>>live from Washington, D. C. >>It's the Cube >>covering Bumi World 19. Do you buy movie? >>Hey, welcome back to the Cube. We've got candy. That's right. I am Lisa Martin in Washington, D. C. At booming World 19 with John Ferrier and John and I are excited to be talking next with a chief technology officer of candy dot com. Gary, welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you for having me great to be here. >>So tell our audience about candy dot com Guinea all that you want dot com cool stuff. >>It is cool stuff. It is the endless. I'll just like going to the supermarket and never runs. Oh, it's absolutely perfect. That's actually how we started knowing that there was so much candy out there that people wanted in the lines just weren't long enough to put him in, no matter where you checked out, and we started off being the online candy store, which was a foot in the door, but it was a very small opening at that time. >>One of the things you said when I met you today whilst eating candy that you guys brought thank you very much for that was very appropriate. Um, was that candy? Is recession proof? >>It is. It's it's ah, you know, good times, bad times. You know, people are gonna have birthday parties. People get married holidays. They're going to come. You know, you've had a really great day. It's a candy bar. You know, you've had a really bad day. It's the candy bar. That's just it's an impulse buy, but it's an impulse buy with your favorite. I mean, it's something to comfort more than anything else, actually. And the technology side talk about how you guys were organized. What? Some of the challenges and how does Bumi fit in? Take us through the journey. Sure, when we started out, we thought, How hard could it be doing? Data entry will get the orders. They'll come across, we'll have some people. Instrument to the system will start filling up, you know, and then everything else will take care of itself. And within about a few minutes, we realized that that was probably not going to work. It was not scalable because first of all, data entry is air pro. You know, if you have someone actually trying to do with their, it's not gonna work for us. So we realized that there was a mechanism out there with Edie I and we went to 1/3 party provider to help us with the FBI. And that's how we started with the first couple of integrations and it was good. It got us off the ground and got us further into that door. >>So you started with, um, how many different partners trading partners take us back to kind of the last 10 years of candy dot com and how that Trading Partner Network has grown. >>Oh, it's like the journey. It's still we starts with the first step. We had one that was interested, one that wanted to work with Austin, and we started to do the work with them and figure out how to handle it. But they had multiple divisions, so, you know, there was only one that was 32 actual integrations that had to be done on being a traditional brick and mortar. It's very competitive. So once the word got out that they were work with us, there was a couple other. So we had six pretty big ones lined up early on that we needed to have integrated in up and running very quickly. >>And from a digital perspective, what were some of the initial system's applications that you implemented just start being able to manage and track those trading partner interactions to ensure that you're able to deliver? You know what? The candy, the candy demand that you need to fill? >>It was, sadly, a lot of C S V. A lot of email, a lot of phone calls back and forth. There was a lot of hours, and it was one those ones where we would really just bring in temps and try to keep up with it did not really have a repeatable process or a good technical footprint of what we needed to d'oh way didn't know what we didn't know when we started, and we very rapidly came to become aware of what we needed to do. >>So starting with air P Net sweet brought net Sweden two years ago. Tell us about that and what you thought was gonna solve all of our problems. Well, that's why it's >>a great package because it brought us both order management and it brought us here. Pee in. There were so many models and so much technology behind it and they have a warehouse module. There's, like all we could grow forever With this, it will never be bounded. This is gonna be fantastic. But what we forgot is that it was only as good as the data in there. And if we're using as a manual data entry, it's not going to meet our needs. We needed to come up with a better way in a more efficient way to get the data in. And this was still back in the day when we're trying to fulfill something within a week, much less where we're at today. >>Okay, so where does Bumi fit into play? >>We realized, unfortunately that even when you have an integration up and running and as good as the integration is, some of your trading partners will have changes. They're going to give you a different reference number. They're gonna give you a different requirement. They're gonna make something that was optional now mandatory. So we had problems because it wasn't just also that was impacting everyone that was doing an integration with that trading partner had it. So if I had outsourced it and there was 100 people that had that map. We were one of 100. Sometimes we were one, and sometimes we were as far away from one is possible and you understand that, and you appreciate it because there's only a finite number of hours to get things done. So we understood that to be really profitable and get to the level of service we needed to control the data. And that's when we decided that we needed to bring the E. D I and house. >>So when you were looking for the right integration partner, what was it about Bhumi from a technology perspective and a business perspective that really differentiated it. >>First and foremost, the number one requirement had to talk to nets. We had a have a native nets. We'd integration if it did not talk to net sweet. It