The Last 10 Feet: Where Most Retail Technology Still Fails

Brett Beveridge is the Founder and CEO of T-ROC Global.

gettyI have spent more than 30 years in and around retail. One uncomfortable lesson I have learned is that the hardest part of retail technology is rarely building it. It is getting it to work in the last 10 feet.

The “last 10 feet” refers to the distance between a technology platform and the moment it actually changes what happens in a store. What happens in that distance? A product gets stocked, an associate gets the right information, a customer gets an answer, a display gets fixed or a transaction gets completed. It is where many otherwise impressive retail technology investments break down.

I learned this lesson long before AI became the buzzword it is today. At 23 years old, I was selling cellphones out of a van with a college friend. We eventually built that business into a nearly 300-store wireless retailer.

What I saw from the beginning was that having the right product, price and technology was not enough. The person standing in front of the customer still had to know what to do with all of it.

The industry has become very good at generating data and building impressive demonstrations. We have computer vision, RFID, generative AI, digital twins, smart carts, predictive analytics and increasingly autonomous systems. At NRF this year, it was difficult to walk a few steps without encountering another AI-powered retail application.

But a technology demonstration is not retail execution. Consider what is happening with AI. Some large retailers have invested heavily in AI-powered tools meant to help store associates prioritize tasks and work more effectively. Recent reporting on some of those rollouts found that frontline employees have had to correct recommendations when the technology fails to account for the realities of an individual store.

A simple task such as restocking an aisle, for example, may require an associate to first deal with a spill, remove expired products or address another issue the system did not anticipate, according to Business Insider. The technology may be sophisticated, but the store can still be messy, unpredictable and human.

This is why I believe the next phase of retail technology will be less about adding intelligence and more about making that intelligence actionable and accountable. A retailer does not necessarily need another dashboard telling headquarters that a display is out of compliance. It needs that display corrected. A retailer does not need another model predicting that inventory will be misplaced. It needs the product found and put where it belongs. An associate does not need 12 applications containing pieces of customer information. They need one useful answer at the moment they are standing with the customer. That distinction matters.

In my experience, when we build retail programs for major brands, technology has never been the entire solution. We have to think about the person using it, the environment they are using it in, the process surrounding it and, ultimately, whether it produces a measurable business outcome.

It is also why I have always believed technology and people should be designed together rather than treated as competing forces. One useful example emerging right now comes from Micro Center, an electronics retailer. It is doubling down on its physical stores while expanding its technology offerings and emphasizing its in-person Knowledge Bar.

Its success is a reminder that even in a category where consumers can research almost anything online, expertise delivered by a person in a physical environment still matters.

The lesson is not that retail should resist technology. It is the opposite. Retailers should use technology to make the last 10 feet better.

That means designing systems around the actual workflow of a store, giving associates tools that reduce work rather than create more of it and connecting headquarters’ intelligence with what employees and customers are experiencing in real time. It also means measuring success by outcomes, not by how sophisticated the technology looks.

There is another shift happening here. For years, retailers asked, “What can this technology do?” I think the more useful question now is, “What problem will this solve for the person in the store?” It may seem like a minor distinction, but it is not. One question starts with the technology. The other starts with the reality of retail.

Today, we have far more capable technology available to us, but the fundamental challenge has not changed: Retail still happens where the customer is. The future will belong to retailers that recognize that the last 10 feet is not simply the end of a technology deployment. It is the point where all the investment, data and intelligence either become useful or they do not.

The winners will not necessarily be the companies with the most AI, the most sensors or the biggest technology budgets. They will be the companies that can consistently turn all of that intelligence into a better customer experience, a more productive employee and a better-run store. Technology proves its value not in a demo, but on the floor.​

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