Welcome to a special NRF Big Show 2022 bonus episode of podcast, one of a series of exclusive interviews produced to support the show, the vendors and industry thought leaders heading into the new year. This episode: David Wilkinson, President NCR Retail
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Welcome to a special NRF Big Show 2022 bonus episode of podcast, one of a series of exclusive interviews produced to support the show, the vendors and industry thought leaders heading into the new year. This episode: David Wilkinson, President NCR Retail
These bonus episodes all follow a similar format: first, we learn about my guest and the company they work for, and what they are talking about to retailers at the Big Show this year, second, based on their experience, knowledge and conversations with retail clients, two starts and one stop advice for retailers listening. And last, but not least, where you can go to learn more. Alright, let’s jump right in.
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven’t already, be sure and click subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week, and check out my other retail industry media properties; the Remarkable Retail podcast, the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast. Last but not least, if you are into Barbeque, check out my all new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbeque, with new episodes each and every week!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
Check out this great interview with David that goes deeper into NCR: https://the-voice-of-retail.simplecast.com/episodes/the-heartbeat-of-the-store
About
CHANGE MANAGEMENT CHAMPION
Taking a business from basics to best-in-class requires the right combination of skills and passion. David has 20-years of experience doing just that. He has led and transformed sales organizations, strategies and teams to outperform and outpace the competition. His proven regimen of customer focus, team and talent building as well as strategic alignment have resulted in success for businesses just starting out and established global enterprises undergoing change. David combines the power of change management and the forces of innovation to accelerate growth and profitability for businesses large and small.
TOP 5 ACHIEVEMENTS
- $1B+ P&L management and responsibility for diverse, global technology businesses
- Track record of hiring, recruiting and building high performance sales and marketing teams ranging in size from five to 300 employees
- Global sales leadership including front-line, high volume call centers; large teams selling complex solutions; outsourced sales organizations; two-tier distribution sales; channel sales; and services sales
- Supported diverse, global markets ranging from high volume consumer and small business to high-end large enterprise and Fortune 100 companies
- Designed and implemented multiple, best-in-class IT partner programs
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide. Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail’s prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers list for 2021.
Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.
Photo credit: National Retail Federation.
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail, I'm your host Michael Leblanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Welcome to a special NRF Big Show 2022 bonus episodes podcast, one of a series of exclusive interviews produced to support the show, the vendors and the industry thought leaders, heading into the new year. These bonus episodes all follow a similar format. First, we learned about my guest and the company they work for and what they're talking about to retailers at the big show this year. Second, based on their experience, knowledge and conversations with retail clients, two starts and one stop advice for retailers listening. And last but not least, where you go to learn more.
All right, let's jump right in.
David, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast, our special series of NRF Big Show bonus episodes. How are you?
David Wilkinson 00:50
I'm doing well, Michael, thank you. Glad to be back with you.
Michael LeBlanc 00:53
Well, it's great to be back on the mic. You and I spoke last year, we had a great conversation and, and introduced ourselves. And this year, I'm doing something a little bit different. I'm doing kind of a, a, a, format episode You're, you're actually my first my first interview, to support NRF, support you and, and all the ways that you support the industry. So welcome. Let's jump right in. So, tell us who you are, what you do? And a bit about your background.
David Wilkinson 01:21
Yeah, absolutely. David Wilkinson, I'm responsible for the retail business here at NCR. I've been supporting the retail business for a number of you know, a little less than 10 years. Been in technology my entire career and just really enjoy supporting and serving our retail clients as part of NCRs overall business. As you know NCR is a, a broader company. We focus on the technology to run the store, run the restaurant and run the self-directed branch. And, and we have banking, retail and hospitality customers. So, we really think about ourselves as a consumer payments and, and platform company that allows us to, to serve all of those constituent groups in a way that really follows the consumer and how consumers use technology, and how our clients and retail specifically use that technology to support that customer experience.
Michael LeBlanc 02:14
Right, and I'll refer back to, to the listeners, and I'll post a link to it in the show notes. Our earlier discussion. As I said, we had a good fulsome discussion on, on NCR and the background and the scope and scale, very impressive organization. Right back to the original cash registers.
