Avalara’s Megan Higgins On The Supply Chain and The Future Of Retail

… Supply chain challenges have placed added pressures on retailers at a time when they were just getting back to a sense of normalcy in the pandemic. To offset these challenges, many retailers are adopting new distribution and delivery methods.

As part of our series about the future of retail, I had the pleasure of interviewing Meg Higgins.

Meg Higgins is responsible for global business development initiatives and leads partner acquisition activity and strategy for Avalara. In her previous role, she served as VP/GM of Ecommerce and Marketplaces and managed the largest partnerships and areas of growth across this category. Meg brings over 20 years of demonstrated success in ecommerce and technology for the digital retail and supply chain industry. Prior to joining Avalara in 2019, Meg was SVP of Client and Partner Management, North America for Pitney Bowes. Recognized for her excellent leadership, talent development, strategic business acumen, and industry knowledge, she has received multiple sales and leadership awards throughout her career. Meg has also founded or been a part of the founding team for several technology startups, and had a brief stint as a restaurateur.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I began my career in technology working in tech support & admin roles before I realizing quickly that IT didn’t align to my personality. I then stepped into a product management role, which I loved because I was able to blend my technology skills and have the opportunity to be more collaborative at the same time. In this role, I worked very closely with the sales & marketing organizations and had another realization — I enjoyed working in the field & with customers. Over time, I took on product marketing roles before ultimately landing in business development, which required the perfect blend of product knowledge and interpersonal skills to work with customers. I spent much of my career working in logistics and technology having been in the eCommerce space now for more than 20 years. I was an early entrant into the space and have loved watching it evolve over time.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

I was part of a team responsible for creating the global eCommerce business unit at Pitney Bowes. The company created an incubation tank that gave four teams $1 million seed funding to create a “start-up” within the company. What we created has grown into a $1 billion+ transformational business for the company — something I’m incredibly proud of to this day.

Are you working on any new exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

It’s hard to narrow it down to just one at Avalara. In my role, I always say that our partner management and business development teams are at the tip of the spear when it comes to transforming Avalara’s partner strategy. As the needs of the company, our partners, and our customers evolve, business development is leading the transformation needed to help Avalara adapt and stay competitive.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I’ve had the fortune of having great bosses, as well as some who weren’t so great. Both have had a profound impact on my career. I will say that the two Greg’s I’ve worked for — Greg Chapman at Avalara and Gregg Zegras at Pitney Bowes — both saw the potential in my contribution and have given me the opportunity to deliver great results, while taking on new tasks to enrich my long-term career.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I have always been passionate about mentoring folks that are young and early in their careers. I have often seen a bit of myself in those that are new in their career and have found that I can help guide, encourage, and shape them. Its the same challenges playing out that I had while climbing the proverbial corporate ladder, and I love that I can help them just as others guided me. Over the years, I’ve been able to work closely with young professionals, many female who simply don’t have the confidence they should, and serve as an advocate for their career progression.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. The Pandemic has changed many aspects of all of our lives. One of them is the fact that so many of us have gotten used to shopping almost exclusively online. Can you share a few examples of different ideas that large retail outlets are implementing to adapt to the new realities created by the Pandemic?

The pandemic absolutely changed how we all think about shopping. At the beginning of the pandemic, the world was pushed online — forcing retailers who hadn’t adopted to ecommerce to get on board and do so quickly. Since then, we’ve seen the ecommerce-only mindset among consumers and retailers evolve into an omnichannel one. People want options across in-person and online channels when shopping, so we’re seeing many retailers expand into several channels to reach customers where they are. From online marketplaces to social selling to physical locations, retailers are diversifying where they are selling to adapt to the reality that convenience will continue to dominant purchasing decisions for the long-term.

Similar to channels, many retailers — large and small — are investing in curbside pickup to serve customers. The pandemic drove up the use of curbside pickup options as fears of exposure loomed. However, consumers also realized that pickup offered more benefits that protection. Along the same vein of convenience, retailers are continuing to invest in curbside pickup options and technology to provide another convenient shopping option for consumers.

The supply chain crisis is another outgrowth of the pandemic. Can you share a few examples of what retailers are doing to pivot because of the bottlenecks caused by the supply chain crisis?

Supply chain challenges have placed added pressures on retailers at a time when they were just getting back to a sense of normalcy in the pandemic. To offset these challenges, many retailers are adopting new distribution and delivery methods to offset the shipping delays and added costs caused by clogged supply chains. For retailers with physical stores, many have turned store spaces into last-mile fulfillment centers. Because stores are closed to consumers, retailers have been able to use existing spaces to create micro-fulfillment centers and cut down on the high cost of last-mile deliveries.

