In this WWYD episode, eCommerce Director Jaime Hill – whose career spans Monsoon, FatFace, Jack Wills, Oak Furnitureland, Hurtigruten, and more – joins host Chloe Thomas to share how she’d approach one of the biggest challenges facing eCommerce leaders today.  
 
Jaime dives into where to start, how to prioritise quick wins vs. long-term impact, and why real efficiency begins with your people, not your processes.  
 
Expect practical ideas, real-world examples, and plenty of inspiration for anyone trying to do more with less. 
 
Hit PLAY to hear: 
 

How Jaime would tackle a “make us more efficient” brief as Head of eCommerce 
Why your team (not your tech stack) is the first place to look for efficiency gains 
Smart ways to shift ad spend between SEO, paid search, and social without hurting results 
How a 2-week payments project boosted conversions in Germany by 35% 
The simple cross-team conversations that can save you time, money, and stress 
A quick sustainability win: the one website check that can cut your carbon footprint 

 
Key timestamps to dive straight in: 
[04:59] Streamlining Operations and Team Efficiency 
[06:47] Team Optimization and Process Review 
[13:09] Prioritizing Efficiency in Evolving Industries 
[14:15] Optimizing Spend and Data Accuracy 
[19:58] Improving Processes Through Experimentation 
[21:44] Breaking Silos Through Communication 
[23:31] Listen to Jaime’s Top Tips! 
 
Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/570
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00:00.031 –> 00:20.619
[SPEAKER_02]: SEO I think is, it’s not completely undervalued, but I think people don’t always realize it’s important as it is, because if your site is really well optimized, then actually that has an impact on your paid media search, because the better quality your site is, the less you’re going to spend per click to be the top of the rankings.
00:20.879 –> 00:26.747
[SPEAKER_02]: So actually by investing in SEO in the long term is actually going to benefit your other channels anyway.
00:28.347 –> 00:30.874
[SPEAKER_00]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.
00:31.495 –> 00:35.486
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.
00:36.007 –> 00:44.128
[SPEAKER_00]: Cutting through the hinder to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.
00:47.112 –> 00:49.316
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome, it’s great to have you here.
00:49.416 –> 00:53.923
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.
00:54.404 –> 00:57.289
[SPEAKER_01]: We’re gonna start this episode with a little shout out.
00:57.729 –> 01:00.995
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello to regular listener, Joe Jacks from Jacks.
01:01.476 –> 01:10.871
[SPEAKER_01]: Joe’s been super active, commenting on our LinkedIn content over the last few months and it’s always great to hear your take on things, Joe, so thank you.
01:11.312 –> 01:13.896
[SPEAKER_01]: And most importantly, thank you for listening.
01:13.876 –> 01:30.231
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, in this episode, we are doing another of our new episode format, our WWYDs, the what would you do episodes, where I get some of my favorite people in Ecommerce to come on and share how they would handle a hypothetical situation.
01:30.791 –> 01:41.301
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, I’m chatting to a super experienced Ecommerce director about what would you do as a head of Ecommerce task with massively improving operational efficiency?
01:41.281 –> 01:42.623
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we’re going there.
01:43.104 –> 01:44.987
[SPEAKER_01]: We are talking about operation efficiency.
01:45.588 –> 01:55.745
[SPEAKER_01]: Jamie is sharing great insight about the areas you need to look into how to make it successful, how to prioritize and there’s quite a lot about people in this one too.
01:56.346 –> 02:02.597
[SPEAKER_01]: Please make sure you listen to the end of the episode because she’s got some brilliant top tips answers as well.
02:08.348 –> 02:28.000
[SPEAKER_01]: And now to introduce our special guest, Jamie Hill is an e-commerce director with a fearsome lineup of past experience, including time in fashion, monsoon, fatface and jackwills, in travel at her to groom to Norway and Avis, and home and garden at Oak Furnitureland, plus many more.
02:28.141 –> 02:29.182
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Jamie.
02:29.743 –> 02:31.386
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, happy Monday.
02:31.602 –> 02:34.087
[SPEAKER_01]: great to have you on the show.
02:34.107 –> 02:45.090
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone with your awesome experience to come and be one of our what would you do guess, but before we get into what would you do, how did you get into the world of Ecommerce?
02:45.110 –> 02:46.894
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you end up in this space?
02:46.874 –> 02:52.140
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of fell into it, started in marketing by accident.
02:52.421 –> 02:54.303
[SPEAKER_02]: I was doing a job straight out of college.
02:54.583 –> 02:56.806
[SPEAKER_02]: They offered me another opportunity, sounded great.
02:56.826 –> 02:59.088
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought, yeah, I’ll snap that one up.
02:59.109 –> 03:01.892
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as kind of digital grew, I moved into that.
03:01.992 –> 03:07.198
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, yeah, probably the last 10, 15 years into digital marketing and e-commerce.
03:07.258 –> 03:10.502
[SPEAKER_02]: So looking at that sort of whole customer life cycle, really.
03:10.482 –> 03:18.332
[SPEAKER_01]: which is only getting more complicated isn’t it with privacy coming in and more tech complexity it just seems to be getting ever harder.
03:19.308 –> 03:20.089
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes and no.