And, and I remember last time we spoke, we, we talked a lot about many things. But one of those was self-serve, and it's interesting timing, of course. We're in the midst, hopefully towards the end part of this latest wave, which has really impacted a lot of restaurants, grocers, retailers, ability to staff. I mean, so I, I have to think that you guys have been working in the background on, on some interesting things on self-serve technology and some of the other technology. So, what, what have you got working? And then we'll kind of get into get into the two starts and one stop. So, what, what have you got in the tickle trunk or in the lab that you're going to be talking about enter at NRF this year?
David Wilkinson 03:05
Yeah, you're, you're, you're right. So, serve as a big part of what we do. And you know, obviously, our market leadership and self-checkout is a, is a springboard for us. And, and you're, you're spot on the labor crisis, as we like to call it around the world. For all of our retailers in terms of whether it's wage rates, lack of ability to get wages or, or, or get workers or the requirement for more hours in the store. So, we're looking at self-serve across a couple of different categories. And then we're looking at how do we integrate payments into that. So obviously, self-serve as you know, the traditional self-service model where we continue to explore. But we're will have some new computer vision, self-checkout concepts to both, not only not only look at the, kinda, will kind of look at the grab and go. You know, doing some experimentation with that and conversations.
But really thinking about the consumer journey and flow looking at ways to help retailers combat things like shrink in the store or queueing in the store with using computer vision. And then integrating, integrating payments into that journey and then and then mobile as well. So, we'll have some fun things to share with our platform enabled capabilities with things like our mobile shopping in store or our online. Like in the grocery space, an online grocery ordering application that we that we, you know we launched early or last year I guess in January. And we'll continuing to iterate on as well to create better in store experiences that are started out of store at home and brought into the store and then completed there in the store physically.
Michael LeBlanc 04:38
I guess there's, there's two sides to the, the narrative, or the reality I suppose around whether it's self-serve or curbside or all the things that you're working on. On the one hand, there is the reality that, listen in the before time, it wasn't that easy to hire either, and staff either. So, it's not like it's a new problem and, and many would say you know, today it's particularly intense, but even going forward, you know that, that challenge remains. So, there's the, you know, how do we make customer experience great by making it, I guess efficient or self-checkout?
But then there's the other side, which is, how do you think through, with so many now, it's a great acceleration, shopping online? And they're used to a lot, what would I say, a lot less friction? How do you, how do you guys think about less friction in technology in, in your side of the business? The retailer's must be asking you these things around, you know, how do I how do I solve for x? How do I make this self-checkout experience better? How do I, you know, talk, talk to me about what you're hearing from your clients around the world and, and how that's reflecting back into what your guys are working on thinking about?
David Wilkinson 05:40
Yeah, sure, there are a couple of things that, that happen. I'll think about more, I'll, I'll speak first to the traditional. The way we think about self-checkout today as a as a as a lane replacement, that consumer would check themselves out. The biggest pain points there, of course, are the inability to scan, interventions, and, and other age restricted items. So, we're doing some things around facial recognition and age recognition using computer vision and AI. Enabling the store manager or the, the associate manning a bank of self-checkout machines. More mobile access, either through wearables, or a mobile tablet, to clear interventions or make intervention. So, they can serve multiple customers faster.
So, we're doing we're doing so those things. And then obviously through computer vision, helping them watch for things like shrink.
Michael LeBlanc 06:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Wilkinson 06:28
And then, and then beyond that, really, when I when I think about what we're having a lot of conversations around is how do you create an experience, like you said, this, this got less friction. And you think about more of an online shopping experience, but recreating that in the store. And so, it's really about understand, knowing who you are when you come into the store.
So, it really becomes a, a platform data discussion. Do I know who you are? Do I know what you've bought? Do I know about you? Do I have a stored form of payment? So having a, a consumer journey discussion with our clients around. You could almost take all the friction out if, if you could identify a client, either through the mobile device, or if you wanted to use facial recognition, as they come in the store. Have a pre-populated basket, let them scan their own items in the store, store payment, and they can leave. That's a very frictionless experience. And it's a very, that's a very real experience. It's not about retrofitting your entire store with cameras and computer vision and a bunch of edge compute. That's about using things that we have today.
Michael LeBlanc 06:55
Yeah.
David Wilkinson 06:55
To create a journey that is inclusive of, of their, of their customers.
Michael LeBlanc 07:33
Now, you and I were talking off mic that unfortunately I didn't make or not making the trip down to New York this year. If I was to walk into your, your booth today, your, your display. What, what are what are the marquee things that, that I would see there that, that you would point me to first? What would you what, what, what would you show me first, before all other? You and I had to hopefully next year the pleasure of meeting in person?
