Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to day one at NRF. I will give you the advice that I give anyone attending NRF of how to have the best show ever, which is to wear comfortable shoes. Yep. Hopefully, you guys are veterans and you know that. But otherwise, just thank you for being here. Also, I want to thank Vikram Subramanian, my guest here. It was a customer of ours at Burlington and has been since 2007. We'll do proper introductions in just a moment, but I wanted to kick off with just two housekeeping points. The first housekeeping point is this session is sponsored by Zebra. That's where I work. My name is Matthew Geist, Global Retail Technologist for Zebra. We're a $6 billion company with 10,000 employees. Most people know us as hardware. Think scanners, printers, data capture devices, barcode readers, et cetera. And that's true. But we've also invested $1.5 billion over the past couple of years in software to really build the entire solution experience around that hardware. So if any of that sounds interesting, please join us at booth 3203. Other housekeeping point is when you came in, you should have got a card that looks like this. This is a raffle entry. If you fill this information out and bring it to the booth, you'll be entered to win a $200 Burlington gift certificate. Now that there's money on the table, let me repeat that booth number, 3203. So I hope to see you there. All right, with that introduction, we'll kick off. And why don't Vikram, you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here, Matthew. Great to be back at NRF and engaging with all you wonderful folks. Yeah, this is the place to be for retail. As far as myself, Vikram Subramanian, I'm with Burlington Stores. I've been in the retail space for most of my career, 20+ years. The first half of my career was in consulting. I was helping retail clients with designing, implementing, process improvement, and technology solutions for their operations. Then the last, the second half has been in the retail industry in a variety of retailers, from pure brick and mortar to pure e-commerce to omnichannel, as the buzzword goes. With that, I've also been fortunate to work in a variety of functional areas as well, from supply chain to marketing to technology to stores. It's been an interesting ride. That brings me to my current role at Burlington Stores, where I'm the Vice President of Store Operations, where we are very focused on building the right processes, systems, tools for our associates to have a great experience working in stores and ultimately to deliver the right customer experience for our customers. Excellent, and I know one other fun fact about Vikram is he recently won an award. I wrote it down. It's kind of a long name, but RIS Influentials: Top Movers and Shakers, so congratulations on that award. Thank you so much. Again, thank you for being here with us. With that said, why don't we talk a little bit about Burlington? I know everyone knows them, but could you maybe give a little bit more detail and maybe some things people don't know? Yeah, absolutely. So Burlington Stores, you're probably familiar with the name, the brand name. Many of us, myself included, before I joined the company, knew it as the Burlington Coat Factory. So that's certainly been our legacy. But over the past few years, we made the transition from just a Coat Factory to being an off-price retailer. And as an off-price retailer, currently, we have a presence in 46 states and Puerto Rico, about 1,000+ stores, close to $10 billion in revenue, and over 50,000 associates or employees at this point. With regards to off-price retail, it's sort of a subsector of retail. And Burlington is the third largest off-price retailer after TJX and Ross Stores. So that's the space that we play in. An interesting fact about Burlington that not everyone might know is we're purely a store play. So we have only a store presence, no e-commerce right now, which is an interesting space, especially as you hear everything about digital and e-commerce. But with that said, we are still growing, adding about 100 stores a year. So a good place to be in. And yeah, the last thing I'll leave with is certainly we're very proud of our culture. We live by our core values, which is driving results for the business, building teams and partnerships, both internally and externally, and collaborating with each other with trust and respect. So yeah, that's Burlington in a nutshell. Excellent. Thanks for that background on you and on the company. I thought as a framework for our conversation today, we might lean into a concept that Zebra has called the Modern Store. If you go to our Booth 3203, again, you'll see that word everywhere. All the Modern Store is, how to translate that is to say, how do we think about what are the top retail concerns and outcomes they want to drive? And then how do we then match that up to the massive Zebra portfolio? The pillars of that Modern Store are all around, no surprise, retailers, customers, their associates, and their inventory. We call those enhanced customer experience, optimized inventory, and engaged associates. So I thought we might lean into those as a framework for our discussion. And let's start with customers. How have you noticed customers changing over the past two to three years, their expectations and what they're demanding of Burlington? Yeah, absolutely. So certainly the customer expectations and what they expect of you as a brand or a retailer has been a significant change over the past several years, pre-COVID, into COVID, and right now in this time. And basically what you're faced with as a brand or a retailer is that the customer has a plethora of choices, right? A lot of information at their fingertips with the evolution of e-commerce and mobile commerce and such. So a lot of brands that they get exposed to, a lot of information that you're constantly bombarded with and such. And a lot of these brands and retailers are delivering those experiences with near instant gratification, right? That's the other thing. I want it now. I want it at my doorstep, or I want to be able to go and experience it right away. So that kind of environment for us as a retailer, Burlington Stores, or really any retailer, you have to be intensely focused on that customer value proposition. Be very clear about what is that value that you're delivering and how do you do that