[Music] [Charles Desjardins] My name is Charles Desjardins. I'm EVP and Managing Director of Valtech Commerce for the Americas. Very happy to be here with you, and I want to thank you all for having the courage of attending our session, following the Bash party. That's very, very impressive. I'm with Janet Engelhardt. Janet, maybe you want to introduce yourself? [Janet Englehart] Yeah. For sure. So, Janet Engelhardt. I'm with Johnson Controls.

Been there for eight years. Johnson Controls is a global entity. I work with mainly our North America presence for HVAC. That's it. So yeah, so Johnson Controls is a massive organization. How big is the ducted system division that you operate under? So there's about 250,000 employees across the globe for ducted systems. We have a residential, commercial, and also a ductless entity that we are partners within Japan. Wow. And do you guys operate physical stores or it's only like wholesale and large warehouses? So for the ducted systems side of things, it's two-tier distribution. So we manufacture to wholesale, and then, we have a factory owned distribution channel along with many independents across the US. Good. Good. So we went right into it. So our goal today is just to share with you the experience that Janet has with Johnson Controls and the ducted system division on how they digitally transform. So that's what we're going to be talking about today.

So can you give us a summary of the ecommerce transformation journey you've been through, Janet, in the past couple of years? Yeah. For sure. So like many businesses, when you start talking about digital transformation, you start to think about how do you operate today. And in many ways, that's manual. So looking at how the business operates and how we serve the customers, and then how do we digitize that.

In the HVAC sector it is a challenge since we've been a little slow to adopt to technologies and different things like that. And so the uncovering of the ugly, I call it, of what that manual process delivers has been an interesting journey. And so it's really been a lot of discovery around, since we do have brick and mortar stores, how do we serve the ease of doing business to our customers and deal with those legacy systems that aren't so smart, if you will.

So, again, the discovery of how do we actually operate, we have, again, brick and mortar stores where we have customers actually come to a counter, we have the physical person interaction, and then how do we actually apply that to a digital sense where they could do that anywhere, not just on a laptop, but on their phone, on a rooftop, because we're dealing with commercial businesses, rather be hotels, restaurants, and those kinds of things.

And then there's the pricing, because we're dealing with dealers to not only wholesale the contractors, but wholesale contractor to consumer. So there's lots of price layers. I was actually dealing with this as a little firestorm this morning. That was an interesting topic is that somebody was like, well, this customer was online, and their price wasn't what the price book says because, yes, we still have printed price books. And I was "Well, if you don't load the price book into the system that I pull the price from, then I'm sorry." - That yeah. - Then you have an issue. The price is not going to be the same. And so, then but you have that trust issue. Because the customer is like, "I went online," and I'm like, "Hey, it wasn't right. But that wasn't the system's fault. That was the backend process. So it's been a long journey in looking at those processes. So you're a true B2B organization, but you have this B2B to C layer. Absolutely. So I've known you for a little while and you have this very unique way of approaching things which is entrepreneurial.

How are you doing it in such a large organization like Johnson Control? Well, so I think that the risks don't outweigh the pros of digitizing. So it's all about the ease of doing business.

So you don't want to have to have the customer call all the time to get an answer.

And then I also have what I call our internal and our external customers. So now I have built an ecosystem, to where our internal staff actually go to the site to find information that they can't find other places. Our product information is everywhere just like a lot of other businesses and whatnot, and honing that into one central location and being able to share that and scale it has been a big success for adoption. Nice. Nice. So speaking of, adoption, this industry is a traditional one. You mentioned that before. So you have people on job sites wearing helmets and dealing with large equipment.

