Considering how fast wages are rising these days, many CFOs would love to be able to predict the future of pay. Unlike other inputs, salaries and wages seem hard to track and even more difficult to forecast that got one man thinking. Meet Cary Sparrow, a former US naval officer and founder and CEO of greenwich.hr, where he helps HR professionals and consulting firms predict the future of pay. He's leveraged 35 plus years of combined engineering, military consulting, and operations leadership to ...
Jun 25, 2023•30 min•Season 12Ep. 5
Running a successful e-commerce business continues to get more complicated - and more costly. The old days when a web strategy was little more than a simple online shop have morphed into a complex, hyper competitive business model. Today, surging costs and few barriers to competitors have raised the stakes for e-commerce businesses. That’s requiring new tools and new skills. Meet Matt Putra is the CFO of eightx.co, which helps companies with that all important financial forecasting - so that lea...
Jun 18, 2023•30 min•Season 12Ep. 4
We often talk about brands on this show, but so far we’ve never talked about manufacturing brands. In fact, until this guest came on A Seat at The Table, I hadn’t given it much thought. Turns out, I was overlooking a huge marketing opportunity - and it seems that a lot of businesses are too! Today Jim Huebner joins us on a Seat at The Table to discuss what manufacturers need to now know about branding to not only grow their market but to also protect the market share they already have. Jim is th...
Jun 11, 2023•32 min•Season 12Ep. 3
Almost every business leader is discussing what role AI will play in their company. For manufacturers, AI is considered to be foundational to the move towards Industry 4.0. However most manufacturers are not quite sure how to specifically apply AI to their operations. How to go from theory to practical application. Meet Bryan DeBois, director of Industrial AI at RoviSys, one of the largest independent global system integrators focused on manufacturing. Today on A Seat at The Table, we’ll be answ...
Jun 04, 2023•36 min•Season 12Ep. 2
Manufacturing is getting modernised as companies look to boost process efficiencies, create more resilient supply chains - and of course reduce costs. Elon Musk redefined manufacturing through Tesla and SpaceX, where he leaned into new technologies to make his processes faster and better. The manufacturing sector is now starting to look to startups and SaaS solutions. Meet Renan Devillieres, CEO of OSS Ventures, which developes and scales technology-driven businesses in the manufacturing space. ...
May 28, 2023•20 min•Season 12Ep. 1
The value of establishing a strong brand is indisputable. Even in tough times companies with power brands - or even just strong brand recognition within one sector - outperform the market. Established brands are also better positioned to ride the economic peaks and troughs that often crush near competitors. While understanding why we need to invest in brand building is easy, figuring how to do it is a bit more complicated. Meet Carolyn Walker, CEO & Managing Partner of Response Marketing, an...
May 21, 2023•36 min•Season 11Ep. 13
The game for online sellers has gotten a lot more competitive. The free money that was funding start ups and the subsidies that drove massive pandemic-era online shopping are off. The soaring costs of reverse logistics - in fact all logistics, as well as customer acquisition - is on! It’s definitely gotten a lot hotter in the e-commerce arena - and retailers are now a lot more worried about getting burnt with losses than driving record shattering top line growth. The market dynamics have clearly...
May 14, 2023•42 min•Season 11Ep. 12
After being heralded as the next digital hotspot, the Metaverse plummeted out of favor - in tandem with the fate of its parent company, Meta. Brands that were tripping over each other to grab a space in this new space suddenly started to make a hasty exit. The post-covid world was retuning to stores, people wanted experiences - in real life - and were making the internet a part of their lives rather then the center of their lives. However despite the overall trend of moving back to the physical ...
May 07, 2023•31 min•Season 11Ep. 11
It’s gotten to the point where most digital native brands are looking to physical stores to grow their business. To maximise our e-commerce marketing, we need to first identify which metrics we should be measuring. And it turns out that many of the traditional metrics are not the best indicators of how well your business is doing. Meet Valentin Radu, founder of Omniconvert and a specialist in increasing customer lifetime value. According to Valentin, e-commerce sellers spend too much time chasin...
Apr 30, 2023•29 min•Season 11Ep. 10
The pandemic put supply chains in the spotlight. Companies doubled down on identifying weak links and looking for solutions to ensure greater resilience in the future. Most people believe the solution - or at least the foundational part of it - is greater automation and digitisation. But what if we are misunderstanding the problem? Or maybe just need to look at it from a different perspective? Could we be overlooking incredible supply chain strengths and opportunities that resulted from the unex...
