The Launch of NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific — Day 1 recap
It’s here! The inaugural NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show in Asia-Pacific opened today with much excitement and enthusiasm from the Retail industry. The highly-anticipated, retail-focused event is taking place across three action-packed days from 11–13 June 2024 at the centre of the most diverse retail market in the world.
Building on the success of the annual retail show in New York, over 5,000 attendees and 300 global industry leaders and solution providers have come together in the iconic Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre in Singapore to share regionally-tailored Retail expert insights and game-changing technology that will empower retailers to drive growth in their own businesses across Asia Pacific.
The day kicked off at our booth co-located with one of our key partners, SAP. For those that missed it, there were some recent global announces from SAP Saphire in Orlando last week which can be found here.
As so wonderfully described by Martine Reardon, Senior Advisor for Retail Insights and Content Creation for NRF, in her opening remarks, the first day of NRF brings back nostalgic childhood memories of excitement and wonder for the treasures of insight that will be unlocked in the days ahead. I had the opportunity to catch top-tier thought leadership, demonstrations, and case studies encompassing the latest technological advancements — including groundbreaking AI, augmented reality, machine learning, facial recognition, robotics and more.
Here are my rapid-fire takeouts from Day 1 of NRF APAC 2024!
A Focus on Customer, or to reference the opening keynote speaker from Domino’s, Christopher Thomas Moore, “a fanatical obsession with the customer wins every time.”
Customer was truly at the heart of every panel, keynote, and engagement today. However, the challenge we all face is meeting our customers not where they were, but where they are and where they will continue to move towards. In recent years, fundamental changes to consumer behaviours and expectations have been the catalyst for rapid digital transformation across retailers and consumer goods companies.
In the fast-paced retail landscape, understanding changing consumer needs is key to delivering a superior customer experience and gaining a competitive advantage. Three in five consumers say their priorities keep shifting in response to everything that is happening in the world. However, 64% of consumers wish that companies would respond faster to meet their evolving needs, and 88% of executives think their customers are changing more quickly than their business can keep up.
In his opening address, Poh Chi Chuan, Singapore Tourism Board’s Executive Director — Exhibitions and Conferences, discussed how consumers are increasingly seeking emotional connections with brands and products, and are willing to pay more for these experiences. Keynote speaker, Christopher Thomas-More, Chief Digital Officer at Domino’s Pizza, highlighted this trend in the digital space — with fascinating insights into the innovation journey which has led them to become the world’s No 1 pizza company.
At 60 years old, Domino’s has managed to transform into a digital-first business by fully and consistently embracing the tech revolution head-on. Christopher emphasised that the secret to their success is a willingness to engage directly with their customers and frontline employees about their pain points so they can innovate with purpose and intent.
This innovation has resulted in reformulating their pizzas, creating real-time tracking of pizza delivery, rethinking value by allowing customers to save the buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) ‘emergency pizza’ for later consumption, designing a specific delivery vehicle kitted out with specific pizza and ancillary product transportation, and finally launching the first pizza delivery autonomous vehicle.
The Domino’s story resonates with AWS’ vision of powering business growth through digital innovation. A key takeaway was the importance of harnessing accurate data to demonstrate business value — helping achieve the necessary buy-in from company leaders, teams, and customers to enable future innovation. At the same time, innovation delivery business checkpoints ensure alignment and flow-through to execution arms, such as marketing to delivery activation against customer need.
Delivering Seamless, Personalised Retail Experiences
Both Domino’s and Uniqlo illustrated the power of new technologies in creating the ideal retail experience. Uniqlo Global CIO, Takahiro Tambara, delved into how the world’s largest fast retailer is leveraging information from digital technologies to provide customer-centric clothes — delivering what customers want, where and when they want them. For example, RFID tags have been adopted to digitise product information and provide visibility from the source to POS checkout. Other benefits include streamlining inventory management, while self-checkout technology creates a smooth, effortless customer experience in-store.
