Nolan Smith, President and COO at Cin7: “AI is actually replacing what makes jobs hard”

Manage less. Sell more. Connect everything. That’s the promise of Cin7, which is there to help small-to-medium sized businesses keep track of their inventory, and we’re pleased to welcome Nolan Smith, President and COO at Cin7, as the latest guest in our Pipeline interview series.

Our interview covered many subjects, but perhaps inevitably the topic of AI just kept cropping up. Not only does it solve problems, says Nolan, but it can help people expand their business too.

Take sales reps. AI can be an invaluable tool when it comes to training, helping them become subject matter experts. “It can take years to fully understand a product and all it offers,” says Nolan, “but that amount of time isn’t a luxury that human sales reps have.”

So you bring in AI to both train people and supplement their knowledge. “Solutions now offer tailored plans and resources to each individual based on progress and challenge areas. It can also quickly call up responses for sales reps to answer customer questions, or listen in on customer success calls to help guide reps for upselling opportunities.”

That brings us to expansion, and Nolan had much to say about “how AI is going to make expanding business operations into global markets easier, especially for SMBs”. He explains that it helps them “see around corners and tell them what they don’t know about their own operations. Not only can it help identify problems, but it can also offer tailored solutions that save businesses time and money. One example is through demand forecasting capabilities.”

Read on to discover more details, but there is a huge amount here for any SMB looking to expand into new markets and generally solve problems they face.

Related reading: Five CRM solutions for medium-sized businesses

Can you give an example of a complex problem in sales that you – or your company – have been involved in tackling with technology?

At Cin7, our customer base is primarily small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who are experts in their products and know how they want to sell them, but often lack the technology and tools required to track their inventory levels.

Learning and understanding the backend of inventory management processes is challenging for anyone. A lot of existing SAP and ERP tools are also challenging to navigate and usually require solely designated project managers to run that aspect of a business.

Our SMB customers don’t always have the resources or manpower to dedicate one person to run inventory management. It’s important to provide tools with a mix of comprehensive features while prioritising user simplicity that democratises that same kind of technology but brings it down to a level where SMBs are able to reap its benefits.

While the simpler aspect of ERP is something that Cin7’s products offer, the opportunity to continue to make the technology the most accessible is something that still exists in our market. This is an opportunity that we are continuing to pursue with Cin7’s products. Our recent advancements and investments in updating our technology, like our acquisition of Inventoro, will help us in achieving this.

Continuing to enhance and adapt our technology not only allows us to develop the best product experience but also the best sales and revenue experience. We want our customers to see themselves and their problems showcased in our marketing campaigns, go through our sales process and receive a great product demonstration, and then the product backs it all up. 

In your view, how has the role of CRM software evolved over the last decade or so? What major breakthroughs stand out for you?

Over the last decade, CRM has probably seen more developments and enhancements than it had for multiple decades prior. People have changed the ways they shop and interact with businesses, so businesses need to change the way they interact with their customers in turn.

We’ve shifted from traditional, basic customer tracking systems, to cloud-based systems that can enhance the entire customer journey. These systems now have the ability to automate and track data in real-time, across multiple platforms and channels.

With the boom in e-commerce selling in recent years, it’s more important than ever for businesses to be able to manage their customer relationships from one central location. Today’s CRM software can aid businesses in not only those operational processes but also customer management. Providing tailored marketing strategies, handling customer communication, and helping inform decisions based on customer tracking and data are just some of the ways CRM has changed recently. This allows them to operate more efficiently, and maintain a strong and solid customer retention rate.  

Recommended reading: How B2B marketplaces can build trust, reputation and credibility

How has technology helped marketing and sales work better together? Or, if you feel differently about it, has it increased the gap between those two departments? 

Certain technology tools allow for close collaboration between the sales and marketing departments. Technologies and software, like CRM and Customer Experience systems, allow for the enablement of in-depth customer relationship management, with highly automated functional and customer data analytics, from the prospect stage through the customer’s post-sale experience.

This creates the opportunity for more informed decision-making practices. When technology offers advanced reporting analytics based on sales experiences, marketing leaders can use that data to make better decisions for their brands and the prospect journey.

Understanding customer trends and demand through sales allows marketers to appropriately execute campaigns based on what customers want – ultimately we believe the tools provide a more seamless collaboration between Sales, Marketing and Post Sales teams.

