Radio four dot O tune into TCS. Welcome to Leader Speak. This is Sheetal and this is where we bring you an array of perspectives ever so often with leaders from organizations across the world. And it is our privilege today to have with us Gilberto Tosca, who is Vice President for Caring Technologies and Regional Head of Caring America's IT department, joining us to help us, or rather walk us through a disruption that the luxury industry has really witnessed in recent times and then some. We're going to be talking about technology and how that has come to the aid of caring. Some of the digital transformation lessons perhaps that Gilberto can share with us and then some. But first up, thank you so much Gilberto for joining us on leader SPEAK today. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Thank you so much sheetal for having me. I'm doing very well. Thank you. And really, it's great honor for me to be today with you and try to share with my experience about what's happening in these last months. Crazy for everybody, I'm sure. I'm sure you said that. Really, Gilberto, I think it has been quite a ride. But of course, there are so many lessons that luckily I think mankind has learned from the last year. Some of those hopefully will share with us, right. But your own story, I mean at the organization, right? That would be a great one. I think our listeners could be very inspired by the fashion industry businesses and the luxury business that has been disrupted. That's a worldwide phenomenon that we've noticed. How did you turn this disruption into an opportunity? What are the, what are the kind of thoughts that really informed your choices? Sheetal you are right, the disruption was huge and on the life of everyone. So for many it was really a tragedy. But on the luxury specifically just to imagine the biggest shock probably was the loss of our retail stores. In nearly one night we got a notification that we were supposed to close our full retail chain for all our brands. You know we're carrying with seven brands in North America and also Latin America the same kind of effect. So basically you lose your. Connection, your direct connection with your customer that is what making the luxury experience so special And as technology has since the day we were closed, we had to figure out what to do with the reopening and we didn't even know what were the conditions to reopen the stores. And it came out that many states in the US they just enforce the curb retail. And probably you're for sure you're familiar with the concept where at the end of the day people are supposed to cold and to get. Something delivered to them, right, driving straight to the mall parking lot, right. And that's something is not even the typical click and collect where you do that on the ecom side. You just called your store associate and it's good because it was a way to reopen a bit of human contact. That was a sort of foundation and it's still a foundation of our, we're working with our customers, so we have to develop a technology solution. To allow the remote payment to allow people in their car to pay for what they were buying and to get it delivered on the spot, right. So due to technology, thanks to technology, we were able to turn at this disruption. It is said in front of what a story that one is and I think it's an example for a lot of our listeners on how you can turn a set of cards that have been dealt to you into, you know something that can actually work for you and deliver business outcomes and Gilberto, such a transformation you clearly have achieved in a very short period of time. It would be great to know of the innovative approaches that you might have taken to achieve this and perhaps even you know a few details on the steps that you have taken to build the new Wayne facility with state-of-the-art amenities with no business impact. All of these aspects I think would be of great interest to our listeners. Thank you so much. Yes, Wayne was a success with success that was conceived much earlier much before the COVID impacts and but we have to deal with COVID also during the deployment of. Of Wayne and we had to mix three key ingredients, I would say #1 people. I was lucky enough to coordinate a very diverse team, not only technology across all the different departments to deploy these facility. And it was great because everyone was contributing, everyone was able to share the same objective. And I had a feeling that the transformation this time was perceived as something built by the team bottom up and not sort of imposed top down. By your organization, that was good. The 2nd component was a of a very conservative approach to the planning. You know you have a big transformation, you have milestones and in simple words, we try not to put always all the eggs in one single basket. I give an example when we had to move the operation from one location, you know, the old warehouse to Wayne at the same time when we're supposed to get a new system. New WMS system, world management system to improve the efficiency of depression. We tried not to couple these two milestones in the same date to avoid to have disruptions on either of the two affected affecting the other one. That was a way to mitigate. Obviously it's not always possible because many times you have to deal with something you don't control, especially with Pandemic, but it gave us more agility and the ability to. As sort of a delivery in a more predictable way. The last part, sorry, the last part, the number 3 ingredient is what I call technology. First I'm hearing Wayne today, I would love to welcome here to visit this place. So I'm on the office portion of the facility and you see a lot of technology around, but you don't see a lot of, as an example, lot of cables, right. You don't see a lot of the complexity that is. Behind why? Because the design of the technology started together with the design of the building. We worked hand in hand with our architecture to blend these two components and to have a result that is also beautiful and not only very functional. So that I think district park technology first wise planning approach and the people are the three ingredients that they put together. Maybe not super innovative as a concept but is the balance that I think eventually work well. Absolutely. I think those 3 pointers are things that people can apply across the board, no matter what their industry or sector is, Right, Gilberto? Thank you. Absolutely, Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Great that you could share those with us. Now Speaking of technology first, right? Would be great to understand how exactly technology has helped the caring brands to transform their customers journey, improve, for example, warehouse operations, increased revenue would be good to get a sense of the. Results that you have got from leveraging technology. We started from our old facility. So Wayne is a was supposed to replace a 30 years old warehouse not far. We moved to Wayne and in Wayne not only obviously we had much more volume and we had automation, but we were able to sustain almost immediately the big explosion I would say around ecommerce. And in our official results for 2020, we declare A plus for America's North America plus 89% of revenues versus 2019. That's a lot. And we were able to do that because in Wayne, due to technology implemented in Wayne, we could add another ecommerce platform on top of the existing one to cover all the other brands. That was amazing. So we have now seven brands working on ecommerce but also on retail and wholesale. And so altogether with the highest possible level of operational and IT synergies, we're not done with this transformation. We're still far from the end. That is also good news because I'm