Dick’s Sporting Goods CTO Vlad Rak on Inward and Outward Facing Strategies | Technovation 637

Well, thank you for having me, Peter. Glad to be here. It's a pleasure.

Sure. Well, I have the privilege to lead a team of about a thousand technology professionals, with about 700 or so of the roles being internal. And we are actually helping solve some of the very, very complex industry problems. I say that because those problems come from quite a bit of scale that we face every day: from 870 plus stores, to five distribution centers, to 1600 retail partners that we work with, 250 million athletes, one million SKUs, and 1.5 billion website visits. So you get the point, there's a lot going on there. And as you permutate and try to solve for how do you understand the marketplace, how do you serve the athletes, how do you support all of our teammates, there's a lot there. We actually do this through all disciplines, from product management to user experience design to engineering across all of our business domains. And we sit at the table with all those leaders and have a very active seat in shaping the business model and also bringing that to life. So we have a full gamut, a lot on our plates, and a lot of exciting work that we do these days.

Sure. I mean, there is an aspect of what we do that requires basics or fundamentals. And when we talk about mastering fundamentals, there are the inward-facing strategies that we have for ourselves. So when you think about talent, when you think about ways of working, partnering with business, creating a scaled foundation within technology, and then creating a culture, those are the five things that are at the forefront of us mastering fundamentals. In there, when you think about talent particularly, how we focus on career development, how we actually create the culture of one team, is a massive focus. And so there are specific tactics and metrics that come with that that help us focus. Similarly, the ways of working: we're in a very modern way of working on one end, which is lean product management. On the flip side, we're learning every day because doing this across omni-channel, across athlete expectations and all teammates, there's a lot of planning and execution that comes into play. So there's a cost, and those are some of the examples of internally facing five strategies that we have. As it comes to the outward facing, which is what our athletes and our teammates — by athletes I mean our customers, and by teammates I mean employees inside DSG — we obsess over athletes and teammates. On the athlete side, technology and our data around the athletes so we can personalize, so we can serve them, we can address their needs across channels. And then on the teammates side, we want them to become trusted advisors. There's an advisor just knowing what a particular product is within sporting goods, and there's advice at a whole other level when we can help you learn the sport, improve in the sport, be fitted in the sport. So there's a lot of technologies that lead to that. And then there's plenty of omni capabilities that are seamless, and we've led the way in many ways and are continuing to innovate in some of these capabilities in the industry. So that's a big part of our strategy there: the mobile app and mobile platform being at the forefront of that. A lot of what anybody in retail deals with, especially anything that involves fashion or sports or a combination, solving the problem of demand sensing and demand planning is a significant problem when you look at the entire population of athletes, the number of categories in sports, the number of products and SKUs, and everything else. So that is a space for us that we're heavily focused on, and one of our big strategies. And lastly, which is one of the more exciting things that we talk about these days, is this whole ecosystem that we're creating around transforming sport. That's the next generation experience, because we're establishing in our stores where our stores are no longer just traditional retail stores; they're destinations. So what we are doing — I'll give you an example in golf as a category, and you can imagine this shaping in all other categories, whether it's baseball or soccer or anything else — we're actually putting in IoT and sensing technologies that allow you to fully understand the body movement in the golf swing. We're connecting that with technology that tracks what happens with the club and the ball afterwards. We understand your ground movement, we're able to fit you into equipment, we're able to ultimately equip you with the best equipment, we're able to connect statistics outside of the store, and the ability to look at that entire what we call the athlete 360 construct that we have. So how we then learn from that as an athlete, how we improve, how do we come back for more data, how do we create this platform of sports that allows us to do that, is a huge focus area for us as a company and as a technology organization.

It is. I mean, it's absolutely ingrained in my DNA to wake up and think about sports, and doing that for a living for what we do in technology is just a whole other dimension. And what's really fun about our environment is we have a lot of athletes at different levels that wake up and obsess about sports. So that's what makes us go, that's what makes us innovate, that's what makes us obsessive about other athletes and teammates. So it's a culture where it's collegiate, very internally focused as one team, and very competitive as we face other teams. So that's the other part of our DNA.

