In this session, Estee Woods, Senior Director of Product Marketing at YOOBIC steered a conversation with leaders from francesca's that revolved mainly on how Francesca's implemented a people-centric strategy using technology to humanize and connect their teams, which helps employees feel connected to the brand and to the community. This has helped them turn around the business, enable their store teams to be successful, and is creating an employee-brand connection. francesca's® is a specialty retailer which operates a nationwide chain of francesca's® and franki by francesca's® boutiques providing customers a unique, fun and personalized shopping experience. Today, francesca's® operates approximately 454 boutiques in 45 states and also serves its customers online.

Estee Woods introduced YOOBIC, the company as a frontline employee experience platform that brings communication, microlearning, and task management together in one platform. The platform is designed for retail and store networks so that employees have everything they need at their fingertips. She showcased a new feature of the YOOBIC platform called "communities," which helps team members feel supported and connected across different stores.

Sarah Brown, Director, Field Training and Guest Experience, francesca's talked about how technology has been an enabler of building personal connections among teams. She believes that Francesca's leadership team, led by CEO Andrew Clark, has created a customer-first culture where everyone has a voice. To build the company's strategies, cross-functional sharing of feedback and ideas is foundational to its culture. Sarah explains that Francesca's technology platform, YOOBIC, has helped the company overcome its geographically dispersed teams, especially during the pandemic, and has been a game-changer in building people connections. Sarah also talks about how the company has reduced email communication by 95% by encouraging to use chat functionality on the YOOBIC platform. In addition, the company has invested in a learning management system that allows the creation of content and the assignment of points to lessons and quizzes. Finally, Sarah shares that the company is trying to reduce the use of printed materials, including calendars, by promoting virtual platforms. Sarah advises prioritizing must-haves, need-to-haves, and nice-to-haves and involving the end customers (team members) in the process of selecting the technology solution.

Kim Rogers, Director of Boutique Operations at Francesca's, shared how YOOBIC, a mobile friendly, all in one application has seen great adoption across the organization and is a big win for the company. He noted that the company has identified additional use cases for future successes with the brand.