Supply-chain logistics and customer data truly are at the top of the “food chain” when it comes to building a reliable and innovative supermarket experience. When a company as big as Kroger sets out to transform the buying experience for over 10MM customers browsing their aisles and apps, driving exponential acceleration of its supporting tech is critical to enabling a first-in-class retail environment, and fostering the right leadership of technologists is the key to it all.
In this episode of The Restless Ones, we sit with Ryan Kean, Vice President, Technical Strategy and Operations at Kroger. Ryan’s focus on building the next generation of tech leadership is at the core of his mission to build the next generation of retail. We'll hear Ryan discuss how he cultivates the right style of thinking in his organization and how 5G can finally enable his vision for an “always on” retail experience where last-mile delivery and tracking a true “field to fork” path can move from an idea to reality.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
As we start to see proliferation around like five G mobile,
edge computing, driving AI, pushing more data science out to
the edge, the low latency compute in the store, that's
going to be the interesting thing to see as that
starts to mature a little bit further. We're not quite
there yet, but we're, you know, definitely moving down that path.
And I think when you start to see not just
(00:22):
the maturity, but you have to have, you know, the
range of availability across all of our markets to be
able to see that at mass and in scale, that's
gonna be some really differentiating experiences. Welcome to the restless ones.
I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than a decade really
learning about technology one makes it tag and then describing
(00:45):
and explaining that to my audience. But it's the conversations
with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the leaders at the
intersection of technology and business that fascinate me the most.
In partnership with T Mobile for Business, I explore the
unique set of challenges that see I O S and
C t o S face from advancements in cloud and
(01:06):
edge computing, software as a service, Internet of things, and
of course five g we are often left wondering how
the leading minds and business continue to thrive. Let's find out.
Our guest today is Ryan Keene, VP Technology Strategy Operations
(01:27):
for Kroger. The Kroger Company operates two thousand seven fifty
grocery stores under several banner names. The company has manufacturing facilities, pharmacies,
fuel centers, and more. Keeping an operation like that running
smoothly requires strong leadership and innovative technological solutions. As Ryan explains,
(01:48):
finding the right solutions for a company as large as
Kroger requires a methodical approach and carefully defining the parameters
of the problem you're actually trying to solve. Ryan, thank
you so much for joining us today. I'm really excited
to talk with you about Kroger and technological implementations. But
(02:09):
before we get into any of that, I would love
to learn a little more about you, and so I'd
like to open this up by just asking you what
was your first job in tech? Shared? Thanks Jonathan, and
thanks for having me on today. So my first job
in tech, I was a contractor at the Ray Patterson
Air Force Base. First job coming out of school, I
(02:30):
did a little bit of everything at Desktop support, serve administrations,
some database, little networking. So it was a great opportunity
to kind of test my skills in several areas, get
to learn to delay the land, but also start to
understand what it means to work for an organization that
really has well understood vision and mission well. And I
find that that kind of approach also is really helpful
(02:51):
in that you get that understanding of how one group
is working versus another and how you can kind of
bridge those gaps which often can be pain points when
you're trying to implement a specific project or solution. Oh yeah, absolutely.
And when you first start out in your career and
you kind of look at what is the team I
work on and what are the points that it touches.
(03:12):
But then as you progress and your leadership responsibility grows,
or the scope of your responsibility grows, then it's all
of a sudden, that periphery it grows out to right,
so your sphere of influence continues to grow. And you know,
my current role, it's not just within tech, but it's
also now, how do we understand the business strategies, how
do we understand our corporate objectives? And now look across
all of those and then you lay the technology lens
(03:34):
on top of it, and this is where it gets
super exciting. And there's a lot of passion in this
space because you know, that's when you really start to
accelerate the company and you understand how technology is an
enabler or something much larger. It's not technology for technology.
Um So I think, you know, just even starting off
where I got to be sort of like the jack
of all trades and several roles really helped preparing me
for where what I do today. So for our first
(03:57):
job in tech, as you say, that was a great
opening experience to kind of wet your feet and get
that so that you don't have this narrow focus going
through your career. What was your path from your start
at Kroger to where you are now? How did that progress? Yes,
I joined Kroger in two thousand six, so I've been
(04:19):
here for almost fifteen years. Really spent the first part
of my career Kroger within the infrastructure space, and when
I got to Kroger, I honestly thought, hey, this is
the grocery store I shop at. That was my knowledge
of the scale of Kroger. In my first role, I
had responsibility for our enterprise storage team as well as
our enterprise database teams. So both of these teams are
(04:40):
going through some massive changes. On the database side, we're
going through a managed service transition. On the storage side,
we're going through massive throwing pains in terms of scale. So,
you know, it kind of got dropped in two areas
where I didn't know quite honestly, a whole lot about
from a technology perspective, and you're all of a sudden
in the middle of everything that goes on in our business.
So you're in the middle of supply chain, you're in
(05:01):
the middle of merchandizing. Because database and storage they support everybody.
So I quickly started to understand the scale. I quickly
started understand the breadth of the responsibility, and that started
to build into other infrastructure roles, so whether it be
a different platforms so mainframe, Unix, BM or cloud. But
then kind of shifting over out of the infrastructure space,
(05:22):
spent a little bit of time and development, but then
it started working more on portfolio, on strategy, a lot
around data and then you know, my current role is
is kind of a mix of several things, but a
big part of that is to help overall company transformation. Wow.
So so really continuing that theme of being able to
(05:42):
step into different roles. It's amazing that that is a
through line in your career in many ways. So if
someone were to ask you what you do for a living,
how do you describe your job to someone who's not
already part of your team? Yeah, I mean I think
you know, and and turns of just the Kroger vision
and and the Kroger mission. Right. So the first thing
(06:03):
I want to focus on is I want to be
part of this team that we're driving these technology and
line of business solutions that provide these incredible customer and
associate experiences, right in terms of retail. But you know,
you step back from that and you're like, Okay, now
what do I do every day? You know this from
your experience to every day Our role as leaders is
to develop more leaders. So I think that's our number
(06:25):
one responsibility. You know, I'm really fortunate that I get
to work with the leadership team that it's focused on
creating a growth culture. We're able to talk about, you know,
our personal challenges, have the humility, provide the coaching along
those lines with our folks in that part of my
job I find to be the most rewarding and it's
something I get excited about every day. What are just
(06:46):
out of curiosity, What are some of the qualities you
look for when you're looking to develop leadership? What are
the things that really stand out to you? Yeah, the
two most important words and leadership are empathy and humility.
So when I step back, I really wanted to have
the folks that spend the time to understand who they serve, right,
(07:08):
go into that conversation with that empathetic stance and saying,
you know what, I want to try to understand your perspective.
I may not know it, but I want to understand it,
and now all of a sudden I can serve better.