03:20.109 –> 03:23.834
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the principles are relatively simple.
03:24.455 –> 03:32.486
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you can get some complexity when you chuck in some of the tools, but they are supposed to make your life easier and help you target customers better.
03:33.247 –> 03:37.993
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it’s just a case of getting them set up properly in the first place, so you can use them more effectively.
03:38.153 –> 03:41.518
[SPEAKER_02]: So it’s a bit swings around about, so I think really.
03:42.173 –> 03:50.189
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn’t agree with you more about getting them set up right in the first place, but let’s not get into that world of random because that could take the whole of the rest of the episode.
03:50.369 –> 04:04.097
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, the what would you do you are tackling today is what would you do as head of e-commerce tasked with massively improving operational efficiency, which I love as a task as a title because
04:04.077 –> 04:09.204
[SPEAKER_01]: I know this is pretty much what everyone’s being charged with at the moment is efficiency efficiency efficiency.
04:09.945 –> 04:11.427
[SPEAKER_01]: So doing more with the less.
04:11.988 –> 04:15.172
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the endless challenge of 2025, I think.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So is this for a specific business size for businesses doing specific channels, for specific products or is this kind of like something that would be relevant to anybody listening?
04:24.665 –> 04:27.371
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it’s relevant for anybody to be honest.
04:27.491 –> 04:43.264
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s not quite a one-size-fits-all because obviously some areas will need more focus than others, but there’s certainly probably three or four areas that I would look at in terms of making these efficiencies and how to to get things running a bit more smoothly, really.
04:43.801 –> 04:58.890
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you’re talking operational efficiency, for some people that they immediately think of the warehouse, for others they think about head office or spreadsheets or something, for you where does operational efficiency say it?
04:58.870 –> 05:04.517
[SPEAKER_02]: So some of it will be looking at warehousing, you know, how does it cross over from Econ into that area?
05:05.078 –> 05:09.663
[SPEAKER_02]: How can you make that process simpler and make sure they have everything they need?
05:10.164 –> 05:14.829
[SPEAKER_02]: But for me, it’s looking at the team, how are they working?
05:15.050 –> 05:20.036
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, is there somebody that’s got a really great skill that’s being undiutilized?
05:20.616 –> 05:22.198
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be optimizing the tech stack.
05:22.258 –> 05:26.143
[SPEAKER_02]: If you’ve got two things doing essentially the same thing that you could get rid of one.
05:26.123 –> 05:35.420
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, it could be, is there an agency you can hand over some of the heavy lifting to without spending more money and free up somebody to do this more strategic stuff?
05:36.482 –> 05:40.249
[SPEAKER_02]: Looking at spend, you know, are we spending properly in the right areas?
05:40.269 –> 05:50.207
[SPEAKER_02]: So you might start to look at multi, you know, the MMM modelling processes as well, you know, are we wasting time doing lengthy processes rather than
05:50.187 –> 06:16.212
[SPEAKER_02]: short cuttings and some areas where necessary without damaging the overall process and how things work so it’s kind of everything within your remit but also how it falls into other areas you know so if a change you could make produces calls to the call center for certain problems can you then free them up to take sales calls or payment calls or whatever yeah it’s
06:16.192 –> 06:21.418
[SPEAKER_02]: it could be a whole gamut of items really to be honest.
06:21.438 –> 06:21.979
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
06:22.259 –> 06:28.067
[SPEAKER_01]: Maximum width of definition, which I think is exactly what people are getting tasked with.
06:28.107 –> 06:32.232
[SPEAKER_01]: The bosses aren’t saying can you improve operational efficiency in this tiny part of the business?
06:32.252 –> 06:36.897
[SPEAKER_01]: The bosses inevitably saying, I don’t know where, but we need to be more efficient, go.
06:36.938 –> 06:41.423
[SPEAKER_01]: So assuming the boss said that to you,
06:41.403 –> 06:43.806
[SPEAKER_01]: Where, what would your first steps be?
06:43.866 –> 06:46.810
[SPEAKER_01]: Where would you start working out where to go, what to do?
06:46.870 –> 06:50.475
[SPEAKER_02]: I probably would start actually with the immediate team.
06:51.036 –> 06:53.279
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what are they spending most of their time on?
06:54.080 –> 06:55.882
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it particular processes?
06:56.343 –> 06:58.405
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you shorten those processes?
06:58.486 –> 06:59.747
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you remove some steps?
07:00.288 –> 07:02.190
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you scrap that process completely?
07:02.230 –> 07:04.153
[SPEAKER_02]: Because sometimes you can.
07:04.133 –> 07:07.863
[SPEAKER_02]: do they have skills and experience in an area that’s being underutilized?
07:08.445 –> 07:15.726
[SPEAKER_02]: Do they have capacity to do more in a certain area and get rid of something that’s just unnecessary?
07:16.588 –> 07:19.476
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, people have always got kind of hidden.
07:19.456 –> 07:25.984
[SPEAKER_02]: skills and experience that you don’t necessarily know about when you join a team because you don’t necessarily see their CV.
07:26.584 –> 07:32.651
[SPEAKER_02]: So that’s one thing I would like to do when I join a new business is sit down with the team and say, okay, what do you currently do?
