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Karen Bicknell & PC Express Operations
37 Plays3 months ago
A Journey Through PC Express Operations :pcx: The Commute sits down with Karen Bicknell to reflect on her remarkable journey with PC Express, offering a unique perspective on the evolution of its operations.
Join us as Karen shares her experiences, from the early days of PC Express to leading its impressive growth. We explore:
- The challenges of building a robust operational foundation.
- Key decisions and strategies that fuelled PC Express's success.
- The importance of people and culture in a rapidly scaling organization.
If you're interested in the journey of PCX's operational transformation, this episode is a must-listen.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning or afternoon or evening everyone. I'm your host Noah. My pronouns are he and him. i hope you are enjoying your commute whether you are coming to or from our lovely office um or you're having a nice snack or lunch and want to give a listen.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello to all y'all doing that. um I'm really excited about this one. I feel like I say that every time. I'm really excited. But like we have such great colleagues that I'm excited about everyone. But this one is definitely special.
00:00:35
Speaker
um With me, I have, you know, what many would refer to as an OG. um Do you want to introduce yourself? Hi everyone, I'm Karen Bicknell.
00:00:46
Speaker
I lead operations for PC Express. ah And yeah, I am an OG and I'm very excited to be here. ah Yeah, thanks for actually inviting me on. This is lot new things.
The Significance of PC Express
00:01:00
Speaker
I'm excited. yeah We were just talking.
00:01:02
Speaker
Funny enough, um and a bit shame on us as a podcast, um but we haven't done like a PCX dedicated cast yet.
00:01:12
Speaker
um Wow. So now I feel some pressure. I mean, if there's anyone better to do it, Rohit who is they say right. Um, say that absolutely. Absolutely.
00:01:26
Speaker
Um, so Karen, uh, you've been with LD, um, the enterprise yeah for quite some time. How long has it been?
Karen's Career Journey
00:01:36
Speaker
So I started and I was, you know what, thinking this morning, like July fourth is eight years. I thought you were about to drop like today is my anniversary. Oh we're like, but we're a couple weeks away. July 4th is eight years. Wow. Eight years. Wow.
00:01:49
Speaker
Wow. So you've seen, you've seen it all. Yeah. I started, I can't remember how many locations when I started. I think it, like it was less than a hundred. So like I started 2017 and 2018 was the year that we did the open
Evolution of PC Express
00:02:05
Speaker
400. Yeah. Yeah. so And it wasn't called PC express then. It was not called PC express. It was called click and collect. click CNC.
00:02:13
Speaker
You see, you see that sometimes on some channels. There's a Slack channel called CNC support. Amazing. They didn't drop the moniker. Love that. little bit of history for you. So actually let's touch on the history part. um You know, you talked to when you came when it was a very low number of stores and you came just for the expansion.
00:02:31
Speaker
um Like what were the early days of you know, PC, PCX or I don't know, if should i call it Click and Collect? collect What were the early days like? so yeah, what when i when I started, um I interviewed to work in a role in operations.
00:02:49
Speaker
And as part of that interview process, they created this role. There was sort of this gap at the time. Like there were literally product managers sending out communications to the teams in the stores.
00:03:02
Speaker
saying, do this, or can you check this? Like it was very, very basic. Let's send a couple of communications out to some of the colleagues doing these orders for our customers.
00:03:13
Speaker
There was a stand-up team that was going to these net new locations and saying, hey, let's get you ready and do like two weeks of training. And that's from an operation standpoint, all there was. There was a couple of guides, a guy in the office sending some communications, and they saw that we were really going to start to grow this thing. And and these were at the time store colleagues, right?
00:03:36
Speaker
ah Or did we hire? We actually had like a, like a implementation team, very small team of like four or five LD colleagues who literally traveled across the country, opened each store, moved on, opened each store, moved on.
00:03:52
Speaker
Got it. a couple of pieces of paper. Yeah. Here's what you do once you leave. Yeah. Because it was a couple orders a day. Right. It was, right. um And then we had, you know like i said, one product manager that would just send out some communications of here's an update or we're updating the site or we're doing this now or sorry, the site's been down for two days.
00:04:12
Speaker
It's coming back up tomorrow. So that's literally when I started. So cool. And um so in the stores, so we... So these weren't store colleagues. These were our, this was an implementation team that we had within digital.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yep. Right. Yep. um And then in the stores, was it store colleagues at the time or was it? It was store colleagues at the time. I think the first store, I wasn't here for the first store, but the first store we had our own team in there managing it until we kind of figured it out.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah. And then as we grew there, they had departments where they brought in a couple of colleagues who would do the orders as part of their duties elsewhere in the store. So I'm going to ring through customers on POS in the morning and then do these orders in the afternoon.