David Wilkinson 07:54
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. The first thing we would talk about is the NCR run the store vision. So, you know, I think about we we're, we're investing so that we can deliver a set of software enabled services so that retailers can have their outcome. And then we the, we quickly pivot from, okay, run the store, we're making all these investments so you can focus on what you need to focus on. To a to a picture and a immersion in our platform.
Our NCR commerce platform becomes the hub to everything that we do. Once we get you connected to the platform, you can start to take advantage of the applications that we connect, attach, hang off via API, this the only really just a, a set of micro services. That we, we will enable all of these experiences through, so we would say hey, let's get connected to the platform. The platform is where all of the investment goes, or at least the connections, and it allows third parties to connect. And you can take advantage of all the investments being made, that you'll be, you'll be [inaudible] NRF from some of the startup companies and all these capabilities. You're not going to consume all of your innovation from one company, or even build it all yourself. If you're a retailer that is investing in technology, but you needed all the work together to create that.
Michael LeBlanc 09:08
Yeah.
David Wilkinson 09:09
Seamless experience. And that's what we would talk about in the platform. And then and then honestly, the, the way we would lay out our, the framework of our, of our footprint at NRF is really about outcomes. Driving outcomes to the problems that you just described. How do I get better customer engagement? How do I get better efficiency of labor? How do I get a better checkout experience? So, it's really all about a set of outcomes that we're creating for our retailers. And, and really less about a, a specific point product, and then we'd probably talk a little about the consulting that we can do to help you design that customer journey. The future or the Store of the Future, or whatever that may look like.
Michael LeBlanc 09:44
I've been in a lot of discussions with the retailers and, and one of the questions I always ask in. I write a report, a quarterly report, and in the fourth quarter I ask about capital spending for the next coming year. Because I think it feels like to me a leading indicator of both confidence and intent. And you know, over the past couple of years, it's been, you know, we're gonna keep the powder dry, so to speak, or, you know, we're just, we just want to stay liquid. It feels like to me and again, you're the perfect person to answer this. When I talk to retailers, and just my vibe, so to speak is that we're about to enter a, a bit of a super cycle of technology acquisition, because we've, we've been. You know, I don't think there's been a massive amount of innovation happening over the COVID era. Everybody's just trying to just run the business. But it does feel like for a whole bunch of reasons that we're, we're gonna enter in a, a, a, super cycle of investment. Are you guys feeling that same, those same requests? Are you feeling that same, I guess both enthusiasm and both necessity? Are you? Are you seeing that in your whether it's your book of business? Or at least the inquiries?
David Wilkinson 10:40
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Both in the book of business, the inquiries and all of the research that, that we would follow. You know, I, I don't talk to any retailer, that doesn't tell me that they're planning on increasing capital investment. And we talked about the, the heart of what they have to do. They recognize they've got to modernize their technology infrastructure to keep up with where consumers are taking them. And even when retailers did invest through the pandemic, when the you had to scramble to get things like buy online and pick up in store up and running quickly. A lot of them did it in a way that was sub optimized. Yeah [inaudible].
Michael LeBlanc 11:12
Yeah, they just had to stand it up right, they just.
David Wilkinson 11:14
Right, right.
Michael LeBlanc 11:14
Let's get this, let's get, get the good news is, you know, some decisions were made and in record time. The not so, I guess the good news is, we stood it up, but probably not. It's probably not stood up in the way that many CIOs would say, is built for the future, right?
David Wilkinson 11:29
Yeah, absolutely. So, I, I all that to say, I, I agree, I think we are in for a, a, a fair amount of spending, and. Again, most of who we follow, and who we talk to are saying, they've got to invest in, in technology in the store. Really with a out an eye for the outcome of creating a differentiated experience for the consumer.
Michael LeBlanc 11:50
Right on, right on. Alright, so here's my format question, two starts in one stop, advice to the retailer's listening. Start doing these two things. And if you were doing this, don't do it anymore. Or if you're thinking about doing this, we don't think it's gonna work or whatever. So, to starts one stop advice for the retailers listening.