07:32.711 –> 07:34.593
[SPEAKER_02]: What’s taking up most of your time?
07:35.134 –> 07:36.716
[SPEAKER_02]: What potentially could we get rid of?
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[SPEAKER_02]: What do you want to be doing?
07:39.339 –> 07:48.990
[SPEAKER_02]: Because obviously you need to kind of think about future personal development and kind of succession planning, because it’s not always about the CEO succession planning, it’s other
07:48.970 –> 07:57.461
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, and then sort of moving into the processes that they’re spending most of the time on, what are the parts of the company do they touch on?
07:57.982 –> 08:01.446
[SPEAKER_02]: There’s projects and stuff that I’ve worked on that have been completely cross-functional.
08:01.466 –> 08:10.017
[SPEAKER_02]: So, for example, I had to greet and there’s a payment project that I was working on, which covered the website, the cool center, the ships and the hotel.
08:09.997 –> 08:12.141
[SPEAKER_02]: and obviously that’s a multiple countries.
08:12.843 –> 08:20.618
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was looking at the localised payment options, which we could switch on enough by, you know, country, whatever’s needed.
08:21.259 –> 08:26.409
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, make sure that people can actually pay for things that they want to in an efficient manner.
08:26.430 –> 08:28.714
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so for example, with Germany,
08:28.694 –> 08:32.661
[SPEAKER_02]: we discovered that our authorization rate was absolutely shocking.
08:32.681 –> 08:34.284
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like 50% for cards.
08:35.105 –> 08:38.411
[SPEAKER_02]: So we got a load of information from the call center colleagues.
08:38.471 –> 08:40.574
[SPEAKER_02]: We, you know, look to our ADD and dashboard.
08:41.075 –> 08:44.581
[SPEAKER_02]: And we got recommendations from ADD and look at the partners themselves.
08:44.661 –> 08:45.743
[SPEAKER_02]: In sort of said, okay, right.
08:46.104 –> 08:48.508
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what happens in Germany is people.
08:48.488 –> 08:53.875
[SPEAKER_02]: typically is by now pay later, or they like to be sent an invoice and then they pay it by bank transfer.
08:54.396 –> 09:00.584
[SPEAKER_02]: So we looked into all the stats, took all the evidence from the call center, which was, that’s what people were asking for.
09:01.325 –> 09:05.370
[SPEAKER_02]: So we did a mini business case, literally within sign-off to live.
09:05.410 –> 09:10.236
[SPEAKER_02]: It was about two weeks and within a week we’d gone from 50 to 85 percent authorization.
09:11.197 –> 09:14.682
[SPEAKER_02]: Now the kind of side benefits to that was
09:14.662 –> 09:19.451
[SPEAKER_02]: the transaction fee for bank transfer is much cheaper.
09:19.471 –> 09:22.696
[SPEAKER_02]: I think for us it was 1% versus 3% for cards.
09:24.079 –> 09:29.869
[SPEAKER_02]: Less cost of the call center because there’s less people calling in so I can’t pay for my cruise.
09:29.849 –> 09:41.103
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, and the monies in our bank much quicker because it’s banked to bank rather than sitting with Adrien for, I think, about, I don’t know, a month, 60 days waiting to be released in case of refunds.
09:41.143 –> 09:50.575
[SPEAKER_02]: So there’s huge commercial impact, as well as customers being happy, you know, but that wasn’t just it with Econ, that was across channels.
09:50.555 –> 10:10.403
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I mean, you know, processes, obviously spend has got to be huge one, you know, are we wasting spend anywhere, which obviously would look at paid search and paid social straight away, you know, are we wasting money there when we could be improving our SEO, for example, are we paying agencies too much money?
10:10.383 –> 10:20.744
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, I’m not saying scrap them because there are benefits to them, like I touched upon earlier, the tech stack, do we have multiple pieces of technology doing the same thing?
10:20.824 –> 10:28.881
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, you might have merchandising built into your e-commerce platform, but you’re actually using another one.
10:28.861 –> 10:34.750
[SPEAKER_02]: which is the best one, you know, and are you wasting money having two bits of kit doing exactly the same thing?
10:34.791 –> 10:41.501
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, looking at pretty much everything and anything and kind of putting that floorboards and seeing what’s underneath really.
10:42.223 –> 10:49.975
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I love from your art Jamie is that you started with the team and I think so often people think you go straight to the spreadsheets.
10:49.955 –> 11:07.052
[SPEAKER_01]: But actually, the thing about driving operational efficiency, I always think is that it’s both about optimizing what you’re already doing, but also finding out the stuff that you’ve got that you’re not taking advantage of, which the spreadsheets aren’t going to tell you, you know, like, where you’ve got two pieces of text acting the same thing.
11:07.032 –> 11:10.880
[SPEAKER_01]: The data analysis isn’t going to tell you that you need the person who works for the gang.
