About the Guest
Jayme Reynolds, Director of AI and Commerce Partnerships at Grid Dynamics, discusses his unique role as a “Chief Dot Connector,” emphasizing the importance of connecting people and ideas to solve complex business and technology problems. He highlights Grid Dynamics as an engineering company and systems integrator that works closely with IT organizations to assess and recommend the right technologies for clients.
Jayme Reynolds, Director of AI and Commerce Partnerships at Grid Dynamics, discusses his unique role as a “Chief Dot Connector,” emphasizing the importance of connecting people and ideas to solve complex business and technology problems. He highlights Grid Dynamics as an engineering company and systems integrator that works closely with IT organizations to assess and recommend the right technologies for clients.
The conversation delves into the evolving landscape of B2B commerce. Jayme notes that B2B buyers now expect the same seamless e-commerce experience as B2C consumers, including the ability to buy in bulk, receive timely deliveries, and flexibly change orders. He shares examples from the roofing industry, where precise delivery timing for materials is crucial. Jayme addresses the historical hesitation in B2B to adopt modern commerce solutions, attributing it to a long-standing reliance on personal interactions and heavily customized ERPs, which often lack real-time inventory visibility and efficient order management capabilities.
The conversation starts with Sonja’s thoughts on how tech professionals have negatively impacted the internet and social media for the next generation. The hosts pivot to Sonja’s role in co-founding the MACH Alliance in 2019, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She explains the alliance started in a London pub, to unite best-of-breed vendors and offer a flexible, agile alternative to the dominant monolithic platforms. The discussion covers the distinction between headless and composable, with Sonja using children’s toys to illustrate how composable software needs interoperability standards to truly be effective for brands. Finally, Sonja discusses the current state of composability, the challenge of SI lock-in, and her vision for an AI-driven, automated future for buying commerce software.
Show Highlights:
- The evolving expectations of B2B buyers for seamless e-commerce experiences and flexible order management.
- The critical need for modern OMS solutions in B2B to manage inventory, fulfillment, and returns more efficiently than traditional ERPs.
- How AI is poised to enhance human creativity and efficiency in the workplace, shifting roles rather than eliminating them.
- The strategic advantage of adopting agile, cloud-native, and API-first commerce platforms.
- The philosophical discussion around the “should” question in AI implementation, focusing on practical use cases that deliver real business value.
Transcript
00:00.51
Natalija Pavic
Hello. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m so excited to have you today. don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
00:08.22
Jayme Reynolds
I’m Jamie Reynolds with Grid Dynamics. I am the director of AI and commerce partnerships officially, unofficially for fun at conferences. I often make my title Chief Dot Connector, which applies to what I do every day in connecting our partnerships, but also in what I’ve done in my past in helping customers solve their problems.
00:28.33
Natalija Pavic
Um, I, you know, I was promised myself that I wouldn’t dig into that, but I’m actually dying to, dot connector. Do you actually put that on your lanyard?
00:36.76
Jayme Reynolds
I do. I do put lot
00:37.46
Natalija Pavic
oh wow. Did do you get like a lot of comments that people like pick up on that and and chat you up because of it?
00:42.16
Jayme Reynolds
a lot of times I do. Yes. People will ask me, what does a chief dot connector do? um
00:46.64
Natalija Pavic
Okay.
00:47.34
Jayme Reynolds
for the old folks, I’ll make reference to the chief Yahoo and say, it sounds a lot better than chief Yahoo, which just was a silly title, but, uh, it does get it.
00:53.14
Natalija Pavic
ah Okay.
00:56.27
Jayme Reynolds
And, uh, when I’m at a conference and during booth duty and clients come and sit down, they ask me, what does it mean?
00:59.61
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
01:02.35
Jayme Reynolds
And,
01:02.43
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
01:03.22
Jayme Reynolds
So yes, it’s fun for me as a conversation starter, and it makes sense for us in the partner community because a lot of what we do is help each other understand you know what activity do I have in account?
01:14.94
Jayme Reynolds
What relationships do I have in account? What problems are we trying to solve for?
01:17.10
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
01:18.48
Jayme Reynolds
How can I bring Kibo in solve those problems?
01:21.62
Natalija Pavic
yeah
01:21.67
Jayme Reynolds
And at the same time, I do the same thing for the client side, understanding What are their pain points? What do they want to solve over the next 6, 12, 18 months? And you know how do we make the right recommendation for them to solve the challenges, whether it’s on the business side or the technology side?
01:38.03
Natalija Pavic
I mean, I love that because i i I know how important networking is. And I think it’s cool to connect people of different disciplines or try to connect dots and say, actually, you need to talk to this person or that person.
01:49.39
Natalija Pavic
You know what i mean? because I think it’s so easy to get bogged down into like um expertise and achievements and going online and finding the answer. But like oftentimes the best solutions, the best brainstorm happen in conversations just when you’re sitting down with very smart people like this conversation in particular, right?
02:08.19
Jayme Reynolds
Absolutely. And you never know when you might need somebody. Right. So even if I can’t do something directly for my client today, if I know somebody who can solve it outside of my direct responsibility, I’m happy to make that connection.
02:21.06
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
02:22.42
Jayme Reynolds
um You know, for us crunchy folks out there, we call it karma. And I try to always put the good karma out so that when I need it, it comes back to me.
02:26.92
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
02:31.59
Natalija Pavic
I love that. Now your daughter ah wants to be a dolphin worker. So I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Can you explain what that is?