not getting bored that is good and my team as well to be positive, but together with TCS. We are working now at deploying SAP FMS that is the solution fashion in North America, US and Canada. And this is just a backbone that is global, is a global backbone to enforce the new processes on finance, retail and also supply chains. Also again in when we will have another change for better obviously in our operations with the arrival of the city like you pointed out, it has delivered outcomes for you and I'm sure. The road ahead is looking charming as well. Would be good Gilberto, if you could share some of the new initiatives and innovations that perhaps are focused towards improving customer relationships. So business and customer relationships, any focus on that you could give us? Thank you. Component, as I said at the beginning, our customer journey is probably the most important part of the luxury experience. And looking again at our stores, we deployed in the last years working very closely with all our brands an application to run a client calling process basically to stay with our customer from the welcome to the time when they're selecting and choosing what to buy and this client telling. Education is just cause. LUCHT is a tool, incredible tool to tell stories about our brands, about our collections, our products, and to connect these stories with the purchase history of our customers and their preferences, all in the same app. And that was great. But this sort of bubble, this sort of exclusive relationship was again broken by the checkout, when people had to grow and pay because they were as everywhere in the world there's. Reported to the cash register to complete the transaction. This is not luxury at all, right? Is it the same experience you can get in a grocery store, right? And we deployed in the US a global and mobile payment solution that is basically able to extend this relationship and to have the transaction happening on the floor, Visa V with the sales associate in a very seamless way. Basically we use a very tiny payment terminal when the. That the client can use to tap or swipe her or his credit card. And that's basically the best because you don't need to break the experience. It was also a good idea to improve our store layouts because the new stores won't need anymore the traditional desk for the charge sister and that's again a better usage of the space and also something more appropriate in term of luxury image. That brings me to this question, Gilberto. How does one decide right, which is the technology for me that is going to help me in a way to or deliver a certain outcome because so much is available. How do you pick the one that's right for you? That's a greater and on top of that, technology and innovation is really everywhere today. And who's not considering himself or herself? Experts, that's good on one side, but means that also and mainly non tech people are exposed to innovation in technology. That happens also a lot with our business. So many times we get new proposal for new solutions, not even from our vendors but from our business counterparts. But as soon as the pilot is deployed and typically it's great, all the questions come and that's where the tech team has to play the traditional. Role of asking about the maturity of the technology, the scalability, the ability to be deployed, so across our whole stores that are many and are very intense environment, I call it industrial environment, you know technology and storage to be very solid. So that's the challenge that's where we have to have and that's also where companies would like PCs that have a lot of experience, a lot of customers help me and my team. To navigate this innovation environment looking at not only at the latest school start up, but more end to end from the deployment, sorry, from the design to the deployment and kids to the support, absolutely. You know, and to wrap up the conversation you've given, I think us a lot of insight on how to pick the right tech for you and what is the philosophy that should be driving your choices. But I'm sure there are several learnings that you've had yourself. Gilberto, is there something that you would like to share with our listeners? Who by the way, might be in various stages of their own digital transformation, something that you have learned. I don't even speak about digital, even mind the New York transformation, there's still a transformation, OK? And it was something I was driving long time ago, even before joining Caring and Gucci. And the we had a monthly steering committee with the owner of the company that was also the CEO and the transformation sponsor. And this guy will never forget. These expression he was between gold and anxious when he was looking at the typical slide that we were preparing to show the project status. You know you go with milestones, you go with a risk list, ETA, whatever, you know typical methodology but he didn't care. He had only two questions in mind. The first question was guys how many people and who you need this month to be successful on top. And the second question was can you give me the list of those that. Don't need anymore. And that his approach was an approach to. The team management, but for me totally agile because it was a way to have the transformation pace that was affecting the team and not vice versa. For him the most important was to achieve the result. It always said that the transformation is not forever, so he wanted to have an end and he wanted also that it is had an end for people that were working into it, sometimes even earlier. Doesn't matter for him the result. Was important and the approach to agility was beyond the methodology by itself. Was also on the way to manage the team to have always the best machine to run the project. You know fine-tuned at this specific time to achieve the result. So attack is important but digital is key, but people always comes first and the way to manage people is making the success of the transformation. That's what I learned. Fantastic. Thank you so much for putting it in that. We, I don't think our listeners are ever going to forget that lesson from Gilberto Tosca. One last question for you and this one is outside of our subject matter conversation topic today. Gilberto that's got to do with life, right? I mean all of us have had a very interesting, some of us difficult as well you know last year or so. Is there something maybe a luxury experience or something that Gilberto Tosco is really looking forward to doing in 2021 that he hasn't been able to, but you know there's a lot of things that. Is everybody was not able to do and I'm very lucky that I'm in good health with my family that is the most important. So I want these days for sure is lucky. I don't need a lot of luxury experience. I need to come back to my you know normal life. Before I started with this we all started with this pandemic. You know I'm a I'm an Italian national. I would love to come back to my country. I'm not traveling since more than one year to see my family my friends. That's me would be enough. It would be luxury enough because it's coming back to what I always used to do and I'm a little bit missing today. But I'm positive the situation is getting better in the US globally. So I'm very confident this is going to happen in 2021 for sure. And we certainly wish and pray that happens for you, Gilberto, that you get to revel on all the things that make you happy. Thank you so much for being part of leader speak and here's wishing you and your team, everyone at Gerring, the very best going forward. Alright. Thank you so much Peter for your practice and for your time. And thank you to all the listeners for the attention. Have a great day, The best of TCS on Radio 4, dot O.