At Cin7, we think about how we solved the inventory management inefficiency model for our customers and apply that same mentality to solving our own revenue inefficiencies. We are a transactional model that sells a product to customers and we close hundreds of deals a month. Marketing does a great job at bringing in over a thousand leads monthly, so any small move we can make to improve that value chain is the same way our customers think when trying to solve their own inefficiencies.

What are some examples of AI being used in sales that stand out to you?

When AI was first coming onto the scene, there was this fear that it would replace jobs. Now, with so many AI tools out there, we can see that AI is actually replacing what makes jobs hard.

When I think about this from a sales perspective, I think about our own onboarding processes at Cin7. We sell a complex tool that has over 700 integrations. Our salespeople essentially have to have a deep knowledge and understanding of our breadth in order to field customer queries. You can’t expect sales representatives to become subject matter experts overnight. It can take years to fully understand a product and all it offers, but that amount of time isn’t a luxury that human sales reps have.

The fact remains that customers still want to talk to humans, but they also want to talk to people who know what they are talking about. This is where AI comes in. The real power of AI comes from the knowledge base of businesses, especially when their AI tools are built specifically for them. You need to take real-world problems and build AI tools that offer real solutions.

When it comes to AI assisting in sales specifically, the technology can be used to help train sales representatives quicker than traditional training resources. Solutions now offer tailored plans and resources to each individual based on progress and challenge areas. It can also quickly call up responses for sales reps to answer customer questions, or listen in on customer success calls to help guide reps for upselling opportunities.

Recommended reading: Overcoming barriers to unlock data value

When thinking of international expansions, how can technology help? What role can it play in developing and executing a strategy for commercial activities in a multinational context?

When businesses think about expanding their operations internationally, technology can help provide unprecedented insight into global operations.

Technology allows for a localised view of where businesses are thinking of expanding and can assist in streamlining efforts to tailor business needs to suit the market they are moving into. Businesses can use technology to gain insights into international market research and data analysis, which allows them to better understand the customer demographics they will be selling to.

Unified commerce technologies, like inventory management and demand forecasting software, can allow for seamless global supply chain management. CRM systems can help maintain consistency across all aspects of the business, ensuring smooth operations on a global scale.

When it comes to general commercial activities, it would be a missed opportunity to not look at how AI is going to make expanding business operations into global markets easier, especially for SMBs.

One of the top five industries AI will and has been disrupting is supply chain management. So when businesses are thinking about selling globally, AI opens up the opportunity for them to see around corners and tell them what they don’t know about their own operations. Not only can it help identify problems, but it can also offer tailored solutions that save businesses time and money. One example is through demand forecasting capabilities.

AI can also predict the outcome of certain sales timeframes and how much stock a business should or should not have on hand. If a business owner is thinking of increasing the stock of a product, they can use AI demand forecasting to see if that’s actually warranted. If it is, the AI forecasting capabilities will let them know. If it’s not, the AI capabilities can save them money on products that will likely continue to sit on the shelves. 

In your view, what role can technology play in providing a unified view of offline and online sales? How can it improve both worlds? What challenges can it tackle?

Thinking about the businesses we serve here at Cin7, one of our strengths is addressing the crossover between offline and online sales.

Think physical retail stores versus eCommerce selling. Some SMBs we serve sell through online channels only, but many also operate through traditional brick-and-mortar buildings.

Most of these sellers use several different programs and manual processes to manage operations. However, the reliance on manual counting and data entry becomes increasingly unsustainable and prone to human error once these businesses reach a higher level of success.

More success in a business leads to an increase in consumer demand, leading to a need for more products and a surge in revenue streams to manage. All of this adds complexity to an SMB’s operations, and Cin7 directly solves that complexity.

A way to unpack that is to think about how the increase in global demand makes traditional inventory tracking through spreadsheets or point-in-time tools, a roadblock in keeping up with customer needs. The external accounting programs and shipment application solutions they’ve been utilising also become more difficult to keep up with.

These sellers require strong technology intervention that not only allows them to control all of these operations from one centralised platform but makes it so they’re not bogged down by manual processes.

This is where something like unified commerce software comes into play and provides an end-to-end solution. Adopting technology to connect all marketplaces, offline and online, enables sellers to manage all of their business operations from one place.

Unified commerce solutions bring all business functions together, across sales and operations in an automated workflow, allowing sellers to target more customers through more sales channels and process more orders more efficiently and faster than before.

Technology like this can sync offline and online sales, automate inventory management, and manage customer relationships, allowing for a consistent customer experience across all channels.