Whirlpool’s Danielle Brown on personalizing online customer experiences

Thank you, Mary Fran, and thank you so much for having me today. I appreciate being here.

Sure. And wow, what an unpredictable couple of years it has been. I'll start from a big picture perspective. As you mentioned, Whirlpool is an iconic brand, but many may or may not know our vision as a company has been to be the best kitchen and laundry company in constant pursuit of improving life at home, which has become even more evident and important based upon what we've all experienced over these past couple of years. So we've seen more people, as you said, nesting at home, being in the home a lot more, and using our products. And that data wasn't just during the pandemic, but the data continues to show that people are continuing to use our products on a more continuous basis and more frequently. We've also seen people at home researching more, browsing more, and purchasing online. And all of these things, of course, favor our business and are powered by technology. So in the midst of these uncertain years, it has really been transformational for our business as well.

Absolutely. The two were really merged, the work environment and the home environment, whether we wanted it to or not. Many of us struggled initially to figure that out, but once we did, it has become a part of how people want to move forward with their lives because in a number of ways it was enriching to spend more time at home with our families.

Good question. Basically, when we think about Whirlpool, we've had for a number of years now four key strategic priorities that really do cut across the globe. Those four strategic priorities remained in place even over the last few years, and it allowed us to accelerate even more. Those priorities include things such as delivering product leadership, which Whirlpool has been known for for over 100 years. When you think about that as the hallmark of our company, even in today's modern times, delivering that product leadership includes data and technology that supports things such as the digital twin and digital thread in our products throughout that product life cycle. That's where the IT organization really has a hand in helping to enable that first strategic priority. The second strategic priority that we have is redefining what a product is, and that's all about leveraging IoT and AI to really support new digital services and new digital products that we can offer to our consumers. Our third strategic priority is really all about winning that digital consumer journey. Again, over the last couple of years, that journey has been online, and that's about really utilizing the technology to be able to engage with consumers throughout their journey from the pre-purchase part of the process all the way to the post-purchase part of the process. As I mentioned in the beginning, consumers were spending a lot more time online, so that was another area in which the IT organization could contribute significantly at the strategic level. And lastly, our fourth strategic priority is really all about reinventing the value chain. That's when you think about end-to-end supply chain visibility. We've all experienced supply chain challenges, and getting visibility into even further up that value chain really can help enable the business, as well as downstream when you think about manufacturing and Manufacturing 4.0 and how technology and data and analytics can help gain productivity in manufacturing. So it's really another way in which our IT organization was able to work side by side with our business partners to advance that priority. So really, end to end, our strategic priorities stood the test of time, and even more so, we were able to accelerate those priorities during this time as well.

Sure. For me, especially coming into a new organization—I've been in manufacturing companies all of my career, but everyone is different. This is a different industry that we're in, so you'll find things that are the same. But I'm a firm believer that before you can start changing anything, you first have to understand that space first. So initially coming in, I did not make immediate changes. It was more about understanding the business and the system that we have working within Whirlpool, and how even more importantly we interact with the consumer, how we engage with the consumers as well as our trade partners in the retail market. So a lot of it was first understanding. Then once I gained enough understanding to see what some of those opportunities were, that's where we internally—one of the things that we really started to move forward was, quite honestly, on the enterprise architecture side. We are a large organization and company, and there are lots of opportunities today to leverage those strategic platforms that can also be leveraged globally but then tailored to the local market. So we stood back and looked at enterprise architecture and where we might be able to create what we call that composable architecture that allows you to be agile in today's environment, as well as then allows us to leverage and still apply things locally in those markets.

Sure. And in full honesty and transparency here, Whirlpool as well has been working on the full end-to-end consumer journey for quite some time, even prior to my arrival. But for the IT organization, with my coming into the organization and working across our leadership team, one of the things I always say about IT is we have a unique view within the company. What I mean by that is we can see across the company end to end, across all of the various processes. With that unique vantage point, part of our role I firmly believe is to connect a number of those dots. So when you think about that end-to-end consumer journey from first engaging and researching a product online all the way through the purchase through the post-purchase part of the process, because our team sees end to end, if different groups are working on different threads or pieces of that journey that may or may not be connected, that's where we have the opportunity to say, 'Let's talk about this as a full journey, not just what's going to happen during the purchase part of the process. How does that feed into when the product is delivered? How does that feed into when someone wants to purchase another product again? We want to know about what that consumer already has or about that recent purchase.' So when we think about—I'll go back to the word composable—when you think about that technology and how it's layered together, we have to think about that as an IT organization. That's part of the value we bring to the table. When you think about how the data is stitched—literally needs to be stitched together—so that we have full transparency, so the business partners have full transparency to Danny Brown as a consumer, and when we engage with her online it's personalized because we know her and know her history. So those are some of the ways in which the IT organization, with my coming in, that we wanted to focus on as a leadership team.

