MM: Then you said, “Okay. Let’s go find vendors, then, who can automate this new idealized workflow.”

TM: Yes. Well, you know, a lot of that was going on simultaneously, too. By then, I knew who the vendors were.

MM: Right.

TM: Yes.

MM: As I recall, you started off with 15 or so vendors, in terms of your not short-list, but your medium-list. Right?

TM: Right. So I probably looked at 100, and we cut it down to 15 for a more thorough review.

MM: At that point, as I recall, you brought them in and showed them the current and future states. You asked them to speak to how they would automate the future state. Is that right?

TM: We only brought in four. We sat them down in the room after they gave their presentation. We set them down in the room and said, “Okay. Here’s our flow. Now we’re going to leave you here for a while. When we come back, we want you to present to us how you can affect our flow.” So we really put them on the spot.

MM: Not just “affect our flow,” but implement it.

TM: Implement your solution. How is your solution going to integrate with our flow?

MM: So what came out of that?

TM: Well, some things that we were able to gauge. To say, “These people are telling us the truth. These people speak our language and understand what we do. These people are not trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.”

For instance, one group would say, “Oh, yes. We can do all of that. We’ll just make it work.” That’s not what we wanted to hear. We wanted to hear the truth.

One person would say, “You know what? You’ve got a pretty good solution here. We can automate this and automate this and automate this. We’re not sure about this automation here. You may have to keep this as a manual process for a while, until a new version comes out. Or we can implement it as a part of our software.”

Then there were people that would talk about heuristic attitudes and speak a different language. We knew that they didn’t understand the catalog business. So when we started talking to people that not only talked our language and understood what product groupings and SKUs were—and making sure that there was an image that could be saved in a directory as a JPG and the high-res image in a similar place. We understood that they knew what they were talking about.

So it was almost an interview, as well.

MM: Yes. And then you selected a vendor.

TM: Well, we actually went through two stages of that. We had them back to. We actually took some partial data and then presented to us. We cut it down to two, then, after the four. Then each of those two came back and presented to us with our data.

MM: Great result! So take us through what the merchandiser did with page-profit analysis.

TM: One of the things that we saw immediately that was advantageous when you think about the fact that all it is – is data. You used to look at a Quark or InDesign page—and say, “Okay. That’s a design page. Type in the information. Import a picture.”

Once the mindset or paradigm shift happened, people started looking at that as data. Then you started saying, “You know what? There’s other data we might want to be able to look at on this page, after we’ve already sent the page to the printer.”

If you can populate data on a page in a price table, does there have to be a price? No.

It could be the amount of sales for that particular SKU or that particular product grouping. Or it could be the number of units that were sold that year. All you have to do is change the data field that it’s pulling to the page.

MM: In the current state, Tom, you had merchandisers that would own a particular category or categories of product. With a felt-tip pen, they overwrote on a print catalog page the quarter or the beginning inventory position, end inventory position, items sold, gross revenues.

TM: Sales and gross profits. And they would actually be looking at a green bar, writing information into a catalog—sometimes using the spreadsheet on their screen to compile data if they needed to compile it. Because the green bar wouldn’t do that.

Each of the product managers would be doing this. So there were five product managers that would spend two to four weeks every cycle populating their pages in their catalog.

All of the product managers wanted to have all of the information, so they’d switch books and they’d mark up somebody else’s book—until all five product managers had all five master books marked up with that information—hand-written.

MM: So the idea then in the future-state is, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we took a PDF or the InDesign document that had the 900-page document and simply did an automated overlay?” A data overlay from the database of beginning inventory position—end inventory position—gross revenues—profits—returns. Simply just published directly—almost as a transparency or an overlay to the actual thing on the page.

TM: Absolutely. That’s exactly what we did. We could do that in the course of a weekend.

MM: With that kind data without the effort, merchandisers could begin to understand patterns and correlate particular presentations or configurations of products that produce a “lift,” in terms of increased sales. Thus, they could begin to understand, “If I put that product here, I get a 3% bump. If I put that same product over here, then I take a 5% hit.”

TM: Yes. There are additional modules that you can get that even do more forecasting than those types of simple analyses, too.

MM: Such as?

TM: It’ll say, “If you put it in the upper right-hand quarter or the lower left-hand corner.” Or, “Is it on the first page of the section or is it on the cover, too?” “Is it on the back cover? Is it on the inside front cover?” “Are you presenting it on the web differently? Are you even presenting it on the web?” There are lots of different ways to look at that type of data.

MM: So then as you develop the future-state capability, you started to really define work-cells that enable you and your automation team to really optimize the productivity of individual workers. Did I get that right?

TM: Yes.

MM: The next thing I’d like you to talk to is the optimized workflow.

With these basic principles of accountability and no enabling bad behavior or sloppy work. Staying online. Getting it right upfront.

With that set of principles, your current-state process, as I recall from our conversation—entailed about 300 or so discrete steps. Is that right?

TM: That is correct. 300 individual steps.

MM: Then how did you start to develop the optimized future-state capability?

