Andy Goodfellow Featured in Authority Magazine

Do you love learning insights from top B2B executives? Same here! That’s why we’re excited to share that Zoro’s Chief Technology Officer, Andy Goodfellow, is featured in Authority Magazine’s article, Lessons I Learned From Last Year To Take Our Organization to the Next Level in 2024. Here, Andy dishes on learning from mistakes, taking risks, and how technology is at the center of Zoro’s growth strategy in 2024.

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This series aims to discuss the experiences and lessons learned by top executives over the past year, and how these insights are shaping the landscape for change and innovation in 2024. The past year has been a time of unprecedented challenges and opportunities, requiring adaptive leadership and innovative strategies. We believe that sharing these experiences can inspire and guide others in their endeavors to drive positive change in their organizations and industries. I had the pleasure of interviewing Andy Goodfellow, CTO at Zoro.com.

Andy Goodfellow has served as the Chief Technology Officer of Zoro since February 2020. In this role he provides strategic vision and direction for the execution of Zoro’s core software engineering, digital product, experience design, data and business systems in support of Zoro’s customers, team members and the execution of the company’s endless assortment business strategy. Prior to joining Zoro, Andy spent almost two decades in the B2B marketing and advertising industry leading teams that created custom software solutions for various companies including CDW, Komatsu, Discover, Lenovo, Philips, Zebra, Abbott, Siemens and more.

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With a background as both a commercial artist and a computer science professional, I realized early on that the combination of technical and creative thinking helped me to behave and think differently. I’m also an extrovert, meaning I get energy from being around people. That unique combination allowed me to move quickly into leadership positions, where I found that I enjoyed building teams. By watching other leaders throughout my early career, I came to appreciate those who lead with purpose. In my case, that meant pushing my team to create value for the business and its customers.

Early on in my career I accidentally deleted a lead database of one of my customers, and quickly learned that it hadn’t been properly backed up. Nervous, and convinced this was going to be my last day of employment, I went into my supervisor’s office and was surprised by his reaction. “Let’s go to the customer and we’ll explain to her what happened,” he said. I was expecting the worst, but she was firm and fair as she listened to what happened, she shared she was glad I acknowledged the mistake and had learned from it, and wanted to know where we were going to go from there.

That taught me a key lesson: It is important to provide safety. When you do that, you also empower people to work with speed and give them the freedom to innovate. Mistakes will happen, but how you react to them, how you unwind them and move forward from them is truly what matters.

To me, success is a journey, not an event, and it involves loving what I do, who I am doing it for and finding fulfillment in both personal and professional aspects. I do not measure success by titles or positions, but instead by how my team and I can use our skills and talents to create value for the business and our customers, as well as to grow and learn from challenges. I align my definition of success with Zoro’s purpose of making it easy for customers to find, buy and get everything they need, and my team and I ensure all our metrics can be tied back to empowering us to evaluate the impact of this purpose-driven strategy.

As we’ve seen in the news recently, one significant risk many companies faced this year is asking team members to come back to the office. I was personally tasked with that challenge, making it so team members voluntarily wanted to come back to our upcoming new office space. Last year we invested significant resources into creating that office space for Zoro, which was intended to help build a sense of community. Without a formal policy in place mandating employees return to the office, we knew there was a risk that team members might not use the space. However, by focusing on what they would need to function as a collaborative team, we have found that a significant number of employees have been coming back voluntarily. They enjoy being together in person, instead of working remotely.

Zoro’s purpose is to make it easy for customers to find, buy and get everything they need for their businesses. This purpose has propelled Zoro’s overall success by ensuring its investments, organization and technology decisions focus on customer satisfaction and ease of use. Zoro evaluates the impact of its purpose-driven strategy by using various metrics, such as customer effort score, customer satisfaction and net promoter score, to measure our customer experience.

To cultivate a culture of continuous learning and improvement within our team, I place a strong emphasis on encouraging curiosity and experimentation. I believe that fostering an environment where team members feel empowered to ask questions, explore new ideas and experiment with innovative solutions is crucial. This approach not only nurtures a mindset geared towards growth and learning but also drives our organization forward. By celebrating both successes and learning experiences from failures, we underscore the value of curiosity as a steppingstone to innovation. This philosophy has become a cornerstone of our culture, encouraging everyone to push the boundaries of what’s possible and continuously live our value to Win & Learn Together.

This year, I see several key trends taking shape in our industry. Advancements in AI and automation are set to redefine efficiency and innovation, while the ongoing shift to remote and hybrid work models will necessitate new tools for collaboration and culture building. Additionally, leveraging these tools along with data analytics to offer personalized customer experiences will emerge as a critical business differentiator. The importance of cybersecurity will escalate as digital transformation deepens, requiring stronger protections for data and systems integrity. These trends highlight the fusion of technology, security and customer focus and will become central to our strategic and operational approaches.

1. Cloud-First Strategy: Being cloud native has continued to help us scale rapidly while remaining super flexible to adapt new technologies.
2. Custom Technology Solutions: Developing our bespoke recommendations, search engine and the proprietary Zoro Data Platform (ZDP) have revolutionized product search and assortment management, aligning technology closely with business needs.
3. Data-Driven Decision Making: Leveraging the ZDP for advanced analytics and machine learning tools significantly improved our operational insights and customer understanding.
4. Customer-Centric Product Development: We’re focused on creating a seamless customer experience that underlines the importance of understanding and integrating customer feedback into the product development lifecycle.
5. Organizational Agility: Expanding the Zoro Technology Group and the shift towards a product-driven operational model underscores the importance of adaptability and the need to foster technology as a business for a culture of continuous innovation and learning.

In 2023, one of the pivotal lessons I’ve embraced is the transformative power of treating “Technology as Business.” At Zoro, we’ve seen firsthand how integrating technology across every aspect of our operations can drive growth and innovation. For instance, our shift to a fully owned e-commerce storefront not only streamlined the customer experience but also significantly reduced overhead costs. Additionally, developing the ZDP product, tailored to handle our expanding inventory, has allowed us to scale operations efficiently. These strategic moves underscore the vital role technology plays not just as a support function but also as a core driver of business value, shaping our approach to problem-solving and decision-making. This understanding has led us to continuously invest in technology, ensuring it remains at the heart of our growth strategy as we move further into 2024.

You can visit Zoro.com and check out the resource hub for more tips, tricks and how-to guides at www.zoro.com/resourcehub/.

This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!

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About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience as the Founder and CEO of multiple companies. He launched Choice Recovery, Inc., a healthcare collection agency, while going to The Ohio State University, His team earned national recognition, twice being ranked as the #1 business to work for in Central Ohio. In 2018, Chad launched [re]start, a career development platform connecting thousands of individuals in collections with meaningful employment opportunities, He sold Choice Recovery on his 25th anniversary and in 2023, sold the majority interest in [re]start so he can focus his transition to Built to Lead as an Executive Leadership Coach. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com.

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We hope you enjoyed learning from Andy about the key technological advances that are propelling Zoro into 2024 and beyond. Make sure to check our Resource Hub for more thought-provoking articles from industry leaders.

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