Absolute Labs - NRF

AbsoluteLabs (http://absolutelabs.co) provides technology consulting and digital transformation services to leading brands across customer-centric industries. They have deep expertise and understanding of complex business challenges and deliver tailored solutions to empower companies to stay relevant, agile, and innovate in a digital consumer era. 

Transcript

Speaker A: On this episode of the Unsolved podcast, I speak with the team at Absolute Labs, Tashara Seth and Stephen Hill. This episode was recorded in New York during NNF a few months back, but the topics around unified commerce and technology adoption for retailers still rings true and even more important today. Let's roll. Hi, guys.

Speaker B: Hi. Hey.

Speaker A: How is everybody doing?

Speaker B: Well, good.

Speaker A: Escape the cold and the rain from here in Manhattan. Thank you both for joining us here in New York and in person at Gotham Studios here. Podcast recording. We've been coming here now two years in a row, and it's been awesome to meet with partners and customers and industry leaders. So excited to have a couple great partners here with us. Would you guys introduce yourselves for the audience? And then we'll get going. Yeah.

Speaker C: So my name is Tusha Seth, co founder and partner at a boutique consulting company called Absolute Labs, working with retailers now for 20 plus years. And we love new stores. So just to kind of put it out there for the listeners. Stephen, you want to go next?

Speaker B: Yeah. Stephen Hill, solution architect here at Absolute Labs, joined fairly recently, supporting the north american market as we kind of grow into that space. Lived a lifetime in retail. It. I worked at a product company before this and then two different retailers, one in luxury and one in hard goods. So it's great to kind of see that spectrum of this and now be able to bring this to lighting up solutions.

Speaker A: What brands were you at?

Speaker B: So, Holt Renfrew, Canada's sort of national luxury department store. And Canadian Tire is Canada's national hard goods leader.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Everybody in Canada lives within ten minutes of a canadian tire. Don't quite like Walgreens, but close.

Speaker A: Yeah. Philip from our side out of Montreal was explaining to one of the guys on our team in North America that Canada Tire doesn't actually sell tires.

Speaker B: We do sell tires, but that's a little corner of the business now. Grew out of a family tire store on downtown, whatever, in Toronto, and now it's 500 plus. They're 50,000 foot hard goods and automotive sporting goods. So you see the whole wealth of without doing a talk on canadian tire. But bids that are easy to forecast, like hammers, where you got to carry the same hammer year over year, and then patio furniture that comes in and goes out and it's bulky. And when do you take the picture and how long does it take to get it manufactured in Asia? And it's a whole thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. So what prompted the shift from the brand side to the dark side now?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it was an opportunity. I'd left my previous company, the product company, due to a downsizing there. And actually somebody at new store introduced me to absolute labs. Okay, don't burn your bridges when you leave one place because those connections is what's going to keep you going.

Speaker A: Yeah. And especially in retail, it's such a small, small space. It seems vast. If you walk through the javits or you go to euro shop, and there's a whole campus in Dusseldorf. They've got nine different warehouses, all doing different things. Have you ever been? Oh, it's insane. You go to an entire expo hall and it's all just lighting and fixtures.

Speaker C: That's it.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: Yeah. You could just have a home.

Speaker A: It's crazy. It's crazy.

Speaker B: And yet you keep running into the same people over and over. Hey, I worked with you before. I walked the floor today and see people that have worked out at every one of the companies.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, and then some of our team, you know, like Dave Hartenstein, who was at models, and Michael Kors, you know, all the people that used to work with swing by, and then everybody that's been working for years, it's just, that is how the industry goes. So, Tishar, what about your background?

Speaker C: So I started my career in delivery. So I started with accenture back about 20 years ago, but I think slowly grew out of it. But I always loved tech, and then kind of four years ago myself, Rushi Bharat, we kind of started up through labs because we thought there was a bit of a gap in the market because you've got these big tier one consultancies who would do big ideas but not great at implementation. And you've got some system integrators who are great at implementing, but don't give you the thought leadership. So that's how we started the firm. And we've been kind of focusing on retail and the retail ecosystem with retail tech. So, yeah, so it's been. It's been an amazing journey and all the kind of background in soviet kind of working in retail for many years now. So all that kind of domain expertise has really helped in terms of providing that, you know, next level consultancy and then thought leadership to the client. So that's a bit about, you know, the company, about me and about us.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I know we. Newstore has been working with you guys for a number of years, and increasingly slow, or increasingly so not slow. We're hoping to speed things up. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we're hoping to accelerate things. We've got a lot of stuff planned this year and some things to figure out. You know, we, I think before, oh, what was it? In November, we started talking about total cost of ownership. What can we do there?

