Google Cloud’s Professional Services Organization (PSO) engages with customers to ensure effective and efficient operations in the cloud, from the time they begin considering how cloud can help them overcome their operational, business or technical challenges, to the time they’re looking to optimize their cloud workloads. 

We know that all parts of the cloud journey are important and can be complex.  In this blog post, we want to focus specifically on the migration process and how PSO engages in a myriad of activities to ensure a successful migration.

As a team of trusted technical advisors, PSO will approach migrations in three phases:

1. Pre-Migration Planning
2. Cutover Activities
3. Post-Migration Operations

While this post will not cover in detail all of the steps required for a migration, it will focus on how PSO engages in specific activities to meet customer objectives, manage risk, and deliver value.  We will discuss the assets, processes and tools that we leverage to ensure success.

Pre-Migration Planning

Assess Scope

Before the migration happens, you will need to understand and clarify the future state that you’re working towards.  From a logistical perspective, PSO will be helping you with capacity planning to ensure sufficient resources are available for your envisioned future state.

While migration into the cloud does allow you to eliminate many of the considerations for the physical, logistical, and financial concerns of traditional data centers and co-locations, it does not remove the need for active management of quotas, preparation for large migrations, and forecasting.  PSO will help you forecast your needs in advance and work with the capacity team to adjust quotas, manage resources, and ensure availability. 

Once the future state has been determined, PSO will also work with the product teams to determine any gaps in functionality.  PSO captures feature requests across Google Cloud services and makes sure they are understood, logged, tracked, and prioritized appropriately with the relevant product teams.  From there, they work closely with the customer to determine any interim workarounds that can be leveraged while waiting for the feature to land, as well as providing updates on the upcoming roadmap.  

Develop Migration Approach and Tooling

Within Google Cloud, we have a library of assets and tools we use to assist in the migration process.  We have seen these assets help us successfully complete migrations for other customers efficiently and effectively.

Based on the scoping requirements and tooling available to assist in the migration, PSO will help recommend a migration approach.  We understand that enterprises have specific needs; differing levels of complexity and scale; regulatory, operational, or organization challenges that will need to be factored into the migration.  PSO will help customers think through the different migration options and how all of the considerations will play out.

PSO will work with the customer team to determine the best migration approach for moving servers from on-prem to Google Cloud. PSO will walk customers through different migration approaches, such as refactoring, lift-shift, or new installs. From there, the customer can determine the best fit for their migration. PSO will provide guidance on best practices and use cases from other customers with similar use cases. 

Google offers a variety of cloud native tools that can assist with asset discovery, the migration itself, and post-migration optimization. PSO, as one example, will help work with project managers to determine the best tooling that accommodates the customer’s requirements for migrating servers. PSO will also engage Google product team to ensure the customer fully understands the capabilities of each tool and the best fit for the use case. Google understands from a tooling perspective, one size does not fit all, thus PSO will work with the customer on determining the best migration approach and tooling for different requirements. 

Cutover Activities

Once all of the planning activities have been completed, PSO will assist in making sure the cutover is successful.

During and leading up to critical customer events, PSO can provide proactive event management services which deliver increased support and readiness for key workloads.  Beyond having a solid architecture and infrastructure on the platform, support for this infrastructure is essential and TAMs will help ensure that there are additional resources to support and unblock the customer where challenges arise.

As part of event management activities, PSO liaises with the Google Cloud Support Organization to ensure quick remediation and high resilience for situations where challenges arise.  A war room is usually created to facilitate quick communication about the critical activities and roadblocks that arise.  These war rooms can give customers a direct line to the support and engineering teams that will triage and resolve their issues.

Post-Migration Activities

Once cutover is complete, PSO will continue to provide support in areas such incident management, capacity planning, continuous operational support, and optimization to ensure the customer is successful from start to finish.

PSO will serve as the liaison between the customer and Google engineers. If support cases need to be escalated, PSO will ensure the appropriate parties are involved and work to get the case resolved in a timely manner. Through operational rigor, PSO will work with the customer in determining if certain Google Cloud services will be beneficial to the customer objectives. If services will add value to the customer, PSO will help enable the services so it aligns with the customer’s goal and current cloud architecture. In cases where there are missing gaps in services, PSO will proactively work with the customer and Google engineering teams to close the gaps by enabling additional functionality in the services.  

