Multi-source data aggregation and extracting value from different data types has always had associated challenges. Cost, tedious legal processes, limited capacity and lack of technical expertise are significant barriers to organizations working to leverage vast amounts of data types on top of their point-of-sale data. In this episode of The Insights Factory, David Hannibal, CPO at Seek, and Sean Cline, Industry Principal for Retail and CPG at Seek, sit down with Ian to discuss the upcoming launch of Seek Enrich, an offering that works to address this.
Multi-source data aggregation and extracting value from different data types has always had associated challenges. Cost, tedious legal processes, limited capacity and lack of technical expertise are significant barriers to organizations working to leverage vast amounts of data types on top of their point-of-sale data. In this episode of The Insights Factory, David Hannibal, CPO at Seek, and Sean Cline, Industry Principal for Retail and CPG at Seek, sit down with Ian to discuss the upcoming launch of Seek Enrich, an offering that works to address this. They dive into the boots-on-the-ground use cases that make this a game-changer in the CPG space.
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Key Quotes:
“We saw this problem and yet everyone fundamentally came back to this same commonality, which is, man, if only we could answer basic questions with other data than the data we have today and do it at scale. And so that is what Seek Enrich is.” - David Hannibal
“Being able to look at just the full view of what was happening with not only weather, but additional datasets, as well and being able to use that at the boots-on-the-ground level, it's amazing.” - Sean Cine
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Timestamps:
(01:06) What is Seek Enrich?
(03:45) Using Seek Enrich at the “boots-on-the-ground” level
(05:00) What will people be interacting with directly?
(09:09) Why hasn’t anyone done this before?
(15:56) Seek at Grocery Shop
(18:26) The importance of customer feedback
(22:23) What is in the private previews available the beta stage
(24:59) Using Seek Enrich insights to support conversations with retailers
(26:52) Where to find Seek at Grocery Shop
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Sponsor:
This podcast is proudly sponsored by Seek, the leader in cloud-based creation and delivery of industry-focused insights.
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Links:
Connect with David Hannibal on LinkedIn
Connect with Sean Cline on LinkedIn
Connect with Host, Ian Cook, on LinkedIn
Follow Seek on LinkedIn
Ian Cook: [00:00:00] Some days, it feels like we're drowning in data, but data isn't knowledge. Data without context, or the expertise to understand it, is just something taking up space in your warehouse. That's where being insights driven comes in. Insights driven organizations focus on generating actionable insights, rather than just collecting and munging data.
Insights drive better decisions. Welcome to the Insights Factor.
I am your host, Ian Cook, the Chief Technology Officer here at Seek, and joining me today are the Chief Product Officer, Dave Hannibal, and Industry Principal, Sean Klein. We're here to have a discussion today that's going to be a little more internal than the past couple of episodes, but we have a fantastic announcement, and I really wanted to get a chance to talk to the people behind it and have everyone learn a bit more about what we do here at Seek, and give us a chance to talk about the kinds of ways we're addressing A lot of the issues that we talk about every day [00:01:00] here on the podcast.
Welcome, David.
David Hannibal: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Ian Cook: And welcome, Sean.
Sean Cline: Thank you, Ian. Appreciate it.
Ian Cook: So what we're talking about today is the launch of a brand new product. We're calling it Seek Enrich, and it's going to be available to the public. Dave, can you give us an overview of Seek Enrich?
David Hannibal: Yeah, sure. So really where Seek Enrich comes from is this multi industry challenge where people have always looked at being, you know, an aggregator of more data feeds.
You know, even the other day I was on the phone with, uh, with a firm and they actually had a title. Uh, the individual on the other side of the phone was someone with a data scout title, right? And it continues to grow and grow where people want to leverage more and more data. But the problem always is...
Well, what happens when you get all of that data, right? You still have to run it through procurement. You still have to do all of these other things with the data. And then you hope at one point you hit the holy grail where out comes the other end, something of [00:02:00] value, right? And over the past, I don't know, 10 years, we've all kind of watched as.
