In this episode, I meet Peter Vigilante, Ento's Canadian Country Manager, and in a wide-ranging interview, talk about how this young company has come to this market to help retailers solve issues around their hourly workforce, mainly on the front lines. Peter takes us through recent market research by Ento, telling us what keeps retail HR leaders awake at night, including the speed of offer execution in today's fast-paced and highly competitive labour market.
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Founded in Australia in 2009, Ento is a powerful workforce management solution that allows shift-based workforces to manage rostering, time & attendance, leave, and onboarding from one centralized platform.
In this episode, I meet Peter Vigilante, Ento's Canadian Country Manager, and in a wide-ranging interview, talk about how this young company has come to this market to help retailers solve issues around their hourly workforce, mainly on the front lines.
Peter takes us through recent market research by Ento, telling us what keeps retail HR leaders awake at night, including the speed of offer execution in today's fast-paced and highly competitive labour market.
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven’t already, be sure and click subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week, and check out my other retail industry media properties; the Remarkable Retail podcast, the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast. Last but not least, if you are into BBQ, check out my all new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbeque, with new episodes each and every week!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
About Peter
Technology and business savvy with an entrepreneurial spirit. A self-starter, self-sufficient and also work well in a team environment. Highly motivated and ambitions with a passion for technology and customer satisfaction.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide. Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail’s prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers for a second year in 2022.
Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:10
Founded in Australia in 2009, Ento is a powerful workforce management solution that allows shift-based workforces to manage rostering, time & attendance, leave, and onboarding from one centralized platform.
Michael LeBlanc 00:24
In this episode, I meet Peter Vigilante, Ento’s Canadian Country Manager, and in a wide-ranging interview talk about how this young company has come to this market to help retailers solve issues around their hourly workforce, mainly on the front lines.
Michael LeBlanc 00:38
Peter takes us through recent market research by Ento telling us what keeps retail HR leaders awake at night, including the speed of offer execution in today's fast paced and highly competitive labor market.
Peter Vigilante 00:50
often I come across with clients as they just want to take their paper based form or process and just digitize it. And we're like, no, don't do that. You're not going to get any benefits. You're not going to solve any problems. It's just taking something that's already a little bit slow or a little bit cumbersome. And you're putting it into a wet version of that there's no real benefit. Yeah, so, let's take a step back what problem you're actually trying to solve. How can we do that?
Michael LeBlanc 01:15
Peter, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Peter Vigilante 01:18
Hey, Michael. Great to be here. I'm so excited to chat to you this morning. Thanks for having me on.
Michael LeBlanc 01:24
Yeah, my pleasure. Where am I finding you in the world today? Where are you located in I think you're in Canada right, where are you located?
Peter Vigilante 01:31
Yeah, my accent might deceive you but I'm not actually in Australia. I'm in not so sunny Toronto today. But yes, I've made my way across from Australia Melbourne to Canada Toronto and loving it.
Michael LeBlanc 01:43
Well, that's, that's a great place to start our discussion. Tell me a little bit about yourself your journey what brought you here to Canada from, from lovely Melbourne. And, and let's start there.
Peter Vigilante 01:53
Yeah, thanks. I've always been wanting to travel with, with work and, and have work for an organization that will take me somewhere overseas. And at Ento it's, it's finally given me the opportunity. So, I've headed across from working at Ento for about two or three years to now here in Canada to be the Country Manager, which is pretty exciting. I've always been working in the software industry, back home in, in Australia, where I've worked with all different types of organizations to help implement software for them from kind of like the healthcare industry all the way through to, you know, asset management and today workforce management. I am really loving Toronto so far; everyone is so nice here. I've really enjoyed, you know, chatting to people working at the cafes, and things like that. And everyone's been super nice. I've actually even managed to score some free donuts in Starbucks as well as I've been here as well. So, I don't know if that's just me and my Aussie accent convincing people to give me free stuff or just lovely natured Canadians,
Michael LeBlanc 03:03
Yeah, your fellow member of the Commonwealth. So, listen, welcome. Welcome to Canada. Now, you know, we're looking at your background, you've got a depth of experience in workforce management is, is but where did where did you start your career? Did you, were you, were you oriented towards technology? And like, what, what, you know, what pointed you in the direction when you were starting your career or as you progressed through the career? Was it just opportunity? Tell me a little bit about that?
