(upbeat music)
-: Hello, and welcome to T-Mobile for Business
5GHQ Spotlight Series, where industry leaders
give real insights and discuss the benefits of 5G.
I'm your host, Scott Amyx.
And today I'm joined by Roopi Crowley,
Director of Retail Industry Solutions
at T-Mobile for Business,
and Aaron Nielsen, the VP of IT at Mall of America
and American Dream, to talk about the impact
of 5G on the retail industry.
To view other discussions from the series
and learn more about T-Mobile for Business 5GHQ,
visit T-Mobile.com/5GHQ.
Let's kick things off by talking about where 5G is now
and how it's impacting the retail industry today.
So let's talk about some of the biggest business priorities
as well as challenges facing retail.
And I wonder, Roopi, what are some of the things that we
need to really understand the state of affairs?
-: Sure, Scott.
I would say the last year and a half,
the pandemic has really changed retail
as we used to know it, going to the store to find your item.
It went to online retailing.
180% increase in online shoppers.
So now retailers are trying to grapple with things
that are happening with supply chain, worker shortage.
And then, "How do I get the customer back?"
Brand loyalty went out the door.
It was all about supply.
"I need my sneakers or my son needs undershirts.
"Where do I go?"
So whether you're a loyalist of brand A or brand B,
it didn't matter.
It's who had the supply.
So now retailers are really rethinking that it is all about
how do we satisfy the guest experience and the customer
and keeping that in mind.
And retailers have never invested in IT technology.
That's usually the last thing that they invest in.
But as we see the digital transformation in retail today,
it is all about the connectivity
and what it can enable in the future.
-: That's mind-boggling.
As a CMO, that would've been horrific.
-: Yeah, and now they have to take a step back.
How do I use my analytics?
Do I have the right analytics?
And do we understand what we have,
and how do we leverage that to
deliver personalization messages to our old customers?
And so they had to really strategize.
How do we spend money wisely to enable the future of retail?
And a lot of retailers, unfortunately,
didn't have that thought and went out of business
during the last year, several large brands.
So the retailers that are going to be successful are looking
at the infrastructure a little differently
and how now 5G can play into that.
-: And I wonder coming to you, Aaron,
how IT is viewed differently today
versus let's say even three years ago.
-: That's a great question.
That's a great point.
I think over the course of the last 18 months,
certainly we've seen how dependent we are
on technology, now more than ever.
And I think the transformation that businesses all
over the globe have made is that, okay,
we can't depend now on our brick and mortar stores.
We can't depend on our actual physical locations.
How do we bring our brand and our customer base to us,
even though we're not allowed
to bring them physically to us?
Also around analytics, how do we make sure that
when we do get a touchpoint with our customers,
that we're bringing them the relevant information
that they're interested in,
as opposed to blind shooting out marketing campaigns
and hoping that we get a stick?
I really think that we've been able to see that
over the last 18 months where we have been able
to more specifically target market with the data points
that we have to be able to reach a broader customer base
with the most relevant information to them.
-: I wanna go back to some basic things,
some foundational things.
So in a retail context,
one of the things you mentioned was inventory.
-: Yes. -: If you don't have it,
they're out.
So maybe they come in, they're looking for a pair of shoes,
and they look at the shelf,
and they have limited set of inventory.
And they're about to head out.
What would you wanna be able to do?
-: So this is a great question.
So a lot of retailers had too much inventory
and that drove sales and actually lost revenue.
So now they have to be strategic with the inventory they
can get and what they actually have in the store.
So it's opening up space for a lot more experiences.
We wanna be able to enable that guest
and that associate to cater to them.
So with tablets in the store that are running
on great connectivity, which is key,
with low latency you need to be able to quickly tell
that customer, "Don't worry.
"What color were you looking for?
"Let me just pull out my tablet and get your size
"and have it shipped to you."
That is instant gratification and the customer is satisfied,
so they have a better experience, but not only that,
the inventory in the story doesn't matter
as long as you have an associate
that's enabled with the right tool.
-: But I wonder for some of the current retailers,
depending on where they are in the building,
just trying to get consistent connectivity and being able
to use their tablet, being able to get to the mobile POS,
it's a real challenge, isn't it?
-: Oh, yes, for sure.
And that's why you look at retail,
they have a lot of dead spots.
So to enable any solution for a retailer,
the problem they're trying to solve,
you need to lean on now 5G in the mid-band spectrum.
-: Well, again, I think Aaron,
you guys are trailblazers clearly.
And I wonder for your organizations,
how you've been able to really enable that
so they, the guests as well as associates and the tenants
are getting what they need from connectivity.
-: I think proper coverage, of course,
in a almost 5 million square foot building
is certainly a challenge, right?
Something that would require a lot of planning.
We've done a great job of making sure
that we don't have dead zones inside of our building.
And we've all been there where we've tried
to walk into a mall.
I can think of some in my personal life where I'm walking
into a building and I don't have the cell coverage that I
need to try to look up something that I'm trying to find.
And we really took that to heart at Mall of America.
We said, "Okay, we don't want that to be our experience
"for any guest that comes into our building."
We wanna make sure that everybody has the appropriate
coverage to not only look up things on their own,
but also to make sure that our associates
inside of each of our tenants also have the ability
to find what they're looking for online,
not only in their own websites,
but also in their own internal inventory systems.
