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January 2021 Kadro eCommerce Insights Newsletter
- By Chris Cowles
- Feb 5, 2021
The team at Kadro received some exciting news this month from Clutch, the internationally-renowned B2B rating and review platform. Kadro was named one of North Carolina’s top e-commerce developers for 2020. Clutch praised Kadro's e-commerce strategy, consulting, design, and development expertise! According to Clutch and their research, amongst all providers in North Carolina, Kadro is consistently one of the best!
Website: www.seadek.com TO READ THE FULL STORY VISIT THE SEADEK PORTFOLIO PAGE ON THE KADRO WEBSITE AND TAKE A LOOK AT THEIR CURRENT WEBSITE.
Technology Partner of the MonthBraintree provides the global commerce tools people need to build businesses, accept payments, and enable commerce for their users. Braintree permits the use of many payment methods including alternative payment methods such as PayPal, Venmo, ApplePay and GooglePay. With Braintree and Magento 2, merchants get comprehensive payment options to allow customers to pay via their preferred method, the potential for more mobile revenue via a fast, simple checkout process, robust fraud protection & PCI compliance, and expansive global reach via a network of more than 300 million active consumers (Paypal 2020 Q2 data).
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Say hello to Allison Holadia, Customer Support Specialist at KadroThe famed football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “It takes months to find a customer… second to lose one.” This statement has been validated by volumes of survey data over the years and I suppose a bit of common business sense as well. It’s surely true that customers quit doing business with a company due to bad experiences and thus businesses must approach every support interaction as an opportunity to delight or displease. Good customer support starts with the human touch, often boosted by a dose of technology. It's reinforced by the understanding that customer support/service is the cornerstone of the business and the foundation of the customer experience. It is with this brief preface that we introduce Allison Holadia, Kadro’s Customer Support Specialist. Like many at Kadro, Allison has been with the company for quite a few years now. She started in 2007 after leaving the eCommerce Department at a long-time Kadro customer (the first customer actually), REEDS Jewelers. Given her familiarity with Kadro and its services, Allison was a natural fit. Also like others in the company, Allison wears many hats. No literally, she has lots of hats and wears them. But she also “wears lots of hats” when it comes to her role at Kadro. Knowing the customer and their website(s) reinforces the support process… Allison has been an integral part of many new website launches and upgrades over the years. Regardless of the project size, Allison considered each to be a major project. "It’s exciting to be part of a new website project from start to finish," mentioned Allison. A current project Allison is participating in is the new Hungry Harvest project. She is the QA lead on this website, so she’s responsible for all aspects of testing. Being part of the QA testing team allows Allison to get to know the new website in great detail. This familiarity spills over to other types of website projects like upgrades which typically include the addition of new features and functionality. When support issues come up, it really helps to have this hands-on familiarity with both the customer and their website which adds context and relevance to the support request or issue. Great people meeting an array of business and technological support challenges… Kadro really is a place full of great people. The staff exhibits a true team attitude which makes working at the company a very positive experience. Everyone is always willing to help and teach others when needed. And no day is ever the same. For Allison, each day’s course is charted by the variety of support issues and new website feature requests received. These make each day unique providing her and other team members with a new sets of challenges to meet and more interesting projects to undertake. She can go the distance… in the long run… (and swim and cycling) Outside the office, Allison’s hobby and favorite interest (other than her 2 kids of course) is training and competing in triathlons. She has competed in multiple sprint triathlons, as well as many half and full marathons. She has competed in three half Ironman’s (70.3 miles) and finished her first full Ironman last year (140.6 miles). For those not familiar with what an Ironman competition is, it’s an endurance multi-sport race consisting of swimming, cycling, and running over various distances. But 140.6 miles? Really? Now that’s impressive! With the physical and mental demands of competing in endurance events, it’s not surprising that Allison spends a great deal of her spare time participating in swimming, biking and running training. Should you have the occasion to be on the phone or emailing support at Kadro, you’ll likely have the opportunity to communicate with Allison. If you do, take a minute to ask how her training and competing is coming along. Magento 2.4 - packed with great enhancements to make the customer experience even betterMagento is a powerful, flexible, reliable and popular commerce platform used by hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. And the latest version of Magento adds to this legacy with great new features for both B2C and B2B eCommerce and omni-channel merchants. Here a peek at just a few.