People didn't actually pull that off. Right? You know, even, even the most prominent, um, uh, hedge funds in the quantitative space with more money than God, uh, you know, are really the only ones who have ever been able to pull this off, let alone, you know, uh, Annie's Mac and Cheese, a challenger brand. Right?
And so this is the world we came from, and we saw this, and we saw this problem, and yet everyone fundamentally came back to this same commonality, which is, Man, if only we could answer basic questions with other data than the data we have today and do it at scale. And so that is what Seek Enrich is. It is all about answering the fundamental basic question of not just where an insight goes, which is what is going on and what action do I need to take, but taking it to that next step of saying, well, why do I need to take that action?
You know, why is this event [00:03:00] happening? What, uh, what is really going on under the hood? And you need all this other data. And so Seek Enrich is that culmination. It, we call it an intelligence layer, uh, because it is literally bringing together all of this data that help answer that why question that people have been talking about for years.
And for the most part, everyone has really struggled to ever do internally. And that's why we think we are perfect. Perfect fit to solve it as an external party to help our customers answer that that main fundamental issue of why? So that's that's what Seek Enrich is all about.
Ian Cook: Sean, for those of people who are possibly watching along with us online, you've been nodding your head.
You've been in this industry. You've been the kind of person on the other side. Nodding 100%.
Sean Cline: Uh, this is something I probably would have killed for, uh, back in the day. Uh, I think one of the, [00:04:00] the episodes that we had previously, uh, recorded, I talked a little bit about when I was in cat litter. Yes, the sexy, glamorous world of cat litter. Uh, we talked about snow and ice and what effect that little bit of weather had on sales.
And I became an amateur, uh, NOAA weather person, uh, for that, that season. You know, having to manually identify stores that would be affected by a snow and ice event. Um, and, and that was just one additional layer, and again, that was a manual process, and I hoped and prayed that, uh, somebody at the retailer would, would accept that recommendation, uh, and we were fortunate where sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't, um, but boy, being able to, to, to, to look at just the full view of what was happening with not only weather, but additional data sets as well, um, and being able to use that at the ground, you know, boots on the ground level, Uh, it's, it's, it's amazing.
Uh, it's game changing. This is completely different. We're really excited about bringing this
Ian Cook: to market. Dave, you've given us a really great vision of this from a [00:05:00] high level, but talk a bit about what are people going to be interacting with directly?
David Hannibal: Yeah, that, that's a great question. So, you know, historically when people think about pulling all this data together, right, because this isn't a fundamental new concept.
It's been around for, for a number of years. Um, Traditionally, people think about it as a very data science database type of concept. So lots of rows, lots of columns. Some data engineers in the back who are writing some SQL, some Python. But what we ultimately know over the last number of years and have watched as people continue to struggle with this challenge that, that Sean was articulating is that it's people like Sean or even myself who, yes, maybe we have some Python or some SQL knowledge, but we're not the SQL Python people, right?
There are way smarter people than me that know how to do all of this and I'm highly dependent on them to do it. But as a business person, I'm the one who has to communicate the story up or out or to my [00:06:00] peers or colleagues or what have you. And so from our perspective, what makes this different is having that UI layer on top.
So for anyone who has, uh, you know, been in Insight Cloud, anyone who is a customer, anyone who has done the take a tour on our website where you can quickly and easily just Click and see what's going on and click through some insights based on some, some... Which if they
Ian Cook: haven't, they absolutely should.
David Hannibal: Yeah, very good call out. Yeah, so take a tour, it's right on the website, and it runs on demo data. So you get the full look and feel of what's going on as if it was your data, but it's, it's on demo data. And what an enriched insight looks like, or the way you consume Seek Enrich, is through a layer, what I call the intelligence layer, on top of the insights you purchase.
So, if you think about, I'm looking at, say, uh, Distribution Expander, which is Integrator, so I'll use that. It's a great example because anyone can go right now and go click and see [00:07:00] what that looks like. Distribution Expander says, what stores am I in? What is my potential when I expand into stores? Where Enrich goes to the next step is saying, well, behind the scenes, really smart people here at Seek have done all the hard, dirty work to bring together multiple data sets.