Speaker B: That's a really interesting conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, tomorrow will be the end of NRF, and this will publish sometime in the next few weeks. And so it comes off the back burner and comes to the very forefront of what we want to do in addition to everything else. You guys have been busy. I know our teams. We had dinner last night. What are some of your takeaways? What are some of the things you've been hearing on the ground across different vendors, partners, customers, anything stand out this year at NRF?

Speaker B: In the talks, in the keynotes, people are talking about AI. It's out there. But then when I actually talk to people about what they're trying to do, that seems like it's still a bit far out and they're dealing with maybe some more tactical problems, like just simplifying the infrastructure of the things they've installed over the last five or six years that still don't quite talk to each other. And with that complexity, how do I put in this other new thing I want, which might be AI enabled later, but for now, it's more of a core business function like we always done. How do I do point of sale? How do I keep my customer data clean?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I know. Last year, the year before, whether it was NRF shop talk, the metaverse was what everybody was talking about. Yeah.

Speaker B: Did that go away? Who turned off the metaverse?

Speaker A: I did, but now everything's AI. So, yeah, we had a session yesterday with some customers and, yeah, basically the moderator, she just said, you know, we're not talking about this at all. So if that's what you're here for, kids, don't get lost.

Speaker B: It's a whole other thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you're talking about simplifying things. How do we, how does a PoS work? You know, and it always amazes me. And we, we just produced a research report and trying to see where brands sit across omnichannel maturation or just the customer shopping experience in general. And the question I want to ask both of you, and it's something that we, as companies solve together, is why is it that brands are so far behind? Is it just old habits die hard, lack of knowledge? Is it the macroeconomic climates that have slowed investing in different solution areas? What do you guys think? I'm curious.

Speaker C: I think from my point of view, I think the brands really don't really see a return of investment in changing their pos because you're just replacing a with b. So the real value is going to come if you go next level, which is omnichannel, endless aisle, headless commerce. So that's where you would really see the value of moving to the new tech into the future. And I think that's where brands have kind of almost 20 years behind. They're still kind of going on that old mindset of that big till at the counter, really old kind of systems, because it's just at the minute they're just keeping the lights on, but they're not, I think, leveraging what's out there in the market of the latest technology, all the latest platforms, they're not kind of redefining their thought process because they're still kind of very, very old school where you got that big bulky setup on the pause. You just kind of making sure you customer walking in, taking the transaction and letting them go. There's no customer 360, there is no kind of forward looking client telling where you could say that you could upsell to the customers, cross sell, kind of make sure you don't lose an order if the item is out of stock through endless aisle. So I think that's where maybe the brands are now waking up to that forward or change thought process. And I think that's really key in terms of how do we move forward, because if you were to just change the pos, that's there's no real kind of value in doing that. So I think that's where maybe the brands were just keeping the lights on and hence hasn't been investing. But now, I think with all these modern pos, omnichannel solutions, which have come to fruition, that's where they're kind of rethinking about the whole strategy of what that store tech would look like.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, and talk about why are they under investing slightly. It seems like every couple of years there's another wave downturn in the economy. Now, just after it was picking up, it was Covid. There's always an excuse not to invest. And so if every year we just underinvest a little bit, then we're building up that deficit of things that we'd love to get to someday. But when does someday come?

Speaker C: And we were talking to some clients recently at NRF and we were like, what's your omnichannel strategy? And they were like, we are fine the way we are. We don't really need to reinvent the wheel too much. I think we've got 600 stores, customers are walking in and we are doing fine. So they didn't really feel the need. But I think what they haven't realized is that as there's downturn and there's cost pressures, there's inventory problems, you've got to reinvent, you've got to think outside the box and try to really up your omnichannel strategy because if you don't, then you could end up endangering the brand by not leveraging latest technology. So I think it's probably time that people are starting to realize the importance and starting to look at these forward looking solutions.

Speaker A: Well, that complacency. I know Steve Dennis, who's a huge expert in the retail space, um, had brought him up earlier today actually. And you know, he wrote a book on remarkable retail. He was on the Endless Isle podcast a long time ago. And um, you know, he said it's that type of complacency or that good enough thinking that is really, really toxic for brands because you, you start to think, well, okay, we, we're still hitting our number, but what are those opportunities? Right, an apples to apples replacement on pos. Okay, maybe you could, you can justify staying put, but what other opportunities are you missing? We go to a customer, we say, or to a prospect rather said, hey, we went to go visit one of your stores. We weren't able to do endless aisle transaction or we couldn't do mobile checkout and say, oh no, well we can do that at other stores. Okay, but that was one customer experience in one store on one day. Now multiply that across all of your stores. That one shopping experience now gets magnified, you know, however many x across all of, and so what have you lost?

