Sue & Simon reflect on 2023 They discuss:
#theproductivityexperts
Register for the Produtivity Forum 2024
Follow us on Twitter @Rethinkp
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Sue & Simon reflect on 2023 They discuss:
#theproductivityexperts
Register for the Produtivity Forum 2024
Follow us on Twitter @Rethinkp
Connect to Simon on LinkedIn
Follow ReThink on LinkedIn
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. Sue and I are going to spend 10 minutes or so just talking through what we've learned in 2023. Turbulent year for many. Lots of expected events, lots of unexpected events. So you're going to kick us off, sue, with number one in terms of what we've learned in 2023.
Speaker 2:I think there's been an ongoing growth of self checkouts, with a notable exception of booths that kind of made a lot of press about taking them out.
Speaker 1:But still left them in their Biggie's two shops, but left them in the Biggie's two shops. Get below the headline, because I got sucked in by the headline and then read the article and said, yeah, but in your Biggie's two shops you're actually leaving them in.
Speaker 2:And I think that really tells the story of where it's at. So we've seen sort of the big grosses putting more and more of them in and it's increasingly being used in smaller stores and I think there's been different models really of how they're used and customers are getting more used to them. So I think we've been seeing kind of some tweaking and some fine tuning as people have realised the best way to operate them from a colleague point of view and also that it works best for customers as well. And obviously we've had the self scan bit as well come in. So I think it's been interesting that it's carried on developing, even though it feels like it's technology that's been around a long time now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Number two there needs to be no particular hierarchical order, just the way that they've been documented.
Speaker 2:There's been an increase in the number of people looking at and then going on to install electronic shop edge labels. So I think there's as ever with technologies around longer prices change. There's probably a wider understanding of the cost benefit case, although for a lot of retailers the price of the actual label technology is still prohibitively expensive. So I think it's something we'll see kind of continuing to grow. But I think nobody's I don't think anybody's quite got the right way to do it. That kind of gives you everything so the best price projection you could have from it. You know, fully optimising all the technology, using the picking opportunities. You know the light up that the shelves can do. So I think there's quite a lot and it feels like we're still very much in the early learning stages. But I think it was. It's going to carry on growing and become a hot topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, capital cost is clearly king and it's a big expenditure, but the benefits are certainly there to be had. The technologies have just come in cheaper and then the applications becoming wider. So for those that have done it, it's been great to see. For those that are thinking about doing it, it will be interesting to see how that progresses this year.
Speaker 2:And the thing is anybody that tries it. Once store managers have got it, they'll kind of it's the last thing they'd want to give up as well. So store teams absolutely love it when they get in. It does save a lot of work. The flip side of that is how much it costs to save that work, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Number three I've got on my list is AI automation. So clearly in 2023 was the rise of chat, gpt, bard, all the other online portals that you can get to do whatever you want, pretty much for you. We've seen that being kind of integrated into cars. That's starting to be produced and other things. Not sure we've seen a really good, thorough implementation of anything in retail or hospitality. I know it's there. I've seen lots of examples. You know AI order taking it drive-thrus, but not really implemented in scale. So I think 2023 was the year of the idea. Hopefully 2024 was the year of the practical implementation and seeing some of that come through as people drive to combat cost challenges. I think it's one of the obvious areas to explore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and where there's been use of AI, it hasn't been the generative AI, it's been more around how do you get useful insights and things out of big data sets? So I'm thinking you know the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury's and Boots that have got loyalty schemes that have been running multiple years with millions of customers. You know they've been very good at getting commercial benefit from that data and obviously how we use AI is part of that. You know it's big programs running in the background digging through it all, but I don't think we've seen the use of the generative certainly commercial yet.
Speaker 1:Now number five, I'd say and again these are no particular orders shrink so clearly. Last year economic challenges across the world led to increased shrink, which has probably been combated by the fact that people are managing costs, so there's less people and prices are going up, so things cost more. So a bit of a perfect storm.
