Mastering Modern Store Transformation With Omnichannel POS | Ask An Expert

  Welcome to

the latest edition of the Omnitalk Ask an Expert series. The series that highlights the people, the companies, and the technologies that are shaping the future of retail. I'm your host, Chris Walton. And I'm Anne Mozinga. And today we have an Omnichannel expert to give us a masterclass. In modern store transformation.

That's right, Chris. We are honored to have our friend and also another top 100 retail influencer, Nikki Baird, the VP of strategy and product at Aptos. And she's here to talk to us about how you can upgrade your omni channel store operations, starting with point of sale technology, which is. Always a major, major topic of discussion for people as they're starting to think about this.

So, uh, Nikki, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to OmniTalk. Thank you so much for having me. I'm, I'm really happy to be here. Uh, well, we're excited to have you. And before we get started, uh, just a quick reminder to those joining us live on LinkedIn. Uh, you can enter your questions for Nikki and the Aptos team at any time.

In the chat on the right side of your screen right now. And we'll all be here to follow along chat and answer them throughout our conversation. Um, Nikki, before we dive in here, I'd love for us to just kind of start with getting a little bit of your background. Cause it's, you have such a rich history working in Omnichannel in store transformation, and then maybe a little bit about Aptos too.

Sure. Yeah. I, for, for me personally, I've done pretty much everything you can do around retail technology. I've been a retailer selecting and implementing. I've been a software company selling it. I've been a consultant helping people select and implement. And I've been an industry analyst commenting on all of the above.

So done it long enough that, uh, seen omni channel go from, you know, we have a dot com site to, uh, you know, Uh, multi channel to on channel to what's next. So, uh, that has definitely been fun to kind of see the evolution. It's been an exciting time to be in the industry, honestly. And, uh, I think that applies to Aptos as well.

Aptos is an enterprise solution provider. Uh, we focus on the store first and kind of expand out from there. So, point of sale is critical and it's been right at Frontline of that omni channel transformation. So, uh, definitely something we have a good point of view on. Yes. You're kind of the Swiss army knife of, of retail experts here.

I think that's how I would describe you. I thought it was interesting too, how you mentioned multi channel because, you know, I think back to history too, as multi channel, then it was omni channel, then it wasn't omni channel, now it's omni channel again. I mean, I'm curious, what is your, what is your take on omni channel?

Do you like that as a word? Do you, do you think it's here to stay now? Finally? Like what's your take? I mean, you know, of course, we're in the business of trying to define a piece of the market. So right. So we're not unbiased in that regard. But, uh, you know, unified commerce has been something that we've been using for a while.

And that I do think kind of is the next thing beyond Omnichannel, you know, it's really Kind of taking channel out of the phrase, and I think that's what's the important part about it is that you have to stop thinking about channels, and you have to start thinking about the experience and the and the commerce part of that experience.

So. Um, yeah, I use, I use Unified Commerce a bit more these days than Omni channel. You do? Yeah. We're hearing that too. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Unfortunately, for us, uni talk just doesn't quite have the same ring to it, I think. And that, that omni talk does. No, it makes me, it makes me think we're gonna have a show about like unicycles or Tards or something.

ITT comes to mind for me, likes shade fondest days back in the eighties, you know? Yes, yes. Um, all right. But, alright, so, so first question here, Nikki. Let's get into this. So, you know, we're here to talk about modern store transformation. And I got to tell you, when, when Anne and I were working on target store, the future project, one of the things that hit me square in the face, uh, and quite unexpectedly actually, because I had never had at that point in time.

A rich experience in actual like omni channel future store design. And what I learned really quickly was I couldn't do anything without a good POS system, and I needed to upgrade our POS system if we're going to do anything successfully. So, so why is the point of sale system, such a key unlock for retailers as they go forward here?

You know, you, you called me the Swiss army knife of industry experts and point of sale is really the Swiss army knife of the store associate. I mean, it's a great point. It, it, it is their, um, arms and legs from a technology perspective of For everything that they try to do in the store. So even when you bring in other applications, you know, even, you know, time and attendance, for example, it's still often has to be surfaced to that store associate through point of sale, or at least very closely right alongside.

