Michael Moore, CIO, of Moosejaw Mountaineering, recently shared some of his thoughts and initiatives. While Moosejaw is a unique company, they share many of the same challenges and opportunities as other retailers. He finds himself, like most CIOs, working with the CMO more and more.
Like most retailers, Moore is learning more about his customers’ and prospects’ purchase path, in hopes of better selling, serving and communicating. The use of multi-devices and multiple shopping channels have made the purchase path blurry.
Moore acknowledges that keeping track of buyer behavior and testing hasn’t been a priority in the past, but that Moosejaw has been stepping up its game through use of IBM’s Websphere and Coremetrics – and are also considering Tealeaf, IBM’s customer experience management software.
He also noted that the need to remain agile has become very important in every aspect of technology and the company’s operations.
Moore listed some of his largest current objectives:
- Migrating from version 6 to 7 of Websphere. This will put more data into the hands of business users themselves.
- Improving the site’s performance, optimization and checkout. Performance and usability has been challenged by multiple browsers, mobile, tablets, etc. Moosejaw finds its mobile users growing faster than most – over 30% of users – possibly because many of them are outdoorsmen who contact them while they are outside and discover that they need gear.
- Amazon dictates that retailers’ operations continue to get product delivered faster and cheaper than ever before, and Moosejaw is no exception. The company does ship-from-store effectively, using its Boulder, Co. store much like its “west coast distribution center”
- Moosejaw now has its retail store associates using tablets at each brick-and-mortar location, and Moore suspects that only tablets with be used in all its stores fairly soon.
Their uniqueness is in how they communicate with, and treat, their customers and prospects. Moore described Moosejaw’s great desire to “create authentic experiences that don’t feel like a sales experience.”
He said that social media works well for Moosejaw, providing a good medium for fun customer engagement and experiences. After a trip to @MoosejawMadness, I understand why their customers love to be involved. It’s a great example of the many ways a company can use Twitter to keep their customers engaged.