David Wilkinson 12:06
Yeah, absolutely. The first, the first start is a little bit broader, it is focus on differentiating your customer experience. Your consumer experience. That is the, the real, the real battleground for, for all retailers. If they're not already doing that, they've, they've got to start. And that's really, got three elements to it. I would tell you; it's got a data element to it. How do you get smarter and understand your customers and their preferences better? How do you create that online like shopping experience in the store? Because your store is your battleground, and is your differentiator. And then having some form of integrated payments or thinking about payments in the future, is the way, the way I would think about that in terms of the overall customer experience. Those are the, the that's going to be core to what, what's happening in the in, in the transformation that we see.
I would say the second one, it's, it's modernizing. We just talked about, modernizing the store tech, to enable that differentiated experience. And that's really about how do we deploy things with an architectural blueprint in mind. Not technology on an island, that leads to a set of dead ends, that you're just creating a problem down the road. Like I said, some sub optimized investments were made as a knee jerk to, to the pandemic for the right reasons, to continue to serve the clients. I think we've got to, I would encourage retailers to think about fixing that, because the. The rate of technology deployed is just going to continue to increase. And if you're not taking an architectural approach, you will end up with a bunch of island investments that won't ever seamlessly blend together, and you'll end up spending more money and it's harder to maintain.
Michael LeBlanc 13:44
I, I like that. That's a positive word, Island investments. I used to call it Frankenstein. You know [inaudible] a patch something together and it all kind of works, but it's ugly. I like that, island investments. I like I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of swipe that one [inaudible].
David Wilkinson 13:57
That's fine, that's fine [inaudible]. No, it's just two words, no creative trademarks on that. On the, on the stop side, you know, I, I, I. When I think about this, I'll, I'll phrase it in, in a maybe an interesting way. I would say stop doing non-core activities. Labor is at an all-time premium, not only in the store, but at your, at your headquarters in your enterprise. And, and we're really focused on, like I said, running the store building a set of technology and services that allow you to run the store. So let us focus on running a store and you focus on being a really good retailer and differentiating your consumer experience. I think, gone are the days where you know, as a retailer, you have a lot of freedom to focus on non-core. Because those are not going to differentiate you. The, the, the competition is so fierce with the pure play eComm. The, the demands on the experience in the store, the demands on availability of inventory. All the things that, that you have to do to be a really good retailer require a lot of energy. So, focus on those and find good partners to help you focus on the non-core activities.
Michael LeBlanc 15:05
Very good. All right, last, last question. Where can folks get in touch with you or keep up with all the great things that you're building or thinking about and, and learn more?
David Wilkinson 15:16
Yeah, I mean, the, in the near term come to NRF. Where we always are, if you're used to seeing us.
Michael LeBlanc 15:21
Top of the escalator kinda thing.
David Wilkinson 15:22
Yeah, top of the escalator.
Michael LeBlanc 15:23
Got you, got you.
David Wilkinson 15:23
Right there, you can't miss us. It's a 70 by 70.
Michael LeBlanc 15:25
4 9 18.
David Wilkinson 15:27
Yeah, absolutely. And then, if not come to our website, NCR.com. We will be I, I know, EUROSIS got pushed out a little bit to the end of, of May. I believe now will be at, we'll be at EUROSIS. So, I mean, we're, we're just we're in the we're in the market. So, the websites the best place if you're not at NRF. And, and we'll, we'll, we'll make sure we keep it up to date and keep all of our latest innovation out there for you.
Michael LeBlanc 15:45
And, and your, you're a LinkedIn guy. You on LinkedIn? [inaudible] if people wanna connect.
David Wilkinson 15:55
Thank you, LinkedIn is the best kind of social platform to grab me on personally, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 16:00
Well wonderful. Well, listen, it was great to, great speaking with you. I mean, I wish I wish I was looking forward to meeting you in person this year. But we'll have to wait to another show or another year. But next best thing. It's great to catch up. And, and I'm sure you're going to be busy. And I'm sure you've got lots of great stuff to showcase. So, thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail, and I wish you future and, and continued success.
David Wilkinson 16:23
Perfect, it's a pleasure as always. Thank you, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc 16:25
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure to click and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week. And check out my other retail industry media properties the Remarkable Retail podcast, Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvia Charlebois.
Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all-new YouTube BBQ show, Last Request Barbecue, with new episodes each and every week.
I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media. And, if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
store, retailers, self checkout, retail, nrf, computer vision, platform, technology, investments, consumer, serve, ncr, podcast, inaudible, year, support, modernizing, bonus episodes, talk, absolutely