Stephen Gilroy

Background

About Stephen Gilroy

Positive Control: An Effective Process for e-Commerce Catalog Management In the Navy, we learned that maintaining positive control was the most effective method for line handling (see my cover photo). As you haul the line, you make sure you always have the right grip, and that the people in your party also coordinate and maintain control. In doing so, each member of the team holds the others accountable, and safety, efficiency, and control are maintained. In my years of e-com experience, I've taken this to the digital realm. Building and selling a decent e-com catalog requires a similar style of teamwork across all cross-functional teams; handling digital assets, product data, copy, and operational/shipping data. From one step to the next, each team handles their respective facets, while holding all the other teams accountable, making sure that accuracy, quality, pride-of-ownership, and in the end, positive control at the SKU level, is maintained. I've done this through the use of several tools and methods covering one end of the process to the next-An effective PIM/DAM to act as a source of truth-A process that both provides ownership of each team's assets/copy/data as well as an efficient means of sending those assets/copy/data to that source of truth-And finally, once the catalog is built, effective tools to automatically syndicate and distribute the content to various retailers and/or company sites, measure the outcomes, and make further changes to constantly improve performance. By doing this, efficiency can be achieved to make room for best-practices: Cutting-edge imagery and video content to drive conversion. SEO to drive search and provide the info consumers need to make an informed purchase. Enhanced/below-the-fold content to provide in-depth knowledge. And the insight tools to measure the results in both digital shelf and SKU health to drive further improvements. In the end, positive control has driven my success, both in the Navy and e-com.