.png)
The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
The Hidden Challenge of Retail: What Happens Between Clicks and Bricks with Elliot Winskill
What really drives the future of retail? According to PMC’s Technology & Solutions Director Elliot Winskill, it’s not about choosing between online and in-store, it’s about mastering the space in between.
In the latest episode of The FODcast, Elliot unpacks how 12 years in retail technology have given him a front-row seat to the industry’s scars, shifts, and breakthroughs - from the flawed “e-commerce versus high street” debate to the rise of unified commerce as a mindset, not just a tech solution.
We also cover:
- Why the biggest barriers to progress aren’t technical, but organisational
- How COVID accelerated a more balanced, blended approach to retail
- The untapped opportunity of impulse purchases across digital + physical channels
- Why unified commerce means mapping every customer touchpoint, not just selling platforms
- How retailers can embrace composable architecture without a costly “rip and replace”
If you’re in retail, technology, or customer experience, this is a powerful conversation on breaking down silos, rethinking digital transformation, and creating the seamless journeys today’s customers expect.
#RetailTech #UnifiedCommerce #CustomerExperience #RetailInnovation #Omnichannel #FODcast
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Hello and welcome to Season 7 of the podcast, the podcast focused on the future of digital commerce hosted by Simply Commerce. Season 7 promises to continue to bring you some of the industry's brightest minds across the globe as we unpick the sector and where it's heading From war stories to strategy and technology, deep dives to future trends we cover it all as we continue our journey to have one of the most popular podcasts in commerce. Before we start, if you enjoy our content, please do hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening on, like and share on socials.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome back to the podcast the Future of All Things Digital Commerce. Today, I'm pleased to welcome Elliot Winskill, technology and Solutions Director at PMC. Welcome, elliot, good morning. Thank you for joining me today. Now. We've been going back and forth on this one for a while, so it's great we've been able to lock down some time to get this recording in. Elliot has spent the last 12 years at PMC, working up the ranks from analyst through to his current role on the board. Before we jump in, do you want to give a bit more detail on how your roles evolved over that time, elliot?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I.
Speaker 2:I started off, uh, in in the managed services realm, working in support analysts and working through retail's biggest challenges on a day-to-day basis and and then started to move into um more of the technical consulting, implementation, upgrades and and going through that period of retail where upgrades and implementations and updates were a massive project challenge took many, many months.
Speaker 2:I learned a lot of the scars of implementing retail and how does that really happen.
Speaker 2:So then, sort of taking on our own internal platform and product to sort of work out how do we do things differently and how do I use those scars to make sure people of the future and retailers of the future don't have to go through quite as many when they're doing technology upgrades and technology changes and innovating within retail. And then we sort of caught a hit COVID and we took the product to the new level. And then in April, sort of last year a couple 18 months now I joined the board to take on the technology. And then in April sort of last year, a couple 18 months now I joined the board to take on the technology arm and really start to focus on how our product, our platform and our innovation help retailers at a much broader level, so very much technical background, but learned how to turn that into helping business people deliver outcomes faster, easier and hopefully with uh with less scars than than what we had to go through in in my first uh 10 years.
Speaker 1:It really sounds like there's there's plenty you can fall back on there, which is uh, which is awesome, and that's what you want, and that's what we want from guests on the show is those that have been there, done it and got the t-shirt or the scars in this case? So, uh, so they were cool. Well, look, um, thanks for that. Um, today we are going to be focusing on why retail's real challenge isn't digital versus physical. It's what happens in between. So I guess a good place to start is going to be, um, talking about retail's evolution over the last 10 years. Do you want to start and break it down?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely, and so. So I work for a company that spend a lot of time working with lots of different retailers, and so we're very fortunate to see the span of how retail has evolved across the retail industry, but also those verticals within industry, and how different sized businesses go through that journey, and what you tend to find is the big players are normally going through the challenges first and the little players are then working out the ways to do it faster, more efficiently and with ultimately less cost to help them deliver, and so retail evolution is something that we sort of live and breathe, and so the last 10 years for us have been a really exciting space for retail. For us have been a really exciting space for retail. It started off, if you think, 10 years ago with actually a realm of negativity around the high street, around the physical space, being very much a struggling environment. Post 2018 and the sorry 2008 and all the crash, you had that sort of four or five years of quite tough time in retail, and that was the rise of e-com and where e-com started to really drive and find a space. Now, the interesting part for that is is that dynamic change that happened between about 2015 and 2020, where e-com sort of felt they were going to take the lead, and actually for physical retail, I mean, I remember many articles coming out saying, you know, physical retail is dead, the high street is dead. All of these comments that sort of ultimately were never going to happen. And so what you actually found was 2010 to 2020, was the evolution of finding balance between e-com, digital engagement and physical and, and physical and the physical journey and how those two are changing rapidly and they're both driving each other.