So proper coverage is key.
-: 'Cause you have tremendous amount of experience
that's so germane and relevant here is,
in your prior life, in the retail context,
you really saw the challenges of things you couldn't do
because you had connectivity.
And it came down to just lack of visibility from end to end.
And I want to, if you could just talk a little
bit more about that. -: Sure.
So for example, one time we tried to put in
price checkers into the store,
and we didn't have connectivity.
It was a fleet of stores.
We had to do an assessment and hard wire those
instead of wireless connectivity 'cause we didn't have it.
And that costs a lot of money.
But now with the introduction of 5G
in the mid-band spectrum, it's far easier and cost effective
to deploy even mobile POS systems.
For those who are embracing the change
and to get to the digital transformation,
it is about the connectivity as the foundation of retail.
And reliable connectivity throughout the building,
even through the back room where the warehouse
and the product is coming in.
So you can put in scanners, as things are coming
off your trucks that goes right to your POS system,
so you know where your inventory is at all times.
-: Again, you're speaking from experience.
These are real, tangible hardships
that you and your associates had to go through.
And I think part of the reason it sounds like
you're excited about your role is you're now the enabler.
-: Yes, and it's so empowering.
As I was talking to Aaron a few weeks ago,
we were talking about the things that he wants
to achieve at American Dream.
And let's just take parking for example.
-: With buildings the size of Mall of America
and American Dream,
I think parking is always gonna be a big challenge,
especially when you're trying to find a store
that's on the opposite side of the building.
You want to know what spots are available in those areas.
And you wanna make sure that you can get
in and out and potentially
visit some other stores while you're there,
but you want to have the path of least resistance.
So pulling in, automatically connecting
to the services that we offer
when you walk into the building,
when you pull into the parking lot,
definitely something that provides
that guest experience that we're really after.
-: At the end of the day, bottom line,
all of this has to come down to financial metrics.
And I know in retail per square foot, for example,
is the holy grail.
And I wonder if the challenges,
especially in this day and age with the mega trends,
how important it is to maintain your margins,
increase the per square feet,
and why we need to look for enablement like 5G.
-: Yeah, that's a great question.
So, I remember X per square foot, right?
So if that product's not selling, you need to move it off.
And so retailers were cramming so much into the space,
and then the shoppers were reacting that
"This is too tight, I feel claustrophobic.
"I don't wanna shop here, it's too cluttered."
So retailers started to increase the space,
but they still have to dollar it.
And that's where the fight starts.
So now with so much analytics that are out there,
how do we use analytics correctly to say,
"What is my customer shopping for?"
So there are solutions out there now
if you have that store connected properly.
And due to mid-band spectrum, you can heat map your store.
And as retailers are trying to bring in guest experience
and customer experience back into the store
and clear up some product
because of the endless aisle offering and tablets now,
they're able to say,
"I wanna put in a digital sign and I want a heat map."
And as I'm heat mapping, I understand they have
looked at something in the past digitally
and left something in their basket.
But now they're standing in front of a section.
I'm gonna push out a coupon to them.
-: Amazing, amazing.
-: Or because 5G has low latency and speed,
they can understand what is happening in realtime.
And even for that customer that's standing
in front of that fixture or going to a venue
or they're walking by
let's say a ski area in American Dream,
they can, a coupon could be pushed out to them to say,
"Come back next week.
"You'll get 50% off.
"Bring your family."
So that's where things have really evolved
to improve that per square footage.
-: It's amazing, it really is.
And I think it's things that you couldn't have
done it before, right?
AB testing.
And really getting that model right on a flagship
or a pilot place and really having the concrete data
to prove that this is gonna have a significant ROI
or significant IRR.
And then you can actually ripple that
across the different markets.
-: Yeah.
The other piece of that is as lease renewals come up
or you have vacant space in a mall,
how to use tools that are available now to say
how many people are actually walking by space X or space B.
And if I'm a retailer and I have a lease renewal
and my landlord is telling me one thing,
but I see different results,
now I'll have analytics to go back to the landlord and say,
"This is actually what's happening."
Or if I wanna move my store to location B,
putting that in location B and see
is location A still better versus location B.
And prior to that, nobody knew.
And it was a guess of millions of dollars
when you have to move a store.
-: You want optimization.
So it's not simply about just filling in those spaces.
You want the right tenants to be in the right spaces.
And I wonder from a mall operation,
how you guys think about that.
-: Yeah, the old adage in real estate.
Location, location, location, of course.
One of the key things we're able to provide
in the analytics space is showing traffic patterns
based on certain demographics.
To your point, a family of five coming in
is gonna have a different traffic pattern
than somebody coming in individually who wants
to shop for clothes or at a restaurant.
We have the analytics and the tools behind it now to say,
"Hey, these are the more premier spots
"for your specific niche of the market
"because of the past behaviors that we've
"been able to see with our past customers."
So being able to show that and show it empirically
to say, "This is a better spot than this
"because of your business segment,"
is really powerful stuff.
And only more empowered by the capability of 5G.
-: Absolutely.
Now from a balance sheet perspective,
we've been talking about kind of an income statement.