Peter Vigilante 03:27
Yeah, look, to be honest, if, if we go all the way back to my younger days, I actually started working out in hospitality and retail funnily enough, not surprising when you're a university student. It's a great industry to work in with flexible hours. And that's where I did my that's while I was studying my IT degree. And that's always been a passion of mine, it's always been technology, always been software. And I did have the opportunity to start implementing asset management software, and then moved across to the healthcare industry, this was a really interesting one, because it exposed me to the high pressure that these workers are under to, you know, to get to a client's home, to perform a service for them, you know, deliver the best quality service, get back in their car, drive to the next client's home and be on, you know, on point and deliver that high quality service.
Peter Vigilante 03:51
And it was working for that particular organization where they had a great system there that involved a workforce management compo-, component where it did all the scheduling, and it did all the routing. And that was kind of where my interest started in the workforce management area. And now it's led me to enter where it's purely workforce management across any type of industry you can think of from retail, hospitality, transportation, education, you name it, we we've got a solution in there to help these businesses.
Michael LeBlanc 04:22
Well, let's get to, we'll get to Ento in a minute. Yes, from it, you know, you've expressed what it's like to live as a civilian so to speak in, in Canada have you noticing? Or do you have any comments on the business environment? I mean, we generally think between Canada and Australia I mean, there's similar geographies, similar backgrounds, that the business environments are fairly similar. What's, what's been your experience so far? Just from a, you know, how you experience clients’ prospects and, and the business environment?
Peter Vigilante 05:18
I've, I've indeed noticed that there's some similarities between organizations here and back at home and the and the problems they've been, been facing just through conversations I've been having with them, it's really interesting that it's the same things and these problems haven't been solved for these clients yet. And we're talking about things like you know, budget control, saving, you know, costs on labor, we're talking about compliance and making sure that, you know, you're paying people correctly and not breaching any of the collective agreements, as well as engaging staff and making sure that, you know, they're sticking around and, you know, the onboarding and first impressions experiences on point.
Michael LeBlanc 05:54
You know, it's interesting, I guess I, you know, I'm often asked to com-, to comment on the differences, the US and Canada and I often say there's far more similarities than differences. You know, there's some different industries here. Certainly, I mean, you've got retail cannabis here, which is a whole industry that does just simply doesn't exist in Australia, right. So, there's some, some different takes on it. But generally, that would be your experience. Yeah. More, more similarities than differences.
Peter Vigilante 06:20
Yeah, correct. And that's one of the main reasons why Ento decided to hit Canada as its first international expansion was for those similarities. We thought, hey, we've solved all these problems in, in Australia. And let's solve the, the next best country, which is Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 06:35
All right. Well, let's, let's talk about Ento, new name for, for some certainly, if it was for me, tell me all about it. Obviously Australian based, but tell me scope and scale, the where and how you operate? And, and what makes you know, what the expertise is? And what makes you different than the so to speak in the competitive set of, of who you are and who you compete against and who you want to be.
Peter Vigilante 06:57
Yeah, sure. So, Ento was established in about 2009. So, we're mature in the market. And it's actually an interesting story, how we got started our, our founder and CEO, at the time, was dating somebody's girlfriend and she was complaining about how the bar she was working at didn't have any scheduling or rostering software. So, he was running a web design business at the time and shifted to making a web app to solve the problem for his girlfriend. And now it's gone on to solve that problem for many, many more organizations.
Michael LeBlanc 07:31
I often experienced talking to people that this intersection of the personal and professional There you go, there it is, again,
Peter Vigilante 07:36
yeah, it's, it's important to have some sort of connection to solving that problem. And being you know, in, in the, in the real life aspect of it. It's not until you experience it firsthand that you can understand how to solve it properly. I found so, -
Michael LeBlanc 07:49
So, that's where it started. So, tell me tell me how it's developed. And when, when was that? Did you say a date?
Peter Vigilante 07:55
That was in 2009, around then when that all started? And yeah, we've, we've been very successful in Australia and expanded into New Zealand as well. We've got about I think, three or 400 clients at the moment, where we're managing millions and millions of shifts every day across these, these different clients. As I mentioned before, vast array of industries, retail, hospitality, childcare, education, manufacturing, and anything kind of in between is our is, is where we can help you out. And really, for those organizations that have like a schedule, or roster, or it's shift-based work, where we come in and, and help all those deskless workers, as you know, is the new hype term for them.
Michael LeBlanc 08:43
So, when you say deskless workers, is this, is your system kind of being asked to flex for planning for head office versus shift workers? Or is it still mostly your, this sweet spot is the kind of hourly workforce so to speak?