Speaker 2:And so what that meant was, you know, we had this belief that mobile was going to take off in retail. We put a lot of emphasis behind that in a lot of the work we did on things like our product, but actually what reality was was physical retail really struggled with its evolution away from being driven on everything is done in the high street, everything is done in in physical to now a lot of things are done in e-com and e-com is starting to drive that. But actually e-com then really struggled or didn't really embrace how to make the physical work really well, and physical struggled to embrace the digital and they sort of had a tussle and it tussled over about six years and it really sort of tussled between which one was going to land and I think in about just pre-covid. Uh, we probably hit that equilibrium of people starting to work out the, the right journey, that idea of high street and physical and all the physical stuff we do in retail being more about experience and engagement. And then the econ world driving more about convenience and speed and agility and finding the things you want when you need them.
Speaker 2:And you started to see just those those little shoots, um, of excitement of people coming into stores. Where they were, they had the digital on their phone, they'd already researched the item they're looking for, they already knew the comparators and the prices and the information, um, and the physical stores realizing that they're no longer the experts because actually the consumer is a lot more clued up. And COVID sort of both stopped that completely. Of course, we went into lockdowns, it became a massive crunch, but it also accelerated that journey and the reason for that is I remember being locked down and realizing I couldn't wait to go to a shopping center again, um, and I'm not a massive shopper, so that was quite a big thing for me and I think everyone went on that journey of buying online, buy online and then go. I could do with an experience so that really COVID accelerated that.
Speaker 2:And that's when, in post-COVID world, you start to see mobile adoption really start to spike and actually in physical spaces, mobile is much more adopted than it ever was.
Speaker 2:The digital systems have started to hit the store a lot more effectively, a lot more usable, and there's a focus now on creating experience, empowering your staff's knowledge so they understand digital and that digital feels it has a real world space in a physical world now to actually really add value and drive each other's journeys.
Speaker 2:So I think it's been a really interesting technological drive and change and I think that the whole last decade has been about finding that balance and I think it's taken so long, not because of technology and not because technology have been the barriers, but actually more people, organisation and org structures have taken time to adapt to this new world where you can't think of the world as just digital and physical. Now you have to think of the world as how am I selling to my consumer and how am I engaging my consumer, no matter what the channel, no matter what the type, whether it's physical or digital, um, and and how do you all structure that? How do you get ownership and drive and and elements of that. So hierarchy's been a slow mover. It always is. People and change are always your slowest factor. Um, and, and that's really been the massive chunk of the last 10 years of evolution in retail has been about org structure aligning to, hopefully, the future of potential that technology now gives us so I mean you covered a lot.
Speaker 1:I mean, first of all, I'm amazed at, uh, the fact you can remember what retail was like pre-covid, I mean to me that's just that's just a blur.
Speaker 1:I don't remember buying anything before covid, yeah, and then what the experience was like. So, uh, yeah, fair, fair enough for that one. It's um, yeah, what's that six years ago now? Yes, crazy, yeah, it's crazy. And um, but yeah, it's. Obviously covid did impact everything massively and we'd be silly to sit here and say it didn't. Um, I remember looking at a uh a graph quite recently which I think was produced by retail economics and, um, it showed the acceleration of covid and obviously the last couple of years we've had a bit of a pullback from an online shopping point of view and an investment, uh, but it looked as though if it hadn't been for covid, we would be on the trajectory now that we should. We would have been on anyway had it not been for covid. So actually, whilst many feel as though we've had this big pullback, we're actually just in line with where we would have been had covid not have happened anyway yeah, yeah, I was encouraging.
Speaker 2:I think covid also made us all think and made a lot of businesses stand back, um, and and you know, there are some great examples of digital brands that have come out of covid and gone. Do you know what? I don't want to be, you know, a traditional physical retailer, but I do want to to start to build some experiences and some physical spaces, and you're seeing pop-ups that we've never had in the industry come out, things like, um, the ebay pop-up that happened over christmas last year, the, um, you know, the verycom one. There's all these little pop-ups coming up and they all just drive this mentality of actually digital wants a bit of experience and a bit of physical experience in what they give their consumers.