And then on the humility side, I don't want to
do that in a way that says, you know what
I can learn from you. I don't know everything I have.
You know, you have all this great experience, and I
have all this great experience. What if we get together
(07:28):
and we start talking about it, and now, all of
a sudden, it's like it starts to have this big
multiplying effect. Technology skills you can teach it, business skills,
you can teach it, and you know, of course you
want folks to come and have that experience, but you know,
in the end, I do feel like you've developed a
culture in your company and you want to have you know,
progress that culture, you know, to even a higher level.
(07:50):
And some of those things that aren't necessarily technology skills
aren't necessarily business skills. Well, and you mentioned earlier the
importance when you're looking at technology is thinking about the
outcome that you desire, the end result you're aiming for,
and how can technology enable you to reach that goal
as opposed to just throwing tech in willie nilly just
(08:12):
because it exists. But I am curious in what ways
has tech evolved while you've been at Kroger that have
been really interesting or surprising to you. What are some
things that you know you've seen change over your time
there that perhaps have become really important and really transformational. Yeah,
(08:34):
it's it's been a journey, We'll say that. So, you know,
having been there fifteen years. When I first got there,
our primary focus was and we've got to improve reliability, scalability, availability,
all of sort of that service management component. To say
that we were challenged in certain areas at that time
would probably be a pretty accurate statement. So we invested
quite a bit. It was a heavy lift getting to
(08:55):
a place where, you know, through consolidation of legacy platforms
and doing work our data centers, we get to a
place where now you know, our business partners can depend
on us. And so once we got to that point,
then we start to say, okay, well now we're like
we can deliver predictable, but how can we be better?
And then we started to shift from waterfall over to
(09:16):
agile methodology. And this was awesome for me because as
as being a leader through this period, now I got
to shift my mind focus of not just changing technology
to help the business move before, but now it's like,
how do we change how we work right? How do
we have a better understanding of the people every day
and how they're delivering their work and where those gaps at.
(09:37):
We started to deliver incremental value and now we've kind
of matured to all right, well, now let's think about
how do we start to use platforms to drive exponential acceleration.
So not just a technology platform, but actually again look
across the entire line of business. Step back, understand how
you can change one area of the business and have
direct or indirect implications in a positive way to three
(10:00):
or orders away in some other line of business. And
so that's I think one of the biggest opportunities that
we have. We're moving down that path super fast now
and I'm super excited about that. It's exceptionally hard in
a company as large as we are and as complex
as we are, or this awesome grocery store, right we have.
You know, we support ten million customers a day, we
(10:21):
have four d and fifty thousand associates, but we also
have pharmacies, We have a massive supply chain, we have
a massive manufacturing capability, and on and on and on
that all the support that goes into that. So when
you're trying to drive transformation that we like we are
across something that massive, it requires this constant collaboration, this
(10:43):
constant transparency in building on how we work just as
much as building on the technology. So to think of
it from that perspective of how do we continue to
make good on the mission statement of the company while
also moving it forward in a tech logical way, It's
hard for me to even wrap my mind around the
(11:04):
scope of that. Yeah, and it's you're right, it is
exceptionally challenging. But you know, while we have the scale,
we don't necessarily have the solutions that scale. So a
lot of times that is you know, either custom developing
something because you know, simply you know, cots application out
of the box just is not going to you know,
fit within our scale. Or it's finding great partners and
(11:25):
that might be startup community, that might be some niche players,
you know, that might be just working our personal networks
to figure out where can we create partnerships, bring something
in and start doing the rapid test and learn and
get something out there and then figure out, Okay, do
we need to invest to get it to scale or
is it a niche within the our overall complex that
(11:46):
we can put it in and gain value from it.
Sort of every situation is a little bit different. You know.
In the ideal world, we would want the vast majority
of things that we bring in to be able to
scale just like that, but the reality is it's um
it takes a lot of work. M hmm. Well, this
is a great time for us to transition into more
specifics about your approach to your role and projects that
(12:07):
you've worked on. So can you tell us about a
specific project you've worked on at Kroger that that made
a big difference. It sounds to be like you have
no shortage of options. Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you, Jonathan,
I've been so fortunate throughout my career. I've had leaders
that have invested in me and provided me tons of
opportunities to stretch and grow. You know, I've got to
(12:27):
work on master data projects. I've got to help, you know,
drive our move to agile, I've got to help champion
moving to cloud. I really do think a part of
my current role is some of the most exciting that
I've done with Kroger, and that's being our transformation workstream
leader for Kroger Technology and Digital. So what that means
is I'm collaborating with my peers from all across the company.
(12:49):
We have a number of different work streams out there,
and we're not only trying to ensure that we're investing
in the best way, in most effective way. I think
more importantly, we're trying to drive to this new way
of working that's centered around partnership, transparency and trust. So,
given the scope and the scale of our company, this
is absolutely critical for us to do and it's this
massive difference maker. So a year ago, I would say
(13:12):
I would have been super challenged to reach out to
all you know, ten twelve plus lines of business and
try to find a great contact to help bounce ideas
off of collaborate, try to figure out that we have
issues that we can solve together, or how do we
escalate things. Now today we're meeting multiple times a week.
We had this strong collaboration, open feedback, and we're growing
(13:35):
this trust and which is super important because when you
look at the Technology Department, we're involved in everything, right,
So if you don't have that strong foundation of trust, transparency,
a great way of working with all these peers across
all these areas and understand what are their needs, what
are their business objectives, what are their strategies, and then
how do those ladder into the enterprise strategies. You know,
(13:58):
Without that, you're just it's technology for technology, right. So
now we're going down that path and it's that shift
from being hey, you're the technology department, so now you're
like a strategic partner um And to me, you know,
I get so excited um to be part of that
because I see it every single day and I know
where we came from and we talked about the things
(14:20):
that make a big difference. I think this is something
that's gonna make a big difference of Kroger for decades.
That's fantastic. I'm very curious what does success look like
for you and for Kroger? Um? I think success is
going to be really around that openness, clear communication, the
transparency that's driving the most effective use of our resources
(14:43):
and differentiating experiences to our customers and status. Because in
the end, regardless of how well we work together, if
our customers and our issues and our stores are not
feeling it and they're not engaged and they're not excited
about Kroger, it's not a success, right. And so it's
working to together to understand, Hey, if we have supply
chain and merchandising and marketing and technology all working together,
(15:07):
what can how can that impact our associate in the
store in an awesome way? That's a success, UM. And
that's that's really, UM what we get excited about. And
again that comes back to that idea of how can
technology achieve the outcome that you desire? Right? And I
love that that's your definition of success. What is your
(15:27):
process when it comes to evaluating technological solutions. How do
you go about that? Yeah, you know, part of it
hasn't changed in a decade. Let's start with the first one.
