[On-demand]Product Management Webinar: Product in Retail

Janna: All right. Hello everybody. Come on in. Welcome, welcome. I know that everyone is just settling in and, getting everything loaded up now. So we’re gonna get started in just a few moments, but in the meantime, I just wanna say hello. Big welcome to people are joining. Find a way over to the chat in Zoom here and say hello.

Let us know where you’re calling in from. Let us know, what you’re looking to get out of today’s session. Say hi, and let us know that you’re here. We’re gonna give people a moment to, come on in and, find their way round. Find your way to the chat. Say hello. Let us know where you’re coming from.

Find the q and a as well ’cause we’re gonna be using that to capture any of your questions. You’ll be able to up vote and, see other questions that are, that are in here. And we’ll kick off in, in just a moment. We’re gonna let some people get settled

and as I said, welcome folks who are just joining. We are going to be kicking off in just a moment. Thanks Andrew for making sure that the chat is working. That’s great. Anybody else around, say hello. Jump in, let us know where you’re calling from [00:01:00] and, we look forward to chatting with you today.

All right. I can see some folks coming in now. Dan from Winnipeg. Amazing. Hey Dan. I’m also from Canada. Some people don’t’ that, but I’m from, Toronto originally and I can see that we’ve got, Orion from India. Awesome. Welcome, welcome. Come on in, say hello. Um, glad to have you here. If anybody wants to use the chat for networking as well, feel free to drop your LinkedIn.

Feel free to drop while you’re here, what you’re looking to learn. That’s always useful stuff. And also find your way around to the q and a section, because that’s where we could drop our questions and, we’ll be able to, go through them as we chat today. But let’s, let’s start kicking off. We have, this, this is gonna be an excellent session today, so this is actually a new format.

As you know, we run a series of webinars here at ProdPad, the product [00:02:00] expert series, and we run these things and have done for, years now. So we’ve got a huge back history of ones that you can go through. Today is going to be a deep dive into the retail product management world, and we’re running it as a, panel where we’re gonna be, asking questions and diving into everyone’s experiences.

And so these webinars are always with a focus on the expertise, always with a focus on the learning, the sharing. All of our past webinars have been recorded. Today’s will be recorded as well. So you’ll have access to that and you can see the whole back history of all our webinars at prodpad.com/webinars.

You will have a chance to ask questions, so feel free to jump into the q and a and drop your questions. And feel free to use the chat to connect with your fellow product people here today. For this webinar, we have partnered up with Gate One Consulting, who is one of ProdPad Partners on a day-to-day basis anyways, but is working with us on this webinar to help, make it [00:03:00] as magical as it’s gonna be, right.

So where we’ve got Teja here from Gate one, who is going to, I’ll do a full intro in a short while, but she’s gonna be our moderator and is going to help guide us through. In the meantime, before we jump into the guts of the webinar, I wanna talk you through a little bit of what we do here at ProdPad.

So, ProdPad is a tool that was built by myself and my co-founder Simon. We were both product people and we need the tools to do our own jobs, and they simply didn’t exist. So we started putting something together and now it’s being used by thousands of team around the world. And essentially it’s a product management platform that helps you make sure that you’re building the right stuff.

It helps you stay away from some of the bad habits that you might be falling into and helps you craft better product management processes that ultimately lead you to. Reaching your goals, meeting your outcomes, getting the right products built. And also being more confident in your decisions as you do it.

It brings the whole team on board with the process. So it’s a tool that’s absolutely free to try. We’ve got a free trial area. We have a sandbox, which is preloaded with existing data and [00:04:00] roadmaps and other examples of how product management systems work. So jump in, give it a try and let us know how it works for you.

I want to introduce, Teja, who’s here with us from Gate one. She’s a transformation leader with deep expertise in digital strategy and product management. She’s led large scale operational change across sales and service teams using data-driven insight to un angle complex problems and elevate the customer experience.

She brings a strong mix of strategic thinking, cross-functional leadership, and a passion for building better, more innovative work, ways of working. So I wanna hand over to Teja. Everybody say hello. And Teja is going to, kick us off with our panel, introduce our folks today, and we’ll go from there.

Teja: Thank you so much for the introduction, I’m really thrilled to be here. So, like JAna said, I’m Teja. I’m part of Gate One based out of New York City, so I see a few of you in New York. So Gate One Consulting is a digital and business transformation consultancy. We have a lot of different capabilities, but the ones that I’m most passionate about that we get to collaborate with ProdPad [00:05:00] on are around really all things products.

So product strategy, product management. And also blended with a really strong change management foundation because we all know that people and change is at the heart of every successful transformation. So really excited to be here and di dive more into product and retail. I also wanted to introduce our amazing panelists that we have.

They all bring such unique and diverse experiences, so we’re in store for some really insightful conversations today. So our first panelist is Ana Chakrabarti. She brings a rich background in product leadership, retail strategy, and customer experience. She’s previously worked at Dunelm’s and Sainsbury’s and spearheaded the rollout of multiple digital applications.

And fun fact, her career actually started in a handmade chocolate factory. So Ana, you’ve really been creating delightful experiences from day one. We also have Andrew Wagner on our board, who is the lead product manager at Macy’s, where he drives omnichannel shopping experiences across discovery, checkout, and fulfillment.

With 10 plus years of product leadership experience, he scaled [00:06:00] cross-functional teams and launched market differentiating solutions at both Fortune 500 retailers and high growth startups outside of work. Andrew likes to take on Iron Man triathlons and enjoy spending time with his three kids. So Andrew, you take endurance to a new level outside of product.

And, we also have our final panelist, Fabrice Klar, who is the Director of Product and Technology at Boots, one of UK’s largest pharmacy led health and beauty retailers, where he drives digital transformation and customer centric innovation. He brings over 20 years of experience in product strategy, omnichannel experience, and large scale retail technology.