11:10.940 –> 11:26.813
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you know there’s a whole module on here or you need like all those of us listening who have run Recruitments in the past will know that you hired someone because they did have this really cool thing on their CV and you’ve forgotten about it by the time they start
11:26.793 –> 11:53.610
[SPEAKER_02]: or you just don’t take advantage of it because you don’t have the time and there’s other priorities and then you forget about it like you say but yeah I mean you know I’m not in any way saying that you should get rid of people just for the sake of saving money because actually asking them to do things differently or free up something else and take on something more strategic or something that has bigger impact that they are perfectly capable of doing
11:53.590 –> 12:03.544
[SPEAKER_02]: can actually, you know, outweigh the benefits of getting rid of somebody, you know, because actually they could be working smarter to generate more money rather than use save money because you’ve got rid of a salary.
12:04.125 –> 12:09.173
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn’t always work the way that you necessarily think at first glance.
12:09.233 –> 12:13.759
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and, you know, I’ve been the impact of some of those decisions unfortunately.
12:14.380 –> 12:17.785
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I don’t really want to see other people going through it either.
12:17.805 –> 12:18.366
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
12:18.447 –> 12:20.490
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, please people think more about the team.
12:21.292 –> 12:23.114
[SPEAKER_02]: See what you can do to optimize that first.
12:23.755 –> 12:31.928
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, having been through a few redundancy processes, both as the person, both as being amongst the team who at risk of redundancy.
12:31.948 –> 12:36.135
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn’t technically on the grad scheme, and yes, this was many years ago, everybody.
12:36.115 –> 12:37.818
[SPEAKER_01]: and then doing it with my own team.
12:38.539 –> 12:49.617
[SPEAKER_01]: There is nothing that kills productivity, motivation, the intangible cost of any of those processes has horrendous anything you can do to avoid them.
12:49.697 –> 13:00.975
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean being deeply involved in it from either side of the coin is not fun, you know, either being one at risk or having to choose who goes at risk is,
13:00.955 –> 13:09.075
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s not a decision that you want to be forced to have to make really, but I guess it’s life at the end of the day, but yeah, if you can avoid it, I’d recommend it.
13:09.713 –> 13:34.050
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of the things you mentioned of those places you would look in the first instances for where to build the operational efficiency, or I think we can all agree we fail to do this, but we can probably agree with the theory, is that as our industry evolves, especially as the tech spaces evolving a lot at the moment, they are things which we should be checking on a regular basis, but we tend to forget.
13:34.030 –> 13:39.557
[SPEAKER_01]: So you mentioned about diverting money from your ad campaigns into SEO.
13:39.577 –> 13:43.421
[SPEAKER_01]: How often do we actually take that big strategic hold on?
13:43.762 –> 13:47.727
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we flogging a dead horse with, with meta these days?
13:47.947 –> 13:49.589
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it still working to the level it is?
13:49.689 –> 13:53.213
[SPEAKER_01]: Should we shift half the budget into a new ad channel or into SEO?
13:53.293 –> 13:58.840
[SPEAKER_01]: And the same thing with the tech stack with all the mergers and the developments going on at the moment.
13:58.820 –> 13:59.581
[SPEAKER_01]: that review.
13:59.601 –> 14:08.497
[SPEAKER_01]: In an ideal world, we’ve done a much more regular basis, but it does tend to be almost like the big stop sign comes up and I was, oh, maybe we should, maybe we should take a look.
14:08.858 –> 14:14.568
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, why have we got a hundred Google Drive subscriptions going on in the business of ten people?
14:14.768 –> 14:15.850
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we doing?
14:15.830 –> 14:36.927
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, sometimes looking at the modelling of how spend is working and where you’re spending it, I think can be hugely valuable and it is something that they’ve really started to look at at Monsoon, which was great because, you know, it would give you kind of day by day updates and say, actually, do you know what, this week, we need to be moving more money from
14:36.907 –> 14:42.414
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, maybe money from Meta to Google or vice versa, because actually it’s more effective here this week.
14:42.875 –> 14:49.924
[SPEAKER_02]: But obviously, you need to make sure that those data feeds into the system are accurate and correct, because otherwise it’s a bit of that crap-in crap-out.
14:50.504 –> 14:57.073
[SPEAKER_02]: So with things like AI, if you are putting, like, dirty data in, you’re going to get rubbish out.
14:57.613 –> 15:00.016
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you need to make sure there’s no bias going on as well.
15:00.076 –> 15:05.243
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, in theory, you could
15:05.223 –> 15:08.511
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I mean, we’ll probably touch on it a bit later.
15:08.551 –> 15:13.664
[SPEAKER_02]: But SEO, I think, is a completely, it’s not completely undervalued.
15:14.004 –> 15:22.405
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think people don’t always realise it’s important as it is, because if your site is really well optimized, ideally it’s
15:22.385 –> 15:35.181
[SPEAKER_02]: really well optimized for accessibility as well, which, you know, all counts and then actually that has an impact on your paid media search because the better quality your site is, and I believe this is still the way it works.
15:35.601 –> 15:39.466
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the less you’re going to spend per click to be the top of the rankings.
15:39.807 –> 15:45.013
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, in your quality scores better and you’ll rank better and all that kind of stuff.
15:45.554 –> 15:51.261
[SPEAKER_02]: So, actually by investing in SEO in the long term is actually going to benefit your other channels anyway.
15:51.241 –> 15:56.009
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, it’s all a bit chicken and egg tonics.