02:40.43
Jayme Reynolds
She has shared with us that she wants to be a dolphin worker when she gets older. She’s eight today. And as she’s learned over the last two weeks, what they actually call that is a marine zoologist.
02:52.74
Natalija Pavic
Okay, good.
02:53.79
Jayme Reynolds
So we we are aren’t far from where Winter the Dolphin grew up, for those that are familiar with the movie, ah The Dolphin Tale.
02:54.16
Natalija Pavic
Okay.
03:01.85
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
03:03.81
Jayme Reynolds
So she loves that movie. And we’ve had her in camp over here at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. learning all about sea life and dolphins. What was new to me is this term marine zoologist, because I’ve always heard of marine biologists.
03:18.82
Jayme Reynolds
So guess I guess the difference is when you work at a aquarium, you’re a zoologist in the same way if you’re a veterinarian or a biologist that works at a zoo, you’re a zoologist, um as opposed to a marine biologist who’s working with them out in the water, out in their natural habitat.
03:19.48
Natalija Pavic
Yes.
03:36.40
Natalija Pavic
That’s so fascinating. I can see how you can get hooked on that, especially being in Florida, having all the access to all of the courses and resources that you do there. ah That’s really cool. Now I’m going to pivot completely 180.
03:49.20
Jayme Reynolds
we can become We can become e-commerce zoologists.
03:49.49
Natalija Pavic
had
03:53.49
Natalija Pavic
There you go. I have have no good segue, so you have to save me here. But um so you work for Grid Dynamics. And besides being a connector and nurturing young minds to pursue their passions, what um you know what do you do at Grid Dynamics? or more Or a better question would be, what does Grid Dynamics do?
04:12.17
Jayme Reynolds
and So Grid Dynamics is an engineering company, first and foremost. And i refer to it what I think is common lexicon as a systems integrator.
04:24.27
Jayme Reynolds
ah The difference, I believe, is we are very technically savvy, arguably cutting edge, leading edge for a lot of our larger clients.
04:28.51
Natalija Pavic
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
04:34.02
Jayme Reynolds
um We operate. almost exclusively, if we apply the Pareto rule, 80% of the work that we’re doing is directly with the IT organization. The other 20% is working with the business side of the house.
04:47.81
Jayme Reynolds
So if a complex problem comes up within the IT organization, they say the business wants to solve X. ah We’re not really sure how to do that. Grid Dynamics, can you come in and help us assess what are the right technologies to help us assess that?
05:03.58
Jayme Reynolds
And historically, Grid Dynamics did that in a custom build approach going back to 2006 because the leadership at that time didn’t feel that a A lot of the solutions out there were ready for prime time.
05:19.52
Jayme Reynolds
ah And since about 2020, 2021, they really started investing into the independent services companies or or service vendors, ISVs, technology stacks, whatever you want to call it, right? So ah solution partners that are solving the problems. And we’ve really embrace that so that we can deliver value faster to our clients.
05:48.24
Natalija Pavic
um And a lot of stuff that we’ve been talking about, it’s interesting that AI is in your title, I imagine that’s sort of um ah mandatory now because you kind of can’t do really and really anything without AI and in our business.
05:59.60
Natalija Pavic
um Now, we talked a lot in earlier conversations about the challenges B2B, the B2B industry specifically is facing. Let’s talk a little bit about that. ah What are some of the things that that’s coming up more and more? I imagine Great Dynamics. What are some of the things that B2B companies are looking at and thinking about and when they’re considering e-commerce, commerce and OMS tech stacks?
06:22.77
Jayme Reynolds
I’ve been in IT consulting for 15 years and been in traditional retail going back to 1999.
06:33.66
Jayme Reynolds
And retail has spearheaded much of technology innovation. B2B now, having had an entire generation grow up buying and shopping through e-commerce,
06:47.36
Jayme Reynolds
now expects to have that same um experience for being able to go online. It used to be just research, but now it’s being able to buy it, receive it in bulk, delivered to the right place at the right time.
07:01.51
Jayme Reynolds
And in B2B, they even have on the delivery side, expectations around being able to change in order, i you know, I think a few of us have accidentally placed an order and reached out to the company and they’ve said, oh, I’m sorry, we’ve already shipped that order. We can’t change it. You’ll have to return it.
07:22.25
Jayme Reynolds
B2B may place an order or several orders for the same item over the course of 12 months. And depending their demand forecast as the year progresses, they may need to change that order, increase it, decrease it, reroute it.
07:39.51
Jayme Reynolds
um <unk>ve I’ve done work in the roofing industry where they need to make sure that the asphalt singles shingles arrive in line with the day that the roofers are supposed to be there.
07:52.21
Natalija Pavic
Mm-hmm.
07:52.30
Jayme Reynolds
It’s not just as simple as Amazon showing up and you opening your door and bringing the package inside. So a lot of interesting, complex, unique solutions there in in the B2B world.
08:04.05
Natalija Pavic
That’s a good point. It sounds a lot more complicated. And what’s funny is when I talk to some B2B clients, um they seem to have a greater amount of ah business that actually occurs via digital transactions. And yet some of them are hesitant to classify them as commerce.
08:25.19
Natalija Pavic
um Talk to me about, you know, obviously retail, you know, retail kind of ushered in process. revolution and kind of drove everything, drove innovation. But it seems to me like B2B stands to benefit more from ah from this new technology. what’s What’s the deal? What’s the hesitation with the industry taking up new OMSs and
08:50.24
Jayme Reynolds
I think it’s the networking effect. We talked about networking earlier, but it’s really people.
