Foreign.

Hello everyone and welcome to Omnitoch Retail's NRF must see tech LinkedIn live session.

Chris, you and I, every year around the end of December, we start to get emails, we start to get texts, we start to get messages from, from retail executives who are looking to find out where should they go.

At nrf, it's a huge conference they're trying to figure out.

There's very limited time, you know, what booths should they make sure to stop by to check out what technology is hot this year.

And we wanted to simplify things for amituck fans and try to get that all together in one digestible LinkedIn live event and podcast.

It's something we're doing for our audience and our biggest fans right before the show.

And so yeah, we're going to take you through a series of interviews with folks that we believe are the must see technology providers at next week's big show.

So you can listen on the plane, the train or the automobile on your way to the show.

If you're Steve Martin, if you're John Candy, well, you're not John Candy anymore.

But that's what we're doing here today.

It's going to be fun.

It's going to be a blast.

We're going to keep them quick, we're going to keep them short.

Just give you what you need to know and give you the booth numbers of all the people we interviewed today so that you can know exactly who to stop by and check out.

So Ann, let's get to our first interview.

Joining us today is Gray Orange's general manager of G Store, Troy Seiwick.

Troy, welcome to today's show.

Excited to be here.

Always great to chat with you too, Troy.

We're super excited to have you.

You're one of our favorite guests of the last year, without a doubt.

But if you can just quickly recap for some of the listeners who may be joining us and meeting you and Gray Orange for the first time.

Just tell us a little about what Gray Orange does, if you don't mind.

Think of Gray Orange is like brain power, making retail supply chains smarter, managing robots, equipment, software and the interactions with humans.

We're helping some of the largest retailers in the world get packages out faster, get products out faster in the direct to consumer space.

And the retailers we're working with, we've kind of upped them the next level or, or maybe two and we're really good at that.

Automating, innovating and supply chain and beyond that and more to the point for today One of our big clients asked us to take that magic and that technology and can you put that in our.

Our brick and mortar stores?

Which we did.

And that's how G Store, our retail in store app, was born.

And so when we took that intelligence into the store, instead of robots, we hooked it up with RFID readers that.

That sit fixed overhead in the stores, and they get a view of where all the inventory in the store is located.

Every single item in every spot in the store all day long, every day.

So you know where everything is at any given time.

So it's like, imagine like GPS for store inventory.

So the associates can obviously quickly find what they need, keep shelves stocked, make shopping less frustrated for consumers.

So G Store is kind of our app, our retail app that's all about running stores more smoothly and efficiently.

And Troy, one thing that I think is important to call out.

So, G Store, you mentioned you're using overhead arrays for rfid, not the traditional method that people might like.

If you haven't.

If you've been to nrf, you may have said, I saw RFID technology five years ago.

Just quickly explain why this advancement is so significant.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's actually, that's the most challenging thing for us, being kind of an innovator in the space.

A recent innovator is a lot of people have seen RFID and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

I've seen this.

This was like five years ago stuff.

Tell me something new.

So what's different is I mentioned you.

So if you're using handheld rfid, you're walking around with a scanner.

So now you're a store associate, you have a bunch of.

Especially right now at this time of the year, you got customers everywhere.

You have a scanner you have to keep track of, and you're really only counting what you're counting in that spot at that moment that given time, whether it's a cycle count or a transfer or whatever it may be, replenishing back room to front room with overhead idea.

The.

The big change is put the handheld away.

The inventory is going to be accurate, 99% accurate all the time.

You don't have to walk around with.

With the scanner.

So down to a few feet.

Everybody knows, whether it's corporate office or your manager or the store associate, they all know where the inventory is all the time.

That is a huge change from the three years, four years, five years ago, just walking around with the scanner.

So, Troy, what I take from what you just said is, is the real time nature, you're able to see everything that's happening in a store in real time.

So.

So, but why is that valuable?

Like what inherently can one do if they have that type of visibility?

The more obvious things are just keeping this, the shelves stocked.

And that is super important because like what we've learned, I mean, we expected it, but what we've learned is that the back to front replenishment or moving stuff where it's not supposed to be to where it's supposed to be has helped our retailers.

I Talked to somebody 10 today, actually I was going to say this week, but today I talked to one of our customers that has only 50 stores of their whole chain deployed and they did 90,000 replenishments last week, Black Friday week.

So it's getting stuff where it's supposed to be.

It's not just saying where it is, but getting it to where it should be.

And then beyond that, the analytics within the G Store app will give you insights on how stocks moving, what's selling, what displays are working, you know, kind of the compliance things, which is like, is this store set properly like it's supposed to be?

Are things where they are supposed to be?

This store is doing great.

Everything's where it's supposed to be.

Wonder what's going on here.

They're yellow on the map.

For some reason, their front of their front display with, you know, denims doesn't have as much stock as it's supposed to have.

So let's, let's give them a call and see what's happened.

So it does simplify finding inventory, but it all the things that happen because you know more about the inventory like replenishments and merchandising and things like that are all enhanced with this.

So the reason that's important, right, Troy, is that you know, traditionally, especially, especially in an apparel environment, you know that you know potentially that the inventory is in the store, at least you think it is.

So, you know, even with traditional RFID solutions, you can understand that the inventory is there.

But what you're saying is now you can understand where the inventory is actually in the store.

So is it in the back room or is it in the front of house on the sales floor?

And you can more quickly move it from one place to another because you can locate it in the back room more easily.

And then you could also know when it's out of stock on the floor and when you're visually compliant with the presentation guidelines as well.

Am I summarizing that correctly?

Absolutely, absolutely.

And you're taking the store associate and freeing them up to engage the customers, help them with their questions and stuff like that.

Because they're not trying to find things and they're not cycle counting.

They're eliminating all that because it becomes automated through the overhead systems and the.

Software and you're bringing, you're allowing them to do other things that you're, that you've been testing in some of the G store enabled, especially in apparel formats where you're, you know, allowing somebody to request an item from the fitting room when they're in there trying something on and now that associate can go and grab it.

That's one of the things that I think is really fascinating and a good thing for people, especially in the apparel industry to be checking out when they're out at nrf.

So the rfid, everything that, that can do and then especially starting to look at things like how you're, how you're starting to solve for that and look at the opportunities with things like smart fitting rooms or buy online pickup in store.

Exactly, exactly.

And you, you nailed it.

And, and only suggest things that you know are exactly in stock.

Right.

So you won't have that sloppy.

This would look great with that.

Or we'll go retrieve that.

If it's not there, it won't be suggested.

So.

Yeah, exactly.

So outside of that, Troy, what, what is the kind of main messaging that people are going to hear if they come and spend some time with you and the G store and Gray Orange team at the booth at nrf.

So what you'll see at NRF from us is in all about intelligent inventory.

Everything we've been, we've been talking about here, we're, we're showing how you can turn inventory from a pain point or a task, an operational task, into a real advantage for your sales.

So at the booth we'll show off G Store.

Well, people that visit the booth will be able to see with iPhones, iPads, you know, other devices, how easy this thing is to work.

It really trains itself.

It's got high adoption from the store associates.

And so we focus on all of the inventory management, task management around inventory stuff.

But they'll get a look into what G Store offers because it's really like a Swiss army knife for inside a retail store for the associates.

So there is way more than just inventory.

We do omnichannel, pig picking, pick pathing, so they'll get to see all of that.

That's typically not the first thing that, that a retailer will want to tackle.

So we focus mostly on this Intelligent inventory.

But they'll get to see everything that we offer, you know, and then if they come talk to me, I can talk about all the future of all this, where it's heading and where our retailers are asking us to go.

I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit too.

So the first one, you know, I can remember being a retail executive walking a conference floor.

You're hearing from a lot of different technology vendors, and you're always trying to ask the tough questions to get to the root of, you know, whether this technology can do what it is that you're saying it does.

So I'm curious, so question number one.

What is the biggest question you generally get asked from the retail executives that stop by or that you converse with, you know, on a daily basis to prove out that, you know, you, you can do what you've been saying you can do?

The one thing that a lot of people will be asking, I'm sure they'll continue to ask this, this time around, is how do I simplify my operations?

Okay, about losing precision or adding precision.

Right.

To get smarter, but simplify.

So in other words, like when they say simplify, they don't want a bunch of apps, they don't want their use, they don't want their associates logging into a bunch of different things.

So, so how do they do that?

And then we'll obviously answer with how G Store is so easy to adopt.

And, and you know, our customers, they all love it.

The associates that are using it, they all love it.

It's not a pain.

And, oh, I have to use G Store.

It's like, it makes their here.

But I think where you're going, the number one challenge for us is the skeptical executive.

So you have the tech people that walk around nrf, right?

And they're like, looking for the next cool thing.

And those are easier people to talk to about things like.

Right.

They're super curious.

Right?

It's.

I talked to a CFO of a big fashion retailer this week, okay.