15:56.029 –> 16:08.891
[SPEAKER_02]: I’m not saying everybody just going cut your paid media, it’s been absolutely not, but do should be looking at it regularly and saying actually, are we spending wisely, have we found the right balance between volume and cost?
16:08.911 –> 16:16.624
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes you do have to pay money to spend on
16:16.604 –> 16:20.351
[SPEAKER_02]: because, you know, there’s multiple searches before people narrow things down.
16:20.371 –> 16:28.467
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I went for an insurance company a year ago, and we uncovered that people would do seven separate searches before they would actually take an action.
16:28.568 –> 16:35.862
[SPEAKER_02]: So they might start searching car insurance, or car insurance, Ford Fakers, car insurance, Ford Fakers.
16:35.842 –> 16:56.348
[SPEAKER_02]: over 50 contracts, forward focus over 50 in childhood, you know, they would do multiple searches and then they would actually get on and do a quote or something like that or pick the phone or, you know, they would actually then take an action but, you know, you have to sort of pay for those current trends or they’re the horrible expensive.
16:56.328 –> 17:08.751
[SPEAKER_02]: to filter people down, you know, everybody knows the long-tailed keywords of the cheaper ones and more cost effective in the long run, but you don’t always get the volume through them, so it is a bit of a balancing act.
17:09.102 –> 17:11.024
[SPEAKER_01]: and endless balancing out.
17:11.044 –> 17:20.934
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Jamie, you’ve given us a whole host of different areas to look at to find the right places to drive that efficiency, which of course, the answers will be different for every business.
17:21.014 –> 17:24.978
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do you go about making it happen?
17:25.038 –> 17:36.730
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think there’s a, I always think when there’s an operational efficiency project on, there’s an expectation of fast changes.
17:36.710 –> 17:43.559
[SPEAKER_01]: or the research, as you’ve outlined, they’re whether it’s looking at the data, or whether it’s talking to the team or something else.
17:44.020 –> 17:52.812
[SPEAKER_01]: And there also has to be some element of sign-off or agreement on, you know, because there are only so many hours in a day, so you have to decide what to prioritize.
17:52.832 –> 17:54.955
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you go about both?
17:55.306 –> 18:06.750
[SPEAKER_01]: making sure you’re doing the right things, the due diligence, I suppose, part of it, but also making impact fast, which I think are the kind of the two competing aims of an operational efficiency project.
18:06.967 –> 18:13.757
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, obviously subtitles you don’t actually need sign off because sometimes the smallest tweaks can have a huge impact.
18:13.798 –> 18:21.750
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, just cutting out three steps in a process, you know, could save you a couple of hours, remaining you’ve got more time to do other things.
18:21.830 –> 18:25.836
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it’s not always about getting sign off sometimes.
18:25.816 –> 18:55.722
[SPEAKER_02]: you know you can come in and go right okay well I need to overhaul XYZ and you know whoever you’re putting into it might just give you free rain to do that so if you’re lucky sometimes yeah you might need to say look I found this opportunity I’ve been here five minutes if I make this change what does that mean for XYZ you know because you know you making one change in your team might have huge impact in your area but it might really mess things up for somebody
18:55.702 –> 19:03.955
[SPEAKER_02]: generate, you know, 1,000 of more calls in the call center, which, you know, if they can’t cope with it, then you’re in debt with unhappy customers.
19:04.355 –> 19:08.782
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, making a change that makes things live easier for you in your team.
19:09.183 –> 19:13.509
[SPEAKER_02]: Great, but if you’ve made it live, it’s so much more difficult for everybody else.
19:14.090 –> 19:15.212
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s not going to help.
19:15.252 –> 19:16.073
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
19:16.053 –> 19:26.628
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you’re new in, very often you wouldn’t need to double check something because you don’t know the rest of the set up and and who else maybe needs to be consulted before you actually put it into place.
19:27.288 –> 19:29.652
[SPEAKER_02]: In terms of, you know, what would you prioritize?
19:30.753 –> 19:40.727
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, it’s a balance of quick wins as opposed to what’s going to deliver the biggest impact because the quick win might deliver the biggest impact, but actually,
19:40.707 –> 19:51.523
[SPEAKER_02]: The biggest impact might be delivered by something that takes a couple of weeks to do, you know, you do need to have enough information and facts to hand before you make those decisions.
19:52.244 –> 19:55.509
[SPEAKER_02]: But then, you know, as I say, a lot of that comes from having conversations.
19:55.589 –> 19:57.892
[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of it stems down to communication.
19:57.952 –> 20:01.698
[SPEAKER_02]: And the way, I mean, I’ve come across it in several companies.
20:01.738 –> 20:04.342
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s like, well, that’s the way we’ve always done it, right?
20:04.362 –> 20:06.445
[SPEAKER_02]: But that doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do it.
20:06.425 –> 20:07.847
[SPEAKER_02]: I’ve found a quick way to do it.
20:07.927 –> 20:09.089
[SPEAKER_02]: Why can’t we do it?
20:09.189 –> 20:14.396
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a particular reason as there are a person, a system, another process that’s holding up?
