WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting read with lots of links and videos to understand some of the tools and techniques YouTube deploys to understand what videos contains. Google then uses this insight to moderate content (ie. 18+) but also provide creators with insights (ie. video segmentation) as well as monetize the content (ie. detect products featured for eCommerce or ad placement). Of course most is machine learning based as evidenced in the chart I extracted, but some good old fashion humans are also part the game. This article helped me view YouTube less as a video broadcast platform than a social media.

WHY IT MATTERS: data is essential for AI but also all kinds of business intelligence and analytics in the "traditional" world of eCommerce for example. The post brings up some of the elements to consider when planning to cleanse data. Not a trivial task to perform automatically.

WHY IT MATTERS: this list of technology questions for 2022 feels like an answer to the question "what is digital disruption?".

We have reached a moment in time where old technologies - eCommerce or videoconferencing for example - are finally breaking into established industries. And the impact, at scale, cannot be found in technology but rather in every single industry it disrupts.

Very thoughtful piece, very good questions.

WHY IT MATTERS: this tech trends is different than other "lists" in that it analyses a number of topics and provides useful data trends to understand the issues. Well done and very useful. I highlight the change in buying behaviour in the chart I extracted (buyers know what they want more than in the past but sellers have yet to adapt to this new normal) - but I guarantee the report has a bunch more. 

WHY IT MATTERS: as marketplaces become popular, finding a specific product in a catalog of millions of products will become harder and harder. The holy grail is visual search: snap a picture of something and get some AI to help you find something similar, or that matches well with that. eBay has made tests, Google lens has returned amazing results in my recent experience. Not sure what Amazon is doing but I assume it is top of their list.

Facebook is a major player in this game as it wants to make marketplace the shopping destination (don't forget it owns instagram as well). So the investment in grokNet is critical and recent results appear promising, though not yet perfect. 

So if you build a marketplace, as we are for panier bleu, then this is an area of innovation we cannot afford to bypass.

WHY IT MATTERS: warning! this article is not about your typical "robots will rule retail" or "everything has to be AI driven unless you die". Well, in some parts it is.

The reality check that retailers - and their technology vendors - must make is: retail is difficult, focused on the bottom line, with no appetite for innovation with short term results. Retail innovators must find a way to experiment while staying focussed on the bottom line.

Best quote: "‘I think the majority of the problems come from the unwillingness, perhaps the fear, of investing in something that
doesn’t automatically bring a load of cash onto your balance sheet."

WHY IT MATTERS: an interesting list of retailTech solutions, with recent updates.

WHY IT MATTERS: a very interesting article about a robot taxi system, how it works and its limitations. Fun read to understand what is possible and what is not in self driving tech today. This is important because many of digital transformation use case depend on this for profitability (for example eCommerce delivery cost should reduce drastically when this available).

WHY IT MATTERS: machine learning biggest contribution is with image analysis and the visual search feature is a great example of a useful application. Of course search engines and eCommerce are low hanging fruits but what are business use cases for this? Find me the user manual for this part? Where is this product in the warehouse? Etc.

WHY IT MATTERS: this post is a bit theoretical for someone not bathing in digital transformation all day as I do (mostly). It explores what could come next but more importantly stresses an important fact: we now have a new platform - the mobile phone - in our pockets that has the potential to transform our world. We have started to see this with eCommerce - physical retail stores become irrelevant and we can price compare from anywhere - but we have yet to see the real impact of eCommerce+mobile+cloud+5G. THIS is what I think about most days...

WHY IT MATTERS: an essential part of shopping is product search and discovery. Easy to do in stores: just walk around, look at products on racks. More difficult to do in eCommerce websites. Technology, and especially AI, is being pulled to help identify product characteristics automatically so that searching for a "confortable summer dress with flower patterns" becomes possible.

WHY IT MATTERS: an amazing overview of technologies that are on the horizon. They range from bizarre - empathy design? - to the probable and useful - supply chain tech improvements. Read it.

