Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Publisher: Harper

Comments:After his stunning bestseller and international phenomenon, Sapiens, which chronicled the rise of homo sapiens from primate to dominant force on the planet, Professor Harari from the University of Jerusalem does it again with a “history of tomorrow”. He claimed that after the agricultural and scientific revolutions, humankind was creating networked intelligences with a far greater capacity for reason than our own. This last book examines that scenario in more detail. Modernity is a deal, he writes: the new human powers come with a cost. What he calls “dataism”, a universal faith in the power of algorithms, will become sacrosanct. In exchange for immortality, happiness and power, humans will trade the meaning of their lives and become “biochemical subsystems”. There will be created an enormous “useless class” of redundant people without economic or military purpose. According to one review, the book leaves us with the question: “What is more valuable – intelligence or consciousness?”

Authors: Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, Mark W. Johnson

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Comments: In these days when “transformation” is seen as the only way to stay alive, the challenge of simultaneously building a new business while maintaining the existing disrupted business, is one faced by many. One task in this transformation is doing what you are doing better, faster or cheaper. Many are going digital to deal with this. Another is “core transformation”, that is, doing what you are currently doing in a fundamentally different way. A third is strategic involving changing the very essence of the company. Examples include Amazon shifting from retail to cloud computing or Walgreens from pharmacy retailing to treating chronic illnesses. When executed well, this can reinvigorate a company’s growth. Executed badly, on the other hand, leads doubters to say that the company should have stuck to its original business.

Author: Scott Galloway

Publisher: Portfolio

Comments: Scott Galloway, professor at NYU’s Stern School and founder of L2, is a well-known speaker and commentator on retail. He holds controversial views on a number of topics and has been following the four companies sometimes referred to as GAFA for some time. His take on their dominance is interesting and backed up with figures, information and some striking comments. For example, there are only six countries remaining in the world with a GDP larger than the combined market cap of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. They already exert untold influence over the economy, public policy and consumer behaviour. He believes that each company is attempting to take over in areas where the others have been dominant. His verdict is that Amazon will eventually win.

Author: Stephen King

Publisher: Yale University Press

Comments: Globalisation is not new: in the late 19th century, capital moved freely around the world, goods were traded across national boundaries and people migrated on a proportionally far greater scale than they do today. All that ended with the first world war. Trade and economies recovered and globalisation began again spurred more recently by the internet and the spread of liberal capitalism. According to Stephen King, an economist at HSBC, one of the most global banks, this may be due to change again. Technological development has led to robots which may replace at home cheap labour in the developing world with subsequent impact on global supply chains; the internet has also created inequality with increasing divisions between “haves” and “have nots”; furthermore, a resurgence of migration has caused a political backlash on both economic and cultural grounds with a rise of populism; geopolitical shifts may also have an effect. One consequence is that cooperative arrangements between nation states will be less frequent and more challenging. “Conflict, he says, at least in the economic sphere, will become ever more frequent”.

Sensemaking: the power of the humanities in the age of the algorithm

Author: Christian Madsbjerg

Publisher: Hachette

The Fuzzy and the Techie: why the liberal arts will rule the digital world

Author: Scott Hartley

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

According to the authors, it is time to stop worshipping algorithms and rediscover the value of arts and humanities in business. For Christian Madsbjerg, a strategic innovation consultant, there is a liberal arts deficit which is in danger of preventing businesses from engaging with the culture, language and history of their customers. If businesses accept pure data as their only truth, they are in danger of losing their ability to understand people. The best chief executives can read a novel ad a spreadsheet.

For Scott Hartley, a venture capitalist and start-up advisor, the “techies” are more in danger of being replaced by automated processes, while the “fuzzies” who studied liberal arts with their creative skills and broad understanding of communication techniques and ideas may well populate Silicon Valley C-suites in greater numbers in the future. In fact, it is already happening, with many start-ups in the tech industry being established by fuzzies.

