The retailer of the future will harness the power of data, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality, says serial entrepreneur and technology expert John Straw.
Farid Mheir's insight:
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."
The future travel experience will be personalised, delivering seamless and safe services that are high value, low touch and consumer-centric, thanks to an accelerated digital transformation post-pandemic. These new advances in technology will usher in a new era of automation, requiring upskilling for employees to provide greater levels of high-quality service. Tracking climate impact across consumers, brands and destinations will be critical for building resilience, agility and speed to combat future risks and accelerate the green transition. This white paper outlines a vision for how consumers will book and experience travel in 2040, exploring how technology and the need for sustainability could change the travel experience over the next 20 years. In particular, this analysis will focus on the future of travel — exploring what online travel agents, urban mobility, air travel and hotels will look like.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: short white paper on what travel *may* look like in 20 years. I think it is idealistic and far fetched but there are elements in there that feel very probable (ie. renting clothes instead of packing your own, robots that carry your luggage, AR-VR to help with travel planning). Not saying if this future is good or bad, but will certainly be very digital. Thoughts?
SINGAPORE: Far from barking its orders, a robot dog at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park politely asks joggers and cyclists to stay apart and keep to safe distancing measures.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: here we are, technologies that were in labs last year making its way into commercial applications. The robot dog from Boston Dynamics is the 1st viable robot as it can move around in "real world" - climbing stairs, walking on ground and uneven terrain, etc. Here just a prototype it uses AI to recognize people and calculate if they are keeping safe distances. Give it a few years and the tech may be autonomous (now it needs to be human controlled) and represent real solution for guarding... and surveillance. Look at the video in the article.
By providing retailers with real-time, accurate, and consistent data on OOS, they’re able to manage inventory successfully— including reducing costs—while improving in-store efficiencies. Our robots scan every aisle daily, providing employees prioritized tasks that allow them to take immediate action to reorder or restock based on velocity, department, promotion and more. Bossa Nova enables retailers with precise granular data like persistent OOS in specific departments, and items with consecutive OOS days, triggering automatic reordering where necessary
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: covid crisis may further put pressure on the workforce. If you had a choice between a store with humans or robots that perform most mundaine tasks - cleaning floors & disinfecting area, providing help, checkout & payment, replenishment of shelves, ... - would you prefer the one with fewer possible infection vectors?
The past few decades have seen unprecedented levels of innovation, especially in what Peter Thiel calls the world of “bits,” or software, internet, and mobile technology.
According to Thiel, however, there’s a sense that the tech space “could be doing so much more,” especially in what he calls the world of “atoms” or efforts to create things like new forms of energy, medicine, and transport — spaces that tend to be costly and challenging to tackle, but also potentially transformative.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this diagram shows well that the next improvements will come from technologies that impact the real world. We thus will move from a digital transformation to a real world transformation. Am I already obsolete with digital transformation? *sad*
With the enforced self-examination of how we integrate with society, commerce and and our customers, we realise it is "all change". Are we ready for the future?
Game Changers - that is what atoms can be. Atoms are the basic unit of matter and the defining structure of elements. Knowing its secrets in the tech space could do potential transformations that can make life easier in the near future.
Workers can pick 2x-3x faster with near-100% accuracy and less labor, delivering higher productivity and a better workplace.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: robots are leaving the factory floor to enter the workplace. First stop, warehouses. This new generation of autonomous robots can carry orders from one place to another, navigating against the human and robot traffic.
See this video that I shot at NRF2020: youtube.com
See this article I wrote about this (french): e-marketing.fr
A leading Canadian grocer will pilot automated fulfillment of its buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) offering.
Loblaw Inc. is building an automated picking facility to support its PC Express BOPIS service. Leveraging a hyperlocal fulfillment solution from Takeoff Technologies that functions in compact vertical spaces, Loblaw will launch the 12,000-sq.-ft. facility inside one of its GTA Real Canadian superstores in 2020.