And it was, it was, you know, like you can expect with somebody like that.

Quick, hard hitting, right to the point.

He says, my team has told me this stuff doesn't work, right?

This overhead RFID doesn't work.

So here you are talking to me.

What, what do you say about that?

And I said, well, we're.

We have hundreds of stores, hundreds of stores moving into the thousands on this overhead RFID technology that are live and working great.

I don't want to make your team look wrong.

Well, maybe I do.

Right?

I said take the challenge.

I'll go out to your store and show you that this will work.

And.

And he took, he took us up on that.

So we're going out to a couple of stores, one in Texas, one over in Chicago where I'm at, and we'll show them how this is going to work.

So there's a.

I guess the answer is a very skeptical executive that is not aware that this step changes happen.

There's only a few hardware companies that can provide this level of accuracy and we're working, working with them and then combined with our software we can provide it.

So it has to be a quick answer from, from us, from me to say no, this does work.

Now your team tested the wrong stuff or too early in the process.

Yeah.

So that, so that's great because that's actually gonna.

My number, my second question, my number two question was actually gonna be okay so then for those that have invested with you in, in the G store concept, I'm curious, like why did they invest in it and what benefits are they actually seeing from it?

What I referenced earlier about the, the replenish thing now that not what I would have guessed.

So I would have guessed accuracy for client telling.

Knowing exactly where everything is.

I'm going in the store.

Do you have the.

I say size small but that would be not very believable.

But do you have the size small for me?

And I thought that would be the number one thing.

The number one thing by far and away right now is getting the stock where it needs to be during the busy parts of the day or the week so that there is never a moment where your customer is walking by sales captures.

Yes, exactly.

Conversion of the in store traffic.

It is super huge.

It's where even the software we have people are pushing.

Can I get this?

Can I get that?

New features and stuff like that related to replenishment.

So that is the biggest game changer for them.

The clients that we have doing this right now.

That's the biggest benefit roi.

All that is in getting that stock out to the right spot in the store.

There's a lot of other cool things.

Like Ann mentioned the, you know, requesting stock back to the changing room.

Those are, those are experience changers.

Those are the things that make it on TikTok.

Right.

Like look at what this company has, you know, kind of stuff.

But replenishment is the big game changer.

And then, and then along with that will come all the corporate level analytics and heat mapping and all that kind of stuff.

Right.

The insights that we provide.

Troy, I want to thank you so much for taking time today to just give our listeners a quick overview of why they should come visit the booth.

Before we let you go, I need to know what is your number one guilty pleasure when visiting New York?

Troy?

I love all the walking.

We don't get that in the Midwest, so the walking, picking up a car.

Get that in the Midwest.

Yeah, you're Midwest.

You know.

You know, we don't get as much.

We don't walk in the Midwest in winter.

We don't.

We don't.

You walk in New York.

Yeah.

So I, I just love interacting at the show with all the people.

We're all so interconnected.

Right.

I love interacting with the other companies, the retailers.

Yeah.

Competitors.

You even have fun with the competitors, right?

Yes.

Coffee or a beer with them.

So my guilty pleasure is just getting around and seeing people.

I say, okay, well, Troy, if people want to share the joy of walking with you and they want to stop by Grey Orange and G store's booth at NRF, where should they go?

3974.

So please stop by and say hi.

We'll be in some other booths too with some of our partners, but that's our main booth.

All right, go check them out.

Thanks so much.

Joining us next is Corso CEO Julian Mills.

Julian, welcome back to omnitok.

Are you getting excited for nrf?

I'm very excited, Chris, Very excited.

And thank you very much for having me.

Well, Julian, remind those who might not be familiar with Corso or who are meeting Corso for the first time, you know what Corso does and some of the retailers that you work, work with.

Yeah, sure.

So Corso is a co pilot for store managers or store leaders and above store leaders, so district managers, region directors, etc.

And really what it does is three things.

The first thing is it helps them drive the performance of their business to drive sales improve, shrink, et cetera, by translating data into simple next best actions them every day.

The second thing it does is that it saves a lot of their time.

So the average store manager is spending something like 10 to 15% of their week reading dozens of reports, looking across about 20 different systems and applications to try and work out what to do.

And it brings all those together in one place.

And then the third thing it does is it really simplifies and kind of unifies your system.

So instead of having to use lots of different point solutions, it can bring it all together in one place, reduce your total cost of ownership and kind of make usage Much easier for your managers.

And then, Julian, who are some of your current customers?

Yeah, sure.

So we were very lucky.

We work with about 10 of the top 25 retailers in North America.

So we work with people like Dollar General Track Supply, Walmart, Mexico, cvs, folks like that.

Wow, that's a hell of a roster, actually.

I mean, we've known you guys for I think, four or five years now.

Kudos to you for building that roster over that time.

I'm curious too.

I'm curious too, Julian.

So, you know, productivity, increasing the productivity is something you kind of just alluded to.

Is that something you're seeing retailers invest in more of across the range of retailers that you're servicing?

What's your perspective on how retailers are looking at their investments in that space?

Yeah, it's really interesting.

So this year I've heard something a little bit different from previous years, which is the manager jobs just got impossible.

There's just too many different applications, too many different reports, too many different dashboards.

It's just overwhelming and bewildering and we don't actually know, or they don't actually know what to do.

And so I think what we're hearing on the productivity front from a lot of people, particularly the big grocers, is how do I just bring that together in one place and have one simple tool that kind of guides people's daily work and integrates all of the work that's sitting in other systems.

So that, that's very top of mind for a lot of people at the moment.

Yep.

And so, and so, so Julian, just follow up question.

And so, Julian, are you seeing that more companies are putting this on their technology priority roadmap then as well?

Yeah, I, I think, you know, and this is amazing for someone who founded the business on paternity leave in my shed.

Yeah.

But you know what's really amazing is I'd say most of the larger retailers in the, in, in the US at the moment kind of have us somewhere on their radar.

And there are different stages.

Some are like, yeah, we're going full steam ahead.

And some people are going, this is great, but you know, it's something for next year.

But I think everyone is trying to solve this problem at the moment.

And you mentioned a lot of major names that you're working with.

Walmart, Mexico, tractor supply company, cvs, just to name a few.

When you're talking to those executives, you're sitting at the table with them as they're planning for 2025.

Talk to us a little bit about what Their priorities are in terms of technology investments, especially store.

You talked about productivity being number one, but what are some of the other things that you're hearing from them?

Most retailers we're speaking to are very interested in things that can continue to improve store processes.

So there's a lot of interest in improving availability, improving markdowns and stuff like that.

There's also always interest in opportunities to improve associate productivity.

And then I think the, you know, the, the exciting got working yet is computer vision where, you know, it's beginning to come of age, important to keep an eye on it.

But, you know, is it there yet?

I'm not quite sure.

Well, and it gets into the important role then that computer or that, you know, productivity applications, single point of view dashboards like Corso kind of come into play there too, to kind of help them understand, help the associates in store really understand what's going on and what their priorities are for the day.

It sounds like.

Yeah.

And I think the problem is, I mean, all of these cool new technologies are just yet more data, more applications, you know, and so that's how something like Corsair becomes even more important as a way of kind of bringing them together.

Julian, when we've had you on in the past, you've talked about how, you know, store associates are drowning too.

Is that also why you mentioned that, you know, a lot of retailers are just focused on helping their employees get stuff done that needs to get done regardless of productivity, just as a kind of lifeline or a life raft to help them day to day.

Is that, is that also a part of this message?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I, I think that many retailers are moving on, I think from many of the larger retailers are moving on from the kind of classic task management world where, you know, go do this and someone ticks a box and says, I've done it, and you don't actually know if they've done it or not.

Yeah.

So I think many of the more sophisticated retailers tried that six, seven years ago and are now starting to say, well, actually, how do I use data to know if someone did it or not and how do I use data to know if someone needs to do it?

Okay, so I think we're seeing a lot of interest around that.

So, you know, classic case would be someone says they've done kind of price changes actually, you know, are you seeing lots of price overrides at the checkout which suggests that they haven't done it hasn't happened.

Why is that not happening?

Is it because, you know, A device is broken or is it because the associate hasn't been trained properly?

And so I think we're seeing lots of people using data to kind of get under the hood of these, those kind of problems and to run it up the chain, to flag it up the chain so that you can then put in place fixes which are going to kind of solve those problems going forward.

Right, right.

And hence the application of computer vision, like you said, so that on the margins you can start to understand that even better and monitor what's actually happening in your stores.

All right, so those watching, they're going to be.

Those watching, some of them are going to be at nrf, some of them are going to stop by the booth.

What's the one thing you want our listeners or watchers to take away from a quick stop by the Corso booth at NRF this year?

What we're going to be demonstrating this year is the way that you can link together these kind of missions to automate whole management processes.

So let me give you an example.