wasn't gonna make it onto our plate because we weren't gonna spend the time to reinvent the wheel when obviously the wheel was out there. We had actually done that once before, and it was successful but painful. And there's people out there who build a connection and work to silver partners like blooming in the platinum partners that can go out and they can actually keep up with the release before it comes out. And you're being proactive by the reactive from a business need. It was We can't drop data. We need to be efficient. We need to be timely. We need visibility. And looking at Bumi, it met all those needs. We had a connection into nets. We had a reporting tool. We had error messages coming back. We had everything that we needed to manage our own world and take control of it. Or so we thought >>that look. Okay, so get this implemented. What sort of opportunities is the start opening up? You talked about control there, or so we thought. What have you been able to unlock where control is concerned? In the last few years, >>what we didn't realize with what we were doing is that way. We're just basically turning on everything and trying to run this efficiently and fast as possible. And that was really the wrong approach to take what we needed to do it as some governance to it as some logic to it, too, you know, not compete with jobs. There's there's a finite number of avenues into the back end system, you need to utilize it. But there was also tools that we found out inside this system that handled things like error trapping and retrial, logic and time outs and stuff like that. And as we worked with the subject matter experts at Boom, as we worked with the people at Nets, we in our account managers who would show us things and help us long. We learned a lot more about him. When we went live back in February of 2016 we were very excited. We did 1000 orders into our system and one day and we thought, How phenomenal is this? I mean, 1000 orders. How many more orders could you actually look for? And we very soon realized that there was a lot more orders willing to come into our system if we could handle it. >>So what? So when you first started with Bhumi went from some number 2 1000 orders today. What was that original number that you guys were able to handle when it was more of a manual process? >>It depend on how many attempts we could hire that sometimes it was 100 orders we got in. Sometimes it was 100% dependent on people. Also depend on someone, Remember, understands the spreadsheet. >>The Sun's painful, >>painful and not really easy to plan for. >>But you discovered pretty quickly you went from I won't say 0 to 1000. But somewhere in between that realized tha the capabilities, though of this system was gonna allow you to get 20,000 orders per day. Where was the demand coming from? Was it coming from trading partners was coming from their customers? Was it coming from your internal team seeing Hey, guys, I think there's a lot more power here than we originally thought. >>Well, success begets success because we were able to get an order in now in a timely fashion and ship it out there. All of a sudden, I realized we were shipping orders within 48 to 72 hours. It wasn't taking 10 days anymore, so we had repeat customers, which obviously makes your numbers go up. And then, as you know, your experience is good and you share it because social media is the weight of the world All the sudden, you know if if you tell two friends and they tell two friends we start getting more volume. Damn white starts happening is someone realizes they're losing market share of their brick and mortar website. And who was fulfilling the orders for them if they're doing so well and we're losing business and they start knocking on the door saying what? We'd like to work with you as well. And the other thing, too, is just timing. In the United States, it's pretty warm between April and October, and the bulk of perishable and heat sensitive product will ship through one of our warehouses because we have the thermal controls in the programs in place to give a good experience to make sure the product arrives the way it's supposed to be treated. >>Yeah, you were mentioning that when you were on stage this morning with Mandy Dolly Well, Mami CMO and Jason Maynard from Net Sweet that there are obviously, if you order some chocolate. I wanted to get there in the exact state in which I saw it online, right? But there's you've gotta have a lot of access, invisibility and systems to be able to help you facilitate that temperature control, depending on the type of product. >>Absolutely. So we're very proud of the fact that, you know, we're temperature controlled where humidity controlled were suf certified. We've done everything the right way to make sure that what we do is gonna be the best experience that your food is safe. Because, Paramount, the last thing we ever want to do is to keep a product of someone's gonna make your child sex because, you know, you don't want anyone to get sick. But the worst feeling is apparent is when your kid doesn't feel well. So we understand that Andi have a phenomenal staff. Are Q A team will go through and we have ways to test the product to get to the melting point. And we know different products melted different temperatures, and we determine what those temperatures are. We build those thresholds we do calls out to get the weather. No, I'm shipping it from my location to you. What's the temperature of my It doesn't matter if it's cold at your place. It is 90 where I'm shipping it from. So we look at what is it now? Where is it going? What's it gonna be the next few days? How big is it? You know how much product is in there with that? That isn't heat sensitive. And we have a pretty complex algorithm that we put in place That has really enabled us to handle the summer months and give a good product because, I mean a lot of people like s'mores, but they don't want the pre melted chocolate showing up at their house. >>Would agree. That takes the