I would say—and I'll dig into a little further—I would say that they understand very much so, which is why it's a part of our four strategic pillars. That's one of the great things I love about Whirlpool: technology and data and how it can help us to gain competitive advantage, that's very much understood at the leadership level. So I don't have to explain it. But the way that we talk about it is we talk about there's the digital consumer journey, which is what I just described, which is that pre-purchase all the way to post-purchase and really that loyalty loop. And then there's also the product life cycle, and that's where we'll talk about the digital twin. When you think about the product life cycle, you think about how all the way from our global product organization really designing our products and designing it in a way where it's digital as well, so you can carry that digital twin all the way through. Then the two things merge when you think about a product being in a home. If we have that data from the product life cycle merged in with the consumer life cycle, we can feed data back into our business to further improve our products. So they are two different life cycles, but they can merge as well when you think about the product being in the home. Across Whirlpool, organizations really do work together to think about those end-to-end threads.

To tell a very quick story about our appliances, that's one of the other reasons I love it, because I can engage with our product as a consumer myself. I think about how for the KitchenAid stand mixers, I had purchased one. I still have my grandmother's old KitchenAid stand mixer, and I keep it for memory purposes. I remember her baking pies and things like that. Well, I recently bought my mother a KitchenAid stand mixer, and I had engraved in it 'The Queen' because that's what the kids in our family call her. I just thought about how with that stand mixer, she'll make memories, and more and more memories, and it will become just as cherished. So it's things like that. It is about kitchen and laundry, those duties, but at the same time it's also about memories.

My team and I, we do talk about the fact that within Whirlpool—again, credit to my boss who was in the position and set it up very well to be in the right place—we work very closely as cross-collaborative teams. So to redefine the product as an example, it is IT at the table. It's IT, our engineering organization, our product marketing organization working very closely together to bring that end product to the market. And then knowing once it's brought to the market, how the business wants to leverage that data for additional insights and to create new products and new services. So it is a responsibility, but it's what, as you mentioned, we've been trying to get to over the past, I don't know, 10 years. So as an organization, we talk about now that we have that seat, we need to own that seat. We need to lean into having that seat at the table, which means having a voice, which means having a position, which means understanding where technology is going so that we can contribute to those discussions. So I think it is a privilege to have that role, and we have to lean into it.

I've been blessed, quite honestly, to have had phenomenal mentors early in my career where it was instilled in me that yes, you're coming to the table with the technology knowledge, but being in a manufacturing company at DuPont at the time, you have to know the business just as much. You wear two hats. Never be deep in marketing or sales, but you have to know the processes just as much, because otherwise how do you know how the technology can help either productivity or on the business gaining additional business growth? That's how you know, by understanding those processes. So fortunate I was able to have that instilled in me early on.

Yeah, well, we've been—and you've asked about some of the things that my leadership team and I have driven since being at Whirlpool. One of those things is being bimodal, right? Being a bimodal organization, meaning we will continue to have major projects that require that waterfall method, whether it's in the ERP space as an example, or in other major areas. So we'll continue to have where you need that discipline and that process where you really define your requirements up front. Some areas will still—and I personally think we'll continue to require that for quite some time. But at the same time, we also have where we are looking—if folks are familiar with the PACE model, where it's systems of record require waterfall, but then you go into the systems of differentiation and systems of innovation, and that's where we're seeing platforms that do require more agile type of practices and more scrum teams and things of that nature. Because the systems are implemented, but then those systems are designed so that you continuously put forward new and additional functionality multiple times even during a week, and continuously do that. Those are the things that you have to be agile because the business environment changes so quickly. So you want to be able to leverage new and additional functionality in order to help your business continue to have competitive advantage in the marketplace. So we will continue to have to have both, and gain and grow the capabilities and skill sets in both areas.