00:04:58
Speaker
And when someone shows up, we'll run and get their order, bring it out to them. So it was very like. And I would imagine these orders were done like when a store got an order. It was, it's a paper checking off. Yeah, and it was like, yeah. ah It was, or on the tells on guns, like early on. And they would just go and pick a full order, right? And then just go around the entire store, all temperature zones, everything just pick. and get ready for when the customer shows up. So very basic, very basic.
00:05:27
Speaker
So that was the early days. What was, what was
Scaling the Operations
00:05:30
Speaker
scaling like? So you said, you mentioned you came when we like. Yeah. So I started in July, 2017 and we started scaling in January, 2018, January, February.
00:05:41
Speaker
So I remember being really scared, like, oh my God, we're going to open 400 stores in a year. And it wasn't just in Loblaws now, we were going to other banners. So that meant a whole different way of introducing the program, getting people excited. We had to expand our team.
00:06:01
Speaker
um We created, and ah like a we had an implementations team still in place, but then we had to figure out as we scaled, how do how do we help them once we make changes? Because we knew there was going to be rapid changes.
00:06:14
Speaker
So we brought in a whole other team to kind of say, follow in afterwards and give them training and be on site and support, et cetera, et cetera. And then had to build out a communications network and structure to even talk to these teams so that they could be, they would feel like they had support behind them because it was just such a low volume business at the time, right? Right. you So even when we opened 400 stores, stores were still doing like, you know. Oh, few orders. Yeah. you Like 10 orders in a day would be celebratory. grace celebratory fantastic. Yeah. yeah
00:06:47
Speaker
That's like you're pulling on my Joe Fresh ship from stores. Oh, yes. Right? Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I remember it was like, you know, the store would get 10 orders and, you know, we'd go for drinks. It'd be like, yeah. Super exciting. Amazing. Yeah, super exciting.
00:07:01
Speaker
So, I mean, so that was the scale up. And then that's when we, start like, when did we start talking about, you know, a ah billion dollar business?
Key Partnerships and Growth
00:07:11
Speaker
Like, when did that happen?
00:07:14
Speaker
I remember 2019 was like the first time we were targeting a billion and we hit it. I remember like that was a big target. But when, when did it become like, oh, wow, this is the year?
00:07:28
Speaker
Uh, that's such a great question. I, i remember being part of the Instacart discussions, like nobody was doing delivery, right? We kind of started to see, I think to our credit ahead of everybody else, that delivery was going to be a thing. And we signed Instacart on an exclusive deal. Like you're only going to do this with us. They already had, um, they already had a contract with Walmart in the U S and nothing here. And we we held them to be exclusive to us so that we could get this going because we knew this was going to start to get big. And to do that, we needed this as part of the offering. yeah And we knew we could scale super quick the minute we turned this on. So I feel like that was the moment. That was 2019. That was the moment that it was like, okay, we're on, man. And it started to really, really make a difference. And wow we started to see Penn improve, et cetera, et cetera.
00:08:22
Speaker
That and we recognized that we could bring in our franchise banners, which were even smaller volume, but we saw the need across the country.
00:08:34
Speaker
We had, you know, really done our job in terms of a marketing and program perspective and other grocers were starting to come on. So we could really bring on every single banner.
00:08:44
Speaker
And those smaller market, I would imagine um there's a bit of a... um like real estate proximity play, right? In the sense that like in a smaller town, there's only so many grocers.
00:08:57
Speaker
And, you know, if a franchise store of ours in a smaller town, let's say is offering that service, you know, there's not many others that are going to offer it. There's a competitive aspect to it as well.
00:09:11
Speaker
We really at the time focused on how many locations are within sort of 10 to 15 minutes of Canadians. Yeah, of course. Household, right? yeah So that's, we were like, we're, we just need to get everywhere and make sure that we're penetrated everywhere, and even in smaller towns. So that service was available.
00:09:28
Speaker
So, okay, we're kind of going through the timeline of GX. So we hit a billion in 2019, 2020, COVID.
Navigating 2020 Challenges
00:09:36
Speaker
Oh, my God. I tell people that was the hardest year of my retail career and the most rewarding of my retail career. Yeah.