Apr 23, 2023•40 min•Season 11Ep. 8
A big part of winning at retail is understanding what motivates consumers to buy. It’s a topic that has gotten increasingly complex now that retail spans so many different channels. One man has made it his life’s work to go deep and get inside the mind of the consumer. Meet Paco Underhill, founder and former CEO of Envirosell, a behavioural research and consulting firm that tests prototype stores, as well as monitoring consumer behaviour on websites and in brick and mortar stores. In this episod...
Apr 19, 2023•27 min•Season 11Ep. 9
Digitising product development and design is the way forward - both from a cost cutting and speed to market point of view. However certain aspects of digitising more complex products such as apparel and home textiles are still difficult to do - creating a sticking point for taking this from concept to wide spread implementation. One of those challenges is being able to digitise fabric swatches so that when brought into a 3D design environment they show all the nuances that the fabric would show ...
Apr 16, 2023•40 min•Season 11Ep. 7
Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands. That’s exactly what Dawn Strachan did. With her primary school aged daughter and son facing learning challenges - and unable to muster support for them from her local school system, Dawn realised that she would need to find her own solution. So she leaned into her university training in early learning development and education and created her own methods for helping them with math, spelling and reading. Dawn realised two fundamentals: ...
Apr 02, 2023•24 min•Season 11Ep. 6
Anyone who has a professional position - whether they are senior executive, a C-suite boss or an entrepreneur - knows that they need to have a presence on LinkedIn. For most (including myself) that typically ends up being some version of their resume or CV - and not necessarily one that is up to date or particularly compelling. However, with companies increasingly using LinkedIn as one of their recruiting tools and clients often using LinkedIn as part of the way they learn about companies or con...
Mar 26, 2023•29 min•Season 11Ep. 5
Managing global supply chains has become one of the most challenging, risk intensive aspects of just about any business. While the logistics crisis that rocked the past three years has now normalised, geopolitical issues are escalating, key retail markets are uncertain - at best - and then there’s the increasing pressure to meet more stringent demands for transparency. Oh, and let’s not forget about the ubiquitous price pressure that has always been part of product sourcing. A growing number of ...
Mar 19, 2023•44 min•Season 11Ep. 4
E-commerce is an essential retail channel, but the costs associated with selling online have become daunting. From soaring warehousing and last mile delivery costs to high volumes of returns, it can get to the point where the more you sell, the more money you lose. One cost that has gotten out of control is customer acquisition cost or CAC. Those pay-per-click ads that drive traffic also take a bit out your margins - in fact they can devour so much of your profits that many sellers are left with...
Mar 12, 2023•32 min•Season 11Ep. 3
Leadership is a big topic these days. From staff retention to getting better performance from teams, there is a lot of pressure on leadership to be be better leaders. Probably one of the best of the places to look for role models and best practices in leadership is to the people who manage professional sports teams. The stakes are high - and so is the pressure. After all, sports is really all about performance. And measured in each and every game - and even down to single plays. And one of the b...
Mar 04, 2023•21 min•Season 11Ep. 2
On the one hand, there’s a low barrier to entry so any size company can participate. On the other hand, it has become increasingly complex, time consuming - what worked yesterday could very well not be effective tomorrow. Mastering digital marketing has become a must for most businesses. Thus learning what’s working - and what’s not - is critical in order to develop the right strategy for your organisation. Today’s guest is going to share how to do this. Chris Pistorius has over 15 years experie...
Feb 25, 2023•27 min•Season 10Ep. 12
Typically marketing and sales are handled by a company’s marketing and sales team - who, not surprisingly, approach the task using the standard marketing and sales tools. But what if we could uncover hidden opportunities or boost our success rate by taking an entirely different approach? Our guest today will be talking about why we might want to solve marketing and sales challenges like an engineer - and how his has used this strategy in his company. I’m Jane Singer and it’s great to have you wi...
Feb 18, 2023•32 min•Season 10Ep. 10
For anyone who travels frequent flyer or loyalty programs as they are called play an outsized role in our airline choices. While most don’t want to admit it, the lure of a free flight or an upgrade is almost irresistible. While most of us are active participants in loyalty programs, few of us really understand why they say are so beneficial - to the airlines. What you you find out might surprise you as much it did me. Today we are joined by Mark Ross-Smith, Founder of industry news site “Travel ...
