.jpg)
Leaders In Payments
Leaders In Payments
Special Series: The Omnicommerce Revolution with Shae Orrick, Sr. Product Manager at Worldpay | Episode 330
Unlock the secrets of omnicommerce and revolutionize your business with insights from Shea Orrick, Senior Product Manager at Worldpay. Ever wondered how to provide a seamless, unified shopping experience across multiple channels? Our latest episode promises to break down the complex world of omnicommerce into actionable steps that can help you adapt to ever-changing consumer buying habits. You'll gain valuable knowledge on how integrated systems and data can enhance the consumer experience while making business management more effective.
Shea guides us through the journey of adopting omnicommerce solutions, often discovered through online research, ads, and trusted partners like banks. We dive deep into the top three pain points these solutions address—simplifying business operations into a single portal, improving inventory management through key business insights, and keeping customers happy with efficient, cost-effective marketing strategies. Learn about Worldpay's Commerce360, a powerful tool designed to streamline your operations with features like a robust payment system, seamless website integration with GoDaddy, and comprehensive marketing and inventory management tools.
Shea provides an exclusive look at Commerce360's future plans, including an online order option for merchants not ready for a full-fledged website, advanced user management tools, and the integration of AI technology to make inventory management a breeze. With Worldpay and GoDaddy's combined expertise, you can expect continuous improvements and innovative features that future-proof your business.
Thank you or mobile, you'll find WorldPay at the heart of great commerce experiences globally. In this five-part series, we'll dive deep into seamless commerce experiences across all customer journeys, including from the consumer and merchant perspectives. We'll also look at solutions in the market today and where Omnicommerce is heading in the future.
Greg Myers:Hello everyone and welcome to this, the third episode in our series, in collaboration with WorldPay, about Omnicommerce. Today, we're going to be talking about Omnicommerce from the merchant perspective and how merchants must adapt to meet the needs of consumers changing buying habits. In the last episode, we discussed how different consumer demographics are driving the payments ecosystem and how COVID was an accelerator, so I suggest you go back and take a listen to that episode as well. It was episode number 326. Joining me today is Shea Warrick, product manager for WorldPay. So, shea, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
Shae Orrick:Well, thank you so much.
Greg Myers:Well, let's go ahead and dive right in. Much for being here and welcome to the show. Well, thank you so much. Well, let's go ahead and dive right in. If you don't mind, tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe where you grew up, where you went to school, where you currently live and, if you don't mind, touch a little bit on your professional journey as well.
Shae Orrick:Yeah, absolutely so. I grew up in a small town in Colorado. It's called Durango. It's the bottom southwest corner and just really picturesque, lovely little ski town but a little too small for me. When I was growing up I wanted to be an actor, right. So I went to school and I got my BFA in acting from Oklahoma City University. I did try my hand at making it out in New York City, had so much fun. But you know, small town girl had to go back.
Shae Orrick:I wound up back in Durango, just really not sure what the next chapter of my life was going to look like. I wound up back in Durango, just really not sure what the next chapter of my life was going to look like. And Durango, like I said, is small. So really you had an option to work at the local restaurants, at the hospital or my mom told me about a company called Mercury and that's really what kicked off my professional career here in payments. Mercury was a small little startup business in Durango that became a big name in integrated payments and 11 years ago I started there as a customer support representative. I've had the opportunity to work in many areas of the business, so I've done sales. I've become a sales trainer. I then took a job working with our strategy and our go-to-market team and driving solutions forward. I'm now the senior product manager for the Omnicommerce solution. We've got Commerce 360. Very excited, and I work closely with all the teams here at WorldPay and with GoDaddy to maintain and enhance the solution.
Greg Myers:All right, well, can you please define for our audience, just to level set, what Omnicommerce means?
Shae Orrick:Yeah, I'd love to. So Omnicommerce is really a comprehensive business approach providing a seamless and unified shopping experience for consumers from end to end. It means integrating various systems and data across multiple channels while optimizing technology and creating a consistent and personalized consumer experience. So you combine your storefront with an online presence, you throw in the social connection. These are all set up to work seamlessly together in an Omnicommerce experience. It gives the merchant a lot of control of their business. Everything flows all the way into one spot. It can help them also promote their presence and obtain and retain their customers right. It ensures consumers receive that unified shopping experience that we all want, basically saying hey, it's easier to find and buy, you have a happy customer and you have a growing business for the merchant.