I was visiting stores in Denver a couple of weeks ago, and Corso sent a mission to the meat department manager of a grocery store saying, you've got 7,000 bucks of chuck steak that's going to expire in three days time, and that's going to cost you about, you know, thousands of dollars.

You're going to write it off.

Oh, and by the way, you've got another $4,000 that's going to get ordered automatically in the next few hours.

So you need to cancel that order and get this chuck steak out onto the sales floor on markdown.

Okay?

Now, what had happened is that was the first mission.

What had happened is that meat department manager hadn't acted on it within a couple of hours.

And so it got escalated to the store manager, and the store manager got a message to say, you've got a problem here.

Actually, you've had two or three problems like this in the last day or two in the meat department.

You need to go there and coach the meat department manager to fix it.

Okay?

So between them, they did get, you know, the meat out on the sales floor or markdown.

They canceled the additional order, and as a result, they reduced waste, you know, and actually, you know, they banked the sales from that item.

So that's, that's the kind of thing we're trying to illustrate.

If that makes this is like choose your own adventure on the iPad in the booth.

It's exactly, exactly.

And we have all sorts of products.

It's not only Steak.

So there we are.

We have vegetarian.

Well, it's a great example, too, because it shows you how you can improve execution at the store level, but then also improve your management team and their knowledge of what's going on in the store by the same use of technology.

So that's a pretty impressive example, Julian.

Yeah, well, thank you.

And I think the other thing we're trying to do is just reduce duplicated work.

So, you know, there's a lot of managers who walk around checking things that someone's already checked, but actually, if you can only escalate to them, things that you know are wrong, everyone gets a lot of time back.

I always wish I had your tech when I was running stores, man.

I always wish it for sure.

100%.

That is a great answer.

Julian, we've had some fun with you while we're in New York, and we are asking everyone that we're talking to today about what your favorite thing to do is while you're in New York or at nrf.

Do you have anything that you'd like to share with the audience?

We go on an early morning run through kind of Battery park and, you know, the river, etc.

So if you're an early bird and you feel the need to kind of clear your head, do come and join us for that.

It's a great thing to do.

And, you know, you can enjoy your pints night before even more.

Well, Julia, thank you.

Thank you so much.

That was great.

Always informative.

Before we let you go, where can listeners find you?

Actually, at NRF next week.

So we're at booth 515 on the lower floor.

Come and find us.

It should be pretty visible, or if you're not an nrf.

And this just sounds interesting, do connect with me on LinkedIn.

Julian Mills at Corso on LinkedIn.

Thanks, Julian.

Joining us now is VUISION Group Senior Executive Vice President for Marketing Strategy and Communications and the CEO of UK and Ireland at Vision Group, Roy Horgan.

Welcome back to omnitalk.

Thanks for joining us today and thank you very much.

It's a real pleasure being here with yourself and Chris.

Thank you for having me.

We're really excited to have you.

And Chris, as people should know, we are going to be live streaming all of our interviews from NRF from Roy's booth, the Fusion Group booth.

Are you excited, Chris, for yet another year of nrf?

Of course I am.

I think this is our third year, right, Roy?

Third year that we've been doing it?

Yep.

A third.

Yeah, I think third year.

So I Can't wait.

We've got a good lineup already in place and it's going to be a blast.

I can't wait to get to it.

And I finally got my way this year for Omni Talk.

So we have a surprise for all our guests and customers and partners.

So we're really looking forward to it.

So thank you again for being our partner.

Thank you, man.

The next few days can't come soon enough.

All right, so for those, for those that are maybe new to the Vision Group or not familiar with what the Vision Group does, who have not seen our coverage for the past few years, and I don't know where they've been hiding if that's the case.

But, but in case there are any of those folks talk about what it is the Fusion Group does and who are some of the retailers you're working with too?

Because if memory serves, you work with some of the biggest retailers out there.

Fusion Group is essentially a data and IoT business.

And what that essentially means and like cutting out, I suppose, the technical jargon, we help retailers in terms of their pricing, operational efficiencies and solutions like local E commerce.

So in store picking we look at and this year we'll be focusing a lot on solutions like in store E commerce, fulfillment.

Food waste is a big topic of ours this year and what we're world famous for is the world's largest digital pricing company.

So we'll more of the features that you're used to and then you're going to see a lot more how we bring solutions to the shop floor to solve problems and the impact of those solutions.

So that the story this year will be very much around bringing the products to solutions and bringing the solutions to an impact from, from a customer's perspective.

One of the sessions that I'm going to be doing at NRF is with Philippe, your CEO, and then also Cedric Clark, the head of store operations for Walmart.

You rolled out digital shelf labels, which you were just talking about with Walmart this, you know, at the beginning of this year.

That was kind of the big news coming out of NRF last year.

But what do you kind of think in terms of further penetration of things like, you know, these smart store platforms and technologies that Vision Group has to offer.

What do you think that's going to look like and how is it going to expand in 2025?

Yeah, well, you know, it's one of the proudest accomplishments of our businesses is to successfully deploy our solution at Walmart.

We have many customers.

We're a 30 year old business and we have some of the largest retailers in the world.

Both.

Yeah.

In Europe, APAC and now North America.

You know, I think it's been a journey.

Right.

So if you think about the simple things, it's just the execution of pricing.

Right.

So beyond that it's creating, I suppose, digital connected stores and that will be the message.

What we're going to see in 2025 is we're going deeper into the connected store where you connect the supply chain to the store, the store to the store, colleague, store colleague to the shelf and so on, so forth.

It's getting a full view over, I suppose, a 360 view essentially.

And we're going to be launching at NRF a product called Fusion, Fusion Live, which essentially is the way we connect all our products and solutions together.

And I think you're going to see that in 2025 we're going to go faster, we're going to go deeper into conversations with retailers and hopefully we're going to have bigger impacts and outcomes.

And in 2025 and in January, hopefully we'll announce some new customers to our ever increasing, ever exciting customer base.

That's a good tease, Roy.

Okay, so I want to put you on the spot a little bit.

I want to get down to, down to brass tacks, put you on the hot seat a little bit here too.

So, you know, Ann and I've long been a proponent of electronic shelf labels, you know, for a number of years now.

And the one thing that's really interesting to us is as you're describing it, they're kind of, they can be a key linchpin to the smart store design and in terms of how stores are going to operate in the future.

So as you look at, as you look at that kind of conceptually, what is the value chain of different things that get unlocked as you start to ladder up the different technologies that can coordinate together across the store?

What are those in your mind?

What are the biggest ones that you're selling to retailers as you talk to them day in and day out?

In my mind, in terms of like, first and foremost, one of the challenging things and one of the things that we've seen in recent years is the ability to execute in terms of in store.

Whether we've seen before it was Covid, now it's the challenges that we're seeing in terms of maybe even labor shortages in stores.

So again, it's doing the basics well.

Right.

So that's the start of it.

And when you do the basics well, then you can Leverage that.

And what I'm saying, what we've launched in 2024 at NRF was a product called Ed Sense.

And Ed Sense is our gateway to the connected store.

So very simple thing, how do you, and this is the questions, you know, the questions that we hear the whole time from retailers are I want to know what's in my store, right?

I need to know what's in my store.

I want to create, I want to create that and turn that into digital assets.

In order to do that, you're going to have to do a couple of things.

You're going to have to understand where products are on the shelf, how many products are on that shelf, what data solutions can, can give you the insight and what kind of task management and navigation tools can bring you around the store.

We're essentially delivering solutions that will allow retailers have much more confidence to create digital assets as their physical stores and improve their operational efficiencies.

You know, in store, picking on shelf availability, execution and pricing, ability to compete against their, their, their competitors.

Improved technologies to improve loyalty and customer experience, to free up the associates and essentially create.

And I'm not like we're not the savior in retail, right?

We're just incrementally improving operational efficiencies.

But hopefully if we're successful, you have better run more profitable stores, happier customers, happier customer associates and ultimately shareholders win.

That is what we're after.

And if we even get half of the way there, we're, we're, we're, we're in on a good path.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I wanna, okay, so I want to keep you on the hot seat then.

So say, say you're, say you're selling that story to, you know, Joe retailer, ex retailer.

What is it that they most commonly ask you back or how do they, what do they ask you to kind of prove your mettle, so to speak, in terms of that story?

Yeah, very simple things.

What sets you apart from the competition?

Right.

And it's not the competition.

We've invested over the last 30 years in, heavily invested in research and development, in IoT technologies.

So that's everywhere from Wi Fi in the stores to moving from WI fi to Bluetooth, to looking at how do you run IoT networks in a physical store and how do you interoperate data?

We do that at scale.

So the scale and the infrastructure that we've built out with our partners, essentially it's taken us 30 years to go to about 40,000 stores and half a billion devices.

We're going to do the same in two years.

So it's the scale.

Yeah, it's a lot and it's happening.

Right.

So that's what sets us apart.