A lot of folks in that industry have been doing things in a certain way for many, many, many years. So changing the way they approach their job and using technology has to be challenging. So what have you done from an organizational point of view to ensure that there's adoption and that their customers are really embarking in that journey? Yeah. It's a lot of communication. I have stood at the counter of many of these physical stores and actually saw the customer come to the counter and felt their pain because there's a big services part to the cooling and air industry. It's not just new system. That's the easy part. But there's a break fix. And so it's understanding what the pain is of the customer coming to the counter, and then that person that's behind the counter, the staff, they may be new. Where are they going to go to find the data and the information? So giving them the ability to find that information easily to help solve that problem has really been, my big like, what gets me up in the morning is how do we serve the customer and that user experience. And so if we can hone more of that to saying, hey, go to the website that's your central entry point to find all the information that you need, and just call people when you have their questions, not the easy stuff. And one of the way that exists, right, to make sure that there's good adoption is to leverage some clients in the process. Have you been doing that? Have you incorporated some clients to get feedback, to participate in the transformation, to provide input, or is this something that you did on your own and after you basically launched the initial platform that you basically went and get some introspective from them? To me, it's a living, breathing kind of thing.

It was really important to me to understand how the business operated to begin with, so then we can automate and make that digital transformation from what the original manual processes are to make the experience good internally and externally. So I've spent significant amount of time understanding how the customers serve their customers and how I can better ease their ability and maybe coach them a little bit along the way of how they can also adopt some of the digital transformation on their own. Because, typically, if you think about HVAC, if you're a homeowner, for instance, and there's something wrong, everybody needs to be cooled in the summer, everybody needs to be warm in the winter. But if that's not working right the average homeowner, just like any other industry, doesn't know, so they have to try to call a professional. Yes. So they call a professional, they come to the home, they survey the situation, they're sitting down at the table with them, and they're scratching on some paper. Or whatnot. Now if you digitize that, they can go, "You know what? I think I have a solution for you. Let me go to my van, put some numbers together, make a call. I'll be right back." Now I can just go to their van, and they can go on the website and online, and they can just quickly make a quote for that customer. And a lot of times, we have portable printers now with all these technologies, and they print out a slick looking quote, and then they can come back in to miss Homeowner and go, "Okay. Here's your good, better, best." Because they were able to go to a location where they can find the information easy. So in other words the best way to make sure that the solution is being adopted is to provide value to your B2B clients so that they leverage the platform. They see they see that it's useful. That's a great example. So are they able to manage the margin whenever they're building the proposal like that? - And how does that work? - Yeah. So I've actually created a system where we pull in real time the individual customer's price in our inventory so that they can actually go online, and they can put into what I call a digital order form. And it will show them what their price is from me, and then they can actually put in what they want to charge for the service or the job. Fantastic. And then they can quote quickly from there. And is it heavily utilized? Are most of your clients using that that feature or it's-- Yeah. And it's kind of one of those things where you have to remind sometimes like, "Hey, did you know it does this?" Because people do fall back to their typical behavior. So you have to remind them sometimes that these features are available. Yeah. So in B2B user adoption is huge. It's critical, for to ensure success of a transformation like that from a client point of view, but it's also true from the internal point of view.

What did you do about your sales rep and making sure that they would be leveraging that platform in their process? Yeah. Well, just like any traditional sales organization, when you come in and say you're going to automate something, they automatically go, what does that mean for my position? So it's a matter of gaining the trust and saying, hey, this this an extension of your customer service.

They're account managers, their territories can be big depending on what part of the country they're in. In the Midwest, obviously, the drive time from one location to another or one customer to another can be vast. So I call it reducing the windshield time. So in saying, hey, if you put them in touch with this system...

And you're going to know when they use it because I send out transactional emails. Every time anybody places an order, the account manager gets it so they can call up. I say, you can call Bob and say, "Hey, I saw you ordered X Y Z. How did that job go for you?" Like, it gives you a touch point. So I just try to show the value of where this an arm and extension of them, and it it's true customer service. Fantastic. One of the advice that I give a lot to a B2B client is whenever they're embarking in a transformation like that, I tell them identify your top salespeople and onboard them early in the process, so that they feel they are part of the transformation and they can be the first one adopting the platform. Salesrep, being with what they are, they look at the top salespeople and they look at their behavior and then they say, I want to use that tool too. Did you do something similar? Have you onboarded some of your top salespeople at the beginning of the journey? - You didn't do that necessarily? - Yeah. No. For sure. So we've got some top salespeople that actually have really embraced the industry and the systems and learned how in their own way to work through some of our archaic...

