Rizwan Rajpoot: A Data-Centric Leader at the Intersection of eCommerce and Disruptive Technologies

By S G Rickman On Jun 20, 2022

With the world immersed in data from disparate sources, every time you click your mouse to purchase something, the information trail (data) is captured and stored which is used in the future by retailers to attract you to make more purchases. Even though future events have distinct circumstances or conditions, they characteristically follow similar patterns. The “Big Data Revolution” has brought technological advancements in data storage, cloud computing, and data science which helps businesses identify these similar patterns. Today, data science algorithms can predict everything from flu outbreaks to mortality to crimes. Data science helps retailers discover new ways to understand how to retain their “core” customers rather than merely acquiring new customers. With the growth of big data, data professionals have also started playing a more critical role in the commercial ecosystem. In this interview, Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Rizwan Rajpoot, Group Chief Digital Officer of L’azurde where he explains how data is being incorporated into the retail business.

Brief Us About Your Company and How it has Evolved Over the Years.

Rizwan: L’azurde was founded in 1980 by a Saudi entrepreneur and the company has predominantly been a traditional wholesale jeweler that designs and produces its products. L’azurde has its own factory and design team. We manufacture our jewelry and sell it to other small retailers. This is what has historically been the company’s business model. Now, some years ago, we moved into retail. L’azurde opened its retail business, which is over a hundred points of sale now across Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We also went through an IPO and the company is listed on the Saudi stock exchange. L’azurde has now grown exponentially with both arms wholesale and retail. Only a couple of years ago, we launched our eCommerce business as a result of Covid lockdown. It is now contributing 12 to 15% of total retail revenue. Besides this, the company is embarking on the full-blown transformation of its entire technology stack. As a result, the stores of L’azurde will be truly integrated from an omnichannel perspective, we’re getting state of an art eCommerce platform and all the other digital tools that are needed to support it. Huge investments and efforts are going into our big data and advanced analytics. So, our entire people process technology streams are getting a significant transformation and uplift as we speak. By the end of this year, we should have an absolute state-of-the-art business. There is a huge opportunity for us. Despite that, we are trying to make this 12 to 15%, 20% plus easily coming from eCommerce for our group. We are very excited about what’s happening now, but also about what the future holds for us.

Take us Through Your Role and How You have Contributed to the Development of the Company.

Rizwan: I’m the Group Chief Digital Officer of L’azurde. Data is such a broad topic and it’s so hot on everybody’s agenda. It’s the new gold. Almost everyone is investing in it semi blindly or being completely blind. In some instances, they are doing it without really understanding what it means for them or identifying use cases and areas of the business where they feel that it can help. In my experience, you’ve got to pick and choose and go towards the big goal in sort of baby, but strategic steps. Currently, L’azurde is focusing on customer data. We’re what the customers buy when they’re coming to our website.

We’ve invested in a real state-of-the-art CDXP customer data experience platform by Bloomreach. We are also effectively investing in interaction with our customers, be it in in-store or online to go into that platform. I’m hopeful this will effectively create a true single view of every single customer and it will also allow us to record. Generally, in stores, you can only get a certain amount of data about a customer like their name, contact details, and email address only if you’ve got your staff trained to ask for that information correctly, but it’s very transactional. When the users are online, the only information you can get is this customer bought this product from this location on this date at this time. But when that customer visits online, it starts to record all the enriched data about them. For example, how long did they spend on us, where they came to our website, what they searched for, what they looked at, what products they’ve added to their wish Wishlist, what products they’ve added to their shopping basket, and what products they’ve looked at and haven’t yet added to their Wishlist or basket.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning that we’ve got will effectively work out for every customer in real-time at an individual level. The way they’ve interacted with us will be a part of our omnichannel project. We’re integrating that with our e-commerce and our store pause system in real-time, which means when they come online, the data and products serve to them.

In the Ever-Changing Data Sphere, What are the Primary Challenges You Faced and How did You Overcome them?