Author: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Publisher: Dey Street Books

Comments:The author, a former data scientist at Google, argues that the web will revolutionise social science just as the microscope and telescope transformed the natural sciences. Microeconomics, sociology, political science and quantitative psychology all depend to a large extent on surveys of a few thousand respondents. In contrast, Big Data has four unique powers: it provides new sources of information; it captures what people actually do or think rather than what they choose to tell researchers; it allows researchers to home in on and compare demographic or geographical subsets; and it allows for speedy randomised controlled trials that demonstrate not just correlation but causality. He illustrates his points with surprising and sometimes disturbing material (such as the prevalence of searches on pornographic sites for videos depicting violence against women, and the fact that women themselves seek out these scenes at least twice as often as men do). He also warns against abuse of such knowledge: for example if liking motorcycles turns out to predict a lower IQ, should employers be allowed to reject applicants who admit to liking motorcycles? On the whole, however, he is optimistic and claims that humans will be able to learn a lot more about themselves in a lot less time.

Author: Porter Erisman

Publisher: St Martin’s Press

Comments:The author, ex-vice president at Alibaba group, is known as an expert on e-commerce in emerging markets. In some of these, such as China, India and Nigeria, e-commerce in entering a golden age. This is where, he claims, the next stage of e-commerce development will take place. It is being driven by widespread internet adoption, a rising middle class, and most importantly by innovative new business models which serve the needs of local customers better than the models used by western giants. The mistake of western companies, including Amazon, is to apply the original model to emerging markets. As Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba put it, it is like putting a Rolls Royce jet airplane engine into a hang glider. Alibaba started by focusing on the asset-light C2C model with Taobao before shifting focus to B2C with Tmall. In addition, the western Amazon model leaves little room for product information and a rich experience, which doesn’t matter if customers are already familiar with the product from other channels. On Tmall in China, on the other hand, all kinds of videos, product demos, colourful branded content and more is possible on the site which fits emerging markets better.

Author: Doug Stephens

Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing

Comments: This book continues where the author’s previous book, The Retail Revival, left off. Well-known futurist Doug Stephens gives a picture of the future where every aspect of retail experience will be transformed. The very concept of what stores are, how consumers shop, and even the core economic model for revenue will be profoundly reinvented. In the words of the author, “even the centuries-old formula through which retail companies make money – the core economic model – is going to be shape-shifted beyond recognition and with it, the very concept of what a store is and what it does is going to be rewritten.” Nevertheless, our need as humans for social contact in the physical shopping activity remains, but stores cannot continue as mere distribution centres in a world where customer expectations have been radically altered by technology.

Author: Rick Nason

Publisher: Rotman-UTP Publishing

Comments:The author, from Dalhousie University in Canada, offers a paradigm shift for business away from the traditional modes of compartmentalising problems and solutions. Principles of “complexity thinking” empower managers to understand, correlate, and explain a diverse range of business phenomena. Complex and complicated are not interchangeable terms.  Understanding the differences between simple, complicated, and complex processes and systems, enable professionals to identify, understand, deal with, and exploit complexity in the business and investment realm. The difference, widely accepted by the scientific community, is still unfamiliar in business, but might be usefully applied to a number of different businesses or situations. While complicatedness can usually be solved, for example by breaking down the problem into elements, it is predictable though often wasteful. Complexity, on the other hand, is non-linear, random, and interconnected. It requires another approach.

Author: Amir Husain

Publisher: Scribner

Comments:Amir Husain is an entrepreneur and serves on IBM’s Advisory Board for Watson and Cognitive Computing. His company SparkCognition helps businesses and governments respond to threats. Husain rejects the facile views of AI which characterise it either as the solution to all problems, or as leading us down the dark dystopian path to human irrelevance. He considers the risks and potential of AI and how we should approach them and draws the conclusion that we can ultimately benefit from AI.

Author: Jennifer Mueller

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Comments: According to Jennifer Mueller, we all crave creativity but we also often reject it. Why is that? Partly at least because the uncertainty of new ideas makes us think, and this makes us uncomfortable. However, it has never been as risky as it is today to play safe, and at the same time it has never been tougher to embrace newness. We need to foster creativity in ourselves and to reduce our resistance to it when it occurs around us. Based on the latest psychological studies, the book is aimed at leaders in any area including business, education, science, who tend to choose the familiar even as they profess commitment to innovation.

Author: Andrew McAfee & Erik Brynjolfsson

Publisher: W. W. Norton

Comments:The authors, both from MIT, who also gave us The Second Machine Age, offer a trip through important digital trends such as machine intelligence, big data, and the sharing economy.  The disruptive development of machine learning, AI, and robotics will sometimes displace humans, while the winning firms of the near-term future will leverage these shifts to “bring together minds and machines, products and platforms, and the core and the crowd very differently than most do today.” Among the facets of this different world are algorithmically driven “automatic decisions,” by which Amazon cross-recommends products to shoppers and airfare prices respond to the laws of supply and demand; in time, machines will be coming up with proposals and projects “that people can extend and improve.”