Speaker C: Correct. You know, you could put monetary value to it as well. It's going to be in the millions. Right. If you look at all the, if you got like three, 4500 stores, yeah. You know, you're like, that's just going to pay for the cost of upgrading to a more modern platform quite easily. So, yeah, I think that's the change in the thought process that needs to maybe come about. And I think it's time that people start kind of realizing the importance.

Speaker A: Yeah. How do you, you guys are based in London. I know, Steven, you're here, but are there differences across the different markets, across EMEA versus North America? What are some of the biggest differences or maybe philosophies or changes in the way the business is done as that impacts the customer and those retail brands?

Speaker C: I think what I've seen is that a lot of people are going towards loyalty, for example, because they think the importance of retaining the customer. They're realizing the importance and there are some brands doing it a lot better than the others. So I think that's one thing that we are seeing, that there are some modern platforms coming in like tell on one who are bridging that gap, then there's also a lot of appetite to move towards a omnichannel pos but handheld solution. So that's again a change in the mindset that we've seen where people want to kind of be with the customer on the shop floor, rather than just waiting for them and try to serve them better. We are seeing client telling is another kind of area where people want to. The clients want to understand the importance of understanding who the customer is and what their needs are. They're trying to move towards that solution where they could give recommendations to the customers that they are servicing. I think we've seen that the UK is slightly better. I think on that tech standpoint, they're getting the technology slightly ahead. Personally speaking, I think the brands in the US are also getting there. We've got, you know, some of the players, like, you know, the Sacs and the others of them, you know, lvmhs, they understand it, so they've got a global strategy, but the ones which are fairly local, which are american brands, they still, I think, have that old school thought process that they don't really want to reinvent the wheel or they don't want to kind of go that next level from a tech standpoint. So that's just a observation, personally, you know, comparing the two markets.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: From your observations, I have this picture in my head. I don't know if it's valid, I should sit down and test it out. But like that, in UK, they're just all more concentrated. Right. And so they were just so sensitive to the competition and it's just such a fire to compete and keep up. And it also feels like, well, gee whiz, I could put my arms around the whole country, I should be able to change that out, whatever that is. And then you come to us and they're probably really facing the same competition on, you know, on Main street, but it's such a. It's this huge geography, so how could I change it all at once? And yet it's still just, you know, it's one store estate, one store footprint, maybe it's 500, maybe it's a thousand stores. Once you've done it 20 times, you just keep rolling.

Speaker A: But it is scary if you've never done it right, if you've never transformed your business or changed it, you know, how. How really difficult is that for brands to say, yes, we're committing to this new, modern way of doing retail.

Speaker B: Having been at retailers a couple of times, we looked at how our competitors were moving quickly and we say, gee whiz, look, look what you can do when you don't have legacy holding you back, when you can start over again. It supported Saks Fifth Avenue for a while, and they do a great business, but there's so many customer offerings that they have to keep supporting because they made that promise to customers years ago. Every one of those particular payment profiles or models has to be built into anything they do new. And you can't just start over again. It is. You get risk that it doesn't go well. Risk. Will I be actually out of business? Will I impact my fulfillment rate? It's just so much to change. When you've been in the business for a long time and you have a lot of things connected to each other.

Speaker A: Do you think, what's the best way to sell that? I mean, obviously we have vested interest in seeing transformation happen, but is it dollars and cents, or is it philosophically, is there a better way to do it? And maybe this is a loaded question, and I suppose if our two companies had all the answers, we'd be in a very different position. But we're trying to figure it out, and every brand is different, right? There's. There's certain folks at an executive level, they want to see, let's see the ROI, let's understand the TCO. Um, and that'll help make the decisions. Others, you know, depending on the Personas, maybe we're talking through these, some of these answers. They care about the infrastructure and what the tech stack looks like. And so, um, I don't think there's probably a right or wrong way, but just curious what your thoughts are.