Feb 11, 2023•33 min•Season 10Ep. 6
Today most leaders are so focused on survival that don’t even dare to dream of being able to win praise from their employees or truly find a way to consistently manage both their time and their energy. However this might not be as out of reach as it seems and our guest today will be showing us how. Take we have Herdis Pala Palsdottir joining us. Herdis is co-founder of Opus Futura and a frequent lecturer on the future of work, as well as having sat on many management boards. She champions the co...
Feb 04, 2023•28 min•Season 10Ep. 11
Digital marketing is now something that every business needs to include - even if only in a minimal way. That’s left a lot of companies either wondering what to do - or wasting time and money doing the wrong thing. One of the core tactics is building links on your website. They can significantly boost your ranking in search, add credibility to your website and help attract more visitors. Like most aspects of digital marketing, the cost can be low, but the time required to do it right can be mass...
Jan 28, 2023•30 min•Season 10Ep. 9
In an environment where interest rates are continuing to rise, suddenly raising venture capital is not as easy as it used to be. If fact, it’s getting a lot more difficult. However, there are always investors who are looking for interesting opportunities. The key now is knowing how to find them. I’m Jane Singer and it’s great to have you as part of our global community of industry leaders here at A Seat at The Table. Today we are joined by Ron Bauer, Founder of Theseus Capital Ltd, principal inv...
Jan 21, 2023•39 min•Season 10Ep. 8
Many companies think that having survived the pandemic that the worst is behind them. However they might be surprised to find that economic instability can strike at any time. To ensure that they can survive in any circumstances, leaders need to continually be looking for those ’silent business killers’ that are often lurking in even seemingly healthy companies. Today we’re joined by Steven Blue, CEO of Miller Ingenuity and author of five bestselling books that teach senior leaders and CEOs how ...
Jan 14, 2023•34 min•Season 10Ep. 7
One of the biggest challenges service providers face is getting new clients. Not just more clients - but the right clients. Those people who need and want their services. Typically, executives needed to invest a huge amount of time networking - from attending conferences to working the room at local events. While you can certainly meet a lot of people this way, it takes up a huge amount of time - not mention the travel travel costs. In an age of where everything has a digital component surely th...
Jan 08, 2023•30 min•Season 11Ep. 1
For years companies have been talking about digital transformation but many are still trying to figure out what might be the best pathway for transitioning their operations onto a more automated platform. The idea of digitising sounds great. Executing on it often seems daunting. And in fact it can be. As a result, companies end up with a compilation of old and new solutions - which can be less efficient and actually cost them more than taking the leap to fully digitising. Today’s guest is going ...
Jan 01, 2023•27 min•Season 10Ep. 13
Most companies have learned how to attract people to their websites or their online stores. The challenge is converting those visitors into customers. In an increasingly crowded and noisy market, how can we develop the right strategies to get people to move from looking to buying? In this podcast we are joined by Carl Weische, co-founder of ACCELERATED and an expert in CRO. That’s conversion rate optimisation. Accelerated works with some of the fastest scaling D2C brands helping them grow from 8...
Dec 24, 2022•34 min•Season 10Ep. 11
Technology has become essential to almost every aspect of our business operations. Organisations of all sizes are looking to new digital solutions to help them successfully navigate complex and often fast changing environments. Today it’s not only about automating repetitive tasks or making our employees more productive. Newer technology solutions are providing more immersive ways to use applications, as well as far greater predictive capabilities. So what are some the newer technologies - and h...
Dec 17, 2022•27 min•Season 10Ep. 5
Customer loyalty is something every company wants, but nowadays few are able to achieve. This leaves most companies spending more and more budget to acquire customers who quickly hop to the next brand or chase the newest offer. A big part of running a successful business is being able to retain your existing customers, while continuing to attract new ones. With customer acquisition costs across all channels at record highs, investing in retaining those customers you already have could be the sma...
Dec 13, 2022•29 min•Season 10Ep. 4
Companies have always focused on growth, but now there’s increasing pressure to drive profitability. Typically this means cutting costs. However in a highly competitive market that will no longer work. Businesses are going to have to ‘invest their way to success’. Winning companies will need to super charge their creativity and build high performing teams. Now you’re probably thinking ‘That sounds good, but how exactly can organisations execute on this?’ I’m Jane Singer and thank you for joining...
Dec 10, 2022•32 min•Season 10Ep. 3