Speaker 1:Um, that pre-covid, you probably would never have imagined no, and, and something that I find interesting is when we go back to the first ever podcast that we were recording, one of the topics was what does the future of the high street look like? And actually we had a lot of really experienced guests come on and a lot of the comments that they were saying around how the high street needs to provide an experience. We're going to see far more things like, um, like coffee shops in stores. We're going to see more things to draw a customer into store, almost like it's a flagship store, like an apple store, for example. All of these ideas that were shared. We're seeing that all come to fruition now, which is, uh, really pretty cool, um, yeah and uh yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like I said this you can, you can really now see why those that didn't adapt over that time have have struggled. Yes, let's talk a bit more about the hierarchy, because you touched upon already that people are always, or often, the slowest to adapt. We've seen it a lot in organizations where they go through substantial change and it struggles because people don't like to pick up the new processes. They've been doing something for a long time in a particular way and it's not easy to just come in one day and suddenly do it a completely different way. I'm sure you see this every day and you have all of these conversations, so do I guess? What I'm trying to say here now is do we now feel as though companies are working in unison, is digital and it working together as we believe it should do, or are you still seeing these kind of digital versus it?
Speaker 2:I think. I think it's a really interesting one, because there were companies you know five, ten years ago who made those switches really quick and literally smashed together their departments and went. You're now one, and that doesn't ultimately work either, because the challenge you've got is their mindsets of the ways of working and also the thing the arts of the possible is slightly different and the way that people have to implement their thinking and process have to be slightly different. It's a journey for everyone that's been in more traditional, very highly regulated or change managed environments, moving to that digital space where the digital director wakes up on a saturday morning and goes I don't like the message, change it before 11 and the digital team just change it and no one worries and it all just works. That mindset's very different and so there were some that crunched too quickly and that actually causes just as many issues, because you end up with spending huge amounts of money on lots of different initiatives trying to train and teach and journey the people and the teams into the right place.
Speaker 2:I think the ones that have done it really well are those that have just slowly evolved um more about who owns the outcome and less about who is driving the project. So in a lot of good businesses, where we're starting to see lots of positive change is people, where they're bringing business much closer to the owning of the change, owning of the outcome. And business own that, not IT or digital. And IT or digital, or the two combined, are more just feeders delivering back to that business requirement and that business owner. Um, and that's really interesting because what you're saying is you're going traditionally, business would go I need it and I want this and I want this and I want this and then it would go away. Spend 12 months figuring out, picking, selecting, implementing, testing done. Happy business? Are you happy? I kind of met my requirements, but you missed these 10 things Figuring out, picking, selecting, implementing, testing done. Happy Business? Are you happy? I kind of met my requirements, but you missed these 10 things. Now it's much more about bringing business in and going right. What's your day-to-day needs? Let's work together, continuously evolve the offerings across all of our channels and outcomes. And that's actually been a massive learning curve for business because they're not used to that sort of fail fast mentality and you know the problem with having a great fail fast, agile, innovative mentality is it can get very draining, you know as a business user, if you're constantly putting something out, it's not quite right changing it. Putting something out and you're constantly going through through that loop, it can be quite draining and that's quite a different way of working. So I think, ultimately, what they're doing really well is starting to focus on the consumer and the outcome and not the technology. And, and that's what technology has enabled us to do is to stop worrying about how and start focusing on why and what, and and. If you do why and what really well, there are so many hows that you can just pick the right one based on cost efficiency, partners and and and what you believe, as a technical team, is going to drive a great outcome. So it really is, for me, about bringing business into much more of the conversations and having the business owners be actual, genuine business operations or marketing or those, those sort of front-facing roles that are engaging the consumer and working out what the consumer wants from their brand. Um, and that's where I think it it's start. We're starting to see that working and that really adding value. Um, once you can get them in the right space, which is hard because it it's a new world for them as well, um being part of the failures as much as the successes yeah, it is a completely new world and it's a completely different mindset.
Speaker 1:And I guess, do you think companies could go through this evolution by themselves, particularly big traditional retailers, or do you believe they need to enlist the help of specialist third parties or even specialist hires within the business to help drive that change?