day in and day out. And what that means for us at Burlington as an off-price retailer is we are intensely focused on delivering great merchandise value, what we call great merchandise value for our customers. And what that means, when you think about value, you traditionally tend to think about price. And while price is an important component, we think about value as being at that intersection of price, fashion, brand, and quality. So how do we make sure we're delivering on all those dimensions to our customers? And what that means is when our customers walk into our stores, they find products that are of great value, and they're able to shop in an environment that's neat, clean, and organized. So that's really, if I simplify it to the essence, that's really what we're after. Because the truth of the matter is if you're not delivering on those, then the customers with the choices that they have, they're just going to shop elsewhere and vote with their wallets elsewhere. That makes a lot of sense to me in an environment where customers are worried about inflation and recession. There's so many options for all customers in their shopping that being laser-focused on that customer experience and accomplishing some of those things, I think makes a ton of sense. Expanding that a little bit to operations, what are the things that you need to do to be successful in delivering those kinds of experiences? Yeah, absolutely. So from an operational perspective, one of the fundamental truths in retail is that engaged associates lead to happy customers and driving greater customer loyalty. So when we think about our operations and associate experience, you have to start with that customer value proposition that I spoke about earlier and sort of work your way back. What do I need to do in my stores and for my associates in order to deliver that customer experience? So with that in mind, the kinds of things we think about and worry about is what are the processes and tools we're giving our store associates in order to deliver that customer experience? How do they have the right information at their fingertips so they can meet the customer where they are and meet the needs of the customer? How are we giving our associates the flexibility that they need with things like managing their schedules so that they are able to manage their lives better and work around that in order to, again, deliver for the customer? The other things that we think about is around communication, so what information are we sharing with our associates and making sure that's timely, and then finally, and I would say probably most importantly, outside of all this is how are we creating that right culture and environment that allows our store associates to excel in their jobs day-to-day and really thrive and grow their careers? I love that one of the key ways that you help meet customer expectations is to keep your employees happy and engaged. What are the specific tools that you give your employees to help them accomplish all of that? Yep, definitely, so I certainly think a lot about technology and tools in order to drive that associate engagement and the right associate experience for our store employees, so with that, one of the solutions we've certainly employed is Zebra's task management or workload task management solution the past few years, and what that has helped us do is make sure that we're communicating with our field leaders and our store associates, giving them the information at the right time, which then allows them to manage their day-to-day schedules well, so how can they manage their tasks and routines efficiently, again, in order to meet the customer in our stores, so that tasking piece of it has certainly been a big part. The other thing we think about a lot and have invested heavily is in mobile capabilities in our stores. So whether that's mobile handheld devices or tablets and such, that allows then our associates, our employees, to be on the sales floor, meet the customer where they are, and not be in an office, and really understand how the customer is shopping and be able to engage with customers on our sales floor. So those are a couple of areas. And last year, we also embarked on implementing the workload scheduling solution as well. So those are some ways that we think about driving the associate experience and connecting it with customers. You mentioned Zebra Workload Tasking and Scheduling. What was that experience like? What was that journey with Zebra like, and why did you end up going that direction? Yeah, so in terms of going with Zebra, as everyone does, certainly evaluated multiple options, and the ultimate selection of Zebra came down to being a very strategic choice from multiple angles. The first and foremost was having a single platform. You spoke about the Modern Store and such, but having sort of that one-stop solution where our store associates, whether they're managing their schedules, whether they're looking at the tasks that they need to perform, managing their time cards and time off, things of that nature, having one solution where they can have access to all that information was certainly a big reason and a reason that we chose the Zebra solution suite. Another reason was, I mentioned hardware devices and such and some of the native integration of the software solutions with the hardware devices, making those applications easy to access and intuitive to use. What's the second reason? Certainly, Zebra's deep experience in the retail industry, obviously your presence here at NRF and such, certainly means you have relationships with a lot of retailers. So that experience in the industry and the nuances that come with that was an important factor. And last but not the least, I would say throughout the journey, it definitely felt truly like a partnership where we felt with Zebra we had a partner who is in it for the long run with us, where you're going to be continually investing in these solutions and partnering with us on how the solution evolves as, frankly, the customer environment evolves, as we've been talking about, as well as our needs as a retailer might change. So somebody we could partner with the long run was certainly a big factor as well. What was it like before that project? Was it just kind of the opposite of those things? There was a lot less integration, a lot less automation. Was it kind of replacing just that steady