So when you look at the business challenge you're trying
to solve, is it something that you can define the
requirements for? Right? Is it something that's well understood? Can
(15:49):
you go out of the box? Right? And at that
point it kind of falls into our standard process that
we all use. Right, it's well, I'm gonna create an our.
If i I'm going to do an RFP, I'm going
to bring something in, I'm going to implement it and
deliver some value that commissure. But then there's the latter situation,
and these are the ones that are can be a
little bit more challenging. Right, it's a little bit more nebulous.
But this is where we're focused on driving differentiating value
(16:11):
or a differentiating experience to our customer of the company
or associate. And for those it gets into Okay, now
let's step back, let's do this ideation. Let's do a
lot of brainstorming, design thinking leading into okay, now, can
we do this ourselves? Right? And maybe we do custom
develop it or maybe this is where we look for
a startup partner, or we look for a niche player
(16:32):
partner or one of our trusted partners, and we bring
them in and we start to iterate and kind of
put something out there and test. Right, it's the test
and learns the test l let's iterate through it and
then figure out is that something is going to deliver
the value that we want. We have the measurements built
in place so that we can directly tie that into
incremental value to the company. If it is, then at
(16:54):
that point becomes okay, well, how do we structure a
partnership that's beneficial to all parties? And what about when
it comes to getting buy in from leadership? What sort
of your approach to that? Um, it's really about you know,
that direct high into your enterprise strategy and outcomes and
it kind of you know, it gets to what is
(17:15):
the difference between output and outcomes? Right? And so I'm
making it sure that our our business leaders, you know,
they're not the only ones that understand the outcomes, but
your technology teams have to do it as well. They
really have to understand line of site between what are
they trying to build and how it has direct impact
to the company, customers, associated shareholders, and the rest um
(17:37):
So for us, it's about how do you create the measures,
the okay rs that are tied to each one of
these efforts, and then make sure that we are appropriately
communicating that to our line of business leaders to gain
their support. If there's one thing most businesses can agree
(17:58):
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(18:19):
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(18:40):
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(19:01):
average speeds USA five G User Experience Report January. Capable
device required converts on available in some areas. Some users
may require certain planner features cet mobile dot Com. Ryan's
approach the leadership goes well beyond identifying tech solutions, but
I really wanted to find out what his opinion is
(19:23):
on several emerging technologies, and his answers really opened my
eyes as to how a task is universal, is shopping
for groceries can be transformed with the effective use of technology?
In what ways has Kroger leveraged customer data from a
customer facing and user interface approach and also from a
(19:47):
store operations approach. Yeah, let me let me touch on
a few ways we're doing that today. So for anybody
that shops, you know, in any of our banners across
the US, they're likely part of our loyalty program. And
so you know, through our great data science, our personalization science,
and then tying that into store behaviors, and we use
(20:09):
that to be able to create very relevant offers for
our customers through that program. And we do that through
a couple of different ways. One is we'll do UM
sort of a best customer communication that we send out
to our customers, but then we also do it UM
through digital cupons. If your preference is one brand, we're
not going to send you another brand, We're gonna send
(20:29):
you our offers for that brand. And because that our
redemption rates are well in excess of industry average, right,
So that that science tied to that is uh, you know,
it's a massive differentiator for us when we look at
then how do we tie that into our store experience
when you go into the store, and UM, we use
(20:50):
that data to drive you know, obviously, what are we
carrying within our stores? Where are we do we need
to improve our in stock positions? You know, what are
the brands or the commodities that we needed to expand
or contract And that all gets tied into our associates
experience through their handhelds or through other applications to make
sure that they have the most relevant data at one
(21:11):
time of what the movement through the store is. Right,
so as things go out the front and we can say, hey,
well we need to restock x, you know, in the
next thirty minutes, so we can make sure that. From
a customer perspective, you know, we're doing our absolute best
to make sure we have a great position for you.
And then you'll see some of this in the store,
and it's a lot of our store technologies behind the scenes,
(21:33):
but when you look at some of the data around
people as they come through the stores. If you're in
any of our stores and you look at the front end,
you'll see some screens in front of you. Numbers on
the screens are saying, is there's how many check lanes
we should have open right now? And our goal there
is that we want to have the fewest number of
folks waiting in a check lane, you know, to get
(21:55):
through and get out of the store right So if
we know haylenes are starting to back up, we flash
up there and we say, hey, we need more lanes open,
because we're watching the data as it comes through. And
then from a user experience perspective, you know, we're building
the measures into all of our products, both customer facing
and associate facing, so we understand how they're using the applications.
(22:16):
So by building the measurement plan upfront, putting it in
the hands of our users, understanding, gathering the data that
informs our product management team on where we need to
make changes, and then it just kind of creates the
circle that we hopefully will continue to improve that product
to get to the sweet spot for both these customers
and our associates. So, yeah, data is um data. The
(22:37):
collection of the utilization, the analytics around it is absolutely
a huge part of Kroger and Kroger technology and digital
and and I like that you touched on the in
store experience. I mean, obviously if you take a step
back and you look even further, that data applies to
decisions for things like supply chain. Uh, you know which
(22:58):
regional stores are going to be stalking more of a
certain product than another. You start looking at at how
data has a really powerful impact on big business decisions.
And again, as you say on the on the of
the store side of it, to make sure that the
associates have everything that they need in order to create
(23:20):
a customer experience, that's a positive one. So to me,
that's a great use case to show how powerful data
can be because it's something we can all relate to.
It's something. We all go grocery shopping, so we all understand,
Oh yeah, the reason why I'm able to get the
things that I can get at the grocery store are
because these companies have the information and know how to
(23:40):
act on it in a way that benefits me. Yeah.
I think the next challenge you run into is then
how do you use that data at that point of
decision right and drive that to the most relevant uh
irrelevant point within the store and how it's being used
at the time, whether it be a customer or an associate.
And this is where I think some of the rapidly
(24:01):
advancing technologies and as we start to see proliferation around
like five G mobile edge computing, UM, you know, driving AI,
pushing more data science out to the edge, the low
latency we have at that point to compute compute in
the store where we can actually do that at that moment,
that's going to be the interesting thing to see as
(24:21):
that as that starts to mature a little bit further. UM,
we're not quite there yet, but we're you know, definitely
moving down that path. And I think when you start
to see the um not just the maturity, but you
had to have you know, the range of availability across
all of our markets to be able to see that
at mass and in scale, that's gonna be some really
(24:41):
differentiating experiences. Well, and and Ryan, you you said one
of my favorite things in the world. You mentioned five G,
and uh, I agree, like the the the possibilities are phenomenal.