PSO will continue to work with the engineering teams to consistently review and provide recommendations on the customer’s cloud architecture in ensuring the most optimal and cost efficient design along with adhering to Google’s best practices guidelines. 

Aside from migrations, PSO is also responsible for providing continuous training of Google Cloud to customers. To ensure consistent development of Google Cloud, PSO will work with the customer to jointly develop a learning roadmap to ensure the customer has the necessary skills to succeed in delivering successful projects in Google Cloud.

Conclusion

Google PSO will be actively engaged throughout the customer’s cloud journey to ensure the necessary guidance, methodology, and tools are presented to the customer. PSO will engage in a series of activities from pre-migration planning to post migration in key areas such as capacity planning to ensure sufficient resources are allocated for future workloads to providing support on technical cases for troubleshooting. PSO will serve as a long-term trusted advisor who will be the voice of the  customer and provide the reliability and stability of the customer’s Google Cloud environment.

Click here if you’d like to engage with our PSO team on your migration. Or, you can also get started with a free discovery and assessment of your current IT landscape.

The practical benefits of migrating SAP systems to the cloud aren’t lost on most businesses. Running SAP in the cloud lets companies simplify tasks, scale quickly, and reduce costs. But as a growing number of organizations are discovering, the cloud is more than the sum of improved processes and workflows. It offers unique and powerful ways to transform an enterprise.

That’s because the cloud is more than a technology. It’s a foundational layer for business and IT transformation. In the best scenario, it unleashes exponential gains that fundamentally change an enterprise. Organizations achieve greater agility and resilience, and they’re equipped to innovate and disrupt like never before.

RISE with SAP and Google Cloud sit at the intersection of these possibilities. RISE with SAP helps organizations embark on the cloud migration journey with minimal risk and on their own terms. Together with Google Cloud, it enables a more advanced framework for a move to the cloud. Think of RISE with SAP on Google Cloud as business-transformation-as-a-service.

Companies move their SAP systems to the cloud for very clear and compelling reasons: 44% say it fuels digital transformation, and 43% are looking to build out a modern IT infrastructure to lower costs and simplify processes. RISE with SAP on Google Cloud takes direct aim at these challenges.

MSC Industrial Supply Co., a premier North American distributor of metalworking and maintenance, repair, and operations products and services to industrial customers views RISE with SAP on Google Cloud as a way to make its IT systems and the business more flexible and scalable by expanding data access in the cloud. With approximately 2 million products and more than 6,500 associates, that’s no small task for the Melville, New York, company.

In June 2021, MSC successfully migrated to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, running on Google Cloud infrastructure. Through RISE with SAP, MSC adopted cloud resources that were both reliable and scalable, without any disruption to its business operations. Advanced data analytics, machine learning, and other AI capabilities are now available to MSC.

At the center of this transformation is BigQuery, with which MSC data scientists can pinpoint business insights among vast and complex data sets from diverse sources, including Ads, Maps, Shopping, or the Google Marketing Platform. The net effect is significantly less time needed to manage and analyze rich data sets.

Energizer Holdings Inc., a leading manufacturer and distributor of primary batteries (think Energizer Bunny), portable lights, and auto care products, has turned to RISE with SAP on Google Cloud to power its move to SAP S/4HANA. The company wants to automate essential business processes, improve customer service, and boost innovation. It had been using a private cloud solution but needed to gain flexibility while better containing costs.

After migrating through RISE with SAP on Google Cloud, Energizer is able to share data and intelligence to keep teams better informed. The framework has also helped contain costs and support business growth through reduced licensing costs and a more economical and efficient SaaS model.

Inchcape plc, the leading multi-brand automotive distributor for Toyota, Mercedes, BMW and others, is turning to RISE with SAP on Google Cloud to take its business-critical sales, marketing and operations systems, and data into the cloud. Doing so will allow the UK-based company to join a diverse range of datasets into a centralized, secure, and scalable platform for the first time.

With operations in over 40 markets and geographies, Inchcape has complex logistics requirements. Google Cloud supports and offers the types of advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities the company requires for today’s complex manufacturing environment.

GCP Applied Technologies Inc. (GCPAT) is dedicated to the development of high-performance products and the advancement in construction technologies, simplifying the complexities of construction worldwide and delivering value to its customers. As a part of their business transformation initiatives, the company was looking to move from an on-premise data center to a more modern framework that can keep up with evolving demands. GCPAT considered various solution options like non-cloud colocation, but ultimately opted to move to the cloud through RISE with SAP on Google Cloud.

