"Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot" - Chapter 105

Though Todd had admittedly gotten off to a somewhat hot start, with a few legitimately strong ideas, they've been a lot more miss than hit ever since. Edgar still isn't quite sure what to think about this guy. On one hand, he spews so much industry jargon that you almost have to conclude there must be some actual knowledge and experience buried in there. On the other hand, are they certain that this isn't all there is? That he hasn't just memorized the language and how to deploy it? Because much of what's happened for the past few months has this strange off kilter slant to it. As if maybe the guy overheard some people talking about certain concepts, or perhaps glanced at the conversation in an online forum, and then decided to launch into something as a result – without actually knowing how it works.

           A couple of weeks ago, he decided to shut down the juice and coffee bar at Arcadia, declaring it a waste of space. Which was probably justified – Vicky for example wasn't shedding any tears over this decision – and even in converting that space to a customer service counter, they probably come out ahead. But that's all very simple and relatively basic for anyone to grasp. Regarding anything more complex than this, however, the most common reaction to his decrees is an effective or actual huh?

           For instance there's the matter of these employee discount cards, a concept he allegedly researched and signed off on. While, despite the continuing complaints of various cashiers, the discount portion itself is working just fine, there are a whole host of other features that nobody has even gotten around to looking at, much less implementing. Much of the point of this program was that, since they have the shopper's email address tied to the card number, it's capable of not just targeting each customer with a unique newsletter, based upon their history, it's also capable of generating various rewards based on such. All it really takes is to decide on a strategy, as far as what kind of rewards they wish to offer, for the coding stuff in the Slingshot program basically runs itself on that front.

In the meantime, though, the “points” continue to accumulate and display at the bottom of every receipt, although anytime a customer inquires as to what this means, they have nothing to tell these people. The handful of times Edgar has mentioned this to Todd, it's gone nowhere. Which was itself maybe dismissed as mere inattention, although this has turned into something else entirely, of late, considering that's he's now picking the brain of Bellwether's marketing guru, Carl, as they brainstorm on ways to...directly target Wholesome Shopper Market customers. The latest concept, after a couple months of back and forth, is that they might generate, say, ten or twelve different paper flyers, to stick in with the daily paper, each one attenuated to the different neighborhood demographics Todd has personally come up with (or so he claims), visible on these snazzy charts he showed up at the office with this morning.

           “Okay, but wait a second,” Vicky interjects, at this Monday morning meeting which is, if nothing else, at least more animated than most, “they're gonna let you do this? Like The Chesboro Tribune lets you stick different ads in the paper, depending on what neighborhood it's goin' to? And how would that work, anyway, I mean, are they gonna stuff these ads in there themselves?”

           “That's a good question. That's a very good question,” Todd agrees.

           “Mmm. Nnnn,” Carl hesitates, “let me get back to you on that. I'll have to look into it.”

           “But...”

           “Well, however it has to actually work, you know, we need...,” Todd starts.

           “Exactly,” Carl agrees, raising his eyebrows to convey the profundity of this point, “we need some way to specifically target these people.”

           “But we already have that,” Edgar eventually manages to inject. “I've been mentioning this for months. The loyalty card program has a program for that, all we need to do is decide on the rewards and turn it on. Then it emails everyone based on their history.”

           “Well, they would have to agree to receive emails from us,” Carl says, dismissively, “we can't just spam people with marketing emails.”

           “They already did agree to it. They agreed to it when they signed the application, and gave us their email address.”

           “Well, I would need to see those applications,” Carl sniffs.

           Edgar agrees to send him a blank one, but can already tell how this is going to go. Carl has been a nice guy and everything up to this point, yet is clearly reveling in the additional power he's been given, drafted into this side of the operation after all these years, and seems to already consider himself one of the management bigwigs or something. Then again, who knows, maybe Todd told him such. As for Todd himself, he remains dismissive of anything to do with Slingshot, will shoot a suggestion down at the mere mention of that word – even when there's nothing better to readily replace it.

           The next potential selection for a greatest hits album is cued up when Todd flies in yet another old St. Louis crony, this Josh guy, with this nifty gadget that sounds somewhat cool but not exactly essential. In fact it feels as though it might embody that old aphorism about a technology in search of a problem, that Todd is more just throwing a bone to one of his buddies, hooking him up with a project and a payday.

           Explaining the situation now, Todd's latest outrage involves customers writing PLU numbers themselves, he says, on the packages, when buying bulk items. For whatever reason, it's determined that this Josh guy will mail the parts to his device here first, then fly in a few days later to get the program up and running. Once this package arrives, the assembly of its few components – basically a bunch of metal pieces and one tablet sized computer screen, all of them black – seems simple enough. And yet Todd asks Edgar to take the parts over there and set up this unit himself. He's not in the habit or arguing with his bosses, when asked to do something, and this does appear pretty straightforward, so he marches over there with the box, begins examining the situation.

           Craig's involvement is required soon enough, however, at least in an advisory capacity. Bulk takes up two aisles, yet they have just the one device, which means the store manager here will have to sign off on its ideal placement. This thing was designed to clip to a pole, with an adjustable clamp, which already limits their options. It's eventually determined that the only place this will really fit is over on a metal support pole near the spices. Only problem is, there's no power source anywhere near here.

           After analyzing the situation, they conclude that the only way this will work, apart from running an extension cord across the floor, which would look tacky even with a rug covering it and require going around an aisle besides, is to bring it up through the drop tile ceiling, then over to the far wall, down to an outlet over there. As they rummage around in the office and the back dock area and come up empty handed, on a long enough extension cord, and for that matter don't seem to have an adequate ladder on hand, they traipse down to a discount store, just a few shops down in the strip mall, and acquire both, charging them to Central. Then return to get cracking on the installation.