20:14.476 –> 20:25.171
[SPEAKER_02]: Do we need to go and talk to another team who also needs to change their process to smooth out the entire journey, rather than fixing one bit and then breaking something else?
20:25.211 –> 20:29.076
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is a bit like when you’re doing experimentation on the website, CRO.
20:29.617 –> 20:33.883
[SPEAKER_02]: I’ve been lucky enough to work with tools like
20:33.863 –> 20:35.565
[SPEAKER_02]: the impact of the change you’ve made.
20:35.645 –> 20:40.810
[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, it’s fixed the piece that you were looking to fix, but has it impacted somewhere else?
20:40.850 –> 20:47.297
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can either go, okay, right, we need to roll that back temporarily or actually we can fix that really easily.
20:47.317 –> 20:58.668
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can almost sanity check that you haven’t broken anything, but you can’t always do that with just changing a process because, you know, you need to find out how it affects everybody else.
20:59.168 –> 21:02.672
[SPEAKER_02]: Sort of the knock on effect maybe before and
21:03.125 –> 21:21.392
[SPEAKER_01]: I suppose there’s also an angle of having those conversations helps create a less siloed business, a business where there’s more visibility of what’s going on where people are working more closely together, which often is actually a root cause of some operational efficiency.
21:21.432 –> 21:30.145
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, as the web team built this personal, bought this personalisation tool, the marketing team bought this personalisation tool and 80% of what the team tools do is the same thing.
21:30.125 –> 21:34.799
[SPEAKER_01]: And now the IT team are having to build two separate integrations and all the data’s gone wrong.
21:35.300 –> 21:39.733
[SPEAKER_01]: So there’s an element of the process of an operational efficiency project.
21:40.676 –> 21:44.387
[SPEAKER_01]: Can help, I guess, future proof, the business for future efficiency?
21:44.637 –> 22:00.857
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and also it’s building relationships as well, you know, by having these various different conversations with different parts of the business, not only do you get to learn about how they work and information about things you didn’t even know existed or processes they do, but then you also find out their headaches.
22:00.837 –> 22:26.473
[SPEAKER_02]: which you know you can say or do you know what I came across this isn’t in another business I didn’t really get involved in it but this is what they did so actually inadvertently you could be helping them with something else just by passing on a bit of information so yeah I mean everyone says you know communications one of the biggest things that you can do but not everybody does it and yeah silos I think are probably the bait of a lot of people’s lives
22:26.453 –> 22:42.152
[SPEAKER_02]: I think most places are starting to change, certainly in the experience I’ve had in the last few businesses, but it is still a bit of a people just kind of get the heads down and work on what they’re doing, get things done, and then forget to tell people.
22:42.712 –> 22:47.398
[SPEAKER_02]: So like, look at what we’ve done as a team or this is what we’ve done as a department.
22:47.378 –> 22:52.708
[SPEAKER_02]: and people go, oh, great, you know, what we can borrow some of that, or I really like the way you’ve done that.
22:52.768 –> 22:58.218
[SPEAKER_02]: How did you get to that, you know, result, and then they can sort of transfer that learning into their own areas.
22:58.358 –> 23:02.365
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I just wish people would talk a bit more to be honest.
23:03.668 –> 23:04.670
[SPEAKER_02]: But you really know, nice.
23:05.070 –> 23:11.462
[SPEAKER_02]: And that goes for probably every part of everybody’s lives to be honest if they think there’d be a lot less problems if everybody talks a little bit more.
23:13.687 –> 23:18.632
[SPEAKER_00]: Ecommerce Masterplan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the Ecommerce sector.
23:18.752 –> 23:27.020
[SPEAKER_00]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.
23:27.040 –> 23:28.902
[SPEAKER_00]: It’s time for the top tips round.
23:31.545 –> 23:36.690
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I love this section because it gives me and I’ll list us some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So Jamie are you ready for the top tips?
23:39.052 –> 23:39.913
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, go on them.
23:40.231 –> 23:41.673
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the book top tip.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If everyone listening to this podcast agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?
23:48.543 –> 23:53.451
[SPEAKER_01]: And you’ve already waved this at me via the video, so I’m fascinated to know what it is.
23:54.091 –> 24:03.285
[SPEAKER_02]: So it’s probably not what you would actually think, so it’s by Ed Kappel, who is one of the founders of Pixar.
24:03.265 –> 24:21.159
[SPEAKER_02]: and it’s good creativity ink and like I said to you earlier, I don’t write in books, they are pretty sacred but I’ve got little bookmarks and I’ve underlined so much stuff in here, it’s absolutely you know crazy, I mean it is just one sentence, as always how feedback is where did it’s crucial.
24:21.780 –> 24:22.962
[SPEAKER_02]: Super simple.
24:22.942 –> 24:49.793
[SPEAKER_02]: but you know it’s how you phrase it like is it constructive criticism or is it you did this wrong and that’s what broken that rather than next time you do this could you think of a better way to do it because unfortunately it’s you know mess something up for someone else just and you know been able to give that feedback without judgment just you know really the such great stuff in here at like yeah
24:50.262 –> 25:01.441
[SPEAKER_01]: Jamie, before we lose you to the bit, at least there’s you can’t see her right now, but she she is a beaming, flicking through the book, which you can probably hear and she’s put glasses on in order to actually be able to read it.
