Through a special arrangement, what follows is a summary of an article from Retail Paradox, RSR Research's weekly analysis on emerging issues facing retailers, presented here for discussion.
Traveling this year's conference circuit, a phrase I've heard over and over from tech vendors has been: "Any way they want it." This is in reference to their (retail) clients, and to the vendor's willingness to bend over backwards to get their clients whatever they need.
It's okay to emphasize flexibility when it comes to how a vendor enables a business process, or even flexibility in how a vendor deploys their solution (cloud vs. on-premise, for example). But what's not okay — and what I too frequently hear in keynote speeches and press conferences — is to take that flexibility to mean that the vendor should not have a point of view about the future of the industry.
In fact, I would argue that a point of view is especially important right now, when the future is so uncertain. There seems to be a concerted effort to kill off the term omnichannel as if it's done and has no value today. But how many retailers can say omnichannel is done? I'll tell you how many: absolutely none. No one has digital transformation figured out, let alone implemented.
Why have so many tech vendors lost their way? This, I don't understand. Everybody's talking about the same trends. Millennials. Digital Transformation. Experiences. Price Transparency. Social Media. So many more. How hard is it to articulate what these trends mean for a specific solution area? How hard is it for a vendor to translate that impact into a vision for the future for their solution?
Apparently, it's really hard, because instead of hearing those conversations at the events I've attended, I am far more likely to hear, "We'll do whatever our clients need." When retailers don't know what they need next, I guess that answer roughly translates into "nothing of importance."