And to do that in a secure environment, managing hundreds of millions of devices across multiple jurisdictions, using the highest standards in terms of IoT security and data like this is, this is not trivial.

And I think you cannot basically disseminate down between one solution to another just on the basis of a very simple thing.

What's the cost of that?

Right?

What the cost is your, the.

Do you value your security, your infrastructure, the future of your business in the connected store, your ability to compete, but both now and into the future.

So that essentially sets us apart.

And that's, that's hopefully the story that, you know, myself and my colleagues will be telling and hopefully successfully engaging with our, our visitors.

That as on booth 4938 on the third floor at Java center in Manhattan.

Well, in booth 4938.

Roy, I'm curious, you know, you've said so much like what, what do you hope that people visiting, like what's one thing they should ask about?

You mentioned you got a new announcement coming out with Vision Groups Live Store.

Like there's other, other technologies now to your earlier point, like it started maybe with digital shelf labels, but now as you get to this intelligent store, there's so much more that retailers can now build upon that foundation that they may have started with or may have come to Vision Group looking for, you know, five years ago.

What do you, what do you hope that they really ask about or, or, or talk with your team about in the booth this year at nrf?

Yeah, it's, it's something we, we spoke about last week on our, one of our scoping meetings for nrf in terms of our planning sessions really where we want customers and partners to leave.

Is that a sense that there is a path and they understand the path to the Connected store, that there is a path to digital transformation, that they understand that there is a foundation that they have to invest in and when the foundation is strong that then they can build on that.

So when I, when hopefully we don't over overwhelm them with technology or jargon.

It's, it's a very simple thing.

Right.

If you want to have an effective online e commerce strategy in your physical store, you have to have stock on that shelf.

You have to know where that is.

You have to have pickers, you have to have to do it in an efficient manner of navigating around the store.

And we will bring you through the solutions and hopefully the case studies from people who have done it before them or are in that journey and that they feel that they leave with a sense of confidence that they feel with a sense of excitement.

And the next step is that they hopefully have a call to action.

They go back to their businesses and they go, let's start or let's go faster.

And then that, to me, is the impact of these things.

Because, look, we know that, you know, there are probably because of the time we've been in the market, we've had conversations with practically most retailers.

It's not like there's a lot of new entrants in.

But what we have to have is have better, more quality conversations.

And these shows are not.

It's not about lead generation.

It's about, once again meeting our friends and colleagues and customers that hopefully have challenged us to do more in 2024 and set the bar high for us in 2025.

It's about the two P's.

You want them to understand the possible, get excited, inspired by the possible, and also be focused on the profit that you can obtain from working with a company like yourself.

Right.

Thank you, Chris.

Every store has the ability to be better.

Wrong.

Yep.

100.

All right, Roy, we got to get you out of here on this.

We've been asking everybody this question.

What's.

So you're going to be in New York.

What's one favorite thing you like to do outside of the Javits Center?

Even though, you know, time outside the J Saturday is usually pretty sparse, but if you get time, what is the one thing you like to do?

What's your one guilty pleasure?

I have two.

Right.

I love running in the park.

Like, there's absolutely, you know, you wake.

We wake up early, we get on the road and we go running into the park.

And I love going down 3rd Avenue.

I'm Irish.

Right.

So I go down and find some bars and 3rd Avenue and see some of my friends that have been in New York since I've been in university.

So I.

Yeah, some.

Some of it is very wholesome and some of it is a little indulgent in terms of a couple of Guinnesses in.

In.

In on 3rd Avenue.

So.

Oh, my God.

Love it, Love it.

I.

Chris, so many people that we've talked to are running in the morning.

I don't know how people are finding.

The time, but it's making me feel quite slovenly already.

Yeah.

Not even out there yet, you know, but the running shoes.

It's been awake at 3am that's right.

You guys are up earlier than we are.

That's right.

Oh my gosh.

Oh, boy.

Well, Roy, thank you so much for taking the time to share all of Vision Group's NRF plans with our audience today.

One more time, just remind people where they can find Fusion Group and OmniTalk at NRF.

We are on booth 4938 on the third floor.

And you can't miss us because just follow the big V.

And as I said, you're going to see omnitalk live.

And we're really looking forward to hosting omnitalk with you, Ann and Chris and also welcoming back our customers, colleagues, friends, partners in New York.

Thanks, Roy.

Joining us now is Scandit co founder and CTO Christian Florchmaier.

Christian, welcome back to omnitok.

It's been a while.

I know, I know.

I'm glad to be here.

Thank you.

For those out there that may not be familiar with Scandit and you know, maybe new to Omnitalk as well, watching us for the first time, why don't we start by giving a little bit overview on what skin it is, what it doesn't, and also who's in your customer dossier.

I'm always curious to hear about that as well.

Yeah, good question.

So I mean, at Scandit, we provide smart data capture solutions that power a lot of retail processes across the stores for store associates, but also for consumers.

Really supporting the shopping journey and helping retailers unlock return on investment, uplift revenue and also really drive a better store experience for the store associates.

But as well, you know, as well for the, for the consumer and consumer experience.

Right.

And this is really across many processes in retail, including shelf intelligence, supply chain, Omni Channel, and as I said, enhancing the customer experience.

So we digitize physical assets, we automate workflows, we drive efficiency all the way from the supply chain to the shop floor.

And we're doing this by capturing backwards really quickly capturing text price labels, but also recognized products.

Top stock on the shelves in the back room with computer vision and machine learning.

So really around unmatched speed, really high accuracy and intelligence in some way.

And to your question about who we're working with is six out of the top, top 10 global retailers work with us.

Eight of the top 10 US grocers work with us.

And this includes in the US Levi Strauss, Sephora, Instacart, Shipt, Seven Eleven, CVS, Health, L'Oreal, just to mention a couple.

Right.

So like a couple.

And then globally it's decathlon Aon.

So like lots of companies and as I mentioned, really across both.

Right.

Consumer experience as well as store associate experience.

Yeah.

I always love, I always love when we, when we ask that question and, and we get like we're working with 8 out of 10 of the top global retailers or 8 out of 10, whatever, you know, whatever Christian just said, 8 out of 10 of the top US resellers.

Yeah.

I'm always like, who are the two that aren't working with you?

Like, what?

Yeah.

What's up with them?

Like.

Right.

Why have they not got the punchline to the joke?

Like, I don't understand that.

It always blows my mind whenever we hear that.

But anyway, yeah, look, I say that.

To our sales team too, to be honest, so.

Right.

Well, Christian, I'd love for you to dive in a little bit deeper too.

We know that investing in technology that will support associates is going to be huge this year at nrf.

But can you elaborate a little bit on specifically some of the things that you've seen are improving Associates lives after scan.

It's been kind of deployed within a retail organization, especially one of the top, top, you know, 10 retailers in the, in the world that you mentioned.

So, so one of the things we've really focused on is, is, is lately is for a while at Scandit, you know, we really focused on, or in the early days of Scandit, we really focused on just bringing reliable backward scanning to smartphone devices in consumer as well as in store associate use cases, releases.

And but more recently we really noticed that the, there's a lot of, you know, yes, you can make the backward scanner, you know, a little bit faster and have a little bit more range, but it actually really doesn't drive employee productivity that much.

Right.

It's.

It's a nice problem to work on, but when you really look at the store associate, it's, it really doesn't make that much of a difference.

What we have noticed is there's a, there's a lot of like really tedious tasks where scanning a backord just a little faster and a little further away really doesn't make much of a difference.

And we really focus on solving some of those.

Like one of them was.

Is.

Is what we call smart label capture.

Right.

So the idea of that, we don't just read the barcode on a label, but we read all of the information.

And that could be the price and promotions, but this could also be for, for weighted items, the information on the weighted item.

So for example, we work with one.

With one.

One of Those large retailers I mentioned and they used to have a process where you know, weighted item, chicken, whatever, meat products, whatever.

Right.

They, they as a, as a store associate in, in the order picking, you scan the barcode but then you need to go and enter the other information like the weight, the price per weight.

And that is not only a tedious task for the store associates, but you also tend to make mistakes and you make mistakes quite frequently.

So we delivered a solution to them where they no longer had to do this.

Right.

It actually didn't matter what had to be read.

With our technology we not only read the barcode, but we read all of the information on the label.

And then in some way, I hate to almost say it, but in a true AI sense our solution does what the human does does.

It reads all the labels.

It says somewhere it says wait.

Then it reads a number underneath it and it reads there's no other number around it.

And now it knows like oh, the number underneath is actually the weight.

And it can also read the expiry date with similar mechanism.

So it's like true intelligence built into the solution.

So the user doesn't need to need to go and do any of this association anymore, but our solution just captures all of this information.

And the retailer I mentioned to, they deployed this and they avoided up, I think they 1.3 million in annual revenue losses from undercharging customers because they were making mistakes when they, when they were printing these weighted items just from this.

Right.