Greg Myers:Okay, great Thanks for defining that so well. In the last two episodes we talked about Omnicommerce at a high level and through the lens of the consumer. For this episode, I like to do two things. I'll talk about it from the merchant view and how they adapt to and have to grow, and then also talk about it from the solutions that WorldPay provides. I know you mentioned it, you know, with the name Commerce 360. So we're going to dive a little bit deeper into that because we haven't done that yet in the series. So first let's talk about it from the merchant perspective, and I don't think they sit around and randomly say, oh, I need an Omnicommerce solution, so maybe talk about their view and their journey. How do they typically get started to end up with an Omnicommerce solution?
Shae Orrick:No, yeah, you're absolutely right. Merchants aren't waking up one morning and saying, oh, I need X solution to run my business, right, I mean, merchants are so busy, right, Setting up a business and running a business and maintaining it. Their focus isn't always on figuring out the best solution, maybe right, but just finding something that's going to work, allow them to perform the basic business needs, at the core of which is accepting payments. But business is so much more right. You'll see merchants getting started. They might do some research online, might hear an ad on the television, right? Or payment processing or for overall business solution. It could connect them to any number of things, right? Some are software driven. There are other just standard payment devices that they could go frankly on Amazon, purchase and then go find themselves a banking partner to plug into. It gets a little messy.
Shae Orrick:But, others will get connected to a solution through a trusted partner. To plug into it gets a little messy, but others will get connected to a solution through a trusted partner. Right and I mentioned that from the banking relationship, which is one of the ways we go to market is leveraging our wonderful relationships with these bank partners who connect with these merchants, you know, at the ground level.
Greg Myers:Okay, and what do you think, or what would you say, are the merchants' top three pain points that having an Omnicommerce solution solves for them?
Shae Orrick:It gets them organized by connecting their business right and putting it in one space to make it easy for merchants to manage everything. It will also give them key business insights. So when everything's talking together, the merchant isn't reconciling just one part of the business with another. We can take inventory management, for example, right. So if you have a storefront and are selling a particular product really well, or you'd want to know how close you are to running out of something so you can keep your supply up, it all can be managed and be brought to you through that insight that the portal can provide and then finding and maintaining happy customers.
Shae Orrick:So this, I think, is a really big pain point that customers don't think about or merchants maybe don't realize as a pain point until they're really in it. Right, there's a lot of competition out there for businesses. You have large box stores. They can pay to have massive marketing campaigns, right. So they've got deep brand awareness in the market. But there's also 33 million small businesses out there looking to play in those markets as well, and so for a business, it's got to find a way to stand out that isn't going to be crazy costly but also allows for customers, both new and existing to continue to come through the door so that they see that revenue.
Shae Orrick:Driving and this is the part that I think is the most overwhelming for most small businesses right is how to find the time and effectively market their business to create a seamless multi-channel experience for consumers, and most merchants honestly don't know where to start. In fact, 67% of businesses out there today don't have any marketing plan or strategy or a process to make it easy for the consumer to find them and jump into it. And this is one of the most beneficial opportunities that an Omnicommerce solution can bring to a merchant is having that presence and allowing a consumer to purchase where they want and how they want because of how it's set up and keep them coming back. It all sinks into this one portal easily managed by the merchant, and it's really a no-brainer.
Greg Myers:Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So let's talk in a little bit of detail around the WorldPay Commerce 360 solution. So maybe can you describe for the audience you know, what does it include? What are the specific solutions that kind of fall under that umbrella? I'd love to.