Processes. But to show them okay, I can help you actually get the answers to your customers faster and ask them examples. I always get the resistance of a website is not going to be for everybody. - You can't solve every problem. - Absolutely. And account managers are very relationship driven and we are in many times, all of us in a relationship business. And you want them to find the value in the person, but at the end of the day, you want them give them the ease of doing business of when do I need you and when do I need you kind of thing. And so I've adopted with them and shown them that they can actually build and grow their portfolio by showing the customer the website and all of the parts and pieces associated to those boxes because a lot of times the dollars are in the big pieces. - That's it. - But the margin's in the small pieces. Yes. So to show them how we can actually do the upsell cross sale, grow the line items per order, and that kind of thing has really gone well and resonated with those-- So you've been telling them pretty much leverage the platform to answer the basic questions and spend more time providing value to your clients and at the end of the day, it's going to make you more successful. - Absolutely. - That's great.

You're not alone. 52% of manufacturers are focusing on transforming their digital services in the year ahead.

As we mentioned, Johnson Control is a very large organization.

It's a public company.

Do you have good support and buy in from the top management? I know that's a tough question, but-- I mean, I would say yes, of course. The challenge begins with it being such a large company, there's lots of things to invest in.

And so where do you pick? We manufacture, we distribute, so there's a lot of different technologies and platforms. But in like a lot of businesses, there's also a lot of legacy systems. And so showing the value of investing in a way that you can still flex and connect all of those systems has been very pivotal to the executive team. And showing those KPIs are all based on, obviously, performance and adoption and sales and revenue. But at the end of the day, how do you do more with less? - Yes. - Tends to be a lot the conversation. And with the platforms we've picked, Adobe Commerce being one of them, has definitely given the ability to scale quickly and then still have the ability long term to show what's the forward path, what does three, five years look like, that same tool will still serve that purpose. Fantastic. We spoke a lot about the experience in general and I know that's the majority of your focus is to make sure that your clients have the best online experience possible.

What is the main challenge that came up and what is that you do differently than any other organizations in your in your space? The quoting engine is a great example, but what else do you do? Yeah. Well, product, the data really is key. How do you provide the customers with the information to make knowledgeable buying decisions? Our product is very complex, so I get challenged a lot of, well, why would I go to my computer to look at information? I don't have time for that. But the thing is, these products are very intuitive. You have to have skills, and you have to understand, and they're complex. So going to the computer and looking up information is really no different than working on that piece of equipment because you have to have the right tools, you have to have the right system, you have to have the right knowledge. So the product information has really been probably the biggest hurdle that I've experienced, especially since we have a residential side, we have a commercial side, and we have a parts side. - And those kind of operate independently. - Yeah. And they capture their data in different ways. And so there hasn't been until I honed all the information together to be able to have that in one place. So that's really been impactful.

Interesting.

I heard you many times that ease of doing business is like, again, critical for you.

What is going to be your focus in the upcoming months to, again, pursue that ambition? Yeah. Well, I tell you, for the HVAC sector, it's going to be very interesting the next year or two.

Those that don't know that the government has come in like they do in a lot of different businesses, and said, "We need to look at our regulations," for us, for refrigerant. They've changed the way we look at refrigerant and which refrigerant to use. So the refrigerants that we've been using in the past are now going to be obsolete. They aren't going to be allowed to be manufactured. And so now we've had to retool our entire line, just like competition, and there's new tools to actually install the product that's coming down the pike. And so for me, to get ahead of the competition is I've got to get that data right, and I've got to get it early. And so I've got to organize it in a way to where I can share it with the customers where they're prepared and understand those regulation changes, so it's like a rapid-fire product change. The entire line changes within the next 18 months. Yeah. It's funny because again, I work with a lot of different organization and one quality that you have is that among many other qualities that you have, because you're fantastic, you know that, is that you understood before many, many other stakeholders that product data is super important, it's foundational in in the commerce transformation. So, you invested very early in that, and then that really shows.

What is your recipe for success at JCI? Well, going back to the statement of it being a very large organization and having to navigate that system, the first and foremost, when anybody asks me what my superpower is, it's persistence.