And fun fact, Fabrice told me that he enjoys embarrassing his teenage kids by DJing at local events and community festivals in North London. So next time I’m in town, I would love and invite Fabrice. But first off, massive thank you to everyone that is able to make it. And all of our panelists, I know this is the busiest time of the year for retailers, so I really, really appreciate you taking the time to, be here with us today, whether you’re [00:07:00] watching this live or on the recording.

Thanks for your time. And quick disclaimer before we dive into some of our panelists discussions. So, a lot of the opinions and views that we wanna talk through today are the opinions of the individuals and not necessarily tied to the companies. But I wanted to start out with Black Friday. So Black Friday, cyber Monday just recently happened, and we’re seeing that it’s no longer just a one day event, right?

We’re seeing this stretched into a week long, month long, a digital event that is AI powered with different shopping experiences and also social media playing a huge role in the way that buyers are making decisions. So, for anyone tuning in live. Please feel free to drop in the chat what you bought for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Always looking for some good deals and some excuses to do some shopping. But for our panelists, I wanna start out with, how does this Black Friday season compare to previous years? What trends or what shifts are you really seeing, this time around. We can start off with Andrew. 

Andrew: Yeah, sure.

Thanks for the [00:08:00] intro and appreciate that. Great question. Coming off the busiest time of year for many retailers, yeah, so looking at, black Friday and Cyber Monday, even giving Tuesday, I think what I’m noticing, not just at Macy’s, but across, you know, my own personal experience within shopping and looking for different deals or gifts, is that things are really starting earlier, right?

So, it’s not just black Friday, right? Stores aren’t opening at midnight and, you know, it’s focused on a lot of in-store and in-person shopping. I think there’s a lot of retailers who are spreading this out. You’re seeing decorations at companies like Target and Home Depot, come out earlier, right?

So these seasons are kind of getting longer and I think all the retailers are really trying to figure out, how long can we push it, before it becomes too unacceptable to be seeing, back to school things, before back to school or Christmas trees before Christmas.

And I see a lot of daily deals, right? So it’s like 12 days of deals with many retailers trying to get people to come back [00:09:00] after a specific date. But also trying to promote that discount and trying to help that customer see this value.

That’s what I’m seeing. 

Teja: That’s a really good point of just like personalizing a lot of these deals for that specific brand. ’cause you’re competing against so many different other brands as well. Ana, what have you been seeing in the market? 

Ana: I think value is just continuing to be such a big factor when people are shopping.

So are they still going for the big ticket items? Are they thinking a little bit differently about what’s important to them? You know, black Friday is very closely, as we know, followed by Christmas and purse strings are stretched heavily. In the UK it’s been a challenging time and it’s becoming even more challenging.

And I think we are seeing those challenges hit, stores and hit our online shopping habits. And, I think we are having to think differently as retailers. I think the other thing is that people are also savvy shoppers. Is the Black Friday deal really a deal? Are you really getting a discount because we are not [00:10:00] necessarily getting the true picture as a consumer.

And I think people are also quite savvy to that. They’re, checking across, different capabilities on the internet to see whether they’re actually getting the best deal or not, but actually have prices changed and now there’s more tooling that tells you the history of what the prices have been.

So am I really getting a better deal on Black Friday itself? So we need to think a little bit differently as to how we approach these key campaign time periods and how do we make sure that the we’re being really true to the campaign and truth to the customer so that they’re getting the best deal.

Teja: That’s a really good point. ’cause even now with AI shopping agents, it’s so much easier to research and really find out if you’re getting the best deal in the market. That’s phenomenal. Fabrice, what are you seeing in the market? 

Fabrice: Well for us, I mean, black Friday is really big and I think I agree with a lot of what’s been said.

I think it, it feels like it starts earlier definitely in terms of shoppers starting to look for deals and start to plan. I guess they’re, as you said, they’re [00:11:00] savvy. I think I agree with that. So we sort of saw that demand starting to peak a lot earlier, maybe this year. I do agree that in the UK especially, it does feel like.

Black Friday’s a really good opportunity to get all of your Christmas presents out of the way and again, benefit from those deals. So I think that behavior was definitely, comes through in our data where it’s things like slightly more expensive purchases, electricals, those kinds of categories seem to have done really well for us.

The other thing I found interesting outside of my direct business was just the variety of deals and businesses that I thought were, I guess on the one hand I could say jumping on the Black Friday bandwagon, but I thought there was just so much out there on the day. I mean, I was getting emails about discounted airport parking and I was like, oh wow, okay.

That’s a Black Friday thing too now. So it is just really interesting to see, concert tickets, music merch, like just that variety of, I think businesses , that are kind of jumping onto this, is interesting. And I think it does say something about the consumer and the consumer being offer led and, deal driven [00:12:00] increasingly.

Teja: That’s a really good point. I didn’t realize how many more options and newer brands are kind of capitalizing on this opportunity as well. Maybe we can shift over more to digital investments in omni-channels. I know retail has been in an interesting space for a while now because a lot of the focus has been moving more towards quality over quantity, meaning fewer stores and more emphasis on creating an actually meaningful experience for our customers.

And I think a lot of brands are starting to double down on omnichannel strategies and what that really means, and they’re making more digital investments than they have before. So for example, I know at Macy’s, you guys have been undergoing the bold new chapter strategy to kind of modernize operations and experiences.

So Andrew, I’m just curious from your perspective, how have you been able to balance digital innovation and still maintaining a strong physical presence? 

Andrew: Yeah. This a big one, especially for a company, like the size of Macy’s, right? So I think one of the biggest keys to like the success of this is actually like the [00:13:00] company setup and funding, right?

So, execs need to be top down saying that this is a priority, right? We’re gonna steer this big cruise ship and we’re gonna head this way. And, at the end of this trip is an experience that ties, physical stores to digital, right? We had earnings today, our, CEO, Tony, every earnings is mentioning, you know, the omnichannel customer experience, like word for word.