So I'm curious if you could think ahead and someone's
going into go shopping and you've got a mature rollout
(25:05):
of five G infrastructure and the various technologies, the sensors
and the apps that integrate with that, what do you
think that experience is going to be, Like, how do
you envision the leveraging of these technologies to make a
transformational experience both for the customer and and for the
company's side. Yeah, you know, five years from now, it's
(25:28):
kind of it's kind of funny when you think about it, right,
So if you would ask this question last January, I
would have said, well, it's it's just like it is today, right, Um.
But the reality is we're there and I think you're
gonna continue to see to accelerate as the technologies accelerate.
So when I think about a customer experience in retail
five years from now, it's gonna be this ubiquitous retail.
(25:49):
It's gonna be always on. So it doesn't matter if
you're in the store, if you're at the your kids
soccer game, or you're at work. Right you have the
availability to get what you want, when you want, where
you want, and then how you want to receive it.
Um where I think all all these things come to
play together is going to be in making sure that
(26:11):
that is a dramatically personalized experience for you, not just
for you, but for your family unit. Where I think
will be the differentiator though, is going to be around
a fresh So I think everyone is going to push
to say, how do we start to understand better last
mild delivery? You know through things like delivery or like
(26:35):
what we're doing right now and doing a pilot with
drone delivery. You know there's gonna be a lot of
play within that space, So how do you do that
end to end field the fork and be able to
start to understand and communicate traceability, scalability, sustainability. So when
you know Jonathan gets food delivered to your house, it
(26:58):
is I know this is the freshest thing and I
can trust it. Whoever manages and optimizes that is going
to be the winner. Yeah. I sit there and I
think about the experience from a customer standpoint, and I
think about things like having a shopping list that integrates
with the app in such a way that I'm having
(27:18):
a seamless experience navigating through the store to get the
things on my list. Further than that, I think of,
what if instead of a shopping list, I'm just telling
the app what it is I plan on, like making
that week like a menu, and it's directing me to
all the different individual ingredients and I don't even have
to break it down into a shopping list the way
(27:39):
I did. So these sort of little experiences, I think
are things that I just imagine as being integrated into
that that store experience in the future, where it again
is just making the the entire uh visit from start
to finish seamless and useful and rewarding. Yeah. And you
(28:03):
you can actually see that in a lot of our
stores today to to a degree of what you just described.
So when you log in with your account and it's
gonna come up and say here's all your usuals, right,
you want us to create your list for you, right,
based on what you typically get and then as you're
going through the store, right, if you can't find something,
ask the app where is that in the store? And
intellis you. And so we start to build all of
(28:25):
this in and now what heck, what could happen if
you could start to tie that into more like a
r in the future, right, and is there some some
play there that is relevant and valuable to the not
not just kind of like a techy thing, but what
is it that brings value to the customer, value to
the associates um. So, yeah, there's absolutely there's so much
(28:46):
here you can build on. And it's really exciting to
see this space right now because there are so many
new players, so many great startups they are going into
this space, and then the technologies to support air maturing
really rapidly. It is so exciting. We have seen in
the past a sort of seesaw effect with bottlenecks of
where the slowdown was going to be in tech, whether
(29:08):
it would be on processors which just keep getting more
powerful and smaller, or we see it on the communication side,
where we have all these cool technological solutions, but because
of the throughput or the latency of our communications channels,
they're not really uh, not really practical to implement, and
(29:28):
we're getting to a phase where a lot of those
doors are being opened wide and the possibilities are are phenomenal.
I love what you said right there, because in the end,
when you have this technology coming in and we as
technology leaders, you know, one of the best things that
we can do is help people ask the question that
they've never thought of before. That's how these companies move forward.
(29:50):
That's how the experiences get to somewhere where they've never been.
Because if I've been doing the same thing for twenty
years in the same way, I will never ask a
different question and it's not gonna get any better. But
if we can bring in different perspectives, you know, and
bringing our friends from different areas and have that conversation,
and then all of a sudden, now it's like I
(30:11):
have twenty new questions, and we have fifty new experiences,
and we have like this variety of things to choose
where to invest that are all differentiating, and that is
so exciting. I think our ability to help people ask
new questions is so important right now. I think you
just nailed the mission statement of the Restless Ones with
that as well, it's not enough to just sit back
(30:33):
and do the same thing as you've been doing for
twenty years. There's always the opportunity to look at it
from a new perspective and improve the process for all
parties involved. Before concluding our interview with Ryan, I had
to ask one more thing, what keeps you up at night? So,
(30:56):
without question, what keeps me up at night is how
to build the the best tech organization in all of retail.
Right now, every company we're all in the same battle
for talents. We know that there's not enough talent out
to fill the jobs that are going to be available,
and we we've seen all the data and so now
it's like, how do I still go external bring in
(31:18):
who I can? How do I work with universities and
bringing new talent that's coming out and it's going to
be starting their careers. But most important of all is
how do I develop and grow the talent that we have?
And Dewey that doing that in a meaningful way while
each one of them feels uplifted every day that they're
doing something that's differentiating and it means something to the customer,
(31:39):
means something to our associates. Um I think I'm gonna
have a lot of sleepless nights because you know that
the talent challenge is not going to be solved anytime soon. Um.
But it it's once out there, it's real, um, and
it's everywhere. Marian, thank you so much for joining us
(31:59):
on the Restless Ones. This has been an incredibly interesting
conversation for me and given me a new perspective on
something that frankly, I have frequently taken for granted. All Right,
I really appreciate the opportunity and to get share a
little bit about Kroeger story. So thank you. Ryan's background
(32:24):
gives him a great starting off point for creating actionable
solutions to solve business challenges. At Kroger. He's served in
the trenches, as it were, in a variety of roles.
That experience gave him an appreciation for the needs and
goals of various stakeholders, which is of tremendous value when
as a leader he's working on the next generation of
(32:45):
technology solutions. Brian also gave me a greater appreciation for
how technologies like five G and connected sensors can have
a huge impact not just on me as a consumer,
but on business operations as a whole. Imp Proved operations
frequently ripple outward and lead to a better customer experience,
and so what benefits the business often has a beneficial
(33:08):
impact on me as a shopper. Putting changes into that
kind of context is a powerful story that encourages enthusiasm
and buy in. I'm grateful that Ryan took the time
to share with us his perspective and expertise, and I
look forward to many more conversations with leaders and lots
of industries to learn about how they use technology to
(33:30):
enable a truly amazing future. Make certain you tune into
future episodes of The Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. These days,
new ways of working have become the norm, and the
status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to
helping businesses evolve and grow. That's why T Mobile for
(33:52):
Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses sees innovation only.
Te Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network,
which makes their new WFX solutions possible, letting businesses stay
connected and productive where work happens. See what T Mobile
for Business can do for you at t mobile dot com.
Slash Unconventional, Open signal awarded. T Mobile Fastest five G
(34:15):
network based on average speeds. USA five G User Experience Report, January.