Author: Cass S. Sunstein

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Comments:As we become ever more sorted into groups of like-minded people by increasingly sophisticated social media companies, we live in “echo chambers” that merely amplify our own views. We no longer communicate with people of different political horizons, in fact we often cannot understand them anymore. According to Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law School, and best-selling author, we need to rethink the critical relationship between democracy and the internet. “Cybercascades” and “confirmation bias” are two elements of the current online world which assist “polarization entrepreneurs” to exploit online fragmentation which endangers the shared conversations, experiences, and understandings that are the lifeblood of democracy. It might be argued, following his line of thought, that the holy grail of personalisation in retailing will eliminate serendipity in shopping and indeed put an end to shopping itself.

Author: Kate Raworth.

Publisher: Cornerstone Press.

Comments: Oxford economist Kate Raworth argues that output and growth were the defining concerns of economics since the end of the 1950s with a fixation on GDP. These are no longer appropriate to the present. Nobel economists Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz and 23 other leading economists concluded that “those attempting to guide the economy and our society are like pilots trying to steer a course without a reliable compass”.

The Doughnut is an attempt to provide such a compass. The inner ring sets out 12 social foundations for humanity identified as sustainable development goals; the outer ring is formed of 9 planetary boundaries that earth system scientists have identified as being necessary for planetary stability. It replaces an impossible goal of endless growth by one of thriving in balance.

The theory has often been mentioned in the context of sustainability debates.

Author: David Bosshart

Publisher: GDI

Comments: According to Bosshart, the director of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institut in Switzerland, our increasingly complex global community is characterised by polarisation. There is a growing lack of trust in institutions, leaders, corporations, and governments. Tensions and potential conflicts exist between elites and masses; nationalists and globalists; experts and laymen; facts and feelings; the misunderstood and the authorities. For the author, we need to find the right operating system for the digital society, perhaps by accepting a shift towards a horizontal networked distribution of power.

Author: Doug Stephens

What: A second reading of Doug Stephens’ book from 2017 with a critical mindset

Why it is important:  One must admit that his approach and conclusions proved many times right.

Doug Stephens is a consultant specialized in retail. He founded Retail Prophet, after having spent 20 years in the industry, including the leadership of NY store chain Janovic. He is a keynote speaker, TV and radio contributor on the future of commerce in addition to being a writer. His publications include : The retail revival (2013), Reengineering retail (2017 – second reading at IADS), Resurrecting retail (2021).

Introduction: is retail dead?

Doug Stephens starts by dissociating 2 types of retail activities: Commodity goods and “Experience economy”. These terms are widespread and commonly used. However, for him, they are missing a point, which is why he provocatively quotes Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, who famously said “software eats retail”.

Amazon represents half of Walmart’s turnover, and was founded in 1999 (Walmart in 1964). For Stephens, it is software which radically changed retail, thanks to the rise of e-commerce and new usages (e-commerce represented a market of 1,5 trillion dollars in 2015), leading to the appearance of giants such as Amazon and Alibaba. They clearly came to eat retailers’ cake, and, to make things worse, these new players do not limit themselves to retail: they encompass every domain of activity related to customers’ interactions, to the extent of Amazon becoming a competitor even for UPS and Fedex.

What can retailers do? They have traditionally relied on advertising to promote their activities. However, the multiplication of devices on which customers can stay informed and keep connected, media became abundant, and attention scarce. In other words: gone are the days when it was worth paying or buying advertising spaces to show products. Doug Stephens mentions the example of Woolworth which invested significant budgets to reach a total of 700,000 Facebook likes over a period when it welcomed at the same time a total of 21 million customers in its stores, ridiculing the social media strategy.

Media is the store

For Doug Stephens, the answer to this now-impossible advertising equation is to change the paradigm and consider that the media is the store: there should no longer be any friction or divide between the message about the product, and the ability of customer to buy the said product. Doug Stephens illustrates his thoughts by mentioning several examples: Amazon’s dash button, and the possibility to buy / replenish via a device, Virtual stores, VR, 3D printing and chatbots. All these initiatives contribute to enable customers to shop, without having to come to a physical store. So, coming back to the introduction, does this mean that retail as we know it is dead?

