Steve Krause : Blog

Intelligent Cross-Sell at Office Depot

At work, we just released a case study that's a nice progress report for Intelligent Cross-Sell, my group's main product. The featured customer is Office Depot, which runs one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world at officedepot.com—it's currently ranked #3 in the Internet Retailer 500, the Fortune 500 of retail e-commerce.

Here's the main story:

In 2007, Office Depot deployed CNET Channel's Intelligent Cross-Sell solution to automate and optimize merchandising on its e-commerce site, www.officedepot.com. Doing so caused a doubling of online cross-sell revenue for the multi-channel global retailer. Cross-selling is an important tool that involves recommending accessories to products, such as a memory card with the sale of a digital camera.

One of the keys to success was utilizing Intelligent Cross-Sell's "guided automation," which combines merchandisers' knowledge with the automation and scalability of a recommendation engine. For example, Intelligent Cross-Sell's point-and-click interface allowed Office Depot merchandisers to target cross-sell opportunities by factors such as key selling features, popularity, compatibility, and brand affinity. Then, Intelligent Cross-Sell executed the rules across millions of possible product combinations. Compared to Office Depot's previous cross-selling functionality, the result was a significant increase in the number and relevance of accessories offered as cross-sell opportunities across the site. This combination of more and better cross-sells drove the increase of cross-sell revenue.

Needless to say, I'm pleased. In my line of work, results are measurable, and these are the kind of results we like to see.

The full case study is here.

Eastward

It's not often that you pack up your life and take it across the country, but that's what we did in early March. One day we were living in a San Francisco urban highrise; the next we were amid snow-covered fields in a town outside Hartford, Connecticut.

A few weeks later, I'm pleased to say, "So far, so good." Our two-year-old daughter has happily adapted to new everything. And—the reason we're here—Jacqueline is now an executive at a Fortune 100 financial-services company based in the area.

I am continuing my CNET duties, working out of a home office but traveling regularly, including to San Francisco. So to those in my Bay Area network, I'll be around. And for friends and colleagues in New York and Boston, I look forward to seeing more of you. Hartford is about halfway between, a couple hours by car.

Leaving Northern California, there is much to miss. But I like the idea of change when the circumstances are right. Long story short, the circumstances were right.

Hiring Again

[My group at CNET Channel is hiring again. If you know of someone interested in the following, please send them my way.]

Want to help some of the Web's largest e-commerce sites apply leading-edge merchandising technology? CNET Channel is looking for an Account Services Manager in our Intelligent Cross-Sell group.

The position involves several elements:

• Client Services: You will be the primary point of contact and accountability to a set of customers. You will make sure their questions get answered quickly and correctly, if not by you then by the right person.
• Project Management: You will coordinate customer-specific projects, setting expectations about what can be done when, and monitoring progress to ensure we deliver on commitments.
• Product Expertise: You will become an expert at using and applying Intelligent Cross-Sell. You will be a virtuoso with the user interface, creatively solving customer problems in a manner that also teaches customers to do the same things for themselves.
• Merchandising Expertise: You will learn and explain best practices in interactive merchandising, especially online cross-selling.
• Product Marketing: As you do your job, you will be continually exploring customer needs. Your ability to perceive and prioritize needs across different customers will have a direct effect on what we build next.

If that all feels overwhelming, stop reading now. But if you're saying, "Let me at it!", here is the full posting with additional details.

Software Engineer Opportunity

The group I run at CNET Channel is hiring a Software Engineer dedicated to Intelligent Cross-Sell's backend database infrastructure: loading, transforming, and analyzing large-scale data. It's a chance to work on innovative technology that has directly measurable value for customers.

If you or someone you know is interested, the official job posting is on the CNET Networks job site.

Tragedy and the Kindness of Strangers

If you are in the United States, you may have heard about James Kim earlier this week. On a family roadtrip, he took a wrong turn onto an isolated mountain road in Oregon.

It was an ordinary mistake. It became tragic when the family's car got stuck amid heavy snow. His wife, Kati, and their two children were rescued nine days later near the car, which they had used for shelter.

However, on day seven, with supplies and hope dwindling, James had set out on foot for help. Before succumbing to the elements, he covered more than ten miles of snow-covered mountain wilderness, with little food or protection, searching for the searchers.