Speaker 2:So I think the future business owners are coming in with a much higher degree of technical capability in general, because, as a human race, every generation is getting more technically adapted, and I think it's about making sure you balance experience with the talent that you can bring into your business unit and your business ownership space.
Speaker 2:I think number two is it is about getting really clear on what are your partnerships with, not just what you do internally, but also then the partners, so you know if you're going to bring a solution in and implement a new solution, make sure that solution is close to the business unit as well and to the business owner, because actually what you don't want to create is there's this traditional, traditional again traditional mindset model of business wants something.
Speaker 2:It decide what it is and pick a partner partner work deals with it, it deal with partner, the business owner gets annoyed and gets annoyed at it and it get annoyed at partner.
Speaker 2:And actually, if you can cultivate a different way of working where you've got more of a triangle with partner, it and business and you're all in those conversations, you're all having those debates and the business feel like they are as much a part of that partnership as the IT and the partner is, then what you'll do is you'll end up creating a much more collaborative change process and a collaborative move forward. And I think that's quite a mold change because ultimately, it is used to owning all of their relationships and solutions that they drive, but actually, if you do a good job of it, it means that retail and IT and marketing and all of these sort of business owners spaces with IT have a much more joined up feel and they feel part of the discussion. So when things are going wrong, they can see that the solution provider is in the trenches with them, is trying to help, is doing the right things, is being proactive and supporting them in fixing issues or solving failures and making successes. You've got to create that connection.
Speaker 1:It's really important yeah, and so I guess. Last question then on this topic is you have these conversations on a very regular basis with retail brands of all shapes and sizes. How receptive are they to this change, because for some it's going to be very different.
Speaker 2:I think it depends very much on the size of the business. The bigger the business, the harder it is, because you've got more facets of your business that are more siloed and breaking those silos down is as much a business-wide challenge in the sort of tier one businesses as it is actually trying to solve these problems. I think that the mid-tier are actually getting into a much better space. They really are starting to adopt and part of that's because they have to, because of the adoption models of solutions now much more SaaS-based. It's a lot more subscription-based. It kind of forces you into that space because actually IT are not really delivering the same services they used to deliver.
Speaker 2:But I think it's got to slowly permutate its way up to tier one. I think tier two do a very good job of it now or majority do and tier one's now slowly got to move in that direction and and they're trying. You know cross-functional teams are are a constant conversation. You know we've built a cross functional team for this project and a cross-functional team for this project and a cross-functional team for that project and I think that's the way tier ones are doing it and I think that will long-term work very well. I think it's just important how that permeates up the triangle to the top of the tree and how the business structurally supports that cross-functional model.
Speaker 1:Okay, so a little bit of work to go then, but it seems like we've made some good progress and, uh, but we're certainly going in the right direction then, um, yes, yeah, nice. So we've spoken about, obviously, how it's important that everyone, uh sort of works, works together in order to give the customer the best possible experience possible. Now that brings me on, nicely, to the next, the next question, when I mean, ultimately, we love a buzzword in in technology. Uh, going back a few years, we started with multi-channel, went on to omni-channel, we now have unified commerce, which has probably been a buzzword now for maybe 18 months or so, but it's certainly something that's still very prominent and probably more prominent than it has been for a long time, and there's always a lot of different definitions on these buzzwords, based on whoever you speak to, what. What does a unified commerce mean to you, elliot?
Speaker 2:I think you're absolutely right. Every single solution has a different definition of what unified commerce means to them. And actually unified commerce, um is mistaken to be a solution. You know there are many unified commerce platforms out there and and um, everyone will will sort of define what that means to them. I mean, ultimately, for me, um, unified commerce is not a solution or a platform, um, it is a mindset, um, and it is actually much more about how do you help retailers and digital brands to deliver to their consumer in all of the different touch points that you can physically get with a customer.
Speaker 2:Any moment that you've got the customer whether it's social, whether it's an event, whether it's staring at your shop front, whether it's being in your shop, whether it's being on your e-com sites every touch point is a moment that you can turn into selling. And that is a definition, mindset of unifying commerce. To say, I have to make sure, whatever my stack is, whatever platforms and solutions and things that I do, that I am maximizing as many of those moments as I can into a retail selling moment. And so unified commerce is really about getting everyone on the same page in a people sense of what are all these touch points we have with our customers.