Can't give up. The opportunities are vast. They're not challenges. Well, they are challenges. It's not negative, but it's opportunities. And at the end of the day, it's like, what is it really that we're trying to do? We want to sell more stuff. - Everybody wants to sell more stuff. - Absolutely. And to do that, sometimes takes persistence because you have to get the buy in, everybody's budgets are tight, teams are small. How do you augment that with other parties that can really, really drive that? The other thing is the right talent. It's super critical, and sometimes you have to take a little bit of time to find the right talent. And then you have to release the product at the right time. And all of that is very important and difficult to do. And then it's technology.

A lot of times, in my world anyway for ecommerce, a lot of people focus on marketing, or they focus on IT, but that's not what the recipe is. The recipe is actually sales, marketing, technology, and all of that wrapped in in together. So how does that serve the customer, and how does it make it easy to do business? So that it's kind of a juggling effect. Yeah. And actually one thing that you did, that I noticed too is that you are not necessarily waiting for Global to basically show you the way, and you took initiatives to make sure that things would be happening in the ducted system division. - Correct? - Absolutely. Well, and at the end of the day really, leadership, they just want it done. They're not so super honed on how it gets done, as long as it's within the budget that we talked about, within the timeframe that we talked about, and that kind of thing. And that, actually, the timeframe becomes more of a challenge than anything because of all these other legacy systems that we have to deal with. And then we see communication being also a fourth pillar of your recipe for success. - What is that about? - Yeah. So communication, again, so internal and external customers, we don't always think about it. I don't think all the marketers think about an internal and an external customer. But if we can drive everybody to one location to find all of the information in the same way, in the same format, then we're all speaking the same language. And so it's really important to continue to have those touch points, communication being outward to customers to remind them of things or new features and functions that we're releasing, and then also internal staff. How can we make, for us, the cooling season in the summer is our biggest point, where we're the busiest. So how can I reduce the phone calls to those brick-and-mortar stores during those busy seasons to where they can actually be serving the customer that's in front of them because they have an immediate need? Terrific.

You alluded to that earlier on, but in in your space, like many businesses similar to yours, the money is not necessarily in the big equipment. It's in the parts.

That's pretty much also the case at g at GCI. - Correct? - Absolutely. So if you think about it, the business is kind of in those three pillars. I said residential, commercial, and parts.

Lots of times, especially depending on economic times...

Businesses are going to want to how do I fix it to keep it going? So they need the part. - And-- - Yeah. You can only get it from one location, or there's only this one specific part that's going to serve that need or replace that. So it's easier to do business and actually add that margin on to the smaller parts, and then we can reduce the cost of the bigger items.

And then the other thing is there's specific parts that go along with installation. So if you are doing a net new, then you have to have these specific parts. So you can actually bundle them together and reduce the price of the larger items by augmenting with the smaller. Makes sense. Makes sense. So, I mean, your dealers or your B2B customers, they're on job sites. They're eventually searching for parts based on problems they see or things that they want to fix.

How does your digital platform support that process? So, I've created a very inclusive parts finder ability. So if you're looking at the specific piece of equipment, which for us, they're all serialized, they have model numbers and whatnot, and so there's a specific repair parts list, if you will, that are associated to those items. So I serve that up. So if they're looking at a particular piece, it's a, hey, do you need this? Do you need that? Upsell, cross sell opportunities are pretty vast when you look at it that way. And then also, if you've already installed that unit and you need to change the capacitor or something small, the motor or whatnot, then just making it as easy as possible to figure out which model that they may need. And all in all, how many parts do you have in your catalog? Within our JCI parts along with the third parties for our factory owned distribution, there's probably about 40,000 SKUs that we need to have data on imagery and all of that. So that must be pretty challenging. Like, what role did PIM play? First, do you have a PIM? And second, what role did it play in that strategy? Absolutely. Have a PIM. Now early on, we did not, just to be honest.

