Revionics AI capabilities can expand into Aptos' entire solution set
Atlanta-headquartered Aptos, a market leader in retail technology solutions, drives growth for more than 1,000 leading retail brands. In an interview with Paulami Chatterjee, vice president (VP) of retail innovation Nikki Baird speaks about changing retail trends in the wake of the pandemic, the recent acquisition of Revionics by the company and its future plans.
What are the trends in the retail space as the pandemic continues to rear its head every now and then?
COVID-19 has forced retailers to rapidly transform to a new, digital-first world. Rather than backing off on information technology spend, retailers will keep digital transformation at the top of their agenda, in some cases even doubling their investments. As part of their digital transformation efforts, many retailers will be rethinking the ways they sell. Livestreaming, pop-up shops, rentals and subscription services are among the options that will be explored. Omni-channel-the creation of seamless experiences for consumers as they cross channels and touchpoints-will be a high priority. Towards the end of the year, we expect retailers will shift their focus from providing seamless experiences to providing seamless experiences that are profitable. While as an industry we have talked about omni-channel for years, the reality is that many retailers are still struggling to satisfy consumers' omni-channel expectations, particularly in a way that is profitable for their business.
Your acquisition of Revionics in 2020 is supposed to fuse AI into the retail space. Please elaborate on how you will leverage AI to further simplify things.
Aptos sees three major opportunities with Revionics. First, the company already brings market-leading AI-driven optimisation within price, promotion and markdown solutions. They do this through two main differentiators-a unique approach to AI-driven, unified forecasting and a glass-box approach to AI that significantly improves user adoption over other AI solutions. These pricing solutions expand on and enhance our planning and inventory management solutions.
Aptos will expand these capabilities first into our merchandise planning solutions through expansion of the unified forecast. We are looking forward to tackling the two most difficult challenges remaining in retail forecasting today-the problem of intermittent demand (when a retailer sells only one or two of a SKU in a location per week or per month, which makes predictability of demand extremely difficult), and the problem of initial allocation for a new product where there is no demand history.
Additionally, we are already looking to other places where the Revionics AI capabilities can be expanded into our entire solution set, with capabilities like next-generation omni-channel fulfillment optimisation, dynamic safety stock settings and personalisation.
If retailers have learnt anything in the last decade, it is that data-driven insights are not a passing fad.
How is AI set to change the retail scape?
Artificial intelligence has immense potential. The capability can drive step-level improvements in business outcomes when applied correctly and managed well. As a technology that has the potential to disrupt the retail industry, AI cannot be ignored.
First-generation AI solutions were simple-data in, answer out. Solutions were designed to protect the average end user from confusion and distraction. While black box solutions serve their purpose, they also limit the value organisations can extrapolate by hiding AI logic, which in theory could be used to teach humans what was learnt that led to various recommendations.
That is why, as an organisation, Aptos has made the design choice to focus on transparency in our modelling, forecasting and optimisation. For example, in the case of our AI-powered pricing and promotions solutions, we believe that pricing teams need to have well-placed confidence in their decisions and really understand the factors that drive any pricing action. We call that glass box AI.
What is your USP?
Most software companies of our size and scope divide their focus across many industry sectors. Aptos, however, is 100 per cent focused on retail. We employ 1,350 retail specialist colleagues who are fully aligned with the needs of the retail industry, the needs of our customers and the behaviours of our customers' customers, i.e., the end consumers.
Aptos provides software solutions for all the things that are hard and unique to the retail industry. No other industry faces the challenges that retailers do when it comes to managing competing priorities for both precision and flexibility in product and inventory planning, and no other industry has faced the same degree of disruption caused by the collision of consumer shopping behaviours across digital and physical. It is not enough to address one side of the equation or the other-bringing in-demand products to market or creating a valued brand promise for customers. Where retailers differentiate themselves is in how well they can connect customers to products, consistent with their brand promise. We call that unified commerce. That's what Aptos helps retailers achieve.
When retailers work with Aptos, they know they are utilising software that has been built from the ground up to be fully focused on retail. Yet the Aptos advantage is far more than just our solutions. We leverage more than 40 years of best practices; utilise the cloud to drive efficiency, productivity and growth; support our clients through collaborative, long-term partnerships; and offer global coverage with offices and personnel in key markets around the world.
What is the story behind Aptos? What are the recent achievements of the company?
In 2015, Aptos launched as an independent company following its spin-off from Epicor Software Corporation. Since then, we have more than doubled our business to become the largest software provider exclusively focused on retail.
In March 2020, Aptos was acquired by the Merchant Banking business of Goldman Sachs, which is one of the largest managers of private capital globally.
In September the same year, we acquired Revionics, the leading provider of AI-powered price optimisation solutions for retailers. And just very recently, we announced our acquisition of Iceland-based LS Retail, a world-leading provider of unified commerce solutions for retail, hospitality, food service and forecourt businesses of all sizes.
What are the latest offerings you are coming up with?
One of our newest offerings is Aptos ONE, a cloud-native, mobile-first, microservices-based retail experience platform. Retailers need a foundation for delivering new experiences that keep up with the rapid pace of consumers, and Aptos ONE is designed to do just that. With API-driven architecture, flexible deployment models, shared microservices, dynamic application updates and platform management tools, Aptos ONE is helping retailers to transform their businesses, fast.
With disruptions in the supply chain, how have retail solutions got altered?
For a lot of retailers, the pandemic exposed how costly it can be to have systems that are so old and so brittle that you can't change them quickly. Retailers affected in that way are turning to the cloud to address that risk.
An example of that is, we are seeing significant interest in our cloud-based Enterprise Order Management (EOM) solution. With shoppers now expecting to buy, collect and return from virtually anywhere, fashion retailers need a centralised commerce hub to profitably manage all orders throughout their lifecycle. Aptos EOM offers core capabilities for enterprise inventory visibility, order orchestration and routing, customer service, store fulfilment, and more to help retailers fully integrate their physical and online channels.
Name some prominent retail brands that are using your solutions.
More than 1,000 retail brands in over 65 countries use our solutions. When looking specifically at our portfolio of customers in fashion and apparel, our client roster includes retailers like Adidas, Carter's, L L Bean, Michael Kors, Mulberry, Tommy Bahama, Yamamay and Zadig & Voltaire.
How would Aptos work for a one-store brand?
We work with mid-market and tier 1 retailers, not small and medium businesses.
What are your future plans? And how will unified commerce solutions become more important?
Aptos remains wholly focused on delivering technologically advanced, innovative unified commerce solutions and services that deliver significant business benefit to our customers and allow them to optimise the entire customer experience.
Now, with our acquisition of LS Retail, we are uniquely equipped to support retailers across all tiers, verticals and geographies.
The pandemic has amplified and accelerated existing trends and realities. As part of this, digitalisation has become even more urgent than before, and the need for unified commerce solutions is more compelling than ever. This puts Aptos in a prime position to increase market share and help more retailers around the world. (PC)
Published on: 18/02/2021
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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