The platform provides a resilient foundation for accelerating business process improvement and innovation while optimizing maintenance and licensing costs. With the ability to deliver transformative solutions across the enterprise, GCPAT is now well-positioned to handle the pace of business change.

Veolia is an international company with nearly 180,000 employees across the globe and activities in three main service and utility areas: water management, waste management and energy services. Veolia, which aims to become the benchmark company for ecological transformation, was looking to digitize its processes and operations with a modern, cloud-based enterprise management system. Fundamental to Veolia’s success is its ability to continually roll out new, digital services to its industrial and municipal clients, so the company needed an enterprise management system capable of adapting quickly as the company’s business model evolves.

Veolia Poland upgraded to S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition on Google Cloud through RISE with SAP. Not only has the company been able to take advantage of a simplified, fully managed, and shortened cloud implementation, it has also been able to extend its existing Google environment, including BigQuery, to place data at the center of its digitization strategy and develop predictive capabilities using Google Cloud AI.

4 steps to cloud success

These successful transformation stories share four key characteristics in common.

• Low-risk path: Each enterprise reduced its risk of migrating to the cloud while speeding up time-to-value. Subject matter experts from Google Cloud and its partners guided each enterprise through the transition, and they were able to take advantage of incentives to defray infrastructure costs through the Google Cloud Acceleration Program.
• Near-zero downtime: By increasing SAP application availability with Live Migration, our success stories dramatically reduced planned outages due to infrastructure and maintenance updates, down to less than 1 percent.
• Room to innovate: With advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning capabilities, these enterprises are improving processes, reducing costs and driving new revenue streams. Additionally, they have the ability to experiment with modern applications faster and more securely using their SAP data with Apigee.
• IT sustainability: By moving SAP applications to smarter and more efficient data centers, these success stories instantly reduced their IT emissions, while eliminating guesswork. Now, they can set goals based on seamless, agentless assessments and track progress with Google Cloud tools, analytics and reporting capabilities.

The engine of progress for cloud migrations

RISE with SAP on Google Cloud delivers a modular and low-risk path to the cloud for organizations at various stages of the migration and transformation path by clearing roadblocks and using performance indicators and industry benchmarks to pinpoint the best place to start.

The result? Reporting that’s 100x faster, as well as embedded AI technology, real-time advanced analytics, streamlined data display, consumer-grade UX across devices, strong sustainability, and a 50% reduction in a company’s data footprint. In practical terms, all the numbers add up to a simple but profound conclusion: RISE with SAP on Google Cloud is an engine of progress for organizations looking to gain an advantage in today’s highly competitive business environment.

To learn more about RISE with SAP on Google Cloud click here.

We’ve been saying it for years, the benefits and potential of the cloud abound. 

And yet, more than 80% of respondents in a survey of 753 business leaders point to managing cloud spend as their top organizational challenge, and these same respondents estimate that nearly 1/3 of their cloud spend is inefficient or wasted (Flexera, 2023). Many organizations are new to optimizing cloud costs and ensuring resources are used efficiently.

As your organization digitally transforms you may be realizing what other organizations are realizing too: When it comes to business value, simply migrating to the cloud isn’t enough. Achieving the full benefits of cloud requires fundamental changes to both mindset and behaviors around existing financial-management practices. It requires changing the way your disparate teams work together. 

Enter the Cloud FinOps Building Blocks

Cloud FinOps is a framework, discipline, and cultural shift combining people, processes, and technology to drive financial awareness and accountability. FinOps practices align engineering, finance, technology and business leaders and teams under a primary objective: to maximize business value from the cloud. With Cloud FinOps practices, every business stakeholder is charged not only to take responsibility for their spending and costs, but also to optimize them. These practices enable businesses to manage consumption and make sound, data-informed cloud-spend decisions. Cloud FinOps is comprised of five building blocks:

1. Accountability and enablement
   Establishing governance and policies to manage cloud spend and realize business value.
2. Measurement and realization
   Driving financial accountability and value realization with a defined set of KPIs and success metrics.
3. Cost optimization
   Providing financial visibility and recommendations of IT resource usage to optimize cloud spend.
4. Planning and forecasting
   Modernizing budgeting, forecasting, and chargeback methods to allow for iterative, innovative and cost effective development practices.
5. Tools and accelerators
   Deploying and integrating a set of cloud cost tooling to effectively manage and track cloud spend. Learn more here. 