fun out of the bonfire part, right? Exactly. So let's talk about the people transformation because you were saying your 100% dependent on manual Somebody even sending the spreadsheet little into star inputting data to process X number of orders per day went from almost 0 to 1000 overnight with Bhumi, then saw this capacity for 20,000. How have has your team has other business units within candy like finance? How are they benefiting from all of this? What a presume is massive workforce productivity gains that you're giving everybody? >>Absolutely. It was a great problem tohave because as we got bigger and we started getting more and more orders than we got more and more invoices and you know, we got more and more checks in which we always think it's a good thing, but those checks need to be reconciled. They have to be reconciled against the transaction Inside the Nets week. It's no exaggeration that we would have pages printed out with a ruler going down and highlighting one by one on the invoice to make sure nothing was omitted. And we were spending an individual spent an eight hour day, three days a week, just going through direct missile. One invoice that was coming in and we would get two or three a week from them. So it was painful and again also error prone. And these people are very creative, very smart, and they offer so much more to the business that it was a waste of their time in a waste of their intellect. S o del. Booming, we found out, is not just any eyes phenomenal, Aditi, I but it has all these other tools and won. The tools we had was to be able to take the remittance file from the financial institution, reconcile it against the invoice is in the system and create a C S V import that would run that we have a script for that created a cash payment in our system that would actually close out the invoices and be paid so that we don't take care of it. It was done, and finance would basically get the file and e mail to us. We would file it back and they'd run an import. So instead of 250 hours a week, it was five minutes of file. >>That's a dramatics saving hundreds of hours a month, but also faster time to revenue recognition. >>That's a big one, you know, because when you try to get people discounts or give them brakes or if your terms are out there, it's nice to get it in there and keep your system's clean, because you also have to answer to the end of the month. You know you want to close the books and everything in manual processes. Air one the few things that you can't just throw more horsepower at. >>I'm glad you brought up, though from a resource kind of reallocation. Perspective is, these folks, in particular areas of the business, have value that they're not able before weren't able to really unlock and deliver. Now, with the technology in place, they're able to probably focus on more strategic areas of the business or more strategic projects. I also imagine your sales. We said faster time to revenue in revenue recognition, but big boost to candy dot comes sales. Since you've implemented the technology >>direct, I mean the sales numbers have just grown. I mean, as much as we do. No do are forecasting and think where it's going to go. Wee wee drastically underestimated this year. The summer was very, very good to us. Our first year under booming, we ran for 11 months. We did a little over 600,000 orders for that first year. In comparison, in June, July and August this year, we did over a 1,000,000 orders. That's a lot of chocolate. So a >>lot of candy, >>most certainly >>busier time, period. I mean Halloweens in a few weeks, Christmas is coming. How does that compare in terms of like the Flux >>way? Have a peek? Obviously, Halloween Halloween is obviously the time, of course. November 1st, our orders are zero because everyone walks in with a pillowcase of candy from their kids to the office, so it literally goes from a 1,000,000 miles an hour or two nothing, and it's it's kind of eerie. But throughout the summer we stay very, very busy because a lot of the market places don't have the facility and listen, they're great, you know, it's one stop shopping. They have everything, but everything is in a warehouse in that entire warehouse is not properly controlled to handle food products. So they decided it was an advantageous for them to ship, you know, during the summer, and it's poorly monitored as a summer Shipp program. But it's really more of a heat sensitive program because we'll add the thermal product to protect the thermal packaging to protect the product, even in February. I mean, there's some spots in Florida in Texas at a pretty one that you want to protect the item. So it's a heat sensitive program that we're very proud of, and we keep advancing and we keep growing. And, you know, I have. I'm very fortunate. I have a great team. I mean, we're not gonna call out, you know, like Jim and Scott, because that would be wrong to deal with. These guys have been with me from the start, and they put the E. T. I in place. They put the scripting in place that the guys were just, you know, rock stars on. Do I look good because of their effort? And I'm very, very proud of the team we've assembled that does this to make sure that you're and satisfaction is always met. >>Awesome story. So I imagine you know, when we hear like, four out of five dentists recommend this kind of bet. Is the fifth dentist recommending candy dot com? Is that where that guy's been? >>Yeah, he's got four kids >>going through college and >>everything, so he figures candy dot com to go. Way to make the money to make sure those tuition skip. >>All right. Well, Gary, it's been a pleasure to have you on the keys. Thank you for sharing what you're doing with bhumi at candy dot com. We appreciate and thanks for all the candy. >>Oh, our pleasure. Thank you very much for having been a great couple of days. I'm glad to be part of it. >>All right. Our pleasure for John Ferrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Bhumi World 19. Thanks for watching