EVP Retail for Valtech, Jean-Christophe Hermann

Lina Zarate:
‍‍I am Lina Zarate, strategist at Valtech, and today I am in Montreal with Jean Christophe Hermann, EVP Global Retail for Valtech. Hello Jean Christophe, thank you for being here.

JC Hermann:
Hi Lina, thanks for having me.

Lina Zarate:
If you just want to introduce yourself to our listeners.

JC Hermann:
Right, I’ve been in the retail industry for 17 years in C level positions mostly in Europe, but finally before joining Valtech four years ago in the US. In Chief Digital Officer role, EVP, Global, e-commerce, and digital and so on in retail in various product categories. I’ve been in the grocery category with Carrefour.

JC Hermann:
I’ve been in the electronics in Europe with Fnac, and also in the telecom industry with Orange. My role at Valtech is to support our teams in their engagement with major retailers around the world. Not only in what we do very well, which is a customer journey, design thinking, and customer journey implementation with all our technology skills, but also help our customers understand key trends, and define their strategies leveraging all the innovation ecosystem that we have access to as Valtech, since we are in 26 countries in the world.

JC Hermann:
My role is really to support those teams as they engage, but also personally participate to some key projects, especially when there are C level people who are seriously driving transformation projects.

Lina Zarate:
You had the chance to attend to one of the largest retail conferences, the National Retail Federation’s Big Retail Show, which took place in mid January in New York City. You had the chance to be there, to talk with people in the industry. What was a key moment for you at the NRF this year?

JC Hermann:
Right, right, NRF by the way is named National Retail Forum, but should be probably called Global Retail Forum, because originally it’s the professional association of retailers from the United States, but really has become the global retail forum. People come from all around the world including from Asia. This year at NRF, which it was a very intense NRF by the way, because it was over …

JC Hermann:
Now it’s two days, so it starts on a Sunday and really finishes in on Tuesday afternoon, so it’s two days and a half. Very intense, a lot of technology demos, large tech companies, but also plenty of startups. More and more startups now are at NRF, especially this year, but also a lot of talks, meeting a lot of people. You get a feel of where retailers are, where they’re searching for, but also you get a feel for what technology will win given their needs.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, it’s the place to be to find out what’s happening, what’s coming out new?

JC Hermann:
Yeah definitely, if you’re a retailer, you must not miss NRF every year.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, and so out the discussions that you had, what are you going to share with us today? What are your top trends that retailers can’t ignore?

JC Hermann:
Right, this is probably … I didn’t count, but something like my tenth NRF, so it’s really good to see what changes from one NRF to the other. This year was special in the sense that there was much more optimism about the future of retail. In fact, I think that the track to the rebirth of retail can be seen and has been seen during this NRF.

JC Hermann:
I think NRF is a new animal if I may say in the retail landscape. Amazon has been an incredibly high performance company. They reached $1 trillion market capitalization last summer, and really over performing any other retailer in the world. We may speak later about Asia, but let’s say any other retailer in the Americas or in Europe.

JC Hermann:
I think that the news that for the second time one unit, one key unit of Amazon group, so that’s AWS, Amazon Web Services had a booth. That was the second year, and I think it’s a symbol of something much more profound, which is that Amazon is now becoming a friend, a true partner of retailers, much more than a foe or a competitor.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, so what do you mean by that like maybe being a partner for retailers instead of a competitor?

JC Hermann:
I think there are two aspects. If you ask who is Amazon’s enemy let’s say? It’s probably himself, or Amazon is its own enemy. It’s so powerful on a lot of dimensions that Amazon is now probably closely watched by the regulator. It’s not public, but we all feel they have reached a level of dominance in various ways. Probably if I had to quote one number, the number which is the most public now is that 60% of households are on Amazon Prime, so they’re a member of the Amazon Prime program.

JC Hermann:
That gives you an idea of how strong Amazon is. On the other side, they only account for 4% or 4.5% of the retail transactions or value of retail in the US. In that sense they’re not so dominant. I mean Walmart is 17% to 18%. No, I think what’s new is their business model is taking them towards being a partner of retailers, that’s really the news.

JC Hermann:
I was mentioning that, of course, the talks around NRF are very intense, so I had some sources confirming that. Business model Amazon, if you take Amazon Web Services, I mean most retailers actually use Amazon Web Services, so in that sense …

Lina Zarate:
In that sense, okay, by leveraging the platform in order to touch more people, and using it as a transaction as a touch point for transactions, how does this partnership take place?