So to start, it's going to be five key different data types, I should say data type, not versus data set. So bring together five unique different data types, put it all together. And then our data science team figures out what are the right data types to answer that why question. So in terms of Distribution Expander, most people can kind of think about this, uh, fairly, it's fairly self explanatory, right?
It's, alright, I live in Sarasota, Florida, demographics has drastically changed, therefore probably want to ship more diapers versus, say, denture cream, because the demographics and average age has changed, right? So, that is an obvious story, [00:08:00] but what is really hard is when you want to say, layer in foot traffic, plus points of interest, plus events, plus the weather data, and all these other data sets, and say, okay, why is there this change in buying behavior, uh, and what is it real, you know, is it the causation or correlation, right?
Like, what is actually going on that is really driving this? And that is the key thing under the hood that one gets to now consume through a UI. Thank
Ian Cook: you for watching. Bye. Bye. With all these types of data you're talking about, one of the things we've done, and I want to make it clear because I think it's super important and really a fascinating thing about what we've constructed, is we're not talking about looking at even one page with just five different types of data, say in a big line down the page, these are actually put together, so you're seeing conjoined data showing your insights that mesh the Things that we think about from each one of these data types into something that you can kind of act on.
Sean, these data providers that have been pushing this kind of data [00:09:00] type into the world have existed for a while. I have to imagine they've, you know, you've heard plenty of these things from the past in your experience. Dave mentioned some technical items like SQL and some Python knowledge, but what other reasons exist that people haven't done this before?
Sean Cline: Yeah, I think first and foremost, and I make the joke, I don't even know how to turn SQL on. So, you know, if you think of a business practitioner or somebody boots on the ground at Bentonville, um, we're not paid to be technical resources. We are not paid to develop, uh, complex data science, uh, solutions.
We're paid to go sell stuff and to manage inventory and optimize, uh, and make more efficient supply chains. So, you know, if you think about that, that's issue number one. I think issue number two is frankly cost. Pick one of the big data sets that we're partnering with, a demographic data set that could be half a million dollars on an annual basis for the full data set.
Well, that typically lands at the headquarters of the supplier, [00:10:00] our customer. And is used in ways at that headquarter level, for example, in production planning, procurement, things like that. It doesn't always get to the replenishment analyst or the salesperson or BDR, if you will, the business development representative.
In Bentonville who can use it again in this boots and boots on the ground from that boots on the ground perspective to manage day to day business, but also relationship with the merchant, um, they're bringing additional insights that they probably wouldn't have had access to just because these datasets are so big, so expensive, so complex.
And unwieldy, it's difficult to get and disseminate through all the layers that need to or should be able to access that information.
Ian Cook: I'll tip my hand a little bit about what's going through my head. One of the things I think about working with these types of data is you have to know what you're getting from these providers.
So you have to understand the data. So you mentioned foot traffic data, Dave. We [00:11:00] also have weather data. We've got Point of sale data. So not only do you have to understand the original data, which can take a lot of time and understanding. So if somebody's spending a career and they're trying to understand point of sale data and all the nuance and what that does, now we have to add in, well, what's the weather like in the area?
But I just need to know what kind of weather data comes in. What is its time frame for each step in the data? How do I format that? How do I appropriately link that to other things? So I think one of the things that Also, maybe a barrier, and we've talked about this in previous episodes, is there's that sort of business understanding of the data about what can I do with this?
What is the good reason to have whether, uh, you know, the foot traffic around the store matters and in what way does it matter? And do we, do we know how to put things together in a way that says this is a useful insight into what we're doing? So I think one of the great things about Enrich is that.
People don't need that. Like they need business insight or business understanding to, to, to come to us and say, well, these are what things I wanna understand about my store. But we've already pre-baked some of [00:12:00] that work into it to say, we know what you're gonna be thinking about. Here are ways to look at it and provide that business value right off the bat, rather than having to be like, alright, I have five types of data.
What's the right way to combine foot traffic with weather data, with point of sale, with point of interest, et cetera.
