If you bought popcorn at the movie theater or picked up candy in the checkout aisle at Home Depot, you probably didn’t know it was probably Performance Food Group Co. that supplied it, Jim Lyman, head of the company’s e-commerce strategy, said at the EnvisionB2B 2023 Conference and Expo last month. Lyman, vice president of e-commerce and customer enablement at Performance Foodservice, PFG’s largest division, then described in a keynote presentation how PFG is building an enterprise-wide e-commerce growth strategy. company in its market segments.

The Performance Foodservice division provides meat, seafood and other foods and products to restaurants and other businesses and accounted for more than half of the parent company’s $50.9 billion net sales for the fiscal year ended July 2, 2022. PFG operates in two other reportable segments: from Vistar snacks and beverages to movie theaters and other businesses; and “convenience store” products ranging from snacks, beverages and tobacco products to fresh produce and bread at convenience stores and other merchants.

PFG also provides value-added services such as assistance with menu development, sourcing policies and operational strategy. It has approximately 150 distribution centers, 300,000 customers and 35,000 employees.

Customer-oriented systems

Lyman was tasked with bringing together the multiple segments of PFG’s business into a digital commerce platform. He first wanted to know how PFG interacted with customers.

Jim Lyman, Vice President of E-Commerce and Customer Enablement, Performance Foodservice

“What we’ve found is that we have disparate systems because of all the acquisitions we’ve made over the years,” Lyman said, noting that PFG acquired Reinhart Foodservice in 2019 — a deal valued at $2 billion. “Our customers were ordering through multiple e-commerce platforms. We were using several mobile apps with our clients. And our sales team also had several tools. Frankly, it was confusing for everyone.

The online customer experience also needed to be improved, Lyman said. Not only were there multiple e-commerce systems running for different branches of the business, but research was also done differently for each, he said.

“If you made a [website] search, each of those results came back different,” Lyman said. “There were no consistent products. Descriptions were inconsistent.

Redesign of the B2B e-commerce experience

Lyman and his team met with the company’s board of directors to seek capital to invest in redesigning the online customer experience.

“We said, ‘Let’s rebuild the online customer experience from start to finish,'” Lyman said.

The goal? Create a single platform for customers to buy from one of multiple business segments, Lyman said. Customers can order what they need and receive product recommendations.

“We had to look at the segments and figure out how to put them all together,” he said.

To do this, Lyman and his team needed to better understand their customers. For example, customers buy more than candies and snacks. Some customers are restaurants. Restaurants buy items like meat and other food items in bulk.

“And the operation of a food service or a restaurant can be very different,” he said.

Upon further inspection, Lyman’s team discovered that their products lacked consistent product images and descriptions. There were no allergens listed, eg.

“We didn’t have everything we needed in a format to present to our customers,” he said. “And it’s very serious because if you give the customer the wrong product, and it contains allergens, it’s a real problem. Someone could die.

Data quality control

Data quality is just as important as data volume, he said. Internal product descriptions with cryptic abbreviations were just as detrimental to the online search experience as the lack of product images and descriptions.

“You can have the best search system, powered by artificial intelligence, but if your data is bad, you’ll get bad results,” Lyman said.

The company’s marketing and IT teams reviewed product descriptions to streamline abbreviations and descriptions.

The next step? Marketing language, he says. “Now we’re on our way to take marketing descriptions to the next level,” Lyman said. “We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there.”

Conversion of customer data

Another important element is customer data, Lyman said. “When we convert customer data, whether it’s invoices, transactions, or lists they’ve ordered/prices, it’s converted from the [old] system at the [new] system,” he said. “It’s a painful process. And no matter how much you check, there will be [errant] hyphen that throws something.

So Lyman tested each iteration and monitored client behavior.

“We asked customers what they wanted to be able to do,” he said. “But then we looked at what they actually did – and it’s amazing how they’re usually two different things.”

For example, how many clicks did it take for a customer to find and complete an order, he said. “Several,” said Lyman, that PFG has also worked to reduce and facilitate conversion for customers.

Lyman continues to survey customers and monitor their behavior to see where the company can make improvements.

“We received great feedback as well as points of frustration,” Lyman said. “You must have fairly thick skin.”

After two and a half years, PFG has one integrated system, he said.

A new way of thinking

PFG also looked beyond the client side of its ERP system and overhauled its internal system. For Performance Foodservice to improve its e-commerce experience, Lyman said it’s essential to think beyond “legacy thinking.”

“Avoid thinking like ‘we’ve always done it this way’ or ‘we have to do it this way,'” he said.

PFG had to test several approaches. When developing for multiple brands or business segments, it is necessary to first choose where to start. In this case, the company focused on candies and snacks, then on catering.

“We now have a version of the truth for product information, product descriptions and all informational images,” he said. “Instead of customers seeing different systems in our system, we now have one version of the truth for them. And it was quite a heavy lift.

Moving forward with best practices

“We have research technology that we continue to learn from. And we will continue to build on that. We have the business [software] best practices.”

These best practices include an easy-to-identify and easy-to-use “Reorder” button for its foodservice customers. “We’ve always had that. [capability] in snacks and customers loved it,” he said. “These are just things that provide real value.”

Other examples include consistent product information and a rapidly evolving website.

“We monitor the APIs to make sure nothing is stopping” or slowing down the client, he said.

Lyman looks forward to future technology expansions. “The way our site was built by our technology team allows us to take advantage of AI tools as they mature,” he said. “We can take advantage of truck tracking and start building those capabilities into our roadmap.”

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