Evolving Retail

I started working in retail technology in the early 1990’s.? Since then I’ve worked with over 1500 subject matter experts.? Now is my time to give back to you that which has been given to me.? Let’s start with this post.

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In 2020 Over 100,000 restaurants closed and over 85,000 retailer stores closed.? Today these numbers have done nothing but grow. ??Paramount announced laying off 15% of its workforce.? I wanted to explore why but more importantly is there something that could have saved them.

In 2020 tThe top 44 retail store closing accounted for 8976 stores being closed.? When you take into account the suppliers, the support people, the total number of people impacted is in the millions.?

Let’s take a look at why these stores were closed and what can be done to improve things.

Store Failings

Why did they fail?? There are a number of different reasons why.

1. Changing retail ?- Less foot traffic in-store, Legacy infrastructure (silo model) – online shopping

3. Shopping Malls - In today’s world no one has time to wander around a shopping mall.? Kids use to hang out in the mall now they do it online.

4. Changing Customer - Buying online – Demographics - Work from home

5. Unable to Compete against the national giants – You can’t compete against the national giants on their turf – find your own nitch?

6. Inventory - Trying to be all things to all people – poor focus - Too much inventory – poor projections - Competing with large stores with same inventory

7. Social World – being inclusive

8. Cash Flow - You must have sales to have the money to make money- Unemployed people have limited resources

9. Poor Locations – stores too close to each other.? They are competing with each other

10. Store Size - Sales per square foot for large stores are down

11. Poor Focus – trying to do too many things

12. Buggy Whips - not selling what the customer wants.

A lack of flexibility

-??????? Existing infrastructure both technology and operational are difficult to change.? It is like changing direction with a aircraft carrier versus a speed boat.? The modern agile retail architecture will help solve this inflexibility.

Evolution of Retail Technology

Within the past century, local corner stores gave way to department stores and supermarkets, then to suburban shopping malls, then to discount chains and big-box retailers and now back again.? Flexibility is critical in this modern agile retail world.

Adapt Customer Experience

1.????? Appeal to the Shopper – turn these shoppers into customers.

1. Support Knowledgeable Shoppers – Shoppers know as much as salespeople.? They do their own research.
2. Personalize, Relevant Suggestions – The right message at the right moment in the right channel is the next level in customer service - it can quickly and easily turn intent into action
3. Mobile Devices Drive Foot Traffic to Stores – Provide maps to the store and maps in the store to help locate desired items.
4. Watch Social Media Influencers’ Opinions – Influencer Opinions carry much more weight than ever.
5. Experience Item online to get customers excited about the product
6. Focus Customer/Brand Loyalty – Most profit comes from repeat loyal customers.? Help them stay involved.
7. Provide Same-Day Delivery – Moving same day delivery to local operations are required for today’s retailers.

Adapt Demographics

But you need to understand the needs, preferences, and attitudes of growing consumer segments.? This will be especially important in understanding?individual?consumers and customizing offers in a one-on-one basis.

Adapt Technology

?This will be a critical part of everybody’s new future.? Make sure the capabilities you chose map to the Value Streams identified to support your Business Strategy.?

1. Agile Architecture – allow one to dynamically change to changes in the technology without serious interruption to ongoing processes.
2. Internet of Things – enables devices (like Alexa) to help drive customer purchases dynamically.
3. Unified Commerce - This is where everything comes together to provide a common support to YOUR customer.? All of your sources of interactions are communicating not only with your customer but with each other
4. Artificial Intelligence - What the customer is looking for, what their desires are and help them with their purchases
5. Robotics ?- Are robots in your future – you bet they are.? It depends on where you, the retailer, are going and what you are going to do with them
6. New Payments – bitcoin sure changed the financial market and there will be more to come
7. Last Mile Delivery – this is an interesting one.? how are you going to get your products to your customers seamlessly and quickly without their involvement
8. Virtual Assistants – they are showing up all over the place. Provide intelligent communications to your customers by leveraging AI and the Unified Commerce model to help your customer decide what it is they want to buy.
9. Autonomous Cars- you have your customers shopping list.? Your robots have gone around the store and picked up the items.? You’ve moved it out to the Last-Mile-Delivery.? The customer has decided they want you to put it in their Autonomous Car.? You have to find it, properly load it, tell it to return to their home.? Finally pay for it with one of these new payment models.
10. Facial Recognition – if you are able to identify your customers as they come into your store and link that up using artificial intelligence to their Unified Commerce model, you are able to help guide them through the store to buy the products they want
11. Video Analytics – being able to leverage the video content you have to figure out the best way to optimize your store to improve sales is a critical component of this.? On top of this Video Analytics has a lot of other uses.

