Collaboration Control Tower

The control tower concept is really going to come of age in the retail omni market to support and improve collaboration across the and among the retail partners.  Collaborative support activities may be one of the best applications of the control tower concept, just as important, if not more important that the supply chain control tower concept and tools. The control tower provides the perfect structure and concepts to pull together the disparate participants and diverse objectives of the participants into a cohesive structure that can provide the data in a manner that supports value added analytics in a manner that cannot be supported in any other way, really.  Effective collaboration requires and especially collaboration across the number and types of participants requires a loosely connected federation of data and tools to analyze the data and the control tower brings these together in an effective manner.

One of the most valuable concepts of the control tower is the ability to add to both the connections along with the data collected to grow with the collaborative demands and growth.  Retailers, and really all partners in the retail omni market, will be forced to expand their collaborative practices in order to succeed as the retail omni market grows and changes to support the market demands.  I do not believe there is any one partner within the retail omni market that can hope to meet the changing demands across the market without the support of other partners within the marketplace. The complexity of demands along with the complexity of relationships precludes the ability of any one partner to go it alone.

This is actually a good thing from the perspective of the marketplace and the ability to react to the changing demands quickly and efficiently.  The growth of collaboration is really the next logical progression of the partners that support the marketplace. Leaders in the marketplace such as Amazon have truly changed the retail market and they will continue to have an oversized impression and impact on the market because their practices have focused on the consumer.   I do think though that we are reaching the end of the period where a handful of leaders will continue to direct and shape the market.

Technology and consumers’ embrace of technology is reshaping the market now into a more flexible and dynamic market that requires collaboration across a broad spectrum of partners to support the changing demands.  The market is continuing to turn and while it will be quite some time before Amazon peaks and levels off, however the demands for flexibility to quickly react to changing demands is certainly laying the framework for Amazon to become another large retailer that falls to the disruption of the market. The collaboration control tower can provide the framework that can support and encourage another market disruption and retailers must recognize the opportunity and embrace the capabilities to reshape the market again.  Retailers should not hesitate but should embrace the collaboration control tower now to begin the transformation and prepare for the futures.