State of the Grocery Tech Stack: Navigating The Second Wave of Disruption

The pandemic caused two major waves of disruption. First-wave grocery tech advances were largely designed to solve supply chain disruptions and serve customers during lockdown. Now, the grocery business is dealing with second-wave issues – heightened employee and customer expectations, a tight labor market, quiet quitting, and the Great Resignation. In this edited webinar transcript, RIS News and Hughes talk through the results of the RIS Grocery Tech Study and outline some of the moves grocers are making to adjust to digital transformation, personalized marketing, inventory management, and more. Read on to learn how grocers are navigating these second-wave challenges. Jamie Goodman: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar, “State of the Grocery Tech Stack,” which is hosted by RIS and presented in partnership with Hughes. I'm Jamie Goodman, editor-in-chief of RIS News. I'm sure everyone attending this webinar realizes the grocery industry is rapidly transforming. Customer expectations for in-store and online experiences are high and grocery retailers need to be in-tune. Today, we’ll uncover the move grocers are making to adjust to digital transformation, personalized marketing, labor challenges, employee and customer engagement, inventory management, and the overall store experience. We will also be talking through the results of RIS’ annual “Grocery Tech Study” and the top technology and shopper experience trends happening in the industry. To explore the transformation of grocery stores and how evolving technology requirements are pushing retailers to improve engagement and connectivity strategies are Mike Tippets, marketing VP of the enterprise division of Hughes Network Systems, and Joe Skorupa, editor-at-large of RIS News. Mike and Joe, thanks for joining us. May you take a moment to introduce yourself and your roles? Mike Tippets: As mentioned, I'm part of the Hughes Enterprise Division. Hughes is a managed service provider with a broad range of services for both business and government around the world. I have specific responsibilities for the marketing activities as well as the opportunity to lead product development activities for our digital media services group, including digital signage and employee communication, which are a big part of what we're going to be talking about today. The grocery market is an important part of our business and I'm excited to talk about the use of technology in the grocery business. Joe Skorupa: Hi, glad to be here. I'm the longtime editor of RIS News and am now editor-at-large. I've been enjoying my relationship with RIS for 20 years and enjoy focusing on the studies and deep research that we do, both short-form studies and longer, deeper benchmark studies. Over the past 5-7 years, we've been digging deeper and more specifically into the grocery segment because it has a number of unique challenges. I've enjoyed being part of that process as well over the years as it's developed. Goodman: It's wonderful to have both of you here today. Many of the topics that will be discussed were covered in RIS' recently released benchmark research study, “Grocery Tech Trends: The Next Horizon of Food Shopping.” We’ll explore key themes from the report here, but encourage everyone to check out the report. The labor market has been a topic of conversation for retailers across the board, but grocery retailers are feeling the full force of this issue. Joe, in this year's report, 79 percent of respondents said that the tight labor market is the top business challenge. Have you ever seen a topic that's this impactful? Skorupa: I'm happy to be able to present some insight into the “2022 RIS Grocery Tech Trends Study.” This is an interesting finding. The tight labor market is the number one business challenge by far. It has become a major driver for tech investment over the next 18 months. We're going to be talking about the grocery response to the labor market in detail throughout, but I'd also like to make the point that there are two major waves of disruption that have been triggered by the COVID pandemic. These waves have forced grocery retailing to change more in the last two years than it has in the last 20. Many of the changes leveraged advanced technology to solve what I refer to as first-wave problems, such as serving shoppers during lockdown and resolving massive supply chain disruption. Two years later, grocers are dealing with second-wave issues, such as the tight labor market, rising wages, the Great Resignation, and quiet quitting. This is a major problem because reliance on a large workforce is a pillar of retailing and the signature of our industry. Walmart, for example, is not only the largest private employer in the U.S. with 1.6 million workers, but also the largest private employer in the world with 2.3 million employees. When turmoil hits, the labor market retailers are deeply affected, even more seriously than inflation. Inflation appears much further down the list of major challenges grocers are coping with today because they feel they have some weapons to use to solve inflation, and far fewer to solve the labor market issues. Goodman: Very interesting. Mike, how do you think technologies like digital signage can help grocers deal with the tight labor markets that we're facing? Tippets: In a tight labor market, employee productivity becomes more critical. We always want employees to be productive and feel the advantages and job satisfaction, but it becomes critical when you're down an employee or you're having trouble filling open positions. One of the first places to impact productivity is in the onboarding process. You want new employees to be on-boarded and productive as quickly as possible. Typically, it takes an employee about three weeks to achieve full productivity. You can use digital signage to accelerate learning and understanding that would allow you to reduce that time. We've seen that get down to as low as one week. That saving – going from three weeks of productivity of onboarding down to one week is real money. The employee will feel more confident, more satisfied with their job, and more engaged. Legacy environments where there are paper job aids, such as books, laminated cards, and pictures that explain how to do tasks and assignments, are not as effective as moving to video and treating this information exchange, or information