JC Hermann:
I can give you several examples. I think the news is how fast the media business at Amazon is growing. Basically the media business at Amazon, you can compare it with Google. I mean, it’s Google AdWords, but on Amazon search engine, but they’re going beyond that now. Now they’re proposing to re-target Amazon Prime customers outside of the Amazon space on third party websites.

JC Hermann:
With its media business, Amazon is truly now proposing a very powerful targeting tool in terms of quality, but also in terms of quantity to brands and retailers.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, so for sure something new again from this year then. Amazon more as a partner rather than a competitor, but if we’re going to look in terms of key success factors for retailers, what are your top five that you can share with us?

JC Hermann:
Yeah, of course, NRF covers is very exhaustive. It covers about every technology, every aspect, from supply chain, warehouse management, last mile delivery, to store management, e-commerce websites, so about everything that counts in retail. If I had to pick out the five that I think are quite innovative, but becoming some key, very heavy factors for the future of retail, I’d name the following.

JC Hermann:
I’d say first what I call 100% visitor check-in in stores, and 0% checkout time. I think, of course, the Amazon Go concept in grocery has shown the way, but I think it’s gonna go way beyond even in nonfood, non-grocery categories. The fact that 100% of visitors check-in in a store will happen if retailers bring enough value and significant value for visitors to check-in, but also in the reverse for retailers, there are huge benefits of doing that.

JC Hermann:
I think that’s a trend, on this one Amazon is showing the way. The other trend is the emergence now and coming to maturity of progressive Web apps. It’s a technology that really enables to have an app, mobile app experience, except that you don’t have to download the app. It’s a website that’s designed, and that literally behaves as an app, but no download.

JC Hermann:
That’s a huge almost revolution for retailers who have not been able to really build and distribute successful apps. I mean, we’re doing short, so I would say the app experience for most retailer has not been a success. This is a wonderful opportunity for them to enable customers to basically use their phone in-store with augmented store experience.

JC Hermann:
The third one I would say is conversational AI applied to customer service. I think we spoke a lot about AI in the past. Conversational AI is now all over, whether it’s Google, Amazon, or Apple pushing it. The news is that now it’s mature for customer service, and that’s also a huge impact on high customer satisfaction, and reduced cost in call centers, email centers for retailers.

JC Hermann:
It’s a 24/7 type of service, so I think it has a very strong future based on how mature the technology, and effective the technology is today. A weakened signal, but I think also is very interesting, is what I call community-based sellings. It’s really how beyond having ambassadors of your brand, of your retailers, how do you engage with these people, so at some point they’re going to actually sell products for you?

JC Hermann:
You could call it affiliation 4.0 or 3.O. Affiliation has been around for a long time, but now this is the dream of retailers for the future, having limited fixed costs, or almost no fixed costs, and having communities basically sell their products. Last but not least, I really think it’s the first year where the dream can come true in terms of analytics, basically having one single tool to capture customer or visitor behavior on both online channel and store channel.

JC Hermann:
I really think this is the year, and it’s another key turning point. That’s the five I would say profound trends that I see that could impact favorably classic retailers in the future, in the near future.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, so okay, if we take the first one, 100% visitor check-in, 0% checkout time and store experience. If you can, just for our listeners, just what do you mean exactly by that?

JC Hermann:
Yeah, well listeners may have heard or seen or investigated on Amazon Go. Amazon Go has been a concept store opened in Seattle three years ago now by Amazon. It was, until last year, until the beginning of last year, the beginning of 2018 it was open only to employees of Amazon as a test store. They opened it to the public this year, and apparently it went well, so that they decided to open three other units.

Two in Seattle, two more in Seattle, and one in Chicago. It’s very interesting, because of course all visitors that come into the store check-in, right? Non-grocery, most visitors in fact convert when they come to a store, so you could say well it’s a not revolution, because the conversion rate in groceries 90%, 95%, if not 99%.

It’s true revolution when this technology and approach will be applied to nonfood categories, where conversion rate are 20%, 30%, 40% maximum. With this approach suddenly retailers could engage with 100% of their visitors, and that’s a huge stream of value that has not been tackled yet.