08:54.35
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
08:55.30
Jayme Reynolds
And what has driven sales throughout history in the B2B world is that personal interaction.
09:01.41
Natalija Pavic
Yeah. Yeah.
09:01.56
Jayme Reynolds
And I think people are holding on to that. You have you know older people who have always done it in a certain way.
09:12.04
Natalija Pavic
yeah
09:12.22
Jayme Reynolds
And now that their children, and in some cases, their grandchildren are now taking over the reins of accelerating yeah the sales through the business.
09:22.31
Jayme Reynolds
And if we define commerce as sales for a business, it doesn’t matter the channel of transaction. Commerce is is the same thing, right? E-commerce is a specific channel.
09:31.63
Natalija Pavic
Mm-hmm.
09:33.59
Jayme Reynolds
EDI is a specific channel. ah Telephone sales is a specific channel. All of those have to be fulfilled through some sort of fulfillment methodology.
09:46.53
Jayme Reynolds
Historically, it may have been highly customizing in ERP in order to get that done. And in my work in the ERP space, that wasn’t the best way to do it given today’s technology because of the heavy customization. And what is an ERP supposed to do?
10:05.90
Natalija Pavic
Right.
10:05.99
Jayme Reynolds
um It’s really a financial system of record. It’s really supposed to help with the financial transactions. um And because the order would come into that ERP and then the inventory would get pushed out, it became OMS.
10:20.09
Jayme Reynolds
But today’s world, an OMS doesn’t just manage the orders, right? You’re not just shipping it from the manufacturing location to the point of receiving or the fulfillment center to the the point of business.
10:35.06
Jayme Reynolds
You’re also managing the inventory, which was an old functionality of quote-unquote ERP, right?
10:36.94
Natalija Pavic
Mm-hmm.
10:40.32
Jayme Reynolds
So Inventory management system is now part of it. And understanding inventory real time is something that’s very important, both in the direct-to-consumer channel, but the B2B space.
10:53.82
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because, you know, you’re right, you have this like sort of world where people are used to calling each other up, making a deal over the phone, right, making a handshake um approval process, and then you have this movement towards like, well, we need to digitize something.
11:09.93
Natalija Pavic
And why don’t we start with the ERP? Because that seems where all of our information is. And so they’ve bolted on these portals. But it’s funny when we think about portals, we don’t think about fast and performant e-commerce sites the way that we do in retail. so there’s like this kind of discrepancy between how portal is, how it’s displayed, how it performs and how a modern B2C site is.
11:31.01
Natalija Pavic
Now, people still don’t use don’t like to use the word order management for B2B purposes. They may not know why they should they should use it. But it’s interesting how we’ve introduced a new layer to to your point is pull out um managing an order, to pull out managing inventory into an order management system and be able to have a system dedicated um to this this specific functionality. Can you tell me a little bit more about the need that B2B companies quite frankly have for order management systems?
12:02.04
Jayme Reynolds
Yeah, I think um
12:05.43
Jayme Reynolds
the largest companies in the world have become successful by being customer centric and understanding the needs of the customer.
12:11.25
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
12:15.35
Jayme Reynolds
That shouldn’t be specific to a direct to consumer channel or a retail channel, anything of that nature. So think about the buyer experience that you want to provide to your customers if you’re in the B2B space, right? So if The old way of doing it or the even the way you’re doing it today was you have a field agent does the handshake, completes the order. The guy needs the, the buyer needs, you know, 15,000 units of X and they expect it in 30 days.
12:44.44
Jayme Reynolds
And now the order gets faxed in maybe scanned and emailed in. Um, and then you realize, oh we can only deliver 5,000 units. Now the seller has to call back and say, yeah,
12:57.38
Jayme Reynolds
We know we promised you $15,000, but we can only get you $5,000. you know Can you take the next $10,000 over the course of 60 to 90 days? And that might leave you with an angry customer.
13:08.78
Jayme Reynolds
And he might cancel 100% of the order and go source it from from somebody else. And if you think about the way ah this year, 2025, has worked out, there’s been a lot of supply chain fluctuations due to ah forecasted tariffs.
13:29.24
Jayme Reynolds
And if you can’t have that flexibility that your demand forecasting tools and your inventory management system ah to be able to accurately look at where can you change your sourcing methods and your delivery methods and Minimize your shipping costs, all the things that you need to do in in running a business.
13:50.71
Jayme Reynolds
It doesn’t matter what what type of business you’re in. You’re going to end up with cost overrun, shrinking margin, lower ah ROI. Worst of all, angry customers that have that you’ve chased to a competitor.
14:04.53
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, that’s that’s ah so interesting because, you know, you brought up a lot of unique aspects of B2B which don’t get really considered in B2C, like, you know, the large skew count, the idea of this needs to come at my house at a certain time for installation. I can’t have the, you know, shingles delivered three, you know, weeks ahead and have them just sit outside and get, you know, where am I going to store it?
14:29.73
Natalija Pavic
And having just gone through renovation, I feel all of that pain because I watched my renovator go through these project delays due to inefficiencies, um delivery and order. Like we still have a fireplace that we like, it’s been sitting in my nursery for four months. And I’m like, really?
14:50.55
Natalija Pavic
So, yeah.
14:51.55
Jayme Reynolds
I think i think one yeah lean Six Sigma methodologies were all the rage ah for many years.