So revenue side.
But let's talk about the, the expense, the cost side.
What are the challenges for the retailers
in terms of keeping things really tight and low cost?
-: Sure, so I'd first start with the labor shortage.
So the labor, there's a shortage
and people are trying to get labor back in the stores.
And the minimum wage went up.
And they even skyrocketed even more
because there's a labor shortage.
So you're incentivizing employees to come back.
But even with the employees that you have,
how do you optimize if a store has 1000 hours,
how do you optimize your staff correctly?
So you might say, "Okay, my staff,
"based on the heat mapping and the traffic flow
"and my map of that,
"I understand that at four o'clock
"on a Monday is my heaviest traffic flow,
"but I didn't know that."
So I'm not giving the guests a good experience
'cause I don't have enough staff.
'Cause in the past, retailers were just saying,
"I need two people in the morning,
"three in the afternoon, four people in the evening."
But now they have analytics to drive that
that improves not only the bottom line,
but also the guest experience.
'Cause there's actually physical people there to help them.
Everybody has this, every retailer I talked to,
my colleagues, they're like, "Yes, in the bathroom,
"you sign off that it was cleaned."
There's a piece of paper and somebody signs off.
That's their job.
But what if you actually knew how many people went into
that restroom because during the middle of the week
and in your store or the mall isn't really busy,
and you have an outside company that comes in.
Now you can leverage that analytics to help your bottom line
to say, "Actually these are not needing to be cleaned
"because nobody's come in them in three days."
This corner of my location.
Or actually I only need to clean it once a day.
Versus every hour.
So that's very powerful.
Or my HVAC system and regulating temperature
and with sensors, or before my cooler
in a supermarket is about to go down,
which actually happened in my supermarket
when they had a staff of 10 people
taking out all the yogurts and the milk.
'Cause they didn't have sensors to say the temperature
is dropping and alert them to fix something immediately.
-: That's a great example, I really like that.
I wanna switch gears to talk
about changing customer expectations.
And I wonder what are some of the
changing customer expectations
and how is that affecting retailers?
-: So I would say it is about speed.
Speed is key and king, everybody is busy.
So you might order online, but you wanna be in and out
of that establishment for the most part.
So the expectation now is I don't wanna stand in line
to buy my ticket.
I wanna be able to buy it online through the app
and have a QR code to scan when I get there.
-: And I wonder from a mall perspective,
how both expectation,
but also behavioral change has affected the mall.
I think your organizations have done a very good job
of responding and being creative and innovative,
but clearly malls throughout the world
have taken significant hits, right?
-: Sure, yep.
And I think Roopi hit on it as well.
Our team members, our people,
are our biggest commodity.
They are our most important commodity.
So when we're talking about labor shortage,
we wanna make sure that the people that we have
are doing the jobs that are most important,
not only for them, but also for the company.
So being able to take some of those things
that are more routine, more repeatable,
and put them onto the power of something like a 5G network
that we can allow for more automation
allows our most important asset, our people,
to be able to focus on the things
that make their companies great.
As far as customer expectations go,
I think that we've seen a lot of that transformation,
certainly over the last 18 months,
where we wanna meet people where they are.
And most often where they are is have their phone
in their pocket where they can access the entire world
right from their phone.
So how do we bring our brands front and center to them
in a way that's meaningful to them so that they can
find what it is that they're looking for
right from the palm of their hand.
-: People leave stores sometimes
because I wanna actually find out what looks good on me.
Like, so, but now even that has changed.
Like there's things that are called magic mirror.
Scott: Magic mirrors, yeah.
-: You can put on two or three outfits.
It captures what you wore.
You can now have a conversation with your friend
who can come with you and downloads those pictures
to your phone while you're in the store and say,
"Hey, tell me what looks good on me?"
-: Social shopping.
Well, now that we've touched on ways 5G
is already impacting the retail industry today,
let's explore what's new.
What innovations should we expect to see
in the imminent future?
Aaron?
-: If I'm coming into a building,
if I'm coming into the Mall of America or American Dream,
how do I allow the customer to see the relevant information
that they've accessed potentially in the past
so that we can continue to cater their experience
for the next time that they come?
We want to make sure that we're communicating the
appropriate information to the customer as they come in.
We wouldn't advertise kids' products
to folks who don't have kids.
So how do we continue to make sure that every touchpoint
that we have with our customers is a personal experience
where they feel like we know them.
-: That's amazing.
Now I have a basic question, which is online
even though we have various means of tracking behavior,
both from a shopping cart and abandonment
and cookie tracking, whatever it is, but offline,
what are the means by which 5G can enable tracking in a way
that's anonymized and private and GDPR compliant
so that we can actually know what their preferences
and personalization needs are so that we can
actually serve up what's right?
-: I would say with beacon technology now,
it's very anonymous.
But if you're a known guest and you've opted in
and said, "You know what, it's okay.
"I'm a loyal customer and I want to know
"about some of these things."
It's different. -: Absolutely.
-: And I think the adoption from unknown to known
has come around over the last 12 months
to more people are acceptable.
In the past, everybody was like, "Oh, big brother."
But now I think, in my opinion,
that's changing and evolving.
-: Very interesting.
-: I think that speaks to the adoption too.
