(US and Canada) Dan Whitacre, Senior Director, Kroger Labs & Tech Transformation, Kroger, tells Jeff Ronningen, Account Executive, Pure Storage, about the company’s approach to technology, data, research, and innovation.

Dan Whitacre, Senior Director Kroger Labs & Tech Transformation, Kroger, speaks to Jeff Ronnigen, Account Executive, Pure Storage, about the company’s approach to technology, data, research, and innovation.

Whitacre says that organizations may have to go down several paths to figure out the bottlenecks regardingthe vetting of technology use cases and justifying investments.

“Understand how to experiment and do the right experiments upfront so you don’t spend time on other experiments that the first experiment cancels out, and so you can fail fast. How do I organize my experiments? The toughest one, the hardest one, the one that will discount everything else — I’m going to do that first,” he says.

Elaborating on the challenges of ingesting a huge amount of consumer information every day, he says that the company collects a lot of data to create a better customer experience. “Everything we do with data, we first ask ourselves, “Is this a value to the customer?” And if it’s a value for the customer, then we proceed. Trying to figure out how to acquire, govern, and make that data ready is always a big challenge. It takes a lot of computing, a lot of storage, etc.,” Whitacre explains.

While a lot of technology is available today, learning how to use it to make it work, is of utmost importance. The other challenge is to ensure data is being used in the best way to serve the customer. Whitacre adds, “You really have to understand the context of the customer’s journey. Not every trip to the grocery store is the same. So, you have to look at the whole breadth of data and the consumer’s behavior, and how to best serve them at that point in time.”

Kroger now offers drone delivery near Dayton and has opened fulfillment centers to facilitate online ordering.

Each fulfillment center serves online orders in the absence of any of the company’s brick-and-mortar stores in the area, Whitacre explains. Kroger plans to open more of these across the country. It has also partnered with Instacart to enable fast delivery, so getting a set of products within 30 minutes of ordering them is a possibility now.

“The ways we can serve customers, the modes by which they want to shop, continue to change,” Whitacre concludes.