For a general overview of the Cloud FinOps framework and more on the five building blocks, check out these resources:

• Video | What is FinOps and 3 reasons why you should care about it.
  This 5-minute video provides an overview of FinOps, the 5 building blocks, and how they can benefit your organization. 
• Podcast | FinOps with Joe Daly
  In this podcast, Joe Daly of the FinOps Foundation shares about the key principles of FinOps, which he refers to as financial DevOps. Daly discusses how this framework is helping companies make better and more efficient financial decisions while taking advantage of the cloud.
• Blog | Decoding Cloud FinOps to accelerate digital transformation
  This blogpost discusses the critical role of FinOps in a successful digital transformation. It outlines key metrics to help measure and track business value and to increase visibility into the effects of digital transformation on top-line revenue. 
• Article | Cloud FinOps: The secret to unlocking the economic potential of public cloud
  This Forbes article profiles OpenX, the first major advertising exchange platform to migrate entirely to the cloud. It details the 5 key pillars of the Cloud FinOps framework, which OpenX leveraged in their digital transformation strategy. In just 9 months, they reduced their per-unit costs by more than 60%.  

Importantly, Cloud FinOps isn’t about saving money; it’s about making money. It’s about promoting a cost-conscious culture, financial accountability, and business agility in the cloud. Whatever stage of the cloud journey you’re at, cloud FinOps practices will help you get the most value out of Google Cloud. This framework can help to remove blockers, implement the building blocks, and empower your teams to make better business decisions. 

The Cloud FinOps Journey 

Implementing Cloud FinOps is neither a destination nor a box your organization will check then archive. Rather, Cloud FinOps is an ongoing journey and discipline. It’s inherently iterative. As such, growth and maturity across processes, capabilities, and domains requires action, repetition, and continuous learning. 

Across the five FinOps building blocks, we’ve identified 50 subprocesses to best understand organizations’ FinOps proficiency, capabilities, practice domains, and blind spots. We scale them from 1 to 5 and categorize them in one of three phases of maturity: Crawl, Walk, or Run. Organizations in the Crawl phase tend to focus on technical problem solving and cloud-cost visibility. Organizations in the Walk phase emphasize strategic improvements such as employing cost visibility dashboards to realize better business value. And organizations in the Run phase are focused primarily on transformational change and strategic innovation, factoring cost considerations into both processes and cloud architecture. 

Through this “crawl, walk, run” maturity model, we can evaluate proficiency, establish a benchmark, and recommend a targeted action plan for FinOps adoption. And whatever your level of maturity, your organization can take quick scalable action not only to foster improvement but also to evaluate outcomes and gain insights. 

The key here is that regardless of your organization’s Cloud FinOps maturity level, you can take small steps now toward continuous improvement. Here are some common focus areas and several more resources organized by maturity level that you can access.

Crawl phase 

Improve cloud-cost visibility. 

• Whitepaper | Drive Cloud FinOps at scale with Google Cloud Tagging
  Tags and labels can be useful and flexible tools to help your organization segment cloud spend and allocate costs. This whitepaper introduces Google Cloud Tags and best practices for implementing them. It differentiates tags, which offer reliable reporting and governance features, from labels, which can be prone to problems, including poor coverage and a lack of integrity in data labeling. 
• Whitepaper | Unlocking the value of Cloud FinOps with a new operating model
  This white paper unpacks the details of the FinOps operating model, including roles, organizational alignment, and driving culture change. It details how to establish strong financial governance and a cost-conscious culture. 
• Whitepaper | Cloud FinOps: Shared services cost allocation
  In this whitepaper, you’ll explore the elements of cost allocation as well as the complexities and challenges associated with shared-services cost allocation. While some of these concepts and models are interchangeable between legacy and cloud environments, this whitepaper focuses primarily on cloud computing and associated services.

Walk phase

Improve business-value realization. 

