GoDaddy.com

GoDaddy: Tuning in to the dynamics of change in procurement

Keith Tice, Chief Procurement Officer, walks us through the comprehensive transformation that has radically upgraded GoDaddy’s procurement processes

WRITTEN BY:

WILL GIRLING

PRODUCED BY:

GLEN WHITE

I've been with GoDaddy just shy of eight years: I came in May of 2013, just as GoDaddy was beginning a new transformation,” states Keith Tice, Chief Procurement Officer. “When I joined the company, procurement essentially did not exist here.” It’s a bold conversation opener, and one which perfectly anticipates the details of both Tice’s and GoDaddy’s accomplishment, which saw a function primarily managed by business stakeholders and a legal contracts team become a developed, dynamic, and digital process of its own.

Founded in 1997, GoDaddy’s stature as one of the US’ foremost internet domain registrars and web hosting companies has only grown over the years. Now with over 20 million customers worldwide spread across almost 60 different markets and 9,000 employees in 14 offices speaking roughly 30 languages to service them, this Scottsdale, Arizona business is one of the internet age’s most enduring global success stories.

Although Tice arrived with a significant challenge to overcome when he first joined, his expert level of experience gained from over 20 years of work in purchasing gave him the clear vision needed to begin overhauling procurement at GoDaddy. “I brought a mindset that focused on how we structure, separate and categorize the various spend aspects of what we're doing, particularly in terms of understanding suppliers and how they fit in the company,” he explains. Integrating this mindset required good oversight and command of data, something which was made difficult by legacy infrastructure. Tice’s goal was to spearhead a digital transformation that would go above and beyond the solutions he’d worked on previously.

“When I joined the company, procurement essentially did not exist here”

KEITH TICE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY

The first step of Tice’s plan required a broad evaluation of GoDaddy’s supplier network, “prior to my arrival the company had about 10 times the number of suppliers that we have today.” Following a six-month period of rationalizing the available data, he made the decision to shift away from difficult-to-manage Excel spreadsheets to an integrated platform that provided a single pane of glass visibility into the

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company’s spend with each supplier. “I needed to figure out what makes sense for GoDaddy, and I did that through a series of interviews with internal stakeholders about why they have certain vendors performing certain tasks for us.” Tice used the ‘five whys’ as his model:

• Why are you doing this? • Why this vendor in particular? • Why does it cost this much? • Why are we paying for that? • Why is it necessary?

Tice’s next move was to transmit the idea that each and every vendor is “expendable”, acting as a challenge for them to proactively justify GoDaddy’s spend through competitive service and delivery. “Step three was then

KEITH TICE

TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER

LOCATION: ARIZONA, UNITED STATES INDUSTRY: INTERNET SERVICES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Keith grew up in a very small town in the northern high plains of Texas. After attending college at Tarleton State University, Keith began his career working in the protein industry for IBP, Inc., which is now a part of Tyson Foods. The goal Keith had set after leaving Tarleton was to establish a career in Procurement. His first role came in 1997 with The Dial Corporation, not a part of Henkel. Keith initially managed Procurement for the Armour Star Brand of food products, a division of The Dial Corporation. As he progressed through the various functional areas within Procurement for Dial/Henkel, Keith was recruited to build a Procurement function and organization at GoDaddy. Starting in May 2013 the transformation and building of the Procurement organization with GoDaddy began as a team of three focused on IT requirements alone. Today, the organization and team Keith has built is managing all third party spending through the efforts of 12 staff located around the world.

$3.32bn

Revenue in FY 2020

1997

Year Founded

9,000+

Number of Employees

to renegotiate and/or add the right suppliers categorically across the company to service our business needs adequately, not just the way people perceived our needs,” continues Tice. “That shift, while difficult, put us in

a position where the relationships with vendors have become very strong. To take us to the next level of innovation, we needed to bring in vendors that could change the game for us: new technologies and new ways of working.”

In addition to consolidation, GoDaddy’s digital roadmap meant that the daily admin of procurement needed to modernize. Dispensing with rote manual tasks that introduced margins for error as information was traded from one system to another through automation was key, as was incorporating spend analytics and e-procurement platforms. Of course, no tech-based transformation story of the last 12 months could avoid the effect of COVID19, and it is in this regard that Tice adds special praise to GoDaddy, “I really have to emphasize how well the company did moving everyone quickly from the office to remote working.” However, the challenge

“I brought a mindset that focused on how we structure, separate and categorize the various spend aspects of what we're doing, particularly in terms of understanding suppliers and how they fit in the company”

KEITH TICE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY

was far from being merely a technical one: procurement, he states, is strongly rooted in person-to-person negotiation on both sides of the table. Reflecting on the beginning of the pandemic, Tice claims that he genuinely feared the effects of losing this important aspect, “I was becoming increasingly worried that the effectiveness of my team was going to start to decline because they just don't have that ability to work with the vendor one-on-one.”