Store is media

In a very sensationalist way, Doug Stephens reminds us that shopping is physiological activity that answers to human needs. This is the reason why even DNVBs and e-commerce companies (Amazon, Warby Parker, Everlane) end up opening physical stores: to answer this need.

However, despite being a necessary activity, retail as a whole became dull, with boring experiences provided by retailers obsessed by sales by square feet metrics, instead of thinking about what the customer really wants. As a consequence, retailers end up playing in the same field than Amazon, i.e. they sell products, and do not see that the purpose of a store is not any more to do so. Doug Stephens illustrates this transition from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach with a few examples: emphasizing co-creation of products by retrieving customers’ data and opinion, or immersive experiences.

As a whole, Stephens advocates to replace the sales per square feet KPI by the Net Promoter Score, more adapted for him to the new world. After all, the store should be seen as a part of the brand content (this is what Apple does, leading it to welcome 1 million shoppers a day in 2015).

Stephens does not resist to push (and to illustrate) strong catchphrases: “no more omnichannels but more moments”, “less inventory, more inventiveness”. All in all, what he sees is the death of the wholesale model, which is not adapted anymore to the new customers’ journeys and the need to rethink the industry’s business model (he mentions as an example Story in NY, which since then was closed).

Stephens also makes a whole list of technologies which are here to support the fact that retail is becoming “show business”: facial recognition, beacon tech, emotional tracking, technological fitting rooms, interactive signage, superior membership and subscription programs, mobile engagement, RFID, clienteling, video analytics.

This business model shift leads to 2 consequences:

• A change of role for sales assistants, becoming brand specialists if they want to escape automation of their previous positions,
• A change of paradigm, from a world where the retailer was the customer of the brand, to a world where the brand is the client of the retailer.

Going further

Doug Stephens makes a comparison between the pre-digital and post-digital world, to see what changed:

• From a world where alternative product options could be difficult to be found, to a world where customers have an infinite choice,
• From a world where mediocre retailers could survive, to a world where new competitors are not even coming from the industry, and are disrupting the chain value,
• From a world where you are identified by what you sell, to a world where you are identified by how you sell.

In order to survive, Doug Stephens advises retailers to fuel innovation at any costs, challenge existing scripts and look to achieve a x10 rather than a +10%. How to make that possible:

• By thinking in network, not in empire, to stay agile, flexible (über or markeplaces models)
• By benchmarking laterally rather than comparing to the market
• By engineering everything and controlling the customer’s experience.

Post Covid-19, the book is still very much relevant, and if one could regret the sensationalist tone of voice and few examples that do not exist anymore today, there are still many points or illustrations that are valid to keep in mind for the fast-approaching post Covid world.

Buy it on Amazon here

Author: Peter Hinssen

Publisher: Lanoo Publishers

Comments:Peter Hinssen, entrepreneur, lecturer at several business schools, and founder of nexxworks, believes in a long-term view of business organisations. In fact he quantifies it: we should spend no more than 70% of our energies and time on today; 20% on tomorrow; and 10% on the day after tomorrow. In fact, we achieve nowhere near that and our daily work leads us to neglect the long term. In fact, we spend quite a lot of time on what he has called SOY (the shit of yesterday) that we have to clear up. He focuses on organisation culture, talent, mindset and technology which we should take on if we want to maximise our chances of survival in the future.

See a video of one of his talks 

See also The Three Box Solution: a strategy for leading innovation by Vijay Govindarajan

and Dealing with Darwin: how great companies innovate at every stage of their evolution by Geoffrey A. Moore

Authors: Carsten Linz, Guenter Mueller-Stewens, Alewander Zimmermann

Publisher: Kogan Page

Comments: Many companies are relying on a business model which is fundamentally suited to a different era. Arguably, department stores may fall into this category. New trends are putting on the pressure for companies to find radically new ways to develop business and a radically different value proposition. Two of those trends, digitisation and servitisation are transforming business. (Servitisation is the trend for product companies to offer services related to their product – sometimes described as the “as-a-service” movement.) Both of these reduce costs associated with creation and delivery, and allow businesses to be “content-heavy” but “asset-light”. They also involve two-way communication with customers leading to increased “stickiness” and brand loyalty. The authors are from St Gallen Business School and SAP.