Lina Zarate:‍
Yeah, so when you talk about engagement with 100% of visitors, you mean just not only when they are in-store, but at different moments to capture data, and then be able to touch them at a later moment?

JC Hermann:
Yeah, but the idea is you want them to realize as they enter the store that the experience is going to be unique, okay?

Lina Zarate:
Okay.

JC Hermann:
They must use their phone for those who are agile with their phone, but now most customers are, right? Because they showroom in store anyway, so they need to understand that if they connect on Wi-Fi, they’re going to be connected to a progressive Web app, so a mobile site which is dedicated to that store. They’re going to see that in terms of experience it would be a shame not to use this service.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, okay, so increasing engagement with them in-store, changing the in-store experience. What type of retailers, what type of industries should be looking at this trend? Is it for everyone? Who might be looking into this to implement this type of technology for example?

JC Hermann:
Right, I really think it’s a trend that could apply to any retail category, okay? Whether it’s sporting goods, whether it’s DIY, or whether it’s fashion. Of course now each brand, each retail brand and each category has to develop its own set of service, so that customers say, “Well it’s very clear I need to engage my visit in terms of product information. When I get out of the fitting room, I’ll have a trace of all the garments I tried on. I will have immediate check out, etc., etc.”

JC Hermann:
I mean, there are plenty of service that have to be defined, but that’s the ideation phase. We know the technology now can make it happen.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, so you think consumers in the States are ready for these type of experiences? Are they expecting them this year you think?

JC Hermann:
I think when you see the statistics about how many people use their phone inside a store. I think now latest statistics is probably 80% of people or 70% people they use their phone anyway while they shop. Of course retail has the choice of leaving that state, or saying, “Well why don’t I use the screen of the customer to help them in his experience in the store and make a difference?”

Lina Zarate:
Absolutely.

JC Hermann:
I think the customer is ready and has been ready for some time in fact.

Lina Zarate:
Yes, absolutely, it’s the notion of maybe tailoring the experience in-store around the phone and around the customer.

JC Hermann:
Yeah, I mean, let me give you just a very simple example that will speak to anybody. In a web app today you can activate your camera. You don’t need to have the app, you just have a mobile website of the store, you activate camera, and you read a barcode of a product, and suddenly you have readable information, video tutorials, and it’s a huge difference.

JC Hermann:
I mean, most information on products today are not readable as they are for most, whether it’s on the packaging or on the shelf for most consumers. This would change the readability and it would be a truly augmented product and store experience.

Lina Zarate:
Yes, yes, and I guess it would also bring brands and retailers in creating new content formats, new experiences and working that aspect?

JC Hermann:
Yeah, plenty of work for digital agencies such as Valtech, that’s for sure.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, you also mentioned mobile centric retail with progressive web apps, which I think it’s a good segue for what we were talking. You mentioned just that …

JC Hermann:
There’s one word to be said on this. We’re probably coming at the end of a phase where the mobile was treated or dealt with as a responsive website as we say, right? Which is basically saying the site was designed for desktop, and then the desktop was massaged in terms of row and columns, so that it could fit on a mobile.

Lina Zarate:
Yes.

JC Hermann:
That’s what we used to call, I mean, most of the industry used to call responsive websites. Unfortunately, this has led to very long scrolling pages, okay? Because it’s cheap to do that kind of mobile website, and cheap is also important, low cost is very important. I think as this new technology of progressive web apps comes, it is the moment also, the opportunity to redefine the mission of the mobile for retail.

JC Hermann:
Knowing that by the way, traffic and conversion in e-commerce now reach 60%, 70% in terms of traffic and transaction for most retailers, okay? Mobile is taking over basically traffic, online traffic and e-commerce, so it’s time to redefine that mobile website. The nice thing about progressive web apps is you can have a dedicated website inside a store, because if people go, geolocalize themselves, opt in to do so, or they go on the Wi-Fi of the store that’s provided by the retailer, they’ll have a very local experience of that very specific store, okay?

Lina Zarate:
Okay.

JC Hermann:
If they’re outside of the store, then they’ll go on a website which will be different.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, so …

JC Hermann:
It’s multiple geolocalisation and feature-rich type of mobile experience.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, so it’s a completely different experience from when you’re checked-in let’s say, or logged in, in the store.

JC Hermann:
Right.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, some of the functionalities that you’ve mentioned. It’s a different experience, what type of functionalities could you see a store leveraging on a progressive app for example?