To your point, now that we're
more in a world where we want things
readily available to us,
and we wanna see the things that we're interested in,
as people, to Roopi's point have adopted in
and become more available and accessible
to their previous patterns,
we've been able to tack onto that and say,
"Okay, how do we continue to serve up the things
"that they're interested in?"
Based on what we think we know, inferred behavior,
and what we actually know,
which is obviously known behavior.
-: That's amazing, that's really incredible.
And this really kind of brings us
to just broader kind of smart retail concept.
And I wonder first if you could define it
and how 5G can really help enable that.
-: I would say it's really about the connected store
and the connected journey of that customer
and that employee.
It's not just only about the product.
The product will bring you in, but as they enter the store,
how do we make that better?
So digital signage in the past had no analytics.
Now digital signage can deliver analytics.
How long did you dwell in front of that screen?
Mobile POS.
The endless aisle, things like that.
Sensors by the bathrooms to understand
who's walking in and who's walking out.
Sensors to control the temperature.
And sustainability plays a big role.
Having things on premise versus in the cloud.
-: Yeah.
-: And then there's so much data
and the bandwidth is being taken up,
so 5G comes into play,
but then realtime we need edge computing.
-: Mm, interesting. -: Right?
Instead of going all the way to the cloud,
which sometimes can be expensive,
having it on the edge is better sometimes
and understanding that.
-: Edge computing is important because it allows, again,
that realtime response where we can make
realtime decisions that actually impact
not only the daily business,
but also potentially hour to hour.
Maybe partnering to say, "Hey, can we offer a certain coupon
"to drive more traffic in."
Whether it's in that day or within the near future,
allowing that realtime computing allows us
to make realtime decisions that impact not only us,
but all of our tenants.
-: And then back to inventory too.
It adds BOPIS and curbside pick up.
I'm ordering something online to pick up in store,
and you get there, it's not there.
How frustrating?
'Cause there wasn't realtime.
Scott: Absolutely.
-: Inventory awareness of that retailer.
-: I wonder how are large retailers using connectivity
to optimize the guest experience,
and where does 5G play into that?
-: Yeah, so large retailers are really looking at that.
So, for example, a large retailer for curbside pick up,
they have robots.
And they're geofencing.
So as I'm departing and on that app,
I'm saying, "I'm leaving to pick up my order."
And that store has been alerted I'm 20 minutes out.
So then I break the geofence, maybe that's five minutes out.
And as soon as I get to the parking lot,
a robot is deployed with my package.
-: I want to ask this to both of you,
which is what role does guest expectation
play in future proofing and adopting 5G?
-: I think it drives 100% of our play in the future.
The retailers and the companies that refuse
or aren't fast enough to adopt to the new changes
and anticipate changes as they're coming up are the ones
that are gonna have a hard time succeeding.
We need to make sure that we continue to evolve
with what the customer expectation is
because the market's going to dictate
whether we're doing well or not.
-: And would you like to add?
-: Sure.
If I was planning my trip to the mall,
I wanna have the quickest path.
So by navigating on my phone
because of the great connectivity, I know where to go.
And then when I get there,
I might have an associate help me,
or I might go to the dressing room
and I have to go to an event and I have pants,
but I don't know what else to pick with them.
That magic mirror is going to say,
"Here's some things that compliment you."
So that guest experience is very different now
because of the time constraints of everybody currently.
-: Interesting. -: And also they want more.
And they have the option to shop other brands.
So as a brand, you are trying to say,
"What is gonna get my customer back in my space
and stay with me?"
-: I love that, I love that.
-: So I think that is so critical.
And as retailers look at the art of the future,
they're looking at how do we build that.
What kind of expense do I have to spend now
to get the return and build my retail establishment
for the next five to 10 years?
And so if 5G is it, how do I start that journey?
It's kind of mapping out the plan from all touchpoints
in the company and bringing teams together.
It can't be done in a silo.
So IT is such a big part of it.
But then the marketing team
because the data analytics is involved.
The store operations team is involved.
Everybody needs to come together and say,
'Let's whiteboard and let's figure this out.
"Where do we wanna be?
-: Yeah.
We've been talking about kind of the larger brands
and retailers of different stores,
but I wonder what about for more the smaller shops?
How is 5G relevant for them?
-: So that is a great question, Scott.
So I would say the number one thing is the mobile POS.
If you go to, my town has small retailers,
and it's all about the mobile POS.
They don't want a big register there because their footprint
might be only 2000 square feet or 1000 square feet.
So they wanna have mobile POS deploy there.
And they might not have a website, so they,
but they might have extra inventory.
So maybe they're gonna have tablets there
so people can look at extra inventory.
-: Well, this is very exciting.
And I know without mentioning a specific name,
there are companies that's experimenting with shop and go.
They don't even need to stop by a register.
They could literally just pick up things and the system
automatically puts it into their virtual carts
or their phone app.
And they just literally walk out.
Things are really changing in ways
that we can't even imagine.
And I wonder how those new business models
and new approaches are gonna be enabled by 5G.
-: Yeah, so I would say some coffee companies,
they have products, you order your coffee on the app,
but you still wanna buy your bag of coffee.
But what if there is SaaS out there that you can
actually download and pay through your phone.
