Consumer Change Agents

Consumers control the velocity of change in the marketplace and they are continuously pushing the velocity as a result of change and developments in the wireless and Internet capabilities. Consumers learn quickly to take advantage of the gains in wireless technologies to push the changes in the marketplace to support their lifestyle demands. Now we are on the cusp of another major advance in wireless technology with 5g wireless networking to be delivered in the next year. This new wireless network technology brings the potential to dramatically change the networking and capabilities in a dramatic way and the retail marketplace must prepare to embrace these new demands and capabilities. There is simply no time to waist in preparation for this change because the velocity of change will only increase with the extended networking capabilities.




Consumers have used technology to become leading agents of change in the retail marketplace and the coming wireless changes are going to shift this role into high gear for a period of time. Understand that there is always a difference between the hype of new technology and the reality and this new technology will be no different. The change though opens the door for change that will start with a trickle in the market as the technology forward consumers experiment and will quickly increase to a rush when the new capabilities are flexed and niche vendors deliver trial capabilities. Technology forward consumers and niche vendors will very quickly drive the change into the marketplace and this technology, just like the release of the 4g wireless technologies, will have extreme disruptive impact on the marketplace as consumers quickly embrace the capabilities to support their lifestyles.




The consumer acceptance of the new 5g technologies will be must faster than the 4g technology. Of course it will take some time for contributors to roll out enhanced 5g capabilities, however, the consumer is now prepared and anxious for the change. This time around there is a much larger market of technology savvy millennials that will quickly push the capabilities of the technologies and and also the marketplace. The demands and the consumer capabilities will build quickly pushing the marketplace into another round of disruption.




The market must prepare and brace for this new wave of disruption because it will come with a breathtaking speed that can overcome those that are not prepared. This means that partners must increase their collaboration across all channels. This means that partners must improve and increase their interactions and collaboration with consumers. This means that partners must improve their integration flexibility to support new niche partner integrations quickly and efficiently. The change will start slow but it will grow in volume and velocity very quickly and this will require imagination, collaboration and flexibility from all partners in the market to meet the challenge.

Age Of Disruption

We have entered into an age of disruption in the market and this disruption is fueled by the consumer embrace of technology and especially the explosion of wireless technology. The technology has allowed consumers to reshape their interactions with retail to support their lifestyles and the velocity of this change has been increasing past the point of market disruption. The market partners must realize now and accept this as the new reality. The velocity and volume of change will not slow and will continue to disrupt the market for a long time. This disruption, though, can be addressed through a robust continuous improvement program, or more appropriately, a continuous disruption program. It is more critical than ever to implement a strong process that can sense the direction of change, or disruption, and also identify the most flexible and robust method to address the disruption.




As change velocity and magnitude increases the market disruption also increases to the point of reaching a continuous disruption model that remakes the market on a regular basis. The tensions of this model have been building for a while now and it seems that the technology advances and especially the wireless technology advances have provided the foundation to deliver the disruption that as been in the wings of the market. Market participants can no longer wait for the change to settle an then implement the new standard because the new standard is changing at a breakneck pace. This continuous disruption will require that market participants increase their rate of change to meet the demands or they will be left behind on the periphery if they are lucky. You can clearly see the results of the disruption in the retail marketplace by the increase in the number of bankruptcies.




This requires the market participants to step up their game, especially in the ways that they are collaborating and developing partnerships to meet the demands. The supply chain is leading this integration and partnership drive and has been developing the tools for a while now. The extended supply chain has developed a strong model for implementing the type of network that will allow the entire marketplace to sense and respond to the demands and even help to create the disruptions in the marketplace. The supply chain extended network supports speedy and efficient integration of new partners and encourages specialized service providers to bring new point solutions to support the supply chain demands.




The way to succeed in the age of disruption is not through harder work but through AI technologies to sense change and then a strong collaborative network to react to the change. No single organization can hope to bring the resources and the flexibility of capabilities to address the disruption (maybe Amazon, but that’s another story). This is where the flexibility and capabilities of the extended supply chain network can be viewed as a model for future direction.

Market Repurposing

The market is changing at a breakneck pace an impact on participants in ways that never would have been imaginable just 3 years ago. This is the result of breathtaking advances in technology and especially the network and connectivity of the technology and tools across the marketplace. I live in an urban area and can just look out the window and see the impact of the technology and the connectivity. Add to this the promise of 5g wireless technology and this pace will only increase and the disruption based on the technology will increase as well. This all leads to a focus on market repurposing of technology capabilities and more importantly of real estate and the use of physical locations to extend and provide new capabilities to the brand. There is really no telling right now how the market will look in the next 5 to 10 years but I think it's safe to say that the retail brick and mortar location will be completely re-purposed.




We are in the midst of almost complete market disruption where many of the largest historic retailers are failing in new ways as result of the digital retail competition coupled with consumer embrace of the technology and the opportunity to reshape their shopping and purchasing to meet their lifestyle needs. This change has reached a level of velocity that is most difficult for the legacy retailers to maintain as a result of their need to redesign their services and practices to support the new digital demands of consumers to support their shopping. Another result of the digital disruption is the impact on the brick and mortar stores and malls. You can see the results everywhere with empty malls and store fronts and as the larger retailers are fighting to survive they are also shedding real estate. This leaves new opportunities in the market to address other demands of the market but it will take imagination to re-purpose to meet the digital demands.