Peter Vigilante 08:58
Yeah, so when we go into organizations, for example, you know, a retail organization, they've always got to a head office, back-office kind of stuff, component to help, you know, run the operations of that business. Whilst the main focus is normally always, you know, the in-store staff, were often seeing that they wanting to use a system like Ento to engage with those back-office staff. And it might be something like the onboarding process, or, you know, the messaging capability just to have that consistent across all staff in the organization. And we've actually got some clients who are getting their back-office staff to fill in timesheets and clock in and out of their office jobs as well, which is really, -
Michael LeBlanc 09:38
to maintain who's, who's where and when, right, for, you know, clocking in for different reasons, right, who's, -
Peter Vigilante 09:43
there's that and there's the ability to then report on your entire organization, labor cost, for example, and you know, what business units are costing what and it's, it's very interesting when you, you take a step back and you look at the whole organization and go where else can we apply this same type of solution to help solve some of our problems,
Michael LeBlanc 10:00
You know, like, like a lot of businesses, one of the things you did when you came into the market is try to assess, try to survey and you literally surveyed the market. And one of the things brought me to your brought you to my attention is a survey you just published. So, we'll get to that in a second. This survey let's talk about it. Let's talk about the tradecraft what you what you intended to achieve with the survey and how you went about serving the Canadian marketplace.
Peter Vigilante 10:26
Yeah, when we decided to come to Canada, we thought, hey, let's find out more about this market. We've got we've got, you know, our own research that we've done, and we've got Inklings that we're pretty confident that the problems that are in Australia or New Zealand are similar to what's in Canada. Let's prove that. So, let's go out and engage a trusted third party to run a survey for us. So, we engaged our Maru Public Opinion, and they ran a survey for us across about 450 different Canadian HR decision makers. And yet, we asked them all sorts of different questions to try and understand the problems they're facing in the current climate. And we got some really interesting learnings out of that.
Michael LeBlanc 11:05
And when, when was the when were the questions asked? I know, the survey came up fairly recently. But give me a sense of time period, when, when were these folks answering questions from you?
Peter Vigilante 11:13
Yeah, so, the survey was written just a few months ago. So, the data is quite fresh, which is really interesting, because things are changing so fast with the lifting of COVID restrictions and the businesses trying to get back to normal. So, you know, if you'd surveyed an organization, you know, six months ago, or, or 12 months ago, it's a completely different scene we're in now. So, it's quite fresh survey data.
Peter Vigilante 11:13
Yeah, it's the recent (inaudible), it's always been fairly important to have a survey that's recent, but n-, never more so than now, right? Everyone's trying to figure it out. All right, so, hit the high notes for me, what are the, what are the top kind of three, five things that you that you took away from your survey that you want to share with us?
Peter Vigilante 11:51
Yeah, it was really interesting. We asked our, the HR leaders about the expectations that they're putting on their managers who are out there running, running these workforces or these stores. And it was really interesting, because about 86% of them said that the expectations had not changed at all, which for me, I thought hold on the whole scenes changed. Now, the expectations that you, you have on your managers surely should be different. They're managing a totally different climate post COVID. So, for you to be expecting the same is very interesting, especially because there's so many extra pressures that managers have now, in, in the current climate where there's changing COVID regulations, or hopefully not changing anymore. The labor supply is still very volatile, where, you know, it's hard to find people and the chopping and changing between jobs like no tomorrow, as well as, as we all know, inflation is rising. And, you know, recessions are looming for, for various organi-, comp-, countries around the around the globe. So, that was one aspect of it that we can't we saw out of the survey that was very interesting.
Peter Vigilante 12:59
One of the other areas we saw interesting out of the survey was the digital adoption, opinion of these leaders. And it's true that whilst COVID has forced a lot of digital adoption on many organizations, some of the leaders of input have indicated that for them, it's areas like employee engagement, onboarding and off boarding and scheduling that is still key to their digital strategy and have yet to implement a solution to solve those problems.
Michael LeBlanc 13:30
So, it's still it's still a high need from the from the retailers, right? They're still looking for these solutions. So, I guess you're it kind of, I guess, if anything, it validates coming to a market like this. And als,o you talk the work life balance is interesting. So, you know, what's, what was your assessment around what people are looking for? I mean, and, and I guess, with your experience in this has it changed from, you know, their priorities versus pre COVID. I mean, you got some interesting numbers here, right. 52% change there, you know, 52% report, they changed their policy to include better work life balance, that's a big number, right? 50 It's funny when you do these surveys, you know, I'll say broadly pre-COVID, you'd see single digit movements and be oh, that's interesting. You know, you're 86%, 52% like, these are big numbers, right? There's a lot going on in your space, right?
Peter Vigilante 14:19
Yeah, organizations have finally kind of woken up to the fact that, you know, you just can't treat stuff like you've been doing in the past and COVID now has demanded that you be more accommodating to what staff employees need and want to be able to be an effective and happy worker. To be honest, I was a little surprised with how low that number was, in my opinion, because COVID has affected, you know, most organizations and industries so for only 52% to say they've changed their policies, how does the other you know 50 whatever percent or 40 whatever percent think that they can get away without doing it.