Speaker 1:We've seen lots of pictures on LinkedIn and around social of things being locked up behind perspective screens, cameras being put in place, exit gates have become commonplace now, even receipt checking in some places, although it kind of didn't dawn on me yesterday, but every time I go shopping now there's a security guard at the door and I walk out, yeah, I press the button on the till saying I don't want to receipt. So I don't really know how those two interact if the alarm goes off, because we have to then go back and look at some journal or E-POS record to see what I did or didn't buy. So that feels a bit disconnected. But yeah, be interesting. Don't know any facts or figures whether that's reduced shrink, but kind of prohibited sales, whether it's made a difference, because certainly again, the pain of trying to buy something that's locked up when organisations have less people on the floor becomes more apparent in this kind of climate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, be interesting as well the rise of kind of more body cams being rolled out for safety reasons as well. So again, that goes with the fact where you've got fewer people I mean particularly convenience retail where you're trading late hours and you know not many people across a large space, you know anything that helps protect people in those circumstances is a bonus, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Absolutely Next on the list is price. So it's a bit briefly shrink, but clearly price is rising, and price from a consumer point of view, but also from an operating point of view. So not necessarily in 2023, but clearly it's going to impact this year in 2024. National living wage I think a bit of a shock for lots of people that we did the pound and two and then pulled in anybody that was between 21 and 23. So lower the threshold For those that pay above it great, it kind of narrows the gap. So if you're going to maintain that differential, it's going to still cost you.
Speaker 1:For those that are on it, I think it really knocked some people's short term plans and created a hole in their budgets for this year, which again will be interesting to see how that plays out, when everybody was striving for efficiencies and costs anyway. But also may impact years two and three, as we have a potential change of government which may mean that we go a bit quicker towards 15 pounds and if you've had to pull stuff forward into 2024, how does that leave you 2025 and 2026 plans? So operating costs clearly a challenge, but again on the consumer side, we've seen other prices significantly increase and with no, probably other than notably pectoral sign of it coming back down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, pricing workload in stores. I'd be interested to see if there's been a higher number of price changes going through, because my perception is the retailers are having to be cleverer about which prices they put up and which prices they don't down with put down, and you always see as many headlines about prices being held down or reduced down to match somebody else as you do as a regarding inflation, you know, for the food in particular. So I just wonder how much more price changes store teams are having to complete just to keep that, you know, the margin protected and keeping up with what everybody else is doing. There just seems a lot more fluidity around price.
Speaker 1:Which clearly, if you have electronic shelfage labels, he's not a problem at all because it's pushing a couple of buttons and templates.
Speaker 1:I think the final two stock. So we saw huge, huge ways of stock holding allocations in kind of pandemic, and post 2023 we've seen that decline somewhat and then as we head into 2024 we've got people sailing a long way around Africa and things. So I would expect that pushes price and even potentially more stock it. And the one we'll finish on before we share kind of the plans for the podcast for this year 2024 is structure. So we've talked about it quite a lot on the podcast this year in terms of well, last year even in terms of role studies, how we used them, the Insighted Games, benchmarking and maybe driven by cost pressure, maybe driven by different ways of operating, you know, more self-checkouts, electronic shelfage labels. Some of the stuff we talked about there is that perpetual review of staffing, leadership structures and we've probably seen the demise of supervisory stroke, team leader level to some degree, maybe even deputies, assistants. It'll be interesting again as we go through this year what the next incarnation of those types of hierarchies look like.
Speaker 2:And I think it's interesting. I don't think it's purely a commercial thing that people look into costs. I think that can be part of it in some instances, but the reality is it can be really difficult to get enough good people. So when you're looking at your leadership roles, you have to make sure that you're deploying them in the right way. That supports delivery of whatever is that your business wants to deliver, and you can't afford to have too many because you just can't get enough good people to fulfill those roles and stay in them. So you know there's lots of drivers, for that being the way it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's really encouraging that people are starting to make those decisions using fat-based data rather than kind of emotional data, because sometimes the facts support what you think sometimes is a completely different narrative narrative in there, as we talked through previous pods. So, plans for podcast 2024 we've got some excited mini series planned. We've got some amazing guest planning on a monthly basis. Sue and I'll start to take you through chapters of the book. Every second counts. I'm sure you've seen it all over the LinkedIn pages that we publish and it's on the website. So we'll kind of work through those 10 chapters in the coming months. Hopefully that helps you with some business challenges. You've got some ways of thinking, stimulate some thoughts or really, ahead of the productivity forum in September 2024 in Birmingham, lots and lots of people registered. Places are really filling up. So again, if you've not registered and you want to come along, get onto the website, get your place secured, because the line-ups looking good not announcing any speakers as yet, but the line-ups looking good for 2024.
Speaker 2:Seems funny to be talking about September when we're in the middle of a bit of a cold spell. It seems hard to think ahead to the summer, doesn't it? And beyond.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll get there. Anyway, thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker 2:Bye.