Just like my partners, I was also at a conference last week. Having never attended Demandware’s annual XChange Conference before, I didn’t know quite what to expect; it was an impressive event all the way around.

I won’t even try to summarize Life is Good CEO Bert Jacobs’ keynote address about the power of optimism and charity, only to say that if you have the chance to see this speech, take it. We get to see a lot of presentations in our travels, and this was one of the most engaging, uplifting, and undeniably inspiring speeches I’ve ever seen – in our industry or any other, for that matter.

And while much of the vendor’s own content was intelligent, grounded thinking about why a cloud-based digital commerce platform is now a viable alternative to more “traditional ” solutions (highlights included Demandware’s product demonstration and Rob Garf’s panel discussing what the near-future of digital commerce would look like), for me, at least, the most intriguing things I heard came from the mouths of customers.

For example, Steve Cretney, the CIO at Land’s End, gave a presentation that embodied many of the core tenets that go into the recommendations we often make in our research; demonstrating a firm understanding of the brand, the customer, and how the two are connected before implementing technologies intended to assist that relationship. In fact, while giving the company’s background, Cretney pointed out that Land’s End has always viewed itself as a customer service organization that “just happens to sell good stuff. ” (To illustrate his point, the company’s CEO, Gary Comer, originally moved the company from Chicago to Dodgeville, WI because having taken summer vacations there, he liked the manners of the local “farmboys “- he thought they’d make for great customer service representatives).

So when a company that was set up to sell products first via catalog, and then phone, and then web noticed that channels had started landing on its head faster than it could keep up, Cretney employed some bold thinking. In his own words:

“I don’t want to figure out the omni-channel thing. I want someone else to do that for me. What I need to focus on is being with the customer; I need to focus on being the voice of warmth and humanity with her as she shops, and I simply can’t ask her to start over time she engages with me in a new channel. ” And then he said something that struck a serious chord: “And I need that not to be a big deal. “

So Cretney went with a cloud-based digital platform. His goal? “I don’t ever want to deal with mobile, or social, or whatever the next thing that comes along is. I want to always be current, but I don’t ever want to have to stand up someone else’s technology. ” In his viewpoint, the CIO’s true role isn’t to be the head of IT, he’s supposed to be the innovation enabler, and shouldn’t have to think about adapters and storage. As you might expect, he got some pushback from his staff.

Without changing a single member of his staff, Cretney set about changing minds. While IT’ers weren’t a hindrance, they were certainly uninformed: he likened the situation to asking a team of house painters who’d spent a lifetime working with only blue paint to try painting with a different color – at first, they’ll do everything they can to make that color blue.

However, starting in 2010, Cretney began a pilot in Sweden: within 3 months, they were up and running. And for Cretney and his team, they haven’t looked back since.

While his presentation was certainly the most daring I saw, Cretney’s experience wasn’t singular. Public statements and private conversations with several retailers in attendance all led the to the same sentiment: According to its customers, Demandware seems genuinely interested in (and capable of) helping them meet the challenges they face with the new ways customers are shopping today – and will shop tomorrow. And when it comes down to it, whose opinion matters more than that?