Rizwan: From a technical perspective, there has been a whole heap of challenges to be able to get all the systems to align in my past organizations to where I am now. There has also been the human aspect. People don’t like change and they have always been sceptical of change. Thirty years back when eCommerce first started, everybody thought it was fake. Now, you know that it is not going to replace retail or even put a dent in it.

When mobile came about, before smartphones hit the market, they were talking about the NOKIA phones. So that sort of skepticism from the human aspect on anything new is always there. It is important to be skeptical, to check how it impacts your business, or when do you invest in it. For us, the biggest challenge was to take the team on the journey with you and convince the wider teams across your organization. In the beginning, data became such a hot topic that everyone was trying to do something about it but they didn’t really have a coherent strategy and end goal, or some defined use cases on how it’s going to improve them and therefore they were unable to identify the ROI for them.

How Should a Digital Leader be in order to Survive the Disruptive Sphere?

Rizwan: While talking about digital leadership, I would like to take a step back and first define what a digital sector is. People automatically assume digital is eCommerce. It is not. It is a very small percentage of what digital means for your organization. Digital refers to the transforming processes, digitizing processes, and ways of working, both internally and externally. Then comes marketing and it is the commercial effect.

In my personal opinion, chief information officers will have to be evolved to be more data-centric or more digital-savvy. If you were to start a business today or invest in new systems, you would not be going to get those big oil tank curves or enterprise solutions in place. You must get the agile SA cloud, API first microservices systems in place. Actually, over the last 20 years, it’s the digital sector that has gone through the wave of change that is now transitioning into several different roles like the chief digital officer, chief data officer, chief information officer, chief customer officer, etc.

How Are You Using the Data You’ve Collected along with Disruptive Technologies to Innovate?

Rizwan: Innovation could be defined in several different ways and it is different for every company. I would suggest never investing in all of these fancy technologies without having the focus on getting your foundation rock solid. Because what generally seems to happen is people start to abruptly invest in these technologies and the foundations become crooked. So when they launch the technologies, the experience for the customer isn’t seamless, which is supposed to be the end game. With all the digital transformation and innovation, the end game is to provide that seamless experience for the customer. So that experience drives their loyalty to the companies.

Now, in terms of innovation, the data we collect from our customers helps us know who they are. It allows us to serve them better when they’re visitors, lets us serve better adverts to them, and provides more tailored content. This is what our data lake and AI do for us. As a part of that transformation, we are truly getting at microservices first, headless commerce, the digital technology stack that is currently in development. That allows the eCommerce and the storage systems to be connected in real-time to provide one overall system for the business. So the two most important aspects of our innovation are the artificial intelligence through our CDP data, going into the store and delivering a real-time online experience to that individual customer based on their preferences that the AI has built through, and taking the augmented reality functionality, putting it on our website and flipping it into the store as well.

How do You See the Company and the Industry in the Future Ahead?

Rizwan: When I think about the future, I see our business growing significantly over the next five to 10 years. With the assistance of technology, we want to give constant focus to the end consumers. So, I see our organization’s productivity significantly increasing conversion rates online, and offline in stores as well. Looking at the future, I also see the entire business’s internal processes digitized, not just for retail but our entire wholesale business as well. The way we sell and the way we produce and manufacture-those entire processes will be digitized and will effectively through our digital online capabilities. Being able to go global with it right across Africa is our aspiration right across GCC.

Give a Piece of Your Mind for Budding/Emerging Tech Leaders.

Rizwan: My first advice for emerging leaders is to keep it real. They should not focus too much on or try to do everything in one goal. They should make sure that their foundations are rock solid. The investments that people make should ensure that they link to the key strategic drivers that are going to give long-term benefits to the customer, as well as provide immediate short-term gains. Before making big investments in Tech, you should do research and harmonize your internal team toward a common goal. You have to be selective in what you do. On the other hand, if you are a new joiner in an organization, you should be careful not to get so stuck in the day-to-day business that you become reactive. You need to be able to zoom in at the right time and be able to zoom out and have that strategy.

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