David Hannibal: You know, I think, Ian, the other one I always think about is the, probably the one that's the least sexy of them all, which is the fun legal and procurement phase of all of this. Which is, as someone who's had to do all data sourcing and data contracts for years, it's like, You think about the effort to your point where you're talking about, hey, someone has to look and figure out, does this data, does this weather data actually have all the characteristics I need to give to my data engineering team to then go do the work, to then go build the insight, but then there's that massive in between of Well, then it has to go through legal, and procurement has to review it, and you have to negotiate that contract, and that can be months and months, um, [00:13:00] even for a smaller organization.
So then you think, not only is there a cost to get that data, or a cost for a data engineer, and then a cost for a data science individual to put it all together, there's like a multi month, You know, period of twiddling your thumbs as a business individual where you think this is the right thing to do, but there's nothing you really can do because you're just simply waiting on legal, um, which could, could ultimately kill the whole deal.
Right? I think we've all seen that in the past where there has been a data set that you have really wanted to use.
Ian Cook: Time kills all deals.
David Hannibal: Oh yeah, and it's like six months later and then you throw up your hands and you have to go find a new vendor for that specific problem you were just trying to solve.
And so, you know, I think that is that one of the big things with Seek Enrich is when one buys Seek Enrich, We're handling all of that behind the scenes, you know, so it's not just say on your end where it's, well, joining all of this data [00:14:00] and tying it to a specific location is hard. Yes, that is very hard, and we have a good team of folks that report to you that do all of that, but there's also just the mountain of time that it takes to do all the contract management, negotiations, make sure you're in compliance with every last row and column of data and manage all of that.
Um. You know, that I think is such a huge mountain that Seek Enrich solves. So when someone says, yep, I want it, you know, that is another big pain point that we really wanted to solve in doing this, you know, so we just didn't want to be another one doing common data. It's, we wanted to learn, take all the lessons learned from everyone else who's kind of gone before us.
And do it the way a business user would want, if we were on the receiving end, you know? And that business
Sean Cline: user here in Bentonville is really kind of concerned with, I need to cut through all the noise. I need to get as much time with my merchant, my replenishment [00:15:00] manager, whomever on the other side of the desk, so to speak, that I'm doing business with, enabling them to have additional insights that are unique.
And forward looking and prescriptive and all the buzzwords positions them to get more time to index higher in their time, which ultimately leads to better relationship, leads to additional insights that leads to optimizing the supply chains, ultimately selling more stuff. Uh, that's what everybody in this, uh, you know, in this whole process is looking to do is sell more stuff, whether it's us helping our customers position for a better conversation, more insightful, things like that.
The replenishment people, the sales people, the category people, uh, the executives, uh, you know, everybody's in this to sell more stuff, even the merchants and whatnot. So this type of information allows for that, that more, uh, deeper conversation, more robust conversation.
Ian Cook: So, I hinted at this at the beginning, uh, but I think people might want a little bit more [00:16:00] detail.
So, I said we're going to be announcing this, uh, more broadly at something called Grocery Shop. Sean, can you give us an overview of what Grocery Shop is, who attends, what the goings on are? Yeah, Grocery
Sean Cline: Shop is sort of a, a part of, uh, Shop Talk and Grocery Shop is really focused in on, on the grocery class of trade, um, and more specifically within the, the CPG world or consumer goods world.
Is, is the brands, the brands will come and visit and talk to companies like us, uh, companies like, um, um, agencies will, will be presenting their, their things there, but ultimately the, the, the whole, the whole conversation on the trade floor will be around, um, technology. Insights, um, different facets of the business to help, uh, be more efficient.
Um, things like that. It's very much a trade specific conversation, if you will. And when I say conversation, the big, the big, the big chat, if you will. [00:17:00]
Ian Cook: So we're doing the typical industry thing with like. Uh, we've got a booth. We've got something there that people will come be able to visit and talk to us and talk to actually you two in specific.
Uh, I will not be there unfortunately for me, but probably fortunate for everyone else that listens to this, they'll have heard me talk plenty. So we have that kind of interaction right there with all of those people. And like you mentioned, the technology and insights, if that's a huge, a huge interest, then we are positioned well.
