Prior to the NRF Big Show last week, I put out a newsletter article where I said I would be looking for examples of retail execution at the show. Between speaking, scheduled meetings, and the attempt at happy coincidences from wandering around, I had some luck in this area. In general, here are the themes I saw:

Integration

As retailers turn away from seeking to define omni-channel strategies to focusing on executing them, they are increasingly looking for ways to bring existing capabilities together, over adding new capabilities. For vendors, that is always a challenge to show, but I did see it – create once, publish everywhere; high-leverage solutions; a solution footprint that covers a process instead of random squares of product footprint that loosely have to do with each other.

Integration still isn’t easy, but the integration that I saw at NRF proves that it should be getting easier – if retailers implement wisely.

Innovation at the Fringes

That said, there was plenty of innovation too – but they seemed more like small steps, rather than break-through capabilities. I’ve seen “swarming behavior ” at NRF before – when price optimization launched, when WiFi network security suddenly became critical, and even last year around in-store analytics. This year, I didn’t see any real swarming behavior – except maybe around payments (we’ll get to that in a second) – and I think it is reflective of retailers needing to focus on assimilating changes and investments they’ve already made, rather than looking for the next coolest thing.

Fringe innovators need to be wary, though. A lot of times they are a handful of developers with a customer and one iteration of a product that might best be described as “niche “. If they’re not careful about their success – and have a strong plan to become a platform play – they could easily be turfed out of by larger vendors simply adding new features to their existing roadmap.

Making Things Happen at the Edges

The most exciting solutions I saw focused on helping the edges of the enterprise – particularly in stores. No, this isn’t about more mobile devices. This is about solving specific execution challenges, like helping to make all your store employees as good as your best store employees. Or making ship from store as efficient and profitable as possible. Or even just helping retail brands bring legitimacy to their local marketing efforts in a scalable way.

This problem/solution thinking is extremely valuable, I think. I saw very few solutions that were hammers in search of nails (although, in some ways, see the next section for the exception), and I was really impressed with a lot of the vendors I talked to who had explicitly thought through retailers’ pain points and how to address them. That bodes well for retail tech and the future.

Which is good, because we’ll all need a little pick-me-up before facing down the next knotty issue in retail:

And the Crowds Flocked to… Payments

Here’s the thing about payments. There is very little good to say about any of the payment innovations out there. I saw ISIS and Google Wallet both while at the show and while they have some strengths, they also have significant drawbacks that limit their market potential. But if payment innovations are so weak, then why are people drawn to them? They don’t really have a choice. Both the US and Europe face an upgrade of their payment capture devices – the US to take on EMV, and Europe to move away from the mag stripe.

Since they both have to make some pretty substantial investments, they can’t help but wish that those investments also took them forward into the future of payments. And thus, booth visits that represent hopes for a more digital payments future, but not necessarily a lot of excitement about what they see. Let’s hope that changes – for payments, the future is beginning to loom large.

And don’t forget to mark your calendars: we’ll be conducting our annual NRF recap webinar on Wednesday, February 12, so be on the lookout for an invite soon!