Scan and go.
And it's not the whole store,
but there are parts of the store that are set up like that.
And that helps with labor.
It helps improve the ROI of the retailer.
And it's customer satisfaction.
You're giving them what they want quickly.
So if I wanna buy my coffee and I want my bag of coffee,
but there's a big line, I'm gonna walk out.
-: And I think another great example of that
is at American Dream we charge for parking.
So we've all had experiences in parking ramps.
Where there's a big, long line after your concert's done
or your sporting event is done.
We've actually enabled people to be able to park
from Park'n Pay, from the mobile app,
pay for their parking spot,
so they can just skip the line and head right out the door.
That's a great experience, only more bolstered by 5G.
-: Now, we've been talking about a lot of different,
interesting ways that we're able to use 5G.
I wonder if there's any other areas that we missed
or areas that you feel like we should
explore a little bit more.
-: I think in the warehouse setting for supply chain,
robot technology where 5G as the trucks are unloaded
and scanning in items, that's critical.
But I would say understanding where my workers are
and what's their optimal path as they
pack and pick in a warehouse setting.
How do we increase the speed.
Or in a grocery retailer,
understanding that I wanna pick three
or four carts at the same time.
So instead of picking, my average might be five,
but they wanna get me to eight, what tools can they give me?
So those are critical.
I would say, for sure.
-: I would say that, I agree,
certainly with the idea that being able to optimize pathing.
Again, we've all utilized online maps.
Certainly driving maps where you take one wrong turn
and it automatically reroutes you
maybe miles down the road.
Think about doing that same repetition
as picking inventory all day
and shaving minutes off of every run that you have
and being able to fulfill more orders,
therefore generating more for the company.
Definitely powerful.
-: And Roopi, I think just kinda extending
what we're talking about there
is in a retail context,
let's say you used to go to Nordstroms or Macy's,
you walk around and you shop, but now it's like there's,
the experience is different, right?
-: It's the social aspect of things.
So today in retail,
they have to look at it differently.
At my last retailer, we brought in coffee.
-: I love that. -: Because customers wanted
to have coffee.
Coffee is-- -: And together.
-: To the heart of America, I think.
-: And it's a social context, right?
With other girlfriends or friends.
-: Yeah, or like a husband and wife go
and somebody doesn't wanna shop.
And then the wife wants to have coffee.
And the husband is shopping.
So it's very different.
And I think the retailers are looking at that.
Scott: That's right.
-: Just like Mall of America and American Dream
have done such a great job, learnings from that.
How do I entice my customer
and give them what they really want?
One is that social aspect, the touch and feel,
but also talk to people.
And experience something different that I couldn't do
from just ordering from my app.
And that's where other things come into play, AR and VR.
Like, "Let me see what those shoes look like."
But I'm in the store.
Or the glasses, instead of putting them all on my face,
the store has developed this great app that I can just see,
and I don't have to touch anything.
Or the cosmetic counter where the beauticians
used to put makeup on us.
But now it's all done with augmented reality.
-: That's amazing. -: Through a device.
In the retail space
because they've enabled the connectivity.
So that they've addressed the COVID issues.
They've brought in technology to now
deliver that customer experience.
-: I love that, absolutely.
I want to ask in terms of,
some of those that are watching thinking,
"Gosh, I really need this for our organization."
But they're thinking,
"Our budget is so tight already, or we just really,
"we don't have an IT department.
"We don't have the knowledge or expertise."
What are some of the other potential types of barriers
or obstacles to adopting 5G,
and are there any resources for them?
-: Yeah, so I would say retailers have such a short margin.
So I think that's important.
But looking at the whole infrastructure from the
manufacturing of the product to the supply chain,
where's my product,
understanding where the product is in realtime.
When it's in the ocean, when it's leaving country,
when it arrives at the port, is it stuck in the port?
When is it going to get there?
I have a sale, but my stuff is stuck in customs.
So with realtime analytics, you can pivot the sale.
So I think a retailer has to look at everything
that it is going to enable and the effect of getting product
from manufacturing to the store and to the customer's home.
That entire journey of that product is critical.
-: Absolutely, without a doubt.
And I'm thinking for you, Aaron,
you have to justify investment into these types
of infrastructure, to the CFO, to CEO,
maybe even the board of directors.
How do you go about positioning the narrative
in such a way that they understand
that it's not perceived as a cost center,
but something exactly what we're talking about,
this enablement, competitive advantage?
This thing that frankly is gonna be not only
keeping them alive today but future
proofing them into the years to come?
-: Yeah, yeah, and that's a great question.
The digital transformation that we've seen
has shown empirically that the dependency on technology
and fast and reliable connectivity
is as important as it's ever going to be.
I understand that I think there could be some hesitancy
to make the investment out of the gate,
but showing the ultimate capabilities that we can create
with 5G connectivity in the future
and the business verticals that you've created by laying
that underlying infrastructure is a really powerful message.
-: Absolutely, absolutely.
And I wonder how 5G is changing things
in terms of data capture analysis
and how that is enhancing guest experience.
-: Sure, so I was talking to somebody,
a SaaS provider and they were saying,
"Okay, imagine a customer has five clicks
"when they're buying something."
And that happens in 150 seconds.