Authors: Josh Sullivan & Angela Zutavern

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Comments:The authors Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern, both from Booz Allen Hamilton, challenge us to reconsider assumptions about machines “taking over”, relegating the human factor to a bygone era. Their hopeful alternative scenario for the future instead clearly shows the importance of leaders and employees who work creatively in symbiosis with machines to achieve greater productivity, better innovation and higher profits. Mathematical corporations, the organisations that according to them will master the future, will outcompete high-flying rivals by merging the best of human ingenuity with machine intelligence. While smart machines are weapon number one for organisations, leaders are still the drivers of breakthroughs. Only they can ask crucial questions to capitalise on business opportunities newly discovered in oceans of data. Leaders of mathematical corporations combine data analytics with the mathematical intelligence of machines and their own creativity to enhance the quality of current and future decisions.

Success strategies for top e-retail executive track

Managing for Today and Stewardship for Tomorrow

This track will cover the landscape on the strategic thinking retail company leaders must use in assessing opportunities and challenges. It will show how critical decisions made at top management levels pull the key levers that drive e-commerce results and company growth — increasing revenue and containing costs — at the implementation level.

Retail Chains Track

Exploit Store Assets to Fuel All Selling Channels

Physical stores represent a significant investment and retailers seek new ways to leverage these assets to support all selling channels. The store pickup option for goods ordered online has grown in popularity and many are taking the service to new levels. Others are focusing on creating interactive experiences in store using beacons and touchscreens. This track will explore initiatives that blur the lines between the physical and digital to keep customers shopping wherever they like.

Marketing Must-Have track

Find New Ways with Tried and True Tactics

The long-established vehicles that are the bedrock of online marketing today remain popular on their own merits: affiliate marketing, email, SEO and SEM can cost-effectively acquire traffic and customers and drive sales and loyalty. This track will cover new ways to use the proven workhorses of digital marketing and also remind e-marketers that sometimes, the quickest problem fixes and best opportunities may be found in a new perspective on what they already know.

Small But Mighty Track

Big Wins and Great Saves on a Shoestring

Small and mid-sized e-retailers have a competitive edge: agility. In this track, multichannel and web-only merchants will divulge initiatives that strengthen their market position and do not require huge investments. Learn how startups get off the ground, rebrand when needed, how they turned their first profit—and once humming along at a good clip — how to manage growth while keeping profits and the customer experience top priorities.

Fullfilment, Customer Service & Operation Track

The Backroom: The Hub That Keeps Customers Happy and Loyal

The real test of how good an e-retail organization is comes after the sale. How well do they handle fulfillment and delivery? Post-purchase inquiries? Returns? These sessions will dive into the hidden foundation of e-commerce success that supports everything else. Topics include managing fulfillment and shipping, handling customer service, keeping a lid on fraud and managing returns.

Day 2

Design & Merchandise Track

Clicking the Buy Button: How to Turn Shoppers into Buyers

For today’s shoppers, the website is the richest — and sometimes the only — contact point with a retailer. And so the website must make a strong initial impression and provide a quick way to buy. This track will provide guidance on effective site design, content organization, ways to test a site’s effectiveness, how to make sure a site is ready for the mobile revolution and more.

Managing Technology Track

Creating a Technology Strategy that Leads to E-Retail Success

The sessions in this track will help attendees develop a technology strategy in a fast-changing market. Experienced merchants will discuss whether to take e-commerce technology in-house or to outsource it, how to integrate legacy systems into e-commerce technology or replace it altogether, how to grow faster than your technology investments, how to make sense of data, and more.

Social Commerce & Marketing Track

Trading Cautious for Audacious

If 2015 was a year of prudent experimentation in social channels, then 2016 is shaping up to be full of bold initiatives – and an exit strategy when efforts backfire. The best social strategies ensure shoppers know their voice is heard and the content they create is handled with respect. After today’s daylong programming on social strategy, stick around Friday to learn about bold tactics to deploy once you return home.

Marketing New Frontier Track

New Tools and Tactics to Connect with Shoppers

Triggered email, content marketing strategy, native advertising and more: A new world of online marketing practices has joined established tactics, offering e-retailers more opportunities to drive sales and traffic. This track will cover the pitfalls and the possibilities, what results these new approaches are delivering to online marketers, and the important lessons they’ve learned that you need to know.