Farid Mheir's insight:
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.
See below a chart comparing different out-of-stock solutions, their value proposition, challenges, benefits and costs to see how Focal's Shelf-Mounted Cameras stack up against the competition.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: technology is tackling manpower shortage in retail. Here an example of how cameras, robots and drones are leveraged to perform out-of-stock detection on store shelves. When you realize that certain store may have 25000 or more products, the time required to identify out-of-stocks for replenishment and the lost sales makes those technologies useful and cost effective.
Boston Dynamics only has 20 of the robots available right now, but it’s hoping to manufacture about 1,000 for use out in the field. So it has to be very choosy about who gets one. It hasn’t disclosed how much they will cost.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this is a big deal because the Boston Dynamics robots appear to be the advanced and versatile. The fact that they are made commercially available is significant after years of being research project. You have to be in the market for an early device with lots of limitations but, looking down the road a few years, one has to start planning for robots to start making their way into practical use cases in construction, etc. Plus the videos are just fun to watch!
At Amazon, inventors are patenting their ideas and seeing their inventions come to life.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: reminds me of the joke: "Only one man and one dog are needed in a warehouse of the future. The dog is there to keep humans away from the place. The human is there to feed the dog."
The retail industry is rewriting the laws of physics. Change is coming at an ever faster rate each year and 2030 will be upon us before we know it. Explore the world in 2030 and the future of retail 2030.
Farid Mheir's insight:
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.
Robo-cars are picking up everything its sensors see, hear, and detect. So to corral all this information, Cruise — through a hackathon event — created an open-source data visualization platform called Webviz. Other autonomous vehicle companies offer different aspects of the self-driving process, like Baidu's Apollo open-source autonomous driving platform. Now Cruise is opening up its application for anyone who works with robotics.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: interesting to see all the data self-driving cars process. More interesting though is that tools and technologies required to make self-driving cars, trucks and other vehicles is becoming more readily available which should spark an even faster adoption cycle.
The big features for Blue include that it is low cost and can perform some of the basic human tasks we might want a robotic assistant of the future to perform for us. Blue can do things like fold laundry or make a cup of coffee thanks to advanced AI and deep reinforcement learning. Despite its advanced skills, the robot remains affordable and safe enough that eventually every AI researcher and home can afford one.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Ii find clothes folding robots to be an interesting benchmark in robots use in commercial environments. Folding clothes is a complex task as clothes come in different shapes and made of flexible materials. I've been tracking them since early 2010 where it took many hours to fold one shirt and cost 50000$ or more. At CES 2018, folding clothes machines were introduced at a cost of 3500$ but are yet to be fully commercialized. And now this 5000$ robot from UCBerkeley is another point in the trend. With labour shortages in countries like Canada, having robots perform those mondaine tasks will become important but as we see there are still a few generations before they are very cheap and widely available.
The robots, made by Fellow Robots, use a 3-D scanner to detect people as they into stores. Shoppers can search for items by asking the bot what they want or typing items into a touch screen. The bot can guide them to those items using smart laser sensors, similar to the technology used in autonomous vehicles. The LoweBot also scans shelves using computer vision to send up-to-date information to store associates, even while it is showing people around the store. Inventory tracking may seem mundane and boring, but is incredibly important to a retailer.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: with labour shortage and minimum wage increase you will see experiments like this one flourish in retail stores. Not certain that a robot like this will be helpful nor that it will meet the marketing definition of enhanced customer experience in store... But it sure will address a major pain of mine: finding a sales rep in a RONA store on weekends!
Cutting-edge technology gives a glimpse into the future of how things will get made, and what manufacturers must do to stay relevant.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: factories are being transformed by digital at a rapid pace and this paper provides insights into that transformation, including how technologies are being deployed today.
