Q&A: Jackson Versitano, Regional Manager, UK & RoEMEA for Lightspeed
Lightspeed Commerce are about a lot more than transactions. We talk to Jackson Versitano to find out more.
Tell us about your background?
I’m originally from Australia and have Italian heritage, that’s probably why I like London, it’s very multicultural. I’ve been in the UK for about 6 years and pre Lightspeed, I was with Vend which was acquired by Lightspeed in 2021. I started out in sports and business management and then just fell into sales.
Can you tell us what Lightspeed does?
We are a one stop cloud-based commerce platform that provides customers with the functionality they need to engage with consumers, manage their operations, accept payments, and grow their businesses.
We help customers globally to compete in an omnichannel market environment by offering an easy-to-use platform to retailers and engaging with consumers across online, mobile, social, and physical channels.
Have Vend and Lightspeed integrated well?
Honestly, I was a bit nervous about the acquisition because so often you hear negative stories, but our experience has been very positive. Firstly, our teams have blended well with similar personalities and culture, culture being the biggest one.
Internally, we have this expression “We’re a company infused with culture just as much as code”, and I love that. With every person involved in our business, every contribution builds towards our success.
Second to this, our teams are selling the Retail product which is a combination of the original Vend product, but since joining Lightspeed we have been able to rapidly develop into the best product in the market!
What is different?
What we’ve created in this path of acquisition over the last couple of years is essentially, a one-stop omnichannel shop. Lightspeed acquired companies to create the best-in-class retail platform by integrating features from the different products acquired, which today allows retailers to access the best tool for all of their needs. We’ve built a platform that enables our customers to run their whole business through one cloud system. And we worked hard to make sure we built an intuitive, user friendly and simple front end.
Time is the thing that everyone wants to buy back in spades. Our omnichannel approach results in operational efficiency, streamlined processes, and centralised management with for example, reporting, customer support and data. All of this helps to save time which means our customers can focus on core business activities. That’s a really big advantage.
An example of this would be payments. With our fully integrated payment platform, the moment the payment card is tapped, payment is processed, it’s on the screen, and it’s reportable. This is essential because retailers need to understand their performance day to day, save time and money, particularly in this economical climate. Plus, it means no double handing and no manual processes. And if something goes wrong, you’ve only got one person to call.
Relationships and people set us apart. A lot of our people come from or have worked in retail or hospitality, so it’s easy to ‘get’ the challenges and needs of our customers, it helps us to find the common ground, to build strong relationships.
Are retailers investing?
The last 12 months have been big for us. We’re in a period of strong and rapid growth and have hired 6 new people into our team in the last year – we’re moving forward at pace. While retailers and the industry – well all of us really – talk a lot about the recession, many are investing. The outlay of our system can actually help our customers to reduce costs. If you’re using our tools correctly, we believe over a matter of months you can make that investment back, but businesses must invest wisely.
Retailers need to invest wisely?
Yes. Good technology implemented badly is bad technology. It’s important that you get it right from the beginning.
Migration is very important because you need to make sure your business is still up and running, but you also need to make sure you’re using tech in the right way. We work closely with our customers to help them get it right. We recently showed a customer how to change a process and it was able to save them 10 hours a week. Like I said earlier, time is precious, often priceless, especially for a business owner.
Neal’s Yard Remedies are a great example of a customer that we’re really invested in. Neal’s Yard is a complex business; they make their own products, they manufacture, distribute and sell across the globe. They were looking for a solution that was simple but understandable, and were a little anxious about a big roll out. Lightspeed had Neal’s Yard up and running within two weeks. They were shocked by the efficiency of the onboarding and pleased. Take a look at their experience with Lightspeed here.
What’s on the horizon at Lightspeed?
We’re very focussed on working together with businesses to help them simplify and improve their operations by constantly being at the forefront of the industry’s latest needs and trends. By investing in them, we are building trust and that’s important to our business.
Secondly, we are also investing in our technology and our product teams to make our system better everyday. We are very lucky to have strong relationships with our customers who regularly give us feedback.
Want to know more?
You can find out more here. Plus, Jackson will be speaking at the upcoming TRB Digital Transformation Strategy event on 14th June. Book your space here.