Speaker C: I think that's why it's extremely important for the brands to make sure that they do a proper due diligence. They know what they're getting into from a tech standpoint, what are the kind of pitfalls to avoid? And hence, that's why there's a need for, I think, somebody to kind of guide them, help them from a consultancy point of view. But if they don't want to go for a consultancy, they should be able to kick the tires, make sure that they could differentiate a real product to a smokes and mirror product, because they are, at the end of the day, putting they entire business or whatever the revenue is from the brick and mortar on that platform. So they need to make sure that there's due diligence from a functional standpoint as well as from a non functional. But also, is it the right partner, is it the right ecosystem? Does it have the right support, does it have the scale? Does it align with our values? Is this the right relationship for us? And then who's going to do the implementation? That's extremely important as well. Where we've seen that the brands want to do all by themselves, it could take them quite a long time rather than working with the experts. So I think it's making sure that they select the right product in terms of what's best for them, but then also find the right partner to work with to make sure that they're getting the right advice and getting the right support, not just for implementation, for change management, for making sure that they've got the support afterwards from a business operation and keeping the lights on standpoint. So I think that's the kind of due diligence that's extremely important. And that's where maybe there's a bit of a hesitation from the client point of view, because like Steven said, it's something that they haven't done before, or they feel might be a bit risky because they're going out to the market. They've got this old tech for 20 years and they just are a little comfortable. So they're in that comfort zones. They don't, you know, want to change too much. So that's why it could get inundated. And hence, I think you've got experts coming in to provide the advice, you know, some kind of selection process.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that's what we've been doing quite a lot with some of our customers. We do obviously partner with yourself, but we also provide expert advice when it comes to being an impartial advisor to the client, where we would run an RFI RFP for them, understand what the needs are, do a proper thorough process, talk to other customers of the product, make sure that it's the right product for the customer. So that's where I think some of us, as consultancy, could add value to the client, rather than they think that they know what they want, doing it on their own and then selecting the wrong product two years down the line, they're thinking, what have we done? And we've invested two, three, 4 million and we need to start the process again. So do it once, do it right.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker C: Is I think where we would go with this.

Speaker B: But like what you said in terms of maybe it's different for different retailers. When I was at Tulip, we talked to a global retailer who had already done that TCO math in their own hand and realized the cost of all that infrastructure. So I've got Windows servers, I've got Windows desktops in the store that I got to keep security patches and version up to date. Then I've got Windows servers and SQL servers, same thing. And then I've got the central servers and just all that infrastructure. By the time they got done an upgrade, they had to start over again. Like the old adage about printing a bridge for them. They'd done the numbers, and that was what was going to turn it for them, for others. And we're talking to a couple of clients with you right now. We think that they just need to see how beautiful it can be, right? Like, if they just think, like, pos is just an appliance, I just need to take money. We come along and say that thing that you've already paid for years ago, you should throw that out and you should pay for a new thing. So then they just see numbers. But have they actually thought about the difference of I'm taking pay and doing Pos on a phone instead of a great big PC, and what does that do to my retail floor? So we're talking about, can I do a demo in the store, load up their catalog, give it to the CIO or the head of store ops and say, look, I bet you can cash somebody out without even training. So just being able to visualize what that new world looks like and just stop thinking it as just another revolution or another evolution, it's a whole different way now. Of revolution.

Speaker A: Yeah. That change management piece is so important. And I wanted to ask, because it is a lot, what we sell and what we co sell together. Yeah, it's new technology, but it is innovation. There is a lot of change there. It's hardly just the technology. How important to the success of an installation and implementation and go live. And this total transformation is. Executive alignment is internal alignment. I'm sure you guys have seen projects fail because one hand doesn't know what the other is doing and the project's driven without the best interest in everybody in mind. You know, just.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I think the change needs to be driven from the top. The senior leadership at the organization needs to be committed to the cause, and that's where it should be driven. I think that's where we see the difference between a successful and not so successful project, because if there is a, if there's a lack of alignment between the leadership, because there are multiple parties involved, there's ops, there is merchandisers, there's e comm. But if they are not aligned to a common goal, that could really cause delays, which is obviously not helpful for anybody, but even could lead to unsuccessful projects as well. So I think that's one of the key factors where you need to make sure that the leadership is aligned. Let me give the example of foot asylum. We went live recently. There was absolute commitment from the top to the bottom, common goal. They were kind of ready from day zero. They made sure that the right people were available. They were kind of making sure that the vision, the goal was clear, well communicated throughout the leadership, throughout the hierarchy, from the top to the bottom, and make sure that people were made available at the time we needed them, we were able to work with them, do workshops understand what their requirements were, design, build solutions for them? And we were able to roll out the solution in 89 days from start to finish. And vis a vis, we see another retailer that we are working with, and we could see that there is quite a lot of misalignment between the various departments. Department A is not speaking to the other leadership, is got other priorities, and they are kind of not focused on the initiative, and there are kind of constant delays on that. So we are trying to kind of escalated to the senior leadership. But I think that's the difference which we see between absolute kind of, you know, a cracker of a project to one which is getting a little slipped.

Speaker A: Do those start to show signs early on? Like, can you pick that up early on? Or is it something that reveals itself that you're like, oh, ****, we've got a problem?