00:09:47
Speaker
Like we were helping people get food. Yeah. i I tell the story, I remember Craig Reed, a lot of people know Craig Reed, also an OG. I can remember um being on calls with him at midnight regularly because ah store was shut down. They had to, at the time, if you remember, shut down, clean the entire store because they had a COVID case.
00:10:10
Speaker
We had to lift and shift orders to another store. how are we getting ahold of customers? What communication were we sending out? Like literally that was our job. Yeah. But you felt like you were like, there was a two week wait to get your groceries.
00:10:26
Speaker
And people were staying up till midnight because they knew the next day. I remember. And they yeah hold their slot. Right. I was one of those people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, you had no choice. Yeah. um Yeah. i But I just, I felt so proud because an entire team, we came together and, and, and made it happen.
00:10:47
Speaker
And made sure we helped every single Canadian that eat groceries. andless I was so proud. So proud. Yeah, it was ah it was it was a lot of fun. ah Fun.
00:10:59
Speaker
it It was very cool to watch sort of, I mean, being on the Joe business at the time, you know, like, still working in stores, like understanding, like, yes, a store higher um there was a breakout or a case in stores and they would shut down and like watching the operations oh my god fumble through that.
00:11:19
Speaker
Fumble probably the wrong word. I would say like actually strive through that um was quite amazing. So, yeah, it's really, even though it feels so long ago, it's still like, I i kind of get goosebumps when when you say that story. yeah We really did do a lot for Canadians. I don't think. Oh, my God.
00:11:36
Speaker
you know If you didn't live through it, um it's hard to to really fathom, but we really did. that That's really cool. I and was looking, because I was like, what is he going to ask me today? i was I was looking at numbers again this morning, and this this is a cool fact.
00:11:52
Speaker
Total online grocery 2020, our pen was 5.8%. nationally was five point eight percent Like we jumped from like three, cause we were right. People didn't go into stores. Everything was online. Yeah.
00:12:05
Speaker
We jumped like everybody talked like e-commerce nationally did that, right?
Current Market Insights
00:12:10
Speaker
Everyone jumped. We jumped to five, eight. We like, that was crazy numbers. We never thought. And then there was the downturn after COVID was over, right?
00:12:18
Speaker
We this year are at five, eight. So cool. So we're hitting the volume we were doing in 2020 when all stores were shut down and you could only do online. That's actually kind of a cool fact. Yeah. And that, i you know, what that actually like that, that, you know, we're going down that timeline, right?
00:12:35
Speaker
You know, that's not just a customer demand a customer demand piece. That's a capacity piece that, you know, if, you and keep me honest here about like, that's a capacity piece that the enterprise has bought more, bought in more to, uh,
00:12:53
Speaker
at the PCX business. um That's another cap capacity piece on the delivery, like how we've scaled that business as well, right? Yes. So like, yes you know, why don't we now bring it to like present day where, you know, you talk, we talked about, you came on when, you know, it was a handful of stores doing one to two orders a day.
00:13:13
Speaker
and now we're in a place where, you know, it's nationwide. Um, it's got a pen of, you know, close to 6%, um, which 6% of a $60 billion dollarlar company is not a little bit obviously.
00:13:28
Speaker
um and then like, it's not just pickup, right. It's delivery. Like maybe let, like, let's round out this timeline of, you know, from an operation perspective, like how are we getting to the customer now today versus like how we did, you know, five years ago.
00:13:45
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, back to 2020, like we took over Joe Fresh Departments. You probably know that. no I remember. Yeah. ah Because we weren't selling clothes and used that excess space so we could fill with those orders. Right. So now think today, how are we doing that? And I think there has been a laser focus on getting more efficient in the store.
00:14:07
Speaker
so that we can house more orders. That coupled with a significant amount of capital investment in stores out West, like Superstar West. no I think everybody knows Superstar West is the banner that's so continuing to grow.
00:14:22
Speaker
ah We open up capacity, we fill it up. We open up capacity, we fill it up. It's it's been incredible to watch. But I would say it's a result of the investments we've made, the partnership that we've developed with the Superstore team who believe in this business, who know this is part of their, like it's contributing to directly to their growth for the last two years.
00:14:46
Speaker
ah And so they've been on this journey with us to say, okay, what do we need to do to turn this thing on? We we we recognize the value. And it's been hard. It's been really hard because you you know we're we're dealing with um a business that has a high turnover of colleagues.
00:15:00
Speaker
yeah We're dealing with a business where we are consistently changing their SOPs in store, how they interact with the picking app, how they pick orders, how they bring out orders to the car. We're adding more delivery.