So it is very important and I think that when we have that buy-in from the executive level, then you can push from inside of your product org, for different things to prioritize, right? Because what we’re trying to do on the digital side, you know, offer customers that kind of like in-store experience of I walk into the store, you’re greeted by someone, how can I help you?

What are you looking for? So how can you help emulate that on a, website? And I think tying all of that together is really how you succeed in really, like any kind of like omni-channel business is, really just like that executive [00:14:00] level buy-in and then that helps you push for the right product features or feature sets or even brand new products that really tie these experiences together.

Teja: Yeah, that makes sense because I feel like with in-person shopping it’s a little bit easier to create that emotional connection and loyalty feeling. But with a lot of advancements in personalization, I think we can start creating some similar aspects to loyalty online as well. So that’s a really good point.

I know Boots is also prioritizing consistency across physical stores and all of their different channels. So Fabrice, what has been your experience balancing this digital and physical aspect, and what are some challenges and opportunities that you’re seeing? 

Fabrice: I mean, I think, and this isn’t specific to Boots, I feel like in the retail industry in general, I’ve been in a few retailers now.

I feel like we’ve been talking about omnichannel for a long time, but I don’t know that we’ve actually put that much action behind it until more recently. And I feel that’s because for a while, a lot of exec and [00:15:00] leadership teams still sort of felt like it was one or the other. And there was still sometimes even like this inner competition of like your online teams competing with your store teams for numbers and for share of, wallet and things like that, which is

kind of absurd when you think about it, because as a consumer, ultimately you shop your mission in terms of how convenient it is for you at the time. And if the retailer’s doing it right, I think you’re enabling your customers to sometimes, browse things on the sofa and purchase them, or decide to click and collect in store, or decide to purchase in store if you’re at a train station or in an airport, like for boots.

So un understanding how to create that connection, I think has become increasingly more important and is something we definitely talk about more. And I think where we’re starting to see a lot of value is also to think about like, where in the experience is it important? It’s not, and again, this might be my opinion, but I’m not sure that everything has to be connected.

I think if you’re connecting the data layer up, if you’re making sure that your customers are recognized, your loyalty follows you, [00:16:00] regardless of channel, those kind of really important sort of customer touch points that then lead to the purchase. I think as long as you’re connecting those things up, the customer will feel like they are recognized regardless of how they choose to shop with you.

I think that’s a really important point that we need to start focusing on, and when you start to move into the importance of data with AI and agent commerce, like again, I think it just says those are the areas we need to invest and focus in. And I feel like leadership teams are starting to get that and starting to invest in the right places.

Teja: Yeah. So you mentioned a really interesting point about sometimes it does make sense to create that seamless experience and sometimes it doesn’t. I’m curious, when does it not make as much sense to create that like seamless omnichannel experience? 

Fabrice: Difficult question. But I suppose, there are things that you’re never gonna replicate to the same level That’s true in a store, right?

To your point, that experience of going into a store, being able to speak to someone, there are elements that you can do digitally. And some businesses have done that fantastically well. But again, when it comes to like trust advice, if [00:17:00] you want to go speak to a pharmacist in store, like those are all things that are slightly more difficult, I think.

And there’s a local aspect to that as well that you have to think about. So I, I think it’s picking and choosing like what are those parts of the journey and those missions where omnichannels really important. And maybe focusing on those first rather than thinking you have to connect everything up.

I think that’s sort of where I was going with it. 

Teja: No, that makes complete sense on giving the consumer enough variety so they can pick what’s convenient to them at the moment. That makes sense. And Ana, so based on your experience at Dun Elm and Sainsbury’s, what are some like really big digital investments that you’ve seen create some meaningful change or business impact?

Ana: So I would have to say, I think one of the biggest things that’s happened is at Dunelm they have finally joined the 21st century and launched an app. And that has been a really big change for them. So that app launched this year. It’s been really exciting. There’s been some really good feedback about [00:18:00] it.

There’s lots more that they are planning to do and come through, and they’re also dedicating more team. Resources to be able to build out those capabilities. And instead of it being, a small trial and a pilot, it is now going to have dedicated people working on it, which is really exciting.

They’re quite behind the curve on this, but I think the aim is that they accelerate quickly. So they’ve been talking through what that plan could look like, the different phases, and then how can they actually understand more about what their customer needs are because they don’t have a loyalty scheme at the moment.

So again, behind the curve with other retailers, but hoping to catch up on those things. I think what’s been really interesting when I look at some of the retailers I’ve worked at, so for instance, you know, I mentioned Dunelm. Sainsbury’s, they’ve been doing more and more with Nectar, which is their loyalty scheme that they’re joined up with amongst other retailers.

And one interesting capability that’s come out of Sainsbury’s is Nectar 360 Pollen. And what they’ve called it is their unified retail media platform, to drive brand growth. And the key [00:19:00] thing about it is that it’s been built in-house at Sainsbury’s, and it’s a unified platform to help understand shopper behavior, and their aim is to drive some

sales, real results. And they’re actually starting to onboard clients onto the platform as well. So the theory being that Nectar 360 Pollen lets you plan and book and activate campaigns across your media touchpoints. You can connect it in store online with offsite media, you’ve got a unified experience.

You’ve got personalized customer journey being supported Within that, they’re using, AI powered audience buildings. So they’re using their first party data within the Nectar scheme. They’re using gen AI tooling to, basically create target audiences they can target. What they’re, focusing on.

They can create conversational ai, they can do segmentation, they can start doing analysis about what’s happening within that. And, they’ve also got multi-touch attribution modeling so that they can look at different touch points, they can visualize how campaigns are [00:20:00] performing. They’ve got dashboards.

I swear I’m not working for them. But what I’m saying is you have a retailer like Sainbury’s that is known for having your loaf of bread and your pint of milk. And on the tech side, they have gone beyond just getting a promotion to a customer. They’ve gone beyond having a loyalty scheme now building platforms and growing their tech capabilities.

