Latest / Talk Commerce / Unified Commerce for Mid-Market Retailers with Thomas Lichtwerch of Manhattan Associates
Transcript
- [00:00.0] Hi, I'm Isaac Mori. Welcome to another episode of Talk Commerce from Shop Talk Las Vegas. Today we'll be hearing from Thomas Lichwirch of Manhattan Associates. Here's that conversation now. All right. All righty. Well, we're here live at Shop Talk Las Vegas. [00:17.2] Could you kick things off by just sharing your name, your position and your company? Yeah. So my name is Thomas Lichtwerch. I'm the VP of Point of Sale on the global scale for Manhattan and Associates here. Yeah, excited to be at shop talk 10th year, in a row. Awesome. Yeah, very cool. Well, for anyone who hasn't heard of Manhattan Associates yet, tell us a little bit about what it is that you guys do. [00:37.0] Yeah, so Manhattan has been around for 35 plus years now. Very much well known in the industry for supply chain warehouse management. But over the last six, seven years they've really gotten into point of sale store transformation and really unified commerce. Right. With products like market leading OMS and point of sale systems. [00:55.1] And I lead up the point of sale group here, as far as the go to market. Yeah. And I know you guys have a new report out about unified Commerce and one of the big findings that stands out is a lot of brands have not really achieved what you would call unified commerce. Could you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. [01:11.1] It's a great report. We've done four straight years of doing. It has really grown now to 400 retailers, in three different regions. Like North America, APAC, excuse me, EMEA and Latam. So again, we had a third party group go out and do all kinds of secret shopper eight different experiences, whether it's online or in store returns and purchases. [01:34.8] And yeah, the findings are pretty surprising. I mean really, 2/3 of the retailers that out of the 400 are scoring in the lower or the second lowest bracket. So room for improvement. Yeah. What does that mean in practical terms if your brand falls into that two thirds? [01:51.9] What, Yemen? Yeah, I mean in practical terms, I mean there's net revenue dollars. Right. If you move into the above category, we're seeing for every billion dollars, of revenue you do, there's million incremental growth that you can see just by improving in these regions or these scores. [02:11.8] Overall customer experience, as we all know, I mean consumers today are so much more, they expect so much more. Right. They expect that, you know, everything about me, whether it's from online, from another store I shopped at and what I bought before. And you know, you also don't have as much of say five or ten years ago there was so much loyalty to a brand which certainly a lot of people have still. [02:35.1] But there's so many options out there too. So it's getting very competitive and if you don't get that good experience and someone else can provide that for you, you start seeing the loyalty waiver a bit. Yeah. Would you say that that's been a trend in the industry broadly like now versus 10 years ago, less customer loyalty? [02:52.4] I would say so. I mean, and I think the report shows that too. I mean again, there's always going to be top brands that everyone prefers, but you know, with social media shopping on, you know, social media outlets now and all these other things, so many new brands are being introduced and the ease of clicking a button if you're scrolling on mobile, versus maybe before having to go online on a desktop, you know, 10, 15 years ago and stores. Right. [03:16.5] It's really changed that, that, that paradigm. Yeah. Okay, well, here's a question that I have to ask everyone. How is AI playing into all of this? Yeah, no, it's I mean the last, the last couple of years at nrf, it's just NRF with the big retail show and shop talk here, right. It's, everyone is trying to figure it out. [03:33.2] I mean, I don't think anyone has figured it out completely. But AI overall, obviously what AI can really help is data. Right? You have a bunch of data and you can quickly access it, whereas before you start looking you have to go in and write queries and slow and meticulous. Right. [03:49.8] So if you put the blinders on from a unified commerce or point of sale kind of look at it, that you start looking at. Well, I need to know everything about the person that's shopping here, right. Or I need to drive them into the store, I need to help them with the return or if they have a issue with something that they bought in the past. [04:07.5] All these things need to be available like this where I can really try to try to do that. Then you can also start using it for shopping, Right. For incentivizing someone to shop again, come in more regularly or buy a product that just became available again online. So those are the areas where I see again from the store transformation area, but overall overarching for retail as a whole. [04:29.5] I mean from supply chain all the way through how order management and to satisfying and selling the product to the customer. AI will play a large role in that. Yeah. So our audience here at Talk Commerce is a lot of smaller and medium sized businesses maybe who are just getting into utilizing the fullest potential of their data or might be looking for new opportunities, advice or words of wisdom that you'd give to that audience specifically. [04:57.7] Yeah. I mean, in some ways, you know, obviously it's always