Gaining Retail Business Insights
Industry Accolades
Several awards were presented at Epicor’s Insights for Building Supply and Retail 2024, including:
Forest Lake Greenhouses received the Retail Champion Award- Hartville Hardware and Lumber received the Retail Executive Champion Award
More than 1,000 retailers and building supply companies gathered Nov. 18-20 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas to learn about retail business trends, network and keep abreast on Epicor software options at its annual Insights for Building Supply and Retail event.
Kerrie Jordan, group vice president of project management at Epicor, spoke on how artificial intelligence (AI) will affect retail. She called AI an enabling technology to provide solutions for issues including automation, business agility and employee empowerment.
I caught up with Jordan at the conference to find out how garden retailers can incorporate AI into their businesses. She suggested first identifying your company’s mission and goals, as well as challenges the business is facing.
“I think it’s really important to kind of go back to the fundamentals. AI is an exciting technology because it can solve challenges that haven’t been solved yet, but we have to think really specific on what are those challenges that we want to solve, because it can get out of hand, it can get costly.”
Transitioning to AI can be overwhelming as well, Jordan said, citing an example of moving from on-site servers to the cloud. Trusting a public cloud provider “is a big step for a lot of companies, and a lot of companies aren’t there yet, either,” she said, but having foundations in place and choosing a cloud platform that’s resilient and able to scale and secure is important.
For companies that don’t know where to start, she recommended finding “the most curious person in your organization and set up a 15- or 20-minute chat with them every two weeks. It doesn’t have to be your most techie person — it’s the person who is the most interested in what’s going on pick their brain. I actually did that — I found a person in my team early on when AI was exploding, and I was like, ’Tell me everything. What is going on. What podcast do you listen to that keeps you like up to date on the latest information that’s coming out? What media outlets do you pursue?’ I think finding a curious person in the organization could be an interesting way to stay on top of it.”
Retail Trends
In the Epicor Retail Leadership Keynote, Carl Hildebrandt, vice president of product management, and Jeff Young, vice president of retail, discussed Epicor’s perspective on the retail industry, industry trends and key areas of innovation. Hildebrandt said retailers can differentiate themselves by empowering employees. An example of this is point of sale (P.O.S.) systems for retailers that allow employees to turn the checkout process into a more meaningful connection — and one that can increase the ticket. Epicor’s software allows employees to look up products on their mobile device and even check stock at a retailer’s other locations.
He also said that loyalty programs are on the upswing as well.
“We’ve seen loyalty be pervasive in a lot of other markets, but for garden retailers, we’re seeing a lot of creativity and engaging customers to keep the seasonality more in check,” he said. “There are always going to be the peak times, but promoting indoor plants in the winter months and being able to capture that data and create incentives to keep those customers coming and continuing to provide their data helps retailers address their customers in a unique way.”
Hildebrandt said Epicor aims to allow retail employees to not have to worry about the technology. “By bringing in things like automation, it frees up their time to have more time in front of customers that are coming in. And when labor is at such a high demand and it’s at such a shortage, making sure that the employees aren’t sacrificing customer experience or customer-facing opportunities for upsells is important. Automation is a big focus — reducing steps, making sure if they’re running a promotion set at one time, we’ll take care of the rest. We’ll make sure it’s running properly, to make sure returns reflect properly. We’ll make sure that, when there’s a promotion, the receipt will say, this is your return value — all the little details that make those transactions flow through and remain positive for the customer.
Garden Retailers Chime In
Garden retailers attending the event said the Epicor software is helping them elevate their customers’ experience in their stores. Kara Harris, business manager at Barrett’s Showplace Gardens in Adrian, Michigan, said they switched from a DOS-based system in the 1980s to Epicor’s cloud-based retail P.O.S. Eagle and two years ago moved to Propello. While it was “a little bit of an undertaking, it was very welcome, and we’re grateful that we did it because we get so much information out of the system now.”
She said she attends Epicor’s Insights event for its educational opportunities and networking opportunities. “We’ve sat in some great classes, had a lot of discussion with people that use the same software that we do, made a couple cool connections with a couple greenhouses that use Propello like we do.”
Luke Venable, wholesale manager and head grower at Forest Lake Greenhouses in Florence, South Carolina, said, “My biggest goals here just to connect with other users and get more familiar with the functionality of Eagle and understand what KPIs my peers are looking at to better run my business.
“I’ve had a great experience with our customer service with Epicor — everybody I interact with is very knowledgeable and has been with Epicor for a long time, so it’s really comfortable and knowledgeable in their products. … The experience has been great from our account manager to implementation and customer service.”
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