So, um, I think, I think from that perspective. You can't, you can't think about what the store associate can or should be able to do without thinking about how point of sale is going to play a role in supporting that. Yeah. And it seems it's, I was just going to say, it seems to be so much more front and center now, um, that we're seeing, like, I was just at a conference in New York yesterday and everybody was talking about like, it's not, it's, it's, it's.

They're reducing the number of cash registers. It's, it's about like implementing it all into that one handheld device that really allows, you know, the, the associate in store to truly facilitate omni channel and the job that they were doing before in store. Yeah. And you, and you have to think as well about, you know, the ultimate goal, right, besides a great customer experience is to sell them something.

Right. And, and ultimately that means you're going to end up in a cart. So wherever you start from. You still have to get to that cart and in the store, that is the point of sale. So even if you're trying to do endless aisle or save the sale or any of those kinds of things, you're, you're going to end up in a cart.

So if a customer's like, well, I want to buy this one thing and I want this other thing, but I want it in a different color. And, you know, can you order it for me? You can't have that be two separate experiences because one of them needs a point of sale and one of them needs an order management system. It all has to go into the same cart.

And, and that's point of sale. That's how, that's how you end up with, with point of sale at the center of all of this. That brings up another important point here. Like we're, we're talking about this, these omni channel like seamless customer journeys, empowered associates, being able to serve the customer in Right there, not to have to like go bring them to a cash wrap and then finish a transaction.

This stuff is not, not a new concept is the tech new, like how is point of sale different now from a system that like most retailers would have been exploring even like three to five years ago, how, how is that different now and like set that set the stage for us of kind of what we're looking at right now is retail executives.

Yeah, I think I think for me that the key to answering that question is to think about the information that a store associate needs in order to effectively serve a customer. So, you know, even 10 years, I'll go 10 years back rather than the three to five, but even 10 years ago. The store associate might've actually known the most about a customer because the primary channel for that interaction was the store.

It was that store associate. It was all captured through point of sale. And that, you know, about 10 years ago, that really, really changed where actually corporate knows more about the customer than the store does. And from a point of sale perspective, if you've got a solution that's designed to basically Suck as much information out of the store as you can, but not really provide any back, then the store is at a disadvantage in that relationship with the customer.

And I think that's the key difference. Like you can talk about, you know, Oh, do you have a server in the store and the hardware and, and mobile or not, or all of that, but it's really about the information flow and making sure that there's as much information flowing back into the store. To enable that store associate as there is coming out of the store to enable corporate, to understand what's happening with customers everywhere.

Yeah. You know, it's a good question. And because like, when I think back to our store, the future is that was eight years ago, right? And, and quite honestly, quite frankly, it was hard to find a solution that could do what we wanted to do. And one of the issues was bridging the gap between the online sales transaction logs and the in store transaction logs.

Can you, can you talk a little bit about. How the solutions now are different than what was like in the market and, and what problems they actually helped to overcome. So I think one of the, um, the biggest differences is having all of that data that's in the cloud and making it somehow accessible. To the store.

So, you know, we've treated stores as islands because we want them to be autonomous. We want them, you know, if that connection to corporate, if the internet goes down, you still want to be able to bring sales in the store. I mean, even if the power goes out, you still want to be able to bring sales in stores.

And so that's dictated a lot of. Heavy footprint in the store that now we see a lot of retailers wanting to pull out because as soon as you have that tech footprint in the store, it really limits what you can do with that. You know, you can't access all of that real time digital, you know, heavy, high, rich data environment that's happening in the cloud.

And that's really that's part of what we wanted to tackle was to take cloud native to put it in the store, but to do it in a way where if you do lose that connection, you have the offline resiliency and you have enough data on your device that you can keep running things. So. That's been, um, almost from day one for us, it was a requirement, right?

You can, you can, uh, always get fired as a CIO if, if the stores can't transact, that's like the deal killer. Uh, and so it was definitely the first place that we wanted to make sure that we could solve that problem, um, before we went anywhere else with Omnichannel or, you know, customer acquisition or any of that other kind of stuff.