Speaker C: I think it's. I think what we started on a very nice note where we're kind of, everybody was aligned. We had a great pre scoping workshop in terms of we knew what we wanted to do. Their leadership kind of onboarded. But I think as we went along, maybe macroeconomic factors kind of played out. Things were kind of getting a little difficult from a trading volumes point of view. There was kind of pressure from a stakeholders from a board level as well. So I think they kind of lost their way slightly. So it kind of unraveled as we kind of went into the program. But that's just one example. I don't want to generalize that. Yeah, but that's kind of the message is clear that you need to make sure that all your ducks are aligned. Before you start, make sure you're committed, because if you know it, then it's going to be counterproductive.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And especially that lateral. I mean, you said that a couple of times, but, you know, if it's just an it project because it thinks they know what the business needs, and then at the end, okay, it's done, could you just roll it out? Business, that's not going to work. And in business, in this case, with point of sale. Right. Finance is a super strong, needs to be a super strong supporter of that and supply chain and store ops. So if this was just, well, store ups just went out and they saw something at a show and they're talking to somebody, but they haven't aligned internally. That's where your friction comes, I think.

Speaker A: It'S increasingly becoming the entire organization has to sign off on it. A lot of the deals, even, even on the marketing side, I help run marketing for news store. We're adopting a new piece of technology, the amount of business units that have to be brought in from the finance perspective. And they're saying, okay, so what is this going to do? And I'm saying, hey, I know what it's going to do. Is it going to save us money? Yes, potentially. It's going to support us growing, certainly. But that's one example on an insignificantly inexpensive, you know, and the grand scheme of things, not, not a huge investment. This isn't a multimillion dollar investment that a brand is making that touches all of their sales and revenue.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: It was just helping a couple of marketers in Boston work a little bit more efficiently. But the VP of finance bringing her in, we're helping talk through the negotiations now, elevate that to what we're trying to sell and co sell. And you need that organizational buy and the CEO CFO, they need to be involved. And that's certainly why we've talked about some of the projects and some of the things that we want to bring to the market to help make those business cases a little bit easier. But yeah, you have to have the buying centers all bought in, certainly early on.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I think the, it needs to be aligned to the business. It can't be just an it led project. If it is, it's going to be ending in disaster. Because if you don't have the two talking, then you're going to find out much later that half the requirements were miss or things that were built which were not really needed. So yeah, it makes sure that those.

Speaker A: Two are, and those days are gone. Right. Especially with a solution like what we sell. Yes. Managed and operated by it, but impacts the retail teams, store teams, store planning even.

Speaker B: Right. Like how do I change the store layout to take advantage of not needing a cash repair anymore?

Speaker A: Yeah. You know, we had, you know, spoken with a number of our customers at the CIO and CTO level and, you know, one of the things, and on this podcast in particular, you know, James Reed from all Saints. I think you guys know him. You know, he said one of the greatest things that he can do is sell the vision. And, you know, you're not just working in a silo and saying, oh, we just brought on this new thing. You have to sell that. Especially as these, these deals become much more team oriented, business oriented, and everybody has to be across it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And shows that alignment on requirements, whatever you think your requirements were, now you've bought a piece of software and it's going to make your business awesome. It might not tick every box. In fact, there's probably a lot of boxes that won't exactly tick, but that's okay because of that vision. Right. So if you're all aligned to the vision, but we bought this because, and this is how it's going to change our business. And so if a couple of reports don't come out the same way and somebody that always did a thing on Tuesday doesn't get that anymore, and the vision is if you stuff, that's what you need to be focused on.

Speaker A: And we deal with that with existing customers almost that exact scenario. Yeah, it happens. How do you guys land on the terminology around omnichannel versus unified commerce?

Speaker C: So I think they've been used interchangeably. There is a lot of kind of misconception. People are trying towards move towards unified commerce. As a new buzzword, there was omnichannel and then suddenly everybody started talking to unified commerce. And now it's kind of the composable and the Mac principles which are kind of coming into play. So I think they're all kind of similar interchangeable topics. However, I think the definition has evolved. The functionalities are evolved and the products which are there in the market are giving much further, much enhanced capabilities that they were previously. So it's not just a new coin of term, but it's also making sure that the brands and customers are able to leverage data in a way that it wasn't in the past. Like endless Isle, Boris. Buy and shop and buy online, return in store, buy online, reserve in store. So all those kind of additional enhanced advanced journeys are being made possible in that unified commerce. So I think that's where the world is moving towards.

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't have a preference on the term. In a couple of years from now, we'll make up another new one.