Video in e-Retailing Track

The Merchandising Tactic That Really Engages Shoppers

Video has become key to online success. Yet many e-retailers have not adopted video merchandising because they don’t understand how easy it actually is. This track will examine the parts that make up a successful video merchandising and marketing program. Experts will discuss what makes great video, video production, how to measure success, how to scale up a video program, best means for distribution and more.

Delighting Global Travellers at Home & Away

The unprecedented rise in travel and tourism paired with fast-pace changes in technologies is opening up an amazing new world for customers. It promises untapped opportunities for many businesses and brands - department stores especially.

In this new era, all customers are global travellers by either holding the world digitally in their palm or spending time and money on travelling.

Which businesses are going to be challenged and which ones are ideally positioned for growth? Who wins the fight for market shares?

During the 5th Global Department Store Summit, highly experienced retail CEOs and experts from around the world will analyze this and its  impact on their businesses. How will this affect your business?

Conference

27-28 april 2016

Birmingham (UK)

The Connected Store of Future

The Connected store of the future is designed to illuminate the most ground-breaking technologies and strategies that are driving the digital store, so retailers can get smarter about the way to help shoppers feel connected in multiple retail spaces and online places! Hear from leading retailers who are successfully delivering a seamless online to physical store shopping experience, boosting sales and enhancing customer experience

International & Cross Border

International & Cross Border will showcase strategies for overcoming significant challenges of planning, establishing and growing retail operations in multiple countries. Hear how UK retailers are evaluating the risk of entering new territories and taking advantage of growth opportunities in both established and emerging international markets.

Insight & Experience

The digital revolution has precipitated a massive shift in retail. Customers now have the freedom to shop from the comfort of their home with a phone, laptop, tablet and other devices. Insight and Experience will explore the best practice to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds for a seamless and memorable customer experience.

Multichannel Fulfilment

Does your delivery service meet your customers’ expectations? Delivery is one of the most important parts of the multichannel process and a challenge for retailers to get it right and keep customers happy. The anytime anywhere customer knows what she wants and expects a range of delivery options to choose from. Find out how retailers can manage the operational challenges to ensure speedy delivery and collection in the Multichannel Fulfilment conference.

Mobile in Multichannel

Mobile pervades everything and is continuously on the rise. We are now at a stage where ecommerce is ‘mobile-first’. The focus is moving from the “newness” of the mobile device to understand the impact on staff, stores and services when the customer is holding a “remote control for retail” in her hand. Where are the newest and biggest opportunities for retailers and how can they deploy the latest technologies to win the virtual race?

Digital Sales & Marketing

Digital Marketing is increasingly complex but retailers keen to gain the competitive edge are realising that getting to grips with digital can offer more opportunity to reach customers and deliver results. How can you use digital to shape a customer-centric culture, deliver more compelling customer experiences and use data, journey mapping and personalisation to create campaigns and drive behavioural change? Find out at the Digital Sales and Marketing Conference.

Digital Merchandising

How easy is it for your customers to log on, find what they want, purchase it, receive it on time and in perfect condition? Digital Merchandising is designed for retailers who want to connect with the customer online to win new business, with a focus on converting customers and boosting online sales. Find out about the latest tools and strategies to create new websites and display products in a way that is accessible and attractive to online shoppers.

Operations in Multichannel

Since the emergence of online shopping, retailers have restructured operations, models and relationships with customers and suppliers in order to achieve supply chain effectiveness. This conference will look at how leading retailers are getting to grips with new technology and operational strategies designed to increase growth opportunities and customer satisfaction.

Download the presentations

THEME 2016

Connected Retail: The New World Order

By end of 2016, connected retail is expected to influence 44% of retail sales.*

Built on the pillars of innovation, convenience and engagement, Connected Retail seeks to offer fully-integrated, digitally enhanced, personalised in-store experiences that engage customers at the intersection of the virtual and digital world.

This is done by integrating channels and optimising all business processes including sourcing, HR, supply chain, operations, payments and marketing.

Connected Retail offers retailers the opportunity to digitally enhance immediacy, control, convenience, touch-and-feel and face-to-face interactions — key factors that form a store’s core strengths.

However, connected retail demands a fundamental and enterprise-wide transformation in the current operating model. New systems will have to be put in place, new priorities set and new job roles defined – all centred on the customer.

Connected Retail is undoubtedly The New World Order and therefore the focus of Retail Leadership Summit 2016.

*Forrester

RLS 2015

RLS 2014

RLS 2013

Author: Martin Lindstrom