Data is gold. Alongside great people it is often a company's most valuable asset. Rich information provides the building blocks for refining products or processes to drive sales, retention and success.  

Why then, do so many advisory companies take the gold of their client's data and spin it into straw. We were never told about Rumpelstiltskin's method... but we knew his results. Straw in, gold out. In data terms, this means extracting what is most likely to work from what we can currently find out. Research in retail should help to drive frictionless connected experiences that thrill customers. Instead, what emerges from the reservoir of knowledge is recombinations rather than insights. What Henry Ford called 'faster horses'. Instead of improving an existing product or system, a new approach helps to embed a new vocabulary of experience and so choice and so expectation. 

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Data is gold

Spinning straw from gold

One existing problem with retail is the last 5, 10 - even 20 years of legacy systems - out of date PIMs, multiple disconnected CRMs, PoS systems that barely get a postcode as well as a payment - and in-store tech that is in itself a silo - to even consider a world where the tech is all interconnected, harmoniously chattering, serving up exactly what the customer wants exactly when the customer wants it is a fallacy.  But we should take a lesson from only the last few years - the move to modular architectures in the Web World - I won't mention the MACH Alliance here, but I just did. The same will be and is becoming, for the rest of the retail tech.

Too negative? You’re right… Let's think of that journey but with a more positive lens, shall we?

So you are keen to invest team time, effort and maybe a little cash into the project “Keep an eye on the future” [notice conspicuously absent “innovation”]. Instead of looking out for tech that piques your interest (you keep these in your own list), you are on the hunt for a collection of tools and services that ladder up to your expectation of what your customer experience might be in the future.

So how do we get there, and what do you need to do today to remain relevant and at the front of the changes? Many innovators are just great combinations of existing inventions. Retail businesses should think the same.

Building a completely connected experience isn't easy; take a look at this outline to showcase the complexity (see adjacent diagram). 

To move to a more future-focused way of thinking:

1. Start solving problems and creating solutions that serve a future where the interfaces will change, but the data types won't.
2. Stop trying to connect your data platforms 1 to 1 or in silos - start looking at your entire data set as a mechanism to serve the customer experience - as one - and of the moment.
3. To test 1 and 2 - Experiment often with creative technology solutions that solve the problem today AND could be envisaged in the future - then Validate first to ensure an ROI - however, understand if a solution isn’t right for today, it may be right tomorrow, so take the learnings.
4. Be authentic to your brand; yes, we all love Apple and Patagonia, but don’t try to be them; create connected experiences that match your brand and what you want to stand for.
5. Trust your consumers, they will lead you to what works and what doesn’t. Focus groups are great - but better to create channels with more open dialogue for constant learning and collaboration.
6. Align all of your departments, whatever experiment you take, and whichever department leads this, ensure that whatever the output, there is a connection back to your data system. 


Let’s close it off with why OutcomePath. The above is the exact reason we founded this business. We move past the lists, the siloes and the long drawn-out navel gazing - We work with you to understand the art of the possible, the trends, the services and, of course, the tech - we think creatively about how to approach each new idea as a tested and validated proof of concept and help you on a journey of continual growth and excitement for what might be!

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Act now to prepare for a connected future - it won't all magically connect!

The elephant in the store

The world of retail is forever changing, the expectations of customers are changing, and, of course, the available tech is always changing. If we asked you if planning for the future meant listing technologies from CES and NRF, you would probably say, “Well, that would be a start” - and you would be right. If you take any number of amazing tech out right now - probably ChatGPT enabled, let's face it - you - like most -  would likely struggle to craft a story that weaves the value of said shiny new thing into your current customer experience journey or your future proposition, or even your marketing plan. And that is really the problem with lists - they are just that - even if you ask ChatGPT what connected experience is - it will give you a list of technologies!  There are, of course, amazing things on those lists…

**Lists to solution silos**

You probably saw those amazing transparent screens, and if - like every other retail executive - you were thinking, “they would make incredible storefronts”.  You pull a small team together.  Well, not really...You send a group email / Teams/ Slack chat - with the link and get the creative juices flowing. Most of your team agree they seem amazing but will probably be too complicated, not really ready yet, won't fit and will be something called cost-prohibitive.  Some might get IT, Architecture, Store design and production into the conversation and take it further - but the best you end up with is a PowerPoint of fancy graphics and the latest promotions.

What can you do to stop putting list items into experimentation silos

First: Have a view of what your retail connected future looks like (you probably already have this - at least in part - if not - call us!)

Second: Try to map where all the data points are, all the tools, and the separate systems that exist today and might exist in the future

Third: Now take your new ecosystem of data, services and tools and try to imagine What else you could do to support the customer experience, or engagement, of how you might diversify with this data - it is very likely your list will be much longer than you had in Point 1.

If you have done these three things, chances are you can now look at your now and future landscape as a set of customer interaction tools that will adapt and evolve over time and the underlying data as something that can drive change - from here, it is easy: every time you see new tech, you can ask yourself (and your team), how it sits in the connected customer experience landscape, how might it work with other services, and how might it benefit more than just the specific reason you liked it in the first place.

If you haven’t already, take a look at our article that talks about the future of retail <link>.  What we outline here is not a groundbreaking POV that you wouldn’t have heard, but a view that the world we are moving to is very simple, highly integrated with connected data systems and technologies that will remove all the friction with how we shop today, all of which that enhance your brand's experience and ability to provide a unique and engaging connected consumer. 

At OutcomePath, we move past the lists, the siloes and the long drawn-out navel gazing - We work with you to understand the art of the possible, the trends, the services and, of course, the tech - we think creatively about how to approach each new idea as a tested and validated proof of concept and help you on a journey of continual growth and excitement for what might be!