00:15:13
Speaker
um It's not easy to stay on top of. So it's a lot of, i now i now this is where I say I have an amazing team who has been nothing but focused on, like you think about we want our customer to have a good experience. Our customer is our colleague. yeah We want to make sure we're providing them with the right experience so that they feel successful in in handing off those orders to those customers. So lost investment um in stores, ah investment in our processes,
00:15:43
Speaker
And just a really solid partnership partnership with the operators to make this a reality. Shout out JC. Shout out. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
00:15:55
Speaker
Definitely. You know, the person you want in the foxhole with you is. Oh my goodness. and Yeah. I've learned so much working closely with that team. Yeah. Um, for the, for listening, JC is Jonathan Carroll. Yeah. yeah Yeah. Um, he is a SVP of store ops for supermarket. Correct. Yeah. Correct.
00:16:12
Speaker
Um, Yeah. And, you know, I was i was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago and i think what people forget sometimes, because, you know, we come in with our focus of, God, this business is growing. Like, listen, we've just got to get this done.
00:16:27
Speaker
Like, they just dealt with the Manitoba wildfires in their communities. Right. On top of, um you know, we've got this big glassware promotion that last minute they pulled the trigger and added some complexity for the front end teams on that. Then we got all the walks arriving from the pod and then they had to make sure that they took care of that in a good way.
00:16:49
Speaker
And then um we just had a big change. You've all heard about it in Folgers Coffee. And like literally within 24 hours, they had to take it off the shelves, reline the shelves. um but So I was in a meeting where they were going through all of, this is in one store in one week, all they were dealing with.
00:17:07
Speaker
um they want to They want to open their stores and sell a lot of product, but it's not as easy as it It really isn't. I got to say, you know, in my, it's been a year and a half now on loyalty.
Store Management Complexities
00:17:20
Speaker
It has been an eye opener of, you know, what you just mentioned, that that's a week. yeah That happened all in one week, yeah right? um It's pretty amazing all the moving parts that um make our stores grow.
00:17:33
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Like it's it's, I'll never forget there was one, and and I've been in retail my whole life. So i like, but we were in a Superstore Ontario location. And we were meeting with the store manager and they had just gotten off the phone with two of the local school, high school principals because they were letting their kids out at the same time for lunch. And they were coming into the store and there was a rivalry between the two high schools.
00:18:01
Speaker
and causing problems. The row down at our RCSS? Yes. They were coming for lunch and having... So they had to negotiate changing lunch times so that they could... But like this was like a day in the life of the store manager. He wants to come in and sell some stuff.
00:18:17
Speaker
Gotta love it. And he's working with the community, right? But this is this is a day in the life of... And then we're coming going, hey, can we sell some more stuff? Like, can you open up your capacity? they're like, listen, we'll get to you, but...
00:18:29
Speaker
So I just think you have to always remember got to walk a mile in their shoes as well, right? To really understand. I love that. um Yeah. So let's, when it comes to your team, right? I feel like the walk a mile in their shoes, I actually love that. um I think, ah you know, from in my past role,
00:18:50
Speaker
So really working, I worked very closely with store ops and building shiproom stores. So like, I definitely, I have a ah deep respect for store operations in a big retail company like ours. um You know, ah how do you, how do you, when when someone joins your team, you know, what what are things that you remind them of um for to be successful?
00:19:14
Speaker
uh here's what i would and this so i'm going to do a plug we have a program called dice training and when anyone at ld starts we encourage you reach out to me reach out to sydney on my team um we encourage you we have regular sessions get into a store and pick an order end to end it's It takes you a couple hours to go in We have a trainer there and you can really understand, one, how it works, how our systems work, all the complexities of our systems, what we ask our colleagues to do on a day-to-day basis, but also be in a store environment to understand all the other things that happen because you'll see someone called in sick today, the truck was late today, this happened.
00:20:01
Speaker
um And so it really gives you an understanding of when you come back to your role, wherever it is in LD, what's happening in the store. And it's a reminder of everything you do, every decision you make is going to eventually get there. And so you got to really make sure you're putting the colleague as part of that solution. Love that.
00:20:20
Speaker
So of that that's such a good place to start. And that's i for for sure on ops, you have to do that and spend time in the store to understand, right? Yeah, a hundred percent. Um,
00:20:32
Speaker
Sort of shifting gears. You've been here at eight years or almost eight years, yeah right?