With Whirlpool, we are very laser focused on what adds value for the consumer, right? Because you can do so much with technology, but if it's not adding value to the consumer, then it's just technology for the sake of technology. So the way that we think about it—I'll give you a few examples. Recently, with one of our ovens, we enabled through over-the-air updates the ability for it to be a fryer. That's adding value to the end consumer, and we received so much uptick online because of that feature being rolled out to our consumers. You can expect to see more of that with our products. Another example, in the laundry space, we have our Load & Go washers where you can pour the detergent for more than one cycle, and then through the app, which is the way that we engage with the consumer, you're notified when it's time to replenish that laundry detergent. And when you think about auto-replenishing through engaging with Alexa and other connected devices, those are value-added experiences for the end consumer. So that's what we mean by redefining the product. It's not just a traditional oven or traditional laundry appliances; it's how do we continue to add value for our consumers through different digital services or even new services.

Absolutely. I think we have to be—we'll use the overused word 'agile,' right? We'll admit that. But we do it in more of an agile way, meaning that you start the year off one way with a plan, and then quickly, a few weeks into the year, the plan changes. So why not adjust your practices to accommodate for those changes? So we started to do that more specifically. When you think about those areas of systems of differentiation and innovation, those are the areas where, as I mentioned earlier, you're expected to adjust to the market changes. So when we think about budgets, we adjust for a certain period within the planning cycle, and then if things change, we can adjust the target or the functionality that we want to roll out or change. It's because we've allocated certain portions of funding to that, but knowing that the features we're rolling out can adjust within that particular planning period. I'd say it's the same for other big areas, unless it's like a major ERP program or something like that. We do try to think about it more in increments because you do need to be able to flex with the business and adjust to various changes along the way.

Yeah, that has had to morph as well over the last few years, quite honestly. When you think about the big picture, the whole space has really changed. Every CIO today will talk about talent being a challenge, but I'm one who always looks at both sides of the coin, Mary Fran. I look at it as an opportunity as well. What I mean by that is, wow, we've lost some key talent along the way just because they've had more opportunities than we've had in the past. So my competition for talent is very different than it would have looked a year ago, even. Meaning that people can—some, not all, data shows that more companies are doing hybrid or in-office, but some are allowing for remote, and therefore talent in Saint Joseph, Michigan can be talent for another company in North Carolina as an example. But with those unfortunate, sometimes regrettable leaves, that opens up the opportunity to bring in new talent, promote from within, and it needs to be a balance of both. I'm always for—I got to where I am by people betting on me, people taking a chance, a risk on me, if you will. Sink or swim. I learned through the school of hard knocks, sink or swim sometimes, but that's how you learn and grow. So I do believe, and we have promoted talent from within, while at the same time the opportunity for new talent is just as—talent became available, and we're willing to listen and give an ear for what Whirlpool has to offer. We have a very great employee value proposition, especially as a company, and then especially when you take it down to IT. Because when I'm talking to prospective candidates, I can talk about how IT is at the table, how we are directly connected into unlocking value for the company at a strategic level. Where any true IT professional wants to be, they want to be able to move the needle, whether it's for a company or an industry. With that value proposition, that's allowed me to recruit some phenomenal talent at the leadership level and throughout the organization. But no doubt, it has been a challenge. I say that's my number one job. I cannot do anything alone on my own. It is all dependent upon the talent, whether it's at the leadership level or within the organization. So yes, I spend a tremendous amount of time in that area because I believe that that's my number one priority.

Sure. So I think one of the—a couple things. If I talk first about recruiting, I think it means because employees today have many different options, more options than they've had in the past. So I think as a company, we have to work with our talent to ensure that we're promoting our value proposition as a company, because it's not always about the financial aspect. People will typically—there's that saying, 'People will leave a boss, they don't necessarily leave the company.' So as a—and what do they want from their boss? A lot of times it's about they want to know that someone cares about their career. Owning a career is absolutely the employee's role first, but then if they're partnering with their manager or their boss or supervisor, they're partnering with them because they only have a limited view. So the tool that we utilize—and this helps with re-recruiting because it's about the career, and it helps with letting that employee know that you care about their career—we use a tool called Career Compass. What that tool is designed for is, number one, it shares the experiences that that employee has. When you have different leaders or new leaders in an organization, you don't want your experiences to be forgotten. So we start with, 'What was that person's career been to date?' Then we talk about, 'Where is it that you want to go in your career?' When we think about where they want to go, it's not the traditional ladder as it has been in the past. I've heard it referred to as the lattice, right? That there are many different routes that you can get—go sideways, and there's something more enjoyable, not always up, up, up. Because it's about the experiences that someone wants to have in their career. It's those experiences that I think are required if you want to be a global CIO, or it's the experiences you need to have if you want to be an enterprise architect. Those experiences will morph over time. Our organization what it is today, the roles we have, will look very different or have some differences at a minimum in three to five years. So how can you say what that role is in three to five years? But let's talk about the experiences that someone may want to have. Having that type of one-on-one conversation is a way in which you engage with employees. I'm willing to do that with anyone in the organization who—and yes, it requires a lot of time, but I'm open to it. Anyone in our organization that wants to have a conversation with me one-on-one, all they need to do is ping me, and we get them time on the calendar. But my one ticket, my one requirement I ask, is that you come in with your Career Compass, because I want you to have thought about your career. We do have it for a number of individuals that have to have that Career Compass, but it's not 100% of the organization that has it, so I want to encourage it for everyone. So that's their ticket in, if you will, is to just have thought through your career with me. So things like that, I think that really matter, will allow companies to retain talent today.

