 just recently went up on there. We do all the financials, core financials, as well as the supply chain applications. We use mobile supply chain management along with our handhelds. We're looking at moving into point of view. Live from New York, it's theCUBE, covering Inform 2016, brought to you by Inform. Now, here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and George Gilbert. Welcome back to New York City, everybody. This is theCUBE, Silicon Angles flagship product. We go out to the events and we extract the signal from the noise. The folks from Footlocker are here. We're going to talk a little sports, a little human capital management. Alexis Trigo is here. He is the director of store capability is joined by Robert Perkins, who's the VP of talent management at Footlocker Inc. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Appreciate you coming on. All right, Robert, we're going to start. Okay. So Footlocker, the brand is all about like cool sports stuff, right? Sports gear. I got to ask you, Kevin Durant trade. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Is he selling out? What's the deal? Ooh, I'm going to probably get myself in trouble here, but I have to give it a thumbs down. I think it's not going to create parity in the league. It was a bad trade. I was surprised they didn't block it the way they blocked Chris Paul when he was trying to go to the LA Lakers. So I give it a thumbs down. So they're team stacking, right? I'm a Celtics fan, so it was kind of bummed that, you know, they were in the running, little tease, but so anyway. So, Alexis, tell us about, you know, Footlocker, what you guys do, what your roles are. Yeah, so I mean, we're a leading global athletic retailer. We operate in 23 countries. We have multiple different brands, but we curate the best different type of sneakers and athletic powerl and experiences with some of our great grand partners from Nike to Adidas, et cetera. Okay, so you got store capability and talent management. What does that mean to people who don't necessarily know your organization? You know, from a talent management standpoint, really our team's focus is on helping to build leadership and organizational capability, making sure that we're developing the talent out there that can help to move our business forward. Okay, and so you're helping the stores find people? Yeah, so what we do is actually, we partner with our subsidiary heads of operations and we look for synergies in terms of how we can actually make our assets more productive. Because when you think about it, it's the experience that really sets us apart in terms of the customer coming in. It's not just about the product, but it's also the culture around the sneaker, the culture around the player, or whatever that product's background is made up of. So, you know, it's just figuring out ways that we can ensure that we're delivering that experience consistently in all of our properties across the globe. So is it fair to say that you envision like an outcome of an interaction with a customer and you kind of work backwards from there to find the right people to deliver that outcome or is that just too prescriptive or? No, I think it's a really fair statement, right? There's a journey the customer has, whether they engage us through a brick and mortar or through an econ component, there's something they're looking for and they vote every single day with their wallet. So, you know, that's really our key focus in mind. When we work with our brand partners, we think about our pinnacle consumers and what's that experience they're looking for? What are some of the things that drive them? You know, and they vote every single day based on the product that they buy, how much they spend and how they wear it and how they choose to engage with us. So it's an incredibly competitive business, right? So how do you guys differentiate and how does human capital help you differentiate? Well, you know, I think from a customer experience standpoint, we hope and believe that is our differentiating factor, you know, the experience. Yeah, you know, one of the things we look at is just our candidate flow. You know, we get over 1.5 million candidates that apply for over 30,000 jobs that we have on an annual basis. So people want to work for Footlocker. You know, it's a fun place to work. It's a fun experience and we hope that our customers have that same experience when they come into our stores. The product knowledge of our associates, the extra service and attention that they pay to them to help them get what they're looking for, whether it's a pair or a footwear or accessories. People talk about like a war for talent in the technology business, you know, Google versus Facebook versus Amazon. You have a, there's a war for talent, I imagine, in your business, but it's a much larger volume and it's maybe not a belly to belly war. It's maybe, you know, brand and attracting the people into that experience. Maybe talk about sort of how you do that. Sure. Yeah, you know, I think you kind of hit that. It's really, it's a war for talent, but the reality is it's about the experience. And the one thing that we afford is there's a culture out there around the brand, about the products that we sell. And as Robin mentioned, we have the 1.5 million candidates that are always seeking opportunities to work with us. You know, I think the key for us is helping identify who those, right, who those specific talent is that needs to come to join us and can create that experience. And that's one of the things that we're here at Inforum and we actually partnered with them to use their talent science to help us be more predictive in thinking about who we can actually bring into the organization that can help cultivate that experience. Yeah, so I was going to ask you, how does data fit in? Can you use data science and analytics to actually do a better job of targeting the right people, attracting those people, retaining