There's so much more. Contact a Kadro representative to learn more about Magento 2.4 and how it can help make your vision for selling online a reality!
Recent Blog Posts* Retail reimagined: New shoppers, new habits, big opportunity * BOPIS – Spicy Filipino dish or eCommerce business strategy? * What is one of the biggest challenges to running a successful eCommerce store? * Your eCommerce Store Customers Want This! Coming Soon!More informative blog posts! Stay tuned for future announcements. |
PetEdge website shown above...
We love our pets. And all that love requires a very large industry to provide the goods and services pet owners demand for their animals. 67% of U.S. households own a pet which equates to 84.9 million homes*. Most popular pet in these households? Dogs. Yes, the pet industry is big business. It estimated that $99.0 billion will be spent on our pets in the U.S. in 2020. According to the 2019-2020 APPA National Pet Owners Survey
According to data from IBIS World, there are some 133,669 grooming and boarding businesses alone in the U.S. Then there are the various pet specialty, hardware, farm and general merchandise stores, veterinarians and humane societies all of which support the health and well-being of our pets.
Companies that exist to support this diverse array of pet industry businesses supply a plethora of products and often rely on advanced technologies to get the right products to the right business efficiently. Such an enterprise is Boss Pet Products, Inc.
Boss Pet Products, Inc. is the largest supplier to pet-care professionals and independent retailers offering over 12,000 national brand and exclusive PetEdge branded products. They operate two eCommerce websites which are vital elements in their ongoing business success.
KADRO was selected by Boss Pet Products, Inc. (dba Boss PetEdge) to engineer the re-platforming of their two B2B eCommerce websites and CRM system from a legacy SAP Web Channel Experience Management (WCEM) implementation to the Magento Commerce platform, while maintaining their real-time connectivity to their SAP ECC ERP system.
The new Magento-powered websites, which were launched in May 2020, deliver an enhanced user experience for pet professionals and wholesale buyers, an improved mobile shopping experience, enhanced tools for content and product catalog management, enhanced integration with back-end systems and a custom CRM system integrated with the websites order management functionality.
“Evolving our eCommerce business onto Magento’s state of the art platform is paramount to delivering on the needs and expectations of our customers. Completing this major project without incurring any downtime was a tremendous success and Kadro lead us expertly every step of the way.”
Founded in 1999, the company’s mission is simple: powering customer engagement across all touchpoints. This award-winning, global enterprise has offices in 9 countries and over 350 employees who help fulfill the mission for thousands of brands. Engagement Cloud empowers marketers to acquire, convert, and retain customers at scale. Users can connect with CRM and ecommerce systems, surface powerful data, and automate intelligent cross-channel messages that resonate with audiences. You’ll find dotDigital and all our technology partners on the Partners page of our website.
North Carolina native Cameron Rogers began his career at Kadro as a software engineer some eight years ago by way of the Cooperative Education Program at NC State University which Kadro has been an active corporate participant in for many years. University-sponsored Cooperative Education programs allow students to work multiple work-terms in a relevant field to their major to gain firsthand experience in the workforce. Cam graduated from NC State with a degree in computer science.
Over the years he has worked on major projects for a number of Kadro customers like REEDS.com, BoatOutfitters.com and MasonJars.com and has supported numerous other company projects as well.
Moving up the ranks over the years, today Cam is Director of Engineering and is mostly responsible for establishing Kadro’s software development methodologies and providing technical guidance to the engineering teams. He is a Magento 2 Certified Professional Front End Developer and is skilled in a wide array of software tools and technologies like HTML5, CSS, Javascript and more.
In speaking about his tenure at Kadro Cam stated “I really enjoy the atmosphere and culture we have at Kadro. Kadro is a very open, friendly and collaborative environment. Over the years I've really been able to build strong relationships with my co-workers and can honestly say some of my best friends work alongside me every day.”
Outside of the office Cameron is active in sports and outdoor activities like basketball, football, ultimate frisbee along with traveling, hiking and exploring.
Not surprisingly, he’s also a big NC State fan, but moves a bit further down the coast when it comes to his favorite football team which is the Atlanta Falcons. Well we guess the Panthers have some work to do.
You can learn more about Kadro’s participation in the Cooperative Education Program at NC State University by visiting our co-op page.
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