Shae Orrick:I've mentioned a couple times everything coming to one-stop shop, right? One-stop space, and that is the merchant portal. So all those business insights, information, reporting, payments all that syncs up into the portal for the merchant to easily access. It also comes with a sleek payment system, right. So the device is pretty sharp looking, if I do say so myself, and it's a perfect size for most businesses, right? A lot of businesses like displaying things on the counter really want to use that real estate. You don't want anything too bulky, just want something that you know is sleek and tech forward, which is what we're able to offer. And then there is a seamless connection to websites that are hosted by GoDaddy. So this part is an amazing aspect of the solution and really, you know, adds to the whole Omnicommerce proposition, right? Godaddy's a leader in the website hosting and build space, right, they create amazing websites that are custom fit for merchants needs and has some very user-friendly tools. So if a merchant wants to create their own website, they're not necessarily reliant on them. They make it easy. Merchants will leverage this and can promote them, sell their products online, and any online sales will easily connect back to that portal that I mentioned at the top. It also will allow for merchants to connect on social media. I know I certainly do a lot of shopping on social media, much to my husband's chagrin, but you know they got me hooked right and I have found several businesses that I'm very loyal to because of that social media presence and being able to connect to that. Commerce 360 also provides some wonderful marketing tools I mentioned. That's a really difficult point for some of our merchants to get into, but we make it easy so we can set them up with marketing posts and email blasts. You can do a reward loyal customers idea and bring new ones in. All of that's key. We have inventory management, which is key for businesses. The inventory management syncs from both the device and from the online store. All of that is in real time, so a merchant is going to have a clear idea of what is in their stock count at any point of time during the day that they check.
Shae Orrick:We have an invoicing option and pay links all still driven from the merchant portal, and you can customize frequency of invoices. You can go ahead and create a text to pay through pay links again meeting consumers how they want to pay. There is access to a third party app marketplace. So let's say you're a merchant that's looking for a feature that's not necessarily native to Commerce 360. We've got some great features but let's say, something's missing this robust app marketplace that a merchant can peruse. They can find all kinds of different services there. So these apps work directly with Commerce 360. So the merchant's not losing that Omni experience, it's just enhanced. We have a wonderful connection to accounting direct link into QuickBooks. So it's processed and sent through the device or, like I said, the online storefront, even invoicing you name it right. It'll sync with QuickBooks and help the merchant with all their accounting needs. And you know, obviously it also takes payments. So you know.
Greg Myers:Right, right, okay, I mean obviously that's. It sounds like pretty much everything a business needs, you know, to run their business, and bringing all these solutions together, I mean, just makes a lot of sense. So what were the merchants doing before this kind of solution came along?
Shae Orrick:Yeah, everything was kind of piecemealed together, honestly. So when I was in sales, I would describe software solutions like Commerce 360 to merchants like this. Right, the difference between a standalone, piecemealed solution or an integrated software system is a lot like a smartphone. So if we think way back right before, we all had the phones in our pockets that could do everything for us. It was like having a day planner, a camera, a calculator, a checkbook, your wallet and maybe just a simple cell phone all in a mixed bag. Right, Nothing was talking to each other. Everything was disconnected. That's what merchants were experiencing in their businesses. Accounting was separate from invoicing and inventory was managed through another means and would cause discrepancy. Right, it's messy. So a solution like Commerce 360 is effectively giving a merchant a smartphone for their business, where everything they need is managed neatly in one spot.
Greg Myers:I love the analogy of the smartphone because there's so many things that we do on there that, like you said, used to be separate. So I think that's a great way to think about it. And you've mentioned the merchant portal a couple of times and I think you know, in kind of being an outsider to the product, it just sounds like that's like a key part of it. So what all can the merchants manage from there? Can you talk a little more detail about that?
Shae Orrick:It's the brains of the operation, so to speak. So most of what we talk about from a feature standpoint is driven from the portal At the core of it. You're going to be able to see just your daily payments and your monthly you know last month's reconciliation all the numbers portions right that come with a merchant business you're going to be able to take a look at. You can go find specific transactions if you need to run a return or void something specific, and then you'll be able to also see your online orders right, not just your online orders from a website perspective, but someone who maybe is utilizing the new online order feature that we'll have coming in June to go ahead and fulfill an order that came in through social media. Right, you've got your catalog. This is where all the inventory management aspects of the business go through. You can update your stock count there if you need to manually do that, but, like I said, the terminal and online order will also automatically do that when things are purchased.