• Blog | 5 key metrics to measure Cloud FinOps impact in your organization in 2022 and beyond
  To drive business growth and topline revenue, business leaders must be able to connect cloud investments to business outcomes. As such, traditional IT metrics and KPIs must continue to evolve. In this blogpost, we’ll explore five key business-value metrics aligned to the five Cloud FinOps building blocks. 
• Whitepaper | Maximize business value with Cloud FinOps
  The cloud introduces new complexity and challenges to traditional IT financial management. As such, it requires strategic financial governance, processes, and partnership across the organization. This whitepaper explains how Cloud FinOps helps enterprises that have invested in cloud to drive financial accountability and accelerate business value.

Run phase 

Improve strategic cloud innovation. 

• Whitepaper | Unit costing: The next frontier in cloud
  In this whitepaper, you’ll explore the nature of and need for cloud unit costing, the standard by which FinOps practitioners obtain full business context for their cloud costs. It features examples from cloud-first organizations that have pioneered FinOps practices. Additionally, it examines several cloud forecasting and budgeting methods, ranging from least to most rigorous. 
• Blog | You get what you pay for: Principles for designing a chargeback process
  Chargeback, a crucial Cloud FinOps capability, is the process of mapping cloud consumption to internal users within an organization. It provides transparency, facilitates accountability,  enables recovery of cloud costs, and fosters a culture of fiscal responsibility. This blogpost will walk you through some best practices in designing an effective chargeback process in Google Cloud. 

Success with Cloud FinOps

As global markets continue to face challenges, there’s never been a better time to increase the return on your cloud investments. Adopting and implementing FinOps practices will help. For some real-world examples of how organizations across a range of FinOps maturity levels have collectively saved millions of dollars on their overall cloud spend, check out these customers’ stories. 

• Video | Next 2022: Top 10 ways to lower your costs on Google Cloud with General Mills
  In this video, which highlights ten leading cloud cost optimization practices, hear how General Mills, which is on pace to increase their cloud footprint by 60%, has approached the discipline of cost savings and accelerated their adoption of Cloud FinOps to drive waste out of their cloud usage. 
• Video | How Nuro optimized their costs on Google Cloud
  In this video, you’ll get an overview of the Google Cloud FinOps framework, a deep dive on cost-optimization best practices, and hear about how startup Nuro AI has adopted their own cost-savings discipline and Cloud FinOps practice. 
• Video | How OpenX reduce per unit costs by 60%
  In this video, you’ll learn how to establish a cost center of excellence within your cloud practice, explore several cost-optimization recommendations, and hear from OpenX about how they reduced their costs on Google Cloud. 
• Case Study | How Sky saved millions with Google Cloud
  In this case study, read how a few years into their cloud adoption journey, media and entertainment company, Sky Group discovered over $1.5 million in savings and optimized costs with BigQuery, Compute Engine, and Cloud Storage. 
• Case Study | Etsy: Doing more with less cost and infrastructure
  In this case study, read how after migrating their data center and ecommerce platform to the cloud, Etsy realized more than 50% savings in compute energy and leveraged committed use discounts (CUDs) to reduce their compute costs by 42%. 

It’s important to remember that FinOps success looks different for different organizations. It’s neither a one-time fix nor a destination reached by way of a single path. But for every organization, success requires small actions, refinement, and continuous improvement. As you leverage Google Cloud FinOps resources and tools, your organization can:

• Drive financial accountability and visibility.
• Optimize cloud usage and cost efficiency.
• Enable cross organizational trust and collaboration.
• Prevent cloud-spend sprawl.
• Break down departmental silos.
• Accelerate innovation. 

Getting started with Cloud FinOps

At Google, we have a team of experts in leading FinOps practices dedicated to helping you create an actionable plan to optimize cloud spend and drive cost efficiency. We’ve created numerous resources to help you get started from any stage in the FinOps journey. 

Whitepaper | Maximize Business Value with Cloud FinOps
This whitepaper outlines steps to help your organization implement FinOps. It details required teams and processes as well as the optimal behaviors, approaches, and outcomes to help maximize your investment on Google Cloud. 

With Google Cloud FinOps, your organization can also accelerate business value in the cloud. To find out more, join us on the Google Cloud Twitter channel twice a month for open Twitter Spaces discussions or reach out to your Google Cloud Sales Representative for a 1:1 discussion.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Consumer Goods Technology Magazine

Shifting work habits, more online shopping options, rising inflation, and stretched supply chains are just a few factors making it harder to discern what’s top-of-mind for shoppers today.

