Dylan Telford, the Head of Order Operations at Aries Solutions, breaks down the essential strategies for peak retail readiness. Drawing from over 20 years of hands-on experience in retail operations and strategy, Dylan explains why preparing for the holiday rush is a year-round commitment rather than a last-minute scramble.

The conversation explores the critical need for cross-functional ownership and the power of using real-time data to drive decisions. Dylan shares innovative approaches to staffing, such as on-call models and neurodiverse hiring, while highlighting the hidden costs of returns and the dangers of confusing promotional strategies during high-traffic events like Black Friday.

• Why peak preparedness requires a dedicated leader and a continuous, year-round feedback loop.
• The importance of real-time inventory management and testing order routing rules to balance cost with customer expectations.
• Strategic staffing solutions for distribution centers, including dynamic on-call models that increase worker reliability.
• How to manage the "margin-eroding" impact of returns through proactive initiatives and resell opportunities.
• Using KIBO to automate complex routing rules and protect store staff from being overwhelmed by omnichannel fulfillment.
• A cautionary peak season "horror story" about the risks of inconsistent pricing between online and in-store channels.

To learn more about KIBO visit our site https://kibocommerce.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kibocommerce

Jayme Reynolds, Director of AI and Commerce Partnerships at Grid Dynamics, discusses his unique role as a "Chief Dot Connector," emphasizing the importance of connecting people and ideas to solve complex business and technology problems. He highlights Grid Dynamics as an engineering company and systems integrator that works closely with IT organizations to assess and recommend the right technologies for clients.

The conversation delves into the evolving landscape of B2B commerce. Jayme notes that B2B buyers now expect the same seamless e-commerce experience as B2C consumers, including the ability to buy in bulk, receive timely deliveries, and flexibly change orders. He shares examples from the roofing industry, where precise delivery timing for materials is crucial. Jayme addresses the historical hesitation in B2B to adopt modern commerce solutions, attributing it to a long-standing reliance on personal interactions and heavily customized ERPs, which often lack real-time inventory visibility and efficient order management capabilities.

Show Highlights:

• The evolving expectations of B2B buyers for seamless e-commerce experiences and flexible order management.

• The critical need for modern OMS solutions in B2B to manage inventory, fulfillment, and returns more efficiently than traditional ERPs.

• How AI is poised to enhance human creativity and efficiency in the workplace, shifting roles rather than eliminating them.

• The strategic advantage of adopting agile, cloud-native, and API-first commerce platforms.

• The philosophical discussion around the "should" question in AI implementation, focusing on practical use cases that deliver real business value.

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To learn more about KIBO visit our site https://kibocommerce.com/ and follow us on LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kibocommerce

Sonja Keerl, one of the original founders of the MACH Alliance, joins the show to share her unconventional opinions on technology, ethics, and the future of commerce. By day, Sonja helps B2B SaaS companies with strategy, messaging, and positioning. By night, she is busy creating "Unomundi", a network for children to explore different cultures.

The conversation starts with Sonja's thoughts on how tech professionals have negatively impacted the internet and social media for the next generation. The hosts pivot to Sonja's role in co-founding the MACH Alliance in 2019, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She explains the alliance started in a London pub, to unite best-of-breed vendors and offer a flexible, agile alternative to the dominant monolithic platforms. The discussion covers the distinction between headless and composable, with Sonja using children's toys to illustrate how composable software needs interoperability standards to truly be effective for brands. Finally, Sonja discusses the current state of composability, the challenge of SI lock-in, and her vision for an AI-driven, automated future for buying commerce software.

This episode was originally recorded August 6th, 2025.

• The origin story of the MACH Alliance
  
  

• Understanding the difference: Headless separates presentation from content; Composable is modular software for specific business needs, but true freedom requires interoperability.
  
  

• The composable industry faces a challenge with "SI lock-in," where System Integrators provide the "glue" between systems and retain the intellectual property.
  
  

• The collision of AI and composability: modular vendors are uniquely positioned to leverage agents for back-end efficiency and goal orchestration across multiple systems.
  
  

• AI-driven interoperability is the next race and can make composable solutions feasible across different maturity stages in the coming years.
  

We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review," then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second, and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

To learn more about KIBO visit our site https://kibocommerce.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kibocommerce