And this is not the productivity benefits from, you know, the store associates don't like typing this information in either.

Right.

I wouldn't like it.

You wouldn't like it, right.

Is that aside just 1.3 million from mistakes they were making.

Right.

Bottom line improvements that easily.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and I, I think what we're seeing overall with, with you can apply the same to like price and promotion checks.

Right.

Where we're today, the process is super tedious.

People enter it and, and, and we've, we've, we've, we've, you know, had, had like we had, we had a customer deploy our price and promotion checks with the same technology.

Right.

Like you, you, you know, don't just read the barcode, but you actually read the entire price label.

Checks and price checks was the process that people just hated in the stores.

Right.

It was so tedious.

Right.

And to be honest, I don't know which store source it actually likes doing price checks.

And now it was literally just hovering over the labels, moving along, moving, not only making the 7x faster, but actually really improving the experience for the store associates.

So we do think the sort of idea of an AI powered scan engine is the way forward.

Right.

Like just doing backward scanning, of course supports important processes, but we're seeing there's actually much more where you can shift these tedious tasks to technologies and store associate can just get much more efficient.

And on top of that, you know, most, a lot of retailers, they're all, they're all worried around, you know, higher weight labor costs and overall that impacting their bottom line and you know, availability of labor is the other problem.

So doing things faster and more efficient doesn't only help the store associate but also address some of these challenges with overall labor costs.

So I'm curious too, Christian, as we're going into nrf, those watching this are getting excited about it.

It's in a few days we're starting 2025.

What are the retail executives that you've been talking to asking for?

I'm curious what is on their minds?

What problems are they asking you to.

Help them solve labor costs?

And how can I operate more effectively?

How can I address my labor challenges and how can I go and do this with less specialized teams?

And then how can technology help us with this?

Right.

Like we spend a lot of time at scanned on most recently on shelf management and shelf auditing and which is a task that's actually quite tedious.

And as part of this we've seen that and especially also driven by, by the boom in E commerce, especially with grocery retailers, there's been real like a real thought around like how can I go and do better inventory management?

Because with higher on shelf availability I can reduce my substitutions when I do in store picking.

And at the same time I can see some real lifts in revenue by optimizing shelf availability.

Right.

And we've seen that in some of the pilots we've, you know, some of the deployments we've been running with our shelf your technology that we also be showing and we are announcing some exciting changes showing them in NRF with our shelf view capabilities.

That's out of shelf monitoring.

We've really seen a very direct return investment where you can seeing that people who deployed either camera, it's sort of mobile or fixed camera technology to observe the shelves.

They've seen an increase in their on shelf availability like above 95% and then you know, impacting their margins with sort of a 1.5 to 2% increase in, in sales.

Right.

And if you're talking, you know, 2% increase in sales where we are today, that's actually a pretty significant number.

So we are seeing these kind of thinking from retail executives around how can I optimize my stores, how can I improve my e commerce processes, but in a scalable and in a way that actually ideally makes my labor force more efficient.

Wow, Christian, there is no doubt so much that people have to check out.

And you mentioned you have a special announcement.

You'll be showing off the new shelf view technology.

Shelf view, right.

That's what it's about.

Yes.

We actually acquired a company and so we have.

Our shelf you're offering is much more than it used to be.

So we're not only doing mobile, but we also offer additional capabilities.

So you can.

People can check it out.

Booth 3339 at NRF.

All right.

That sounds amazing.

Well, Christian, there's one more question we have to ask you before we let you go quickly.

And that is not related to retail technology or scanned it yet.

It's what your favorite thing is to do while you're at NRF and in New York.

What is that, Christian?

What do you.

What's your guilty pleasure while you're there?

Look, I tell you what.

I, I used to, you know, when I grew up, I did played a lot of tennis and I came in the summer and I really got into pickleball.

So I bought myself and I'm gonna go and see whether I can.

I can find someone to go and play pickleball with me in New York in the summer.

In the winter now, not in the summer.

In the winter.

Did they not have pickleball over there?

No, it's like we just got paddle and.

And that's been really popular.

I think there's one club now over here that, that actually offers pickleball.

But I'm, you know, I bought my equipment.

I'm gonna bring it to New York and see maybe I can find someone to play pickleball.

Oh, my God, I love it so much.

I cannot wait.

You know, maybe I challenge you for a game.

So there we go.

Be a short game.

I don't think I'd stand a chance.

All right, man.

Well, thank, thank you so much, Christian.

Thanks for joining us and good luck at NRF and we'll.

We can't wait to see you out there.

Sounds good.

Thanks, guys.

Take care.

Joining us now is Microsoft's vice president of worldwide retail and consumer goods, Keith Mercier.

Keith, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

So excited to be here, Keith.

We're super excited to have you?

Obviously our listeners are familiar with Microsoft.

We were joking before we got on this podcast recording.

But let's zoom in specifically on what your role focuses on at Microsoft and share a little bit about what's ahead for Microsoft to nrf.

The industry team at Microsoft, really, as I always say, we're the great translators between customer problems and Microsoft technology solutions and partner solutions.

So my team spends a lot of time with our leading worldwide retail and consumer goods customers, meeting with business leaders and really listening to understand what are the problems they're trying to solve and then bringing that back to Microsoft, bringing that back to our partners and making some matchmaking here and really helping us make sure we're always aligned to their business performance, their KPIs and their strategy.

The one hot topic undoubtedly is going to be AI.

And quite honestly, I still think the industry is underrating the impact of AI Overall.

I'm guessing you probably, you probably would agree with that too.

I'm curious.

You could answer that to start.

But what are some of the, what are some of the tried and true use cases that you expect to see in market in 2025?

Last year we were in this era of experimentation.

There was a lot of excitement, there was a lot of really upskilling and just trying to understand what is generative AI and how should I think about it as a retail or consumer goods company.

And this year you're right, we're moving into some real use cases.

So I'll just share a couple of customer stories with you.

One of my favorites is around kind of changing the way we shop.

And if you think about how we've shopped traditionally in E commerce, right.

It's been kind of like the navigation on the left.

It's been maybe some navigation on the right.

And then you've got the search bar at the top with the magnifying glass, which I call the universal symbol of disappointment.

Right.

Because it's really hard to search for products.

It has been.

But really with conversational commerce, we're moving to this time where you can actually have a natural language interaction and solve real problems.

So Walmart is a great example.

You know, they call it moving from scroll based shopping to goal based shopping.

So imagine you're planning a Super bowl party and you're trying to figure out what do I need.

Right.

In the old way it's I'm looking for decorations and I'm looking for snacks and I'm looking for drinks, but now you can actually type in, I'm holding a Super bowl party for 10 people, what should I buy?

So it might recommend food and snacks, appetizers, drink, maybe a big screen tv.

Those are great for super bowl parties.

A sound system.

So it's a basket builder.

It's a way to create more of a dialogue with your customer and start to even learn more about their shopping intent because you can now start to market them if you know they're having a party in a few weeks.

And you could start to think about even more personalized marketing to continue to engage them just beyond the search.

One of my.

Yes, Keith, so I'm curious, as a former E commerce executive, I love what you're saying because I personally, not only the, not only the search bar, I hate the filters as well.

Like I hate the filters, I hate how restrictive they are, how you have to manage the taxonomy as a, you know, as a retail organization.

So I'm curious, as the quote unquote liaison between Microsoft and the retailer, you know, bridging that gap, as you said in the beginning, what are some of the actual things that need to happen for retailers to change their E commerce experience from what we know to where it's going in the future?

You know, I imagine there's a ton of detail you could give on that question too.

But just some of the, some of the key things people need to consider I think would be helpful.

I think one of the first is your data.

I mean, data is so important for generative AI.

So the quality of your data is super critical and it's something that we talk to our customers about all of the time, which is getting your data state, how do you govern it, how is it secure?

Because you're going to be democratizing that in new ways when you start to launch these new generative AI capabilities.

I think on the other side is teaching customers how to prompt.

Right.

Because we've all been kind of taught how to use three or four word search interactions, but now we're having a real conversation.

So teaching customers how to get the most out of the capabilities by asking a big question.

So some of our customers are already putting examples on their E commerce sites like ask a question like this, I'm going to a wedding in Greece in December.

What should I wear?

So really helping the customers prompt the way they interact with the site, I think is going to unlock the experience further.

Yeah, Keith, I have one more follow up question on that too because you bring up a really interesting point to me.

That's something that Ann and I have never really talked about or thought about, but we're seeing different approaches to what you just what you just said, right?

Because like you can't just change your site overnight because the, the conversion and the sales impact would be dreadful if you did that.

So you're bringing up the point of, hey, we've got to acclimate our shoppers to shopping, commerce, e commerce in this new way.

What are some of the ways you've seen people start to do that?

Like, you know, are they placing the, placing it near the search bar, for instance, are they placing it on the product pages?

Like, what are some of the ways that retailers are approaching that?