So with those five clicks,
what if you could do something with that?
And the customer is either they're not gonna buy.
They're buying so you don't need to touch them.
They're buying, it's proven.
We know from the predictive analytics in realtime.
That's the key.
The second is they're on the fence.
So what are the five things that I can do
to influence that purchase?
And the first one that they don't wanna buy,
they're not interested, how do you nurture them?
That happens in 150 seconds, those things.
And without the connectivity and the power of 5G
it's just hard.
And even when they're in the store, that known customer.
Okay, you know what happened before.
So how do you now take that data and predict
that they're actually gonna purchase
because they were on the fence and you did everything,
but maybe you didn't give them that discount.
Or that you didn't have the color.
And now you do, and you push that notification to them.
-: Yeah, there's one area that I don't think we
had a chance to cover just yet.
It's around smart shelving.
And it's a really important topic because it ties
into dynamic pricing and dynamic price displays as well.
So if you could elaborate on that.
-: Sure, so I think, especially in certain industries
and retail pricing is so important.
And it's competitive because online shopping.
Customers are comparing.
So in the past you would tell your sales associate,
"Okay, new price, print it out, cut the label,
"put it on the shelf."
And you may or may not capture that customer
because they might be busy and it's six hours later.
But now with digital price signs
it's a push of a button from a retailer.
As long as they have that connectivity in place.
So I think that's important.
And especially as the employee shortage is still here,
certain retailers change their prices weekly.
And then the smart shelves is also important
because of the inventory purpose.
Saying, "Oh, you are out of something."
You have some in the back, so you're capturing the sale
and improving your ROI.
And on the digital signage,
if I have a customer that's maybe opted in,
and I know they were looking at an X product,
that digital signage can even give them value
and talk about that product to that customer
who's standing in front of that sign in realtime, yeah.
-: And I think just to add to that
is this notion of supply disruption,
not only in terms of competitive pricing,
but also when supply and demand,
you have disequilibrium, if you think about it.
-: Yeah, and the other thing I would say is expiration dates
in food and beverage. -: Yes.
-: If I know that X beer is coming out,
it's going to be not good in another two weeks,
I might lower my price.
I might have video analytics in the store that tells me
that case is not being opened and I can drop the price.
Or it's a snowstorm coming, and maybe I do
bump my hot chocolate or my coffee price slightly
to take a little bit of advantage of that.
Or if something is not selling on, I might lower it.
I have to hit a quota on my coffee,
and I haven't met my goals and it's Thursday,
if I drop it slightly, I may hit my goal.
-: Well, finally, this wouldn't be a conversation
about 5G if we didn't take a look at five,
even 10 years down the road.
What's next in retail, Aaron?
-: I think the things that we are are looking at
certainly going into the future is, again,
we kind of touched on in the beginning, more automation.
So we're able to have people order
and purchase things directly online
and also from some self-service kiosks.
And more in IoT.
How can we empower IoT to get
the most amount of benefit,
not only from the people that we have,
but also reduce the redundancy of the potential overlap.
So continuing to focus in those areas I think we'll
definitely see in the next five to 10 years.
-: As we expand retail in rural America,
how do we enable and stop the digital divide?
So a retailer could have stores in rural America,
and to improve the ROI in retail, automation is the key.
So whether you have robots or you have drones,
or you have tablets, it's about the communication, education
that happens even for the associate
to understand brand X has a new model,
how do I educate that associate?
Maybe it's through the tablet that has streamed content
and is gamified.
So the associate actually wants to engage in...
So the future, that's what I'm seeing is happening more.
-: That's amazing.
And I wonder if you could touch a little bit on things
that we haven't talked about so far, which are wearables,
biometrics, really kind of forward-thinking things.
How do they come into play,
and why is 5G necessary for those things?
-: So I say wearables, they're such a big play,
one from a safety, that we touched upon earlier.
But also wearables in a warehouse setting
where sometimes there's a lot of workers' comp claims.
And you're trying to guide,
and they watch the video on how to bend with your knees.
But now with the wearables, you know,
"Do they really bend with the knees or not?"
-: With biometrics, ease of use comes to mind
because how many different passwords do any of us have
that now I've forgotten pretty much every password
that I've ever had.
But being able to utilize not only biometric scanning,
but also potentially wearables that are already tethered
to my device or tethered to my profile
that allow me to do my job better
is something that empowers all the employees that we have
and any employee of any retailer
to be more efficient in their job.
And I think that's only gonna become more important
as the demand continues to grow for top talented people
to be able to fulfill the needs that only they can do.
-: Shopping is gonna be definitely different.
You want to try on something, what is that gonna look like
on me and what is that?
And with AR-VR from my phone or as I enter,
I don't have to take anything off the racks.
It's gonna be so different.
They might have, through biometrics, your profile.
And say, "Okay, you are actually a size six
"in this designer, and so here are your options.
"And this is what these colors are gonna look like on you."
And it can be done.
That would be a wow.
So things will change and evolve for sure in retail.
But again, it starts with, at five years,
if we don't have the foundation now,
we can't get to that five-year mark.
So while everybody thinks 5G is the hype,
it's actually the enabler.
-: Absolutely.