Speaker A: That's what it feels like, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a new brand on this thing. We want our customers to be able to see us as one brand and transact however they want, whatever you want to call that thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's funny, we had three panelists on yesterday, James from All Saints, Katya who works for app group, and then Ron Ajak from roots. And Ron is like, I do not like omnichannel. I don't like the term. And then we spoke with someone, it was Sonal, she was from the lead, she was the moderator. And she said, yeah, like, I think it was her. Anyway, you know, increasingly people are trying to get rid of it, you know, and it's like, well, you can't retire it. You know, two years ago, people were like, oh, omnichannel instead. Far from it. Far from it. But the use of unified versus omni interchangeably, I mean, it's, you know, some, some analyst somewhere has a, has a real, you know, clear vision of what the differences are. That's it. But for our customers, who cares, right? It is, yeah. You're either able to serve your customers and shoppers or you can't.

Speaker B: I keep coming back to frictionless, whatever the, whatever that is, make it easy. The buy online, return in store, whatever that is, whatever you want to call the box you're putting it in should be easy and the customer should understand the brand and should be able to transact however they want without friction.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you guys serve a lot of different industries, brands, customers, working with partners. What are you guys most excited for over the next twelve months here?

Speaker C: I think obviously everybody's talking about Mac these days, so I think that's where we see a lot of conversation moving towards, because people are moving towards composability, microservices, make sure that they're not getting or buying into those monoliths anymore. So I think that's the world is moving towards that API led approach. So we've got, in fact, we built a lot of accelerators as well with APIs where we could plug and play multiple systems and you're not having one bulky system in anymore and you could have smaller components and you've got a layer of API which talks to each other. So I think that's going to be a driver and that theme is going to be constant in the space. I'm going to say AI and Genai, because I think that's the future. The world is kind of moving towards that. Everybody is getting used to chart GPT.

Speaker B: It's a tool, definitely a tool.

Speaker C: And the businesses are now thinking, how could they make the best use of it? How could they leverage that and serve their customers better? So I think there will be more solutions offering which will be coming up in that space quite rapidly. I think those are some of the themes that I think is going to be driving 2024.

Speaker A: What do you think are some of the more practical use cases for generative AI in retail?

Speaker C: I think, for example, you could talk to, if you got a iPhone app on the POS, you could talk to chat GPT and say, do I have a shoe of this color in stock? If not, could you order it for the customer? And the system could go and order it for you. Right. You're just talking to the app as an assistant. Exactly. So rather than kind of searching it, typing it, you're just talking it while you're with the customer. You could say, whether I have it in stock or not, or you could say, this customer here is liking something in blue and they've got a dinner to go to. What are the options that you want to recommend? And the AI would kind of come up with some recommendations for them. So based on what you, the preferences that you said, I think this blue jacket is going to look really good on you and it's going to match the occasion that you're after. So I think that's where, you know, those could be some of the simple use cases.

Speaker B: Voice assistant. Right. Hey, Alexa, order me another skid of shoes.

Speaker C: Yes, but I think it's taking it to the next level, which is interacting the data that it already has, and then kind of, you know, going through that and then coming up with recommendations. So that's where these machine learning LLM models would play a role, to give that kind of next level recommendations to the shop assistants, for example.

Speaker B: Yeah, I see the copilot model. I mean, lots of people are talking about that. I certainly didn't invent that, but it's not taking a task away from a person, but sitting alongside. And the voice system, I guess, comes to that same heading. Right. And we look up how much inventory of shoes I've got by letting me just. Just speak or help me write this memo to this customer. I'm a customer service voice assistant. I'm sure we've all seen that videos. Again, I didn't invent that. But that seems like a logical step forward, right? Versus I'm going to hand over this whole system or task to a machine and I don't know what it's going to do but copilot a person is just getting helped step by step and always still there.

Speaker C: So I attended keynote by Mark Benioff from CEO Salesforce and he said that when they introduced the genai on Salesforce and it can be reused, the use case can be reused to other tools as well. It was not only they saw an increase of sales by 30% by empowering the customer service agent to be able to proactively sell to customers they were speaking to who were calling for returns or they were calling for any issues with the product or calling in to find where the product were. They were able to not only answer those queries but they were able to upsell cross sell to the customer. They could actually see an uplift in sales. That's a great use case of genai because not only are you empowering the associates but you're also enabling them to do much more than what you would have thought they could do, right, because now you change a call center of a call center into a profit center where we're generating revenue and enabling them to be able to drive sales. So that was brilliant.

Speaker A: Or you directed, you take it away from call centers, maybe that becomes obsolete. You have associates that are actually able to handle those a little bit more.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Or Jenny, I could answer a lot of queries by the customers themselves. You saw what was launched by Google where you could call the customer service and instead of somebody picking it up it was the AI answering that and was able to search the customer based on details. They said we will find them, be able to update their bookings or action what they wanted once they were authenticated. That could reduce your cost of running the operation and we could use the manpower to do kind of better servicing the customer rather than solving mundane issues and tasks and problems.