I'll answer that by saying we think about many possibilities in the future, so I'll just leave it open like that. But what I will say on how we think about technology and the possibilities of technology: number one, you have to think about what technology is really mature today versus the technology that is more speculative in today's market. So what's mature today is AI and machine learning. You also have natural language processing, our RPA technology, things of that nature. So you have those things that we're leveraging today in our business and in our market. But you also have the more speculative technologies such as metaverse and blockchain and things of that nature. So for those emerging, newer technologies, we will experiment internally and think about how they might apply to our business and how it can create new or different opportunities. So I'd say we do go the full gamut, but remember, I'll back up to things have to add value for the end consumer. It can't just be technology for the sake of it.

Sure. Yeah, another great question from that listener. So yeah, I will say—and now I'll expand it even more so from a leadership perspective—I am very cognizant, myself and the leadership team, in ensuring that it's not just about the 'sexy' aspects of technology and that upfront consumer side of things. Because the run and maintain organization, as we all found out during the pandemic whenever we had to shift to all working remote, the operational side is absolutely critical. It's the backbone of our company operating on a day-to-day basis. So that job, and the folks who work in that area, is just as important as those that are advancing growth or interaction with our consumer. So how we apply technology and innovation in that side is—we are, you know, that's in areas where we can think about how we leverage the cloud environment. And again, very innovative—I give credit where it's due, prior to even my coming to Whirlpool, and we just continue to accelerate it. We're one of the few companies with our SAP environment in the cloud environment. That's not an easy lift, right? It's the backbone and heart of your company. So to be able to do that, it takes guts, it takes risk, and it takes knowledgeable team members that lean in and dig into these areas and want to innovate. So how does that matter to our business? At the end of the day, in that run and maintain area, it allows us in that cloud environment to scale up or scale down as business needs change. It provides an environment that allows us to be able to quickly adjust our business processes in an agile environment. It allows us to—when our engineering team wants to work on a new server, it allows us to quickly spin it up and spin it down. So those back-end areas, if you will, are areas where innovation applies just as much. I continue, even with all that has been done today, to challenge that organization: 'Okay, what's next? What's that next horizon look like as an organization?' so that we can continue to innovate.

Yeah, great. So number one, I am a self-admitted data geek. That was one of the roles that I had way back when where I had accountability for the data organization. In that role, there was accountability for data governance as well as, at the time, we called it big data. I always thought that was so relevant to have both, because you really cannot have one without the other. Now, a lot of the data is not internal, but when you are leveraging internal data, you need that governance around that data. So the two are extremely important. Fast forward to today's environment, if you think about—I'll go back to one of our priorities around delivering product innovation and having that digital twin or that digital thread for the product, that's really where data is fundamental to that. This is working hand-in-hand in partnership with the strategy of our product organization: how do we simplify the data, and then how do we ensure that that data is threaded throughout in a digital way? Whether it's embedded within our systems of record, how do we ensure that we have the right governance around that product data so that it can be used throughout the full product life cycle? So that's an example of how data governance is critical within our organization. Then when you think about on the analytics side, that is in almost every single process. Analytics is a way to unlock value. When I say every process, that could be in the integrated supply chain, that could be on the consumer side, that could be in consumer services as consumers call in. How do we leverage that data in order to—that's where machine learning can be even more applicable. Where are we seeing common problems from the phone calls that are coming in? So there's not a process I would say that I could name where data and analytics would not be applicable. For those who are familiar with different maturity of analytics, we are at the full spectrum, all the way from descriptive up to where we are using analytical AI models across the company. So it depends upon the area. It is applicable across all areas, and we have the different levels of maturity.

