Oriola

How do you think the retail tech landscape has evolved over the last few years?

For the last few years, the retail tech space has been undergoing a dramatic evolution. The term—store—has somehow changed. Today, the industry is adopting a mixture or combination of concepts in meeting the customers, from traditional physical stores to pop-up stores to unmanned stores to eCommerce. However, the transition into the eCommerce arena is the most significant change that requires the industry to adopt tools and technologies to automate its processes.

Today, there are many POS systems, net channels, and a lot of other digital tools for our customers to use. The rising consumer demand is weighing down on the supply chain industry, driving them to automate their whole processes. But the logistics companies are reluctant to spend a large amount of money on automation, which pressures us to reduce our operational costs to a great extent.

So, we are now required to go in and understand the orders and deliver them to customers either through eCommerce or to pop-up or physical stores. Hence, in the last five years, that whole concept of a store and how you sell things to customers has changed a lot.

What are some of the challenges persisting in the space, and how do you see them mitigated?

Previously, there were primarily two different ways of buying: either a customer had to go to a store and buy something, or they had to buy something, and it got delivered to them. But now, the scenario is changing. What we’re looking at is that customers have developed a new expectation where they can visit a store and order the same things they can order online, and also sort of access the things they have saved in their basket online. They want to complete a purchase in the physical store while also letting everybody in the store know that they have the items they have selected online as well. As a result, now we have an omnichannel setting that needs to be delivered to the customer to ease their purchase experience. Prior to omnichannel, we had two different platforms for that. Either it was the store-first or the eCommerce. But now, we look at the eCommerce site first, and then we can go and look at the products at stores.

"Enterprise architecture is becoming more central. So, they should invest more in internal competencies"

That’s the current most significant difference for us millennials. We want to buy everything online. But the newer generation is leaning more towards having the best of both worlds. They want to go to a store while still having access to the eCommerce site at the moment. Accordingly, the retailing companies need to rebuild their platforms and entire POS infrastructure anew to cater to this latest consumer demand.

According to you, what kind of business practices and retail technologies should companies adopt to steer ahead of the competition?

Retail companies need to think about sustainable architecture. They need to have technologies that are open and flexible no matter where those are implemented. So, we need to make sure that the tools we choose are compatible with other existing technologies that are there in our company landscape.

Companies can no longer buy an entirely new POS system because now they must first think about different aspects that may get affected by the intended addition of technology. For example, they need to think through how the POS system would be used online and in the store, how it would evolve, how to leverage it in a pop-up store, and so on.

I’d say, previously, we used to have a clear idea that we’ll use a particular POS system for maybe five to 10 years. But today, we’ve a much shorter span when it comes to those technologies.

What would your advice be for the industry veterans and the budding entrepreneurs of the retail space?

I’d advise them to invest more into their competencies. First of all, enterprise architecture is becoming more central. So, they should invest more in internal competencies, including artificial intelligence, robotics, and other different integrations.

Also, retail businesses need to understand and identify their partners and be in good agreement with them. Then, they need to sit down together and collaborate on the ideas they conceive. This would translate into moving forward hand-in-hand and being successful together in this highly competitive arena.

Businesses would be required to adapt to the constantly changing market. Before, we had a few years to react to certain things. But now, the scenario has completely changed.

As a result, my advice to them is to see and go through the competencies they have in-house, make sure to build new competencies wherever they need them for the future, and sit down and undertake a target architecture spree to align with the change in the market. They should also be clear about everything, from the business side to IT, and identify the capabilities they will need to sustain in the upcoming years.

For Oriola as well, it is crucial to find that target architecture that will help us further evolve and run aligned with the market. We need to be much more agile and bridge the gap between the business and the IT competencies in order to be able to deliver the best experience to customers and have a bright future for the organization.