Speaker 2:Number one the bit that sometimes they forget who is their customer and who are the customers and what do they want and what are their touch points, and are we really maximizing them all? Do we really understand all of the points of touch our customers have and do we understand what that means? And then, at the back of that, you've then got a technology problem of okay, great, well, now've then got a technology problem of okay, great, well, now I've got these nine touch points. I need to work out how do I surface selling in those moments so that the consumer can take the best from me. And so for me, it really is about everyone getting behind a common, unified commerce mindset of saying our job is to make sure we make the moment of every retail moment we can. Any interaction I'm going to make sure that our consumer can buy, enjoy, engage, experience us and is also consistent. And brand consistency is still a challenge across many retailers in those touch points, and it it's that consistency that will ultimately keep customers coming loyal in all of those moments of touch.
Speaker 1:So again it goes back to the people element as well. So it's been a reoccurring theme in this conversation so far as we have all of the technology and everything else, but actually it's the people that is the key element here between online and, uh, in store, um, but going back to those touch points quickly, so, um, obviously there's the obvious touch points, right, like obviously in store, on the website, on the mobile, etc. Are there any touch points that generally get missed in your conversations? Is there any like reoccurring ones that uh, people in businesses kind of overlook as a good touch point with a customer?
Speaker 2:yes, I think there are a couple. I think social is still um, while quite untapped when it comes to to to that sort of engagement. Um, I think too many retailers just sort of use the, the expectation they're just going to sort of put a few posts on a tiktok feed or or create an instagram um based on their brand and and, and all of their content is driven on trying to get you to go to their website. Um, and, and I think that as a touch point is is still quite untapped up um as a digital layer and and I think that then transcends into the physical space then of.
Speaker 2:You know, oh, 10 years ago we were trying beacons for location-based prompts yeah, I mean, I've trialed them, we've looked at them and you know the premise it never kicked off really, but that's not because it wasn't a great idea. It was because, ultimately, technology needed to evolve and actually location is now much easier. Um, you can do it in apps, you can do it in in a lot of the sort of near field stuff. You can pop things up, you can use clip app clips and stuff like that to drive a lot of that experience, um. So I think understanding the physical touch points you get that are not just your physical store, are really important. You know, do you do pop-ups, um, do you do events where you just pitch up? Do you sponsor any sort of big events where you could get your retail space in there, but not physically? But how do you do that digitally? You know, how do you bring we call them microsites to the space? How do you bring those, those engagements where you can ultimately get the bit which is, for me, the probably most untapped space, which is the impulse purchase?
Speaker 2:You know, impulse purchase. We are missing a big gap, um, and and and, if you can get me on an impulse, an impulse can come from social, it can come from, uh, whatsapp. It can come from physical walking past things. It can come from being at events where I'm super engaged in the moment and you hit me. It's those moments that, for me, are absolutely important.
Speaker 2:I'm a massive football fan and if you caught me at the moment where I'm winning 3-0 in a massive final and I'm loving life, I am definitely gonna and accidentally purchase the cup winners shirt because I'm that confident we're about to win the final and and actually it's, it's that moment, that impulse, um, that is where you find those little margins of extra retail and that is an alignment between physical retail and digital. I don't see that as just a pure digital journey. I see that as a collaboration between physical retail and digital. I don't see that as just a pure digital journey. I see that as a collaboration between physical retail and the retailing and the digital space it's a really interesting point you make there about that impulse purchase.
Speaker 1:We've all done it. I'm just. I'm sat here now thinking of things I've randomly bought with no need. But it's either popped up at the right time it's a product that I've wanted or it's just been a deal that's been too good to be true so I've bought it or there's there's there's loads that are coming to my head right now, which isn't always in good ways, it shows they work right.
Speaker 1:um, I'm I'm sat here immediately thinking, okay, well, this is predominantly online, at least for me and my experiences, all of my impulse purchases have been online that I can think of right now. You mentioned it's not just in line, it's actually physically in store as well. So have you got an example you can share around that?
Speaker 2:well.
