How our eCommerce team is moving Edgewell’s digital transformation journey forward
After nearly five years in my role on the eCommerce team at Edgewell as Senior Vice President, I’ve seen our team grow from 5 people to nearly 50. It’s been an exciting journey, and the work we’re doing is becoming more impactful and increasingly necessary as digital evolves. While teams across the globe at Edgewell unite to make useful things joyful, we help the business move forward toward our digital transformation ambitions. It hasn’t been a straightforward journey, but it has been an exciting one filled with purpose, learning and growth. As the world moves faster than ever and our need to keep focused on what lies ahead, it’s important to reflect on how far the eCommerce team has come and how we’ve gotten here so we can understand how best to move forward for the future.
What it takes to move eCommerce forward
What I’ve learned throughout my time at Edgewell has been instrumental in helping me create a thriving team focused on our goal of moving forward. Not only have I learned a lot personally, but I’ve also learned so much about what it takes to build a talented team, especially when what we do requires such specialized capabilities.
We’ve worked hard to ensure that everyone on the team is passionate about the same goal, without necessarily having the same background or expertise. Over the years we’ve found that it’s our combined skillset that really makes the magic happen in eCommerce. As a management team, we dedicate time to finding the right candidate for a role and don’t set any boundaries for ourselves. We keep our eyes and ears open for talent with the right skillset we need, whether they’re already part of the Edgewell team and are looking for a new challenge, or they’re on the other side of the world but have the skillset we’re looking for. We prioritize finding the right people who will help us grow and accomplish our goals.
One of the best ways we move eCommerce in Edgewell forward is by recognizing potential talent and ensuring we put plans in place to give our teammates the training they need to grow and develop. This people-first mentality flows from the broader Edgewell values into the vision for our eCommerce team.
I take pride in being an approachable leader for my team so everyone can run their area of the business and I can play a supporting role where and when I’m needed. I make sure my team are comfortable and confident in the skills required to help a global brand like Edgewell find their place in this growing digital world. When I first started at the business, our eCommerce was done through Amazon alone—now we’re finding ways to bring our portfolio of brands to more people in more places, so it takes a lot of organization and ambition to get the job done. Ensuring our teams can build relationships, work successfully with different people and have the confidence to own what they do so we can all move forward together is hugely important. I’m there in a supportive capacity to remove any roadblocks, but its each member of the eCommerce team that drives our division of the business forward. It really is a privilege to see this diverse and multi-talented group do the work they do and do it so successfully.
To move forward we need that specialized skillset, and we’re fortunate to have the flexibility to find those perfect candidates. While we’ve been lucky enough to share our team with talented individuals from across the globe for some time, the beauty of the Hybrid Working model at Edgewell means that we have even more scope to find the right person wherever they may be located. Right now, our team includes people from across the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific but can come from anywhere. By fostering a collaborative and diverse team, we’re ready for whatever lies ahead.
Finding your feet in eCommerce at Edgewell
As I mentioned before, the rate at which our team is expanding is a testament to the incredible work the team is doing. They bring their all to work every day, whether that’s through their commitment, their ideas or their ambitions to help us drive our digital transformation ambitions forward. While we’re a diverse team, we do have a few things in common. The biggest commonality we all share is certain behaviors that embody the culture we have here at Edgewell.
Firstly, we take being decisive seriously.
Just as we’re open to making the right call on the right candidate regardless of where they’re located, we take making the right call in our day-to-day seriously as well. This is all part of how we own it together. When we make a decision, we’re confident in it. Whether it turns out to be the right one or not in the long-term, we know that in the moment it was the right decision for us. Things change so quickly that we need to think fast, decide fast, and adapt fast. So far, this is something which has helped us grow and really make an impact to how people across the globe find those useful Edgewell products that bring them joy.
Next, we make sure to create a supportive environment so we can try, create and learn.
Just like making the right decision in the moment may not lead to the best outcome down the line, this is never something we worry about. When we make a mistake, or the decision doesn’t go the way we thought it would somewhere down the line, we take it as a learning. It’s just another opportunity to learn and grow. Personally, I don’t think we’d have gotten to the place we are now, or we’d have had the successes we’ve had as a team, without that safe environment to try something new, experiment and learn as we go. No one has all the answers, but we try our best to give the best answer we can and work together to do the right thing—for ourselves as individuals, our team and the broader businesses at Edgewell.
Moving forward together to make eCommerce matter
Just like the ever-changing digital world we all experience in our day-to-day lives, our role on the eCommerce team at Edgewell is never the same day after day. As we strive for transforming the business digitally, as a team we’re flexible and ready to tackle whatever a new day brings. This flexibility is key, and our team needs to be able to color outside the lines because a lot of times things are so new to us and there’s so much to be done.
This is where doing the right thing comes into play, it’s a huge part of how we move forward toward our digital transformation ambitions. By focusing on the behaviors that unite us both in the eCommerce team like being decisive and a willingness to try and learn, we can move forward to make eCommerce matter at Edgewell. We know we’re never going to have the perfect strategy, so that’s where the whole team can come together to make an impact.
The next step for us as an eCommerce team at Edgewell is to be a little disruptive within a traditional organization. We’re trying to challenge. We ask questions, like how can we do this quicker, or is there a benefit to positioning this to a digital-first approach? In order to move forward we have to think about how we play a digital role in this traditional world by working with other teams at Edgewell to ensure we’re making things work for every team along the production and distribution chain. There’s a big role to play for the eCommerce team at Edgewell with a lot of opportunities on the horizon, and as we make a bigger impact quarter by quarter, we’re looking for the right people to help us do it.
I hope this has given you an insight into the team here at Edgewell—what we do, why we do it and how we’re moving not only our team forward, but also the impact Edgewell has across the globe too. I am so proud of my team and all they’ve accomplished, and I’m excited to see where we go.
Whether you’re placed in a role with another team at Edgewell and have a real interest in eCommerce and digital transformation, or you’re already working in the space and want to bring your talents to Edgewell, we always want to hear from you.
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