ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Mike Dattilo described his current integration project as a jigsaw puzzle shaken out on the table. Floyd Blaikie corrected him to two or three puzzles, and he agreed.
ㅤ
Mike runs eBusiness at Xerox, covering B2C, B2B and partner commerce. He’s folding an acquired organization’s systems into Xerox infrastructure that wasn’t fully integrated to begin with, which adds up to literally dozens of systems.
ㅤ
Mike took the commerce side with Matt Johnson and Floyd. The friction he kept returning to was human: a pricing spreadsheet John loads every day that never came up in requirements, and an OST report that surfaced only after go-live.
ㅤ
He walks through the documentation his team keeps and why they run Kanban instead of a two-year waterfall plan. He also covers what he’d do the moment an acquisition is announced. Data vs. Commerce is produced by Pivotree.
ㅤ
👤 Guest Bio
Mike Dattilo is Director of eBusiness at Xerox, where he leads direct commerce across B2B, B2C and partner channels. He came up through Lexmark, starting as a software engineer and later serving as Digital Marketing Director, where he led Lexmark’s move to Adobe Commerce on Adobe’s cloud.
ㅤ
Xerox acquired Lexmark in July 2025, so Mike is now integrating systems he used to run. He co-organizes the Adobe Commerce Virtual USA User Group. On this episode he took the commerce side.
ㅤ
📌 What We Cover
- Architecture documentation at both extremes: a Word doc map that looked drawn in Microsoft Paint, and AI-generated docs hundreds of pages long.
- Why requirements gathering is usually one of the longest cycles, and why leadership asks for implementation time before the team knows what it’s implementing.
- Mike’s working set: a one-page architecture diagram, data flow diagrams that map where PII resides, generated code documentation, and automated unit tests that catch a broken order confirmation email before a customer does.
- Critical singularities, from John’s daily pricing spreadsheet to the OST report nobody on the team had heard of.
- Building cross-training time into the schedule when it doesn’t generate new revenue.
- Running Kanban instead of a two-year waterfall plan, and why ten top priorities means equally slow progress on all ten.
- What to do the moment you hear you’re being acquired, and choosing what’s best for the company right now over the best available software.
ㅤ
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- Adobe Commerce
- SAP S/4HANA
- Smartsheet
- Microsoft Word and Microsoft Paint
- Adobe Commerce Virtual USA User Group (Mike’s quarterly user group)
- Pivotree integration services (episode sponsor)