Capable device required coverage not available in some areas. Some
users may require certain planner features see t mobile dot
com
As we start to see proliferation around like five G mobile,
edge computing, driving AI, pushing more data science out to
the edge, the low latency compute in the store, that's
going to be the interesting thing to see as that
starts to mature a little bit further. We're not quite
there yet, but we're, you know, definitely moving down that path.
And I think when you start to see not just
(00:22):
the maturity, but you have to have, you know, the
range of availability across all of our markets to be
able to see that at mass and in scale, that's
gonna be some really differentiating experiences. Welcome to the restless ones.
I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than a decade really
learning about technology one makes it tag and then describing
(00:45):
and explaining that to my audience. But it's the conversations
with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the leaders at the
intersection of technology and business that fascinate me the most.
In partnership with T Mobile for Business, I explore the
unique set of challenges that see I O S and
C t o S face from advancements in cloud and
(01:06):
edge computing, software as a service, Internet of things, and
of course five g we are often left wondering how
the leading minds and business continue to thrive. Let's find out.
Our guest today is Ryan Keene, VP Technology Strategy Operations
(01:27):
for Kroger. The Kroger Company operates two thousand seven fifty
grocery stores under several banner names. The company has manufacturing facilities, pharmacies,
fuel centers, and more. Keeping an operation like that running
smoothly requires strong leadership and innovative technological solutions. As Ryan explains,
(01:48):
finding the right solutions for a company as large as
Kroger requires a methodical approach and carefully defining the parameters
of the problem you're actually trying to solve. Ryan, thank
you so much for joining us today. I'm really excited
to talk with you about Kroger and technological implementations. But
(02:09):
before we get into any of that, I would love
to learn a little more about you, and so I'd
like to open this up by just asking you what
was your first job in tech? Shared? Thanks Jonathan, and
thanks for having me on today. So my first job
in tech, I was a contractor at the Ray Patterson
Air Force Base. First job coming out of school, I
(02:30):
did a little bit of everything at Desktop support, serve administrations,
some database, little networking. So it was a great opportunity
to kind of test my skills in several areas, get
to learn to delay the land, but also start to
understand what it means to work for an organization that
really has well understood vision and mission well. And I
find that that kind of approach also is really helpful
(02:51):
in that you get that understanding of how one group
is working versus another and how you can kind of
bridge those gaps which often can be pain points when
you're trying to implement a specific project or solution. Oh yeah, absolutely.
And when you first start out in your career and
you kind of look at what is the team I
work on and what are the points that it touches.
(03:12):
But then as you progress and your leadership responsibility grows,
or the scope of your responsibility grows, then it's all
of a sudden, that periphery it grows out to right,
so your sphere of influence continues to grow. And you know,
my current role, it's not just within tech, but it's
also now, how do we understand the business strategies, how
do we understand our corporate objectives? And now look across
all of those and then you lay the technology lens
(03:34):
on top of it, and this is where it gets
super exciting. And there's a lot of passion in this
space because you know, that's when you really start to
accelerate the company and you understand how technology is an
enabler or something much larger. It's not technology for technology.
Um So I think, you know, just even starting off
where I got to be sort of like the jack
of all trades and several roles really helped preparing me
for where what I do today. So for our first
(03:57):
job in tech, as you say, that was a great
opening experience to kind of wet your feet and get
that so that you don't have this narrow focus going
through your career. What was your path from your start
at Kroger to where you are now? How did that progress? Yes,
I joined Kroger in two thousand six, so I've been
(04:19):
here for almost fifteen years. Really spent the first part
of my career Kroger within the infrastructure space, and when
I got to Kroger, I honestly thought, hey, this is
the grocery store I shop at. That was my knowledge
of the scale of Kroger. In my first role, I
had responsibility for our enterprise storage team as well as
our enterprise database teams. So both of these teams are
(04:40):
going through some massive changes. On the database side, we're
going through a managed service transition. On the storage side,
we're going through massive throwing pains in terms of scale. So,
you know, it kind of got dropped in two areas
where I didn't know quite honestly, a whole lot about
from a technology perspective, and you're all of a sudden
in the middle of everything that goes on in our business.
So you're in the middle of supply chain, you're in
(05:01):
the middle of merchandizing. Because database and storage they support everybody.
So I quickly started to understand the scale. I quickly
started understand the breadth of the responsibility, and that started
to build into other infrastructure roles, so whether it be
a different platforms so mainframe, Unix, BM or cloud. But
then kind of shifting over out of the infrastructure space,
(05:22):
spent a little bit of time and development, but then
it started working more on portfolio, on strategy, a lot
around data and then you know, my current role is
is kind of a mix of several things, but a
big part of that is to help overall company transformation. Wow.
So so really continuing that theme of being able to
(05:42):
step into different roles. It's amazing that that is a
through line in your career in many ways. So if
someone were to ask you what you do for a living,
how do you describe your job to someone who's not
already part of your team? Yeah, I mean I think
you know, and and turns of just the Kroger vision
and and the Kroger mission. Right. So the first thing
(06:03):
I want to focus on is I want to be
part of this team that we're driving these technology and
line of business solutions that provide these incredible customer and
associate experiences, right in terms of retail. But you know,
you step back from that and you're like, Okay, now
what do I do every day? You know this from
your experience to every day Our role as leaders is
to develop more leaders. So I think that's our number
(06:25):
one responsibility. You know, I'm really fortunate that I get
to work with the leadership team that it's focused on
creating a growth culture. We're able to talk about, you know,
our personal challenges, have the humility, provide the coaching along
those lines with our folks in that part of my
job I find to be the most rewarding and it's
something I get excited about every day. What are just
(06:46):
out of curiosity, What are some of the qualities you
look for when you're looking to develop leadership? What are
the things that really stand out to you? Yeah, the
two most important words and leadership are empathy and humility.
So when I step back, I really wanted to have
the folks that spend the time to understand who they serve, right,
(07:08):
go into that conversation with that empathetic stance and saying,
you know what, I want to try to understand your perspective.
I may not know it, but I want to understand it,
and now all of a sudden I can serve better.
And then on the humility side, I don't want to
do that in a way that says, you know what
I can learn from you. I don't know everything I have.
You know, you have all this great experience, and I
have all this great experience. What if we get together
(07:28):
and we start talking about it, and now, all of
a sudden, it's like it starts to have this big
multiplying effect. Technology skills you can teach it, business skills,
you can teach it, and you know, of course you
want folks to come and have that experience, but you know,
in the end, I do feel like you've developed a
culture in your company and you want to have you know,
progress that culture, you know, to even a higher level.