Speaker 2:So if you've got an example you can share around that, yeah, I think for me some do it really well where you go up to, uh, the the desk to purchase and they've just got, they've cleared their whole sort of space where they pack and they've just got some items just to the left and you just look down and you just go, I'll get one of those um, and, and that's a very physical example but and and it doesn't work in all because some of them don't quite work in that way, but it's. How do you do that? Using a combination of digital media, retail media. You know that retail media is massive. We, you know we're working a lot at the moment around how do we take digital displays, but not like your traditional big windows. I'm talking just take a tablet, put them around, put some content on them, have them look at you. And maybe I'm going to use the first buzzword of today that I'm sure you haven't done a podcast without in the last year, which is put a bit of ai in there around visual recognition, around working out and profiling people walking by and try and just pump them with something that might catch their eye, that might get them engaged, that might make them purchase something unique. So you know how do we work on that in a much more consistent way and do it much more regularly.
Speaker 2:I always think of the brand like slightly out of retail, but I still feel it's part of it to a degree. You know, you go to a festival like Glastonbury just have a big Glastonbury go on. You stand and watch your favourite bands. You are engaged, you're ent enticed, you're part of that journey and at that moment, if you were to ping up to me a QR code and said purchase here for this band that's on stage right now, we'll deliver it to your home. Just do it. I'll probably words because I'm at that moment. I'm, I'm, I'm engaged.
Speaker 1:You've got a few, a few beers as well, so you're like, yeah, why not?
Speaker 2:why not? And and you know that's different to you posting up and going oh, if you walk for 20 minutes down to the right there's a tent with some merch in it. You know, go grab something. Oh, when you get there as an hour-long queue, you know you're not impulsed me, I was impulsed, then I got there, then I was queuing up and then I saw the bar and I went. I'll just go to the bar, you know, and it is that. It's that moment.
Speaker 2:How do you engage, get, grab and not get them to peruse, not get them to to go on your website and do a whole 20 minute review of all the items you've got. It's no, I want to get you now, I want to get you through the sale process in under a minute and I want you to purchase before you even think about what you're doing. Um, that engagement is actually something we don't do a huge amount at the moment but absolutely have to do to get those little gains, to get that extra margin. But I think, importantly it's it's also not about and this is where some are going a little bit the wrong way um, it's not about trying to hit them in every second of the day of everything you can do. So you've got to be really clever with it and you've got to be really careful with your planning of how do you almost sentiment analyze your customers at that level on their walk through your store or on their walk through your event, or on your on their walk through whatever they're doing physically, and get them at the right moment. You know you don't want 20 ipads lined up and each one shows you something different you want. I've walked through, seen certain stuff I like not quite found what I want.
Speaker 2:I'm about to be disappointed and then it hits me with the one thing I was looking for. You know it's how do you do that. You know how do we use technology, and 10 years ago we'd have gone ha, that's impossible. You know this is you're talking, you're talking lunacy, but now tech does that. Tech can do that. Technology can do all of that. There's there's no limitation there. It's now about actually not just implementing technology. It's going back to what is the customer really want, putting the customer at the heart of your problem and figuring out how do you understand them and deliver what they want, but do it in a way that means ultimately you're selling more yeah, um, there's um.
Speaker 1:That sounds dangerous. I'm not gonna lie, I'm sat here as a customer thinking it's gonna, it's gonna start getting expensive, yeah, so I have all these parcels start turning up at my house and you go out and you just impulse buy something, then forget about it, but it's cool. I was gonna ask does do we have tech to do this now? But you've already answered that question, saying yes. So I mean I'm yeah, it's um, it's cool.
Speaker 1:And, as always, those brands that can move forward with this in the early days are the ones that are going to benefit the most. Because, as consumers, when something's new, we're more inclined to be like wow, that catches our attention, let's do it In a couple of years maybe. When every brand is doing this, it's like, oh, ok. Well, actually I've done that before and this isn't so new anymore. So I think it's. I guess it's important to stress that if you are one of these early adopters and you yes, you might face some, some struggles in the implementation of it and getting it perfect well, you're never going to get it perfect right, but actually, from a, if you get that interaction with the customer as an early adopter, as an early adopter, then you're going to reap the rewards, basically because I'm sat here thinking, cool, anyone's putting the right stuff in front of me. Now I'm going to be buying it.
Speaker 2:Let's be honest, it's yes, yeah, yeah, okay, I think importantly, uh, for those early adopters and for everyone in in retail as well, is is, you know, legacy is no excuse.