-: Well, and I think as we look five, 10 years down the line,
5G is gonna be the foundation of everything else that we
want to build as a company and as any company.
So I think the companies that don't adopt it are,
to Roopi's point, gonna kind of struggle to keep up.
Where we look at the technology that we had 10 years ago,
and that almost feels like old news.
So being able to lay that foundation and then build off
of that foundation, building off of a stable foundation
like a 5G will empower so many different business
opportunities that we haven't even imagined yet.
-: Wow, this has been such an incredible conversation.
I wanna just give both of you an opportunity
to share anything that you feel like we haven't covered,
or if there's a point that you want
to further reinforce or to elaborate on.
-: So I would say, I think for retailers
to understand what 5G can enable.
That, yeah, it was the hype,
but they need to understand the future.
And my advice to them is going to be plan.
Start planning now.
What is your goal?
How are you going to enable your digital transformation?
Because you need analytics,
and you don't wanna hire data scientists.
So the analytics that you had in the past
may not be as effective, but you need more analytics,
so how are you gonna get that?
And it might be with more IoT and beacon technology
in a retail space, but also online.
What are the SaaS providers you're gonna reach out to
to give you that.
And it's about realtime, you can't have any delays anymore.
So that goes back to technology.
And I think, several conversations even 10 months ago I had
with retailers were very different than they are today.
'Cause they're understanding to survive I need to do this
and to think about the future.
-: I love that, yep.
-: Yeah, and I think what I would add on to that
is the most important thing that I think a lot of retailers
have learned over the last 18 months
and certainly even prior is know your customer.
How can the customer profile continue to empower you
to be able to serve up what's important to your customer?
Your customer's going to tell you what's important to them
if you listen in the right ways.
The power of 5G allows you to make realtime decisions
based on realtime interactions and tie all that back
into a customer journey that will really allow you
to be able to create an experience.
And create an experience for each individual person
that comes in.
Know your customer, listen to your customer
'cause they are telling you what they want.
We just, you need to be able to hear it.
-: Well, this truly has been a really, I think,
timely and impactful conversation.
I think the retail sector is going through a massive
upheaval and transformation, whether they're ready or not.
And 5G, as we discuss, is an absolute necessary ingredient,
infrastructure that has to be in place.
So what a meaningful and a really comprehensive conversation
that we've had.
Thanks for watching today's discussion.
To learn more about 5G, check out more articles and videos,
or to watch a replay of this episode,
visit T-Mobile.com/5GHQ.
(upbeat music)
Thank you for watching the T-Mobile
for Business Retail Spotlight series.
We have some really great questions
coming in through the chat,
so let's bring our panel on and dive in.
Aaron, here's a question for you.
How did COVID change your focus on customer engagement?
-: It's a great question.
Needing to adapt to the customer's demands
when you're not allowed to actually bring them
into your physical location really gave us some thought
into, well, how do we get our message out to the customer?
So being able to target more specifically
what's relevant to them.
Being able to show them that,
"Hey, based on what we know about you,
"here's some additional things that you'd be interested in."
That relevancy really becomes a mainstay
of how we communicate to our customers.
And COVID certainly bolstered that
and our desire to do more of that in the future.
-: What role does technology and innovation
play in being pandemic-proof in the future?
-: Sure, companies need to evolve and they need to adapt.
What we saw over the last two years is that technology
can and should play a really key role
in any organization's success.
Being able to learn from the past and also,
obviously, the last two years
being a pretty extreme scenario,
but taking those lessons and applying them to the future.
If you think about things like curbside pickup,
BOPIS, buy online pickup in store, loyalty programs,
those were all really bolstered by the fact
that the last two years had us needing
to modify our interactions with how we can bring our message
and our products and our services to our customers.
And I think people have really seen the value
of those sorts of products and services,
and certainly many others that I'm not mentioning
that will continue to shape the future of retail.
-: And even before the start of this Q&A,
we talked briefly about the fact that Mall of America
has actually increased quite a bit in terms
of physical engagement with its customers and patrons.
And it's amazing how you guys have adapted and been very
morphing, especially around customer experience.
Are you able to elaborate a little bit further?
-: Yeah, we're feeling really good about
how we're coming out of the pandemic and our traffic
as it's been relating to people coming in,
back into the building, where before it was we
had some restrictions that were set
as part of the COVID restrictions.
And as people are getting more comfortable coming back in
and resuming their their life before COVID,
we've been able to learn some pretty key lessons
on customer expectations going forward.
And we continue to evolve and adapt
based on the customer expectation.
-: Great, terrific.
Roopi, here's a question for you.
What can 5G enable for retailers
as they build out their infrastructures?
-: That's a great question, Scott.
So as retailers are looking at the infrastructure
to enable the growth for the next five years,
I think what 5G enables
is the allowing of tons of IoT
on the network and not affecting the speed
with the low latency that 5G brings.
I think the other piece is if you think about
where retail is going, I think about my gym in the mornings.
They used to have hours five to 11,
and now their hours are 7AM, but they are open at five.
But you can actually scan yourself in,
and they have AR and VR cameras inside,
and you are able to get in.
So I think about that technology and going
into a large construction site
and a retailer like that's in yellow.
And you think about that retailer,
and they have contract workers that want
to come into the store and pick up their items
prior to going on job at 6AM.
