As CEO of Bamboo Rose, Matt Stevens brings over three decades of experience in tech. His road to the global leader in enterprise retail technology solutions, Bamboo Rose, was thanks to his strategic leadership and expertise in supplier relationship management (SRM) – which is at the heart of the company.
He was a founder of AppNeta, a successful performance monitoring solution designed for very large, complex and distributed enterprises. Matt excels at resolving strategic issues and is committed to prioritising team and product to empower long-term customer success.
From IT to Leading the Charge
Matt focused on the IT sector for a large part of his career, using his skills to deliver success to retail in his early career, working primarily with startups, with Bamboo Rose the fifth such company he has worked with. With a heavy focus on technology in the early part of his career, his roles saw him selling solutions to retail companies, helping him gain vital knowledge of the challenges companies were facing.
But when asked what his biggest influence was on his career to date, Matt says he was a “product of his environment” like we all are – but identified two parts that have shaped him into the leader he is today.
“I worked with a VC who really took the time to help me understand how the investment world works,” he says. “It was really an important shift in my thinking to understand that boards and investors are not your enemy. They are absolutely there to help you. Our challenges and our goals are shared and outcomes are all in parallel.
“I always believed that the stack to success was focused on your customers. Number one, focused on your product and solutions. Number two, if they’re right, you have to be sure you have the team to support those two. This led to a lot of success and I kind of took it for granted. I realised when I moved from CTO to CEO that I had number one and number three backwards. In order to put customers first, you actually have to put them last.
“You have to always focus on your team first. If you have the team right, anything's possible.”
The North Star
His leadership is clearly working, as the company is well on its way to US$50m in revenue this year, alongside a 99% gross retention rate. He puts this down to getting his team right and with that comes his North Star approach. Matt adds: “You have to have a common North Star that your team can align on that also aligns with your customer's mission. If you're both marching towards the same North Star and you really understand it and you really internalise it, it actually becomes almost self-managing.
“By having a North Star, it's the only way that your leadership team and, frankly, the individuals on the team can make those decisions on what's important and what's critical.”
The Focus on SRM
Matt has also been instrumental in the development of SRM at Bamboo Rose, driving the integration of it into the entire product lifecycle, from pre-supplier stages to post-purchase evaluations. This holistic approach ensures that suppliers are continuously evaluated and educated, enhancing efficiency and fostering stronger relationships between retailers and suppliers.
Bamboo Rose acquired Supply Pilot to help with this approach, expanding SRM to be more than something at the point of doing a buy programme to something that is far more holistic and goes far deeper.
“Even before the company thinks about designing a specific product, you’ve got a tight relationship with that supplier, you know how they’re doing, where they’re doing it, you know how they build products, all of their audit and quality dimensions so that you can make informed decisions even at a SKU by SKU level, which is something that retailers have always desired but never been able to do,” Matt adds. “Now with Bamboo Rose, they have much more flexibility, they have much more accountability and frankly it drives a stronger relationship between the supplier and the retailer because you’ve got a platform where they can both come together.”
Despite leading this incredible year for Bamboo Rose, Matt is focused on continuing to drive growth to improve business. “In the business world, you’re growing or dying. So growth remains my top goal, but it needs to be the right kind of growth. It can't be growth at any cost. It can't be just revenue growth. It has to be growth within your existing customers because if your existing customers are growing with you, that means you are hitting the mark for them. So that’s top of the stack for us. You have to have fresh perspectives, you need to have new logos coming in to make sure you're keeping your finger on the pulse of the market.”
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