And what's a great point?

I don't think we're going to go from one way of shopping to another way of shopping overnight.

And people shop differently.

Right there.

There are browsers, they're looking for inspiration.

They're not ready to engage in questions yet.

So some of the examples we've seen are some customers are picking a category like dresses, for example, and really honing in and kind of standing up a dress stylist to help you search for dresses.

Others are experiencing with the search bar and actually helping customers with prompting there.

And then others are starting in a completely different area, which is customer service.

Let me just make your customer service interaction a better one.

Right.

That really is the last mile of retail is providing good service after the fact or during the sale.

I mean, the number one question in E commerce that consumers have is where's my order?

Right.

So being able to even get that question answered very quickly is going to provide a lot of value and a much better experience to shoppers.

Well, Keith, I want to talk about, you know, all, all the interactions that you're having with a lot of these retailers you mentioned, like getting a hold handle on your data is a really important thing to them.

What else are the retail executives that you interact with day to day in your role at Microsoft?

What else are they looking for or asking for as they're kind of planning their investments in technology for 2025?

Well, there's certainly no shortage of excitement around generative AI.

And I think the question is, is how can the technology help me still achieve the things that I need to achieve as a company, whether that's growing my revenue or reducing my cost.

Right.

The problems aren't different the way to solve them.

There's some new capabilities now that we can help our customers make those connections.

So we talk a lot about across the entire value chain of retail, starting with product development, distribution and logistics, running a store or an e commerce site, marketing.

And of course As I mentioned earlier, customer service.

So applying those technologies to the value chain and building the business case is how we're helping our customers prioritize where they should start and where they really need to engage quickly.

I'm curious and I'm putting you on the spot, but is there like one area that you're seeing like, oh my gosh, there's so much ROI from putting generative AI on customer service or marketing.

Is there one that you're kind of surprised at or that's really kind of bubbling to the top of that list of priorities?

I'll give you two.

Customer service, definitely.

I mean, the way you run a call center is so metrics driven.

And typically a call center has actually been a cost center for retail.

And if you can start to unlock more time in agents, right, by deflecting inbound calls first or assisting that agent as they're trying to solve customer problems in real time and start to allow them to focus on more revenue generating activities, you could start to change the role of the call center to be more of a customer experience center.

The other is marketing.

We're seeing incredible opportunities of helping marketers do their job faster, do their job better, and take some of the mundane tasks that they do.

And I'm really excited as we look forward into agentic AI and having those agents start to actually execute tasks on behalf of a human, still with a human in the loop, but taking some of those lower level tasks off their plate so they can, you know, really think more strategically about their business?

Yeah.

Oh my God, Keith, Agentic AI.

We're gonna have to have you back to talk about that.

That sounds, no, that sounds super interesting.

Agentic AI.

That's my new term of the day.

And.

All right, Keith, so.

So maybe this is the answer to that question.

This is my next question.

But so, you know, in your role, I'm curious.

You're gonna have a ton of people at the booth.

I mean, Microsoft has one of the biggest booths out there at the show.

What is it?

The.

What is.

Is there one thing you want anyone that stops by to take away?

Yeah, what, what I, we really want them to see is that, you know, we're leading the charge with bringing, you know, responsible, scalable, safe and secure AI into the industry.

And that's hard, right?

Scalable and secure can sometimes be at odds, but we're really thinking holistically about how we bring these capabilities into the industry.

When you leverage our Azure AI capabilities using your data, your data is your data.

We're not training our models on your data.

We're not using it for other Microsoft purposes.

You're really running our AI within the four secure walls of your company.

So as we as folks come to our booth, hopefully they're going to see all the different applications of these, this new capability, including agentic to the different parts of the value chain inside the retail enterprise.

That's a great point, Keith, because yeah, when you get down to it, like nothing's scalable if it's not secure.

Really, you know, at the end of the day like there's no that you can't have one without the other.

It's a necessary condition at the end of the of the day.

Yeah, very true.

Okay, Keith, we're closing it out with this question which is not related to retail but is very important to all of our listeners today.

What's your favorite thing to do in New York while you're out there for nrf?

I'm a shopper, so it's probably great that I'm in there.

Where are you going?

Where are you going?

Share.

I mean I love to shop small little boutique stores.

I think there's so many great unique experiences in retail in New York City.

Right.

So you know, the biggest brands have their test stores as well as little pop up concepts down in soho.

So one of my favorite things to do is walk the streets and just look inside stores and there's something interesting.

Just go in and I encourage everybody to do it.

It's probably why I love being in this industry so much because I have to shop for my job.

So do I and I love it.

But somebody needs to tell my husband that because this is not, it's not always the best result, especially after a trip to New York.

I'm so with you, Keith.

I love, love going and getting inspired, especially down in the Soho area.

There's always something fun to look at.

So Keith, thank you so much for your time today for sharing all that you did with us.

If people want to stop by Microsoft's booth, can you tell them where to find it?

We are booth 4503.

So we would love to welcome you there.

There's so much that we'd love to show you and really please come in and just make yourself at home.

Thanks Keith.

Great to see you again man.

You too.

Thank you.

Next we have SPS Commerce's Senior Director of Product Management, Nick Schwalbach.

Nick, welcome to omnitalk.

Welcome back.

Thank you very much.

Been looking forward to it.

I always enjoy a good chat with you guys.

So appreciate Me having me.

Yeah, we always like having you on too, Nick.

Let's, let's start like we always do.

Let's take a minute to tell us a little, tell the audience a little bit about SPS Commerce and your role too.

And then also question we've been asking more so right out of the gate here is who are some of your clients as well?

Yeah, for sure.

So SPS Commerce, we're a major player in the kind of supply chain performance, you know, EDI space, like all the above.

And we really work with a lot of the buying organizations across the United States, you know, really worldwide, anybody that's kind of buying and selling goods.

So, you know, retail obviously is the term we use, you guys are using.

But you know, retailers, grocers, distributors, manufacturers, you know, it's interesting.

I think you guys see a lot is brands, a lot of times are their own retailers now.

Right.

So we're spending a lot of time, you know, in that space.

But we're really helping those buying organizations work across their supply chain a lot better through the collaboration, getting better visibility into that supply chain, measuring the performance with some of the acquisitions we've made this past year and how do they kind of operate better throughout their supply chain in order to just be more efficient, get the products to the right place with a better margin.

All of those good things that we all care so much about in the retail space.

So, so my role at SPS Commerce, I've been here 15 years in our product management space for coming up on eight years already, which is crazy.

So I work with our retail segment of our business.

We have a retail, a supplier and a logistics segment in our business.

And so I work with our retailers and all of our sales customer success technology teams to make sure we're putting the right products and services out to market to go help them do what they do and do what they need to do every day.

So any big name clients you want to drop here right out right at the start?

Yeah, you know, I mean, we ran a number of big programs.

You know, this year Costco was probably one of our biggest programs.

We helped them launch, you know, a visibility program into their AI BSN solution.

And you know, what are they doing with that?

We obviously acquired Traverse this year, which is working with a number of people in kind of the soft goods space, you know, with, with Kohl's as a customer of theirs.

MCX is a customer of theirs.

And then we acquired another company called Supply Pipe, which has a good, you know, relationship with a number of big Retailers helping their suppliers kind of, you know, work with them a little bit better, a little bit more tightly coupled with what their expectations are across the retail space.

You know, Nick, one of the things that we love about having worked with SPS Commerce as long as we have, and especially back in December, Chris and I did an event with two people from SPS Commerce, Brandon Pierre and Mayan Kaplan, talking about how you kind of are the dashboard between and the same sheet of music, if you will, between merchandising supply chain manufacturers, like suppliers, all of these people are all kind of using this, this SPS platform as their one single source of truth.

Can you dive a little bit deeper into, you know, how you're doing that and the types of teams that you're working with within retailers?

Because there's a lot of people that should be coming to your booth at nap, and I just want to make sure that they're all kind of aware of that.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I as, as you stated, SPS is a little bit unique in sitting in the middle of all those.

Right.

And, and the reason we sit there is I think a lot of those organizations, they.

It's very easy to look at.

We'll take inventory, for example, right?

It's very easy to look at.

How do I manage inventory once I have it right, or once I need to do something with it, once it's in my possession or, you know, like ordering.

Obviously I'm ordering, but a lot of times what SPS is doing is we're helping like we're helping in between from the time that you order it or till the time you believe you need to order it.

How do you get better visibility and collaborate with whatever that entity is be upstream or downstream of you to make sure it flows better?

You maybe don't have to carry as much because you can trust whatever is going to show up is going to show up on time.

And then you're constantly measuring that to figure out where can I improve upon.

So we really sit in that space and not, not just help.

Once you have the goods right, there's really great systems out there to help you optimize.

How should I store it?

Should I flow it through?

Should I put it in stock?

Should I just go direct to store, you know, whatever it might be?