NPR's Scott Simon eloquently captured what a lot of people felt:

So much of modern popular culture depicts parents who are goofy, foolish, clueless and slightly pathetic. [Yet] almost every parent is certain they would risk their life for those they love; James Kim actually made that sacrifice.

In the days before Kati and the children were rescued, the search for the Kims generated a groundswell of media attention, first local then national. It was a primal human drama, magnified by the involvement of the children, four-year-old Penelope and seven-month-old Sabine.

They all could have died. Among the reasons Kati, Penelope, and Sabine were rescued was a primal response from far-flung strangers, people with no reason to be involved other than an instinct to help: the phone company engineer who on his own time combed through cell-phone network data to narrow-down the area for rescuers to search; the amateur helicopter pilot, unrelated to the official search effort, who spotted Kati from the air, who "went up because he had a hunch, and because a newspaper picture of the girls reminded him of his own grandkids." (San Francisco Chronicle)

As for the official search effort, the San Jose Mercury News tell us that 95% of search teams are volunteers, people ready to take a middle-of-the-night call to wherever, for whomever. They did so for days on end.

And finally, for those people far from the scene, whose only connection to the story was the story, there were kind words—of support, prayer, and later, condolence. James' employer, CNET, received thousands of such emails and postings.

In the aftermath, various anonymous people left flowers at the front of CNET. A baker from South San Francisco dropped off a bunch of pastries that he made, because that's what he could do.

So while one man fought for his family's survival, thousands of people reached out to help. Many were friends, colleagues, and relatives of the Kims. Many more were strangers.

What This Blog Is About

The posting about Ava's arrival drew a large number of extended family and friends who otherwise didn't know about this blog. For those of you eagerly checking back for the latest Ava update, only to find a posting about microwave oven usability, let me clarify what this blog is about.

This blog is where I share stuff that others might find interesting—"others" being a general audience of friends, colleagues, and the anonymously like-minded. It will occasionally include a big personal event, such as Ava's arrival. However, the usual fare is about business, analytics, product design, and pseudorandom ideas and observations.

So, if you are seeking all-Ava-all-the-time, contact Jacqueline or me directly; we will connect you with the ongoing photo stream you crave. And for everyone else, we now return to your semi-regularly scheduled blog. Thanks for reading.

Ava Krause's Zeroth Birthday

Introducing Ava Katherine LeSage Krause, born December 13, 2005. She is Jacqueline's and my first child.

Ava arrived healthy, albeit four weeks early. Jacqueline progressed through the intense part of labor so fast that the doctor barely made it for the delivery.

That isn't to say it was easy. Things went so fast that Jacqueline blew by the window for the pain-management drugs. So she rose to the occasion and delivered the old-fashioned way, with the pain. I was there the whole time, coaching as best I could while standing in awe of my wife's focus and willpower.

Ava was born at 10:48am and went straight into her mother's arms. Here is a picture of the happy family during recovery time at the hospital.

Now we're back home, everything different from before. Amid the sleep deprivation and the many moments of first-timer cluelessness is an overwhelming counterforce of something indescribably right. We are thankful for it all.

Iron Anniversary

Jacqueline and I recently celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. As far as anniversaries go, six is an unremarkable number. Once you get to 25, you've got the "silver" anniversary; get to 50, and you're "gold." But according to a list on Wikipedia, six years only amounts to "iron."

The lure of silver and gold aside, iron has its virtues as a symbol. It represents strength, practicality, and permanence. It's everywhere in our lives although often unseen.

That said, iron is the last fuel that large stars burn before they go supernova. It can also rust.

So the symbology is mixed. But as with symbols, marriage is ultimately what you make it—every day, not just once a year. So here's to our 2,192nd (in days) anniversary. I'm thankful for them all.

Catching Up

I just wanted to apologize for my lack of postings over the past 15,000 years—no good reason, just the usual excuses: work, plague, Dark Ages, etc.

For the sake of continuity, I've included an archaeological photo of my last post, "Untitled" (from 12,789 BC), as seen in the recent Discovery Channel documentary, Instinct for Expression: Lost Blogs of Prehistory.

Although I miss the spit and grit of the cave-as-canvas, I appreciate productivity-enhancing technologies like the Internet and written language.

So going forward, I expect a big jump in my number of postings per geologic epoch, starting now.