The spring tech conference season is coming to a close. Last, but certainly not least was Oracle’s CrossTalk, held last week outside Washington DC. Last year in talking about the conference’s legacy I mistakenly left out that the CrossTalk conference was the brainchild of Christine Lowry and Milly Pellizzari of 360Commerce, which was acquired by Oracle some years later. Now greatly expanded and in the capable hands of Rose Spicer, the conference remains one of my favorites. Retailers like Belk, Advance Auto Parts, Best Buy, Stein Mart, NetShoes from Brazil, and Sprint were present to discuss the business value gained from technology, and this year the 213 retailer attendees got to hear from [relatively] new Oracle President Mark Hurd, and [definitely] new head of Oracle Retail, Mike Webster. As always, before putting fingers to keyboard, I ask myself, “What would I want to hear about if I was a retailer who missed the event? “ 

I think the most important message I’ve gotten from CrossTalk and the other various and sundry conferences attended this spring is that our vendor community recognizes the need to continue innovating. This need is borne of ever-more empowered consumers and retailers’ race to keep up with them. In a consolidating technology marketplace where a lot of time and money is also spent integrating parts and pieces, this is a very important message for us to hear. 

Mike Webster presented a new model for aligning the retail enterprise across all functions and touch points with technology. He calls it Your Experience Platform and its three components are Actionable Insights, Optimized Operations and Connected Interactions. Wherever we meet the customer, it’s in our best interest to bring actionable insights to bear on the interaction. Every aspect of the retail enterprise must be optimized — from the supply chain all the way to the various customer touch points. And no interaction is an island – both inwardly and outwardly facing in the retail enterprise. In other words, merchandising, supply chain and store operations need to be connected to insure the retail enterprise as a whole will effectively interact with consumers across all the touch points they meet in. 

The Experience Platform is more than just a nice technology model — it’s a useful way to look at what I’m starting to think of as a post-channel world. Each of our brands promise an experience and we have to deliver that experience consistently, without breaking the bank. Too often, we believe our own PR and stop asking the customer what he or she thinks. We get away with this for a while…sales stay on course, profits might even rise, and we miss or dismiss consumer sentiment that says “you’re losing your touch. “ By the time these problems show up in aggregate top or bottom line results, we look around asking ourselves “What happened? Everyone was applauding our success…where did it go? “ Most likely we’ve stopped paying attention to those actionable insights, we haven’t realized how disconnected our interactions have become, and instead have focused solely on optimized operations. It’s another one of those stories that’s as old as retailing itself — but it happens at a faster pace than ever. 

Okay, back to the question…if I was a retailer, what would I want to hear? Here are a few bullet points for your consideration. 

• Retail is one of Oracle’s three largest verticals. The sales organization is verticalized, which means the Oracle account manager who calls on you will likely be a retail specialist rather than just a regional sales rep. You can and should expect that manager to understand your business and be able to talk shop with Line of Business Executives. And Oracle spends $4.5 billion per year on R&D. We expect as a top-three vertical, retail should get a good chunk of that money.
• Oracle plans to solicit more feedback from customers. Mr. Webster promises that Oracle is listening. A significant amount of budget has been allocated for an infrastructure to facilitate better interactions. In his words, “We want to be held accountable for performance “ and also build a more responsive roadmap. In other words, their call to action for an Experience Platform has to extend to themselves.
• Oracle users have successfully used the suite to support business transformation. This was made very clear by John Belk, President and COO of Belk, Sprint, Stein Mart and numerous others (a total of 39 retailers from around the world presented at the event this year).
• Oracle’s BI apps are available on mobile devices. Like other vendors, support for tablets and smart phones both inside and outside the enterprise has been made available. Retailers, it’s on you to provide the infrastructure to get those applications going. As RSR partner Steve Rowen is fond of saying, “Without a mobile store infrastructure, store managers and associates are like gang members bringing knives to a gun fight. “ It is long past time. Okay, maybe you didn’t really want to hear this part, but it’s my obligation to tell you anyway.

Another conference season comes to a close. We’re encouraged with what we’ve heard from retailers and vendors both — but remain concerned about overall industry responsiveness. We know we’re in another of those bubble eras, where some new technologies are being wildly over-valued in their IPO’s. So we are challenged to continue innovating without getting caught up in the next bright shiny object that delivers little actual business value. But real change is also occurring. We encourage retailers to continue working to expand their outward facing footprint, even as they look to shore up or replace the foundations underpinning those efforts. That’s what I got from CrossTalk 2011.