Yeah. It's funny. You're bringing back memories too. Cause I can remember, um, I can remember when target had their POS outage on a, it was like a Saturday or Sunday for like two or three, three hours. And I was in the store when it happened and getting picked up on Twitter by USA today. And I'm like, Oh my God, this could be so avoidable.

If you just had a cloud native solution running on an employee's device that they could use. And. And, and help people out to get them through this situation. So, um, yeah, Nikki, what do you want to say on that topic? I see you excited by that. Yeah, no, I mean that, that direct connection, like sort of taking the store infrastructure out of the picture.

Um, I mean, we have retailers who are, who are looking at cellular backups, right. These days, because the, The data channel is big enough and the costs are getting low enough that, um, you know, if you've got, if you've got a mobile device in your hand and it's basically a phone and you can access a cellular network, then, you know, you, you can, you can always transact.

I mean, unless something Way beyond the problems of the store happens. That's a different story entirely. But yeah, you're right. I mean, your POS in a lot in theory should almost never go down in the future world. So, well, let's talk about, let's talk about that a little bit more. Cause you know, how I've, you know, I've worked in stores, managed stores and worked in stores too.

Um, and POS is foundational. It's critical, but it's also like you've kind of hinted at when you talked about the CIO, it's, it's a massive project and things have to run smoothly. And quite honestly, it's, it's, it's one that, uh, it's a project that many, uh, executives are risk averse to try to upgrade for those reasons.

So, so what are the, if, if you're going to do it though, what are the end benefits for the retailers, particularly from the standpoint of the employees and the customers? Yeah, I mean, we see a lot of retailers get, um, I don't want to say hung up on the business case because it's critically important. I mean, the last thing you want to do is spend an enormous amount of money and just be able to do the same things that you could do before, only maybe slightly more reliably.

That's, that's not exactly a business case, right? So I do think, I mean, there's definitely hard benefits and soft benefits, and you really do have to consider both. Because some of those soft benefits translate ultimately into hard benefits. So you want to be able to sell more, right? It's a store. It's got product.

It's got customers. You want to connect them. You need to make some money. So looking for ways that you can improve that conversion rate or improve the market basket, right? All of those kinds of things come into play. And that's where Save the sale, um, and, and ship from store and pick up in store and all of those omni channel things do have a very real definitive kind of business case that you can generate from that.

But I think, you know, having modern technology, having almost consumer grade technology for, for both store associates and consumers is actually a really important soft benefit. Not because it's cheaper, it is, but you also have to take into account that you're going to have to replace it more often.

You're not going to get. 15 years out of that iPhone. Uh, but you, you do have that attraction. I want to work at a place that has cool tech because I'm going to be using this tech every day for my job. I don't want to work for a company that has, you know, dinosaur technology sitting on a table that I have to stand behind.

And same thing for customers. I want to work with a company that I want to go to a company and give my business to a company that can help me find the things that I'm looking for and get them to me. And it can't be, you know, uh, an hour long process for me to get all the things that I want. It's got to be quick and easy and simple for everybody involved.

So if I'm working every time, I don't want a cash register. That's still rings every time I push a button. You bring up a good point though, Chris, it's like, it's like you want to, it's not a good experience when I, as the customer and walking in and I have like visibility to. What's available online more so than my associate does.

Who's standing right next to me and has to like, go check a back room. Like if I can say, it says here that you have four of these in stock, go get it. Like you have to be looking at the same pane of glass, if you will, as your customers are. I think that's a great point. Yeah, and I would even take it further and say, uh, you as a, as a company, you actually do know more even than what's on the website and your associates should know that too.

I mean, they should be more advantaged than the customer coming in. I mean, I know, like, As a customer, I've asked a question and I've seen a store associate pull out their own phone and call up the website. And I try not to roll my eyes because I'm very sympathetic to their plight. But when that happens, as soon as that happens, it's like, Oh God, this is.

This isn't going to be good. Like I can do that. So I appreciate you making the effort, but, you know, we're, we're on a level playing field and you can go back to stopping the shelf. It's okay. Right. Well, if you don't have your TLOG sync, quite honestly, no one knows who's right. You know, I mean, that's the real, that's the real, you know, crux of what we're talking about here.