14:52.51
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
14:56.72
Natalija Pavic
yeah
15:00.11
Jayme Reynolds
And lot of people in the B2B world hold those. And I don’t think people have quite yet thought about how do we integrate our inventory and order management platforms into systems.
15:13.51
Jayme Reynolds
Lean Six Sigma methods and processes. Just in time is not something new to 2025. I was learning about just in time delivery and ah in the B2B world or in college, right? So making sure that you are capable of doing that and having your order management system put the inventory out there to get picked up, work with your transportation transportation partner,
15:42.00
Jayme Reynolds
are all things that a modern OMS can do. and we’re only talking about the ordering process, the returns process.
15:50.42
Natalija Pavic
Right.
15:51.29
Jayme Reynolds
What happens, you know, a lot of times B2B world, you’ll over order. What if you used 80% of what you thought you had because you purposely over ordered to make sure of any mistakes.
16:04.51
Jayme Reynolds
Now you want to return it. And order management systems can help manage the return process, they can integrate with the payment gateway ah to help with refund management.
16:15.27
Jayme Reynolds
So the legacy thought of OMS being only a retail solution is is dated and the platforms like Kibo have addressed most of these concerns for retailer and now looking for ways to really take these and help solve the scale problem for B2B.
16:41.85
Natalija Pavic
That’s fascinating. um and And to your point, ERP can only be as fast as ERP and sometimes they they don’t have the real-time aspect to it that’s necessary for, you mentioned order, you know inventory. um They may have slow batch processes.
16:56.65
Natalija Pavic
um And it’s interesting because there’s there’s like the the buy side, which is like the you know the com e-commerce side where you go through negotiations and approvals, etc., which has its own complexity. But then there’s the like OMS, which I would say is more demand side, right? Because if you think about it, once once a customer is a customer, like once a B2B customer signs an agreement to procure from a certain supplier, they’re not gonna buy randomly.
17:21.07
Natalija Pavic
Like if you think about me and I go on Amazon, I’ll buy different things every week or whatever. and The vast majority of a B2B cycle, like you in your shingles um use case is a regular replenishment, right?
17:32.89
Natalija Pavic
So it’s like a regular purchasing cycle that needs to be tied to because you know how many customers you have.
17:33.08
Jayme Reynolds
Yes.
17:39.46
Natalija Pavic
You know how much they buy. You know how frequently they buy. And there may be fluctuations, but you need to be able to use that information and get ahead of your inventory so you don’t get that situation where you only have 5,000 in stock.
17:51.43
Jayme Reynolds
And in the the retail world or. direct to consumer world, they call that subscription services, right? where
17:57.32
Natalija Pavic
Correct. Yes, that’s right.
17:58.95
Jayme Reynolds
but But in the B2B world, it’s it’s replenishment.
17:59.29
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
18:01.59
Jayme Reynolds
So know if you’re in a grocery store, which is buying milk, they know that they’re probably going to need X number of crates of milk on a daily basis.
18:13.71
Jayme Reynolds
and the order management system can help that milk provider with that replenishment cycle to make sure that it’s delivered on time and the and the customer can save time right because they don’t have to manually go in there every single time with an edi order for for large uh for large milk dairy providers and large grocers but
18:27.54
Natalija Pavic
Yeah. Yep. All right.
18:36.74
Natalija Pavic
All
18:39.04
Jayme Reynolds
last time I checked large grocers and, ah large dairy farmers weren’t using, or they were the only ones using EDI, but they weren’t accounting for a hundred percent of all orders.
18:53.05
Jayme Reynolds
Mom and pops that are in bodegas in New York city or owning the local, uh,
18:53.53
Natalija Pavic
right.
19:00.89
Jayme Reynolds
you know, smaller grocery store in Toronto are still doing ordering ideally from an e-commerce platform and solution that’s in place.
19:12.33
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, because they have different needs. They’re not, you know, they may have, of ah because they’re a smaller volume, they have a larger variety of goods that they’re purchasing by definition. um Now, auto replenishment is so much bigger.
19:25.95
Natalija Pavic
And you mentioned EDI. Can you define EDI for the audience real quick?
19:31.27
Jayme Reynolds
well Geez, i forgot what the electronic data interchange put me on the spot.
19:35.33
Natalija Pavic
Yes. Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. It’s funny because I was just Googling that today. So I was like, you’re reading my mind. No, thank you. But you know what I’m i’m learning? so because I’m here on my journey at Kibo as well, um is that EDI is really useful for dropshipping, but it’s a file transfer.
19:53.94
Natalija Pavic
And so it can be useful in all kinds of ah document use cases, document exchange use cases. And we know B2B is rife with documentation.
20:05.00
Natalija Pavic
POs and invoices um that are maybe originating from other systems, not from your OMS, right? So there seems to be a broader use case for EDI, which is, which is um in my opinion, very exciting because it’s on a roadmap.
20:20.42
Jayme Reynolds
That’s fantastic.
20:22.23
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, so let’s talk about Kibo then a little bit.
20:22.37
Jayme Reynolds
it
20:25.79
Natalija Pavic
Tell me why you like Kibo so much, except that we get to work together. Yeah.
20:30.83
Jayme Reynolds
You know, The news that’s been announced this year, and I’m sorry, I’m just going to keep it relevant to this year, is very exciting, right?
20:37.39
Natalija Pavic
Yeah. Yeah.
