Expanding Consumer Technology

The retail marketplace is entering into a period of extreme change driven by technology and most importantly by consumer use of new technology capabilities.  This change in technologies is driven by consumers demand for increased and improved services to support their changing lifestyles.  These new demands and changes will cause an extended period of upheaval in the market and require retailers focus on extreme flexibility in their capabilities along with increased investments in these new capabilities driven by the new technologies.  The basis of these changes are communications and collaboration and these changes will drive retailers to adopt open technology platforms and tools to be able to adapt to the changes in demands quickly and efficiently.

The order of the day for this new marketplace is disruption and discontinuous change driven by consumer adaptation of new technologies and how consumers use these new technologies and capabilities to support their changing lifestyle demands.  Technology delivered by one retail market segment to consumers is driving the changes and disruption in other retail market segments and these changes are so quick that retailers in the impacted market segment cannot use traditional discovery practices to react to the changes.  

Consumers are utilizing technology, software, social networks with the Internet as the glue that connects all of these tools to create new capabilities and retailers now must plug into these same tools with the connection and glue provided by the Internet as well in order to react to the demands in a response time and manner that allows the retailers to not be overrun by the potential disruption. The Internet of Things is the wild card to these consumer capabilities and based on the current capabilities and the potential changes, especially those changes driven by consumer demands added to the potential promised by smart home technologies, the retail impact will be discontinuous disruption to the retail market in a cycle that can potentially overrun retailers capabilities without warning.  Retailers now must accept the fact they will be chasing these changes and will not be introducing the changes.

Large retailers must first recognize that they no longer control the retail market and second they must change their from directing the consumer interaction to collaborating with consumers to find ways to meet their needs.  The changing and improving technology will support these new demands however the retailers must invest in the technologies.  This is the challenge of the large retail culture which in the past was not supportive of leading edge technologies and in the future will be required to support leading edge technologies in order to survive.  

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Mobile Change Model

Mobile technologies and networks have turned the retail change model on its ear by wresting control of change along with the velocity of change from retailers, allowing consumers to take control.  In my opinion, this is the greatest change in retail probably since eCommerce exploded on the market and brought us Amazon.  In fact the introduction of eCommerce and especially the inception and growth of Amazon have been key factors in the change revolution.  Change has always been a factor in consumer relationships and retail and in the past retailers and their partners have been able to control the change through their control of technology, process and the extended supply chain.  These controls have allowed the largest retailers in the marketplace to exert a very wide and strong level of control on practices and capabilities and these legacy practices have been overridden through consumer embrace of mobile technologies and networks.

The mobile change model and technologies have been shaped and molded to support the consumer discontinuous change demands in shopping and purchasing without direct support from retailers themselves.  This is truly a game changing model in the retail market that first must be recognized and embraced by retailers and their partners just as it has been recognized and embraced by consumers.  Retailers now seem to be moving towards accepting this new model and are acquiring the tools to allow them to support this model.  The greatest change though that must be embraced by retailers and their supply chain partners is the culture change required to break down silos and expand and enhance collaboration and most importantly engage partners and consumers across the market.

During this most recent holiday shopping season we are seeing the results of the of this mobile change model along with the changes implemented by retailers to react to and address the mobile changes.  Retailers now encourage consumers to join their rewards program and then, most importantly, encourage them to access the retailers mobile web site when shopping in the stores to enhance their shopping experience.  This is a dramatic step forward in the consumer shopping experience that utilizes mobile technology to allow consumers to interact with the retailer when shopping, whether in the store or not.  

These practices are a great step forward for retailers and allow them to interact more personally with consumers and also allow them to focus attention on specific consumer demands and past purchases to personalize the shopping experience.  Consumers are also pushing the envelope with retailers to expand the services and communications across channels in their drive to blend shopping and purchasing to address their specific needs and personalize based on their specific needs at the time.  Retailers cannot stop now though, they have begun the journey with a strong first step but this is only the beginning and now retailers must continue and embrace the the change model in order to grow and maintain the relationship with consumers.  Consumers will not accept less, and they will leave if the retailer does not continue to grow and change with them.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Supply Chain New Year

The past year has a tumultuous year in the retail market and the extended retail supply chain and the new year only presents another year of more change.  The velocity and volume of change is only speeding and this will present another year for the retail supply chain to react, adjust and support the change demanded from all directions.  The extended supply chain is at the forefront of this change steam roller and this requires an especially fluid and flexible methodology to support the change demand.  This new change model is driven by consumer demands and especially the mobile change model driving by the consumer imagination to support their lifestyle changes.  These changes are cannot be fully planned for and as such require a strategy of flexibility guided by research to sense the change to allow the extended supply chain to react and adjust to the demands.

Retailers are required to continue to focus on supply chain flexibility and sustainability to support consumer demands.  The extended supply chain has a wide reach and interacts with many partners across the chain providing the retailers in this case an opportunity to understand and the potential to react to the change identified by their partners. Retailers should focus on development and implementation of an early warning system, or a control tower, to collect and analyze change and demands to help them identify potential trends and change.  This control tower process must include all partners in the extended supply chain and this includes the consumers that are reacting to the retailer and the supply chain capabilities.

The control tower is a process first that can be very effectively supported by software to collect and distribute information. The key is the process and the desire of all partners to participate and react to the information produced by the control tower process.  This requires the engagement and collaboration of the partners across the extended supply chain and especially the consumer partners.  Consumers must be included as an integral partner in this process.  This inclusion itself is a dramatic change in both process and culture.  This is quite a change from the past and requires a change to the retail culture in order to support the new requirements.

The control tower capabilities require patience and a long term commitment to change in order to succeed. This is required though in order to identify and react to the changing demands in a manner and at the velocity that consumers are demanding these changes.  The retail marketplace has begun a time of dramatic change as can be seen by the disruption caused by the omni channel consumer demands and retailers must react to these demands.  The control tower process and software provides the methods and tools to identify and determine how to react to the changes.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?