SPEAKER_01 0:11

Welcome to What's in the Box, the brand new podcast brought to you by Box Technologies, powering retail with purpose. Boxtech delivers innovative and market leading customer engagement solutions that turn business ideas into a performing reality. From design and integration to ongoing support and maintenance, we're with you every step of the way. Now, this podcast is a little different to what you might be used to. It's audio only, and our guests do love that. I say it's totally unscripted, and this one almost was. We do do a little bit of prep for these things. And they're usually around about 20 minutes. So that's because, well, we're busy, our guests certainly are, and we're sure you are too. So let's get right into it. My guest today is the Senior Vice President Global Marketing at Fluid, who delivers unified, composable commerce platforms for omnichannel retailers. She leads global marketing strategy and works closely with products, services, partners, and customers to align Fluid's roadmap and messaging with evolving retail needs. She joined Fluid, then PCMS, in 2019 and advanced through senior product leadership roles, including Group Vice President Product Management and Senior Vice President Product and Marketing, before focusing fully on global marketing from 2024. Previously, she spent nearly two decades at NCR in senior roles across self-service, point of sale, and interactive retail technologies, following consulting and e-commerce positions at Anderson Consulting, Lonia Worldwide, and Georgia Pacific. It's a great pleasure to welcome Donna Stevens to What's in the Box. Welcome, Donna.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Thank you so much for that lovely intro, Andrew. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Oh, thank you. Okay, I'll say these are about 20 minutes, so we're kind of gonna get straight into it. And yeah, we were just talking a little bit beforehand. And one of the things I'm sure we'll get into. Well, no, I'll tell you what, let's start. Tell us a little bit about Fluid. Yep. Um, and and what you're you're doing now. I said global marketing, but tell us a little bit about that, first of all.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, sure. So uh so Fluid are actually a Glory company. We were purchased by Glory two a little over two years ago, and are certainly proud to be part of an organization that has over 100 years legacy and presence in the retail and fintech market. But really, what we do is we are a global software as a service provider of a composable unified commerce platform that is anchored by a suite of point of sale, point of service experiences that help retailers delight and engage with shoppers in their store. We're very much focused on working closely with our customers to help them to transform their businesses at the pace of retail. We're excited to be a company that is nimble, flexible, adaptable, and works with iconic retailers around the world in their pursuit of delivering omni-channel experiences, supporting new technology and the benefits that come with that in their stores. But more than ever, we like to think about the people of retail and how we can serve them. And that's very much what we've been focused on the last few years.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

That's interesting. The people of retail, and I know you you like to make sure that they feel those sort of engagements and you and you have this thing that you talk about POS made personal. Tell us a little bit more about that.

POS Made Personal Explained

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Sure. So a lot of times I think when people say personal or personal engagement, they're thinking from the shopper's perspective. And at Fluid, we like to think a little more holistically about the retailer themselves, their own employees, their store associates, as well as the shoppers and shoppers to be or prospective shoppers that maybe they haven't won over yet. And when we say personal, we're thinking about not only a personal understanding of the consumers' preferences for shopping, how they like to shop, what they put in their basket, how they prefer to pay, whether or not they're a member of loyalty, demographic considerations, presence considerations, proximity. But also we like to think about the applications and the technology itself in the store. And how do we make that personal for the associate and personal for the brand? Retail is a very competitive market, and retailers are proud about their brands, how they look, how they feel, the experience in the store. And very often, technology is awkward to adapt. And what we're trying to do is find a way for the retailer to purchase a software product or technology and put it in the store, but configure it in a way that becomes part of that whole experience, which builds loyalty for the shoppers and also helps retain labor, which is another big challenge. So it's very much about pause made personal for the cashier, the cash manager, for the self-checkout associate who's monitoring the lanes, as well as for the store manager and then all of the shoppers in the store.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

And that's quite interesting because for me, I mean, I I've been with Boxtech now for about 18 months. And one thing that I've observed is that when we talk about pause or self-service and so forth, back in the day, years ago, it it that was what it was. It was the till, it was a checkout, and that was it. But now it seems to me, and just the other day we we had somebody in uh who's interested in looking at uh what Boxtech does, and and we got into a conversation very similar to what you just described there about how it has to all fit in with the store. This is a luxury retailer in London, and and and it forms the the customer experience and and the customer journey.

Beyond Branding To Full Journeys

SPEAKER_00 6:48

It does, it absolutely does. It's it it goes beyond just colors and logos, right? Colors and logos are important, or you know, at the self-checkout, the the accent of the voiceover that nudges you along through your shopping journey. But it's also about other options throughout that journey. How do you, for example, enable someone to enroll in a loyalty program to get benefits that perhaps they've not gotten before? How do you offer them alternative payment journeys or options that suit their way of paying or preference or ability to pay for their purchases? How do you reward them? How do you offer additional information perhaps on a particular product or the ingredients in a product, or mated or substitution products with that product? So it's all about thinking through that experience and what that individual really needs to feel like this journey is personal for them. We're very lucky in the world of software, we're much easier to adapt than hardware. You know, we're more haha fluid. And um, for us, we we build into our solution and understanding that technology on its own, without an understanding of people and process, has very limited success. It may be slow to get adopted, it may even be sabotaged in some cases or ignored. And if you really think holistically about the processes around bringing that technology into the journeys the retailer wants to offer, as well as the ability for the people to engage and interact with that technology, that's how you ensure that those solutions really are meaningful and impactful in the store and aren't just cool tech for cool tech's sake.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