Repurposing is an important method recycle and reuse processes systems and most importantly physical structures. Retailers have been very adept at adding new processes and systems to meet the market demands and now these retailers must also become adept and re-purposing processes and systems to quickly and efficiently adapt to the market change. Frankly I don’t see a way that retailers especially can survive the velocity of change and market disruption without re-purposing. Repurposing becomes even more valuable when you extend your capabilities through enhanced and increased collaboration with network partners.




Repurposing is also becoming important in the brick and mortar side of the omni market as well. Real estate re-purposing presents and allows the market to reuse the real estate to better support the changing market demands. As the real life shopping decreases it leaves more time for life style enhanced activities and drives the re-purposing of the real estate landscape. For instance, with the increase in eCommerce sales, the demand for big box stores and brick and mortar outlets is changing and decreasing which provides the opportunity for retailers and malls to repurpose building, perhaps converting large big box stores into direct to consumer fulfillment centers, for instance, or even entertainment centers or even living spaces.

Disruption Includes New And Obsolete

Market disruption, and especially the current market disruption, must include two side, the new and the order or obsolete. This is an extremely important concept for the long term success in meeting the change and in my opinion should be viewed as an opportunity to replace legacy inflexible processes and interfaces with a more flexible and robust framework that can support the velocity of the change. The key to success is in reduced reaction time and this means reduced time to sense the change and then reduced time to react and respond to the change. One of the key limiters to the reaction and response to the change is the technology infrastructure and framework of tools and processes supporting the framework. The actions taken to address obsolete functionality and processes will be large factor in the ability of market partners to react and respond to change from within and outside of the organization.




In my experience, every company or organization is enamored with the new and this is especially true in the social commerce marketplace and you see examples over and over again of organizations acquiring new technology in the omni market space to allow them to provide new sales and delivery options. This is all well and good however these organizations also must obsolete and retire services as well. Again, in my experience, there is less of a focus on the obsoleting process than there is on new service development. This weight of the maintenance for support and also more importantly the cost and effort to take into account the obsolete services and technology required for implementation of new capabilities will quickly overwhelm the organization. In the past, an organization could conceivably implement new capabilities and just stop using the legacy capabilities without much of an impact. In this current market environment though the level of change is only increasing and this will require the retirement and removal of obsolete capabilities and services in order to support the velocity of change.




The challenge now for organizations is how to balance, or include, the effort to retire obsolete capabilities while implementing new capabilities. This can be a bit overwhelming at first because the level of effort required to obsolete and retire capabilities is not included in the organization effort plans and schedules, at least initially. These organizations must quickly overcome these issues in order to incorporate the retirement as part of the new capabilities delivery. This can be addressed by updating the capabilities delivery process and procedures to include the questions initially when reviewing the new capability to identify the legacy services and capabilities that should be reviewed for obsolescence. In my opinion this is the best place to evaluate and also enforces the process and procedures in new development.




Traditionally large legacy organizations focused on the new initiatives and this focus tended to leave at least remnant technology and services after the new product delivery. This practice did not impact the organization when change moved at a slower pace. Now with the increased change velocity turning into market disruption, these organizations must focus on the process to obsolete technologies and services because of the impact these unused legacy technologies have on the ability to delivery new change in the manner and speed demanded by the marketplace.

Disruption Culture

Culture plays a large role in the acceptance and the reaction and support of disruption in the marketplace in the ways that change is recognized and the reaction to the change in both the cultural reaction and the reaction to the change. The culture guides the organization in reaction to change and some organizations have a culture that seeks out change in the marketplace to lead in the reaction to the demands and some cultures ignore the change and try to maintain the status quo. In these times where the velocity of change and disruption is increasing it is important for the organization culture to seek out and embrace change. In these times the culture must also change to embrace change and encourage reaction and change into the organization capabilities to meet the demands.





A disruption culture not only encourages change, it also encourages review of the existing environment to identify process and functionality that can or should be retired. It is important for the organization that the leadership develops the culture to seek out and embrace change because of the need to change in order to succeed. Organizations can no longer wait for someone else to drive the change and wait until the change is generally accepted because before the change is generally accepted the next wave of change is already in cycle. I cannot impress enough the importance of developing the culture of change in the continued viability and success of the organization.





This second point of retiring functionality is just as important as embracing change because without the retirement and elimination of unnecessary functionality the weight of the obsolete functionality will quickly overwhelm. The effort and work arounds required to support the change will delay and potentially stop the ability of the organization to incorporate change. At a very minimum the obsolete functionality will complicate the requirements and efforts to incorporate new change as demanded by the marketplace.





I understand the challenge of change on the market and also on the partners in the market to meet the demands of the change and realize that initially the culture and the focus must be on the change and embracing the change. This, however, is another point of contention and struggle to support the change. Organizations must very quickly focus on the identification and retirement of obsolete functions. The market is never going back and this must be viewed as an opportunity to eliminate functionality that cannot be changed as easily. This elimination of obsolete functionality will allow the organization to put into place a robust framework that allow and encourages change integration to allow the organization to support and react to the market disruption quickly and efficiently.