20:38.37
Jayme Reynolds
And as as far as I can tell, you guys are first to launch agents into this OMS e-commerce subscription management space.
20:51.89
Natalija Pavic
yeah
20:52.05
Jayme Reynolds
And ah first mover advantage is often key, especially in the technology space. ah But it can also be a little scary sometimes because you’re making bets on something that may or may not work out.
21:06.90
Jayme Reynolds
um And the good thing about Kibo is you’re you’re agile, like we try to get many of our customers to be, right? So if you find out that ah one of the agents isn’t executing or or hitting the message the way ah you thought it might, we can adjust it. We can change it. We can modernize it.
21:27.71
Jayme Reynolds
Yeah. I hate to use the word future-proof, but Ram and team at the leadership level are really trying to make sure that they are on the leading edge of what our commerce partners or clients need.
21:44.58
Natalija Pavic
um Thank you. That was a completely unprompted list of compliments, but thank you for that. um No, I mean, yes. and And also, you know, with the demand side forecasting being, you know, being able to bring in and say like, hey, this is how much your customer is probably going to order this year, being able to create auto replenishment, suggested orders, etc. So all those things are…
22:05.73
Natalija Pavic
um pretty valuable. And I’m obviously very excited about um the agent tech revolution that’s happening right now, especially being able to have the agents be API driven and be sort of free from the platform, which is exciting.
22:19.09
Natalija Pavic
um So, you know, we, we obviously, there’s a lot of opportunity for B2B to leverage and people in B2B to be able to use some of these new solutions. um So you mentioned a little bit about, know, tariffs, uncertainty and how that’s driving um changing, you know, changing, making decisions in terms of who your suppliers are and sort of um causes uncertainty and fluctuations in business.
22:46.67
Natalija Pavic
um Moving forward, people are probably going to be focusing more on saving money as a result. Tell me more about what you expect to see and b two b
23:00.08
Jayme Reynolds
philosophically it’s interesting that you say people are going to be thinking about saving money. I feel like every conversation people are talking about saving money and driving ah ROI.
23:08.67
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, that’s right.
23:10.13
Jayme Reynolds
Um, tariffs, I think is a very big if, um, and helping keep people stay focused on the current shiny topic because shiny topic, because it can be so dangerous, right?
23:26.53
Jayme Reynolds
Um, But the other side of that coin is they’re still looking at where or how can we be saving money and driving ah ROI.
23:37.41
Natalija Pavic
Right.
23:38.03
Jayme Reynolds
AI is the cutting edge of that. um My personal belief, not necessarily the belief of the industry or or even grid dynamics, is that ai will change how we do work.
23:55.77
Jayme Reynolds
I am not in the camp. of leaders in the gen AI space that think it’s going to completely replace everybody, i think replace work. um I think humans are creative and we find ways to use the tools that are given to us to help us become more efficient.
24:16.14
Jayme Reynolds
That efficiency drives ah potentially reduced costs or if not reduced costs, maybe the same cost but higher yield and therefore increased revenue for the same investment.
24:34.04
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, i mean and I mean, you’re right. People are thinking of AI as not like, so I have to do it now because I have to do it because that’s the way that I will get to the savings. And of course, you’ve been having ah the kind the narrative being really around TCO for a few years now.
24:50.61
Natalija Pavic
That seems to only be intensifying. I don’t think it’s gonna go back. We were really focused on growth and innovation. Now we’re really focused on TCO and operational efficiency.
24:58.61
Jayme Reynolds
Yes.
24:59.34
Natalija Pavic
Those seem to be the new buzzwords. And sounds like, I mean, you got to do, you got to be doing AI because if you’re not doing your competitors are right. And so, and there’s a lot of opportunity B2B within some of the use cases that you mentioned for reducing costs because you’re not wasting um orders or returns. You’re not, you know, burning clients um and you’re able to have that image and visibility into what’s happening with your orders and your inventory.
25:26.31
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
25:27.56
Jayme Reynolds
Yeah, if you have ah you have an agent that’s able to look into the TMS and the OMS and be able to not ask the customer, what’s your order number?
25:27.84
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
25:38.29
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
25:39.24
Jayme Reynolds
I’m logged into my account. you should When I type in, where is my T-shirt or where where is my shipment?
25:43.88
Natalija Pavic
yeah
25:46.27
Jayme Reynolds
you should the The agent should logically be able to understand. I’m most likely talking about the last order shipment.
25:53.53
Natalija Pavic
yeah
25:54.36
Jayme Reynolds
If not, search… how many orders are out there, which one was supposed to be delivered when I’m asking is’s past due and provide that answer, but then extend that and say, did I answer your question? Would you like to know about the other orders too?
26:10.87
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
26:12.26
Jayme Reynolds
And, you know, I, to me, the question isn’t, how is this adding value? it’s It’s really a data conversation. Like where should this tool live itself? Right.
26:24.97
Jayme Reynolds
And this is going down a different rabbit hole, but what’s so interesting about and MCP and agent to agent communication, because you might just own the agent to look at orders, which you’re going to call the agent to look at the TMS system and say, oh,
26:33.26
Natalija Pavic
yeah
26:43.04
Jayme Reynolds
Their truck got a flat tire, so it’s six hours behind schedule. It was supposed to be there at 9 a.m., m but it it’ll be there at 9 p.m. or whatever whatever that scenario works out and plays out as.