Adapt Business Models

having a sense of purpose knits everything together. Knowing what your company stands for—and living those values—provides a framework for sound and ethical decision making.

1.????? Merge Business and Technology ?– With Omni-channel and Unified Commerce, technology is now required to be an integral component of the modern retail world on the scale of the operational side.

2.????? Cashierless Store – BOPIS BOSI – buy online ship instore, DTC – Direct to consumer - Merged online and brick and mortar a seamless, branded, cross-channel experience for their shoppers

3.????? Returns Management – One of the most challenging areas with the Omni-channel/Unified Commerce world.

4.????? The Supply Chain – plan for same day delivery and the future from thinking about the next normal to making it work. What to Accelerate? ?Where to locate stock? What to Stop ordering? What to Start ordering?

5.????? Reduce Costs - private-label “design to value,” ?- move quickly to fund new, transformational growth areas

6.????? Reduce Footprint - Reduce Store Size – new stores are 25% smaller than existing ones. – more focused inventory.

-??????? Improve Throughput Households now rely upon curbside pickup or home delivery. Shoppers are looking to reduce in-store time. ?No lines, no checkouts, no waiting.

Adapt Direct-To- Consumers

Formation of the loyal customer-brand relationship.? Saving extra costs caused by the intermediary. Getting the current information about the products to the customer

Adapt Supply Chain

It is important to have resilient supply chains that can adapt quickly and continue to deliver during times of disruption. Building resilience is a matter of establishing contingencies, engaging in flexible resource planning, and (in some cases) adding redundancy for your critical products

1. Shopper - Shoppers are early participants in the consumer-to-customer lifecycle.? ?
2. Online - Just as for sales, Online has to be an integrated part of your supply chain process.
3. Brick and Mortar - the inventory-turnover ratio has decreased. This trend leads to higher capital requirements and increased markdowns if retailers are driven to sell off extra inventory at the end of the season.?
4. Mini-Distribution Center – Same day delivery requires the distribution to be closer to the customer.? Makes inventory management critical to make sure the right products in the right quantity are in the right place at the right time.
5. Supplier? - diversifying their supply chains to mitigate dependencies on geographically concentrated suppliers
6. Inventory - Online has caused a lot of problems with supply chains.? Online is more expensive than traditional brick-and-mortar logistics because more inventories must be held in the network.
7. Transportation – because of next day delivery, trucks are moving with less than a full load.? That makes transportation costs more expensive.
8. Brick and Mortar (Collaborator) - retailers are exploring partnerships with each other
9. Artificial Intelligence -? They are using AI to predict optimal distribution routes, inventory levels, and allocations
10. Control Towers - Retailers have borrowed a concept from the airline industry by creating control towers.? They can now quickly reallocate inventories, analyze and de-bottleneck warehouse operations, and rebalance timing of vendors

Adapt Workforce

To help make all this work a new concept that includes the people in the process of selling.? This has nothing to do with traditional HR functions but ties the people directly to the business architecture.? The goal is to create a high-performance culture that transition from a team that has high performance expectations into a team that delivers consistent monthly overachievement of planned results.? The adaptive workforce operationalizes the critical success factors in order to close the gap of what is expected and what is actually delivered.

To see more details check out this YouTube Video - Evolving Retail - YouTube

Check out my book "ARTS for Retail Using Technology to turn your consumers into customers and make a profit” (3 book series) Kindle Edition?https://lnkd.in/g4SqtRB8. You get a MILLION dollars worth of knowledge from over 1500 subject matter experts for less than $25.

-??????I’ve created a whole set of YouTube videos https://www.youtube.com/user/richardthegeek/videos ?to show how to use this information.?

-??????I’ve also created a School of Retail with courses:

?-- on the "Modern Retail Architecture" It is a 10 lesson self-paced course.

-- on "Unified Commerce" https://schoolofretail.thinkific.com/courses/unified-commerce..?

--?on "Modern POS World" It is a 14 lesson self-paced course.

Reach out to me to learn how to get access to these courses.

-- My next one is under construction called "Standard Agile Retail Data Model - Who did what"