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Hello and welcome to our pre NRF
interview with Steve Kramer, CEO

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and founder of Work Jam Were sat
actually lost out. 

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We're stood in the very lovely 
location just round the corner 

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from NRF Asia. 
Steve, I forgot before we go, 

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are you actually expiring or are
you here as a visitor? 

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We are at Expo, we're speaking 
at the event, we have a booth at

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the event and we were really 
excited to be part of the first 

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NRF in this region. 
Our fantastic. 

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Well, listen, without Fergie, 
why don't we maybe start 

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unpacking a little bit about who
you are? 

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How did you become a CEO, 
founder of Work Jam? 

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Sure. 
And then we'll focus in on on 

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Work Jam. 
OK, great. 

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Well, I, I've been in the retail
technology business for around 

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25 years now. 
So we started our first company 

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in 1999. 
It was an ecommerce software 

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company called icongo based in 
Montreal, Canada. 

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I'm, I'm from Montreal. 
Cool. 

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And we grew that to become one 
of the global leaders both in 

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retail ecommerce platforms as 
well as B2B commerce platforms. 

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We learned that up merging in 
2010 with our European 

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competitor called Hybris. 
So icongo became Hybris. 

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We went on to become the 
dominant player in the industry 

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for enterprise commerce 
technology and ultimately landed

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up exiting test AP in 2013. 
OK, so I stayed on at SAP for 

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two years, loved it. 
SAP is a phenomenal 

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organisation. 
And, you know, after two years, 

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I wanted to get back to 
something entrepreneurial. 

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I missed being, you know, close 
to customers. 

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I wasn't in that role anymore 
and building something. 

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I couldn't do anything in 
ecommerce as a result of some 

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non non competes that I had. 
So I started looking into what 

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else was keeping executives up 
at night. 

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And as I spoke to a lot of 
retail executives, you know, 

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people in the manufacturing 
distribution areas and so forth,

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I found that the workforce 
actually, this was like in 2014 

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was a, was something that was 
causing a lot of anxiety. 

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And you had millennials just 
starting to come into the 

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workforce. 
Yeah. 

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And people were were worried 
about that, how we gonna 

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communicate with millennials. 
They're very different from, you

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know, from the traditional 
worker in the US You had 

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President Obama that was 
starting to take notice around 

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the social economic issues, 
around unfair scheduling 

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practises for hourly workers. 
Yeah. 

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So I noticed this. 
It was a it was an interesting 

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time where there was a really a 
transformation that was needed 

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around how organisations were 
communicating and managing with 

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their frontline staff. 
Yeah. 

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And, and as a result, we, we 
took the concepts of e-commerce 

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and really applied it to 
workforce management to create a

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experiential platform, a 
transactional platform for 

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frontline workers where a large 
organisation would be able to 

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better manage their hourly 
staff, their non desk workers 

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and and drive better results in 
their business. 

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No. 
Well, fantastic. 

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So you definitely have the 
entrepreneurial bug. 

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You can't as as much as you try 
and work in the corporate world,

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it's durable, but not where 
where your heart is. 

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So I mean, tell me something 
like what are the problems that 

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when you're you must meet so 
many retailers and I'm sure you 

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can meet a bunch of retailers 
here. 

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What's the thing that they come 
for you to solve? 

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They're, they're, they're 
solving business problems. 

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They they're driving, they're 
trying to achieve operational 

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efficiencies, they're trying to 
cut cost. 

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That comes in the forms of 
either task management, where 

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they have use cases around 
compliance in the field that 

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they're trying to solve. 
They are predominantly right now

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also trying to communicate 
better with the field. 

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That that was a factor that was 
like an impact effect of COVID. 

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Yeah, right. 
Like when COVID happened, there 

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were very few tools out there to
be able to communicate with the 

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frontline. 
On processes. 

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And that's. 
Right. 

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They didn't have a process to 
actually talk to the frontline 

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area managers maybe. 
Yeah, they had E-mail Manager 

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might. 
Put yeah, because they had 

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e-mail addresses, right. 
But frontline employees, they 

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don't have e-mail. 
They don't have the tools that 

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we have his desk workers. 
So it's operational efficiency, 

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it's communication, it's 
learning comes in those forms. 