TM: Well, as you mentioned—the visual representation on the wall. We kind of created, after we had all of the artifacts out there, we either took pictures or put them into a document. We reduced them so that they could fit on half of that wall. Then we drew a line under that.

The top of the wall was the current. The “current,” being with a few modifications that we felt we could implement right away. Then we drew a line.

On the bottom, we started the new process. “What do we do now? What is the process that we should lead with? Look. You’re doing this on the backend, and we know that there’s pain back there. We want to move this up into the process.”

Subject Indexes in Two Hours vs 30 person-weeks

MM: So for example, there were two things that I want you to address. First, how your team builds the subject index in the back of the catalog and, second, how your ream conducted profit analysis of each page in the catalog.

Let’s talk about the index, first of all. In a 900-page catalog, creating an index can be quite the chore. It typically happens at the end of the production cycle.

So there was like a two-week period at the very end of the production cycle, where 15 to 20 people sequestered themselves into a room and basically called out names and told what page number those particular items were on. That’s now the index was built.

Again, you’re talking 10 to 15 people for 8 hours a day, for 2 weeks. That’s a lot of man-hours.

MM: Yes. That’s 30 man-weeks.

TM: It had to be done. So we recognized with database publishing how electronically that information is captured within the database, and—through a simple export—that same result can be more accurately and quickly exported within a matter of 2 hours.

But more importantly, we reduced the cycle time by two weeks.

MM: So you simply got everyone to acknowledge, “Here’s how we do our catalog.” With the idea of really coming to understand if not appreciate exactly the kind of frustration each stakeholder had experienced in this process.

TM: And you know, it’s funny you say that. Actually, at three points during the process, we had everyone come up to the board and sign it, that they agreed with everything that was up on the board.

The first time was after we defined the current process. Everybody agreed. Another time, when we defined an interim process that we felt we could implement without the software solution. So we saw some immediate benefits from defining the process. Then the third sign-off was when everybody agreed to the “new optimal process,” which would include the database publishing system.

MM: Fabulous. What you just described, Tom, is the workflow map in the War Room. It became a visual contract.

TM: Absolutely. Yes. That’s what it was.

MM: What made it easy to sign, is that the stakeholders participated wholly in defining the current state, as well as the interim state in terms of, “Here’s what we could do to make things better without having to automate anything.”

TM: Correct.

Who’s Responsible?

MM: As you begin to create this visual roadmap, people naturally begin to argue about who was responsible for what. Or how things got done. Can you take us through a couple of those scenarios, and how they resolved?

TM: Let me step back just briefly and talk about a little bit of the hierarchy we had at Hubert. I think that that had an effect on those types of situations.

At Hubert, we had a VP of Organizational Development. He was a person who reported to the president but did not have any structure under him. He was a change-management guru.

Because he reported only to the president and had basically no agenda, he could work across departments and not appear to be persuaded by one or the other.

Additionally, this man was trained to facilitate meetings. He was really good at what Peter Block would call the ‘what’ question. That is, “If you ask a ‘what’ question, you’re going to get a whole lot more different types of responses than when you ask a ‘why’ question.”

If you ask, ‘why’—you’re challenging somebody. However, if you’re asking ‘what’—you’re asking them to explain what it is that they need to tell you. That was something that he was a master at doing. He was able to allow people to speak freely, but also was able to get them focused on the right path—together—without creating a lot of disturbances.

That said, there are some people in every organization that are going to create disturbances. You have to address those—and sometimes, that means that there’s somebody that’s going to have to go. And at Hubert, there was. There was a person that had to go.

At Central, they were fortunate to not have it to that degree. But, there are always those that latch on to change and those that desperately try to avoid it.

Change Management Toolkit

MM: Could you take us through Hubert’s toolkit of change management? What does that mean?

TM: It is making sure that you do things right the first time, and therefore you don’t have to worry about it later. That lives in several different areas. It can live as a whole— meaning if we hadn’t done the research and the white paper and all that stuff upfront, would we’ve been as successful?

But you can take it down to the minutia, too. That is, Hubert identified during the current process that there was a maximum of 7 times where a price could be entered into the workflow. Now, that 7 times didn’t happen all the time— but it wasn’t unusual for a price to be entered at least 4 times into the system at some point.

MM: You had developed this already in the Hubert organization. Is that correct?

TM: It is. But this was by far the biggest change that they’d ever undertaken.

But our VP of Organizational Development also did some train-the-trainer type things.  It was the cultural paradigm. So, the idea was, that if everyone in the company had this skill-set, and then it would be a better place to work.

Let’s say there is a process that involved Sales and Marketing. Maybe a person in the Warehouse was trained to do it. Maybe the Warehouse person would facilitate that meeting, because he did not have an agenda between Sales and Marketing. But if it were a big process across multi-departments— which this one was— then he would be involved with something that big.

MM: Tom, I have found that very few companies have a structured, defined, and repeatable change-management process in place.

TM: I’ve never seen one other than Hubert.

MM: Exactly. And I say that the lack of such a process makes change wrenching, difficult, expensive, and problematic. Inevitably, change means that people have to get out of their comfort zone and get out of their daily routines and habits, and do what is new, uncomfortable, and probably prone to criticism.