No one knows who's right. You know, the customer might think they are, but they might not be actually too. And the sales associate could be the same way. All right. So let's get to brass tacks. Um, let's say I want to, I'm an executive, I'm listening to this conversation. I want to, I want to upgrade my, my point of sale system to create an Omni POS or unified POS.

How do I pilot it? Like walk me through like the best practice for doing a pilot implementation of a new point of sale system. Yeah, I, I love that question. I feel like if I was going to go back to school and get a doctoral, my dissertation would be on that question. It's a great question. Yeah. Because there's so many factors to consider.

So, uh, for sure you, you know, you should pilot, so you, you put things into your lab store and you let you bring in users and let them pound away at it, and then you put it in your first store and then maybe you put it in a couple more stores and then you start your rollout plan, but that first store. Is always crucial because you know, they store managers talk and you only have one chance to make a good impression.

Um, so the, the picking that right store is definitely important. Like I see retailers who say, well, I want to put it in my flagship store. And you're like, that's, that's high risk. Like, not, not that I'm expecting this to fail, but. You know, it's such a high volume environment and you have customers who come in with such high expectations.

Like maybe you should pick a lower key store to start with from that perspective. And then you have some who say, well, I want it in my work store because I want to know. What improvements I can get out of it. It's like, well, but do you have a store manager? Who's tech savvy? Do you have somebody who can lead people through what's going to be disruptive change?

Like you really, I think to me, that's the most important is you have enough transactions even. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then you have a store manager who's an ally, right. Who's bought in. Who wants to see this succeed, who's willing to endure the disruption to their own operations, and potentially even their own, you know, bonus, right?

If something gets truly disrupted, that you want them to be, like, really on board, because they'll sell it to everybody else, and, and it just makes such a huge difference, uh, to have, to have that person really bought in. Yeah, that makes that makes complete sense. And to, like you said, to rally the team that's in the support to be willing to kind of work through the kinks and like get it going and give good feedback and be able to like keep a continuous loop going.

Um, so you really can make it as best as it can be. Um, yeah. I always love if you can give us an example too of just maybe someone that you've worked with Nikki or that you've seen do this well, who's piloted in the right way, who's had success in this, because I think, you know, as a, as a former retail executive, that gives me a little, a little more confidence in making this, this jump.

So, um, if you have any that you could share for the audience today, it'd be, it'd be great. Yeah, I definitely can. Um, the North face. has been a great partner with us in rolling out our next gen point of sale, Aptos 1. And I just, every time I meet a store manager or a district manager from the North Face, I am So impressed they are such an on the ball group of people and they're so high energy.

Yeah, you you get tired Interacting with them, but you need that right? That's such a valuable aspect of store management of store teams So, um, yeah, they one of the things that they did that I thought was great. So, uh before What they were replacing. It had a 100 page user manual for store associates.

That was step one. That's two. No, three, three inch binder that was sitting on every store manager's shelf in the back office. Uh, and they got that down to one page front and back, but one page, but they, they basically like tested it out. They said, what do you need to know? Like, here it is. I'm not even going to give you any directions.

What do you need to know? And they were like, take that manual and stuff it. We don't, we don't need to know any of that. Just tell me, like, if I get hung up in a place, what I need to do and. And what's my username and log in and let's go. So yeah, that collaboration of, you know, well, I know our learning management team says that we need to have all of this stuff and it's like, no, no, no.

Let's, let's get real. Let's talk about what we really need to have in order to get going and having the, the store associates themselves basically write their user manual and they got it down to one page. I thought that was a great experience. Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. I was just in the North face for, we were doing back to school shopping and I witnessed that firsthand.

Like there was, they were training in a new associate and we were buying something in the store and there was a back to school promo, but then there was a different promo online and it was like, she was telling the manager right here, like, Oh no, I think I can just enter her thing. It was like, it was amazing.

We got in and out of the store and then, you know, a day and a half, we had the package that we were waiting for that we couldn't get in. So it was remarkable. But. Chris, jump in. Yeah, I was just kidding. I was gonna say a couple things. I think one, you know, like the last thing a store manager wants to do is read.