state? Yeah, exactly. So there was lesser integration and a few different places as an associate or an end user that you had to go to. So that user experience certainly got simplified a lot. And also we moved from not necessarily an entirely paper-based environment, but one that was not as mobile and on the floor as such. So that was prior state as well where you had to either access information in a desktop or print out reports and such. So those were certainly transitions that we had to make, and it was all a step in the right direction. And what are some of the key outcomes that you've seen with that? Yeah, so definitely throughout the implementation, we were very focused on outcomes and business outcomes and did not think of this as just a technology implementation. It was not just about plugging in software and making sure it worked, but ultimately how are we delivering results for the business. So we had to have that orientation of business outcomes from the outset, as well as also be thinking about how is this going to impact the user experience. So change management was another big piece of what we were focused on. So how are we delivering business impact and how is it going to impact the users and how do we help them navigate that change? So with that, with respect to business outcomes, there are a few things I can point to. One was a great focus on metrics. So making sure we are driving towards specific metrics that we are measuring with this implementation and understanding if we're truly moving the needle on those metrics. I'll take an example with the scheduling system, for example. One of the metrics that was introduced or reintroduced was around scheduling efficiency, which is how well are you building a schedule and how well is it meeting the demands in the store, whether that's a customer walking up at a cash register and you have the right staff at the register to meet that demand that's looking to check out in your store, or whether it's in the back room as you're coming, you have incoming freight and you have to process that, get that ready for the sales floor. Do we have the right associates and the right schedules built for that? So looking at schedule efficiency was a big factor because that then helps you understand if there's any underlying issues with that, either with your staffing model, with the number of people you have on staff, or with availability of those associates to work on those tasks. So focusing on metrics was a big one. The other thing was, again, being more and more data-oriented. So one of the things we did, again, as an example, was connecting our engineered labor standard system with the Zebra workload suite. So engineered labor standards is where we have every step of the process mapped out in great detail to understand how long does it take to process a transaction at the cash register, for example, and having engineered labor standards mapped to all of that. So being data-oriented with all that so we can build the right sort of workload to begin with and understand, again, how does incoming traffic impact the number of cashiers we might need and so on. So having that integration built and being very data-oriented around that was an outcome that we were looking for. And then finally, we've talked a lot about associate experience, and associate engagement was a big piece of all of this. And the way we drove associate engagement was having these mobility tools, self-service tools with the workload solution and driving engagement that way so that, again, associates had more information. They could access their schedule on a mobile device. They can pick up shifts. They can look for openings that may be available and, yeah, driving engagement through that and also actually clock in on your mobile devices. So those were some of the metrics that we were focused on and outcomes we were looking for. The Engineered Labor Standards, that sounds really cool. So just to make sure I'm tracking, you have a database essentially of how long each of the things in the store should take, and then you know the drivers of whether it's transactions or whatever. You can build a model of how many you need for your staff. You can then compare and see did a store do what it was supposed to and hit all those. That sounds pretty sophisticated. Yeah, that's exactly right, so it takes data, both historical data as well as forecasted data around sales, traffic, inbound freight, and things of that nature, and exactly like you said, helps us build those labor models because not every store is created equally. We have stores of different sizes. We have stores with different product assortments, so how do all those factors tie into the kind of labor you might need in a store to ultimately serve the customer, and being able to connect all that into tasking, into scheduling, was certainly a big one for us. I'm hearing a lot about your associates. That feels like a really key part of your job and how you think about success at Burlington. So we've talked a lot about today and what's happening up to this point, but let's turn our attention a little bit ahead and what's coming tomorrow. What are some of the things you're most excited about for the future? Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, we continue to grow as a company, which is a great place to be right now in retail in general. And I think one of the things that will not change for us is our intense focus on that customer value proposition. So being able to deliver on that through process, through technology day in and day out, and doing that with the backbone of our culture is certainly something I'm pretty excited about with regards to our growth prospects as a company at Burlington. And then with retail as an industry, I've been in the industry for several years, and it's such a dynamic industry, always a lot of things changing, a lot of things to keep track of, whether it's the consumer environment around consumer preferences, or you mentioned things like inflation driving customer behavior. So how do you keep up with that? There's certainly things in the external environment around things like supply chain challenges, which, going through COVID, we thought, okay, we had hit a speed bump through that and passed it. But now, again, with challenges in the shipping environment and such, seeing those crop up again. So there's that piece, and you have to continually