Retail Technology Show: No let-up in retail tech investments

Against a backdrop of acknowledgement that artificial intelligence (AI) will impact retailers in many ways, the sector is experiencing a major level of investment aimed at creating the infrastructure that will enable businesses to fully utilise the power of emerging technologies.

That was an underlying theme at the Retail Technology Show at Excel London, where retail and hospitality executives, along with technology specialists, converged to share ideas and seek to map out the future of a sector that continues to move at an increasingly fast pace.

Summing up the situation, Kate Jones, executive partner at IBM, says: “Everything is happening all at once, with tech evolving fast. In the last 12-24 months, I’ve never experienced technology moving at this pace. Retailers who win will be those who take advantage of that technology … it’s about tech solving problems for retailers.”

In the thick of it is Anthony Houghton, group CEO of Holland & Barrett, who reveals the wellness retailer has committed to investing £300m to boost its technology capabilities. This involves a mix of in-house built offerings and third-party bought-in technology (from 100 partners), including new tech for its stores and a major overhaul of the supply chain underpinned by the implementation of AutoStore in the distribution centre.

“All parts of the business are now tech-enabled,” he says. “We’ve invested massively in the data stack and are evaluating it. Next is how we serve up the data. AI and machine learning will be utilised way beyond ChatGPT. It will be using one version of the truth, so no duplication of the data.”

This has been recognised as a major challenge for electricals chain Currys, according to the retailer’s chief services officer, Dean Kramer, who says the need to make data discoverable – for Currys employees and externally for chatbots – is vitally important. He adds that he is making the company “foundationally ready for the world of shopping through chatbots”.

But Kramer admits that the much-vaunted single customer view is still some way off for the business. “We’re three out of 10 with it,” he says. “We have amazing information on our customers, but we are not in a place where we would like to be in equipping colleagues with this single view of the customer. We are on the journey, because it’s a big opportunity, but there is still lots to do.”

This ability to supply information to employees is vitally important because the company has 4,500-5,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) per store, and there is a lot of complexity around many of these goods. Kramer says equipping colleagues with knowledge across the range and the shopping history of customers when interacting with them is becoming more important to the business, and AI has a major role to play in this.

This truly is an alignment of people and AI. Even with 300 physical stores – down from a previous 1,500 – as much as 70% of sales still touch a physical store in some way as part of customers’ multi-channel journeys, so Currys has positioned its employees (armed with data) as the differentiator.

“We have a consistent selling model that is the backbone of how colleagues are inducted and trained,” says Kramer. “This links to [measuring] customer satisfaction. As tech evolves, we’ll deploy more tools [in stores].”

People are also integral to the technology transformation that is taking place at clothing retailer Matalan. “Colleagues are 100% at the heart of what we’re doing,” says Phil Hackney, the company’s chief operating officer. “We need to tap into that expertise. They live and breathe it as they do it every day. They just focus on the outcomes, and this centres on the customer experience. They are passionate about the small details.”

With only 20% of Matalan’s revenues derived digitally, the transformation tops the agenda of the firm’s new owners.

It’s an all-encompassing overhaul, according to Katherine Davis, chief retail officer at Matalan. “The transformation was a priority for the new owners, to improve the whole customer experience – technology, visuals, brand experience and the product proposition,” she says. “We’re thinking of an omni-channel journey.”

One of the partners it is working with is Toshiba, which is delivering a whole new capability at the point of sale in Matalan stores, including the introduction of self-scan terminals. Matalan is being very careful with such initiatives as they must not only unlock efficiencies, but also improve the experience for customers. This includes small aspects, according to Davis, who says: “In the pilot stores, we’ve called it Express [highlighting speed for shoppers] and not Self-scan, because we want the whole journey to not be about tech … and not be forcing the customers down one way in-store.”