Sean Cline: Absolutely. And Dave's going to be a top hat and tails.
Ian Cook: Perfect. A little like, maybe like a little Mr. Peanut outfit, or uh... Yeah. Yeah. It'll be good.
Sean Cline: It's gonna be good at that and he'll do an amazing job. And then we also have a launch party Tuesday night of, of, uh, of Grocery
Ian Cook: Shop. So why is Grocery Shop a good place to announce this?
Are like, are the people who you'd sell it to and might work with it be there? Or is it the people above them or someone that we might be interested in terms of partners who all shows up there that we're specifically hoping to attract? [00:18:00] All of the above.
Sean Cline: Uh, there are, there will be retailers there. There will be brands there.
There will be agencies there and, and, you know, personas within each of those, those three types of organizations at all levels, you know, from, from analysts to, you know, VP's of things. Um, the, the idea really is to get our message in front of as many people as we possibly can at this, at this event. Um, but more specifically, you know, develop leads, have additional conversations.
Uh, it's just the right time and the right place, the right venue, uh, to make this launch.
Ian Cook: I love that. One of the things we're doing in these episodes is getting a little bit of the behind the scenes of building a whole new startup, right? So as Shannon mentioned, like we're trying to get leads, trying to get the information out there.
One of the reasons we're doing this is so that people can learn about us. We've had an amazing trajectory. This team, um, the people sitting on this call, plus people, all the people who haven't, who actually have done, you know, a lot of the hands on keyboard stuff have [00:19:00] built several products in the course of just a few months here in 2023.
So it's been kind of amazing, but I like the openness and saying, here's what we're really looking for. Here's what we're really trying to do with, uh, Seek Enrich. So Dave, I think you wanted in on this.
David Hannibal: Yeah, I was just going to add, you know, I think the other big thing that I love about launching new products at a big event.
Because it's a great time to get feedback. So, having, there's nothing better than having people walk up and be able to see their reaction on their face for what lands well, what excites them, what parts maybe doesn't excite them as much. You know, as a product leader that, like, to me, that is like, That is just the icing on the cake by being able to demo and be able to show it in real time of like everything that we've been working on since, you know, we launched Insight Cloud through Present, we're going to be able to show that plus also show Enrich and be able to get real feedback right there, [00:20:00] whether it's You know, on the computer monitor, literally, you know, on the iPad in my hand, you know, that is, that is super important to us as a team, is to be able to hear what people think, you know, like talking about Seek Enrich, it is a rich UI experience, um, maybe I shouldn't use rich UI, maybe I should just say a pretty UI just because of the double use of enrich, um, but, you know, what I really am, what we're really looking for is to be able to hear from folks You know, is it the UI that they really love?
Is it, uh, super easy to understand, you know, to Sean's point, in, uh, folks in Bentonville as the end user, can they get in this and they go, wow, I get it. This is the right story. I can turn around and take this to my retail counterpart. And have the conversation with the screen in front of them and it all makes sense, you know, and that's the type of stuff that we're really looking for at Grocery Shop is be able to hear from folks and, uh, even ideally [00:21:00] sign folks up who are saying, yeah, I'll take this thing for a test drive and we'll be part of that beta private preview season that we're going to do in Q4.
And get that early access and have that nice feedback loop with engineers, with insight developers, and with our product teams to build a really great experience.
Ian Cook: This is all what it means to be customer focused, customer obsessed, is we've built something, we've identified problems that are in the market, and we are attempting to analyze them.
We are attempting to answer them, but until we have that feedback directly from the customers, we don't know how well we're doing at it. And we want them to help shape the experience. We want to hear what can be improved, what worked really, really well. So I think it's, uh, to just echo Dave's point, this is kind of.
The reason we go through this whole process is we're trying to solve a real problem and we know that this exists. So getting that kind of lesson back from folks to say how we're doing on it is terrific for the engineering as well. I mean, obviously for product, it's, you know, [00:22:00] part and parcel of what they do, but I know all the engineers on my team are just chomping at the bit every time they hear about somebody using it.