But we’re starting to get a clearer picture of what consumers say they value most right now. New Harris Poll research commissioned by Google Cloud reveals how U.S. shoppers are thinking about consumer goods brands in new ways—from apparel, electronics, and beauty products, to food and beverage.

While price unsurprisingly continues to be a major consideration in purchases, the average shopper is increasingly paying close attention to the values of consumer goods brands and how eco-friendly their products and practices are.

Shoppers want to buy from brands aligned with their values

COVID-19 drove people to reflect on their priorities, elevating concepts like community service, equity, and sustainability. A decade ago, most consumer goods companies would not have made these front-and-center, operational priorities. But today’s consumer not only wants savings and convenience, they also want that good feeling that comes from spending their money with a company that aligns with their values.

Our new research reveals that 82% of shoppers prefer a consumer brand’s values to align with their own, and they’ll vote with their wallet if they don’t feel a match. Three-quarters of shoppers reported parting ways with a brand over a conflict in values.

Even with their favorite consumer goods products, a majority of shoppers will not compromise on principles. If there’s a value mismatch, 39% of shoppers said they’d permanently boycott their favorite brand, and 24% would break ties at least temporarily. Most won’t be quiet about their concerns either: 28% of consumers that found their values at odds with a brand said they have shared their concerns with friends and family, and another 15% have shared their qualms on social media.

Consumer goods companies need to prioritize sustainability

A majority of today’s consumers (52%) are especially interested in supporting sustainable brands. They want to know how companies are managing their resources, specifically whether they are sourcing responsibly. These shoppers want to see meaningful, measurable efforts from CPG firms to save energy and reduce waste, like how Nuuly, URBN’s digital rental and resale business, has woven sustainability into its business operations, from its distribution centers to reusable packaging.

In fact, 66% of shoppers are now seeking out eco-friendly brands, with 55% saying they would pay more for more sustainable products. But these same shoppers are skeptical too: 72% think that companies and brands overstate their sustainability efforts. And they’re right to question brands’ practical application of their values. According to another Harris Poll survey recently commissioned by Google Cloud, 58% of executives polled across 16 countries admit that their organization has overstated its sustainability efforts.

Product availability is table stakes

A final point from the research: The global supply chain has stretched past its limits, and 60% of consumers are voicing some level of concern about it. At the end of the day, if a preferred brand isn’t actually on the shelves of a real or digital store, it doesn’t matter what the brand’s values or sustainability efforts are. A staggering 98% said they’d either buy from a different brand or search other stores or websites.

What’s a brand to do?

After more than 25 years working in the consumer goods industry in roles ranging from marketing and product development to business strategy and technology, at companies like Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, Carter’s, and now Google Cloud, I’ve seen successful brands do four things well when it comes to their values:

1. Don’t be generic.
   Your brand’s values need to be authentic, and they need to have teeth. But being too bold could run the risk of alienating some consumer segments. This is where technology can help. Personalizing your messages and outreach to specific shopper profiles is one way to ensure that your core values reach the right customers at the right time.
2. Make your values clear and consistent.
   When focusing on which values to highlight with your consumers and the world, make sure they make sense for your brand and that you’ll stick to them over time. For example, it’s painfully obvious when a brand is being opportunistic and inserting itself into conversations around values like sustainability or social justice, when it doesn’t have a history of voicing those values. The key to clear and consistent messaging of values is balancing authenticity with relatability and the appropriate amount of promotion.
3. Develop sustainability practices and communicate their impact to everyday people.
   How everyday people perceive a consumer goods brand’s sustainability initiatives is different from how an investor or general business audience does. Shoppers don’t read business sustainability plans or impact reports. To increase awareness of your brand’s sustainability efforts, consumers need to identify and interact with your brand and products directly. Some of my favorite examples are how I love that Google Maps gives me the choice of eco-friendly driving directions, and that I know I can buy low-waste, packaging-free cosmetics from a company like Lush.
4. Reward customer loyalty.
   Shoppers have more choices than ever before, and supply chain woes are testing preferences even further. But when someone chooses a specific brand because they feel aligned with their values or like their eco-friendly products, that shopper doesn’t always get recognized or thanked. Implementing a rewards program or following-up with customers after their purchases is one way you can make loyal shoppers feel appreciated while creating a lasting relationship that extends as long as possible.