26:55.39
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, no, that’s that’s a good point because you might have, you know, obviously this is all within sort of, we released this year, the shopper agent. We’re about to release a few more agents. By the time this airs, we’ll probably release the bulk of them.
27:07.73
Natalija Pavic
But um you’re right, it’s not just one agent, you know, one agent to rule. It’s not like we’re like ah doctoring a master agent and adding on functionality because that gets really complicated. You’ve got these specialized agents that are doing specific things that are experts in their functions and they’re all working together.
27:23.80
Natalija Pavic
um And then, you know, we haven’t even crossed over. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, we haven’t even talked about personal shopping agents.
27:28.88
Jayme Reynolds
That’s
27:31.40
Natalija Pavic
Like what happens if buyers arm themselves with buying agents or think about the potential with the procurement channels, right? If you’re using ah third party to do your procurement, well, what if they have an agent that facilitates with your OMS or commerce agent to make even the transaction or deal happen?
27:47.53
Natalija Pavic
So B2B is going to be an interesting place where this could really play out.
27:53.01
Jayme Reynolds
why I don’t think, know, true replacement of people will play out. um The roles will shift. We’ll be able to be more creative.
28:02.29
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
28:04.05
Jayme Reynolds
The tedious work that a lot of people ah start their careers out as, you know maybe that gets shifted to AI, that that tediousness, but that could lead to more happy humans and more engaged humans in the workforce because they’re doing something that they think is more creative, more valuable ah to to them. They’re not just oh, I have to answer this call in 15 seconds and I have to get off the call in two minutes and um all that tediousness hopefully will will go away.
28:29.69
Natalija Pavic
Right.
28:33.55
Jayme Reynolds
Now that that person can really say, oh, I have this great idea that can help deliver ah revenue for for this my company. Or if people are able to do more with less, maybe that means we have more brands to choose from.
28:48.48
Jayme Reynolds
And I can get into hyper-personalizing my brand. So, you know marketing 101 says you don’t need to make everybody happy all the time. and To make a million dollars, you just have to make a product that a million people or that you have to sell a million times for $1 profit.
29:04.18
Jayme Reynolds
And if you and I are able to do that with a two-person company and we can make a million people happy, I think we’ve done ah a pretty good job in providing a good livelihood to our families.
29:16.83
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, I mean, and and I think the people that that say that often, you know, there’s like two sort of schools of thought for me. I think that there’s been a lot of like ah technology is on this kind of thinking that technology is unstoppable force is something like happens to us. Meanwhile, we as practitioners know that nothing happens without us pushing the change management and making the technology and getting the customers to adopt it.
29:39.02
Natalija Pavic
um And so meaning that we can define how it’s used, we can define what we do with it. And then the other misnomer misunderstanding about this, the space that we’re in are, you know, if we’re going to be our e-commerce zoologist to get back to your original idea uh,
29:52.83
Jayme Reynolds
Yeah.
29:56.66
Natalija Pavic
There’s so much to do in e-commerce that we’re not even tackling today. Like think about, you know, one of the things that frequently comes up is product descriptions, product descriptions. What is the relationship between colors? What is the relationship between attributes? If you get into industrial manufacturing, fitment, accessories, compatibility,
30:14.91
Natalija Pavic
And right now this is all generated somewhere by someone like a human. And there’s just so much grunt work in this space that we’re in particular particularly in um that could be optimized. And I think that the future is probably…
30:33.78
Natalija Pavic
a group of generalists that can do more with with AI, but it doesn’t mean that, I don’t think any boss ever was like, oh, you’re done early, you can go home. don’t think that’s the response they’re going to have.
30:44.77
Jayme Reynolds
Yeah.
30:45.13
Natalija Pavic
They’re going to be like, oh, you can do this. That means you can do more.
30:51.36
Jayme Reynolds
Precisely, and precisely.
30:52.96
Natalija Pavic
Yeah, yeah.
30:53.47
Jayme Reynolds
And, you know, once we fill up our day with work, we’re all always been complaining, oh, I don’t have enough time to do this.
31:02.77
Natalija Pavic
Yes.
31:03.04
Jayme Reynolds
Right. the Every day ends with how do i how do I naturally find my day to cut off so that I can move from my kitchen table
31:05.10
Natalija Pavic
Yes.
31:09.05
Natalija Pavic
Right.
31:12.35
Jayme Reynolds
two the couch to go play with my son or whatever, however that works out. Right. And, um, if you allow work to fulfill your day, it will consume your day.
31:18.18
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
31:22.65
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
31:23.29
Jayme Reynolds
And I don’t, and I don’t think that’s going to change.
31:23.59
Natalija Pavic
No, that’s a, yeah. Well, you know, if that’s, if that’s one cynical thought we can have, it’s that we’ll never have enough hours in the day. Okay.
31:33.16
Jayme Reynolds
We, we had a discussion internally on, on Friday about things, right. And, if If the core of what business is, is asking questions and solving questions, providing answers, right?
31:45.60
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
31:48.13
Jayme Reynolds
We in the SI space help people understand why do you want to do that? What do you want to accomplish? How are you going to do it?
32:00.33
Jayme Reynolds
The most important question, which I think is often the one that’s mostly, most of the times forget is should we do this? And I actually think AI will help us get and elevate the status of the should question.
32:13.32
Jayme Reynolds
Should we do this?
32:13.46
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
32:14.63
Jayme Reynolds
Because the speed of of can we do this? And that it will accelerate. The how will be accomplished relatively easily now because the AI platforms will start doing the engineering of the code for the how.