I mean, that is number one, the last thing they want to do. They want to be out on the floor. So that makes a ton of sense. But Well, my question is actually, I want to go a little bit further on this too. Like, so what is the North face doing now because of the upgrade that they weren't able to do before?

How is it impacting their business? Yeah. Uh, well, they publicly, which we're very grateful for, have attributed a 4 percent increase in store sales to deploying our point of sale. I don't know. Geez. Okay. I know. I'm like, okay. Take a victory lap. Yeah. Um, but a couple of the things that they've done. So They are paying attention to traffic and deploying store associates with mobile devices to places where there's a high concentration of traffic, which fluctuates throughout the day.

So for them, the shoe wall is a really important part of their business. And they, if they see a lot of people kind of hanging around the shoe wall, then they send a store associate over there so that they can look up and see, Oh yeah, we have this in your size and no, we don't have this in your size, but we can add it to your card and ship it to you.

Ship it to you. Starting all of those kinds of conversations. Um, one of the other things they did, which I thought was fascinating, and they talked about the psychology of it too, is they set up during post holiday, they set up a return station right by the front door. So if you're coming in with a bag, then they divert you right away.

Oh, are you returning something? You can do that right here, right now. You don't have to stand in any line. And they found that those shoppers actually spend more because they feel like they're walking in the store with money already in their pocket, as opposed to, well, I had to wait in this line and then I finally got to return.

And I don't want to get in that line again to buy something. So, um, they, you know, those it's those kinds of things where they're, they're really pushing their stores to look for those opportunities where you can be untethered from the cash wrap. They even redesigned their cash wrap so that part of it literally can become untethered and they can move it around wherever they want in the store.

Um, so all, like, all of those things are ideas that came out of the stores. that they were encouraging them to think about ways that they can use the solution. So, um, you know, they, they got their 4 percent and they were thrilled, but they, they didn't stop there. They really said like, but how else can we use this?

We can go outside of the store. We can go to the parking lot because we don't have to be on the wifi in order to transact. They've, they've gone everywhere with it. It's been really great. Nikki, how much does like the consumer experience, I love that example of, you know, the return station, but like, how much is the consumer experience kind of weighing into the, like what their, what the North face or another partner of yours is considering like success in this installment of new POS.

Are there any other metrics that they're following or that they're sharing with you? I'm trying to think of other metrics. I mean, I know, you know, we look at adoption, right? So one of the advantages of a cloud solution is that. Now we as the solution provider have much greater access to how our customers are aware they're going in the application and where they're getting hung up or where they're not getting hung up and all those kinds of things.

So I mean, I know one area where we're seeing a lot more interest in activity and that we're investing in is around That customer data. So, um, I don't want to call it client telling, you know, everybody immediately thinks black book and, you know, yes, luxury retailers can use that, but, but there's a lot of lower level customer interaction, customer information that applies across the board, like universally, and being able to figure out what's that, what's the right level of, we have a lot of data.

But a store associate doesn't read any more than a store manager does. So you can't, you know, and if the customer's right there, you can't, you can't ask them to page through 10 pages worth of transaction history to understand the customer while they're standing right there, that's never going to happen, right?

So how do you distill that stuff down so that you give the right information for the right context and interaction and do it in a way that makes that customer feel delighted? instead of creeped out. So those are, those are the, the softer standards that we hold ourselves to when we're designing our, our interactions in our software to say like, It's that customer delight that, Oh, you, you actually used my data for something that's valuable to me.

I'm so happy. Even like you just have my address. Like I gave you my email or my one, or I, you know, showed you my QR code, like in the Nike store and they scan it and they're like, okay, here we go. Like, we're just going to ship this to your house. This is your credit card. This is your thing. It's like, yeah, great.

I don't need to pull anything out. Wonderful. Like that is so valuable. It's a consumer for sure. One of the, um, most commented on, which to me is, was like, really? Okay. One of the most commented on things in our solution is that if you've had your name added to the cart so that, you know, your loyalty discount or whatever, if you want an email receipt, It pre populates your email address that's on file.