So it’s something to look out for. I think more and more retailers will be using more and more tools like this, and they’ll see how they can monetize it so they’re not just thinking about what they’re doing. Behind, in their bricks and mortar, they’re going beyond that. But one thing I did want to touch on around digital capabilities and investments is M and S , also another company I worked for, for a very long time, really unfortunate that they went through terrible cyber attack.

So I think the key thing to call out there is you just need to be making sure you’re protecting the brand that you’re working for, but protecting the customers at the heart of it. And just doing much better in that [00:21:00] vein. So I’d say be bold, be brave. It’s okay to fail fast and learn faster when you’re building things, but we do need to think more about the wider business impact and how quickly you can recover and restore customer confidence if things go wrong.

Often being on different programs of work, cybersecurity can be an afterthought. Oh, you’ve got to do some pen testing. So it’s important to bring people on the journey. When you want to launch a new innovation, how do you truly get there? 

Teja: That’s fabulous. I love that. It’s really about building loyalty and trust.

That ties in really nicely to this next topic around AI and how it’s transforming retail, but also just every industry in general. So I want to dive more into beyond just personalization, how AI is really transforming the retail space, because it’s no longer about just smarter recommendations, but it’s also about accelerating our speed to market and really differentiating from our competitors.

I know you mentioned there’s opportunities for us to build something in-house versus actually own and own the IPE versus, outsource. So, maybe we [00:22:00] can start out with Andrew. Where are you seeing the biggest transformation in retail with ai and where can AI really, really help? 

Andrew: Yeah. So I think from the like product management perspective, of course there’s like the product work, right?

So day to day, how are we actually working? How are we writing stories or documents? There’s a lot of tools now that help speed that up. And then other ways that even I’ve used it is like competitive analysis, right? I can go have an agent go look at competitors and tell me specific information about their features, right?

So does this retailer have a specific filter or what does the homepage look like under these circumstances, right? So there’s this I would say like efficiency play that’s been very helpful as of late. And then even, prototyping, right? So you have a whole bunch of different tools at our disposal now to actually create a prototype.

But I think one of the interesting parts of retail is there’s many different pages along the shopping funnel. [00:23:00] So it used to take a long time to actually prototype a experience going from one page to the next. And then what if you wanna go back to that page, right. So all of these efficiencies have been really helpful.

And then I would also say within the other parts of the business, within retail, you definitely have AI coming into, let’s say product attribution. So how are things being tagged and labeled? And then that really bleeds into, the future of SEO, right? So SEO is search engine optimization, but what’s next, right?

Which would be the LLM engine optimization and even agentic optimization there. So it’s making sure that the attributes of any given product are optimized for how the customer’s like really searching. So are they searching in a search tool like Google, or are they using chat GPT or, something else?

And where are we then headed next, right? So where is that technology taking us and our customers? And how are customers going to react to that? I think we can maybe [00:24:00] get into that later. And then the other one that I’ve seen too is probably some enhancements around decisioning, right?

So under certain circumstances, what do we do with the product? In the, post purchase, you have things like returns. Amazon has a chat bot right now that you can talk to, and actually you could get money back if you don’t return it based off of a whole bunch of questions that you ask, where are products coming from?

Where are they being shipped from? Those are really good solutions or problems for AI to help, like solution for. So those would be the buckets that I see really AI coming in and giving us some more efficiencies there. 

Teja: The product returns is really, really interesting.

And I think even with prototyping, it’s fascinating how much more techie like a product manager can become to help like engineers speed up the process. Yeah. So I think right now the, the role of the PM is really expanding with AI efficiency, so That’s awesome. And Boots is also really interesting and was fascinating to read up on just because they have [00:25:00] also heavily invested in ai.

They had their launch of the first customer facing gen AI chatbot in the UK retail space, and I know that was in-house. And there’s a lot more use cases within loyalty and dermatology screening that they’re also uncovering. And Fabrice, from your perspective, what other emerging emerging AI capabilities do you see shaping the future of omnichannel?

Fabrice: I sort of see it as, there’s probably two categories really, where we focus. So there’s all the parts of, I suppose, where you’d be able to use AI to make your processes and your internal ways of working more efficient. So whether that’s, you know, we create a lot of content that then needs to be, formatted.

We need to create different variants for the different channels. We’ve got a lot of teams that have to do quite a lot of work. Some of it is quite, detailed grunt work, frankly. The ability now in a lot of the tools that we use to be able to do some of those things sometimes on the fly, where you’re able to create different variants of the same branded asset or whatever it is, or the same [00:26:00] article that you’re publishing on, like our health hub where we publish a lot of like health advice and link it to the, the right kind of products and wellbeing, for example.

So I think there’s a lot of opportunities there to start to really automate and get the teams to focus on the important parts of that rather than spending all their time creating like five versions of an image or whatever they might do. I think there’s some of the things that Andrew’s mentioned, clearly prototyping, automating some of what we do in the product and UX teams is also great.

I think there’s also on the customer facing side, we have played around with the chat bot and one of our internal data science teams actually helped us build a first version of that and it’s been really exciting to see how customers use it. So I think there’s definitely that sort of advice.

How do you do things like customer service, product advice, those kinds of things that you could do through a chatbot or through other means. But I think the bit that’s really starting to get interesting for us is thinking about the agentic side of it, and pros and cons of that really how [00:27:00] disintermediated will we be as a retailer when a customer is interacting with their agent?

And, you know, we’re a multi-brand retailer. We sell our own brands as well. But again, how do you work with the LLMs, the different platforms to make sure that you are being recommended, your products are coming to the top of those kind of recommendations. But also that you’re easy to find that your site is machine readable.