Automation to lower order assembly costs Hyper local operation to lower last mile costs
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this new solution from takeoff in the US proposes to build a series of automated windowless hyper-local micro-warehouses that automatically prepare grocery orders that you can pick up quickly in your car. Listen to the video for more.
The Albertsons Cos. is embracing robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate and save costs on ecommerce fulfillment.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: warehouse automation is a major component of retail ecommerce digital transformation. As more orders go online, the speed and cost of order preparation must be reduced. Amazon has invested heavily in the field buying KIVA robots in 2014. Now other retailers, especially in the grocery field, are also moving from manual picking to automation because they have the volume. In fact, this may be a sign of the future: grocery retailers may become leaders in the digital transformation, moving away from their current position as dead last.
Ocado's new warehouse has thousands of robots zooming around a grid system to pack groceries. The thousands of robots can process 65,000 orders every week. They communicate on a 4G network to avoid bumping into each other. Is this the future of retail?
Piloting a drone or an unmanned vehicle by only using your gaze sounds like a scene out of a science fiction movie, but now it’s a reality. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and collaborators developed a deep learning system that uses NVIDIA GPUs to enable a user to control a drone by simply directing their eyes towards where they want to steer.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: being able to control devices without your hand - using eyes or voice - is still being explored. I find this a great example of merging new technologies - drone, eye gazing, AI - to expand digital transformation beyond the current scope envisioned today.
Piloter un drone ou un véhicule sans pilote en n'utilisant que votre regard ressemble à une scène d'un film de science-fiction, mais c'est maintenant une réalité. Des chercheurs de l'Université de Pennsylvanie, de l'Université de New York et des collaborateurs ont développé un système d'apprentissage profond qui utilise les GPU NVIDIA pour permettre à un utilisateur de contrôler un drone en dirigeant simplement son regard vers la direction qu'il souhaite prendre.
Companies benefit from optimizing collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. Five principles can help them do so: Reimagine business processes; embrace experimentation/employee involvement; actively direct AI strategy; responsibly collect data; and redesign work to incorporate AI and cultivate related employee skills. A survey of 1,075 companies in 12 industries found that the more of these principles companies adopted, the better their AI initiatives performed in terms of speed, cost savings, revenues, or other operational measures.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: use this diagram as a guide to determine where and how to combine humans with AI.
Companies benefit from optimizing collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. Five principles can help them do so: Reimagine business processes; embrace experimentation/employee involvement; actively direct AI strategy; responsibly collect data; and redesign work to incorporate AI and cultivate related employee skills. A survey of 1,075 companies in 12 industries found that the more of these principles companies adopted, the better their AI initiatives performed in terms of speed, cost savings, revenues, or other operational measures.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: we tend to think AI as replacing humans. Studies are starting to show that in the short term, best bet is to combine humans with AI.
An overview of influencer that inspire me daily when reading the newest trends on digital transformation. Feel free to add your favorite influencer on this list. I personally have no influence on the ranking - a neutral algorithm calculates who has the most impact online. So all fame and blame belongs to the algorithm.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the list provides a great starting point to get a shot of digital transformation leadership. The focus being mostly on technology, you should look elsewhere for impact on society, work, and life that digital transformation brings.
You’re surrounded by disruption and rapid change. Maybe you’re looking for solutions. A way to seize opportunities. We all are. It’s a sprint to stay ahead of technology. Blockchain. Automation. AI. Cybersecurity. It will forever change the way accounting is done. And forever change those who do it. It’s time to reset, redefine and reskill. The way we learn. The way we work. And the way we move forward. Here, you’ll find what you need to not just survive, but adapt and thrive. And disrupt disruption.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: I've been blogging about digital disruption since Jan 2013, and doing it since the early days of Internet in 1995. It is refreshing to see it being picked up by non technology professionals. Maybe a sign of the times that this thing is starting to really impact people, businesses and whole industries...?
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Rozmowa z Johnem Straw, o tym jak m.in. komputery kwantowe mogą zmienić biznes