atrify GMBH NRF - My 4 top insights

I attended the NRF (National Retail Federation), the world's largest retail conference and exhibition, in New York last week. Nothing less than the future of retail was the theme of NRF 2020, which was attended by 38,000 visitors from all over the world!
Here are my 4 top takeaways:

1) The future is digital - and the future is now!
All of the topics on digital transformation raised during the fair are not new in retail, but it seems to me that they have matured to the point where the time has come to implement them.

2) Optimizing the customer experience is an issue everywhere.
The main goal of technology is to support an optimized customer experience across all channels. This really is one of the most hotly debated topics in years, but the NRF 2020 showed me that it is now a reality. A key factor of the future is seen in the intensive personalization of the customer experience measured at every touchpoint. These aggregated and analyzed measurement results will be the basis for business decisions.

3) Data analysis is business critical.
The retail business will create and collect huge amounts of data even faster than before. Data analysis, data aggregation and data quality will increasingly determine our business. The winner of the future is the one who doesn't get lost in data, but gets the best out of it.

4) AI - Artificial Intelligence - the general problem solver?
AI was 'the' hot topic and the biggest 'buzzword' at the fair. AI is seen as the only viable solution for processing the vast amount of data measured, aggregated, or gathered from multiple sources.

All in all, it is about the operational excellence of digital data management, which will determine the leading companies of tomorrow. Data has never been so business critical ...