There's a lot of great system providers out there and we partner with a lot of them so that once it gets there, once it gets to the door, once you know you're going to have it, what do you do with it?

But we really sit in the middle to try to help with that collaboration between companies, which many times is really hard.

Right.

Like contact information is hard, the communication is hard.

The understanding the business implications on both sides of the aisle with whatever change you're making.

And we really, you know, specialize in that in order to help organizations do that better a lot of times because it's just so hard they choose not to do it.

Or maybe you do it with your top 10, top 20%, but then your long tail can take such a strain on your business.

And we really come in with like kind of the people process and expertise in order to help them with that.

And then obviously propped up by a world class network and technology solution to back it up.

So, so basically Nick, what you're saying is I'm rubber and you're glue.

Legitimately, you're the glue that holds it all together.

I mean, yeah, that is the best analogy I can think of listening to you talk.

But all right, I'm curious as the product guy too.

The product guy that sits kind of at this nexus of a lot of things happening.

What are retailers asking you to build for them?

Or how are they asking you to adapt and change the product?

Yeah, you know, great question.

Yeah, I think it's amazing as we, as you know, obviously we don't really talk about the pandemic anymore.

We're removed from it and the world is just is what it is nowadays.

But visibility was such a big thing during the pandemic.

But visibility was kind of easy.

Like I have no idea.

Nobody knows when they're going to get it, so on and so forth.

But the bar was low.

Exactly, exactly.

Right, that's great.

But now that visibility conversation has continued.

Right.

Like, and it's actually probably shifted the opposite way now, which is there's pressure, right.

Like I think we all know there's pressure on many industries of the retail, retail supply chain and just retail business in general.

And so we still get a ton of interest from our customers talking to us just because, hey, I need to work more efficiently.

And the way I work more efficiently is by collaborating with people, not just in my four walls.

Right.

Obviously you want to break down those silos inside of a business and make sure merchandising, supply chain, everybody is, you know, driving towards the right metrics and that's how the business operates.

But there's a, there's a lot of goodness.

Right.

Like a lot of our customers say, you know what, anything I can do Internally, it's worth 3 to 5, maybe 10x more efficiency.

Outside, if I work with my, my upstream or downstream suppliers on that stuff.

And so we.

So they're asking us a lot, you know, Chris, for that visibility.

The other thing that's really big right now is the.

The reporting aspect of it.

Right.

Like, data is a huge thing, but data is really hard because there's so much of it.

Like, where do you start?

And there's a lot of retailers.

I think you guys talk to them on a regular basis.

You're always surprised by how many of them are not measuring.

Maybe some of the core things that everybody thinks retailers are looking at inventory turns.

Like, what are my weeks of supply?

What is my gross margin?

Right.

Like, some of those things.

Like, we think every retailer is looking at them the same and they're not.

And so they're asking, they're coming to us just because we live the rubber and glue analogy.

We live in the middle of so many.

What should we do?

Where should we start?

We're on this journey.

We have a very specific point.

How do we take the next step and the step after that and the step after that?

And how do you tailor your approach to us?

Because not everybody's the same.

Everybody needs a little bit of a different approach, and we can kind of help with that.

So I'd say those are the kind of the two big areas right now, Chris.

Well, one of the things that I'm really excited about, Nick, is, and it gets to what you were talking about, the people and process.

As part of all that your team is doing at sps, you have something very special that people can come and see at your booth at NRF this year.

That I imagine, like Chris said, as a product guide, this has got to be kind of your pride and joy.

Why don't you share a little bit with our listeners what they can see when they stop by the SPS booth at nrf?

Yeah, we're super.

We're super stoked this year, and I'm glad you guys had a great time with it so far.

We're going to have a little bit of augmented virtual reality experience at the booth this year.

And the whole intent is to kind of show a lot of the customers, people that have interest.

Like, what does it look like to live in the world of a distribution center or a warehouse environment?

And what does that look like without that visibility, without that collaboration from your suppliers?

And then what does it look like post having that visibility and post having that collaboration and the difference it makes?

I think the beautiful thing is you can easily touch and feel a dock Getting super backed up because you didn't know that stuff was coming or that stuff came and it wasn't the right stuff or whatever it might be, versus, hey, I knew it was coming.

It was expected.

I can now scan it and receive it in and it goes a lot faster.

But the amazing part is what that drives, is it drives a conversation of that is a very tangible experience.

What are all the intangible things that happened before?

Right.

Well, because I know what's coming, I maybe don't have to buy as much, which allows me to spend that open to buy on something else.

It allows me to carry less inventory.

We all know inventory equals cash.

And in this world nowadays, the more of that or the less of the inventory I have to carry and the more cash I can have to maybe diversify, open a new store, try new things is better.

And so that experience is really to draw out something you can touch and feel by having that collaboration.

And then the broader conversation of how does that impact further upstream and further downstream of all of your operations and your business goals in order to, you know, really operate more efficiently and hopefully add a couple points of gross margin and also make sure the product gets to the shelves in the right speed, in the right place in order to make those sales, which, of course is most important.

Now, Nick, I know Ann and I.

Ann and I got to see this demo live in Minneapolis because it's at your headquarters too.

And yeah, it was pretty.

It was pretty sweet.

So I'm curious though, like, because you undoubtedly, you've taken retailers through it too, at this point, you're going to show it off at NRF anymore.

What are some of the retailers who have seen it saying to you when they.

When they go through the experience?

Yeah, you know, I.

What's so cool is, I think we're all guilty of this sometimes is.

Is you.

You in your head, you build up this experience of what it's like to work in that environment.

Right.

But I think a lot of people, you know, maybe whether it be buying vendor operations, whatever that are interacting with their suppliers every day or holding accountable, we don't spend a lot of time inside the distribution center.

Right.

And what that looks like.

And so I think when you actually have to feel the pain and break a sweat counting really silly colored earphones and they were all mixed up together and everything, it gives you an appreciation of, you know what, there's a lot of things that maybe we should be doing a little bit better at collaborating with or.

Man, there's got to be a better way.

And so I think, I think it's usually an eye opening experience or it's a validation, Chris, of like, you know what?

It is painful.

What we do is hard.

You guys get it right?

Like, it is.

I think a lot of consumers out there think that, hey, these retailers, they just order this stuff, it shows up in the store, I walk in or I go online and I buy it and it's perfect.

Actually, no, retail is really hard.

Right.

Like, there's a lot of steps along the way that things can go wrong.

And if I can do anything to make sure those steps flow a little bit better, I want to go do that.

And if there's a third party out there that can help me that gets my business, that can come in and make recommendations, I think they're going to be a great partner.

So it's amazing to see the eye opening experience.

I think for most of our customers that go through it.

For sure.

Yeah.

Somebody when we were at SPS mentioned to us like, re, there's retailers that come through this demo that are like, oh, can you build this for us?

And SPS is like, you know, you have, you have a dc like you.

Have an actual warehouse.

But it just sometimes takes.

Takes getting outside of your.

Outside of your comfort zone and four walls to be able to do that.

Totally.

Yes.

Okay, Nick, we're closing it out with our favorite question to ask people today.

What is your favorite thing to do in New York while you're out there for nrf?

Yeah, I mean, obviously we're out there for nrf.

Nrf right after Christmas season.

I think everybody's, you know, taking a little bit of time to refresh and get jazzed up.

So I get super jazzed to have a bunch of people in one space that you can talk to, see the creativity of the boost like that.

That's super good.

Obviously that's a very cheesy answer because we're all there for interrupt.

I love New York because one thing that's very sentimental about New York is, is the 911 stuff out there.

Right.

Like, I think there's very few things that change your world being a little bit in the firefighter world too.

It has a little extra special spot for me.

But I think that there is very few spots in the United States that have as much history and global context as that place.

And so if people haven't been there, although it might be a little cold in January to go visit that experience, but I think New York is a special place for that.

I mean, obviously the people the food, I love pizza.

So New York's a great place, but so I think.

I think that that, for me, is a great way to get out there and go see something that is unique to New York while you're there at NRF and experiencing that.

Well said, Nick.

Yeah, I actually have not seen that experience yet, so I got to put that on top of my.

On my bucket list next time I'm in New York.

So thanks for bringing that up.

Yeah.

All right.

And Nick, before we let you go, if people want to stop by, get in touch with you, stop by the booth at nrf.

Where do they go?

What's the location?

We are in booth 6757.

We'll have a beautiful blue banner up hanging from the ceiling to come find us, and hopefully there'll be lots of good dialogue and AR VR experiences going on all around.

Awesome.

Thanks, man.

Great time.

Appreciate it.

Joining us once again is Aptos VP of Strategy and Product, Nikki Baird.

Nikki, welcome to omnitalk.

Welcome back to omnitalk.

Actually, we've talked to you before.

Yes, thanks for having me back.

I.

I love talking to you guys.

