As a certified Baby Boomer, I’ve grown quite accustomed to being catered to by every possible marketer over the course of my life. There were a lot of us: we had all the disposable income, all the cache, and most of the self-absorbed fun. Well, as Dylan (technically a pre-boomer!) said way back when, the times they are a’changin’. Last week brought us three announcements from retailers that show just how much. And the UI we saw demonstrated at SAP’s Analyst Base Camp added fuel to that fire.

By 2014, people born after 1980 will represent 50% of the US workforce and will be in their peak disposable income years. That’s just freaky. As for me, the best barometer of changes in my spending habits is the fact that I have owned my current car longer than any other car in my entire life (going on 10 years!). The younger generation who works for us, with us, and spends with us is going to be a force to be reckoned with. And we have to learn how to connect with them.

In that context, is it any real surprise that Neiman Marcus entered into a joint venture with Target, Nordstrom entered into a joint venture with TopShop, and Lord & Taylor (perhaps the most ‘venerable’ of all) became the exclusive sponsor of Project Runway’s tenth season? Wall Street analysts may be downgrading some of the luxury retailers, but those retailers are taking steps to insure relevancy with Millennials. I suspect that’s one of the reasons behind Saks’ participation in “Fashion Star ” as well. As my friend Tom Scotti of Consensus Advisors pointed out, this isn’t just a win for Target and TopShop. This is a big deal for Neiman and Nordstrom (and L & T). It’s all about retaining relevancy.

This has profound implications for technology providers supporting retailers. At SAP’s analyst base camp, I was really struck by a BI demo. The simplest way to describe the UI is “KPI Widgets. ” Customizing a screen for managers was about selecting the KPI widget he or she wants and putting it on the device. For example, I have a widget on my desktop that tells me the current temperature and may issue a red alert if we’re expecting wind, rain, riptides or other weather anomaly. I also have a widget that shows me how hard my computer is working. Imagine a merchant who has a widget that issues an alert on a suddenly hot product. Or perhaps I want a product-specific widget. Like “How’s my TopShop store within a store trending today? ” Heck, even the word “trending ” is a social media metaphor.

These metaphors are all driven by the millennial generation. Boomers and pre-boomers, live in a columnar world. Give me spreadsheets! Bowl me over with data! Millennials (thankfully) don’t have the patience.

Where do I see these changes coming?

• BI – As earlier mentioned, BI cannot be a firehouse of columnar data, or even the old red light, yellow light, green light dash board. It has to have some flash, and some pop. Short and sweet.
• POS – Unless you are in a conveyor-like checkout lane (mass merchants and supermarkets), the next generation of POS is going to look really, really different. We expect it to be an extension of the eCommerce engine, with distributed order management baked in, and an opportunity for customer interaction. I don’t think it’s going to be device agnostic, at least not as long as we’re managing cash, but it’s got to be simpler to use, yet educational in nature. There’s a lot of discovery that happens in an all-channel world. Think of an employee-facing Amazon.com.
• Planogram – While the planogram has always been pretty visual, I see it getting simpler, and a feedback loop getting built in. Something like, “Sure, you asked me to put the product here, but there’s a post in the way. ” Or “I need more facings, the customer traffic is too lumpy for me to keep a single facing stocked, even if the overall sales don’t seem to support multiple facings. “

On the flip side, I see the science-based apps getting even deeper. I expect the math to grow ever more complex. “Big data ” sounds great, but making it hum…now that’s a challenge.

These are just some off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts, driven by the events of the past week. I know there are lots more. How do you see the rise of the Millennials affecting your business? Either side, employees or customers? How are you going to make way for them?