So you don't have to enter anything. You can override it if you want to use a different email address, but the delight of, I don't have to enter my email address. You already knew it and you're using it. And it's, it's like, it's such a small thing, but the points you earn by doing those kinds of things actually are very large.

Yeah. It's such a great discussion too. And the examples you gave with North Face are great too, because it shows you that. Tech and isolation isn't enough. You have to have great experience design built around the new tech that you're deploying, and that's the key of what you're talking about. So, all right, well, let's get you out of here on this.

Uh, whenever we can, we've got some time. We always like to get, eat takeaways from our guests. And so, you know, you know, one question that we have, you know, is how do you separate the hype from reality of going to sales software and the modernization of the store? And so I'm curious, Ann and I are both curious, Nikki, so What are some of the myths or even the BS out there that retail executives should be on the lookout for as they're trying to decide what to do in terms of the discussion that we've been having?

Yeah, I would say, um, one of the key things that I found is that you have to be wary of the e commerce players who are coming into the store because I, I always characterized the store as having like, um, reality distortion field around it, like gravity, the laws of gravity no longer apply. Like whatever can happen in a store is going to happen, whether that's actually physically feasible or not.

Uh, and, and so having that depth of understanding of just the unique chaotic environment of a store, it is, it is a much more challenging environment to operate in. Then online the customer does all the work online. It's the customer's computer. It's the customer's internet access And that is not how that works in the store And I just find there's so many times that they completely underestimate You have to provide a lot of capability to a store associate.

It's not just taking a self service situation and making it available in a store and there's cash. I mean, people pay with cash and you have to take cash. And we just see coming from the store and having that huge respect for that challenging environment that the store is. We just find that there's a lot of people who come into the space who talk a great talk.

But as soon as you dig beneath the surface, they're missing a lot of, I mean, security role based manager on duty. How do you manage all of this real grunt work of keeping a store running? And, and the e commerce guys, I, you know, I appreciate the digital nature of what they want to try and accomplish, but for a CIO, I would say you really need to press hard.

Don't assume because point of sale has been around forever. So there's assumptions about what point of sale can and can't do. Do not assume in the modern age, when, especially when you've got these digital guys coming at it, they do not understand a lot of that complexity that lies underneath there. You really got to press in that place.

I love it. I love it. So basically, so you're saying you're saying you've seen a lot of digital native brands. Uh, over assess their ability to go into physical retail because of their, um, the capabilities that they're planning to bring from a point of sale perspective to the game. That's, that's, that's so great.

I had that exact discussion with the, with the key CEO, uh, with Wayfair actually, like seven years ago, like saying like, you guys can't discount this. Like you gotta, you gotta keep it straight. And there's, yeah, there's a lot of hubris out there, which is probably why a lot of these digitally native brands go slower.

On their store expansions, then, then the traditional retailers do. I'm always surprised by that. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I agree. I, I, um, maybe I give them too much credit. I figured they're testing a lot of things out and they're trying to figure it out before they go big. But, but I would agree.

I think a lot of the assumptions of what a consumer will do for themselves or needs to do for themselves when they come in the store, it's a different equation. They expect the store associate to carry the load. And that's why you really got to arm that store associate with as much information as possible.

And if you're not prepared to do that, it's not going to be a great experience. You're going to have to make some adjustments. Yeah. And if it can go wrong, it will go wrong in a store, you know, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. All right. Well, that was awesome. I love this conversation. And I'm sure you did too.

Yeah. Um, great Nikki. Yeah. Nikki. So, uh, you know, if people want to get in touch with you, uh, want to learn more, uh, you know, get in touch with Aptos, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, definitely aptos. com is a great resource and a great way to contact us. And I'm on LinkedIn, so you can always hit me up there.

Uh, and I, you know, dabble a little in the writing space myself. So if you, you want to follow me and some of my thoughts, I, uh, I definitely publish some stuff on LinkedIn there. Awesome. Thank you so much, Nikki. We really appreciate you taking the time today, um, and all your expertise that you shared with our audience.

Thanks to everybody who joined us live today on LinkedIn. And as always, on behalf of all of us here at OmniTalk, be careful out there.