(07:50):
And some of those things that aren't necessarily technology skills
aren't necessarily business skills. Well, and you mentioned earlier the
importance when you're looking at technology is thinking about the
outcome that you desire, the end result you're aiming for,
and how can technology enable you to reach that goal
as opposed to just throwing tech in willie nilly just
(08:12):
because it exists. But I am curious in what ways
has tech evolved while you've been at Kroger that have
been really interesting or surprising to you. What are some
things that you know you've seen change over your time
there that perhaps have become really important and really transformational. Yeah,
(08:34):
it's it's been a journey, We'll say that. So, you know,
having been there fifteen years. When I first got there,
our primary focus was and we've got to improve reliability, scalability, availability,
all of sort of that service management component. To say
that we were challenged in certain areas at that time
would probably be a pretty accurate statement. So we invested
quite a bit. It was a heavy lift getting to
(08:55):
a place where, you know, through consolidation of legacy platforms
and doing work our data centers, we get to a
place where now you know, our business partners can depend
on us. And so once we got to that point,
then we start to say, okay, well now we're like
we can deliver predictable, but how can we be better?
And then we started to shift from waterfall over to
(09:16):
agile methodology. And this was awesome for me because as
as being a leader through this period, now I got
to shift my mind focus of not just changing technology
to help the business move before, but now it's like,
how do we change how we work right? How do
we have a better understanding of the people every day
and how they're delivering their work and where those gaps at.
(09:37):
We started to deliver incremental value and now we've kind
of matured to all right, well, now let's think about
how do we start to use platforms to drive exponential acceleration.
So not just a technology platform, but actually again look
across the entire line of business. Step back, understand how
you can change one area of the business and have
direct or indirect implications in a positive way to three
(10:00):
or orders away in some other line of business. And
so that's I think one of the biggest opportunities that
we have. We're moving down that path super fast now
and I'm super excited about that. It's exceptionally hard in
a company as large as we are and as complex
as we are, or this awesome grocery store, right we have.
You know, we support ten million customers a day, we
(10:21):
have four d and fifty thousand associates, but we also
have pharmacies, We have a massive supply chain, we have
a massive manufacturing capability, and on and on and on
that all the support that goes into that. So when
you're trying to drive transformation that we like we are
across something that massive, it requires this constant collaboration, this
(10:43):
constant transparency in building on how we work just as
much as building on the technology. So to think of
it from that perspective of how do we continue to
make good on the mission statement of the company while
also moving it forward in a tech logical way, It's
hard for me to even wrap my mind around the
(11:04):
scope of that. Yeah, and it's you're right, it is
exceptionally challenging. But you know, while we have the scale,
we don't necessarily have the solutions that scale. So a
lot of times that is you know, either custom developing
something because you know, simply you know, cots application out
of the box just is not going to you know,
fit within our scale. Or it's finding great partners and
(11:25):
that might be startup community, that might be some niche players,
you know, that might be just working our personal networks
to figure out where can we create partnerships, bring something
in and start doing the rapid test and learn and
get something out there and then figure out, Okay, do
we need to invest to get it to scale or
is it a niche within the our overall complex that
(11:46):
we can put it in and gain value from it.
Sort of every situation is a little bit different. You know.
In the ideal world, we would want the vast majority
of things that we bring in to be able to
scale just like that, but the reality is it's um
it takes a lot of work. M hmm. Well, this
is a great time for us to transition into more
specifics about your approach to your role and projects that
(12:07):
you've worked on. So can you tell us about a
specific project you've worked on at Kroger that that made
a big difference. It sounds to be like you have
no shortage of options. Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you, Jonathan,
I've been so fortunate throughout my career. I've had leaders
that have invested in me and provided me tons of
opportunities to stretch and grow. You know, I've got to
(12:27):
work on master data projects. I've got to help, you know,
drive our move to agile, I've got to help champion
moving to cloud. I really do think a part of
my current role is some of the most exciting that
I've done with Kroger, and that's being our transformation workstream
leader for Kroger Technology and Digital. So what that means
is I'm collaborating with my peers from all across the company.
(12:49):
We have a number of different work streams out there,
and we're not only trying to ensure that we're investing
in the best way, in most effective way. I think
more importantly, we're trying to drive to this new way
of working that's centered around partnership, transparency and trust. So,
given the scope and the scale of our company, this
is absolutely critical for us to do and it's this
massive difference maker. So a year ago, I would say
(13:12):
I would have been super challenged to reach out to
all you know, ten twelve plus lines of business and
try to find a great contact to help bounce ideas
off of collaborate, try to figure out that we have
issues that we can solve together, or how do we
escalate things. Now today we're meeting multiple times a week.
We had this strong collaboration, open feedback, and we're growing
(13:35):
this trust and which is super important because when you
look at the Technology Department, we're involved in everything, right,
So if you don't have that strong foundation of trust, transparency,
a great way of working with all these peers across
all these areas and understand what are their needs, what
are their business objectives, what are their strategies, and then
how do those ladder into the enterprise strategies. You know,
(13:58):
Without that, you're just it's technology for technology, right. So
now we're going down that path and it's that shift
from being hey, you're the technology department, so now you're
like a strategic partner um And to me, you know,
I get so excited um to be part of that
because I see it every single day and I know
where we came from and we talked about the things
(14:20):
that make a big difference. I think this is something
that's gonna make a big difference of Kroger for decades.
That's fantastic. I'm very curious what does success look like
for you and for Kroger? Um? I think success is
going to be really around that openness, clear communication, the
transparency that's driving the most effective use of our resources
(14:43):
and differentiating experiences to our customers and status. Because in
the end, regardless of how well we work together, if
our customers and our issues and our stores are not
feeling it and they're not engaged and they're not excited
about Kroger, it's not a success, right. And so it's
working to together to understand, Hey, if we have supply
chain and merchandising and marketing and technology all working together,
(15:07):
what can how can that impact our associate in the
store in an awesome way? That's a success, UM. And
that's that's really, UM what we get excited about. And
again that comes back to that idea of how can
technology achieve the outcome that you desire? Right? And I
love that that's your definition of success. What is your
(15:27):
process when it comes to evaluating technological solutions. How do
you go about that? Yeah, you know, part of it
hasn't changed in a decade. Let's start with the first one.
So when you look at the business challenge you're trying
to solve, is it something that you can define the
requirements for? Right? Is it something that's well understood? Can
(15:49):
you go out of the box? Right? And at that
point it kind of falls into our standard process that
we all use. Right, it's well, I'm gonna create an our.
If i I'm going to do an RFP, I'm going
to bring something in, I'm going to implement it and
deliver some value that commissure. But then there's the latter situation,
and these are the ones that are can be a
little bit more challenging. Right, it's a little bit more nebulous.
