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RetailROI SuperFriday Roundtable: Perspectives on Unified Commerce


With a mission to raise awareness and provide real solutions for the more than 400 million vulnerable children worldwide, Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI) is a nonprofit that has positively impacted thousands of lives. 

One of RetailROI’s marquee fundraising activities – dubbed SuperSaturday – is an event that typically takes place on the Saturday prior to the NRF Big Show in New York City. SuperSaturday brings together retail’s most prominent thinkers for revealing discussions and cutting-edge insights – all for a good cause. 

While this year’s SuperSaturday had to be rescheduled to Friday, January 28, and hosted virtually due to COVID-19, SuperFriday was a vivid reminder of why Aptos is proud to be a RetailROI charity partner and SuperFriday sponsor. 

With timely business content, powerful stories from the nonprofits supported by the retail industry via the work of RetailROI, and the always valuable networking time, SuperFriday left people inspired – both personally and professionally.  

No matter the day of the week or the event format, RetailROI President Greg Buzek and the entire RetailROI team always manage to put on a compelling event. 

During the event, Aptos was asked to host a virtual roundtable designed as an idea exchange and networking forum. I have been fortunate to host these roundtable discussions for Aptos for the past six years. Every year I make new connections and new friendships. And every year I also learn a lot from these discussions. 

Hot topic: The future of POS and unified commerce

For SuperFriday 2022, Aptos’ roundtable topic was “The future of POS and the role of unified commerce.” To get the conversation started, I selected a handful of findings from new research from Incisiv that Aptos sponsored. The research surveyed 154 retailers across North America and Europe regarding their investments and attitudes toward the role of unified commerce, with an emphasis on the store.

The research revealed some very interesting insights on the evolving role of the store in the omnichannel journey, and I was eager to hear whether the retailers in our roundtable agreed with some of these survey results:

  • The No. 2 focus of store strategies (beyond driving sales, of course) was supporting digital growth, followed by showcasing products (No.3) and getting products to customers faster (No.4). 
  • 89% said better integration of physical and digital experiences in the store was important to achieving their store goals.
  • 76% indicated that having the flexibility to use store space to suit shifting strategies was important to achieving their objectives.
  • 67% indicated that fulfilling store orders more efficiently was important to achieving their strategic objectives.

A key focus for our panelists: Getting products to customers faster

The retailers in our roundtable described similar areas of focus for their store strategies, although most felt like getting products to customers faster deserved a higher prioritization than No. 4. 

One retailer said, “I’m surprised getting products to customers faster is as low as No. 4. Before COVID, ship from store was a disruption for the stores. When COVID struck, however, we were forced to flip our model and ship a lot of product from our stores. Now we have really improved that process, and we are able to get products to customers much faster than before COVID.”

Another retailer concurred that getting products to customers more quickly was highly important to them. “We’re investing in better POS integration,” said a retailer. “We need to support our growth,” he continued, “and we see the store’s role in getting products to customers faster as key.”

Integration is everything

Better integration of physical and digital experiences also struck a chord with all of our roundtable panelists. Similar to the 89% of respondents in the Incisiv survey, our panelists were adamant that integration was critical to achieving their growth goals. 

One retailer indicated that while his company has made strides to update many of its systems and technologies, it still has a ways to go. “We still have several applications that have to be tied together,” he said, “so the lack of integration between those systems slows us down from being able to deliver important business functions.”

Another retailer indicated that his company, too, has made great progress, but he said not only does it have a long way to go, it will also never reach 100% integration. “We went a far distance when the pandemic struck because we had to, but we still have a lot to do. Integration is something we have got to get better at. And we’ll never be able to say we got there, that we nailed it. There’s always something else that comes up.”

Architecture matters

With this consensus about the need for better integration, the conversation naturally turned to the topic of modern technology architecture and how important it is to provide the right foundation for achieving business goals.  

  • “Being someone that works close to ops and support, architecture is really important, especially when it comes to integrating systems together. You need a more advanced system, particularly if you want to integrate to legacy systems.”
  • “The challenge with legacy architecture comes into play where you’ve already got siloed systems you’ve sunk cost into. Unless you’ve got a roadmap where you know you are replacing those silos, legacy architecture makes it harder for people to buy in and jump into something brand new.”
  • “There’s a common theme that comes with unified commerce – an absence of ‘system spaghetti.’ It also means we are operating toward a unified vision with consistency across our data model.”

And with that, our roundtable time was up, and we proceeded with the remainder of the SuperFriday agenda. I can’t speak for the other panelists, but I left our roundtable better informed on retailers’ attitudes and priorities as they navigate their unified commerce journeys. 

I’m already looking forward to a hopefully in-person SuperSaturday next year.