What inhibited the future of commerce?

"The project is the draft of the future. Sometimes, the future needs hundreds of drafts." Jules Renard

By Moispes Galindo, Published by Grupo Reforma March 18, 2019

How was the future of commerce (retail), the one you now experience, built in the last 25 years?

Looking at the past reminds me of what inhibited its evolution. A first situation was adjusting the systems to operate from the year 2000, known globally as Y2K compliance.

The development of information systems has restrictions, and then it was the volume of data to store. For this reason, it was common to abbreviate dates, e.g., August 21, 1989 was recorded as 08/21/1989, and to save the first digits of the year (19) it is stored as 08/21/89.

By the year 2000, representing dates with six digits instead of eight could lead to errors or erratic behavior in systems. It was necessary to interrupt the evolution and innovation processes in practically all industries. Retail also experienced it.

Finding a solution to Y2K paralyzed companies and governments around the world, some more than others. Some even changed their software, because adopting it required less effort than adjusting their systems. At that time, in addition to licensing software to Carrefour Mexico, we also operated and orchestrated its commercial information systems. This was its first subsidiary that complied months before the others around the world with the Y2K conditions.

Without a doubt, Y2K inhibited and paralyzed the growth, development and innovation of retail for years, consuming its creativity, energy and budgets.

The second situation that still inhibits the evolution of retail in general is the inability of merchants and suppliers to collaborate digitally with their commercial ecosystem. Their systems (legacy and ERPs) are rigidly designed to organize and simplify their internal processes, eliminating information silos. However, they lack standard means to interact, exchange data and information with other software, even of the same brand and model, used by their suppliers in the supply chain. Why operate in isolation?

Commercial interaction was the vision that Jack Welch (GE) shared with Sam Walton (Walmart). Both challenged each other and achieved the fastest commercial cycles for buying and selling merchandise than any other organization in the market. Walmart popularized it three decades ago via Retail Link, where, among other things, it shares with its suppliers day by day the sales of each product store by store.

Blessed vision. One day I shared sales by product with Lancome (1988), consulting online, for each Fábricas de Francia store. This experiment arose after observing - this is how I learned about retail - how its collaborators manually recorded sales in a journal that the supervisor reviewed weekly, keeping the proportions, similar to Retail Link. However, I was almost fired for this madness.

Interacting digitally brings multiple benefits, especially by increasing the certainty and speed of commercial execution. Unfortunately, their vision is focused on simplifying and optimizing each person's transactions, instead of integrating to orchestrate their operations with their commercial ecosystem.

It is essential to use the electronic product catalog, electronically exchange all their transactions and collaborate by forecasting sales. These are some pending subjects. Before adopting artificial intelligence or virtual reality, they will have to learn to collaborate digitally and intelligently.

And thus you will delight with the availability of products and services to the Intelligent Consumer. IIIy. "Carpe diem."