25:01.862 –> 25:03.745
[SPEAKER_02]: So I’ve got the wrong contact lenses in today.
25:05.027 –> 25:11.578
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think I love that recommendation partly because you’re so passionate about it, but also I love the fact that
25:11.963 –> 25:29.787
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s we’ve been talking about operational efficiency and the book recommendation is creativity in which almost feels like they don’t connect but they’re so interling are yeah they absolutely do because there is a lot of stuff about processes but it’s also the human process of like how you think about things and.
25:29.767 –> 25:31.871
[SPEAKER_02]: and how people become attached to their ideas.
25:31.891 –> 25:38.863
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you try and add to it and make it bigger and better, people get really upset because it doesn’t become their idea.
25:39.384 –> 25:42.289
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, there’s all sorts of really cool stuff in there.
25:42.369 –> 25:52.306
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, I haven’t actually finished reading it yet because I’ve gone back and scribbled all over it, but I think most people know and like at least one or two picks are filmed.
25:52.967 –> 25:53.007
[SPEAKER_02]: So
25:52.987 –> 26:20.530
[SPEAKER_02]: if there’s plenty of stories about how they came about some of the stories and how long they worked on certain things and how they fixed what they saw as the problems in it to you know make this actually really cool package at the end of it so yeah it’s not a typical boring business book is quite fun and yeah that there’s tons of stuff in it that you could you could almost open a page and find you know something to make you think differently in there it’s yeah it’s cool
26:20.510 –> 26:21.431
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
26:22.112 –> 26:27.178
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the traffic top tip which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press?
26:27.299 –> 26:27.979
[SPEAKER_01]: It deserves.
26:28.720 –> 26:30.322
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, we kind of touched on this earlier.
26:30.463 –> 26:39.634
[SPEAKER_02]: I think SEO, although there has been a lot more fake on it in recent years, I think it has such a big impact on other channels inadvertently.
26:39.835 –> 26:46.483
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you’re right at the top of the rankings and someone seeing your ad on TV and just feeling lazy and types in your brand name,
26:46.463 –> 26:56.678
[SPEAKER_02]: and you pop up at the top and you’re not squashed to the bottom by five of the competitors and like so before it impacts on other channels like paid search and things as well.
26:56.718 –> 27:01.124
[SPEAKER_02]: So I like to see it as the foundation of all your other marketing efforts.
27:01.224 –> 27:10.037
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you’ve built a great site why not doing the best to get free slash cheap traffic to it without paying for it.
27:10.217 –> 27:14.243
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think that’s probably one of the ones I’d pick.
27:14.645 –> 27:16.087
[SPEAKER_01]: definitely agree with you on that.
27:16.247 –> 27:27.143
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the tool top tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug in, a phone app, or just a wave working, is the record a little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day.
27:27.925 –> 27:29.927
[SPEAKER_02]: I would probably choose Trello, actually.
27:29.948 –> 27:36.417
[SPEAKER_02]: I use it in personal projects and stuff as well, but a guy that used to work with
27:36.397 –> 27:40.102
[SPEAKER_02]: he actually linked it in with all our IT tickets and stuff.
27:40.122 –> 27:42.825
[SPEAKER_02]: So he could automatically update things and send it through there.
27:42.925 –> 27:48.212
[SPEAKER_02]: It was absolutely nuts and he linked it up to all the designs for the CRO projects.
27:48.272 –> 27:52.037
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I’m thinking he linked it up to about four different tools in the end.
27:52.057 –> 27:53.299
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just insane.
27:53.839 –> 27:55.581
[SPEAKER_02]: Georetic, it’s that’s where he linked it to.
27:56.222 –> 27:59.747
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, and it just visually looks quite fun.
27:59.787 –> 28:01.309
[SPEAKER_02]: You can click and drag things around.
28:01.349 –> 28:06.235
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s not exactly difficult to use.
28:06.502 –> 28:09.888
[SPEAKER_01]: excellent recommendation and finally the carbon top tip.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?
28:14.737 –> 28:24.375
[SPEAKER_02]: I’m not sure it’s my favorite way but it’s one that probably people don’t think about is checking your hosting company to see whether they use renewable energy.
28:24.355 –> 28:30.363
[SPEAKER_02]: Because obviously, you know, processing power for our website and AI and all that kind of stuff is huge.
28:30.383 –> 28:34.629
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we don’t still don’t really know the impact of all this AI processing power.
28:35.129 –> 28:39.395
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think you’re looking at your hosting company and seeing, you know, who’s that energy supply?
28:39.495 –> 28:40.517
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it renewable energy?
28:41.137 –> 28:44.642
[SPEAKER_02]: That’s a huge rate of kind of cut down on your carbon footprint.
28:45.247 –> 28:46.028
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that one.
28:46.348 –> 28:50.573
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s a once and done as well, you know, as much as you can.
28:50.593 –> 28:51.454
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.
28:51.635 –> 28:51.815
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
28:52.175 –> 28:55.079
[SPEAKER_02]: Unless you obviously have to change hosting company for whatever reason.
28:55.119 –> 28:58.283
[SPEAKER_02]: But I guess if yours is pretty reliable, then you won’t need to.