So there’s just so many different elements of it that we’ve gotta think about. And I think the reality is as retailers, I certainly in the uk, I feel like we’re at this inflection point where, again, it’s not all or nothing. We’ve got, you know, a retailer like Boots, we serve every generation. There’s gonna be the generations that are

more likely to adopt these ways of shopping and consuming a lot quicker than others. But we don’t want to alienate, we don’t suddenly wanna move everything off an inter inter face to an agentic agent, right. So it’s, it’s figuring out how you do both and you continue to do both well, I think that’s gonna be a big challenge for us in the next year or two.[00:28:00] 

Teja: That’s a fantastic point of that generational divide and capturing that next customer too that we’ll get to in just a second. And Ana, I’m curious from your perspective too, where have you seen AI helping with speed of market? And I know you touched on it with your previous example, but was wondering if you had anything else?

Ana: Yeah, definitely. I think, people are equally afraid and also curious about how they can use AI tooling. And that’s probably a good balance for us to have. Businesses are starting to use AI tooling like Midjourney Chat GPT has obviously been around for a bit longer and it’s much more prevalent, but co-pilot as well to manage their web content more efficiently.

You know, what can they do to progress products more, you know, more products more confidently through their critical path. How can they make the best use of the time that the teams have to get products from concept, through to design, through to launch in a timely manner. And hope that they can go from launching a thousand products a week to 10,000 products.

Simply by automating some of the manual tasks with the help of these tools. So not necessarily changing [00:29:00] the brilliant minds that exist within the business, but actually making the best use of the time that these people have and using AI tooling to support that.

I think machine learning capabilities are now pretty standard within demand forecasting and replenishment tooling, so that they can ensure that they’re getting the right product in the right place at the right time. And I think that’s been a sort of key mantra of a lot of the capabilities that are out there in the market from the leading ones that you would see on a Gartner report to even the ones that were emerging new in the market and starting to make a bit of an impact.

AI and 3D visualization is also coming through quite successfully to help, floor planning and reviewing visual merchandising and layout plans. And that’s developing at pace across a number of different providers. It’s also, again, to help manage the manual workload and reduce the timeframes so that people can make decisions more quickly.

And also to reduce the number of handoffs you’ve got across the teams. So if you think about what you need to do when you are planning how your store is going to look, especially from a bricks and mortar [00:30:00] perspective, you’ve got touchpoints across teams like commercial, digital, retail, operations, marketing, supply chain.

If you can streamline any of those processes and the handoffs that need to happen by automating some of the processes, or actually just making sure that you’re not using an Excel spreadsheet to get decisions made, that you’re doing it through tooling. There’s the right approval layers, et cetera, you can be much more productive.

And at the touch of a button, you can see how things have progressed and where you’re up to. So the introduction of these toolings to just streamline processes, within sort of head office and back of store processes is really key. But one thing I will say is you have to take the sales pitch from a solution provider with a pinch of salt.

So some of them will say that they can grow their margin, grow your margin through their AI pricing capabilities, or through their demanding demand forecasting capabilities. But you do have to delve a bit deeper into these presentations and into these promises and be really clear about the benefits that you are aiming to achieve when you onboard AI tooling into your business.

Because these [00:31:00] are to support your processes. They should be a useful aid to drive productivity and efficiencies for your teams, and they should support them as a part of their day job. And. It’s your teams that need to focus on driving the business forward. You know that when you’re putting through these sorts of changes, and I know that we’re gonna touch on the impact into businesses as these toolings become more prevalent, but you need people to feel confident.

They can trust the output that is coming out, the AI tooling. So the input needs to be accurate, the output needs to be accurate, but you need to have people there who know how to drive the business forward and to make the best of these tools. 

Teja: Yeah, I think a lot of people think AI solves everything, but it’s really not about fully automating the entire experience, but really identifying those pockets of opportunities that really provide either a meaningful customer or employee experience that can help create some efficiencies.

Absolutely. Beautiful. Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about the retail space facing tremendous change and how product is really at the heart of it, driving some of this [00:32:00] innovation. But technology is kind of a small part of the overall transformation, right? I think a lot of it comes down to the right processes, the right expertise, how you structure your teams to actually deliver some meaningful change.

So Andrew, with a lot of your fortune 500 experience and your expertise in the high growth startups as well, what have you been seeing as the key ingredient for a successful agile transformation and also alignment across the entire organization? 

Andrew: Yeah. So I’ve been at Macy’s for almost five years and we’ve had multiple consultants come in and help us with our agile transformation.

And a lot of you know, massive companies are either in some sort of like digital transformation or coming to the end of that. And I think one of the biggest things that I’ve seen that has like a positive impact on the acceptance of a lot of like agile practices is really like the, an open culture that’s really, accepting and open to [00:33:00] get better and test and iterate. Right? And sometimes that can be hard when you’re working with coworkers who have been at a company for over 20, 25 years, right? It’s like the processes haven’t changed very much. And now you’re kind of going in and trying to clean a bunch of things up and focus on making changes for the good.

But I think where I’ve seen things not go well, is maybe another way to answer the question is, like when, when people are hyper-focused on what is the process? What is the document, what are the checks and the check boxes that need to be done. It’s less about that, right? It’s more about how can we test things faster, get things out, are we working on the right thing, and then are we hitting the outcomes?

And not just like output in geometrics or something like that. So when you combine all of that with a culture that’s open to, Hey, we’re gonna test this out, and what does that mean? Not from a product or a consumer standpoint. It’s like, we’re gonna change processes for a few sprints and we’re going to see if we liked it [00:34:00] or not.

It’s going to be a little uncomfortable. But we will literally hold a retro, and then get feedback on it and then change again. But you also have to be okay with being uncomfortable for a few weeks or sprints right? So if you can have that culture and if you can help drive that culture as an individual contributor or a leader, it definitely helps bring the whole organization along.

Teja: That’s phenomenal. Yeah. ’cause I think a lot of these processes should be guardrails, but not necessarily slow teams down. And you said something really interesting too around kind of almost like a project to product mindset shift where It requires a lot of like, culture and a completely different thinking to really get teams on board.

That’s great. And then, let’s see, Fabrice so I know in the world of boots with health and beauty. Wanted to get your thoughts too, and you touched on this in your last point too, like where does AI fall short with structuring these teams? ’cause there’s still a lot of instances where we still need that human touch and we need that organizational [00:35:00] structure that kind of supports that change beyond just the technical components.

