Although this has been an especially tough year for retail (3,800 stores closures to date, 12,000+ predicted),the importance of retail to the economic fabric continues to grow. The total retail trade in the US exceeds 25% of the GDP while retail continues to be the largest private sector employer, powering 42 M (1 in 4) jobs in the US.
While it's easy to be pessimistic about the prospects of this segment, digging deeper into the data could point toa shift toward stronger fundamentals.
Technology continues to be one of the key drivers of change in the retail landscape. Digitization & the evolution of retail technologies have changed both shopper behavior and retail economics. The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has evolved into the Chief Digitization Officer (CDO). At many leading retailers, the CDO's team is now responsible for managing store technologies and driving deeper partnership with operations, merchandising & finance. This team is taking responsibility for the innovation process including retail technology selection, incubation, enterprise-wide deployment and platform operations. Aligning these new buying centers & virtual teams is an ongoing challenge at most companies.
At Cisco, we have also been evolving our Retail IoT strategy to better fit the needs of our customers & partners. As we shift from being a network hardware vendor to a digitization & data management partner, we have been reinventing our portfolio & value proposition. Our focus is to help streamline Retail Automation & AI technologies to drive deeper process integration.Examples of this are the Smart Cooler & Toy Box that we will be demonstrating at Cisco Live. The Retail IoT team has been heads down for the past few months, refining our retail operations offers & working with our partners to demonstrate the art of the possible.
I hope you have a chance to stop by one of our booths at Cisco Live next week (Retail booth#2385 in the DevNet Zone or Unlock the Data booth#885 in the Cisco Campus). I will also be presenting our Retail IoT approach at the Cisco Live theater in the campus area on Tuesday @ 10am & Wednesday @ 10:30am. I'm looking forward to seeing old friends & making new ones!