32:20.32
Natalija Pavic
Right. Yeah.
32:30.03
Jayme Reynolds
So as the human, I better know why I’m doing it and answering should I do it?
32:33.43
Natalija Pavic
yeah
32:36.17
Natalija Pavic
I mean, that you’re touching on like a whole element of business insights and dashboards and analytics that we haven’t even solved for. hey like, why are my sales down this quarter?
32:44.85
Jayme Reynolds
and yeah
32:47.43
Natalija Pavic
Why are they up last quarter? Did this promotion actually work? What’s the ROI? Like there’s so many questions that we haven’t even begun to answer. Like some people have maybe figured it out, but only like the top tier echelon of highly organized, well-funded and exceedingly staffed organization.
33:02.29
Natalija Pavic
So yeah,
33:03.18
Jayme Reynolds
and we’re starting so we’re starting to see some of those, for lack of a better word, i don’t know if they’re actually agents in terms of if we sat down with a technologist here, but we’re starting to see some of the partners in the space come up with these agents that that, you know, a promotions company, you can go into their AI tool and ask it, what promotions should i do if I want to raise sales by $5,000 with a um margin of 35%?
33:11.96
Natalija Pavic
yeah
33:27.93
Natalija Pavic
Right.
33:32.39
Jayme Reynolds
And now that promotions partner of yours can tell people, you can consider this. And that goes back to you’re now answering, should I do this?
33:42.50
Jayme Reynolds
Okay.
33:42.84
Natalija Pavic
Right.
33:42.98
Jayme Reynolds
I got the answer to how to do it and what should I do it? And what are the risks associated with doing it?
33:51.66
Natalija Pavic
But I think, you know, and I’m, I’m, I want to close this podcast, but then i also want to talk to you more about this. And so I don’t know which way to go right now, but, um, I have like the last question teed up, but then you keep bringing up interesting points. Stop it, Jamie, stop it.
34:04.30
Natalija Pavic
So, um,
34:05.21
Jayme Reynolds
I’m always available next quarter.
34:07.18
Natalija Pavic
That’s true. I’ll get you on for a repeat. um But even like the whole personalization space, like what you just mentioned, we have, there’s so many companies out there that have invested in paint of glass or engagement layer personalization, like showing you on the website the right product recommendations. Now we’re thinking about increasing agentic interactions It’s not about so much as optimizing what the customer is looking at to give them the right product. It’s about making sure that the right product finds the right customer. So there’s um different work now.
34:42.67
Natalija Pavic
And it almost feels like there’s going to be an existential crisis in the personalization space. That’s what I’m predicting. Prediction made this year, 2025.
34:51.31
Jayme Reynolds
i I fundamentally believe and in built building our go-to-market strategy around personalization. Hyper-personalization personally, I think has been horrible as it’s been rolled out um because it doesn’t understand the intent of the of the customer or what have you.
35:03.94
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
35:10.68
Natalija Pavic
Right.
35:11.99
Jayme Reynolds
you know Personalization was great when it was first launched on a lot of the streaming apps. And now that we’re multi-years into these streaming apps, ah We’re all frustrated because they don’t have a random button.
35:23.89
Jayme Reynolds
And why do we why do we want a random button?
35:24.08
Natalija Pavic
Yes. Yes.
35:26.30
Jayme Reynolds
Because we think we’ve seen all the things that you’re recommending me that I should watch again.
35:30.39
Natalija Pavic
This is like a big fight I have with my friends because i had a friend who I lived with for a while and I kept using her Netflix account because I just wanted to discover new shows. And literally one day she was like, she was like, get off.
35:40.77
Jayme Reynolds
You’ve ruined her algorithm.
35:44.38
Natalija Pavic
okay like Forget out. I can’t use my Netflix account. And it was like ah schism. i was like, but what why? I like your shows.
35:55.19
Jayme Reynolds
But yeah you mentioned wanting to wrap wrap up the the podcast and I wanted to circle back on something just in case the listener or viewer um doesn’t understand how we started with order management and it and went through inventory and now we kind of went back to commerce again, right?
36:09.05
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
36:12.01
Natalija Pavic
It was pretty random. Yeah, that’s true.
36:13.44
Jayme Reynolds
but but but But it’s not because Kibo has historically been known as an order management platform.
36:19.60
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
36:20.22
Jayme Reynolds
And we talked about subscriptions because you handle subscriptions and people may not realize that you have subscription capability.
36:20.50
Natalija Pavic
and chair
36:27.70
Jayme Reynolds
And you also have the ability to handle e-commerce end to end. And I won’t name your customer, but there’s a very large brand name that most people know.
36:38.42
Jayme Reynolds
that runs 100% of their e-commerce, OMS, and everything through Kibo. And that’s one thing that customer that that listeners should understand is it’s a suited solution built on microservices that’s cloud-native and headless.
36:54.80
Jayme Reynolds
And um you know suited solutions are right for many organizations. It doesn’t have to be Frankenstack, which has been branded as using best-in-class solutions.
37:08.32
Jayme Reynolds
oftentimes best-in-class solutions built as a Frankenstack don’t work as intended.