So curious from your perspective where do we still need human touch with ai? 

Fabrice: I mean I, I think probably in lots of places because, there’s a lot of hype and of course we all know that. And to that point that you made earlier, we think AI is gonna be the answer to everything, but you still need to see AI as a tool to solve a problem.

You still need to spend time on figuring out what the problem is that you’re trying to solve, right? Like, we shouldn’t just think that we no longer need to do that. So I think we’re coming through that where I’m hearing less exec teams going, what’s our AI strategy? Which I used to find quite amusing about 12, 18 months ago to actually

let’s go back to the problem we wanna solve, and is AI one of the ways we could solve that? So I think that’s a, good shift that we’re starting to see. But there are still elements where this technology is nascent, the use cases are still nascent. A lot of it comes, let’s be honest, from four or five key players that own these language models on a lot of these data sets [00:36:00] or, or whatever, scrape the internet to find them.

And I think you’ve still gotta fact check, you’ve gotta be sure that the information that you’re surfacing back to your customers or inside your business is accurate. I think for us, especially as a heritage brand, a health and beauty retailer trusted in this country for over 176 years, we’ve gotta be careful that like we’re giving the right advice, that we’re using AI in the right way.

I think. Testing and learning when you’re looking at like product attributes is probably okay to let the gen AI get it slightly wrong, but when you’re looking at like the ingredients of a medicine or a medical condition, like those are all things that are quite serious and we’ve seen things in the press about chat GPT and others getting it wrong.

So I think for me, that human touch, that where we still sell products where through even our digital workflows, we have to make sure that a pharmacist approves the purchase. Whether you’re buying something through like instant delivery like Deliveroo or one of those products or through our website, we still have that flow because it’s regulatory and it’s the right thing to do ethically.

I [00:37:00] think again, will we trust AI to automate those processes? I think we’re gonna have to tread carefully in those areas because it’s just not something you can hand off and trust the machines to get completely right yet.

Teja: Yeah, that’s a phenomenal point. ’cause when it comes to trust, like health and beauty really can’t make too many mistakes, especially in the health space.

’cause it really could be detrimental to the brand and that ultimately helps create some loyalty to customers. Ana, on your side, what are some lessons learned from organizational readiness and product specific examples for, related to the retail industry? What are some lessons learned that you’ve been seeing?

Ana: Yeah, I think there’s clearly lots of desire to become. Agile to be thought of as an agile company to be product centric, but more often than not, you see a little bit of agile creeping through hybrids, what I like to call fragile, where you’re not entirely sure what anyone’s doing or how they’re working, but you’re just sort of making it up as you go along.

And you try and [00:38:00] push something through and you’re not quite clear about, you know, agile doesn’t mean you don’t have governance. Agile doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan. Working in product doesn’t mean you don’t look beyond the next three months. You should be clear about where, what your goals are and what you’re trying to get to.

You might not think about it in the same way as KPIs, but you should still have your objectives and key results. Are you clear about it lining up to the strategy and the goals within a company? So sometimes some of that can, fall by the wayside. Or it can maybe not be linked together as well as it should be.

And the change to land this, the organizational readiness that needs to happen to understand how you go on that journey to become more agile, to become more product centric. It can be quite a big piece to actually deliver. And it needs to be thought of as a hearts and minds piece. That’s really the key thing.

And it needs to be thought of as something that needs to happen, not just within the tech team or the immediate team that’s going to be affected by putting in a new technology capability, but actually across the whole organization. So I’d say [00:39:00] one of the key things is really clear communication about the fact that the business is looking to become more product centric.

Having that capability. Yeah, real sort of clear change management capability to drive the understanding of the change that’s coming, the benefits it could bring, and also how it might affect the day job. The positive and the negative. Be transparent. Don’t underestimate the timeframe that you’re gonna need to successfully embed a product centric mindset across the business, to become more agile.

And think about it in that way. And it can’t just be agile in name. And also quite often you’ll see that everyone’s really enthusiastic in the EXCO and the directors because they’re going to be landing AI capabilities. Technology’s going to be becoming more innovative. There’s going to be lots of great things that’s going to happen, but actually it’s not filtering down to the teams that need to really onboard into this way of working.

And this might be a bit controversial, but sometimes if you want to land some something like an off the shelf SaaS tooling that you need to pump full of data and then it’s gonna give you an output and it’s gonna be off the shelf and you [00:40:00] just wanna plug it in, to the capabilities that you’ve already got.

Sometimes working with Waterfall might be the most appropriate thing for that particular project, and don’t be afraid of that. 

Teja: I love your use of fragile and I love the use of Hot Takes as well. No, I definitely think that Waterfall sometimes makes sense too, which people don’t always like, it’s not obvious always.

So that’s wonderful. And so I guess I wanted to kind of round us out with. What’s coming up next? So I wanted to get your thoughts on some of the big bets that are gonna shape the retail industry. I wanna talk a little bit more about heritage brands versus challenger brands. So, Andrew, I’ll start with you.

For heritage brands, what does reinvention really look like in the next decade? How are some of these traditional retailers able to compete with digitally native brands that might be able to move a little bit faster? 

Andrew: I think how I see it right, and I think actually Shopify has like a saying where they’re trying to build like a hundred year business or a hundred year [00:41:00] brand.

And I think that’s a pretty neat goal. What’s cool about Macy’s is we’ve been around for our like 150 years so we have a lot of data behind us that, we can refer back to and we can look at different trends and understand our customer behavior over many years.

And I think the biggest thing for some of the larger brands and maybe legacy brands is really hopefully being product focused and product led, which is really at the heart of it, focused on the consumer and customer like centricity. Which in turn retailers need to make sure that they’re reacting to the technology, but reacting to the customer.