Yeah, we love talking to you too, Nikki.

Well, let's get started.

Let's get right to it.

So, quick background, like, let's do a quick background on aptos.

Like, what is it.

What is it specialized in?

And.

And who are some of the clients that you work with?

Yep.

Aptos is an enterprise software provider.

We're focused on unified commerce, which I know has a lot of potential baggage or multiple meanings associated to it, but.

But basically, we focus on all of the solutions that serve the unique and differentiating and kind of difficult to execute needs of retailers.

So point of sale, oms, CRM, merchandising and inventory management, sales audit, and the analytics that sits on top of all of that.

And from a customer perspective, we work with hundreds of retailers around the world, so.

Hola.

New Balance, north face Crocs, L.L.

bean, Tommy Bahama.

Just to rattle off the ones off the top of my head, those are.

The ones that are easy to recall, right?

Yeah.

So many of them.

Right?

Yes, I know.

Well, Nikki, you.

When we interviewed you the first time, you talked about unified commerce, which you just mentioned, and in particular, the ways that you're really helping retail retailers kind of mimic an online experience that their customers are used to having in stores and vice versa.

Can you share a little bit about with us about that, what you're doing for retailers, and even an example, if you don't mind, just to kind of kind of dive a little bit deeper for the audience today on what they might expect from coming and talking to you and Aptos and the team at nrf.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, like, so for us, Unified Commerce really means connecting customers to products, no matter what it takes to do that.

Right.

So sometimes you hear people talking just about commerce when they say Unified Commerce, and they only mean the selling side.

And, and we feel really strongly like you can have the best customers in the world, but if you don't have anything to sell them, then you're not going to be successful.

So inventory management is just as important and, and it's much more challenging to deliver into stores than anywhere else in the retail enterprise.

So that's the.

Like creating an experience for a customer that is exciting and delighting is the overall objective.

But to do that, you've got to have the right products to meet that need just as much as you have to have a sales associate armed with the right tools and the right information in order to help that customer.

And then you really got to make sure that you do that in a way that is profitable for the retailer and also engaging for that store associate.

Right.

Not too hard for them to pull off.

So, Nikki, one thing that I always love when we talk to you is, is.

Is, you know, you, you, you've got a ton of experience, you know, in the Unified Commerce arena across all the dimensions that you just described.

What do you.

What are you hearing is on the minds of the average retail executive that you're talking to in terms of what they want to solve in terms of getting better at Unified Commerce?

Is there one or two particular areas that there they're focused on as they enter 2025?

Yeah, I think the.

That store experience part is definitely coming to the fore more and more in.

In the discussions that we're having.

And I think part of it is really that recognition of your.

If.

If all you have to offer customers is that I have products available for you to buy in my stores, that's not enough.

That's just not enough to win.

You've got to have some kind of magic.

You've got to have some kind of experiential thing that drives customers to the stores.

And it doesn't have to be complicated.

Right?

It can be as simple as, hey, come and get your product faster than if I shipped it to your house or get a credit for your return faster if you return it to my store.

Like, that's, that's enough.

But there's also those opportunities on top of that.

Like a customer that's acquired in a store, we hear consistently from our retailers, they're much more profitable than a customer that is acquired online.

They.

They last longer, they spend more, they're more loyal overall.

So you want to have that first real sticky experience with a retailer happen in the store.

You want to acquire that customer in the store, and you've got to offer a compelling reason to go there.

So a lot of that discussion is, well, how do you build that kind of experience that makes it possible to.

To drive that customer to the store, to do that customer acquisition part.

Right.

Getting them to surrender their personal information to you is the part that becomes really important in the store.

And so, Nikki, how do you see that manifesting itself as a technology investment in the year ahead?

Like, how do you bring that.

How do you make that happen as a retailer?

Yeah, I think the.

The.

The big challenge there has been that it's all disconnected.

Right?

You've got, oh, this is how I access my CRM to look at my customer.

This is how I access my order management so that I can place an order for inventory that's not in the store.

That's a separate device.

I've got this other device that I have to use in order to ring up a sale.

Oh, but if they want, like, a send sale, that I could use this other device in order to do that.

Right?

Like, and.

And you picture, you know, Batman with the utility belt.

And nobody wants that for the store associates.

Some people do.

I don't know if that was the first thing my mind went to, but, hey, I'll go with it.

I'll go with it.

Batman with the utility belt.

All right, why not?

It's too heavy.

They, you know, you're gonna hurt your back.

You gotta carry all that stuff.

Right, right, right.

So I think that simplification from the store associate perspective and making it something that you could literally just hand them the device and they can go, like, you don't need, you know, 20 hours in training and all that kind of stuff.

And then that creates that more willingness on the part of the store associate to really engage with the customer because they don't have to fear the questions that come from the store, from the customer.

Right?

Like, well, can you look it up?

Do you have any in the back?

And it's like, no, don't ask me that question.

Right?

Like, those kinds of things, you want that all to be streamlined.

And that's where we see the interest in the technology investment in 25.

Like, there was a high tolerance because it was sort of, look, we just got to get it in the store.

Let's get it in the store, and then we'll figure it out later.

And now we're at the figure out later part, and I think that's a lot of what we're seeing in 2025.

Yeah.

Nikki, how is this going to kind of manifest in what you'll be putting on display in the Aptos booth then at nrf?

I mean, how are you.

What are you going to be showing people who stop by and are talking to you and the team?

Yeah, I think a lot of things that we're really excited about, a lot of that streamlining and bringing together kind of multiple disparate systems and providing that lens through point of sale into those systems so that you can have a truly kind of seamless experience.

That's the primary thing that we'll have on display.

I will also say that we will be debuting an AI chatbot for a store associate at nrf.

That's the first time those words have left my lips in a forum.

You heard it here first, folks.

Super excited about that.

I've seen it.

I've seen it working, so I can say it.

We're super excited to debut it.

But I think, again, right.

The objective is you've spent all this money on the store, on the inventory in the store, on that store associate, on driving that customer into the store.

You've got to make sure that you capitalize on that opportunity that that presents to you.

And it's really like, it has to be through the store associate.

If you're not delivering this experience through the store associate, then what was the point of coming all the way to the store?

You could have just done all that right online.

So you really have to empower that store associate as much as possible.

And that's really been the kind of grounding philosophy and the approach that we've taken in our unified commerce.

When we focus on the store, it's got to be delivered through the store associate.

Yeah, right.

That.

Yeah.

The funny thing, the funny.

You get me thinking about, like, that experience because having worked at a store, you know, with.

You're the.

I feel like your muse is trying to help the sales associate.

Never get into the situation where they're like, can I help you with something?

And the person turns them and says, I don't know, can you?

You know, like, very disdainfully, what's your favorite thing to do in New York when you're not at nrf?

Research is what I do in New York.

I'M not at nf.

I love this.

Love this answer.

I know where this is going.

I will say I have to make a plug for Retail roi, which is a charity organization that's been organized by a lot of retailers in the industry and a lot of technologists in the industry, and it's something that aptos support.

So they do super Saturday that they invite retailers and analysts, and we sponsor that.

So I have to make a plug for that because.

Bring some tissues with you.

The.

The work that they do and the companies, the charities that they enable are amazing.

So I'll be there on Saturday at nrf, and then I will be shopping.

Got to get time in for that, right?

Research.

Researching.

You're researching, Nikki, you're researching, right?

You're shopping.

You're researching.

I love this.

All right, well, thank you so much, Nikki, for taking the time to join us.

If people are at nrf, they want to check out the Aptos booth.

Now's the time to tell them how they get there and where to.

Yeah, it is booth 5139, and you get a three for actually.

So Aptos is kind of the headline, and that's my business unit, but we also have two other business units that will be represented there, which is Revionics and LS Retail.

And so basically, if you are any kind of retailer, whether the largest kind of grocery to the smallest kind of mom and pop, we actually have something across the three divisions that.

That can help you.

Excellent.

So check those all out.

Thank you so much, Nikki.

This was awesome.

We'll see you at NRF in a few days.

That sounds great.

Thanks.

All right.

And well, gosh, that was great.

That wraps us up today.

We're thankful to.

To all our guests and to those of you who are able to join us live today and to those listening on the plane, on the train, on the.

In the automobile on the way to nrf, we'll be heading out shortly ourselves.

And you can catch our full live coverage of NRF, brought to you by the Vuza Group, beginning this Sunday and available to you via LinkedIn or on their YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com omnitalkretail or wherever you get your podcasts all week long.

And.

And if you happen to be at the show and want to stop by and see us do these interviews live, you can also stop by the Fusion.

Group Booth, booth number 4938.

Come see us.

The big V.

That's what.

That's what Roy Horgan says.

Look for the big V.

And Chris and I will be right in the center of that booth with live interviews from the best, best, the brightest retailers at nrf.

That's right.

So until.

Until that day.

Until that day comes.

As always, be careful out.