Shae Orrick:You can add products. You can add products, you can freeze products. So, let's say, you're starting to see low stock count on a blue shirt. You can go ahead and put that on hold until you get more stock in, and then you can handle all of your reports, you know, and get some things that are a little bit more customized. You can see the inventory that's selling best orders by certain time period and get down to the nitty-gritty from a payment reporting standpoint as well, for things like tips and anything that comes from the POS from an order perspective.
Shae Orrick:You'll also access the third-party app marketplace through the portal, so anything you purchase in the portal will translate direct to the terminal, which is great and it's easy to use, very similar to how the app store works in your smartphone. You can run your invoicing and your pay links, as well as have access to a virtual terminal. If you're not at your store location and need to process a payment Anything from a marketing tool perspective, or if you want to even add an online store, your journey can start from the portal and get you connected with WorldPay and GoDaddy in order to enhance your Commerce 360 solution. There's really no end to what you can do here. You come here to drive your business.
Greg Myers:Okay, and what would you say makes Commerce 360 unique?
Shae Orrick:You know, I would say that it's the ease of use, with the power and the flexibility of all the tools that it has, in addition to the partnership that's behind it. Right Merchants can come to this solution and they know they're being supported by two industry leaders with WorldPay and GoDaddy. Worldpay comes with decades of payments experience right and, combined with GoDaddy's innovative drive through website design and marketing services, we're really able to meet merchants where they're at and with Commerce 360, we can provide tools and services that will help them achieve their business goals. Like I said, it's one-stop shop with all the toys that you could possibly want, customized for your business.
Greg Myers:Okay, and what's on the roadmap? Roadmap, or at least whatever you can share about the future of Commerce 360?.
Shae Orrick:Yeah, absolutely. So. We are about to launch, like I mentioned, a new online order feature. I'm really excited about it. You know there are some merchants who aren't quite ready for the big website build. Right, of course, we want everyone in that Omnicommerce space because it's what consumers are looking for. But if they're not quite ready to be there, this feature is wonderful. The merchants will simply go into their portal and they can enable the service. An online order page will be created with all of their current inventory already in the system. They don't have to do much other than click a button. Once they post the link for the online order page to a social media platform like Instagram or Facebook, then they're off to the races. Very excited about that one.
Shae Orrick:We're also going to continue enhancing the user experience by creating a space for merchants to manage users for both online and a mobile app. That is in partnership with us. It gives our merchants even more control over their business and the experience they and their employees have, which is key, and we're also going to see AI technology really start to play a lot more in the solution. So right now, it's being leveraged mostly as an inventory management tool, but it is the future and I see a great deal of investment going forward to make it almost like a business partner for our merchants. Business partner at their fingertips. That's what we can think of it as, and we're going to continue to focus on creating features that make our merchants' business lives easier. This means consistent market research. We're going to speak with merchants to hear what they want to see. We'll leverage our own industry knowledge to find different ways of enhancing the solution.
Greg Myers:But it's only going to get better, is how I like to think of it. Yeah, I love that. I love the analogy there as well. So we've covered a lot of things, obviously about kind of the merchant view. You know in depth about the product. Is there anything else that you'd like to add or think maybe we didn't cover?
Shae Orrick:You know I know in the last couple episodes we talked a little bit about how COVID accelerated right the technology and consumers to be driven more online, but it was probably moving that direction anyway and you know we just got there a little bit faster. So I would just say I'm looking forward to continuing to work with a partner and with WorldPay on driving a solution that we know is going to be future-proof, right for our merchants and their businesses.
Greg Myers:Well, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show. So I want to thank you for being here. Thank you for your time today. I know it's very valuable. So, shay, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on the show today.
Shae Orrick:No, thank you so much for having me. It was great.
Greg Myers:Great, and to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in today to this special series on Omnicommerce brought to you by WorldPay. To learn more about WorldPay and their Omnicommerce products and solutions, please visit wwwworldpaycom. Slash en slash products slash commerce 360.