It’s one thing to just, like Fabrice was mentioning, like execs hammering AI and just talking about it in earnings or board meetings or whatever as a key word but a buzzword, but it’s one thing to react to the customer, right? So there’s interesting new browser out there, Comet, I think it’s by Perplexity.

You can use that and it has like a built-in [00:42:00] assistant in it. And you can go to Macy’s, you can go to Target, you can go to Home Depot, whatever, and say, help me find X, Y, and Z and it will actually help you do that. And I think there’s going to be a lot of interesting trends where it’s like, “how are customers actually using all of these tools that are now readily available to them, very accessible

they easily work on mobile devices”. And then what are the new use cases, right? So what haven’t we seen yet? And how do you combine all this stuff together? So I think looking at that, that’s how some of these older brands can really react and react to the right thing by of course talking to their customers.

And then using technology to solve those problems, and picking the right problems to solve and the right, technology to actually build the best solution for it. So that’s how I see it. 

Teja: I’ll have to check out that perplexity tool. I actually have not used it, but sounds really interesting.

Ana, I’m curious from your perspective, I know in the beginning we touched a little bit about how we [00:43:00] capture the attention of the next customer, right? And that generational divide, whether it’s like with new requirements on ethical or sustainability. So like what role do ethics and, and sustainability really play in shaping expectations for that next generation of customers we want to attract?

Ana: Well, I think, I’m gonna state the obvious here, but almost everyone has an opinion about the environment and human’s impact on it. So definitely, it continues to be a consideration for not just retailers, but really for any company that’s out there. What is their footprint? What is their impact that they’re having?

And it’s not just younger generations that are much more concerned about the ethical practices of different companies, especially retailers. But they do, you know, that they’re known for having less brand loyalty. So if they hear some bad news through whatever channel they’re watching, or social media about a company, they’re more likely to boycott.

They’re more likely to profess their dissatisfaction and spread the word, [00:44:00] and then speedily flip to another brand and they have the technical knowledge to be able to find what they want very quickly from another provider. So reputation continues to be a key factor on this topic

And looking at circular design, say within clothing, reducing the carbon footprint, not just on your bricks and mortar store, but actually across your whole supply chain. There’s a lot more out there on social media, especially around upcycling. It’s becoming it’s a big feature.

It has been for a long time. How can I take my retro looking bit of furniture and, and change it and do more with it by just changing the handles, giving it a lick of paint, et cetera. So even brands like Ikea and Dunelm, my previous employer, they’ve been giving opportunities to customers to get their items fixed instead of replacing them or buying something new or, sending them to landfill.

You know, it’s a key factor to, to draw customers in. We will help you to make the best use of something that you were gonna throw away. And while you are in our store, have a look around to see if there’s something [00:45:00] else that could go on the end table or could, go on that shelf. And the focus really needs to stay from the retailer’s perspective on marketing.

So shouting a lot more about the ethically sourced products. You know, M and S has been doing it for a long time. They have sustainability pledges, they’ve had marketing campaigns, but have they been clear enough? Do, retailers can always do more than shout louder. And as an example, I think for about 20 years, M and S has been making fleece jumpers that have been made out of plastic bottles, but I’m not sure they actually shout about how they’ve been doing it and what they’ve been doing.

The water consumption to make jeans, these are all things that we could be talking about how are, how are retailers making sure that they’re making the best use of important environmental factors that that can really impact not just

the country that you are in, but actually the country where the products are being sourced from. What are they doing to help over there. And I think also we’re seeing a lot of legislative changes being introduced. So we have the extended producer responsibility or packaging tax that’s been introduced in the UK.

A lot more [00:46:00] onus out on the retailers and suppliers at the point of buying a product to get the data right. So you’re not just having to think about your supply chain, you’re not just having to think about the sourcing of the product. You not having to think about your customer and your marketing, but actually.

Data is a huge factor. It can have a huge impact on your business if you are not capturing that information accurately at that point. So are you making the right decisions when you’re sourcing your products? And are you working with your suppliers to do the right thing? It was quite interesting that, there were a number of different factors that was used by Sustainability magazine in 2025 when they were ranking their top 2 50 companies and they looked at the environmental impact a company has, the social responsibility, governance and transparency, but also their strategy and innovation.

So that last one continues to be a big focus for retailers. If you’re looking at a strategy piece, if you’re producing something, you’re then tying it into what’s gonna be on your roadmap, how are you going to be delivering things that support the business. How are you tying [00:47:00] back what you are doing on your roadmap to strategy and innovation that’s gonna be, continues to be a key factor, I think going forwards.

Teja: That’s wonderful insight. Thank you, Ana. Staying on this generational divide Fabrice, I’m curious to get your thoughts on how are loyalty programs really evolving to attract that generational divide? 

Fabrice: I think it’s not obvious and it’s definitely something that a lot of retailers have to think about because I think loyalty

is probably starting to shift its meaning depending on that generation. You know, are people loyal to retailers? Are people loyal to the brands that the retailers sell? Again, you’re seeing the rise of TikTok shopping and I, I know for my teenage kids, for example, they’ll just listen to any influencer and think that’s the coolest thing, and then they’ll move on to the next thing.

Whereas I think, the millennials and maybe the Gen Xers are still thinking, well, no, I wanna collect my points. I want to I care about where I buy things. I care about sustainability. I care about those other things. I agree with, with what [00:48:00] everyone else has has said so far. I think those things are still important and they play into it.

So I think there’s some interesting attempts by different retailers to try and think about, is loyalty more about experience and rewarding customers through different means. I think the reality is, and for retailer, like Boots being offer led and offer driven is still really important. I think ultimately.

As retailers and the future of retail is no different. I think to the past, we have to listen to our customers. I think if you look at the landscape, most of us operate in, consumers are stretched, we’re suddenly competing for share. I think a few years ago, share of wallet was something we talked about within our industry.