JC Hermann:
For sure product information I think is crucial.

Lina Zarate:
Yes, okay.

JC Hermann:
I mean, people are more and more demanding. If you take grocery, people want to know all the ingredients and they’re barely readable. There are some apps doing some work on helping you to understand what’s going on if it’s gluten-free or lactose-free or whatever, or and it has a risk of pesticides or whatever. I really think people have been looking for long to have more traceability on products, and therefore much more information on products.

Lina Zarate:
Yes.

JC Hermann:
I think that’s the obvious one for me, but after that I mentioned earlier that in fashion think about people who go to a fitting room and do not buy immediately. I mean, what a loss of value if you don’t engage with these people, because they’ve spent 10, 20 minutes trying on garments of the brand, and they go out of the store in an anonymous fashion.

JC Hermann:
The retailer doesn’t know them, cannot re-target them, cannot reengage, what a waste of value.

Lina Zarate:
Yes, absolutely, a way to also build a relationship and a conversation that will go beyond the store visit, and that will take place maybe potentially within the rest of the digital ecosystem of the brand. That becomes interesting for retailers.

JC Hermann:
Exactly.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, okay your third trend, omni channel, customer service, and a conversational AI. This is a big one for sure, what is interesting is something that you mentioned is 24/7, this notion of dialogue, and bringing customer service through another level. What do you see retailers today, would it be integrating the notion of chatbots and applications throughout the different ecosystem as well as in-store? How do you see the conversational for retailers?

JC Hermann:
I think again you had a very interesting question earlier on are the users ready or customers ready. I think on conversationally AI, or conversations with bots, they’re more than ready. I mean, voice search on Google is taking over almost. On text, I don’t have the final numbers, but I know it’s going very fast. Of course Alexa has been a huge education for consumers like you and me.

JC Hermann:
Therefore, I think retail has to catch up, and it’s another wonderful opportunity, because retailers have been on cost pressure. I mean, the opening huge call centers or email centers is very costly for most retailers who are under price pressure, margin pressure, profit pressure. The good news about conversational AI, especially in customer service, is that it’s a very low cost effort for them, and it’s a win-win.

JC Hermann:
I mean, you can suddenly open up as you mentioned 24/7 service on specific use case and have no variable cost on that, a very low cost, so that’s very interesting. It’s not always fully automated by the way. We have a lot of customers in the luxury industry, and the luxury industry is always very anxious about downgrading its brand experience with automation.

JC Hermann:
The good news is with conversational AI you can facilitate the access to a human. For example, it can help you take an appointment with a beauty assistant in a luxury cosmetic store for tomorrow morning. This has value also to I would say mass market retailers, but also to high-end retailers, especially luxury retailers.

Lina Zarate:
Yeah, and I guess we would have to look into specific industries, but for people browsing also, I think what could also be interesting for conversational or AI or these types of support when you’re in a browsing catalog or website or whatever, is redirecting people to the right type of content based on their interests, or based on their questions. Then so I think that could also be interesting for brands to be able to again, I’ve been saying build a relationship, a different way of sharing content, or of sharing brand values, or of bringing value to the customer in the end.

JC Hermann:
Right, you said something very important is that as customers ask questions. This is probably a revolution that has not been yet fully understood. I’m looking at that very carefully for Valtech. If you think about data, trying to understand what the customers want when we say look into the data, we really have been looking at history of visits, history of purchase, or click stream on online channels.

JC Hermann:
In the end, with these methodologies, we’re trying to predict what the customer is looking for. We don’t really know, we approach it, but we don’t really know.

Lina Zarate:
Yeah.

JC Hermann:
What would be really disruptive is that as customers engage more and more and are satisfied by conversational AI, suddenly they would be ready to answer questions that we have not even dreamed of over the last 20 years. I mean, if the customer is always in a win-win game, if he feels when he’s asked questions or when he’s providing information, he gets immediate, real-time, high value information and feedback, he will engage seriously.

JC Hermann:
I’m starting to wonder when I see how conversational AI is picking up on how really the value of data that’s gonna come from that type of conversation is going to overtake suddenly the other traditional type of data.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, and how it would fit in within the rest of the data that they may have.

JC Hermann:
Yeah, and think about the fact that historically when we’ve seen visitors on websites, we were predicting well they seem to be purchasing something, they seem to be looking for something.

