Natt Fry, Managing Director, Retail, Accenture, spoke about the future of retail.
Companies such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Google are literally changing peoples’ lives and along with it their needs. Retail companies need to adapt to this.
Rather than spending a long period of time developing a perfect solution for an entire customer base, companies, like Google, throw imperfect ideas out to consumers digitally, then see how they react and make decisions based off of consumers’ responses.
“Customers are ahead of us,” Fry explained. “[Companies should] spend less time trying to figure out what’s going on. Get some things out in the marketplace, get some mobile functionality out in the marketplace, and let consumers react to it.”
Fry stressed keeping up with the digital consumer. For example, he believes mobile is the present, not the future. “Mobile as we think of it today, this is old technology. What’s going to happen is between virtual reality, autonomous vehicles and other form factors. This functionality is just going to become part of the fabric of our lives,” Fry stressed. “It’s important today but this is not where you should be aiming your business.”
Companies should not forget about mobile but also look past it because even that platform will be out of date in the coming years.