Again, HVAC is a little slow to adopt, so all of that was being managed in spreadsheets, like a lot of folks and whatnot, but it was imperative, especially with the rapid fire that we're experiencing from a product replacement perspective with the new regulations that are coming down, that if we aren't able to address it real time, then...

We aren't adding that ease of doing business. So it's been imperative. And without that, I couldn't do a lot of the upsell cross sell or a lot of the associated items and to raise that-- Or the smart merchandising would be difficult to execute without that. Yeah. Do you have a team of people managing the PIM or how does that work? I have a small team. I do have one dedicated specialist at this point in time, to help with that. We do have seven brands, though, Creston's and Controls, and so...

It's a lot of information. So, I probably could have a team of three. But we're managing with the one. And is that person also doing the merchandising or he's only doing the content enrichment? Well, as an ecommerce director in a large organization, a lot of, again, we sometimes do the less with more or more with us. - Sorry. - Yeah. So that ends up being myself in many instances. So that's why it's always been very important for me to understand how the end customer that we're selling to actually needs to do business with us and how to use the product. And so, it's actually been easier to manage a lot of those processes myself. Wow. Okay. Interesting.

We hear more and more people talk about total commerce experiences. That's a term that we hear left and right nowadays. What does that mean for you at GCI? Well, so if you look at it at the fact that currently, we have 50 brick and mortar stores, and we've got folks that are going in in person all the time, they're also ordering online.

In real time, we serve up their price in our inventory across the country. And what Florida can sell, let's say, and versus what Washington State can sell is different. So the product mix has been very important, and the catalog isn't the same for every state or every locality. So it's the ability of actually showing the customers the inventory we have and their price so that they can go on and if we only have one, that's a slippery slope. So if they go on and they order that one, they immediately get that reserved in their name so that they don't have to wait. So I call it the first in line service. They can reserve it, they can pick it up or have it delivered at the time that's convenient to them. Okay. So the brick-and-mortar aspect and the digital experiences blended together for you is the total commerce experience, but that also includes customer service and many other entities? Absolutely. Because we have a lot of warranties as well on our equipment because it's serialized. - Okay. - We give warranties. The contractors extend those warranties to the customers as well. So they have to be able to register those and claim and get reimbursed quickly. And B2B, like inventories and stocks are a real challenge. So you alluded to that. So whenever a client comes on the platform, he sees the inventory of the store nearby, how does that work? Yeah. So let's just take Florida, for instance. We have 12 locations in Florida. And so it may be out of stock in one location, but they were able to see the inventory of the entire state. So they know that whether if they were in Orlando, if they need to drive to maybe another location to pick it up because it's an immediate need, or they can wait to have it delivered or something like that or transferred from another location. So I always tell if it says it's out of stock, don't worry about it. Go ahead and place the order. The store will take care of you. And so then that's another extension of the customer service. And then the customer profile follows through. Store, digital online, customer service, everything is integrated. Absolutely. Absolutely. And everybody we blast out emails, to the customer, to the stores, I get them myself to where we can review and make sure that the customer doesn't fall through a loop, and we know that the order's been placed. Good. Fantastic.

We've seen that we've seen this a lot also in B2B, this notion of going direct versus going through the B2B channels. Like, how do you handle the dichotomy of going direct to contractors versus going through wholesalers? Well, so, again, we're two-tier distribution, being a manufacturer. So on their independent side of the house, they're buying the equipment and they're bringing it in and they're operating in much a similar way, but independently. To where our factory owned distribution, since that is part of the ecosystem of manufacturer to distribution to contractor, then it's more of an even flow type of information share. Got it. Got it. Let's jump into some key metrics.

Most of your clients are working from job sites. So I would expect that the majority of transactions are happening on their mobile device. What percentage of transaction are happening on mobile? We're less than 40% actually, on mobile devices. It probably ranges between 35% and 37% on any given day. And then the reason for that is, we have our customer isn't defined by one type. So we have the installer, the field rep that's in the field doing the installs or the quoting or and whatnot, but then we also have the larger contractors that have in house folks, their purchasers or whatnot. And then you've got engineering folks and that kind of thing. So, it's not just one persona that we're actually selling to, and the majority of those end up being in an office environment. Got it. So that's why you have only 37% of orders flowing through mobile. Yeah. And luckily, only 37% of the contractors are on a roof in any given day.

