GK Software SE isn’t a noisy, self-congratulatory company. Instead, the company, which was founded in 1990 in Saxony Germany, tends to let its actions speak for it. Without a lot of fanfare, it has become the retail software provider of choice for over 20% of the Global TOP50 Retailers, and it has recently won over 45% of new store systems installations for Tier 1 fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG) retailers.

I was asked to speak at only the second GK Retail Innovation Conference conducted by GK Software-Americas last month, in Raleigh, North Carolina. That had some significance for me, since that was once a center for POS systems innovation in the 1980’s and into the ‘90’s, and in those days I spent a lot of time there. It was in the ‘90’s that I first heard about GK Software and the company’s early adoption of “open systems” standards to help it achieve computer platform independence (a big deal in those days of proprietary POS systems). But technology innovation aside, what has made GK stand out is its focus on its customers’ successes. And it shows; the company was recently ranked at the top of the RIS Software LeaderBoard for customer satisfaction, as well as being rated as a top provider by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC.

The conference kicked off with opening remarks by GK Software America CEO Michael Jaszczyk – who proceeded to demonstrate what I mean when I said that GK isn’t a “noisy” company. Michael took (perhaps) 15 minutes to welcome the attendees, thank customers, encourage all to enjoy the event, and to kick off the agenda.

The focus at the conference this year was all about infusing GK Software’s Cloud4Retail platform with AI capabilities. But before getting into what GK is doing with AI, it’s important to acknowledge how transformative GK’s cloud-based platform has already been. It wasn’t all that long ago that retailers were deeply suspicious of becoming dependent on cloud-based solutions, especially when it came the store selling environment. Nonetheless, the company announced the availability of Cloud4Retail for the Americas in 2018, as “the first fully hosted and managed service for a true enterprise point of sale (POS) solution”. And now the question isn’t why would we implement cloud-based store systems?, but why wouldn’t we do that?

GK SE’s Global Head of Product Daniel Aurich shared a product update with the attendees that delved into “no channel/customer led” experiences as the future of retailing. As Daniel explained, customer loyalty is evolving into individualized engagement – that’s where AI comes into the picture.

AI has been all the rage on retail since at least 2019, as practical use-cases enabled by the technology have worked their way into the mainstream. But just as the company led the charge to implement open technology standards in the ‘90’s, and later implemented store systems in the cloud in 2018, GK Software has been committed to AI since it acquired prudsys AG (2017), a leader in artificial intelligence applications for online commerce. Since then, the company has been implementing AI into its customer intelligence, pricing, and promotions capabilities. And that leads to GK Engage.

The intent of GK Engage is to help retailers transition towards more individualized services- as opposed to generic recommendations – for customers. Engage makes it possible for retailers to offer behavior-driven rewards in a highly targeted and efficient way. The company has developed a “Loyalty Toolkit” that moves retailers away from blanket offers all the way to autonomous offers in real-time to each customer.

The next iteration of these capabilities is encompassed in GK AIR (“AI for Retail”). Both CEO/Chairman Michael Scheibner and (later) the company’s Chief Innovation Evangelist Orit Bar-Ad shared that the aim of GK AIR is to enable real-time, personalized recommendations and offers, and dynamic pricing within the platform – across any consumer touchpoint. These recommendations and offers are based not only on past consumer shopping behaviors, but also predicted outcomes from those actions. The goal is to improve loyalty, sales, margins, and shopping cart value – plus achieve an overall reduction in cart abandonments.

The dynamic pricing component of GK AIR uses Item Master data from a retailer’s ERP or PIM (product information management) system, internal sales and customer interaction data, and external data to calculate price elasticity and project sales at a very granular level, for initial and regular pricing, and for markdown optimization.

Although GK Software has been thought of as primarily a POS solution for FMCG (grocery, pharmacy, convenience) and General Merchandise retailers, the company has a strong presence across segments, including Fashion & Luxury, Specialty, DIY, and even B2B. I was surprised to learn that cloud-based GK AIR already cranks out over 30 million+ recommendations per hour (as I said at the beginning, GK Software isn’t noisy about its achievements!).

Wrapping It Up

What do I make of all of this? First of all, I’m really glad I attended. What GK is doing tracks very closely to what RSR has seen in its research, that multiple separate selling channels are a thing of the past – consumers expect an integrated selling environment that spans touchpoints. With its “no channel” approach, GK is already there.

Secondly, I have a humble proposal for GK Software: don’t be afraid to toot your own horn a little louder!