hard to be, you know, smaller or medium sized and having to kind of, you know, climb that hill. But in some ways you also have an advantage because some of the larger groups have a lot of, you know, legacy systems out there. Right. And they, it's kind of a, they're kind of stuck. Right. [05:15.1] So it's hard to make those changes, which is why the UCB report will show that there's a lot of room for improvement. Right. It's not just something that happens overnight. So if you are more of that medium sized, small size retailer, there are ways that you can kind of say, okay, you know, I've kind of gotten to this point now, but to really kind of take the leap with all the really cutting edge, you know, technology that's out there. [05:37.5] It's maybe not as big of a, you know, rip and replace or open heart surgery as it would be for some of the larger ones. Right, yeah. Well, I noticed one of the things in the report too was it highlighted how, the Latin American market specifically has leapfrogged some technology and really gone into, for example, the heavy use of WhatsApp kind of streamlines communication. Yeah. [05:56.8] It's very interesting to see. And again, if you look at the three geographies that we talked about, Right. There's not one mold that says this is how you have to do it globally. Right. Because, the way WhatsApp is used in Latam, the way there's a lot more GDPR in Europe and how the customers have to be engaged with. Right. [06:15.7] Versus North America was a bit more freedom, for instance. Right. So again, the blueprint is not just one blueprint fits all. It's. You got to look at it at those regional, with the regional lens and really figure out what, what is the right approach. Right. Yeah. Any other, I guess hot takes that you might have based on this report or based on your experience in recent years? [06:35.9] Yeah, I mean, I certainly, I mean there are certainly a lot of brands that are doing a great job and when you see in the report some of the leaders that you've seen out there. Right. I mean they're not just doing well in one region. They have actually managed to really kind of spread that across the multiple regions we're talking about. [06:52.1] But again, I think it's, you know, there are a lot of brands that probably feel like they're, they're checking the boxes and doing a good job. However, when you start. I mean again, this is completely third party. It's something, I mean it's shoppers, it's people going out doing what we all do on a regular basis, right. [07:11.0] And if you start seeing repeatedly that you're not scoring and you're not really getting up in at least a middle category or above category, you really gotta start taking a look at. Okay, sure, I have a. Whether it's a point of sale system or whether it's an online system, e commerce supply, whatever it may be that checks the box. [07:30.5] But it might not have all the things that are needed to be able to be nimble and move quick. Because what's really happened, and again, AI is just going to absolutely blow that out of the water. But over the last five to 10 years, with microservices and really kind of technology being easier to go and connect with APIs and really kind of use the data, if you're not ready for that, you're going to be leapfrogged and even standing still now, you're going to be leapfrogged. [07:56.8] Even if you just say hey, great, I accomplished my two year program of replacing this large system. If you don't do anything else over the next few years and just kind of hold on, right, Other people are going to be moving. I mean it's going quick. Right. And that's to the point, going back to you said the smaller and medium sized ones, there's a huge opportunity out there. Right. [08:15.5] Because again it's easier for them to make that, make that move. Cool. Well, as we wrap up, one thing I like to do is give people a chance to make kind of the elevator pitch. If someone's considering working with you guys, what is it that makes you special and sets you apart from the competition? [08:31.0] Yeah, no, yeah, I appreciate that. So again, Manhattan and Associates, your public company, over a billion dollars in reven, well known in supply chain warehouse management as the absolute global leader. So most companies would always involve us in that. What a lot of people don't know is really where my focus is. [08:48.6] At is point of sale in store transformation, we're maybe not the first, you know, top of mind when it comes to looking at options. And we actually are, you know, since I've come in here over the last year, we're actually going down market because it used to be Manhattan as a whole with service really kind of the tier ones up there, Super Tier Ones, Tier 2s and maybe not be the right fit for various reasons for kind of that mid market but that's changing. And. [09:12.0] And again, we are very, open for conversations with, you know, retailers that might only have, you know, 20, 30 store locations. Right. Instead of the hundreds and a thousand locations. Right. So. Right. So, yeah, we'd love to. The conversation. We, again, we can truly help you from, you know, really from, you know, order warehouse all the way through, you know, complete transaction in the store return, whatever it may be. [09:34.0] And be that, you know, be that platform. Great. Well, thanks so much for your time. Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Great talking with you. Same here. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Yeah.