This technology has allowed change and shift in behavior.
I also think about smart lighting,
smart sensors in the bathrooms.
Smart recycle, if more and more retailers
are getting into recycling, whether it's bags or garments.
Understanding when that is full,
having a sensor for somebody to go pick it up
so things are not overflowing.
I think there are many aspects of 5G and enablement,
including digital signage.
In the past, digital signage was just streaming content,
and retailers were spending millions of dollars on that.
But now with the analytics behind the screen
of a digital TV, you can, one,
push out content based on who's in front of it
if they've opted into your store app
and push out the right content.
Understanding what they left in the market,
what they were checking out before they
arrived to the store is key.
And understanding how long they dwell in front of a sign
is also impactful because now a retailer
can take that analytics and feed it back to brands
and optimize the space.
So I think if you think about a smart retailer,
all of this comes into play because it's not a guess anymore
where maybe the C-Suite is telling you to do one thing
and you did something else.
Now you have proven numbers that actually speak to it,
especially when you are also perhaps doing a remodel
and understanding where my customers went before
and after the remodel to then take those analytics
and learnings to deploy that to the chain,
which was always a challenge for retailers
to spend that money and see what they're going
to get an improvement in the ROI or not.
-: So, as I'm listening, Roopi, I think,
there's this density of internet of things,
smart windows, smart signage to just other mobility aspects.
And really when you have all that density,
you start to have interference.
And I think this is where underlying, behind the scene,
is this low-band, mid-band and that high speed as well,
that can actually account
for all those different requirements,
band requirements and packet requirements,
and making sure that all of these are working properly.
Aaron, how much network cabling did it take
to have complete wifi coverage in the Mall of America?
-: I really like that question.
Short answer is almost 50 miles of cabling
between copper and fiber.
That would be selling the project short.
It was a very focused four or five-month project.
Involved many hundreds of access points,
reconfiguring switches, but the short answer is 42 miles
of copper and six miles of fiber.
-: Amazing, that's an incredible fact right there.
Roopi, what changes have you seen around technology
implementation when new DCs are being built?
-: Well, that goes back to the consumer
wants things tomorrow, within 24 hours.
So as more DCs and smaller warehouses are being created,
the infrastructure inside with...
Fixed wireless connectivity is key,
but then also is key to understand where the product
comes from, and with fixed wireless enabling robots to roam
and pack and pick with accuracy is also critical.
So with human error, that does happen during Christmas.
I ordered something from a retailer,
and I got an extra pair of wool socks
that were pretty expensive.
And I think what robots...
Because people are trying to work fast.
There's a labor shortage.
So retailers are thinking,
"How do we make our DC more autonomous?"
Whether it's vehicles or robots
or things coming off truckloads on a conveyor belt
where they're getting scanned and put onto the shelves.
Retailers are looking at their supply chain
from a holistic standpoint,
from the manufacturing to going through the ports,
getting into this larger distribution center
and tracking the inventory in realtime,
whether they have RFID or other means
of understanding where that is.
Or scanning a label so they don't have to open up the box.
It is critical for speed.
The other piece, I think, as they build out these,
camera technology plays a big part into this.
Understanding the path of where the product is
based on the picking orders of what customers are ordering
or what they're shipping to the store's place and to that.
So somebody's analyzing that so that it's
built correctly is also vital.
And I think as other things emerge such as drone technology,
while there are some regulations about
flying drones outside for delivery,
I think internal usage of drone
from a safety aspect is also critical.
So you don't have ladders going up inside,
whether it's inside a retail space to find an item
or at a distribution center to make sure things
are put on shelves correctly.
And where there are open spaces, again,
it enables with 5G the fixed wireless connectivity
throughout the entire space,
including that back corner of that distribution center.
-: You make some excellent points.
And certainly for a distribution center,
it's all about throughput and efficiency.
So when you have swarms or robotics,
when you have even flying drones,
but even things like Spot from Boston dynamics,
you need an incredible amount
of collaboration and coordination.
And a lot of that has to do with computer vision
like you're referring to, so very exciting.
Roopi, here's the last question for you,
which is frictionless shopping has evolved.
What are some ways that you have seen it adopted?
-: Well, retailers are now taking that customer experience
to the next level.
So if they have coffee inside,
and I'm picking up a curbside order,
I might order my coffee cup on the store app.
So I'm getting one person, a robot,
maybe delivering my order
and somebody else delivering my coffee order.
So retailers are really looking
to make changes in everything.
So curbside having, again,
AI and vision with cameras in the parking lot.
And in the app, I put in my license plate number.
So now it's alerted the store staff,
"Mrs. Crowley is now in Parking Lot Two
"and she is ready for her pickup."
They might also push, well,
"She has ordered X, Y and Z
"in the grocery section of that store,
"and it's time for a refill,"
and maybe suggest different things.
So I think there's a huge evolution with 5G
and what retailers are thinking about.
-: Well, again, I think it's that being one step ahead
of what the customer's expecting
is really the right answer so.
Well, I want to thank our panelists for joining today.
And thank you for watching today's discussion.
And to learn more about 5G
or watch a replay of today's episode,
visit T-Mobile.com/5GHQ.