No, absolutely. And and on uh on the this podcast and what's in the books a couple of months ago, I had Paul Reed from a customer of Foxtext, Harrods, and he was talking about the journey that they went on with us and specifically the the self-service, self-checkout. And of course, you think of Harrods, an iconic store, and excuse me, and and and you think, well, you wouldn't have self-service, self-checkout in Harrods. That's all about personal and all and so on and so forth. But it and if people are familiar with the food tool there, it fits very well. So absolutely. I just wanted to go back to you know what you were saying about POSMate personal and and and what you were saying there. And maybe just share with us a little bit about what this means for Fluid, and and also perhaps what uh you can share about your vision and plans for for Fluid in the space.

Configurability And Micro Frontends

Smarter Loss Prevention With AI

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Sure. So I think to your first question, being a technology or software technology company, we always have to be thinking about what's next. Where where is retail going to be in 2035? And how do we how do we have a roadmap that is informed by trends, technologies, and demands, not just today, but but in the future? And how do we use new tech like AI in a meaningful way? So it's not just this wow, cool thing, but it's actually bringing real benefit to the retailer. So one of the things we've done recently is look at our endpoint experiences ourselves, check out our point of sale, and think about how a retailer could configure that journey to offer their own unique experience within their store. And we've built some capabilities into our solution without getting super nerdy and techie on the podcast here. I will just say it's a way for a retailer to take the software that we've we provide to them and extend it themselves, configure it, make the look and feel and engagement suitable to the way they operate and how they want that engagement to exist within their stores. So we've built some mechanisms using cool what are called micro front-end patterns into our software as part of that. In addition, we've thought about the the challenge, and I did a piece actually with the independent a couple years ago on loss prevention and the challenge of shrink in the retail market. It's a tough, it's a tough topic, and it's it's a challenge. And we've thought a lot about the fact that, you know, there's great technology out there, but it only addresses half the problem. It looks at what's happening, it looks at the behavior of either the cashier or the consumer, and it tries to draw a conclusion. Well, that's that's missing some of what's happening underneath the surface. So we've looked at holistically what can we do to help the associate not only control loss, but also ensure the engagement is optimal for the shopper. How do you combine loss prevention with excellent customer experience and avoid putting a store associate in a position where they are uncomfortable? Again, it's all about the people. These are human beings in jobs. We're not in the world of robots where AI and robotics have taken over everything. There are still people there. How do we use technology in a smart way to make those people more productive? So we've recently released a new product that is essentially an engine to help the associate better understand what's happening at the lanes and make a smart decision about how to act on that rather than just alert, trigger, engage, alert, trigger, engage. It's it's more thoughtful than that. It's more databased, it's more patterns in analytics. And yes, of course, being AI ready and harnessing the power of AI to learn, iterate, and adjust proactively to be smarter and more intelligent as a solution. So we are working toward that end as well. We've done some other updates within our platform to really open it up to new innovations like smart carts and uh cashierless checkout, and to extend and integrate and bring partners to the table that retailers can learn from and consider to build a best of breed ecosystem in their stores as well. So it's all about thinking about the uniqueness that every retailer brings to market. How do they remain relevant? How do they differentiate themselves from the competitor? And how do they build loyalties with their loyalty with their stoppers? And what can we build in our software that is innovative but also helps to bring real value, measurable return investment to that retailer?

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I you know, you mentioned AI there a number of times, I guess now. We can't have a retail conversation without AI. And I think that I just wonder, I may ask you, do you think in maybe in a couple of years' time or so we we won't be talking about AI because AI will be, and we don't talk about all the wonders of electricity or the internet or the whatever it happens to be. AI will just be in everything that we get with our absolutely, yeah, yeah. But I I your point is is really interesting in terms of yes, we need to automate and we need to make it easier both for the customer and the and the store associate, but we also need to retain the human element. I mean, there's one or two grocers, well, in particular, I won't I won't necessarily name them here, but but they to to to exit the self-checkout area, you need to scan your receipt, the the um uh the barcode thing is it might be QR code on on your receipt to get out. Now, here in the UK, I know you're based on the the uh the east coast in the US, people are starting to kind of like you know there's a there's you know a little bit of resentment to this because they're like, oh, you're treating us as criminals. And kind of think, well, some of you are, stop doing it. But I guess it's a really fine balance that retailers have got to try to find between between this.