them? No, and we, yeah, so talent science is exactly that. We're using predictive behaviors to see how we can actually see the candidates that actually take an assessment against profiles that we've actually built behind the scenes with our partners at Infor to find individuals that will be more likely to be successful when they join our environments that are a closer match of success for each one of the brands that we operate, whether that be Footlock or Chance Boards or a Foot Action, et cetera. We're looking to bring talent in that can actually help bring that experience to life that that consumer's looking for in that segment. Is there anything that really surprised you in the data when you first started, you know, going down this journey, anything that stood out as, wow, we didn't know that or, okay, we knew that, but now we really have the conviction because the data supports it. Yeah, well, I mean, I think everybody was surprised when we went down this road, because as we said, we don't have a problem attracting people. So, you know, the old traditional way of hiring people, which was very inconsistent, a lot of times based on likability, it was working for us, we were very successful, but when we implemented talent science, the difference we saw in terms of the increase in sales per hour of our associates and how much more of the people that we were hiring through the assessment tool and having to sell in behaviors that were able to impact the performance of the business, we saw a decrease in turnover from associates, you know, all of that having a financial impact to the bottom line, and even the administrative efficiencies of just really recruiting fewer people or needing to recruit fewer people and having that sort of accuracy of picking the right people has had a huge impact for us operationally. Has having that data available changed? I heard one of the speakers this morning, you know, talking about transparency, I mean, has it affected transparency and has that allowed you to, I don't know if it's just create, you know, greater loyalty amongst employees or talk about that a little bit if it's relevant. Well, when you think about how these, Robert mentioned we've been able to reduce turnovers, so the associates are more engaged, they're staying longer with us, they're adapting to selling behaviors quicker and adapting to the journeys that the consumers are looking for. So, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say transparency is the right word, but rather there's, they're adapting more to the environment that they're in. And I think the data's helped us to isolate what those behaviors are and that DNA that they, that Info calls it, that allows us to be able to predict and prioritize and pre-select certain talents. And then align with that. And align with that. You have a younger workforce, presumably, right? And they, that younger workforce, from all the data I've seen, looking for different things than maybe, you know, the greatest generation or the baby boomers, right? I mean, yes, money's always important to everybody, but they're looking for a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a team, a sense of being part of that mission, right? Do you find that? Yeah, I think so. I think we would both agree with that. The reality is it's a culture. There's something great about being part of a Footlocker's organization, whether that means the product, the celebrities, the athletes, there's so much that our brand brings to life that, you know, you go into these stores and the teams are just excited about what they get to do every single day. And every single day is a new opportunity. You're never meeting the same customer twice in the sense that you're always having a revolving door of people that are coming in, so it's always new. Sure, you built your clients that come back, but it's always a new experience. And it's the product that creates that. It's the love of the culture. It's the love of what these sneakers do that keeps everyone coming back and wanting to work for our organization. And I think we created a winning culture. You know, I think people feel a lot of recognition and rewards are in place, both individually and as a team, in terms of how they participate in the success of their store, participate in the success of the company. We're really good at internal mobility. Most of our promotions come from within. Very infrequently, do we actually go to the outside to have to promote to management positions within a store? So they realize when they're signing up, they're signing up for a career and not necessarily a job within Foot Locker, which also helps us with retention. That's huge for people. The company's willingness to promote from within and you sending that signal is big. And of course, the other great thing about sports is it's just always changing. There's always a new star, so it has a good spot. All right, we're out of time, but just each of you, last thoughts on Inforum 2016, takeaways, things you learned? You know, it's a great opportunity to connect with other clients and see some of the challenges that they're experiencing and recognizing that, you know, we're in this together and wish some solutions that Inforc can help us as we think about our long-term plans around talent and being successful out there. All right, Robert. And I love the benefits of the client conferences. Alexis said opportunity to understand how other clients are applying their different tools within their workplace helps to give us some insight on how we might expand our relationship with Inforum. So, so far enjoying it. It's been a good learning experience. Great, excellent. People, culture, innovation, sports. We're bringing it to our CUBE audience. Alexis and Robert, thanks very much for coming to CUBE. All right, thank you. Thank you, David, appreciate it. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. As colleges and universities use an