How did Adobe Commerce help you in your journey? It's actually been pretty significant.

I have to say that over the last eight years with Johnson Controls and building the platform, that it has really given us the ability to scale.

I've never had an issue of where I haven't gone to my team or had a need or a customer request to where we weren't able to figure out a way to make the system work. I deal with a lot of legacy aged systems that the answer would be to replace that, but, unfortunately, that isn't really where leadership wants to go with it. So I've had to have a system that I can manipulate, customize, and scale to where it could actually work around those systems and at the end of the day, make the customer service them. Good. So flexibility, ability to innovate quickly, time to market? - Yeah. - Fantastic. We have some key metrics to share here with the audience.

Can you speak about how it's been working for you guys? Yeah. So, again, with the brick-and-mortar stores, we do have 20% of all of our transactions going through our online portal. There's 50 sub domains today. Some of those online stores are more in the 50s versus the 20, but as an aggregated average, it's 20%. I've also seen to where there's been many man hours saved by having our online interactions and portal, where we haven't had to add physical staff to the location, salaries, and that kind of thing, because they have the online portal to go to. I've seen an increase in line items per order because we have the upsell cross sell. They can see our vast catalog, what they can't experience that in the store. So I see 35% of orders take place outside of store hours. That's interesting. So it means that before that, people would be forcing themselves to pretty much process an order during normal offices hour, and now they can work overnight and still interact with the with Johnson Control. Yeah. So if you think about installers, from a contractor perspective, we have the smaller contractors and then obviously the larger contractors. Some of the contractors actually are 24/7 establishments, the larger ones, to where they have a purchaser that, somebody's gone out to do a service call at 11pm and they're able to go ahead and go online and order that system so that the ticket connection the next day can go pick it up as soon as the store opens. That sort of thing. So that is the first in line service that we provide. They could go on and they go in and place the order and that equipment is reserved in their name. And as soon as the store staff comes in, they do what we call a staging area. They can stage it to be picked up right away. So that's been huge for us because the contractor can go out and service the customer or meet the customer during the day, and then they can go back home, and they can place those orders at night. That's huge indeed. And we discussed also in great length about product information and the impact it has on the merchandising, but one of the direct impact it has is the number of items that people will put in their cart because of better merchandising and also the size of the average order.

Is this something that you saw a direct impact as soon as you went live, or this something that you've seen progressing as you're constantly enriching product data? Yeah. It has been a little bit of a progression. I think that, for an instance, our customers didn't know the breadth of all the product that we had to offer to begin with. Everything from cleaners to different things that they would they would come to us just for the equipment, and they may go down the street for the smaller parts and different things that they may need. But now they're able to look at it as a whole, and they could easily find it because of the way that the navigation works on the website. It's all bucketed in a way that they can easily find it. Keyword search, search is huge. So having the right information easily at the fingertips has gotten more adoption. I'd say our product mix is still more around the larger pieces of equipment just because that's typically just the way it is. But at the end of the day, there's all these other things that they have to have to install a product along with tools and gauges and whatnot. And so that's been getting increasing adoption as well. Speaking, you just mentioned search. Search is also critical as part of the search-andizing notion. A lot of the people we see like, a lot of mistake our clients are doing is that they install a search engine and then, like, I'm good, while this something that should be optimized then and we should be treating it as an analytics engine. Like, are you analyzing your data? Are you optimizing your search? Are you fine tuning it? Like, how do you go about it? Yeah. Search is super critical. We actually have three or I have actually three different types of search on our site depending on where customer may be and what they may need. We have a quick order platform, as well. I call it Digital Orderpad. The search on that is a little bit different and helps them find keywords and products that they may need to quickly add to their order pad and check out. Then there's a main search, and that main search could even bring up the serialized numbers and different certifications that they may need to find so they can order the product that they need. We're constantly tuning that, because it's not just about the description or everybody calls widgets something different, so you kind of have to always adjust your keywords and that kind of thing so that they can find what they want. Right. And digital presence sometimes will give insights on how to operate business and search is a great one. So we look at search terms and then it can guide us in terms of our product offering and expand our product catalog.

