Think Tank: What It Takes to Create a Digital-First C-suite

So, you want to be a modern, successful retailer? Then get with the tech program. From the c-suite to the sales force and through the back office, there is no hiding place. Driven by the need for connectivity in the use of big data, the new “tech skills” in retail are necessarily impacting everyone across every role and every function. This sense of challenging and even scary brave new world — allied to often successful disruption of the traditional retailers — has led some to feel that we are somehow in the midst of a retail apocalypse. We are not, in fact, experiencing the slow death of an industry but simply a reinvention — where current upheavals, competition and disruption will result in a better, more agile and frankly more exciting consumer-centric landscape, with technology at its core. Consumer Changes Shake Old Ways People are still going to be buying stuff. The stuff will be smarter, and the buying smarter, too. In fact, technology innovations — both to products and the whole process of buying — drive and are driven by customer behavior and requirements. This dynamic at the heart of retail has not changed: when to nudge and lead your customers, and when to

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