WHY IT MATTERS: since the launch of amazon GO convenience store in 2016, the concept of walk-in, grab stuff, leave, felt perfect for small orders (sandwich, drinks and cookies for lunch anyone). They just opened a grocery store now, which has the potential to disrupt the retail market more profoundly (Amazon bought WholeFood a while back). This article explains how the store works but also uncovers a flaw in the camera system: if you change your appearance during a visit the system can loose track of you. Interesting use case... 

WHY IT MATTERS: order fulfillment and delivery is the last remaining hurdle to eCommerce. Loblaws in Canada will pilot a micro-fulfillment solution from TakeOff that impressed me last year at Shoptalk. In short, they create an automated back-store where eCommerce orders are prepared with a huge amount of automation. The question remains whether the economics is better for micro-fulfillment or if centralized warehouse fulfillment with hub-and-spoke delivery is better suited for high volume / low margin eCommerce that grocery is about. Thus this "test" by Loblaws. Note that Sobeys has decided in favor of more centralized ocado-driven automated warehouse and Metro remains with the more traditional decentralized (and manual) store-based pick-pack-deliver process. Given the low volume of orders for online grocery in Canada I remain partisan of a store-based manual approach but the economics I got from TakeOff was promising. Below additional links if you want to read more about takeoff and ocado.

- http://fmcs.digital/blog/a-new-store-experience-windowless-automated-micro-warehouse-with-hyperlocal-presence-may-be-the-future-of-grocery-shopping-takeoff-solution-suggests-this-may-be-the-case-robots-ai/

- http://fmcs.digital/blog/video-of-the-inside-of-ocados-robotic-warehouse-where-thousands-of-robots-pack-groceries-retail-robots/

- https://www.takeoff.com/why-takeoff

WHY IT MATTERS this report presents and categorizes the retail trends in 2019. Some are technology-based (AR, VR, QR codes, ...) but all are technology-driven, even those that improve product or distribution (small stores, popup stores, store as fulfillment centers, localization, ...)

WHY IT MATTERS: this is the obvious killer app for facial recognition - it uses AI technology and similar hardware that iPhone uses to unlock your screen. You can now spend without any friction, not event the need to take your phone out of your pocket. Of course this raises obvious privacy and security concerns - but in China the concept of privacy appears different than in the West. But the most important factor is that Asia is deploying this *at scale* first, waaaaaaayyyy before the USA where you still have to sign paper slips for credit card transactions... Who is leading the techno war these days?

WHY IT MATTERS: the report is not available for free but the 42 slide summary is a great overview of key trends that are presented with observations and outcome.

WHY IT MATTERS: when I ask about what the "store of the future" looks like I often get descriptions of a robot-filled location with huge displays and computer kiosks. In fact the trend is to HIDE the technology to make the store experience more and more about what you had when you visited the general store of the past. Walk in and speak to an employee that is very knowledgeable about you, your needs and the products they have to sell. The only difference is that this knowledge comes from AI, cameras, sensors, and all kind of technologies that support and enhance the retail employee to make you believe they know you and their products. THAT is the magic of the store of the future. Get used to it.

WHY IT MATTERS: a recent survey provides numerous insights into email marketing tools and techniques. A great reference with numerous examples, tools and technologies. One highlight of the report is the role that AI plays in the creation and delivery of email campaigns in the coming years.

WHY IT MATTERS: robots will soon replace humans in Amazon warehouses, as there are already 45000 kiva robots and growing. Moreover, the tasks that robots can perform is expanding and Amazon is pushing the limits of what's possible with this annual robotics challenge. 

Also see

- Economist story http://econ.st/2yO8n90 

- projections that US manufacturing jobs will continue decline while robots growth at an accelerated pace http://bit.ly/2yOFhWO 

- PWC estimates that robots will replace pretty every human worker in every industry https://pwc.to/2yQ270n 

Very proud to share an article I recently co-authored on CloudRaker blog with Simon Hudson. It sheds lights into the potential impacts that AI will have on retail stores.