Speaker 2:That, fundamentally, legacy is no excuse. 12 years of working with systems that, some of them as old as 30, 40 years I've seen green screens that are still out there. Um, that doesn't stop you doing innovation. It doesn't stop you, um, being able to start to get the best of unified commerce and get the best of the way retail is going. Um, you've just got to be much more clever about how you do it. You've got to work out how do you sort of work around the edges of those systems and work with partners and providers who understand legacy as well as digital, or make sure you've got a combination of legacy and digital people who work together so that you get the best of both, cause you still can, and there is no excuse using legacy as a as a reason why, oh well, we couldn't do that in our business because we've got systems that are 20 years old. Well, join the club of of a long list of retailers that do, and, ultimately, some of those that that we work with definitely are still innovating and still moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that the whole technology piece there brings us on nicely then to to next question, elliot, which is can you be truly unified without being best of breed to enable you to be unified or as close to unified as possible? It isn't the sort of technology you're going to find sat if you're on a legacy Salesforce or SAP monolith, for example. So tell me a bit more about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely, and the answer is 100%. You don't need to be fully best of breed. You absolutely need to start implementing best of breed or at least implementing composable architectures into your world and understanding where they be. And some of those can be siloed and work on the completely isolated over to the left and others you can plug in and and be part of. What's important is about making sure you're really clear on what each outcome is. You know, where do you number one? It's where's your data. Yeah, where's your data and where do you need your data?
Speaker 2:I I have a great thing of of saying I I believe data should be at the point where it's needed and it should be its source, should be where it, where the system that gets the most value from it, and then making sure that those systems make it accessible to all the other systems. You know you can go down the route of data lakes and things if that's the route your business wants to go, but I personally don't think that builds you a good composable architecture long term. You know, if I've got customers, I really want them to be stored in the CRM. That's the source of customer. That's where I want them stored. That's when I want the most value out of them. But yeah, ok, my ERP or my order management system do need to be able to talk to that system and be able to get customer from it and understand customer and be able to pull customer customer. So, realistically, what you need to do is find the right partner, tech partner, architecture within your world to say, right, I've got the monolithic, I've got a great system and it probably does everything you want. But actually these five areas, they're not best of breed and I could do a better job of them by putting something else in and then working out how you decouple those and plug in and work with a partner that understands legacy so that they understand those nuances and challenges and realize that, while it is hard, once you've done it, you've now got one system that's composable, that's off on the side, that's probably hooked into your main system, but actually now flexes up that use case. But actually now flexes up that use case and it's about working out those key four or five things that are important to you. I personally think customer is always number one.
Speaker 2:I also think things like order management's number two and all of your sort of then what you put in store has to be a lot more digital, agile, smaller solutions now, because the monolithic systems struggle to be agile on their endpoint solutions, because they've got to be so sort of careful with the core, with what's going on in the center. So if you can work out how you can sort of get your core system still to be the big things you rely on as a business, you don't need to go away from those, but actually start ripping off everything on the edge and going I'm going to slowly thin that core back to just do the core things that I need it to do, I trust it to do and I know it will do and then start innovating on those edge solutions. Whether it's your POS, whether it's your e-com, whether it's your auto management, whether it's your customer, all of those edge spaces product management, management, stock and inventory they're the things you pull out and you leave the erp crunch to do some of your, your core logic, your replan, your, your big things that it needs to do in the middle. So I think for me, you, you, you know the world is never perfect.
Speaker 2:The minute you try and come up with something that is this is the best way of doing something, um, you're not actually building the best way of doing something. You're building a mindset of how you'd love your architecture and your design of your world to be, and then your question is well, how does that apply to me? Which bits of my world would I want to be that way, and which bits of my world are okay being the bigger, more monolithic approach as they are today? And, and ultimately, that is why you will never get 100% best of breed. No one will ever get 100% best of breed, and if they do that, it will cost them way more than the monolithic did in the first place, or the same amount at least, because going composable is not cheaper. It's about working out how you bring agility and flexibility to key systems in your world that allow you to innovate and change them when something better comes out well, I think we've already seen a lot of casualties of that.
Speaker 1:Businesses that wanted to make the move composable and probably bit off more than they could chew and are now already looking at moving back to a monolithic platform. And we've we've seen a lot, I think. I think there's been a lot of casualties, like I said, over the last 18 months and it seems to have really stung the whole composable movement. I think many would agree that, actually, if you, if you can get your business in a position where you do have best of breed in specific areas, then there are going to be a lot of benefits to it. But actually, how complex is it? How much is it going to cost? Can we manage it ourselves? There's so many questions that need to be answered before just saying, right, let's get off this platform. We're going to go brand new cms, pim, pos, commerce, loyalty, etc. Don't? I mean, it's a big, big change.
