By Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner
5/19/2009
Reams have been written about retail’s fundamental transformation. As recently as last week, Forbes published an excellent piece by KSA’s CEO, John Karonis and Senior Partner Madison Reilly giving their view on “Why retailing will never be the same again.” The article traces the roots of change over the past 25 years. While it doesn’t break any new ground for seasoned retailers, we’re surely glad to finally see something printed in the “secular” business press that actually makes retail sense. And we know there’s more to the story.
Retail has been transformed from without – by the consumer, but also from within – by a new generation of employee and manager. And if this transformation hasn’t happened at your company yet, you can be sure it will happen soon. And if it seems like it has happened, you can be sure it’s not over yet. This is about more than just awful economic conditions. It’s about more than Moore’s Law. It’s about more than empowered consumers. It’s about more than Channel Masters, product commoditization, and global sourcing. It’s about the convergence of all these forces to create the next generation of retail. Can any of us predict exactly what that’s going to look like? Probably not, but we need tools, techniques and openness to see the changes as they arrive and respond.
One of the core messages SAP delivered at Sapphire this year was the notion of “clear enterprises.” By SAP’s definition, clear enterprises see clearly, think clearly, and act clearly. I confess to a certain predisposition to like this concept. A long-time teacher of mine encourages his students to “court clarity.” By his definition, courting clarity is personal – and involves looking beyond one’s preconceptions to the simple reality hidden in any given moment. I like this message because it implies unrealized possibilities. It’s what keeps me essentially optimistic. And it also keeps me essentially curious.
SAP highlights its new tool, Business Explorer as a linchpin of the “clear enterprise.” My colleague Brian Kilcourse discusses Business Explorer in his piece this week. For me though, the most intriguing part was “Business Explorer for the iPhone.” I suspect we’ll be seeing “Business Explorer for the Blackberry” sometime soon as well, followed soon by “Business Explorer for Twitter” (this isn’t as whacky as it sounds – shouldn’t an alert be 140 characters or less?).
Why do I find this so interesting? Because with this type of application, we’ve started acknowledging a simple reality: that not only are our customers comfortable with these new user interfaces, but our employees and executives are using them too. We spend so much time trying to figure out how to monetize these tools and devices, that we miss the unrealized possibility – that we can also make our enterprise more responsive and productive by using them and getting comfortable in the paradigm.
While I was at Sapphire, I also spent some casual time talking about this same subject with Karen Lowe, General Manager, IBM Global Retail Industry. We are in violent agreement: it’s time for retailers and enterprises in general to adjust to this new reality. Our user interfaces must change for us to remain relevant. Monetizing will come later.
The clear enterprise will see what is right in front of it and change with the times. The wise enterprise will court clarity. Hopefully, the wise individual will do so as well. It will lead us to the real next generation of retail.
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