Sure. I think there are a couple. This first one will fit in the space of AI and ML, but it is really the edge computing. Because today, when you think about—and that's going back to our connected products—when you think about how analytical models will continue to grow, and we want to continue to get more and more for speed and efficiency, those models being closer and closer to the edge, on the product itself, those are things in which we're further exploring. That's why we're always working on—I think about three horizons: the current near term, but at the same time you're thinking about that next horizon with some of that technology that is now more mature, and that third horizon being technology that's a little further out. AI and ML definitely squarely fits in horizon one and horizon two. So with that, I have to think about edge, the infrastructure piece or the edge computing that would need to go along with that. In addition to that, I'd also add in there 5G, and the impact of 5G to our business, especially in the manufacturing area and logistics, and thinking about how 5G could impact us or enable us even further in the manufacturing space to continue to automate in that area. The other is, I'd say again data, but it's the natural language processing. That is absolutely key because Whirlpool is known for our service as well. So we want to continue to—that's a differentiator for us. As we're able to analyze and learn off of the data that's coming in to enable us to react faster to customer problems or customer needs, that's where we can leverage natural language processing in the consumer services area. So those are probably some of the top three that are near term in horizon one or horizon two.

No, I know. I wish we had been filming it, but we probably didn't have portable—we didn't have cell phones or portable cameras, because it would have made such a funny thing. 'Play.'

Yes. I think—and to your point, Whirlpool is a great company. They recognize that that type of experience also makes me—helps me grow in my management hat as well. So I really do thank them for allowing me to do that. The way that it helps me directly is, number one, I'll back up and take a step back and say with many boards, that opportunity for technologists to now sit on public company boards, I believe has come to the forefront because number one, the risk of cyber and cyber security, cyber attacks, is a big business risk. So there's that knowledge that boards wanted at the table, as well as the technology and the data/analytics and it being critical to business growth, business giving competitive advantage to businesses no matter what the industries are. Technology, as we've seen over the years, can be a disrupter. So that strategic perspective on boards and how technology can relate is absolutely critical. How that has—if I bring it back to PRA and my experience, it's helped me to really—if we talk about you mentioned earlier where someone you knew talked about technology within companies sitting kind of that level up, if you will, and then kind of looking down but hands in. I think at the board level, it takes you even higher than that, meaning to have that bird's eye view of the company. Because they say it's 'nose and fingers out.' So as a management hat, I can say, 'Okay, here's our strategy, here's what we're going to do, here's how we're going to do it, and then let's move, let's execute.' At the board, I'm giving—I'm asking provoking questions. I'm asking questions around how you know the risk around, how far is it going to take us strategically, the growth of the company. I'm asking about the talent within the company. So it's a totally different view, and it makes you have a different perspective and lens on the company and what's going to really add that long-term sustainable value in a company. So now how that helps me is I integrate that while I have my fingers in within Whirlpool. I also can take that step back in the same way as I have to do it in my board seat and say, 'Okay, how does this help us long term in the company? What's the risk to the overall company? How do we think about the governance that as a company we have to provide, whether it's related to talent or others?' I can tell you, real quick, as I prepare to present to our audit committee on cyber, the questions that I ask myself, I say, 'If I were sitting in that audit committee, these are the questions that I would be asking someone presenting this information.' So it just makes you think about things at an even higher lens. It's such a different perspective. It's like—I think using the metaphor of a lens, it just opens the lens so much wider.

As a leader, I would say that—and this takes it personal as well—it was the realization that, and I know a lot of people use this word and I'll tell you what it means to me, but it was I am more empathetic. What that means to me is with that merging of home and work, I've always been a people person, so I've always chatted about family, chatted about more than just work. But the immersion of the two gave you a lens more so into the challenges that people have, the struggles that people have, the additional weights that people have in their lives. Having that open view—because you can't hide if kids are running in the background, you can't hide if someone is down because they really don't know how they're going to handle child care when the day care centers were closed, or aging parents that they haven't seen. All of those things became—even myself became more open during this time, sharing a lot more about me as people shared a lot more about themselves. It not being a bad thing, people are opening up in more natural ways. So when I say more empathetic, it's just really that recognition of how—and even more important, the mental health is as well as physical health—because these things merge into how you show up at work. So as leaders, we need to care about all of it, because all of that is going to relate to how employees are engaging in and showing up today.