37:14.55
Natalija Pavic
it’s one It’s one of the things that like, obviously one of the reasons I came to Kibo is I was, ah I really liked the tech and I’m the type of person that I have to believe in the product that I’m selling, so to speak. And um one of the things, one of the other aspects of the culture was the um emphasis and trust and transparency. And there was almost like, there’s almost like an old school mentality with clients, like which I really adore, which I don’t think is done enough. It’s very personal,
37:41.38
Natalija Pavic
um very you know high touch with or with our team and our executives. And customers talk about that. They talk about how a lot of customer support has been ah kind of outsourced in some bigger vendors, um which it hasn’t here. um And to your point, yes, we have the full stack. mean, people may not know that because they may know us as mostly primarily OMS. We have like a full headless commerce stack.
38:07.62
Natalija Pavic
But it’s also that option of, if you really want to a Frankenstein, You can. And we will support you. You know what I mean? Like, we’re not going to tell, like, the customers know their business and we want to make sure that we give them choice.
38:19.04
Natalija Pavic
And if they want to do best of breed modularity, if they just want our inventory, real-time inventory service, they can have it. um And that there’s not a lot of, there’s like a lot of emphasis on walled gardens right now and a lot of emphasis on big integrated stacks that don’t work with each other and I don’t, to your point, like, I don’t, I don’t think that’s the future. The future is distributed. It’s, it’s agents working across platforms. It’s MCP.
38:41.42
Natalija Pavic
And um if you really want to, to your point, be future proof and be ready for that, think about um the modularity of your system. Like one of the, one of the facts that, sorry, you got me on this. This is your fault. You got me on the soapbox.
38:53.70
Natalija Pavic
But like one of the facts that our chief product officer, Sachin, talks about frequently is we have more functionality revealed through APIs than the UI. was like, what? So you can do more with APIs.
39:05.61
Natalija Pavic
At first I was like, wait a minute. um But then that really lends itself well to this future where you may not be using a website. You may be publishing a marketplaces. You may be through social, through TikTok, through headless, through mobile apps, through and literally anywhere else except for a website.
39:20.72
Natalija Pavic
You’re going to need those APIs. And I think it’s so something that people don’t think about when they’re selecting. Anyway, do you have anything else to say? Because I’m done.
39:30.78
Jayme Reynolds
I do have an existential debate with a buddy of mine in the ERP space who continues to tell me that EDIs are the future. And I keep telling him APIs are the future.
39:40.18
Natalija Pavic
Ooh.
39:40.61
Jayme Reynolds
And, but to close this out, to close this out, when we come back next time, what, one of what,
39:44.99
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
39:47.84
Natalija Pavic
Okay, you know what? Now, next combo is ADIs versus APIs, okay?
39:51.89
Jayme Reynolds
well, I was going to say, whoever, when we kick off next time, we got to have an opening song. because it just popped into my head while you’re talking about MCP. And we’re going to rewrite YMCA
40:05.41
Natalija Pavic
Oh no. Actually, i think we’re allowed to do that.
40:07.51
Jayme Reynolds
with lyrics.
40:08.99
Natalija Pavic
No, we’re a allowed to do that because, you know, from a copyright perspective, if your song is a parody.
40:14.34
Jayme Reynolds
Yes, it’ll be a parody, just like Weird Al.
40:15.74
Natalija Pavic
That’s right. That’s right.
40:16.86
Jayme Reynolds
and And it’ll be YMCP.
40:20.35
Natalija Pavic
Oh.
40:20.49
Jayme Reynolds
And now now everybody has that song stuck in their head as a chorus, and they’ll be wondering, what do the lyrics mean?
40:21.03
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
40:25.17
Natalija Pavic
Yeah.
40:27.95
Jayme Reynolds
come out to be.
40:29.13
Natalija Pavic
Well, I think that’s the ultimate dad joke, so thank you for that.
40:34.69
Jayme Reynolds
You want to know what they call me?
40:34.98
Natalija Pavic
You heard it here, folks. YMCP.
40:37.95
Jayme Reynolds
You know what my kids call me?
40:40.95
Natalija Pavic
No.
40:42.27
Jayme Reynolds
Joe King.
40:45.81
Natalija Pavic
Wait.
40:47.75
Jayme Reynolds
Joe, Joe King.
40:47.88
Natalija Pavic
I don’t get it. Because that’s your name, Joe.
40:51.34
Jayme Reynolds
No, my name’s Jamie.
40:53.01
Natalija Pavic
But I don’t get it.
40:54.35
Jayme Reynolds
they always ask
40:54.75
Natalija Pavic
Okay.
40:55.14
Jayme Reynolds
are They always ask me, are you joking? And I say, yes, I am joking.
40:59.38
Natalija Pavic
Oh, you are the Joe King. Okay. I can be really slow sometimes.
41:01.81
Jayme Reynolds
yeah
41:03.45
Natalija Pavic
So thank you for your patience. I’m very bad with puns. So thank you.
41:11.12
Natalija Pavic
And now the audience gets it too. All right.
41:13.64
Jayme Reynolds
at at your expense, you gave me a laugh.
41:14.67
Natalija Pavic
like um Okay. You’re welcome. All right. Last question. What was the last thing you bought online?
41:23.39
Jayme Reynolds
Oh, geez. I think the headphones I’m wearing or the microphone that I’m using right here. So I picked them up on Friday and Saturday.
41:31.96
Natalija Pavic
You were prepared. Amazing. Thank you, Jamie, so much for joining me today.
41:36.85
Jayme Reynolds
Thank you.
41:38.25
Natalija Pavic
And to everyone else. And to everyone else. Until next time.
41:42.84
Jayme Reynolds
You need a tagline.
41:45.17
Natalija Pavic
What’s your tagline?