           With the ladder near the wall outlet, they remove the ceiling tile directly above, then do the same over by the pole. Snaking the extension cord up through this one, within a few lasso-esque attempts at throwing it, Craig eventually lands a shot within reaching distance of the other. Repeating these steps in reverse, more or less, they yank the cord down and plug it in. From here they are able to mount the device to the pole and screw it in tightly against it, and they are now in business, awaiting only this Josh's imminent arrival.

           Or maybe not so much. On the plus side of the ledger, this Josh guy does seem like a nice enough guy, anyway. This has become their consolation prize so often that it's turning into the WSM battle cry. He's kind of a shambling dork, in thick glasses and somewhat wrinkly, outdated business attire. But perfectly affable and down to earth, despite having developed this software company on his lonesome.

           He and Todd will both insist that this isn't even Josh's first contract, that other grocery stores have installed the software and therefore they aren't this dude's first litter of guinea pigs. This point is a difficult one to accept, however, in light of how this all goes down. After Josh works his magic getting the device up and running, it doesn't take long before a pair of major problems surface.

           The first of these concerns the display screen itself, as far as what transpires when the customers punch in their digits. Though quite naturally an issue that Todd dismisses as trivial, it is truly anything but. In essence, the filtering function is wack and basically works in reverse of how most modern applications are expected to. Typing in a more substantial series of digits like 3003 will work just fine, because there is only one PLU number that this would ever apply to. However, at the opposite end of the spectrum, a single digit such as 3 produces a nightmarish scenario severe enough to keep all but the sturdiest souls awake at night: it lists every single PLU number that begins with a 3, and in seemingly nonsensical order, too. A customer would have to scroll through screen after screen until hitting the jackpot and able to select the correct one.

           Edgar already has a couple other concerns, too, though these are considered minor by comparison. For one, though Josh had him email a bulk database days ago, he insisted he wanted all of the numbers, not just those carried only at Central – which means there are reams of options on here that this store doesn't even carry. Had Edgar known how this was going to play out, he's thinking, he would have only sent Josh the database for Central alone, and told him it was the entire thing. Because as it stands now, there are hundreds of items coming up on the screen which this store doesn't even carry.

           Assuming Josh ever did figure out a way to filter by store, however, how would this work down the road, when new numbers are added, or old ones are deleted, or prices change? In its current configuration, Edgar will have to email all of these changes to Josh, who insists he can at least update those remotely himself.

           Fair enough, maybe, yet even beyond the obstacle of this display screen madness, there's another larger issue looming on the back end. To wit, these barcodes that his machine is cranking out, they don't scan at the register. After examining the situation, Josh declares this a real stumper. He takes some examples with him, of the printed out stickers that won't scan, as well as photos of his display screen, along with notes about what needs fixed, and flies back to St. Louis, promising to resolve these issues pronto.

           In the meantime, though, does Todd wish to unplug the machine? No, he does insist for a spell upon leaving it up and running. He instructs Edgar to show the cashiers how to decipher the numbers printed underneath the barcodes, so that they might punch these in themselves. Only when a number of people complain, Edgar and the cashiers among them, that this makes no sense and is no better than the customers just writing the PLU numbers on there as they have been all along, does Todd reluctantly agree to shut this down for the time being.

           But, they do all have their eye on this theoretical prize of RU Data, which Todd is adamant will prove far, far better than this Slingshot experience. So this is the light at the end of the tunnel, which they keep their eyes upon, the carrot at the end of the stick compelling them to move forward. To that end, Todd and Edgar have had a second conference call with Matt and Greg out in Long Island, to discuss how this database transition is going. Those two admit that they're still working on some automated method for piping the information directly from Slingshot to RU Data, but haven't figured that out just yet and it might be months down the road before they do. Though Edgar's actually not a “techie guy,” despite Todd's continued introductions as such, and he might blow his cover once and for all by proposing this – then again, would it be a bad thing, if said “cover” was blown? Edgar feels like he's been attempting to dynamite this “cover” into shreds for years now - he thinks he actually has a solution for this, which these guys have apparently not considered. It might be an outlandish, rookie type suggestion, that they may laugh out of the water, but there's only one way to determine this.

           “Couldn't I just upload my CSV files to both places, for the time being?” he proposes.

           “Upload your CSV files to both places?” Matt Abernathy echoes, though from his tone it sounds like he already gets it.

           “Yeah, since I'm uploading them to Slingshot anyway, it couldn't be that much more work to upload them to your program also, right? It would get the ball rolling, at least, until you figured out this connection thing.”

           “Mmm, that might work...,” Greg Talbot says.

           “Well, we would have to map the fields,” Matt points out. Although Edgar's thinking, you're going to have to do this at some point, anyway, this is just speeding up the process.

           “Yeah, we'll have to map the fields, but...”

           “That should work. Go ahead and send your database to us again.”

           It is by now the middle of June, which means it's been three months since their initial phone conversation. So they would have needed an updated master file all over again regardless. There haven't been as many changes – if any, actually – to their vendor list in this time, though. This also seems like a relatively easy project to knock out, for them to set up ordering, leading Edgar to inquire what kind of progress they've made.

           “Uh...,” Greg says.

           “Send us those email addresses again,” Matt tells him.

           “Yeah, send those again.”