TheRetailer_Summer_19

8 moments of truth - are you ready to embrace new technologies?

MARTIN MUSK DIRECTOR - DIGITAL OPERATIONS P w C UK

WE ALL KNOW THAT ADOPTING NEW TECHNOLOGIES CAN REALLY ADD VALUE TO ANY RETAILER LOOKING TO TRANSFORM, DRIVE EFFICIENCIES AND GROW. HOWEVER IT’S EASY TO BE SEDUCED BY PROMISES FROM TECHNOLOGY VENDORS OR SCARED BY THE MYRIAD OF OPTIONS. One key factor, which will significantly influence your chances of success, is your culture. When considering how digitally ready and fit for the future your organisation is, consider the following moments of truth, which illustrate how day-to-day behaviours can make a profound difference in your ability to drive technology-enabled transformation. 1. When the engineer meets the data Imagine a very experienced engineer who has been working with a piece of equipment for many years. When that engineer is presented with a new data set, with analytics and recommendations coming out of a new technology solution, and they find something in that data that they don’t agree with: is the engineer’s first reaction to reject and dismiss the data and recommendations and say that they don’t make sense? OR do they make suggestions and work to improve the data and its interpretation, so that the insights and recommendations are more accurate next time? Data and analytics are rarely perfect first time. But too many companies use this as an excuse not to embrace new technologies. 2. Best idea wins In traditional retail organisations, the more senior and experienced you are, the more likely you are to be the decision maker. In digitally ready organisations, there is a recognition that more junior people often have more intuitive insights and capability around digital technologies. When given the space and the opportunity, they also often come up with the best ideas. At this key moment – will senior leaders embrace these ideas? Successful organisations are those that are open, willing and embracing of ideas from their junior people. 3. Are you ready for failure? Implementing new technologies and driving business benefits is not always easy. When failure happens, what is the reaction? Is the focus on diagnosing the failure and understanding how to fix and improve? Or is the initial reaction to stop work and potentially abandon the whole project? Similarly when people fail, is the reaction to congratulate them for trying, encourage them to learn from it and work together to make improvements? Or penalise them? Those who fix and improve are more able and agile to embrace digitisation. It’s important for any organisation to understand that to make progress you will have to take a leap of faith and appreciate that not every decision will pay off immediately.

4. Why are you doing this? When putting new technology into an organisation, it can be easy to lose sight of your business objectives. Experience tells us that organisations that are relentless and continuously focused on the issues they are trying to address, the opportunities the technology provides and critically how this links to the end customer, will get the greatest benefit. Those that get lost in the detail of the technology solution without focus on the end point are less successful. 5. Procrastination There is so much noise out there in the market, so much complexity and uncertainty, and information on the latest technologies, it is not surprising that many retailers can end up in analysis paralysis. It can be difficult to know where to start and how to identify the best solutions for your business - and then to formulate an overall transformation programme cutting across internal silos. But the worst thing you can do is to do nothing. Your competitors are not hesitating. 6. Look around you If you’re involved in a technology project, ask yourself, are you surrounded by people in the same part of the business you usually work with? Are you sharing and receiving ideas across the organisation or are you keeping everything close to your chest? Organisations who bring together teams from across the business to examine the opportunity and the practical considerations from multiple angles, and who collaborate to co-create the optimal solutions will be the most successful. Not just as an individual, but as a company, are you trying to drive digital transformation all by yourself? Those that are most successful are those that leverage external partnerships and alliances. They are the ones who understand that to move quickly, effectively and cost efficiently, it’s a great idea to partner with those that already have capabilities in areas you’re looking to build. 8. It works perfectly well already! “Why do we need to invest in new technology? It works perfectly well already” Sound familiar? Often what works now can constrain your thinking about what could be possible with technology in the future. 7. Are you trying to do this all by yourself?

16 | summer 2019 | the retailer