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Flexible scheduling is another 
area where they're coming to us 

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around solving business issues. 
Ultimately, as we get into 

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conversations with prospects, we
start unfolding other issues 

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that are happening in the 
organisation. 

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And you know, the frontline is a
underserved market right now. 

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75% of companies have not 
invested in and their frontline 

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work tech and, and, and when 
they have, they've landed up 

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with a a disparate group of 
applications that a frontline 

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employee needs to use. 
So on average, we did a study a 

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couple years ago with Forrester 
Research. 

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On average, companies around the
world have 4:00 to 5:00 apps 

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that are frontline employee 
needs to use in order to do 

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their job. 
Wow. 

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And we've seen it up to 8 or 9 
in some cases. 

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And it's hard enough being a 
frontline employee. 

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Imagine having to use so many 
applications on the floor of a 

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plant or an addition, you know, 
a distribution centre and a 

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retail environment to do your 
job. 

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So consolidation of apps 
simplicity is a is a very big 

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focus that we are seeing as well
in the industry, right. 

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Now that's fantastic. 
I mean, as I said, how do you 

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find, do you get in terms of 
your, do you get to spend time 

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with the store associates or the
store managers as part? 

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We do, yeah. 
We'd love to visit stores, we 

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love to hear about, you know, 
what is important to them. 

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The reality is, is that the 
hourly workers know so much 

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about the business. 
They know about the problems, 

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they have ideas on how to solve 
them. 

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So being able to speak to the 
hourly associates and our 

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prospects or our customers is a 
is important to us to start, you

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know, to continue to innovate in
our product to build these 

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operational tools, but also to 
help organisations figure out 

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the digital transformation that 
needs to drive these 

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efficiencies that they're 
looking. 

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For and do you think retailers 
in terms of the outcomes can 

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sort of focus in on some of the 
like real world examples where 

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something that surprised you 
that you know, when we, one of 

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your customers, you, you you saw
went in to do one thing and you 

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you came out with something. 
Else, I mean, one of our 

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customers, JCPenney and in the 
US, they're large big box 

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retailer, discount retailers, 
around 70,000 employees. 

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The project that we've started 
with them was really around 

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flexible scheduling and being 
able to have an open shift 

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workplace where employees are, 
they get their core schedule, 

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but they can pick up an extra 
shift, they can work at a 

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different location than than 
their primary location. 

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We coupled that with 
communication tools and that 

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those communication tools had a 
profound impact on the culture 

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of JCPenney. 
Yeah, but also the level of 

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engagement and loyalty to the 
organisation. 

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I think it was. 
I think the impact was much 

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wider actually than JCPenney 
ever anticipated as well. 

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So in addition to labour 
optimization through flexible 

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scheduling, JCPenney actually 
had almost a 10% reduction in 

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attrition. 
Wow, that's a big number. 

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You know, like in retail, on 
average in in many markets that 

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cost anywhere between 4:00 to 
$5000 to recruit and train a new

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employee. 
Yeah, if you can reduce your 

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your turnover by that those 
types of numbers. 

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A significant amount. 
Millions of dollars that scale 

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the number of referrals that 
they began to have from 

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employees telling other other 
friends or colleagues that they 

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should join JCPenney tripled. 
Ohh wow. 

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And an environment where there's
still a labour shortage. 

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It's very difficult to find 
skilled workers. 

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That's very important. 
So we see a lot of these things 

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where they're solving one 
business issue. 

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But when you give the voice to 
the employee and they feel, you 

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know, part of the culture. 
Yeah and they feel like they 

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understand the head offices 
goals has a big impact on on the

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business and and on those 
employees lives. 

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Yeah, absolutely couldn't agree.
And I I think, you know, Target 

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used to talk about the number of
devices that their colleagues or

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team members Adam belts, yes, 
you know, they have the walkie 

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talkies, they had the the 
handles. 

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So just to focus in a little bit
on the tech you what what device

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you see on your agnostic? 
It's it could be bring bring 

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your own device. 
So a lot of our customers. 

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Have Android enable. 
Yeah, yeah. 

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Android, Apple responsive on on 
web as well for both mobile and 

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desktop use. 
We often sit on shared devices 

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in the stores as well. 
There we have a kiosk version of

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Work Jam as well that is kind of
always on for our location. 

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And so there's a lot of 
deployment optionality. 