Lina Zarate:
Yes.

JC Hermann:
But in conversational AI you don’t try to predict, you just ask, you say, “What are you looking for?” The customer is going to tell you what he’s looking for, okay?

Lina Zarate:
Yes.

JC Hermann:
Suddenly no margin of error there, suddenly you have the real-time information. You know exactly what he’s looking for, this could be a serious game changer in the right way, both for the customer, but also for the retailer.

Lina Zarate:
Yes, absolutely, it would bring customer experience to another level for sure. If we’re thinking from a retail perspective who was wondering, “Okay, if I wanted to get into conversational …” It’s a broad question, again, it depends for what type of industry you’re in. Someone wanting to start this year getting in into conversational, where would they start from?

Lina Zarate:
Is it just having something on your website? Is it a chatbot on your website?

JC Hermann:
Yeah, thanks for the question, because with that broad and very promising technologies it’s difficult to know where to start. At Valtech we really recommend to start with customer service, because in customer service the customer already has semantics which are easy to understand for the bot. He has bought a product, he knows the store, he’s referring to a very precise experience at the retailer’s store or online.

Lina Zarate:
He can predict.

JC Hermann:
It’s very predicable, and let’s say the semantics are known basically.

Lina Zarate:
Yes.

JC Hermann:
There you can provide a lot of value, because you understand exactly. He’s asking where is his order. He’s asking how to return his order. He’s asking if his return has been processed and so on. Our recommendation is to start with customer service, because that’s usual right there, and then probably as the algorithm build up and the relevance of understanding the intention of the customer, plus providing the right answers, as this builds up and proves fully satisfactory for the customer, then take that back to presales where there is also a lot of value of course.

Lina Zarate:‍
Okay.

JC Hermann:
We really think the starting point, because technology is really mature, is customer service.

Lina Zarate:
Yes, okay, we have weak signal community-based selling. What do you mean by that?

JC Hermann:
Yeah, that was not all over NRF to be honest. This is one of my personal thoughts on the fact that the dream of retailers is to have no fixed costs. Unfortunately, stores are big fixed costs, so in this industry it’s tough. If your business is growing, it’s fine. If your business is volatile or decreasing, then having fixed costs is really an issue.

JC Hermann:
I have one example which I think is showing the way, is the fact that IKEA in 2018 bought TaskRabbit. As some of you know TaskRabbit is a community of people who actually make some money by helping their neighbors build furniture, do some DIY in their home and so on. IKEA discovered that a significant part of the TaskRabbit activity, I don’t know the number, but some people say 20% or up to 40% in some cities performed by TaskRabbit members is actually assembling IKEA furniture.

JC Hermann:
IKEA I think made a very, very smart move by taking over that community. Of course, they’re going to respect that community, they’re not going to try to control it, but try to boost it, because right now it’s a city by city expansion. They’re probably going to help them to expand to a lot of cities in the world now. It’s providing a key service to their customers who bought furniture, with no fixed costs for IKEA.

JC Hermann:
I think there’s even something even more promising, which is that community will not only assemble your furniture, but it’s going to cross sell to you the next lamp, or the next table that you didn’t buy, or the next chair you didn’t buy. It’s the dream of … It can profile the dream of some retail models where the community will not only promote your products, provide an excellent service so that you bought a product, but now you use it correctly and you’ve assembled it, but also you’re going to find out that you could buy the right accessories next to what you bought.

JC Herman:
It’s weak signals, but it can be impressive in the long term it. Now there are probably not room for every retailer in that game, but probably first movers like IKEA are going to harvest some significant value from there. Interestingly just to mention, IKEA mentioned that, that move was in particularly due to their competition with Amazon, so very interesting.

Lina Zarate:
People are more going back to groups like Quora, Reddit, where they can find people with same interests in communities and then maybe brands can tap into these groups and forums. Maybe if we were to look at it not just for the IKEA example, but how this would play out, or what it could mean for other retailers.

JC Hermann:
Right, no, it’s a good question. Actually, we have some retailers, especially in the sport industry, they’re totally convinced about that model as well. I mean, they’re looking for it seriously. We have another customer in the beauty industry, same thing. We can name that customer, it’s Mary Kay based in Dallas. They invented almost community-based selling with hundreds of thousands of independent beauty consultants promoting their products and selling their products.