You know, it's a great question. It's a topic that I think a lot of companies are trying to correlate. There are studies that you can look at over and over and see a direct correlation that when the customer is happy, the employee is happy; when the employee is happy, the customer is happy. And we obsess about athletes and teammates at the same time. And what's also happening in this whole world of evolution around data and connections that you can establish through data and experiences, there is a need to create technology that serves both at the same time. So when our athlete shows up with the mobile app in store with the in-store mode, how our teammate supports them with their app in that moment is an example of that. I talked about trusted advisors and helping athletes be a better golfer, understanding athletes' interaction with technology and a teammate with technology going after the same goal is paramount for us. So we actually have inside the organization product teams that are focused on the athlete experience, but we equally have product teams that are focused on teammate experiences. And we treat them exactly the same; we look at them through the same lens, we invest in a similar vein. So those are big things that are yielding results. And ultimately, those teammates on the floor, those teammates in distribution centers, those teammates that are supporting our e-commerce, whenever they are happy, the athlete gets happier. So that's a big part of our vision and strategy.

Sure. We're actually very fortunate to have a few forces around us that help us continuously innovate. One is internal culture. I mean, we're very innovative, very flexible, very nimble. We have, I mentioned, 1600 partners from Nike to Adidas to Under Armour to North Face to many others who demand more from themselves as well as us in the interest of the athlete. And so the way we ideate with them, and our recent partnership that was announced with Nike, was a result of that type of ideation and collective thinking of how do we create that platform on sports moving forward. And then there is the rest of the industry and the rest of the ecosystem around us that VCs and startups are bringing to the table that are pushing our thinking on what's possible. And when you intersect all this with the industry revolution 4.0 and what's happening to all of us every day that we're currently seeing and things that are going to become mainstream pretty soon, these are the things that are pushing our thinking every day. And it is a part of our innovation model; it's not one-dimensional, it's actually multi-dimensional. And it's not just about store, it's not just about online experience, it's not just about a specific moment; it's all of that collectively. So we think about the experience as an ecosystem, we think about the business model as a connected tissue across things. So those are all the things that are making our environment quite interesting and exciting to actually innovate in and be part of.

Sure. I keep using the term athlete centricity, and it is at the core of a lot of where we see the future. So when you think about the ability to personalize the experience when an athlete shows up online or when an athlete comes into the store, there are levels of personalization. There's a lot you can expect: some basic things that I think many are doing right now, which is recognizing who you are and offering a specific product that may be relevant to you. We can also surprise and delight you, which is a whole other level of how do we recognize what you might need, all the way up to how do we make you a better athlete. So if I go back to the example of golf, or if I take an example of baseball where you can come into our store in our batting cages and fully understand and assess how you move and swing against the professionals, against your last swing, what you can do — that personalization of what you do next and the best next step for you as an athlete, regardless of your level, is huge for us. So I see us innovating, I see us pushing the boundaries there, and I see us connecting the tissue that is not connected anywhere else. I explain sports to people in a similar way to how healthcare is being done: you go to all the specialists, you go to different charts, you get different views, and none of that is connected. And when you ask somebody what your health is like, you have to go to many different places to realize that. And that's kind of what happens in sports these days. And we have a unique opportunity to connect all of that. So that's one area. I would say the things that we are really now experimenting around are the whole IoT and sensor-based things and the ability to connect the dots between video analytics to RFID, as an example, and understanding of athlete's behavior all the way to the products that they're interested in, the products that they're trying, the optimization that happens on what matters from a style caller to how do we optimize the back of house and front of house. There's a lot of innovation happening there. And frankly, the whole face recognition and what's happening in that world is going to change how you check out, how you support a particular challenge and an issue. There's a lot there that is pushing our thinking. And the last one I would say is quantum computing. I think while it feels like it's out there, like it feels like we've got ways to go before we hit the mainstream, the type of problems we'll be able to solve from the whole demand sensing and demand planning side, in the moment recognizing and categorizing and helping athletes do their best, there's a whole other world that's exciting. I think they may sound a little futuristic out there, but I also think that that's going to come at us faster than anybody realizes, in my opinion.

It's my pleasure, and thank you for having me.