TM: Yes.

MM: As you had developed the organizational strategy for how Hubert might benefit from database publishing, one of the major efforts that you undertook entailed developing an internal white paper. The preparation of the paper allowed you to put into cogent, logical order, an organizational change—an organizational transformation story.

As you began to circulate the white paper, it served as a persistent messaging object—a framework—for structuring and guiding internal conversations around how affected stakeholders could come up-to-speed with the new system.

TM: Absolutely.

MM: As I recall for our previous conversations, your process of bringing stakeholders up-to-speed revealed new adoption criteria and business requirements that subsequently you wove back into the next version of the white paper. So the white paper was a living document that continued not only the conversation, but also the coalescence of, “Yes. This makes sense for us a firm.”

With internal consensus, you built a nice platform by which to start engaging vendors in terms of what you need from them. I find absolutely fascinating. As I recall in ‘98 or ‘99—when all of this took place—your were in a lot conversations such as, “Maybe we ought to get a DAM.” But you came back with, “Let’s figure out exactly how we produce our big-book 900-page catalog, and understand if there are any other inefficiencies we should work out before we actually start looking at DAMs.” Would you take us through that process?

TM: Absolutely. That was the fun part, really.

What was intriguing was that it was apparent that all of the people involved in producing the catalog had probably never been in the same room at the same time, before. Therefore, there were lots of big revelations once we sat down together.

We got 15 stakeholders in a meeting—people from groups that touched the catalog to people who participated in the production of the catalog—everyone from merchandisers to graphic artists to IT people. Also, we had some fairly significant shareholders, like a VP of Marketing who was there for many of the meetings.

Basically we had 15 people that met twice a week for half a day over a 9-month period, Initially we defined the workflow that was currently in place. The direction of the meeting was very specific. We were not there to change anything at that point. We were only there to identify and to bring artifacts. To make sure that everyone understood exactly what was being done now. We met in what we called the ‘War Room.’ It was a fairly big conference room that had windows—over half of it that we actually covered up at one point, because we simply needed more room to put stuff on the walls.

Workflow Model in the War Room

MM: As I recall, you physically mocked up each step of the workflow associated with publishing a 1,000-page big-book catalog and a website. Is that right?

TM: Yes. Absolutely.

MM: If someone had the printouts from your mainframe—then you physically tacked a piece of green bar up on the wall which somebody then transcribed that into a spreadsheet.

TM: And if an artifact like that didn’t work well, then we took a picture of it. Remember when you were moving paper around, a lot of times it was, “Put something in a bin,” or, “Take it to this location.” If we felt it couldn’t be described very well, we’d take a picture of it and put the picture up on the wall, too.

MM: If “sneakerware” was involved, where someone had to physically move a file from one person to another, you had photographs of the individuals and a string connecting the two individuals?

TM: We had yarn. We had different types of colored tape that we would use. We had different colored starbursts that meant different things. We identified pain points, as well, during this process. And, a big red star meant, ‘Here’s an issue.’—a real Pain Point.

MM: How did you call out defects or mistakes?

TM: In much the same way: remember, we were not trying to solve any problems, yet. We were only identifying them.

MM: I can’t overstate the importance of what you just said. Many people make the mistake of going in to an organization with a change mindset: “Here’s how we’re going to change this. Here’s how we’re going to change that.” That naturally produces all kinds of pushback and resistance among stakeholders.

TM: And resentment.

Long-form interview with Tom Marine, the masterclass innovation leader who implemented, in record time, a DAM-enabled workflow for a multichannel catalog marketing firm.

Professional Background

MM: We’re here with Tom Marine of Johnson Ventures. Would you quickly summarize your professional career?

TM: Sure. I’ve been in the publishing industry for more than 30 years. I started out in newspapers and quickly went into marketing. I’ve been focused on catalog publishing for the last 15-plus years. I have been in charge or have been involved in large- to medium-sized catalogs that have wide national distribution—everything from door-chimes to fake food, and restaurant equipment.

MM: Most recently you worked with a company called Central Restaurant. Could you describe a little bit about the company?

TM: Central Restaurant is a wholesale equipment supplier to the restaurant industry, and also to large institutions that offer food services, selling anything from small wares like tongs or flatware—up to walk-in coolers and freezers.

They do multichannel marketing, utilizing both a relatively large catalog of about 320 pages. We send it out six times a year to millions of customers and prospects throughout the United States.

Catalog Marketer

MM: The nature of that business is that it constantly is on-boarding a fairly significant number of new customers?

TM: Correct. Yes. Acquiring new customers is very important for us, because of the volatility of the market.

MM: Before we go on into the specifics of that, could you give us a little bit of background on your previous engagements—specifically at Hubert?

TM: Sure. At Hubert, I was in a similar role—only it was a larger catalog of about 1,000 pages. We also sent out monthly catalogs to do more prospecting as well as to drive business back into what we called “The Source Book”—both print and online versions.

At Central Restaurant, not only did I handle catalog production, but I’m also handled circulation, the list procurement. That’s where the differences lie between the two jobs.

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