Meet the Kalibrate team: Kayla Kurtz, Account Management Director

At Kalibrate, we believe our success is driven as much by our people as our technology. This blog post introduces our Account Management Director, Kayla Kurtz, and gives an insight into what she brings to our business.

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What’s your role at Kalibrate?

My official title is Account Management Director. I work in a hybrid of client solutions/account success roles across our location intelligence platforms. My typical day involves consulting with internal and external teams, guiding and solving daily business problems, deploying analytical solutions around new site placement, and translating our customer needs into actionable insights for future innovations.

What does a typical day look like?

Every morning brings a new solution to build, a new client to scope, or a new question to answer for existing client success. This means frequent daily meetings to confer with client teams to ensure we are always meeting, and ideally exceeding, expectations. I also train clients on multiple platforms, while helping to build solutions for different verticals within those organizations. In the background, I work with our amazing internal teams to make sure we have alignment on any relevant updates, data cadences, and contemporary brands in our client base.

What do you love about your role?

I love my client teams and the partnerships we continue to build!

My success can only be measured by the success of my clients. The solutions we deploy, the tools we create, and the roadmap we’re working together to implement, keep me excited each day. No matter the existing client footprint (1 location or 1,000+ locations) we are constantly learning and pivoting to find the most effective unique strategies – whether their objectives are expansion, customer targeting, or portfolio optimization exercises. At the end of the day, I am only as strong as the internal teams that support our organization and save my life daily.

No solution is the same, as no client is the same – it’s challenging, but knowing we continue to add value to our partners makes this role incredibly fulfilling.

Why did you choose to join Kalibrate?

When Kalibrate announced that they would be integrating the collective analytic power of TAS, Intalytics, and eSite, I knew it was the organization for me. To be included in the combination of these best-in-class analytic companies was my dream that is now being actualized.

Over the years I have worked for or in partnership with these organizations in various roles, so I knew that once they were united, Kalibrate would be the gold-standard in market and site selection solutions. Our internal teams work tirelessly to provide innovative insight and recommendations to a diverse collection of industries. I get to be a part of our new roadmap – I try to be the voice of the client, so our direction is aligned to what they need today and what they’ll need in the future.

It really helps that Kalibrate’s leadership team is receptive – every voice is heard, and our CEO goes out of his way to make sure the needs of our clients and internal teams are met.

What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities in the Kalibrate sectors?

Like all retail-focused industries, we continue to feel the impacts of Covid-19, especially in the brick-and-mortar retail, QSR, and restaurant sectors. Staffing challenges, increased crime in large markets, and shifts in customer bases are at the baseline for new innovative predictive solutions we are creating to help bridge the gaps, while we continue to battle an everchanging post-pandemic landscape.

As for opportunities, with the launch of Competitive Insights, our mobility-based analytics solution, our clients can now gain real-time insight into how their locations are performing relative to competitors and other retail categories. This tool allows our clients to understand the shifting spending dynamics that occur in the markets they care about most, while solving the many questions posed by inaccurate or lack of customer/transactional data. At the end of the day, the thought leadership here at Kalibrate is always innovating and will continue to create opportunities for expansion and growth with our partnered organizations.

Where do you see these markets heading?

Please hold; shaking my magic 8 ball…

All concepts partnered with us are headed for successful futures. I expect we will see an increased presence of ghost kitchens across many restaurants and QSR chains. Ghost kitchens are a perfect way to soft launch new concepts or break away from an old restaurant model while gaining traction in a new, more desirable customer base.

In-house delivery capabilities could be big – I can see many chains bringing delivery services in-house (if current staffing shortages are resolved) as opposed to leveraging third-party sources that hoard data and charge exorbitant fees.

The state of these markets is ever-evolving, here at Kalibrate, we roll with the punches. If the markets change, we pivot and transform so we can continue to be a leader in the space and help our clients continue to lead in theirs.