keep track of where the economy is headed. What does the labor market look like? So all that said, it's truly a very dynamic industry, and I like to describe it as a never a dull moment. So what that means then, if you're in the industry, either working in the industry or as a business partner, is there's always opportunities to grow. So my takeaway from all of that, whether you're an industry stalwart or newer to the industry, is there's always opportunities to look at things differently, to always keep your mind open to challenges, being open to experiment, because truly there's a great growth opportunity and continually opportunities to pivot and learn new things. Excellent. I read online, so this is obviously true, that there was a Chinese curse that goes, "May you live in interesting times." We definitely live in interesting times, and you highlighted a few of those there. I think we have a little bit of time for questions if we want to have. We've got a couple of people with microphones if we want to have people ask a couple of questions for Vikram. Hello. Okay, that's working. Hi. Thank you for your time. I just want to ask you a little bit about, you mentioned that your employees are clocking in on their devices. Is that on their personal devices, and how do you control against them punching in when they're not actually at the store? Okay, great. The question was, yes, clocking in on personal devices. There's a couple of different ways. Yes, associates can clock in on mobile devices in a store as well, whether it's a tablet or a handheld device. But I think your question was specifically on clocking in on personal devices. Yes, that is something we have enabled. Frankly speaking, it was something that we were a bit nervous as well around how exactly is this going to work for some of the, by the way, I couldn't exactly tell where the person was asking the question. Oh, thank you. Hi. Yes, it's something that we were nervous about as well in terms of controlling that experience and making sure that associates are clocking in when they're physically in the store and such. There's certainly laws around that as well, certainly in some states and such. The way that we manage that, to answer it simply, is around geofencing. The solution does have capabilities around geofencing and such, where you can put in a certain radius around a store and such. I will say it's hard to get it perfect and exactly right. There has to be an element of some amount of audit and such and checks that you do. Yeah, geofencing is really how we managed it. We've been surprisingly, it has been very effective, especially in some of our larger stores when you have a ton of associates showing up at the right time for them to be able to clock in right through their device. And then it's also a great way to get them accustomed to using the app and using it for other features as well, whether it's to pick up shifts or things of that nature. So it has worked out quite well for us. And there's also now new regulations coming up around, and there's a couple of markets where we're experimenting with asking some questions because around labor laws and such that you need to be able to acknowledge changes in shift and such. So we're putting those things on personal devices as well. So it gives us just more flexibility. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. Appreciate it. You mentioned. My My interest is probably around associate engagement. You mentioned that this helps you improve that. Do you have any tricks or what are the connection points that you've used to measure improvement, employee engagement, or team member engagement? Yeah. So how do you measure employee engagement? I think was the question, right? Yeah. So there's a few different ways. So we tried to, so previously, employee engagement for the most part was measured through sort of after-the-fact employee surveys and things of that nature. And that is certainly one way through which we measure engagement in terms of asking associates about their experience and such. But one of the changes we made through this implementation was also measuring that engagement more real-time in terms of how you're interacting with the solution as well. Basic things like how many users have downloaded the app. That's one yardstick that we were measuring early on just to make sure associates are actually downloading the app. So how often do you then, once you download it, how often do you use it? How often do you log in? Things of that nature. What parts of the app are you engaging with? How many people are using it to swap shifts, for example, versus clocking in? Things of that nature. The other thing we're thinking about not quite there yet is now that we have associates actually on their mobile devices, are there sort of pulse surveys we can do in the moment that get sort of real-time feedback as you're in the application and such? That is something we're thinking about and experimenting with. Hey, thanks for the presentation. I want to know if you are already working on the e-commerce platform or not yet? I couldn't hear that question. Sorry. Are we working on? Did you catch that? I did not. Can you repeat that, please? There's some background. Sure. Are you working already on the e-commerce platform? E-commerce platform. No. So yeah, short answer is no because, yeah, Burlington is strictly a store environment. We have no e-commerce. So it's, yeah, strictly store-based right now. So there's no e-commerce or omnichannel. I have done that in my past. So if you have any specific questions, certainly we can talk offline. Hello. Thank you very much for being able to talk to you here. We are the team from Latin America. Nice to be present in this activity. I've talked a lot about internal processes and the use of technology in terms of internal processes. What about using the technology with consumers? What are you doing with your clients in terms of frictionless experience, in terms of doing innovation, access to solutions that Zebra also has? Did you catch that? A lot about internal. Could you say the last part again? There's an echo up here. What I'm saying is that I focus a lot on the internal processes, engagement of employees, and using Zebra technology in terms of supply and stores and so on. What about capturing consumers' interest? What about winning the consumer? What are you doing and how are you using