Speaker A: I mean I love the term like piloting because I think coming out of COVID right. The labor market for retailers was difficult and you certainly don't want to take for everybody but retail as well. And nobody wants to take jobs away by AI. That's a big fear certainly. But if those jobs aren't there because the talent isn't there and people don't want to take them, then for the folks that do they become much more strategic. We produced some content on that and did some surveys around what is the ideal associate customers expect associates to do a lot more. And luckily there are tools like what we are able to provide and you guys can help us roll out. That makes that easier for associates. So they're not the ones that have to say no. But then you layer on top of this, this whole new tech and aspect of doing things, and then there are call centers, customer service, sales support, brand ambassadors. I mean, they're doing a lot more. Right. And that's ideally what you would want and that's what the store should be. Right. More experiential, less transactional.

Speaker C: That's it. That's it, yeah. And that's where you drive the most value out of them. Right. So, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. What can we expect from Abs labs this year? You guys are growing, expanding. I know we're trying to pull you in different markets.

Speaker B: Yeah. So market expansion. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Us, we're committed to, and we've got some great leads in Australia that we have to figure out how to actually service if we win, though, which is great. And then we're broadening past sort of just retail and we're doing some hospitality projects right now. Oh, cool. Some Salesforce marketing, cloud projects. That's a great logo to have on your slides to be able to partner on that. Those are some great projects.

Speaker C: And I think we are looking to accelerate, how can we make the rollout frictionless? How could we accelerate implementation integrations? We're building a lot of connectors. We are building a lot of reusable components that could help the retailers kind of launch quickly. Get to that, you know, go to, go to market very, very quickly, get.

Speaker B: Everybody done in 89 days.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the aim that we want to achieve to, how could we standardize what we're doing? So you're not reinventing the wheel every time and you're reusing.

Speaker B: We've used it twice. Let's package it out so that it's really easy to use the next one and we can promise everybody a faster rollout.

Speaker C: That's the key focus for us to make sure that, how do we kind of scale it for everyone? Because that's in everybody's interest. Right. You don't want to have two years long implementation cycles because you're just kind of wasting a lot of resource, a lot of time. How do we make it efficient? How do you reduce inefficiencies and how to do it quicker, quicker, faster, better. So I think that's the plan for us.

Speaker A: Well, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. I mean, I know what we have been able to do in getting customers live. And you have to think that for the retailers that were walking across the show floors today and yesterday and the day before here in New York at NRF, they're just coming off of the holiday season, right? January is like returns month, so they're tracking everything starting February. If they're looking at new solutions, if that's going to make an impact, that has to get live this year. And that's one of the things that we're trying to push from a messaging perspective, is you don't have to wait for another NRF to see what your stores could look like and how this could go. And I don't know historically how long, I know that we've had longer implementations and things like that, but I think if you're a retailer, you want to know that you can get stuff live ahead of the holidays and not testing, right? You want it done by the summer so you're ready to go. And then it becomes a massive holiday season.

Speaker B: Even that 89 days, that's probably the first wave of rollout. You've got more waves. How big is your geography? How many different versions, how many places do you have to do store planning changes? Great, I can remove the cash desk. I'm going to. Oh, go ahead and do that. I want an extra 3 hours of merchandise in that space by holiday. So, you know, this stuff happens before and after the 89 days.

Speaker C: And also see if we could build an mvp to kind of launch them in one store. They test the waters, they don't have to build every single thing, every single scenario, every single use case on day one, they could kind of, you know, launch it, test it out, see the get real time feedback, and then kind of build on it in phases. Right. So that's one of the key learning and key recommendation from us that don't solve for everything. For day zero, make sure that you have a bit of a ramp up and there's a bit of a learning curve. It's a new tech, new solution to make sure that you launch, you use, you take feedback and you improve. That's the way to go about it. Because if you're solving for everything, you could be doing it for months and years. But if you want to kind of start and pilot and fail fast, I think that's the way to go about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, let's get at it.

Speaker B: Right. I think you're trying to lead us to it's time to start because holiday, next holiday seems like a long way away, but some stuff is going to happen before and after the 89 days.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, by the time everyone gets home, you're midway through January and then before you blink, it's halfway through Q one. It goes fast. It goes fast.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: From a prediction standpoint, industry wide, what do you guys anticipate? I know we talked a little bit about AI and it's probably a little bit of a retread of the earlier question, but anything that jumps out to keep an eye on that you guys are tracking a little bit more closely.