Despite his concerns, GoDaddy’s saving grace turned out to be the ready availability of conferencing software like Zoom. Tice’s team quickly adapted to the new paradigm and didn’t miss a beat; turning in a 2020 performance that was equal to or better than the previous year, Tice states that he was pleasantly “shocked” by the results. “It’s gotten to the point now where I've recently hired two new permanently remote employees. I didn't hire them with any intention whatsoever to move them into one of our hub offices. Whatever the new normal looks like, I don't see my team going back to how things were unless specific needs arise.”

The spirit of embracing change at GoDaddy is easily visualized by its recent rebrand that features a slick image of the word ‘go’ shaped into a heart. “With our logo change, we're thinking about over 20 million customers out there: what’s their

“To take us to the next level of innovation, we needed to bring in vendors that could change the game for us: new technologies and new ways of working”

KEITH TICE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY philosophy and what can we do to support them? ‘Go’ exemplifies all that we want them to do; it captures that entrepreneurial spirit and it's paying homage to the importance of humanity and joy that we wanted in that logo.”

Focusing on CX (customer experience) is a big part of fulfilling the renewed promise of that logo. “A few years ago, if you went to GoDaddy with the intention of buying a domain, adding hosting or email, or any of the various products that we're offering, you would have found a front of site architecture that was cumbersome,” says Tice. Subsequently, this was improved by reducing the amount of clicks customers

EPAM and GoDaddy Join Forces to Help Small Businesses Succeed

After a decade of strong growth, internet pioneer GoDaddy recognized the need for a strategic partner to help navigate the ever-increasing pace of digital transformation and constantly evolving customer demands.

“We needed a highly-skilled workforce that could hit the ground running,” says Keith Tice, Chief Procurement Officer at GoDaddy. “We trust EPAM’s quality of service, their people, attention to detail and leadership. They are a partner we can grow with.”

EPAM offered what GoDaddy was looking for: the ability to accelerate roadmaps, re-prioritize technology plans, transition to a modern AWS Cloud architecture and engage the right mix of professionals to get it all done seamlessly.

GoDaddy started as a domain registrar and is now the world’s largest services platform for entrepreneurs around the globe. GoDaddy is the place where entrepreneurs and small business owners come to name their idea, build a website, attract customers and sell their products and services online. Today, GoDaddy has more than 20 million customers.

Over the years the need for engineering resources at GoDaddy has grown dramatically. The small business owner that once came to GoDaddy for just a domain name and hosting services, now looks to the company for everything from eCommerce to social media marketing.

In 2020, GoDaddy and EPAM kicked off projects to modernize GoDaddy’s eCommerce platform and deliver a more streamlined single sign-on experience for its online customers.

Previously, the customer sign-on and signup experience was focused on security more than convenience. GoDaddy wanted both. Already, A/B testing has shown significant success in changes delivered by EPAM. GoDaddy’s customers now have easier access to the company’s products in a highly secure environment.

Meanwhile, EPAM engineers on the eCommerce project team are ensuring that the existing architecture is seamlessly supported as they build a more scalable and flexible platform that will further GoDaddy’s ability to offer solutions that meet customers’ unique needs. At the same time, GoDaddy gets the tools they need to be more agile in responding to demands.

As GoDaddy continues to grow, company leaders wanted to ensure that whatever project they initiate to help their customers, they would have the right partner to make it happen. EPAM is excited to be a part of this journey helping GoDaddy and its customers build businesses globally that will grow and thrive as we all discover new ways to harness the power of digital.

Learn more

need to perform to find what they need. GoDaddy also introduced automated chatbots to streamline its communication channels and ensure queries are resolved diligently. “We’ve brought in chat automation so that our customers can come in, get what they need, and then move on. Speaking with a GoDaddy care representative is a fantastic experience, but, at the end of the day, running their business is what's important for our customers.”

This sense of technological pragmatism combined with a refreshingly adaptable mindset will form the bread and butter of GoDaddy’s approach to procurement in 2021. However, Tice has grander visions for his department beyond cost reduction, value creation and capital management. “We now are very focused on reducing supply risk and members of my team have goals set against that - we call it ‘joining forces’. I've also moved our organization into becoming more of a strategic advisor to the business as a whole. We now understand their roadmaps and where they're headed, and we're able to align suppliers and or technologies to match that.” As digital transformation continues to accelerate there will still be challenges, particularly relating to properly onboarding and training new remote-based team members, but Tice is certain that “every dollar spent” will enhance procurement’s influence, build supplier relationships, and facilitate its growth. Times are changing, he reasons, and those who can’t keep up with the new program are in danger of being left behind.

“Go’ exemplifies all that we want [customers] to do; it captures that entrepreneurial spirit and it's paying homage to the importance of humanity and joy that we wanted in that logo”

KEITH TICE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY