Primark’s Paul Sims discusses key NRF 2024 takeaways including automation, AI, loyalty, and RFID
Paul Sims, Chief Architect at Primark, has taken to social media to give his key takeaways from NRF 2024, which took place this week in New York.
They are as follows:
1) Multi-channel; omnichannel; omni-commerce; connected commerce; unified commerce; omniscient commerce – all terms I heard/saw at NRF. Ultimately, it’s just commerce. Or perhaps, just retail.
2) Cheesiest quote of the event goes to Microsoft’s Shelley Bransten for, "You can't spell Retail without AI." This from an excellent presentation; behind the cheese, it’s a valid point.
3) Is the inexorable drive towards automating everything becoming problematic?
Amongst the many robots being demonstrated were pizza-bots, fries-cooking bots and humanoid robots mimicking warehouse staff limb-for-limb. But robots won't eat your meals, won't shop in your retail stores and certainly won't order your pizzas.
4) Fabric is the new mesh.
5) Search is no longer about results; it’s about answers, which need context, data, and are conversational. E.g., “I am heading to Nepal in the spring for a goth themed festival. What should I wear?”
6) The value exchange from loyalty schemes is shifting from points/discounts towards personalised, customer centric services.
For instance, rewarding loyal customers with truly personalised results such as AI generated images showing avatars with their body shape (or actually them) modelling clothes.
7) The importance of empowering colleagues/associates was prevalent.
For instance, LLM solutions (such as ChatGPT) can summarise long SOP documents into context specific responses to queries. Similarly, with a joined-up tech stack, colleagues can use data & AI in real-time when interacting with customers.
8) Composable (inc. MACH) continues its expansion into areas such as supply chain, demand planning and physical stores (to name but a few). The traditional players in these markets have an interesting choice to make.
9) AI without data is like retail without inventory.
10) RFID was everywhere at NRF. Trying to accurately track your inventory without it is akin to navigating a labyrinth in the dark, without a map. You can’t automate stock replenishment if the system doesn’t know the stock isn’t there.
You can’t promise an item is in stock if you don’t know for sure that it is. Shoplifters refuse to give updates on what they’ve accidentally removed from stores without paying, but with RFID threshold gates, they’ll be doing just that. NanoBT (as provided by Nexite) has a future here.
11) Citizen data scientists are the new citizen developers.
12) Just Walk Out is the new self-checkout.
13) Transparency, traceability and sustainability are an absolute expectation.
2023 RTIH Innovation Awards Roundtable
Ahead of the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony on 29th November, industry experts from the likes of Primark, Footasylum, Headlam, Marie Curie, Crew Clothing, Studenac and EE came together for a roundtable discussion at the Frobrisher Boardroom at the Barbican in the City of London, with the latter two sharing experiential case studies with EY, IGD, PMC, CADS, and others.
Selected excerpts here.
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