Speaker C: I think this is election year for half of the population on the planet. So the governments would make sure that there is, there was a bit of a tailwind at the back end of last year. Inflation was high, interest rates were high. I think that impacted trading volumes for everybody in the US, UK. Hopefully the interest rates are going down now, so that's going to cool things down. People would have more money to spend. So hopefully it'll be a better year, this one this year. So I think that's something that we are all looking forward to. That Q three. Q four. Last year was a bit tricky for everyone, including the retailers, including the solution providers. Hopefully this year, with the geopolitical crisis, hopefully settling down, interest rate inflation kind of aiming, people should be more encouraged to spend more and drive positive growth for everybody.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. What do you think, Stephen?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I don't have a prediction, more like a fear. I mean, not that things are bad, but what I'd love to be able to say is that things are getting easier in terms of making selections on technology because think some things are starting to become clear. But walking around the shop floor, there's just so many opportunities. Every solution you could look for, there's 710. Twelve people offering the same thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. But then there's some. You scratch your head, you're like, what is.

Speaker C: Yeah, what are you guys doing?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, somebody told us and I couldn't really disagree. 90% of the things you see on the shot on the floor are smoke and mirrors. So, yeah, you gotta be able to figure out how to weed through all that chaff. I think I've mixed some metaphors there, but. And figure out which are the 10% that are actually real and deployable and, and not just testing the waters for next year. But we're ready now.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you go upstairs, everything's impressive and then, you know, like, okay, so what is it that you do?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And which one to go for? Right. You all look great on paper, on the booth and you've all got like this great tech, but does it really work? Is it even usable? Is it mature? Is it scalable, is it secure? So I think those are the things that people might not evaluate on the face and that's where it gets really important to make sure that find the right platform of choice.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know for us, we're preparing for just a run of kind of conferences and trade shows through the first part of, well, all of q one and the first part of Q two, in addition to everything else that we want to do from our own event standpoint and things like that. Where can folks see you guys? Are you guys doing the conference kind of run? Where are you guys headed to next?

Speaker C: I think the next one is shop talk in March. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's where we're going to be and I think. Looking forward to that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I feel like we should have prepared for that one and had a list, but I think it's in flux.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: As we're growing. This is the year to. To do a bunch of shows, but there's just like my previous question on choosing tech. How do you choose shows? You could be on the road all the time, but we're a small enough group that we're not going to quite do them all.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think you can. I mean, every show is a little bit different. We're pretty selective about the ones that we try and do. I know we've been speaking with Jamie Hancock and we're committed to the retail technology show in London in April and participating in Mach three, sending some folks that are, you know, here in New York, but shop talk is the next big one. We do have a presence at Eurosys and go to Deussa Dorf, but that's more of a regional show and. Yeah, I mean, even though NRF is as big as it is, it feels. I know that it feels like it's increasingly a regional show.

Speaker B: Oh, interesting.

Speaker A: I mean, I know there's a massive, you know, global audience, but, yeah, you know, it just hasn't.

Speaker B: Doesn't seem about a Singapore show this year. Is it like an RFP?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So our friends from Australia. Yeah. Team we do so much work with in Australia. Yeah, that would be where they'd be.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're gonna. We are. We are going to that. Yeah, that was the first year that they've done it.

Speaker B: I think. E tail. Is it. E tail does three regional shows as well just within North America.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they do. They always do one in Boston. Yeah, Boston, Toronto. Feels like they have every major city.

Speaker C: When do you get any work done? Right? That's the other.

Speaker B: Just specialize in packing up and going on to the next one.

Speaker A: That's true.

Speaker B: And that's great because you want to be where people can find you.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: But even here we didn't have a booth. Right. We're floating, talking to customers in the aisles and in other people's booths and talking to partners and meeting new partners.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: Great place to network and of course, yeah. It's massive. And it's amazing to make sure that you get everybody who you work with at one place at one time. So that's. It's wonderful from that point of view to be able to meet all the partners, some customers, prospects all in one place. So I think it's phenomenal.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. Well, I know we have a ton of things that we want to do together, our teams, and a lot to achieve and accomplish this year, and I know we're very much looking forward to that. Yeah, it should be an exciting year. Should be a big year for everybody.

Speaker C: Looking forward to it. Absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, yeah. Well, thank you both for making the time and for having us. Yeah, of course, of course. We've got. I know we're, you know, when we get back to our offices and our computers and everything, you know, we'll start working on some, you know, our projects that we're focused on, the total cost of ownership, which everybody's still excited for. And, yeah, we'll get some plans together and figure out, you know, how we can get out there and celebrate our customers and win some new ones.

Speaker B: Awesome.

Speaker C: We're looking forward to the collaboration and the partnership.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you both. It was great to have you on, and we'll have to do it again. We'll bring some customers next time.

Speaker B: That's it.

Speaker C: That's it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Great.

Speaker B: Awesome.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: All right, guys.

Speaker C: All right, good. Cheers.

Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast, which is presented by new store. We'll catch you next time on the MSR.