But this is where we're focused on driving differentiating value
(16:11):
or a differentiating experience to our customer of the company
or associate. And for those it gets into Okay, now
let's step back, let's do this ideation. Let's do a
lot of brainstorming, design thinking leading into okay, now, can
we do this ourselves? Right? And maybe we do custom
develop it or maybe this is where we look for
a startup partner, or we look for a niche player
(16:32):
partner or one of our trusted partners, and we bring
them in and we start to iterate and kind of
put something out there and test. Right, it's the test
and learns the test l let's iterate through it and
then figure out is that something is going to deliver
the value that we want. We have the measurements built
in place so that we can directly tie that into
incremental value to the company. If it is, then at
(16:54):
that point becomes okay, well, how do we structure a
partnership that's beneficial to all parties? And what about when
it comes to getting buy in from leadership? What sort
of your approach to that? Um, it's really about you know,
that direct high into your enterprise strategy and outcomes and
it kind of you know, it gets to what is
(17:15):
the difference between output and outcomes? Right? And so I'm
making it sure that our our business leaders, you know,
they're not the only ones that understand the outcomes, but
your technology teams have to do it as well. They
really have to understand line of site between what are
they trying to build and how it has direct impact
to the company, customers, associated shareholders, and the rest um
(17:37):
So for us, it's about how do you create the measures,
the okay rs that are tied to each one of
these efforts, and then make sure that we are appropriately
communicating that to our line of business leaders to gain
their support. If there's one thing most businesses can agree
(17:58):
on these days, it's that change has never come about
so quickly. New ways of working have become the norm.
As a result, the status quo no longer cuts it
when it comes to helping businesses adapt and innovate. That's
why T Mobile for Business uses unconventional thinking to help
businesses work smarter and grow faster. Only T Mobile offers
(18:19):
America's largest and fastest five gen network. It's just one
reason they're better able to help businesses solve the real
world challenges they face as they evolve. For instance, their
new WFX solutions help team members stay connected and productive
where work happens. With nearly two and a half times
the network coverage of a T and T, nearly four
(18:40):
times more than Verizon, and forty billion dollars invested in
network and business improvements over the next three years, T
Mobile for Business is better for your business right now
and into the future. See what they can do for
your organization at T mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open
Signal awarded T mobile Fastest five gen network based on
(19:01):
average speeds USA five G User Experience Report January. Capable
device required converts on available in some areas. Some users
may require certain planner features cet mobile dot Com. Ryan's
approach the leadership goes well beyond identifying tech solutions, but
I really wanted to find out what his opinion is
(19:23):
on several emerging technologies, and his answers really opened my
eyes as to how a task is universal, is shopping
for groceries can be transformed with the effective use of technology?
In what ways has Kroger leveraged customer data from a
customer facing and user interface approach and also from a
(19:47):
store operations approach. Yeah, let me let me touch on
a few ways we're doing that today. So for anybody
that shops, you know, in any of our banners across
the US, they're likely part of our loyalty program. And
so you know, through our great data science, our personalization science,
and then tying that into store behaviors, and we use
(20:09):
that to be able to create very relevant offers for
our customers through that program. And we do that through
a couple of different ways. One is we'll do UM
sort of a best customer communication that we send out
to our customers, but then we also do it UM
through digital cupons. If your preference is one brand, we're
not going to send you another brand, We're gonna send
(20:29):
you our offers for that brand. And because that our
redemption rates are well in excess of industry average, right,
So that that science tied to that is uh, you know,
it's a massive differentiator for us when we look at
then how do we tie that into our store experience
when you go into the store, and UM, we use
(20:50):
that data to drive you know, obviously, what are we
carrying within our stores? Where are we do we need
to improve our in stock positions? You know, what are
the brands or the commodities that we needed to expand
or contract And that all gets tied into our associates
experience through their handhelds or through other applications to make
sure that they have the most relevant data at one
(21:11):
time of what the movement through the store is. Right,
so as things go out the front and we can say, hey,
well we need to restock x, you know, in the
next thirty minutes, so we can make sure that. From
a customer perspective, you know, we're doing our absolute best
to make sure we have a great position for you.
And then you'll see some of this in the store,
and it's a lot of our store technologies behind the scenes,
(21:33):
but when you look at some of the data around
people as they come through the stores. If you're in
any of our stores and you look at the front end,
you'll see some screens in front of you. Numbers on
the screens are saying, is there's how many check lanes
we should have open right now? And our goal there
is that we want to have the fewest number of
folks waiting in a check lane, you know, to get
(21:55):
through and get out of the store right So if
we know haylenes are starting to back up, we flash
up there and we say, hey, we need more lanes open,
because we're watching the data as it comes through. And
then from a user experience perspective, you know, we're building
the measures into all of our products, both customer facing
and associate facing, so we understand how they're using the applications.
(22:16):
So by building the measurement plan upfront, putting it in
the hands of our users, understanding, gathering the data that
informs our product management team on where we need to
make changes, and then it just kind of creates the
circle that we hopefully will continue to improve that product
to get to the sweet spot for both these customers
and our associates. So, yeah, data is um data. The
(22:37):
collection of the utilization, the analytics around it is absolutely
a huge part of Kroger and Kroger technology and digital
and and I like that you touched on the in
store experience. I mean, obviously if you take a step
back and you look even further, that data applies to
decisions for things like supply chain. Uh, you know which
(22:58):
regional stores are going to be stalking more of a
certain product than another. You start looking at at how
data has a really powerful impact on big business decisions.
And again, as you say on the on the of
the store side of it, to make sure that the
associates have everything that they need in order to create
(23:20):
a customer experience, that's a positive one. So to me,
that's a great use case to show how powerful data
can be because it's something we can all relate to.
It's something. We all go grocery shopping, so we all understand,
Oh yeah, the reason why I'm able to get the
things that I can get at the grocery store are
because these companies have the information and know how to
(23:40):
act on it in a way that benefits me. Yeah.
I think the next challenge you run into is then
how do you use that data at that point of
decision right and drive that to the most relevant uh
irrelevant point within the store and how it's being used
at the time, whether it be a customer or an associate.
And this is where I think some of the rapidly
(24:01):
advancing technologies and as we start to see proliferation around
like five G mobile edge computing, UM, you know, driving AI,
pushing more data science out to the edge, the low
latency we have at that point to compute compute in
the store where we can actually do that at that moment,
that's going to be the interesting thing to see as
(24:21):
that as that starts to mature a little bit further. UM,
we're not quite there yet, but we're you know, definitely
moving down that path. And I think when you start
to see the um not just the maturity, but you
had to have you know, the range of availability across
all of our markets to be able to see that
at mass and in scale, that's gonna be some really
(24:41):
differentiating experiences. Well, and and Ryan, you you said one
of my favorite things in the world. You mentioned five G,
and uh, I agree, like the the the possibilities are phenomenal.