JC Hermann:
It’s not a new thing, it’s just that online is facilitating really the fact that sellers and buyers get together even in the physical world. That it can provide also a marketplace for services, and a lot of retailers have not engaged in actually proposing services to their customers, because it’s a low margin business or even a loss making business.

Lina Zarate:
Yeah.

JC Hermann:
Now community have a way to manage this, so that it’s profitable for everybody. Obviously TaskRabbit, the student who assembles the IKEA furniture for an old lady next door, he’s happy about the $20 he’s making on that furniture, on assembling that furniture, and the lady is really happy as well. I’m not sure that’s the typical customer of IKEA, but it’s a good example.

Lina Zarate:
Yeah, okay, that’s interesting how these online communities will play out for retailers, and how it would evolve.

JC Hermann:
People who assemble would get commission on selling products as well, because once you’ve provided … If you’re a member of the TaskRabbit community, once you’ve provided the service and your customer is satisfied, then it’s so easy to say, “Well you know what? I’ve seen really nice lamp that would fit marvelously with your bed here,” okay?

Lina Zarate:
Yes, it’s the evolution of that community that exists already, where it can go, and where it can grow, yes.

JC Hermann:
Yeah, and favorable moments to do so.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, very interesting, and finally, advanced 360 store and e-commerce analytics. You’ve mentioned that it’s …

JC Hermann:
Yeah, that’s the last trend I listed as the major trends.

Lina Zarate:
Yeah.

JC Hermann:
It’s also a dream come true again of retailers. For the last 20 years retailers have been wanting to understand exactly what was going on, on all channels, right? On e-commerce, tremendous progress were made on understanding where visitors were coming from, what they were doing on the website, and which ones converted, didn’t convert, re-target them and so on.

JC Hermann:
The level of sophistication in terms of analytics on the online world, which has become impressive, but nothing really is comparable on the store side. I mean, most retailers have very limited traceability and tracking of what’s going on in their store. I mean, of course they visit their own store, they see the customers, they have customer satisfaction and surveys and so on, but nothing compared to really the sophistication of online.

JC Hermann:
Well beacons appeared in the 2010 years, early 2010 years, but were not so successful. Now really I think things are changing. There are technologies which are cheap, cheap to implement, and that can really record, thanks to the customer’s mobile, masses of data of what’s going on in the store. Of course fully compatible with GDPR, but really enabling to have …

JC Hermann:
That’s the dream come true, a single view of what’s going on if a visitor goes in a store, then online, then back to the store, we’re really tracking that type of behavior.

Lina Zarate:
Yes, which goes back to what we said earlier, which is being able to just keep the conversation going when they’re in the store and when they leave the store.

JC Hermann:
Also, understanding what’s going on, to tune your value proposition on all channels, intrude on the channel journeys. Really here, I think we’re getting very ready, very close to being ready where data provided by mobiles in stores will be analyzed with the same tool that you use for web analytics. It would be a Google analytics of all channels if you may say, okay?

JC Hermann:
There are some startups who are doing a great job in getting very close to that, but also not only in terms of analytics tool, but also in terms of setting up the right sensors and Wi-Fi sources to really track what’s going on in the store.

Lina Zarate:
Knowing what type of activity to track in the store, and we’re looking at potentially a new set of data that retailers will start gathering that will be able to feed whatever they’re proposing for customers, products, insights.

JC Hermann:
Right, I mean understanding who’s going where in the store. As we said, eventually proposing to opt in on Wi-Fi, and then it’s not anymore an anonymous visitor, it’s a customer that has logged in and is starting to use services inside the store to have a more efficient experience in-store. We’re getting close to that, I’m not saying it’s ready, but I really think this year’s gonna confirm that.

JC Hermann:
I’m waiting for the moment … I meet a lot of startups, but I can see there’s gonna be a moment where one startup is gonna propose to have …

Lina Zarate:
The right tool.

JC Hermann:
Well all the data are readable and ready to be analyzed inside a single analytics tool, okay? Not with different tools, whether you look at store behavior or online behavior. It’s not a new question, but I think technology is there now.

Lina Zarate:
Okay, well thank you Jean Christophe. Thank you for sharing some of your insights with us, some of what’s coming up this year, and in the coming years. For sure very interesting to hear about Amazon’s new role and new technology that is coming for new data maybe that retailers can look forward and gain some insights to improve customer experiences.

JC Hermann:
Thank you Lina.