Cultural Reflections and Ethics
00:20:37
Speaker
um You know, folks like i yourself, myself included, who've been here, you know, for that close to that amount of time.
00:20:49
Speaker
There's a culture um that, you know, started with Wabaw Digital, you know, and now is LDML. yeah Yeah. I'll say proudly LDML. um what What makes us you unique?
00:21:03
Speaker
Oh, my God. Yeah. You thought I was going to give you number questions and stuff prepping for those. No, no, no. This is, you know, I want to know what, know, what What makes us unique in the sense that, like, you would want to tell someone that doesn't work here why we're unique?
00:21:23
Speaker
I will tell you a story that I tell a lot of people about Love Blood Digital my first week here. two so And I will tell you two things about it. My first first week here, I was pulled into, they had, like, a Monday sales call.
00:21:37
Speaker
And the previous week, um there had been a problem in store and we had let a lot of our customers down. And two things happened that meeting.
00:21:49
Speaker
First of all, someone asked me for my opinion and I had been here for a week. And they weren't just asking to be nice. They genuinely wanted my input and feedback.
00:22:00
Speaker
And when I interview somebody and bring somebody on board, and I tell them like, your voice is wanted here. We want to hear from everybody. So that was the first thing that I was like, oh my God, I'm in the right place. Like someone thinks I have something to contribute.
00:22:13
Speaker
The second thing that happened was there were tech folks in the room and product folks in the room who were clearly upset that we had let customers down. Like they took it to heart.
00:22:26
Speaker
It was like we had let someone in their family down. And i hadn't worked at a lot of, places I've worked at a lot of amazing places, but to see that come from the behind the scenes person that what I'm contributing to or what I did or didn't do impacted a customer, they took that to heart. ah That for me spoke volumes about where I was.
00:22:50
Speaker
Customer at the center. customer at the center. Love that. And everybody's welcome. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Um, okay. That was nice. I don't want to ask another question. Cause like, I feel like we could, that was like a mic drop to end the podcast.
00:23:05
Speaker
Uh, but I, we're going to do some quick rapid fire. Okay. Okay. Rapid fire. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I'm going to go all over the map here, Karen. Okay. I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay. Uh, favorite candy.
00:23:21
Speaker
Favorite candy? Anything like caramel, toffee, salted caramel. ah You and my sourdough get along. yeah yeah Loves all the caramel stuff.
00:23:33
Speaker
um Favorite thing you love to do on the weekend?
00:23:41
Speaker
Sleep in.
00:23:45
Speaker
Ah, sleep in. and And this is my favorite time of year because my patio in the back of my house is my favorite spot in the world. And just sitting outside on an afternoon.
00:23:56
Speaker
with my family. Yeah. Love it. Also the sound of silence too. Oh. Yeah. I'm with you. We're in a nice bright neighborhood, so yes. um Last one.
00:24:07
Speaker
We'll get a little deep on this one. What's the um you know the the the saying or like you know thought that you die in a hill for?
00:24:21
Speaker
That's a tough one, I know. Yeah, I... um
00:24:29
Speaker
I'm a big believer in morals and sticking to your morals. And i yeah people who've worked closely with me enough know that I get triggered when people aren't staying true to their morals.
00:24:40
Speaker
Like I get emotionally involved. So that's a big, big thing for me. Like show up, be honest, stick to your morals. I love that. Yeah. um Karen, this was really great. No, i this was fun. I told you it was going to be fun, Karen. you It's just a great conversation, right?
00:25:01
Speaker
um No, this was great. Is there anyone you want to give a shout out to? Well, we started off joking, but we should give a shout out to Rohit because I'm telling you, he is a fantastic leader. He really is. And i have really learned a lot from working closely with him. So I do want to shout out to him. Love that. I should. Love that. He deserves it. He definitely deserves it. yeah And then my team, 100%.
00:25:24
Speaker
one hundred percent of team Of course. I, you know, bias, but I have the best team and, uh, they, they, they're killing it. So I just, I feel so, so lucky. You definitely run a first class team. Oh, thank you. So yeah, it's, uh, it's cool to watch you from the sidelines. Uh, I'm a really big fan and I'm really happy you agreed to this podcast. Thank you asking me. Of course. Honored to be here. Of course. Karen, thank you. Have a good weekend. You too. Okay.
00:25:50
Speaker
Folks, thanks for tuning in for another episode of The Commute. Hope you're enjoying that commute or like I said, that snack or lunch. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks.