Collaboration Control Tower Framework

The control tower concept and capabilities will help to drive the retail omni market to new heights and capabilities to support the increasing velocity of change.  This collaboration control tower will also require a robust framework of distributed management and also more importantly distributed data management, storage and analytics to support the requirements of a distributed collaboration control tower.  This will be a huge challenge for the partners in this collaboration control tower and will also require a strategy to continuously evaluate both capabilities and demands on the retail omni market to ensure that the control tower is maintained to meet the potential and also continue to provide value to all of the partners.  This must be viewed as a continuous improvement and maintenance exercise that will continue to grow in capabilities and value.

It is critical for this collaboration control tower fromework to be developed as a distributed framework that is flexible to support the current demands and that  is robust to support the increasing demands for interaction and analytics. The greatest value of the collaborative control tower is the connectivity to partners and the data that can be shared by the partners to improve analytics to identify and support strategic initiatives to support the retail omni market.  The types of analytics and the value provided by the results of the analytics is only limited by the imagination of the partners and the data made available by the partners.

The challenge though in developing the control tower framework is the acceptance and embrace of the concepts by the partners involved and the interaction of these partners with each other and the customers with whom they interact.  This means that partners must embrace the collaborative practices and also accept the concept of change that drives the consumers and the retail market. It is impossible for any one partner in the retail omni market to be able to go it alone in this new market because of the velocity and volume of change that drives the market now.  This velocity and volume of change requires that the partners collaborate in order to both understand and meet the demands. This also requires that the partners change their culture form one of control to one of collaboration or these partners will fall by the wayside because they simply cannot keep up with the volume and velocity of change.

These changes are in the early stages of identification, acceptance and implementation currently in very early stages of recognition.  This will grow over time into a tidal wave that will overrun retail market participants that refuse to embrace the model. While this will start small with a few visionaries I expect that this will grow over a very short period of time as more retail market participants recognize the difficulty meet the demands and weigh against the ability to survive on their own.  Timing of this new wave may be questionable however I believe that the tide will quickly change as success grows with the collaborative control tower. The biggest hurdle to the change though is the framework supporting the collaborative control tower and the framework is also probably one of the easiest requirements to meet.

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.

Consumer Collaboration In The Omni Market

Consumers have embraced a wide variety of tools provided by retailers, carriers of various sorts, manufacturers, search engines, GPS and shopping apps at various times and for various capabilities and even in various combinations in order to meet their lifestyle needs at the time of shopping and purchasing.  Consumer shopping requirements and practices are molded by their requirements at the time of their activities and the demands and requirements changes at the time of their shopping and even the products for which they are shopping. These various types and degrees of shopping and purchasing demands can make it very difficult for all participants to respond and even more important make it very difficult for the participants to coordinate and support across the various partners because of the number of potential partners involved and the number of combinations that can be involved.

When you stop and think about the shopping methods practiced based on the types of products, the consumer involved (man, woman and generational), the time of day, the channel, the consumer mood, special price offers and even the time of year you can see the challenge for the participants in the experience.  I know that my shopping practices and demands are different if I am shopping for groceries or shopping for apparel and my wife’s shopping practices are different from my practices and level of comfort for technology interaction at the time and type of shopping. For instance, sometimes shopping can simply be a social experience where ther purchase is spur of the moment and completely random and other times shopping is specific with specific objectives for instance groceries or gifts.

The partners across the retail omni market have the unenviable task of trying to define and support the consumer interaction and collaboration opportunities across all of these many combinations.  As you can imagine there is no possible way for partner retail participants to define and support all options, however retailers have the requirement to provide support options that allow the consumer to create their own combinations based on their requirements at the time.  I think this is the most important point related to the collaboration opportunities with consumers; provide options that can be combined by the participants at the time to meet the specific requirements at the time.

This is where the control tower concept can be incorporated to support the consumer and partner requirements at the time of the engagement.  This control tower is where the participants in the retail omni market can come together in a collaborative environment with a tool that provides the means to coordinate both capabilities and data with and across the partners.  It will be extremely beneficial and quickly become a base requirement for participants in the retail omni market to have a place and a tool that provides the framework for collection and analytics of the large amounts of data that is available in this new market capabilities and then use these analytics to develop and implement new collaborative methods and practices to support these requirements.