It is important to understand that the disruption culture has two facets; embrace change and embrace retirement of obsolete functions. This two sided coin view of the organization culture is important to succeed in the growing market disruption. Anything other than this approach will simply delay the inevitable decline to reaching the inability to change and then failure. I do not think this is being over dramatic and this decline will be slow but the speed will be dictated by the rate of change and disruption in the marketplace.

Obsolescence In Disruption

A significant result of disruption is the obsolescence and the market disruption is no different. This means that the market partners must focus on both the change creating new features and functionality along with the retirement of obsolete services in their drive for change in order. This can be a very difficult process because it requires additional focus on the determination and then the retirement of the obsolete services and this can be almost as much work as the development of the new services and capabilities. The challenge for everyone is spending the time and effort on elimination of obsolete capabilities and services because this is not the exciting aspect of disruption and in general is rather thankless. This now requires a bit of cultural modification to focus on the importance of eliminating obsolete features and its role in supporting development of new features.




While it may be difficult to identify legacy features and functionality that has been made obsolete it is definitely not impossible and it is really important to eliminate obsolete features not only because it is no longer necessary but also because the obsolete features can also impact the functionality of new features. This may seem at odds with the concept of new features and functionality, however the obsolete features can get in the way of new features and even negate the feature or benefits unwittingly. In addition to the general housekeeping concept of cleaning up obsolete features there is also a need to eliminate unnecessary costs of license and support costs that will continue on until the feature is eliminated. There is no real easy way to identify and there is also, unfortunately, no standard process to eliminate the obsolete features. Each feature is unique and the challenge with the elimination is the integration of these features. The good news though is that there is an additional benefit to elimination of the obsolete features which is that obsolete features will also eliminate direct hard integration while the new features will deliver loosely coupled integration that simplifies the future obsolescence.




In addition to the effort required to identify and remove obsolete features there is a cultural aspect to this challenge. The culture of the organization must focus and encourage the elimination of obsolete features in the same manner as focus on new features. This is a critical aspect to the equation because of the speed of disruption there must be an equal focus on elimination of obsolete features to support the development of new features. We must realize that the acting of eliminating obsolete features is just as much a part of the market disruption as the development of new features. One way to modify the focus is the realization and the promotion of the benefits of eliminating obsolete features. One very important benefit of the elimination of obsolete features is that these obsolete features currently are more hard wired to the overall functionality and this increases the difficulty to change at the velocity the market demands.




Remember there are always two sides to a problem and change and these must be taken into account in order to meet the changing demands in the manner and velocity required. This requires a two pronged approach to delivery; change in culture to encourage and recognize the importance of eliminating obsolete features in addition to the focus on responding to changes in the marketplace.

Analytics Key to Disruption

The retail marketplace has developed a robust set of tools to support consumer purchase and delivery over the years providing a solid framework of tools and capabilities that can be combined in many ways to support consumer demands. Now it is important to focus the same kind of attention and effort to develop and support the tools that will allow the marketplace partners to sense the change and respond to the demands of the marketplace. In my opinion, analytics tools and data collection is the key to the ability to sense change and demands and as such provide the key to navigating and responding to the disruption that is rocking and will continue to rock the marketplace. Analytics is truly the next frontier and provides the key to addressing and reacting to the demands for change and interactions.




The disruption will continue and increase in velocity and the change will be focused on collaboration and integration of marketplace services with the consumer. A contributing factor to this integration and collaboration will be services and internet tools that are growing in numbers and capabilities to provide new consumer services and tools that will naturally require integration with omni market shopping and purchasing. These tools and services themselves while driving change into the market are also producing a huge amount of data that can be harvested for analytics by the smart marketplace partners. This is where the smart partners will focus because this data provides them with a goldmine of information and capabilities to sense and respond to the marketplace. This is why assistant software is so important to companies like Amazon, Google and Apple not only does the assistant engage and lock the consumer to the assistant, the assistant is also collecting data specific to the consumer for analytics.




We are now entering an age of analytics as a tool to navigate the velocity and force of disruption in the market. I think this is a bit of a chicken and egg question because I believe that as much as analytics enhances the understanding and the how to address the change, I also believe that the analytics is also driving change to new depths and capabilities because of the types of analytics and the data available and utilized in the analytics. In other words the analytics is actually creating new change and disruption because of the types and breadth of the analytics performed.




Analytics are not only the key to navigating and surviving disruption, the analytics practice and framework is also driving the disruption in ways that were not available just a few years ago. In addition the analytics of the future will also be dramatically different in a few years as well. Analytics is a practice that people will improve with use and addition of data, however, analytics is also much more than just a practice. Analytics is truly the key to disruption; not only sensing and responding to disrupting change but more importantly driving disrupting change into the market. This is truly a practice that must be started and invested in for the future and partners must start immediately so they are not left behind. The velocity of change and disruption will not allow time for waiting to settle, the settling of change is really the introduction of the next change and as a result there can be no waiting to follow the lead.