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We're also able to sit inside of
other collaboration tools. 

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So if you're using, you know, 
Teams as an example or your 

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managers are in sales force, we 
can actually bring Work Jam to 

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those users rather than bringing
the users to Work Jam and having

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another app that they need to 
use. 

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And many of our customers tend 
to deploy in a hybrid model 

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where corporate might be using 
Teams for their desk workers, 

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which could go down to, let's 
say, manager level. 

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Yeah, managers will use work Jam
inside of Teams, but the field 

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is using work Jam native. 
OK. 

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Yeah, I think and I think that 
the the focus has to be for 

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success on the experience. 
Yeah. 

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Yeah, final two questions. 
In terms of obviously you, you 

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hold the company. 
The company is 9 years. 

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Old, so nine years old and you 
specifically just focus in on 

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scheduling communication. 
I'm just curious, are you would 

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you move into other areas like 
can't you do task management or 

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we? 
Do yeah, we have 5 main pillars.

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So the five main pillars are we 
have two way communication, head

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of communications. 
Here is that voice text. 

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That's everything from social 
network within the app to 

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messaging, chat channels, OK 
digital doorways into other 

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applications in the 
organisation. 

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We so so two way communication 
is pillar number one. 

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We do task management that goes 
well beyond just traditional 

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task that goes into audit 
capability and and also being 

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able to integrate with other 
applications for for task 

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completion schedule management. 
So we tend to sit on top of core

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workforce management 
applications to expose 

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self-service capabilities and 
open shift marketplace 

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capabilities and then learning 
and lastly as earned wage 

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access. 
So it is a modular system. 

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Many of our customers will start
their digital transformation 

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with let's say one or two 
modules. 

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Yeah. 
And then they tend to grow into 

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the rest of the application. 
This is quite comprehensive. 

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The final question in terms of 
when you look to the future, not

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only where you want to be, but 
in terms of the future of the 

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store associate, how do you see 
that you have a a vision like 

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what how how you see an 
empowered because I've saw see 

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that's where you're about 
empowering the frontline. 

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I'm just curious what how you 
see the future. 

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Of well, I, I think that First 
off, I don't think AI is going 

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to replace the frontline worker,
but I believe that AI will have 

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a profound impact on how 
organisations operate and how 

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the data that is being collected
and the actionable insights that

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come out of AI can really 
elevate an organisation to the 

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next level. 
Is for us as an organisation, 

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we're investing a lot in, in AI.
We're constantly investing in 

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the experience. 
I think the experience is what 

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drives the type of adoption that
we're seeing in our customers, 

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which is typically around 80% 
daily active usage of the app. 

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No, why? 
That's kind of like blowout 

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numbers compared to an intranet,
which is 20 and 25%. 

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And for us as an organisation, 
we're going global. 

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So we are a Canadian based 
organisation. 

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We have many customers, large 
customers in the US, in 

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Australia, in the UK. 
Southeast Asia for us is a a new

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market that we're opening. 
We already have some large 

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customers here. 
But you know, we feel as though 

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the problems that we're solving,
they're not regional. 

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These are global issues. 
Yeah. 

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In Singapore, where we are 
today, the retailers that we're 

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speaking to have the same 
problems as the companies in New

231
00:12:46,940 --> 00:12:50,220
York and London, in Melbourne. 
It's a human. 

232
00:12:50,230 --> 00:12:51,590
Problem. 
It's a human problem. 

233
00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:54,640
Exactly. 
OK, so more humanistic there's I

234
00:12:54,650 --> 00:12:58,460
mean, we're going to go for a 
complete into but coming back 

235
00:12:58,470 --> 00:13:01,260
from Shanghai and what what I 
learned there was it doesn't 

236
00:13:01,270 --> 00:13:03,580
matter what technology can do, 
you're still gonna end up with 

237
00:13:03,590 --> 00:13:05,580
human problems. 
Well, listen, it's been 

238
00:13:05,590 --> 00:13:08,700
absolutely fantastic. 
Thank you so much for allowing 

239
00:13:08,930 --> 00:13:10,690
giving giving up some time 
before. 

240
00:13:10,700 --> 00:13:13,380
That's great view here. 
Yeah, thank you. 

241
00:13:13,390 --> 00:13:14,330
Hopefully I'll see you at the 
show.