“… there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. “

Machiavelli, The Prince

The entire retail industry is in the throes of a digital transformation, and Aptos wants to lead the change. That was the message delivered at the annual Aptos Engage user conference held in Las Vegas last week, by CEO & Culture Leader Noel Goggin. When Noel stated that “the three attributes of new retail are agility, scale, and speed “, he wasn’t only talking about the retail business; the same criteria applies to technology companies that serve retailers too.

As a matter of fact, that’s a good lens through which to view how Aptos is changing itself, creating a platform that is specifically designed to be agile enough to fit many variations of the retail operational model, and establishing an organization that is capable of helping retailers in their own digital transformation efforts. As Seth Brody of Apax Partners (a private equity company that has made a substantial investment in Aptos) said during his presentation at Engage, “Aptos is going through its own digital transformation “.

Aptos has taken the time and energy to develop its new “omni-first ” Aptos ONE retail platform because the company’s customers are grappling with fundamental changes to their value propositions and operating models. As virtually everyone everywhere knows, these changes are being triggered by the pervasive and rapid adoption of “smart ” – and usually mobile – consumer technologies. As Noel described it, companies are required to “retail differently ” by changing to a “brand mindset – one that is customer focused “. But there are “no blueprints “; each retailer must design its own customer journey in the context of the Brand.

That in turn dictates a different kind of enabling technology solution than was available in times past. Aptos ONE is the next step in the evolution of the company from cloud-enabled to cloud-native architectures, built using state-of-the-art software development concepts pioneered by “net-native ” companies like Salesforce, called microservices. Buzzword alert! Here’s Google’s description: “Microservices is a software development technique—a variant of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services. In a microservices architecture, services are fine-grained and the protocols are lightweight. ”

An Era Characterized By Constant Change

What a business person needs to know is that microservices-based solutions are less expensive to change. And that’s really important, because the digital transformation that the retail industry is going through is the outcome of a general recognition that old static and stable retail model is dying. Today’s retail model is constantly changing.

When any company decides to adopt this kind of a technology solution, it really means that it is adopting a roadmap to the future, more than just a portfolio of point solutions. Thinking about what was being presented at Engage, I jotted down the three technology adoption techniques that I’ve either been directly involved in or have witnessed during my career:

• (1)A company can alter the technology to fit its proprietary way of doing things (that’s the “old ” way, circa 1975-2000);
• (2)A company can alter the business process around the capabilities and limitations of the technology (that’s the “gen-2 ” way, circa 2000-2010), or:
• (3)A company can optimize the business process to get the greatest advantage from what technology can do for it (that’s the new way, but the enabling technologies have to be agile and scalable, like the ones touted as “net-native ” or “cloud ” solutions).

In an era characterized by constant change, process has to come first, technology second. To address that, Aptos is transforming itself into an organization that can guide retailers to get the best out of the enabling technologies to deliver their own Brand vision to (hopefully) happy and loyal consumers. Aptos has established three organizational elements: an “outcomes driven ” global customer operations organization led by Aptos COO Steve Towe, a retail transformation group led by former NRF SVP Vicki Cantrell, and a retail innovation group led by former RSR partner Nikki Baird. Steve described the operations support organization as one that is “organized for international scale and growth ” in partnership with Convergys, to offer 24X7 monitoring, problem resolution, and resource scaling. Vicki described the transformation group as both a “customer advocacy ” function inside of Aptos, as well as a service offering to retailers to help them identify ways to deliver a better Brand experience. Nikki’s group was established to help retailers identify innovations that can create new value for consumers and build sales and profits for retailers.

Aptos ONE: An Almost Plain-English Description

So, what does Aptos ONE do? As Noel described it, it’s an “omni-first ” retail platform, meaning that it is built around the fundamental assumption that consumers use both the digital and physical selling channels in harmony to make their purchase decisions. The platform enables a “single view ” for customer, product, and order (meaning that no matter how or from where that information is accessed, it will be consistent). Aptos ONE enables three “experiences “: the customer experience, the employee experience, and the business partner experience. Those experiences are enabled by a set of common microservices (meaning, they can be used by many business functions), which in turn is supported by “retail platform services ” (for example, the data structures that support a single view of customer, product, and order information). All of that sits on top of the really technical stuff that make net-native solutions work, such as API’s ( “application programming interface “), “orchestration ” (something that manages the order of execution for the microservices that a process calls on), and dynamic resource allocation (the ability to add more computing power when its needed).

In his presentation, Noel Goggin stressed that Aptos ONE isn’t intended to be merely a re-engineered version of the company’s legacy offerings. New “omni-first ” functionality has been built, for example, an enterprise order management (EOM) capability, which Noel described as “an agile, lighter alternative to Manhattan and Sterling order management “. “EOM is the heart of omni-channel retailing, ” said Noel, adding that “some people think that all you need to do is use your eCommerce <solution>… but it turns out to be very complex. ”

Transitioning

Aptos is offering those interested in Aptos ONE an “accelerate ” program that features “pre-configured best practices “. And Aptos ONE is extensible, so it’s possible for retailers to add their own microservices-based capabilities without altering the base code.

But current Aptos customers interested in Aptos ONE face an adoption dilemma. Like other companies whose portfolios are built from rollups of “legacy ” solutions (Symphony Retail, Infor, Oracle, and JDA all come to mind), the new solutions have to interface with the old ones. For example, Aptos’ latest acquisition, TXT Retail, is a robust retail planning system that is still winning new customers and has a fiercely loyal current customer base. And Aptos’ BI & Analytics solution is based on Quantisense, a company it acquired in 2014. Finally of course, Aptos is still actively selling its popular Aptos Store suite, which features version 6.4 of its point-of-sale system. All of those solutions pre-date Aptos ONE. Aptos will need to address how it will help current customers protect their investments if and when they migrate to the new platform. And current customers interested in Aptos ONE will need to be patient, as the company is in the early stages of creating business capabilities on the platform.

Do Something Remarkable

Process re-engineering and technology transition issues notwithstanding, Goggin and the Aptos leadership team have an almost missionary zeal to help retailers transform into “omni-first ” companies. It has strong support on its Board of Directors. The earlier-mentioned Seth Brody talked about his company’s commitment to helping Aptos achieve its vision, by giving it “the time and money ” to “get to the Promised Land. ”

Another Engage keynote presenter, Home Depot‘s ex-CEO Frank Blake, gave a plain spoken and often humorous talk about leadership (with obvious allusions to the Aptos team). One comment he made that seemed to relate perfectly to what Aptos is trying to help retailers do: “Retail is not a ‘check to box’ exercise. Do something remarkable! “