How do you think we should reimagine our supply chain to prevent this from happening again in the future?

It all comes down to technology that can be better at predications. A lot of companies have been using AI to predict buying behaviors, but the data informing those predictions was completely thrown off when COVID hit. In the early days of the pandemic, companies were still using data from a world that was going into the office every day. Having technology that can account for massive swings in behaviors will help our supply chain become more intelligent and resilient.

In your opinion, will retail stores or malls continue to exist? How would you articulate the role of physical retail spaces at a time when online commerce platforms like Amazon Prime or Instacart can deliver the same day or the next day?

Yes, retail stores or malls will always exist. We’re always going to need a mix of physical and online retail because of the way consumers like and need to shop. Consumers demand convenience, which includes same or next day shipping. For many retailers, this type of convenience for online orders can only be fulfilled if they have their products close to where the customers are. As such, physical stores give retailers the ability to fulfill orders close to consumers, while also offering an in-person option for shopping.

Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise to retail companies and e-commerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

Competitive low prices at checkout means that retailers need to prioritize accuracy in every layer of the checkout total — especially shipping and tax. It may seem odd to think that tax could actually help provide competitive pricing, but it has more of an impact than you might think.

Additionally, experience will win customer loyalty and recommendations. Long shipping delays from oversees without package level visibility will hurt China brands until they fulfill locally. The experience of returns and the quality of the goods will also be important to focus on.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a fantastic retail experience that keeps bringing customers back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.

Retail today is omnichannel in nature, which creates complexity and challenges for retailers that want to provide positive customer experiences across every channel. Because retailers are operating across multiple channels, jurisdictions, and more, providing positive customer experiences can easily bury even the largest retailers in a sea of manual work. As a result, technology is critical to provide seamless, personalized, transparent, secure, and accurate experiences at every stage of the purchasing journey — across every channel. Five things retailers should address to keep customers coming back include:

1. Personalization: Within the crowded retail landscape, personalization will continue to be a gamechanger for small retailers. Shoppers want to have lifelike experiences while shopping online, which means that they want control over how they go about doing their browsing. This requires retailers to give consumers the power to customize everything from product design to delivery to payment preferences and customer support.
2. Support: Customers want personalized, convenient experiences, but won’t stand for subpar customer service. From AI-enabled guided selection to help recommend products to customers to 1:1 consultations and support for shoppers, digital interfaces are supporting customer support agents by providing a 360-degree view of a customer’s past interactions and preferences.
3. Seamless operations: While convenience is key, retailers must put the foundation in place to facilitate convenient shopping experiences, which requires frictionless interfaces and personalized experiences. To provide seamless customer experiences, retailers must connect their customer-facing interfaces, like websites, with their back-end operations, like logistics and tax.
4. Accurate checkout: Because consumers expect their payment information to be automatically provided across all channels, retailers are updating their back-end processes including everything from point of sale systems to supply chain management. Likewise, it’s imperative that retailers have the technology in place to accurately calculate taxes to avoid surprise costs for customers and optimize conversion, while also mitigating compliance risk.
5. Frictionless fulfillment: Consumers have more control over how, when, and where they can receive purchases and initiate returns. To enable this “have it your way” approach to delivery and fulfillment, retailers must rely on agile supply chains and flexible operating optionality that can centralize customer’s needs to align with their preferences. For example, Kroger reconfigured its supply chain in a pilot program with Walgreens to enable shoppers to order their groceries online and pick them up at Walgreens locations near them.

My particular experience is in the grocery retail industry, and I’m passionate about addressing food deserts and addressing food insecurity. Can you please share a few things that can be done by the retail industry to address the problem of food insecurity?

One issue I’ve noticed related to food insecurity is the amount of waste our country creates which poses a massive opportunity to address this problem. The retail industry is very adaptable — as demonstrated in recent years. With that adaptability comes the ability to implement innovative solutions to tough problems, many of which could be applied to addressing food waste through technology. For example, improvements in last-mile deliveries and distribution models for retail products could be applied in the grocery sector to increase the distribution of food near expiration that can support insecurity challenges locally.

Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

While it’s not directly for people, I am passionate about the treatment of animals. I believe that animals are loving souls that have boundless positive impacts on the lives of people. I would want to create the world’s largest chain of animal sanctuaries that extends welfare to all animals and increases education around animal welfare and the positive benefit to humans.

How can our readers further follow your work?

You can connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-higgins-knislis/.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!