Speaker 2:I think, interestingly, it's all. It's really important that you start and I've sort of harped on a bit about it now but you start with customer touch points and you go how do I make sure the things that those touch points are going to need products, prices, order your transaction, taking um customer? How do I make sure they're much more flexible so that as these touch points change because they will, and the different places where you're going to need to interface your customer change and the solutions that are available will change with technology shift how do you make it so that they're the places that you can innovate and be agile in? And that's what Composable, ultimately, is designed to give us right. Composable is designed as a concept and everything that the Mac Alliance has been doing has been designed around that idea of building a concept of collaboration, agility and speed, and there is nothing wrong about that vision. That is absolutely the vision we all need retail to have. But it's about how do you do that without having to basically break apart your whole world and rip it all apart and start again.
Speaker 2:It that rip and replace is is it as a mindset has got, has gone and and anyone that does it is going to pay heavy prices and it's going to hurt. What they need to do is is just work out right. I got these touch points today and to facilitate these great outcomes, I'm going to need this set of data and these systems, and these are the areas I'm going to flex out and become composable in, and I'm going to do it one at a time until I feel confident. I've got my sort of I call it retail framework, but my retail framework of of services that I can give to any provider and go you want to be our new self-checkout? Great, here's our retail framework. Implement that. You'll get all the things you need. You'll be able to put everything back in. That's the bit that's flexible, so that today I want self-checkouts, tomorrow I want magic mirrors, but those two things ultimately need the same things and need the same outcomes by creating that retail framework and that's your composable layer doesn't mean everything.
Speaker 1:That's just really crystal clear on the thing the systems you need yeah, and I think that was the problem at the start of the composable movement is it wasn't everything, whether that was due to the marketing, whether that was just wrongly misunderstood, but I think that, as you said, the biggest issue we faced was that very one. So, very interesting, thank you. Just on the note of those sort of key customer areas you obviously have these conversations regularly. Are there any vendors that you see as really leading the way right now in those areas and, if so, are you happy to give them a shout out? Like if you were to speak to a customer right now that wanted to invest in in their customer touchpoint areas, who would you be recommending they speak to?
Speaker 2:yes, I think, if you, if you start in sort of e-com space, I think, I think you know there is no denying the likes of the Shopify's, the, the, the big commerce is the fluent commerce, those tools, those sort of idea of taking e-comm and breaking it up, and you know, and, and the irony of those three is they're three completely very different architectures and designs and ways of doing things, but ultimately they're all achieving the same thing, which is to allow you to be much more flexible in e-com. I think they're doing a an brilliant job of creating that world. And then I think it's that layer down of the integration layers that are really important. You know getting a bunch of those integration layers right. You know there's loads of products out there doing some really good stuff, like the guys at jitbit doing some amazing stuff around of integration and how they do those elements of integration. They're doing great and actually not forgetting that payments is absolutely vital.
Speaker 2:Yeah, without payments, you really aren't in in a great space from a commerce perspective. Um, and and and you know the, the likes of adian are doing incredibly well uh, around that, because they're just making it easy for partners and technology providers to implement unified payments. Um and and that and that's a really important thing that needs to happen um, and they're one of a number of the that are doing it in the payment space. So, yeah, a lot of great sort of people out there doing that. And then, from a tech provider perspective, all of the Mac Alliance have the right mentality right, they're all trying to do the right thing, and I think that's the main thing we've all got to try and achieve is be a lot more agile, but also understanding that agility doesn't just happen overnight. It's a journey of composable, which is also again I'd say again, it's a mindset, not just an architecture and unifying the commerce space. It's all about helping retailers do that consistently.
Speaker 1:I think that's a bombshell to wrap things up on. It's all about a mindset, it's all about people, it's all about your approach Be agile but be understanding. I really like that phrase so awesome. Well, I've got at least seven or eight different points down here that I want to refer back to, with some, with some snippets. I think this has been an episode full of insights and so, yeah, really appreciate you joining me. Thank you, no worries. Thank you for the time. Hope you've enjoyed the conversation. I know I did and I hope our listeners did as well. Um, who agrees with elliot? Do let me know um, jump into my dms, let me know your thoughts if there's anything you agree or disagree with, and I'll see you next time. Thank you, thank you.
