Kelly Goetsch is the Chief Operating Officer of Pipe17, which specializes in AI-powered composable order operations. Before joining Pipe17, he served as the Chief Strategy Officer at commercetools, where he played a pivotal role in scaling the company to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Kelly also co-founded MACH Alliance, a nonprofit industry organization advocating for Microservices, APIs, Cloud-native, and Headless (MACH) technologies. 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [1:18] Kelly Goetsch shares his career path and vision for transforming order management
• [4:47] Why brands must meet customers where they discover products
• [7:16] How Pipe17 integrates with legacy systems and uses AI-based routing to streamline order management
• [14:05] Kelly’s use of AI tools like ChatGPT for shopping and product discovery
• [17:40] The future of voice commerce and conversational shopping experiences

In this episode…

Customers expect fast fulfillment and delivery across various selling channels, including social media and marketplaces. Traditional systems struggle to keep pace, leaving companies tangled in connectivity issues between their sales, inventory, and fulfillment networks. How can brands deliver seamless, cost-effective experiences while scaling across these fragmented digital touchpoints?

With experience in AI-driven order management, Kelly Goetsch advises brands to adopt a connectivity-first model. This requires integrating a flexible routing layer that connects selling channels, back-office systems, and fulfillment partners, enabling dynamic order flow based on cost, speed, and product needs. Kelly also recommends embracing emerging sales platforms like TikTok and leveraging AI tools to align with how customers discover products, noting that companies must modernize their operations or risk falling behind in today’s competitive landscape.

In today’s episode of The Digital Deep Dive, Aaron Conant speaks with Kelly Goetsch, COO of Pipe17, about reshaping order management for AI-driven shopping. Kelly explains how selling channels have evolved, marketing gaps in midsize brands, and how voice commerce has shaped emerging conversational shopping experiences.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Aaron Conant on LinkedIn   
• BWG Connect  
• Kelly Goetsch on LinkedIn 
• Pipe17 
• “The Future of Onsite Search With Charlie Cole” on The Digital Deep Dive
• XGEN AI

Quotable Moments:

• “You have to be where your customers’ eyeballs are, and that's not a novel concept.”
• “Discovery is happening elsewhere, and I think that's where you see this big proliferation.”
• “Our customer success team does onboarding, and it's typically a couple-week engagement with one person.”
• “We allow connectivity between these different systems, so we'll take the order from capture.”
• “I really think this is going to completely blow up how people shop today.”

Action Steps:

1. Embrace a connectivity-first order management approach: Linking selling channels, back-office systems, and fulfillment partners ensures seamless order flow and improves customer satisfaction. This foundational integration reduces manual errors and allows brands to scale efficiently across multiple sales platforms.
2. Expand into emerging sales channels: Selling on platforms like TikTok or Temu helps brands meet consumers where they discover products. Ignoring these fast-growing channels risks falling behind competitors who capture new audiences early.
3. Leverage AI for smarter product discovery: Using tools like ChatGPT can streamline research, comparisons, and recommendations for brands and consumers. This improves decision-making speed and positions brands at the forefront of shopping innovation.
4. Simplify onboarding through plug-and-play integrations: Opt for solutions that offer fast setup without heavy custom development or maintenance requirements. This approach reduces internal resource strain and accelerates time-to-value for new technologies.
5. Prepare for voice and conversational commerce: Investing early in voice-enabled and conversational shopping capabilities can future-proof the customer experience. As adoption grows, brands equipped with these tools will lead in convenience and engagement.

About BWG Connect...

BWG Connect provides executive strategy and networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. We network and knowledge share together to better understand and adapt to the newest trends, strategies, and pain points shaping growth in the digital space. BWG Connect, in conjunction with BWG Strategy, has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

In addition, we have had 1x1 conversations with over 5,000 brands and have a real-time pulse on what digital strategies are successful and why. This in-depth knowledge allows our team to operate on the cutting-edge and provide our clients with best-in-class guidance on how to win in the digital world. We have provided free consultations and strategy sessions for companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune-100, to enable growth, resolve issues and make curated service provider introductions that can impact your digital footprint.

We have held to the philosophy of providing high-level insights and actionable knowledge with no sales pitches in order to provide to our network the ability to listen, learn and act to improve themselves as well as their organizations. Our ultimate goal is to be the resource out there to help digital executives find the research they need to excel in the modern marketplace.

If you are interested in getting involved with any of our current or past events, you can find them here. If you are looking for help & would like to set up some time to chat with our team, you can schedule a time or reach out directly to Aaron@bwgconnect.com or Tiffany@bwgconnect.com.