I think when you look at the average consumer share of wallet is now, I’m competing with, you might wanna buy concert tickets, you might go out to dinner, but you also need to replenish your products and your, you need to buy fragrance for a loved one, right? And all of a sudden I think that the fact is we are competing with all of these different things because everyone is so stretched economically.

So as retailers do we also [00:49:00] still have a role to play in terms of not being afraid to be offer driven, to be trying to give customers the best possible deal where we can and to kind of drive still with that and maybe at the forefront. I think that is probably seen as quite helpful in this environment.

And I think that needs to continue to play into what we do, which is ultimately listen to our consumers. 

Teja: That is wonderful Fabrice, ’cause Yeah, I really like the share of wallet because we’re not just competing with ourselves, but competing with a variety of different brands that are, advertising and the loyalty programs itself are going through like major reinvention ’cause it’s no longer about just points.

It’s about creating that ecosystem value, maybe like validation from TikTok, like you said, from their favorite influencers. There’s so many complexities behind it. So that’s really, really interesting. 

Ana: And I don’t wanna upset Fabrice because I am a loyal Boots shopper and have been for many years, but I think where own brand supermarkets are getting in on beauty, there is no shame in buying Aldi shower gel.

You know, that [00:50:00] is what’s happening. So, you know, we’re all being undercut by retailers in different places unexpectedly. Yeah. 

Janna: And I wanna jump in here ’cause I’m conscious of time, but I want to, tackle some of the questions that have been coming in from the audience as well.

This has been a really great discussion. Bruno asks, and maybe we can do a quick fire on this. Is there a retail experience, innovation that customers aren’t yet asking for, that you’re betting on?

Ana: I’m not necessarily betting on it fully, but I have seen capabilities where, a shopper can go into a store, they look into a mirror that then tells them what they should buy, what they, what would look good on them and so on and personalization through that. So, it’s very expensive technology.

And also it could probably give you some rather unflattering results as well. Right? Yeah. So it’s probably something that needs to be built on and worked on. Maybe something that people might like to try out at home rather than in the store. But definitely [00:51:00] something that, has been gonna showcased when I’ve gone to see different innovation companies that are trying to build out this sort of technology.

Janna: Yeah, I mean, if augmented reality was gonna make or break anywhere, be in the retail world, you’re already seeing it with stuff like, see this in my home. And you can sort of utilize what something looks like within your own space. Yeah. 

Ana: The the visualizer capabilities.

Janna: Yeah. The clothing one will get there, but I bet is gonna go through like an awkward phase, I think so. 

Andrew: Yeah, I’ve seen some, improvements on, the, kind of on home try on kind of experience actually within the Stitch Fix company. Pretty new feature actually, their CEO just posted about it recently where, you can, put a picture in there and then it’ll actually help you figure out what are you interested in before they actually ship that box, right?

And that’s really interesting. So if you can reduce the amount of products that, let’s say Stitch Fix is receiving back that are returned because someone interacted with that feature and it resonated with them you can easily, kind of track the [00:52:00] impact of something like that.

So yeah, that’s not necessarily something that Macy’s is betting on or exploring, but definitely, building off of what Ana said there. So yeah, I just wanna add that. 

Janna: Excellent. And one last one. I’m gonna point this one at Fabrice because it’s about boots. How has the Boots chatbot influenced the checkout and overall customer experience?

Like what sort of things have you learned from that implementation? 

Fabrice: Well, we’ve learned that, to be fair, a very large majority of the questions to the chat bot tend to be around where’s my order? So what we’ve learned is that it’s a really great way to help our call center teams and reduce some of the workload into them.

We probably were seeing less of what we, you know, it’s one of those classic kind of things that I think you learn as you test and learn products, right? Like we went into it with a hypothesis that people would wanna talk about ingredients and product advice and recommendations. And ultimately that’s not really what it’s been used for.

It is, in some cases we’re starting to see a bit of a rise in that. But again, is that down to the tool itself or the fact that consumer behavior just [00:53:00] wasn’t ready for that yet 12, 18 months ago? So it’ll be interesting to see how that shifts. And I think kind of harking back to the last question as well, I’m seeing a lot of interesting, smaller startups in the space of

skincare recommendation or looking at large data sets on ingredients of products in your skin type and taking like images of your face and giving you better recommendations on the kinds of products you should be using. I think that’s gonna be a really interesting space, increasingly where consumers will be looking for that advice and will start to trust that they could find products that are slightly more almost bespoke for them.

And I think you bring that and the chat bot together and potentially you’ve got something that will be really useful to consumers. 

Janna: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I can’t wait to see what the world retail has in store for us in the coming years. In the meantime, we’re out of time. We’ve, gone slightly over time here, but thank you so much.

Everybody. Please say thank you to Teja for moderating and making this session , amazing. And as well to Andrew, Ana and Fabrice for bringing [00:54:00] their expertise and sharing with us today. Just as we sign off, as you know, we run these webinars on a monthly basis, sometimes twice a month.

So we’re gonna be back in January. I’m gonna be talking about, um, how you can balance discovery time and delivery time and not get dragged into that delivery time and become an agency. You’ve probably heard me talk about the agency trap, and so we’re gonna rip into that in January. In the meantime, if anybody wants to give ProdPad a whirl, we’ve got a, demo that, we can show you through.

And, we’d love to take you through a walkthrough. So give us a shout. And in the meantime, once again, huge thank you to Teja, Andrew, Ana, and Fabrice. Is there any, final pieces? Does anybody have any follow, where they can be contacted or, any follow up, notes for the audience?

Ana: I’m on LinkedIn, but if you don’t hear back from me, that’s just purely because I’m not as savvy on it as I need to be or as quick to it. But I’ll try and come back to you if you have any [00:55:00] questions. 

Janna: Perfect. And Andrew’s put his, his LinkedIn in the chat. I’m sure he’ll be able to reach Fabrice there as well for further questions.

Once again, huge thank you from, um, myself and from Tesha as well. Thank you. Thanks everyone all. Thanks everyone. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye for now. Bye bye.