On "The Tech Transformation Imperative in Retail"

“The Tech Transformation Imperative in Retail” is a recently published article by McKinsey & Company that I truly recommend ( https://lnkd.in/epFAawXn ). In it, McKinsey argues market evolution ^ pandemic has put significant pressure on the retailers’ bottom line (losing between 3 to 6%/year) and that only a robust tech foundation can reverse the trend (the key figure here is that Digital Leaders outperform Digital Laggards by 3.3x in terms of Total Revenue to Shareholders).

The article then describes a much needed cultural transformation on the way tech is looked and worked at and identifies six key levers for digital acceleration in Retail. 

For me, these levers resonate strongly, as they are mostly aligned with the disruption Reckon.ai wants to bring to Retail:
- OmniChannel integration
- Datafication
- Tech Modernization
- Product-Led
- Highly Automated
- Talent Driven 

I believe AI-Powered Smartstores that are nimble, affordable and completely adapted to people’s daily life are an important part of the digitization and acceleration of physical retail (as are smartareas that transform Supply Chain processes) - and can be engines of the tech transformation championed by McKinsey in this article.

Disruptive Innovation in Retail

Disruptive innovation is (many times) regarded as inferior to established solutions. That is because, instead of looking at the key market features (that everyone keeps check and sustainably innovates on) it plays on specific consumer and customer needs, that are often overlooked - but are just as critical.

With time, and as the disruption keeps on evolving, the perceived quality also rises, and that is when you have a sudden market shift.

On retail, people are usually focused into thinking on assortment range, perceived price and promo. Location seems to be locked to over 100 sqm buildings - which means people will typically need to make a detour of their commuting / daily life just to go shopping. Deliveries are typically expensive in a cost conscious world (especially under inflation).

But, what if you could put a low capex, smaller (5 to 30 sqm) fully automated store, that functions at a fraction of the typical operational cost and that through AI automation builds Supply Chain efficiency while delivering a fast and frictionless Shopper Journey? A store that could easily and swiftly interact with shoppers on their already established commuting and buildings? That's the realm that Reckon.ai operates at - and the disruption we are trying to build in the retail market.

And the main media app that Americas use is...

... Youtube! 81% of them use it according to PEW research, considerably more than the 69% that use Facebook, the 40% Instagram and 31% of Pinterest. Youtube is an amazing media channel, the most impressive global supplier of content.

Are people the secret sauce for a technology brand?

 Building a brand is primarily to think about people.

The people that use your products, the people that buy your products and the people that develop and build your products. If you have read the previous sentence carefully, you noticed one more thing - the word "products" is ubiquitous there, and that's because the product is a building stone for a technology brand.

The company I work in (Reckon.ai) has a great product that is completely focused on delivering fast and frictionless autonomous shopping experiences to people. From the get-go, we developed a product focused on increasing availability (easy to setup at different locations, open 24/7) and eliminating queues (nobody really likes them).

We understood that the best way to achieve this was to harness the sheer power of AI (speed, scale, routine) and the behavior-centric approach of design thinking - so to combine technology with human nature.

Our brand proposition ("Enabling AI-Powered Shopping Experiences") then became more than a simple brand proposition - it became an internal motto on how we (the people that develop products) commit to building a better life for you (the person that will use a microstore powered by our software). It states the belief that if one is people-centric then one can use technology to improve daily lives in a human way.

Original article on Linkedin