Starmount overview

This is the year that retailers put the pieces together. So if you go back over the last five years, specifically on omnichannel, they’ve done a lot of experimentation. They have brought some digital content in the store, they have exposed some of the store capabilities online, they put some new tools in the hands of sales associates taking some away. They’ve not done anything holistically. When a customer walks in, they’re expecting of smooth, clean, holistic experience that is consistent across channels. And doing point solutions and a piecemeal approach to omni channel is never going to satisfy the customer. So this is where we’re starting to see our customers and other retailers in the market as well put all the pieces together and really think strategically about what the complete offering is going to be. So that means mobility where appropriate omnichannel processes that span throughout the store span across channels, inventory visibility from everywhere delivery to everywhere, reuse customer profiles, recommendations, product information, basically taking all the assets and all the capabilities the retailer has the disposal and making it available.

It’s always going to be a combination; you can’t take people out of the equation. We’re a technology vendor, but we recognize that technology is used by people and the better you design it for the appropriate use the better adoption you get, the better adoption, the better results you see on the financial. So people are always important the processes that those people are interacting with that are also equally important. And frequently the processes are what get in the way. So you have to break down the barriers organizationally, frequently you may have to change compensation plans, you may have to change reporting relationships. And then ultimately, you will need technology and having the right technology deployed in the right way is always important. So it’s going to be all three.

No single customer we have uses every capability we provide because every one of them has a slightly different relationship with their ultimate customer a different engagement model, a different value proposition different product mix, different demographic. I don’t think any of our customers any retailer in the world for that matter would say that they’ve reached the end state and perfection in their engagement model especially around Omnichannel or Unified Commerce. The full set of capabilities that anybody might envision that would define omnichannel commerce are seldom going to be used by any single retailer because no single retailer does everything every way with all the customers they pick a unique feature set.