Michael LeBlanc 14:56
What's it, you know, I think it I took a different, (inaudible) when I read that it was like, there's been a lot of work that's happened. So, maybe, maybe that reflects a pretty good state of the industry. In other words, we're, we're over halfway there. That could be another way to look at it, right, that we're, you know, 52%, saying they changed, but maybe the other 35-40% have already changed. You know what I mean? Who knows, right?
Peter Vigilante 15:21
Yeah, you're right. It' it's definitely a good sign that change has, has been made. And people have recognized it, it would be even more interesting to know, as you said, does that mean? That's the final 41% left over have already done it?
Michael LeBlanc 15:35
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Well, I'm sure you'll come up with that in, in your ongoing conversations now. And you know, as you take all of this work, Ento fits into this. So, you take all these numbers? And if we break them down a bit, wh-, where do you add value at? Why are you and how are you different and then when you come in? And let's say, you know, you're talking to prospective, prospective retailers who are looking for a solution? How do you address each of those? And, and what are the key, you know, your key value points, you say? Listen, I'm, you know, I love this survey. It tells us, maybe it tells you a few new things, but it also tells you that there's a demand for what you sell, how do those conversations go, tell me about that?
Peter Vigilante 16:16
Yeah, we we've looked at that survey data and aligned it to the features and benefits that Ento provides. And it's really around finding areas that allow managers to free up time from, you know, long convoluted, paper based, un-automated processes that take them away from focusing on managing their staff and giving them the attention that they need so that they're happy, and they don't leave, for example. So, we're talking about things like moving to automated scheduling, or just making a scheduling process easier. We're talking about the onboarding process as well, where interestingly enough, we're hearing from organizations we're talking to that if they're not quick, to make an offer, get an offer on the table, have a contract in, in front of an employee to sign they've lost that opportunity with that employee, they've gone elsewhere, that someone else has been on their toes, offered them another offer with more enticing conditions. So, with their onboarding solution, you're able to quickly get that out to the new employee for them to sign and agree.
Michael LeBlanc 17:22
That's interesting, because I have heard that retailers are making like offers at the moment. And then, you know, speed is of the essence is basically what you're reflecting back to me. Right, is that, you know, we'll help you get that done quickly. Because if not, you know, you, you're going to lose somebody. And I guess it also is the case that, you know, and this is not necessarily new to COVID, that, you know, people would show up, sign up and then just not show up for the job. But does your help your software help kind of get that done quickly. And, and kind of hopefully reduce that, let's call that the ghosting impact, right?
Peter Vigilante 17:54
Yeah, it definitely speeds up that process, because we're, we're all using electronic contracts and digital signatures to do this now. So, there's no excuse why you can't, you know, sign on your mobile phone while you're sitting on the train heading into the city to, to accept your job. But then we take it to the next level. And yeah, you've signed your contract. But like if, if you if you don't start your role for four weeks, how you're going to engage with that employee and keep them excited and keep them on board with the organization. So, that's where our onboarding solution will drip feed them different onboarding content. So, it might be a YouTube video that they can watch to learn more about what their first day in the role is going to be. Or it might be a user guide or a manual, they can download to read about, you know, how to use different equipment or something like that. So, -
Michael LeBlanc 18:41
just constantly touching base with them, which is a pretty heavy, pretty heavy lift for the for the HR team without this kind of technology. Right, then that's a lot of a lot of work sounds like you kind of facility you know, create content, and we'll make sure it gets the right people to keep them have you a better chance of that employee actually showing up to the front door, you know, -
Peter Vigilante 18:59
Yeah, not only will they, will they show up, but they'll, they'll be excited, they'll be informed as well and educated and ready to go.
Michael LeBlanc 19:07
Fantastic. Now, who is your product right for? Is it what give me a sense of size a retailer and, and whether that sales, or number of stores, number of employees? What's, what's your sweet spot on those kind of metrics for the folks listening?
Peter Vigilante 19:21
Yes. So, retailers with more than one physical location would be what, (crossover talk), we would start with. Yeah, so, if you've got one, you're probably a bit too small to use Ento just because of the depth and breadth of the feature and functionality might be a bit overwhelming. By all means, we'll take you on the journey if you want to. But we've found the sweet spot is where there's multiple locations. We've found there's a certain level of level of maturity in those organizations and they're a good fit for Ento. We then go up all the way to retailers with hundreds of locations with you know, three, four, 5000 staff working across these locations. So, we've got that enter-, enterprise capability?