Human Touch Amid Automation

SPEAKER_00 15:11

It is, it comes right back to that word personal and and you know, really understanding each of the individuals, both the associates and the shoppers in the store. And I think you're absolutely right about AI. I mean, you know, five, ten years from now, it's not gonna be something we even talk about. It's just something that just is, it exists, yeah, it's part of everything. But if we think about what is AI really, I mean, you could make the argument that artificial intelligence is software. It's it's a decision made by something that is not a human being. It's it's intelligence in code, in hardware and physical things that aren't human beings. So, in fact, maybe it is already ubiquitous because of software and hardware. It's existed in older forms for many, many years, and now it's just becoming more clever, becoming more complex, and we're finding new ways to adapt this basic fundamental principle of observe, learn, and adjust with software and hardware. And I think that's it's cool, it's fun, it's exciting, it's a little scary, a little creepy at times, but but I'm I'm excited to see where it goes and and how we at Fluid, as well as at Gloria and with our sister company, AcroLec, can harness the power of artificial intelligence to help our customers be more productive and to channel their efforts in ways that again build loyalty and make the shopping experience more engaging and joyful for their customers.

Overcoming The Tyranny Of The Box

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yeah, no, absolutely. Now you and I flew in a box today. We both love stores. Yeah, that's a given. Now, you but you before I let you go, you said something to me before we started recording, which I thought was great. Um we need to make sure that we we kind of clarify this pretty quickly. But you said that it's all about, it was a quote from somebody, and you'll tell you'll tell me who. Uh it's all about overcoming the tyranny of the box. Now, tell me about that, and I've got to say that we don't mean box tech.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

No, no, we don't, we don't.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Credit where credit is due. It was a quote from uh a gentleman named Brian Kilkors from RSR Research here in the United States, another analyst company that Flood works closely with. And what he meant was you know, retail stores have to work harder than ever because when consumers choose to get up off their couch and come into the store and not shop online, they have a lot of expectations and demands. Equally, there is a cost that the physical infrastructure of a store carries. If you think about just the smallest component, a mouse or a printer in a store, and then you multiply that out times the number of lanes, times the number of stores, you very quickly come up with this giant number that started out so small and seemed so insignificant. This is what he meant by the tyranny of the box, right? This really dictates so much of a retailer's cost, a retailer's environment, the problems and challenges that they have to address and where their budget gets allocated to spend and invest. And they really need to overcome that tyranny in order to be able to break out and be creative and leverage software solutions and their people and things like AI and robotics, of course, in a smart way, in a cost-effective way. And it's always a balance, right? It's always hard to get the decision made about where you're going to spend your money. I know CTOs, CIOs wrestle with this problem. We certainly hear it from many of our customers and prospects. Where do you where do you allocate budget? It's it's tough. This is tyranny. And what we do at Fluid is we try to help our customers find a way to solve their problems wisely and effectively with the solutions we offer, and to think about how they can deliver value to their shareholders and also build customer satisfaction and loyalty with software. And that's that that's our that's our job. Help them as a partner, as a trusted valued partner to solve these problems and see their way through all of the tyranny and all the costs that they have to deal with every day to get creative, to break out, to disrupt and innovate, but also be practical about how you do that. So you're picking the right things to do.

Events, Where To Meet Fluid

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so just to to round off, to finish off, uh, because I just want to very quickly talk about conferences and expos, because I know that you go to an awful lot. I thought I I thought I went to a lot, but no, no, you you and well, we're recording this mid-February. By the time this goes out, you would have already been to Dusseldorf to Euroshop. And uh if you survive that, you'll be because I know that that's that's five days of hard work. But um tell us uh we're gonna be seeing each other, I know, at the retail technology show at Excel in London, April 22nd and 23rd. Uh and I will be recording another one of these episodes very soon with Matt Bradley, the uh the organizer, the director, so that'll be uh that'll be good. So both Fluid and Box Tech, we're gonna be there. Where else can people, not just from the UK, but uh our listeners around the world, where else can they see Fluid if they want to find out more about uh what you guys are up to?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Yeah, absolutely. So, of course, yes, we will be at Euroshop in Düsseldorf, we'll be at Retail Tech later in the year in North America, we will be at uh NACs, the show for uh convenience and fuel. We always make our way there as well as uh we will be at NRF in Singapore in Asia. We also are engaging in Australia and New Zealand with retail doctors. So we we have some presence there and offices there. Anywhere people want to engage with fluid, certainly our office in Birmingham in the UK, and in Cincinnati and Chicago in the United States. But equally, we encourage people to follow us on LinkedIn. We do a lot of work to make sure we post meaningful, fun, exciting content in LinkedIn. So we encourage people to come find us there. We have a YouTube channel, a lot of really great video content that we've recently put out there. Come see us at fluid.com. We've recently refreshed our website and added some new content on some of the New and exciting products that we're offering to the market. And, you know, we we welcome anyone to drop an email to marketing at fluid.com as well. And we're happy to connect and engage. So uh we always love to meet new people in the retail community and engage and talk about ourselves because who doesn't love doing that?

Closing And Where To Learn More

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, totally agree. Well, listen, we're we're out of time, but thank you so much, Donna. That was really great to talk. We always have a good conversation when uh when we get together and talk about retail. So that's all from What's in the Box for now. New episodes will be dropping every two weeks, so please stay tuned. And if you want to find out more about Boxtech, well, also Fluid, you know where to go to uh find out more about Fluid. If you want to find out more about Boxtech, please follow the link in the description. Thank you so much for listening and thank you, Donna.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Thank you, Andrew. It was a pleasure.