Over at the AWS booth, our specialists have been busy showcasing how retailers can deliver exceptional digital shopping experiences through technologies like Amazon OpenSearch Service for real-time application monitoring, Amazon SageMaker to build, deploy and train machine learning models, and Amazon IVS to create engaging live stream and interactive video experiences.
Doug Tiffan, AWS’ Head of Solution Strategy for Fashion & Apparel, explained how retailers should diligently consider their customer journey from pre-purchase to post-purchase. Doug also highlighted various AWS services and solutions that are assisting Retail businesses to push the boundaries of innovation at every point of the customer engagement. Whether your customers are seeking personalised recommendations and promotions, AI shopping assistants, enhanced tailored customer service, or fast and transparent product delivery, there are state-of-the-art AWS services and solutions and partner offerings that can be adapted to meet your customer on their journey.
AWS’ APAC Retail Tech Leader, Joshua Nathanielsz, walked us through the countless opportunities for personalisation at scale along the customer journey. His demonstration of Amazon Bedrock revealed the capabilities of generative AI in tailoring content and advertising at scale according to individual consumer preferences, right down to the use of variable attributes, product descriptions, and colour palettes — all automatically generated within seconds.
How to Drive Digital Transformation
Just as important as understanding the why of digital transformation is learning how to implement a large transformation project. At the AWS booth, Lucy Moffatt, Head of Retail Consumer Goods and Supply Chain ANZ at AWS, was joined by Mandy Ross, Super Retail Groups’ (SRG) Chief Information and Digital Officer, to discuss the benefits of migrating to AWS cloud services — including cost savings of over $2 million a year.
The key learning for SRG was that transformation must first and foremost be business-led, as opposed to technology-led. While retail is often focused on day-to-day operations, it’s essential not to lose sight of long-term strategy and deliver wins along the way.
The Newstore sponsored panel discussion facilitated by Marcella Larsen with Phillip Dixon, Private Equity Executive at Aurelius, Peter Clarke, Chief Technical Officer at Lorna Jane, and Peter Ratcliffe, Head of Technology at R.M. Williams, echoed the need for an incremental approach to omnichannel transformation in order to bring stakeholders along on the journey.
All speakers stressed that having the right people is as crucial as the best technology — that means building trusted partnerships and a dedicated team on the ground who will champion the new ways of working. As someone who is extremely passionate about hands-on experience in retail, I particularly liked Peter Ratcliffe’s recommendation to bring folks in from your stores to be part of the technology project teams when solving process flows that directly affect how the stores operate.
Santanu Chattopadhyay, APAC Partner Tech Lead for Retail/CPG joined Jason Burke from SAS, at the SAS booth on the topic “Eliminate the Guesswork from Demand Planning with SAS Intelligent Planning on AWS.” I also wanted to highlight another partner who was featured on the AWS booth, Avataar GenAI empowered immersive retail solution, a Creator platform that is making real inroads in transforming the industry.
Another impressive fireside chat today featuring Danni Peirce CEO of 7-Eleven Singapore, Hong Kong, South China and Macau, brought home the need to innovate on behalf of your customers and be prepared to experiment on that journey. Danni also reinforced how critical first party (1P data) is to make better buying decisions that respond to customer needs.
To wrap up my first day of NRF, I attended a keynote on sustainable practices with Anne-Laure Descours, Chief Sourcing Officer at PUMA, and Mathsy Kutty, APAC Leader of The Climate Pledge at Amazon. Now in its fifth year, the pledge has over 500 signatories globally, all committed to a goal of net zero emissions by 2040. With sustainability a key issue for retailers at all stages of their digital transformation, the session was an excellent reminder of the role of accurate data in tracking our carbon footprint through products, supply chains, and manufacturing.
While my head is still buzzing from all the excitement and ideas from Day One, I can’t wait to see what Day Two has in store!