A must read ;-)

Amazing insights into the mobile industry state and trends.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Andreessen Horowitz, and Benedict Evans in particular, have been known to spot trends long before everyone else. Here again, it appears they are making predictions about retailing - following in the steps of the print industry when Internet came along. Not certain I agree about the parallel but I agree that mobile and AI and other technologies will impact and transform the retail world in the near future. However, as opposed to the print media, retailers often sell physical goods that cannot, for now, be 3D printed at home. So either you pick them up in the store or get it delivered by FedEx or a drone. 

That being said, retail stores are bound to transform in showrooms and service centers as I wrote about in the past. And this is a major shift that many will fail to take.

Take a minute to watch the video. This is the future of retailing.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Amazon has disrupted many industries with its online business. Recently, as other digital leaders have done, Amazon is trying to bring digital revolution in the world to blend our physical and digital experiences - think Google self driving cars, Starbuck mobile phone payment and geofencing app, Apple stores that are more showrooms and help centres than stores because eCommerce is there to fulfill orders to your door, etc.

Amazon has been focussed on grocery for the past 10 years to use this weekly recurring, low cost, high volume shopping trip to the supermarket as its pathway to bring digital into the real world and blend it with online e-commerce.

With Amazon Fresh for examples they have been busy putting trucks on the road to deliver groceries to your door overnight with minimal costs. Why grocery? Because its high volume guarantees that trucks will be on the road everyday in all areas. And once trucks are running around carrying groceries they can also bring other items - books, TVs, etc. - at little or no cost, effectively making FedEx irrelevant or at least giving Amazon huge negotiation power.

I wrote about this in many blog posts, just see here: http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-transformation-of-businesses?q=amazon 

Here with Amazon GO, it addresses some of the major pain points of customers in grocery stores: waiting in line at the cash register. As they've done online, Amazon focusses on its customer issues to smash them or make them so irrelevant that they are not issues anymore. See "amazon secret sauce" for insights on this: http://sco.lt/979c4P

Take Amazon Prime for example. It addresses the delivery fee issue: we do not want to have to pay for delivery. So they make it a non issue, providing 2-day delivery for free for an annual fee. Side effect: if you've paid for prime, then you spend up to 5x more at Amazon (300$ annually for average client, 1500$ for prime member), basically becoming a loyal shopper. Wow.

Back to Amazon GO and why it is important. The grocery industry has not seen a major disruption since Costco started top sell grocery in bulk format years ago - grocers ost 10% market share with that new player in the field. But today, grocery stores are the same, the layout is the same, the process is the same than it was 50 years ago. There has been little or no innovation in stores recently (last one may be the barcode in 1970s) but GO shows that there may be a perfect storm of technologies that combine to make physical stores transformation a reality:

1- mobile phones are on every customer back pocket;

2- electronic payment is everywhere, making cash almost irrelevant;

3- loyalty programs and big data allows retailers unprecedented customer knowledge and forecasting trends;

4- artificial intelligence enables real-time image analysis, feature detection, and robotic improvements.

From the concept store video and the Amazon description, all that GO is doing is applying these new technologies on a new problem set: adding and removing items to shopping basket and speeding the checkout process.

Of course, at the end of the day, the winner will not be the grocer with the best technology. It will be the one with the lowest prices and the best selection (best marketing and customer service won't hurt either). On those fronts (price & selection) Amazon GO faces huge headwinds from established grocers that have long standing relationships with suppliers and way more volume than Amazon. But it does not mean Amazon cannot provide customers with a more enjoyable, easy, fast experience - especially to millennials - which may give GO 5% or 10% of the market (the "good" 5% by the way, those that spend more and spend on higher margin items) from established retailers. And this will hurt established grocers like hell.

Also see the analysis from business insider here: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-go-grocery-store-future-photos-video-2016-12/ 

and the plans for Amazon to open up to 2000 store in the future if GO concept works: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-2000-grocery-stores-10-years-2016-10