Michael LeBlanc 20:02
And what's, what's the business model? Is it? You know, talk, let's talk about affordability at the, you know, I'm a mid-small retailer, you know, 5, 10 stores versus enterprise, you have different platforms with different affordability. How does that work?
Peter Vigilante 20:15
Yeah, so all the affordability is based on a per-user, per-month kind of concept. So, depending on how many different features you use in our software, there's a different pricing for that. And it's designed so that you get the most out of whatever kind of package you select.
Peter Vigilante 20:35
Some of our competitors I've come across, really have quite limiting packages where there's barely anything in, in the cheapest version or the free version. And you don't really get any benefit from, from using that because all the good features are hidden. So, you get all that with us. There's only a few things which you can opt in and out of, which is which is quite different from their competitors. But where we really shine is the consulting services or the implementation services where we come into your organization, we will actually review your existing business processes and optimize those pres-, processes alongside the Ento implementation.
Michael LeBlanc 21:12
And is that bundled in? Is that over and above is that included? Is, is that just part of being making sure that your, your customers are a success, kind of a success management process?
Peter Vigilante 21:23
Correct, that's the only way we do it. Because it's the only way we can guarantee success with Ento is having those bundled consulting services. So, what we've often come across with clients is they just want to take their paper-based form or process and just digitize it. And we're like, no, don't do that. You're not going to get any benefits; you're not going to solve any problems. It's just taking something that's already a little bit slow or a little bit cumbersome. And you're putting it into a web version of that there's no real benefit. (Crossover talk), yeah. So, let's take a step back what problem are you're actually trying to solve? How can we do that by using Ento from scratch?
Michael LeBlanc 21:58
And, and on, I mean, this is kind of one of those, how big is the breadbasket question. But on, on average, how long from start to finish is an engagement to get people up and running? I mean, the software is pretty, pretty, it's probably cloud based. So, there's not a lot of a big install, but just to get everybody oriented and learn how to use the software. What does that timeline look like?
Peter Vigilante 22:17
Yeah, the, the implementation is interesting, because from a technical implement, and configuration system side, we can have the system up and running, fully configured within about two days. So, we're finding that the system itself isn't where most of the time spent a lot of it's with the organization's own internal change management, or our own training, Rally-, rallying of the troops, getting the right people, the resources are available to help with, you know, deciding what configuration, -
Michael LeBlanc 22:50
the soft strategy stuff, so to speak, versus the tech stuff.
Peter Vigilante 22:53
Yeah, the techs easy, we've solved that we've made it simple enough that it, it's, it it's not what the holdup is going to be. It's where you should be focusing your time on the right things, the people, the processes, the training, not the tech. Let us solve that for you make that make that process really quick and easy and simple.
Michael LeBlanc 23:11
All right, well, I'll put I'll put links to the survey results in the in the show notes. But if I want to get in touch with you or learn more about Ento, where do I go?
Peter Vigilante 23:22
Yeah, head to our website is probably the best place so it's ento.com. So, that's E-N-T-O for those that have no idea how to spell Ento or have never heard of it before.
Michael LeBlanc 23:31
E-N-T-O. yeah, (inaudible). All right, -
Peter Vigilante 23:33
head to our website, and you can read all about Ento. And if you want to get in contact with us, you can do so through there.
Michael LeBlanc 23:40
And, and now your LinkedIn person like you, you are going to want to build your network here, right? Are you on LinkedIn?
Peter Vigilante 23:45
I sure am linkedin.com/in/p.Vigilante you can come through to my profile or just search for Peter Vigilante. It's a unique surname, so, I'm, I'm sure you'll find me pretty easily.
Michael LeBlanc 23:58
Well, and I'll, I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Listen, Peter, thanks so much for joining me on The Voice of Retail, interesting times, for sure. Welcome to Canada. It's great to have new insights and new, new opportunities, new options, and you bring a lot to the market. So, welcome again, and, and I wish you much continued success. And let's keep in touch and thanks for sharing the learnings from, from the survey as well.
Peter Vigilante 24:22
Thanks so much, Michael. Look forward to many more free donuts at Starbucks.
Michael LeBlanc 24:27
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure and click and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week.
Michael LeBlanc 24:37
And check out my other retail industry media properties the Remarkable Retail podcast, Conversations with CommerceNext podcast and The Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all-new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc Company and Maven Media. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website, @meleblanc.co.
Have a safe week everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
survey, organization, Canada, retail, solve, employee, interesting, changed, clients, business, Australia, software, people, staff, workforce management, onboarding, industry, talk, retailers, problems