some of the available technology that I understand Zebra has for that? Am I clear now? Yeah, got the question. Yes. So yes, I did talk a lot about, yeah, internal associate engagement and experience and such. And the reason I did, of course, that was the topic of the conversation somewhat as well. But I do strongly believe that driving that best associate experience then helps drive the customer experience. Of course, then we do measure a lot of factors on the customer end as well. The biggest one being customer satisfaction, whether it's through a customer satisfaction metric or an NPS or Net Promoter Score type metric to understand how is the customer experience in our stores? And with that, there's multiple metrics. There's an overall satisfaction metric. So if you were to walk into a Burlington store as well, there's an option at the end of your transaction to take a survey. And there's multiple things that we measure. One is certainly overall satisfaction. We measure things like speed of the transaction and speed of checkout. How quick was the checkout experience? Because we do want our experience in the store to be quick and efficient, and then I spoke about merchandise value, so we ask questions around understanding how good was the store experience in terms of cleanliness and the value that you thought you got and such, so customer surveys are certainly a big way that we measure the customer experience, and then we try to tie that into the associate piece, so if customer metrics in a store around speed of checkout, for example, are not that great, then what are we not doing from a labor modeling perspective, from a scheduling perspective, or otherwise that customers are feeling that the checkout experience is too long? So we always try to connect the two in terms of customer experience and associate experience. And then, of course, look at a lot of external data as well around how are we relatively performing with regards to our sales performance and such relative to the industry? Because at the end of the day, whatever customer metrics you may track with respect to customer satisfaction or conversion or what have you, the result is in your sales, right? So that is certainly something we look at as any other retailer does. But the most important thing, I think, is we try to make sure both the customer and associate metrics, we're thinking of them hand in hand. Hopefully, that answers your question. The mic is not on. Is it working? Can you hear me? Okay. Hi. You talked about engineered labor standards and giving each store labor that fits their business, which can be really great for planning accuracy. But when the business changes unexpectedly, it can be really difficult to figure out how much labor to move and change, especially when that decision is made in the store. So can you talk a little bit about how you deal with that planning and shifting in that? Yes, absolutely. So the question was, yeah, engineered labor standards is great to have that sort of foundational data layer and such. But when things change and shift, how do you react to that? So to answer that question, so engineered labor standards basically gave us a good foundation, right? And we try to put, and it's never a one-and-done exercise, I'll say that. It has to continue to evolve, as you mentioned, as the business shifts, as the consumer environment shifts, as your operating needs shift and such. So one thing is we do have an in-house engineering team that is constantly looking at, as our business evolves, how do our engineered labor standards need to change, if our processes are changing? Anytime we make a process change, we go back and update the labor standards and such to make sure that's all accounted for. So one thing is staying on top of those changes and making sure it's not just done and forgotten about. But the other thing that we talk about a lot in our business is that, yes, that engineered labor standards gives you that foundational layer and such. But it's very important for stores to have the flexibility that they are able to make that call. If your line at the cash register is wrapping around and going around the store and things of that nature, whatever the labor model might say and the standards might say, you have to be able to react to that as a store manager, as a supervisor, and make sure you're putting your people where the customer is and where the demand is. And then the important thing from there is then relaying that feedback to elsewhere in the organization, to their field leadership and to the corporate organization to say, "Okay, we need to look at something here. Maybe it was a spike for a day. Maybe we got something wrong in our modeling and in our sales plans and our projections that we were not thinking of and such." So I'll give an example around that. So a lot of our transaction modeling was focused on, for example, on the front end around sales, and we have layaways in certain stores and such. But then if you look at a time period like right now or right after Christmas, returns start to spike, right? And if you're looking at sales as a net metric, net of returns, then you won't necessarily capture returns driving a lot of traffic and such. So it's things like those nuances, how do you continually evolve and measure? But if you're in the moment in a store, we give our stores the autonomy to make that decision in the moment. And then, again, the important piece is getting that feedback so we can continually learn and adapt. Great questions. Thank you, everyone. I heard four important things today. That getting the right tools and technology to employees is important. But getting the culture right is also important. If you have the right tools but not the culture, that's still not going to work. Finding the right metrics for your business and making sure that you're tracking and implementing those. And then finally, adapting to change. We're all living in a world that's going through massive change, and keeping up, staying ahead of that is crucial. Thank you again, Vikram. Congratulations again on your RIS Influentials: Top Movers and Shakers Award. That's right. Thanks to all of you for attending the session. I appreciate it, and I hope you have a good rest of the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Also, make sure you go to Booth 3203 and turn in your card. So money's on the line there. Thank you. Thanks.