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Think whole experience, not bolt-ons

Avoiding the Retail “Lists to Silos” approach.

Since learning to code at a young age and later being schooled in my craft in early years - there has been one constant: Boxes. My OG mentor used to say "If you can't draw it in boxes, don't you dare go near your keyboard".

The same is true of web-architecture, composable stacks, retail connected experiences, kinetic art projects... you name it. In a world where we have so much technical capability and flexibility  we keep forgetting to use the one tool that binds most groups together - boxes, or more specifically Postit notes.  

To craft great technology solutions - you need 
- Creative, diverse, and open thinking
- A mission and a north star
- agreements on language, terminology and tooling.
- exposure to the art of the possible
- supported by the software, SaaS, platforms and vendor that offer up the art of the doable.

Each of these needs a plan, that feeds into a master plan. But to have all of the above - you need a very varied set of human brains. 

I've been building architectures, solutions, experiences, and PoCs for 25 years.  I must have run 1000 workshops all over the world for all sorts of people from Global CEOs to local managers. One thing remains true - Boxes are the quickest way to convey information, be visual, adjust, edit and collaborate.  People hate wordy dull presentations, and long word documents but in my experience these are most companies' greatest enemy.

Feasibility studies. Strategy documents. Lever arch  files (physical and electronic) full of words that few people have ever read or will ever read.  We all know as we contribute to these documents that they are dead a week after they are sent.  At OutcomePath, you'll have to accept working with us that we'd  rather spend an hour with Post-its than three months writing a 100 page vanishing strategy doc in one long hard linear semantic streak of words.  

There is much research on the ways we learn, the top-downs versus the bottom-up thinkers - and the wild card creative types who bring the magic and the mayhem.  But we still force people into the same ways of ideating and then squeeze them into capturing the information in a way that only suits a few. 

No architect ever built a building with a Word doc.  It's not the way technical or product architects should either.

This is also the start of what we call "the Solution Silo" - more on that later but in essence this is the step in the process that divides the teams into sub tasks based on their ways of working - rather then overcoming it to empower their way of collaborating. 

The human ability to construct and navigate comes from learning with our bodies and eyes long before we learn with language. Both in gaining control of our own bodies and genetically we learn via millions of years of kinetic and biomechanical evolution. Why ignore that stuff? An organisation needs to interact with its own body corporate visually. See how the bits interact. See where the holes are. Show on the Post-it where systems and functions fit with what customers and the business need to buy and grow.  Work out strengths and weaknesses as you might have done as a child grappling in that sandpit. Wrestle post-its, move them around, test what they look like in different boxes. Scribble, grab, scrunch, double down.




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Your tools for great technical success lie in a more simple form

Boxes and Sticky notes

Big changes have always required big budgets..

Pre-1995, it was usually product development, research, retooling, training, advertising and marketing that used those budgets. Now, it's often technology. A product, service or company refresh often inevitably requires a tech refresh that can easily soak up seven and eight figure budgets like a duvet of blotting paper.

In the 'olden days', occasional duff products or advertising/marketing campaigns could spell failure (remember Sainsbury's Value to Shout About?). Today, it is the failure to validate these big choices (platform, product, cultural acceptance, changing consumer needs) before the expensive red tech build button is pressed. Of course, success hinges on the integration of all elements of the business—not just the provision of a fancy new tech tool that no-one really knows how to use. But let's focus for a moment on tech.

It typically happens this way. 
Company X is doing well, thank you! But their trends are in decline. Competitor, Company Y, is offering AR assisted trying-on of clothes  or placing of lamps on tables or wearable technology assisted diagnostics and their trends are going in the opposite (good) direction. Company X knows its 'platform' (in the widest possible sense) needs significant changes to meet shifts in consumer or business demands. So they pick a vendor or consultancy or professional services company to chart the course to their new phase. The prescribed course starts with discovery. Chalk off six months of high fees, management demands, scoping changes, internal feuds, external feuds, bloat etc. By the time, the 'new' new course is plotted, the destination has often already changed. New technologies, needs or internal culture have come along. Or new customer demands. Or new competitors. Or new products. 

Now... the big decision is whether to proceed on the sunk cost course even though the destination is already known to be inhospitable. Or start again. Or fudge. 

Eventually, someone has to make a decision: push the button anyway or else go back to the world's most expensive drawing board.  In some classic cases in recent years, this drawing board has cost £100s of £ms and usually top jobs too. Here's a hair raising case study: [link] 

There is another way. 

Pre-spend validation. The pre-spend period comes between the recognition of a serious need and the choice of a seriously costly 'solution'.  Solutions usually come in silos. Your consultancy is tied to certain recommended vendors that they know. And also to their shareholders' reliance on dividends via fees. Or its a platform that offers every conceivable solution you can imagine. Apart from you don't need most of the sub-solutions and getting to the ones you do need takes very much longer.

Pre-spend validation is the rapid review of needs, requirements, the current position and the art-of-the-possible en route to fulfilling those requirements. It should be a period (yes, often intense but short) of truly agnostic examination never skewed by commission, overheads that need using.  Many things that a solution vendor or intermediary might have offered may be seen as surplus to requirements. Why buy a Swiss Army Knife when you only need... a knife? More likely, a modular architecture of micro-services can be mapped in the knowledge that this course is the very best now but any modules that improve or become superfluous can be swapped out without risking the whole. 

And it must NEVER just be tech. Validation involves checking if your culture is right to receive and use new systems or platforms. It involves checking that prospective customers really do value the features on offer. That the creative approach to marketing aligns with what's actually possible. 

So when you see PSV in future, don't think of Dutch Football clubs but committing to a low spend validation before you do any big spend changes. 