So I'm curious if you could think ahead and someone's
going into go shopping and you've got a mature rollout
(25:05):
of five G infrastructure and the various technologies, the sensors
and the apps that integrate with that, what do you
think that experience is going to be, Like, how do
you envision the leveraging of these technologies to make a
transformational experience both for the customer and and for the
company's side. Yeah, you know, five years from now, it's
(25:28):
kind of it's kind of funny when you think about it, right,
So if you would ask this question last January, I
would have said, well, it's it's just like it is today, right, Um.
But the reality is we're there and I think you're
gonna continue to see to accelerate as the technologies accelerate.
So when I think about a customer experience in retail
five years from now, it's gonna be this ubiquitous retail.
(25:49):
It's gonna be always on. So it doesn't matter if
you're in the store, if you're at the your kids
soccer game, or you're at work. Right you have the
availability to get what you want, when you want, where
you want, and then how you want to receive it.
Um where I think all all these things come to
play together is going to be in making sure that
(26:11):
that is a dramatically personalized experience for you, not just
for you, but for your family unit. Where I think
will be the differentiator though, is going to be around
a fresh So I think everyone is going to push
to say, how do we start to understand better last
mild delivery? You know through things like delivery or like
(26:35):
what we're doing right now and doing a pilot with
drone delivery. You know there's gonna be a lot of
play within that space, So how do you do that
end to end field the fork and be able to
start to understand and communicate traceability, scalability, sustainability. So when
you know Jonathan gets food delivered to your house, it
(26:58):
is I know this is the freshest thing and I
can trust it. Whoever manages and optimizes that is going
to be the winner. Yeah. I sit there and I
think about the experience from a customer standpoint, and I
think about things like having a shopping list that integrates
with the app in such a way that I'm having
(27:18):
a seamless experience navigating through the store to get the
things on my list. Further than that, I think of,
what if instead of a shopping list, I'm just telling
the app what it is I plan on, like making
that week like a menu, and it's directing me to
all the different individual ingredients and I don't even have
to break it down into a shopping list the way
(27:39):
I did. So these sort of little experiences, I think
are things that I just imagine as being integrated into
that that store experience in the future, where it again
is just making the the entire uh visit from start
to finish seamless and useful and rewarding. Yeah. And you
(28:03):
you can actually see that in a lot of our
stores today to to a degree of what you just described.
So when you log in with your account and it's
gonna come up and say here's all your usuals, right,
you want us to create your list for you, right,
based on what you typically get and then as you're
going through the store, right, if you can't find something,
ask the app where is that in the store? And
intellis you. And so we start to build all of
(28:25):
this in and now what heck, what could happen if
you could start to tie that into more like a
r in the future, right, and is there some some
play there that is relevant and valuable to the not
not just kind of like a techy thing, but what
is it that brings value to the customer, value to
the associates um. So, yeah, there's absolutely there's so much
(28:46):
here you can build on. And it's really exciting to
see this space right now because there are so many
new players, so many great startups they are going into
this space, and then the technologies to support air maturing
really rapidly. It is so exciting. We have seen in
the past a sort of seesaw effect with bottlenecks of
where the slowdown was going to be in tech, whether
(29:08):
it would be on processors which just keep getting more
powerful and smaller, or we see it on the communication side,
where we have all these cool technological solutions, but because
of the throughput or the latency of our communications channels,
they're not really uh, not really practical to implement, and
(29:28):
we're getting to a phase where a lot of those
doors are being opened wide and the possibilities are are phenomenal.
I love what you said right there, because in the end,
when you have this technology coming in and we as
technology leaders, you know, one of the best things that
we can do is help people ask the question that
they've never thought of before. That's how these companies move forward.
(29:50):
That's how the experiences get to somewhere where they've never been.
Because if I've been doing the same thing for twenty
years in the same way, I will never ask a
different question and it's not gonna get any better. But
if we can bring in different perspectives, you know, and
bringing our friends from different areas and have that conversation,
and then all of a sudden, now it's like I
(30:11):
have twenty new questions, and we have fifty new experiences,
and we have like this variety of things to choose
where to invest that are all differentiating, and that is
so exciting. I think our ability to help people ask
new questions is so important right now. I think you
just nailed the mission statement of the Restless Ones with
that as well, it's not enough to just sit back
(30:33):
and do the same thing as you've been doing for
twenty years. There's always the opportunity to look at it
from a new perspective and improve the process for all
parties involved. Before concluding our interview with Ryan, I had
to ask one more thing, what keeps you up at night? So,
(30:56):
without question, what keeps me up at night is how
to build the the best tech organization in all of retail.
Right now, every company we're all in the same battle
for talents. We know that there's not enough talent out
to fill the jobs that are going to be available,
and we we've seen all the data and so now
it's like, how do I still go external bring in
(31:18):
who I can? How do I work with universities and
bringing new talent that's coming out and it's going to
be starting their careers. But most important of all is
how do I develop and grow the talent that we have?
And Dewey that doing that in a meaningful way while
each one of them feels uplifted every day that they're
doing something that's differentiating and it means something to the customer,
(31:39):
means something to our associates. Um I think I'm gonna
have a lot of sleepless nights because you know that
the talent challenge is not going to be solved anytime soon. Um.
But it it's once out there, it's real, um, and
it's everywhere. Marian, thank you so much for joining us
(31:59):
on the Restless Ones. This has been an incredibly interesting
conversation for me and given me a new perspective on
something that frankly, I have frequently taken for granted. All Right,
I really appreciate the opportunity and to get share a
little bit about Kroeger story. So thank you. Ryan's background
(32:24):
gives him a great starting off point for creating actionable
solutions to solve business challenges. At Kroger. He's served in
the trenches, as it were, in a variety of roles.
That experience gave him an appreciation for the needs and
goals of various stakeholders, which is of tremendous value when
as a leader he's working on the next generation of
(32:45):
technology solutions. Brian also gave me a greater appreciation for
how technologies like five G and connected sensors can have
a huge impact not just on me as a consumer,
but on business operations as a whole. Imp Proved operations
frequently ripple outward and lead to a better customer experience,
and so what benefits the business often has a beneficial
(33:08):
impact on me as a shopper. Putting changes into that
kind of context is a powerful story that encourages enthusiasm
and buy in. I'm grateful that Ryan took the time
to share with us his perspective and expertise, and I
look forward to many more conversations with leaders and lots
of industries to learn about how they use technology to
(33:30):
enable a truly amazing future. Make certain you tune into
future episodes of The Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. These days,
new ways of working have become the norm, and the
status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to
helping businesses evolve and grow. That's why T Mobile for
(33:52):
Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses sees innovation only.
Te Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network,
which makes their new WFX solutions possible, letting businesses stay
connected and productive where work happens. See what T Mobile
for Business can do for you at t mobile dot com.
Slash Unconventional, Open signal awarded. T Mobile Fastest five G
(34:15):
network based on average speeds. USA five G User Experience Report, January.
Capable device required coverage not available in some areas. Some
users may require certain planner features see t mobile dot
com
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