retail technology leader whose stint as CEO of Demandware from 2010-2016 included growing the software company into a $300 million public company that was acquired by Salesforce for $2.8 billion in 2016. Prior to Demandware, Ebling was the CEO of Lattice Engines, ProfitLogic and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":53583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[102993],"class_list":["post-53580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics","category-database-marketing","category-e-commerce","category-e-commerce-platforms","category-leadership","category-loyalty-programs","tag-business","tag-ceo","tag-company","tag-consumer","tag-consumer-focused","tag-consumers","tag-customer","tag-customer-centricity","tag-customer-focused","tag-customers","tag-custora","tag-data","tag-demandware","tag-hiring","tag-lattice-engines","tag-leader","tag-leadership","tag-machine-learning","tag-management","tag-predictive-analytics","tag-product","tag-professional-life","tag-profitlogic","tag-retail","tag-retail-leader","tag-retail-tech","tag-retail-tech-leader","tag-retail-technology","tag-retail-technology-leader","tag-retailer","tag-retailers","tag-salesforce","tag-salesforce-com","tag-technology","tag-tom-ebling","tag-torrent-systems","editorial_type-questions-and-answers","company-custora","company-demandware","company-salesforce","person-melissa-campanelli","person-tom-ebling","blog_channel-retail-resources","vertical-retail"],"yoast_head":"<!-- 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