Did they like it? Did they not like it? What worked? What didn't work? What can we improve? What can we make faster? What works? So it's, it's a terrific way to sort of see this. Now, Dave, you mentioned people are going to be able to look at it, possibly sign up for some things. When they see it, we know that there's a rich UI.
We know that there are different data types. What are some specific, uh, products they can sign up for right away? What are the specific use cases that we've outlined in Seek Enrich for them?
David Hannibal: Yeah, that's a great question. So on launch, uh, September 18th, what folks will be able to get right out of the gate is participate in that private preview beta stage against their data, their data being point of sale data, um, to hone in and get really specific.
We're really targeting the, uh, Walmart and Target retailers, uh, to start. Uh, and then we will quickly be adding others like Dollar General and [00:23:00] Kroger as, as well. Um, actually between today's, you know, September 6th when we're having this conversation, and the 18th, we're moving so fast we might even be able to add more retailers by the time we get to launch.
So, that's really exciting, uh, is being able to, to have not just one retailer, but have multiple retailers. And then it's actually not just... Um, Seek Enrich as this one esoteric kind of concept. Uh, it will be three... Specific insights, solving three specific pain points, uh, with an enriched environment. Okay, so, um, you know, when we talk about our replenishment suite, and you can find that on our website, and you also get a demo of it if you take a tour, so I'll plug that one more time for the fun of it.
You know, it's, it is... Three specific insights, and so you will get both the three regular versions, i. e., uh, let's see, distribution expander, historical out of stock monitoring, predictive inventory against your point of [00:24:00] sale data, but you will also be getting then the enriched version of that. So, what does, um, predicting, um, where I'm going to go out of stock and when in, into the future, have implications with say weather data or demographics or an event coming up, right?
Like even the Fed has talked about Taylor Swift and her events and everything else and its impact, right? We all know it. We all joke about it, but it's a real thing. And so being able to use predictive inventory and look into the future and then say, well, is this because people are just buying more of my product or is it because of an event?
You'll be able to do all of these things out of the gate starting September 18th against your specific point of sale data. So your brands, your SKUs, um, you know, officially, not, you know, uh, you know, any, any old tests, smoke and mirrors, like you will be able to deploy this and run it.
Sean Cline: If you think of yourself as a challenger brand [00:25:00] and you're listening to this, there's a, uh, you know, Dave mentioned a lot of the specific insights.
This ups the game by a lot, incrementally. And, you know, a couple things to think about. And I'll just put my, my old brand hat on and I was a challenger brand. And if I went to my merchant and I said, I'd like to expand my distribution because we sell well in the Northeast and we've identified X number of stores that we don't have distribution in, we should go in those additional stores.
And 10 years ago, the response would have been, maybe, we'll see if there's room. Now, fast forward to today, Seek Enrich, and I'm a challenger brand, and I'm going to go to my merchant and I'm going to support that statement of expanded distribution with demographic data, predicted weather data, predicted foot traffic or event data.
Product and brand affinities or propensities or whatever the data type is that we're that we're looking [00:26:00] up against and we support that conversation with this fact and say, you know what, we want to expand distribution into this, these stores. It doesn't have to be one specific region, and these are the reasons why, and this is what we've seen in the past, and this is what the opportunity is for you in terms of revenue and, uh, you know, cart building and all those things, all the tactics that one uses.
The conversation is totally different than it was 10 years ago and positioning, again, positioning our customers to have that type of relationship and that type of insight. It's game changing. It will be game changing. I'm really excited. I
Ian Cook: know I'm biased, but it sounds exciting to me as well. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much.
As we wrap up here, I want to say I appreciate all of the time that you've given for this conversation, plus all of the work going into building this thing. The team that I have the honor of supporting has put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this, so I am super excited for it to hit the world. As this episode drops, [00:27:00] Grocery Shop is happening right now.
Where can people find you? And booth A
Sean Cline: 142 will be near Nielsen IQ, uh, big presence, nice, nice big booth. Look for Dave in the top hat and tails.
Ian Cook: Perfect. We'll post some pictures on the website. All right. Thank you again. Have a great trip and uh, enjoy the conference.
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