28:58.463 –> 29:02.107
[SPEAKER_01]: But even if you do have to change hosting company, you do it once.
29:02.408 –> 29:05.391
[SPEAKER_01]: And you get the carbon benefit every single day.
29:05.812 –> 29:07.474
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s, um, yeah, love that one.
29:07.494 –> 29:08.735
[SPEAKER_01]: Does not get talked about enough.
29:08.755 –> 29:10.157
[SPEAKER_01]: So I’m really glad you brought that one up.
29:10.137 –> 29:21.679
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I came across an event that I went to and they were like, oh yeah, we’ve looked at our hosting company because they were looking at their kind of carbon neutral profile and how did they become sort of moved towards carbon zero.
29:22.080 –> 29:25.406
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was literally one of the things that I said that and it’s really kind of stuck with me.
29:25.787 –> 29:31.858
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s just not anything that you would normally think about because you think about retort from cardboard and
29:31.838 –> 29:45.038
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, waste and, you know, your business energy like is that renewable and all that kind of stuff and you never think about your suppliers as much, so yeah, I think that one could be an interesting thing to think about for people.
29:45.338 –> 29:45.939
[SPEAKER_01]: definitely.
29:45.959 –> 29:53.512
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Jamie, before we say good bye, could you please at the listeners know where they can find you and everything you’re up to on the web and social?
29:54.233 –> 30:01.947
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so the best place to find me is on LinkedIn, so it’s you know, all the slashes.coms and then it’s Jamie, which is J.A.
30:02.247 –> 30:03.850
[SPEAKER_02]: I. M. E. Dashhill.
30:04.611 –> 30:10.401
[SPEAKER_01]: And you are available to help people with operational efficiency, I believe, at the moment and other projects.
30:10.499 –> 30:24.373
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, currently I’m available to help with e-commerce, digital marketing, customer lifecycle, any operational efficiencies, pretty much probably whatever the problem is, I can probably help you with it in some way or another.
30:24.539 –> 30:34.234
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome, so everyone head to Jamie Hill on LinkedIn and that’s J-A-I-M-E-Hill in LinkedIn, URL, if you want to go that route.
30:35.456 –> 30:40.243
[SPEAKER_01]: Jamie, thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing such great insights with us.
30:40.323 –> 30:41.024
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s been awesome.
30:41.785 –> 30:42.787
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thanks for inviting me out.
30:42.807 –> 30:43.628
[SPEAKER_02]: It’s been great fun.
30:49.143 –> 30:52.388
[SPEAKER_01]: What great insights from Jamie, they’re really loved talking to about that.
30:52.408 –> 30:59.559
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it’s really fascinating how you think ups and efficiency and you don’t necessarily think it starts with the people.
30:59.659 –> 31:10.115
[SPEAKER_01]: But the theme throughout everything Jamie took us through there was it’s all about the people and their skill sets and their hidden talents and their experience of the job.
31:10.215 –> 31:14.121
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you want to find where the waste is, I bet your people already know.
31:14.101 –> 31:17.645
[SPEAKER_01]: and then building those relationships across team, cross company.
31:17.705 –> 31:20.409
[SPEAKER_01]: So you’ve got that future proved element.
31:20.429 –> 31:23.012
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you want help with that kind of stuff, do you get in contact with Jamie?
31:23.052 –> 31:30.040
[SPEAKER_01]: I know she’s currently looking for permanent or contract roles, or at least she was when we were recording this.
31:30.060 –> 31:35.046
[SPEAKER_01]: She may have been snapped up by now, but either way, getting contact with her if you want help with that kind of thing.
31:35.026 –> 31:42.998
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, to get your hands on the notes on this episode, including the top tips and the links to what we mentioned, then head over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.
31:43.018 –> 31:53.435
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also use our direct episode short links, just put ECMP.info forward slash the number of this episode into the URL bar, and you’ll be redirected straight to the right episode page.
31:53.915 –> 31:55.939
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you get to the website, go on.
31:56.359 –> 31:57.721
[SPEAKER_01]: Add yourself to our email list.
31:57.741 –> 32:00.105
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you want to get our newsletter too.
32:00.085 –> 32:16.605
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you like this episode, then make sure you check out Episode 561, which is our very first ever what would you do, which is what would you do if you were to take over an e-commerce business in the 10 to 25 million pound range.
32:16.966 –> 32:19.749
[SPEAKER_01]: Fascinating chat that one, well worth a listen.
32:20.390 –> 32:28.860
[SPEAKER_01]: You can find that and all are what would you do, episodes at ECMP.info-w-w-y-d.
32:28.840 –> 32:33.345
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for tuning in to this and every episode of the e-commerce master plan podcast.
32:33.725 –> 32:44.216
[SPEAKER_01]: I bring you a new interview every week because I want to inspire and help e-commerce business owners just like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including progressing along the path to net zero.
32:45.097 –> 32:50.964
[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you know someone this show can help please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.
32:51.244 –> 32:54.207
[SPEAKER_01]: However, great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing
32:57.072 –> 33:00.482
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.
33:00.943 –> 33:06.238
[SPEAKER_00]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com Slash podcast.

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