Are you utilizing your statistics and what's happening on your website to identify new physical locations? Yeah. So, the footprint right now for our factory owned distribution is the 50 stores that I was talking about. We've noticed that there's some under serviced areas based on the data and the request that come in. We get a lead gen through the website as well, and we take that data and look at, okay who do we have? Do we have an independent in that area that's not really underserving the customer? Do we need to take our factory owned distribution and scale it to that area? It's interesting what people search for, honestly. Some of those keywords that come through, I'm like, okay, that's an interesting term. So those, obviously, we put to the side, but it has also helped with understanding some of the new features that we need to put on the website based on what people try to look for. Got it. Got it. So we see a figure here at 21%, an increase in average order size. So, again, all attached to the search-andizing notion that we were mentioning. We see 64% an increase in returning customer orders. So it means that people are appreciating the platform and they're coming back. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I've noticed, so we have a couple of different types of customers. Most of them are on a credit line, we call it. They get terms and credit approval. But then we have some cash customers, and those would be typically people who would have to go to the store to actually place an order. In this instance, they can go online, they can pay with their credit card, get those frequent flyer miles, and see that happen as well. So it really has driven adoption, the fact that it's just easy to use, they can find what they need, they can add it to cart, and they can pick it up or get it delivered when they want it. Got it. And you alluded to the fact that also your digital platform is making sure that you can do more with less.

You were able to quantify the time you're saving in terms of manual data entry. I see 1700 hours pretty much saved via the ecommerce side in 2023. Is this something that you're going to see keep on...

Growing? Yeah. Absolutely. So, within 24, we're actually overdriving those numbers from last year, based on the return customers that are coming to the site, the additional products that we've been able to get, quantified product data in front of the customer quickly and early. So the speed to market with the PIM and whatnot has really been driving the fact that they don't have to make that phone call, they don't have to drive to the local store, so we're saving additional man hours. And I'm noticing that with that this year that our line items per order are actually increasing, which means that it would take even longer for somebody to manually enter that order, so that's just going to increase. So your digital platform allows you to increase your share of wallet with your client, allows you to attract new customers and service them better, and then it allows you to also optimize your operation. - Absolutely. - That's it. Wonderful.

Looking ahead, what's next for Janet and GCI Adducted System? So I alluded to the point around, rapid fire for our product introductions. So the PIM is going to increase in its importance product data and then servicing that to the customer, speed to market is always going to be number one.

The big buzz around the show this week is AI and whatnot. Again, the HVAC industry is a little slow to come to some of the new technologies. So I think that there's going to be some key drivers of how that is going to be important going forward. I think it's going to be in phases for sure.

But with the fact that our product is complex on its own, some of those features and abilities with GenAI is going to be immediately out of the box important, but, again, going to take a little bit of time to foster that buying behavior or what does that mean to our customer. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you again, Janet, for your generosity. I hope you guys enjoyed the session and kind of learned a lot through it. Thank you.

[Music]

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Johnson Controls Finds their Path to Profitability in E-commerce - S436

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ABOUT THE SESSION

How do B2B industry leaders concretely elevate their commerce offering? Johnson Controls International knows how. A world leader in HVAC distribution, JCI rolled out an Adobe Commerce ecosystem in under 1 year (with 39 subdomains!) to improve its online and in-person customer experiences. Join JCI’s e-commerce director, Janet Englehart, to hear how the company got from there to here by using the Adobe Commerce API-first blueprint for digital automation.

In this session:

  • How JCI tackled user adoption head on and got 27% of regional accounts engaging with its new platform 6 months after launch
  • Using the Adobe Commerce Global Reference Architecture to harmonize core functionality across business units while still leaving room for customization

Track: Commerce

Presentation Style: Case/use study

Audience Type: Developer, IT executive, Business decision maker, Commerce professional, IT professional

Technical Level: General audience

Industry Focus: Commerce, Industrial manufacturing, Distribution/wholesale

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