sharing, like an on-demand viewing experience. The on demand viewing of video will not only enhance the usefulness of the information transfer, but also increase the frequency of which it's used, which will then improve the onboarding process and start to bring the employee into full productivity. Then, this can continue throughout their career working for the brand, as you train them up on anything from new product offerings, promotions, new ways of dealing with the products on the shelves, and so forth. Digital signage is capable of a huge benefit and impact when we're in a tight labor market. Goodman: Especially as the workforce gets younger. You're bringing younger employees into retail; they're used to video and using this style of learning. It's going to become more important as time goes on. Joe, last year you led a panel discussion about pivotal tech-powered strategies shaping the future of business. In that panel discussion five strategies were discussed, one being personalization of the experiences for the customer. Do you think that similar focus could be put on the employee to help with shrinking margins and profits? Skorupa: I'd like to focus on the part of shrinking margins and profits in your question, Jamie. Several data points from the study jump out. Thirty percent of grocers plan to start a major upgrade within 24 months. In technology that delivers real-time inventory management capabilities and with prices rising due to inflation retailers can analyze real-time inventory data and then take steps to relocate overstock. For example, if in one geographic region there is overstock, we can send that to regions and stores that are running low, or direct online orders to warehouses or DCs that are overstocked. Grocers can also monitor the speed of product turnover and change open-to-buy parameters on products that are flying off shelves and those that are turning more slowly. Since inventory is money frozen in a fixed asset, optimizing turnover helps retailers recover cash more quickly and efficiently, which will help profits and margins. There are several other data points in this study that show retailers are looking to achieve improvement in profits are found in the section on analytics, which shows a broad level investment interest across the category. Thirty-eight percent of grocers plan to start a major predictive analytics upgrade within 24 months, 34 percent will start upgrading competitive analytics capabilities within two years, and 31 percent will start to upgrade category analytics within two years. Each of these advanced analytics upgrades are intended to reduce costs and improve margins by optimizing functions such as purchasing, pricing, allocation, and demand planning. When you build out your analytics bench strength, that is the foundation for personalization, and that is how personalization can be super-powered by having strong up-to-date programs and analytics. Goodman: Mike, do you think that same digital signage can help with the second biggest business challenge, which is shrinking margins and profits? Tippets: I absolutely do. Again, communicating with that most valuable business asset – your frontline employees, the women and men who are out there talking to the customers, who are out there dealing with stores and keeping them – keeping the experience as positive and beneficial as it can be, training and informing the team at the store. You need to let them know how important certain best practices are in meeting profitability goals, protecting the margins and the business itself. Team members who know their role matters, they've heard from leadership that keeping stock properly rotated, properly stacked and presented will help with those product terms that Joe was talking about and can reduce the waste and expense from expired items. It also helps the customer find what they're looking for and fill their basket to the maximum benefit of the brand. Demonstrating a shelf-stocking best practice is far better communicated as a video demonstration rather than a picture with a text description under it. Helping them see the value, not just how to do it, but understanding that in the produce department, if they go out and do the following practice every half hour, it will make the produce last longer or keep it on the shelf better. We're informing them, helping them understand that their job isn’t just to come in and restock, but to help maximize the turns of product and so forth. This is done better with video. Information empowers people to act and do things. If they can see, on a screen where they take a break or somewhere the employees pass by that yesterday they did better than the day before, and today they’re on track to do even better – whether that's product turns, reduced waste, or whatever the analytics are that you're tracking – if that information is presented, it's no longer a silo of data in a pool, it's in front of the people who can make a difference. It will impact their behavior and their motivation to help. All of that will roll up to the store, to the region, to the brand being more productive and reducing the waste, increasing the turns. All of this will help with profits and dealing with the environment that we're in where margins are compressed and very tight. Goodman: We talk a lot about how employees care about the purpose of the company and the companies that get behind environmental. Understanding that what they're doing is helping to reduce food waste can only be a benefit to the organization. Now, we're going to turn the conversation to personalization efforts. Mike, going back to digital signage, how can it help with personalization efforts to employees, which we know is so important right now? Tippets: The goal of communication is to make the target audience feel like the communication was specifically speaking to them. Digital signage provides the ability to get hyperlocal and focus on items that matter to a single store, a single department, and in cases of recognition, even down to a single employee or small group of employees at that store. Digital signage enables the brand to personalize messaging to the employees, which will impact the employee in a positive way. Nothing is more impactful than seeing yourself recognized or being recognized in front of your peers. If we can put information down, again, informing and helping them understand where they are, but then to start to say, "We really appreciate Mary, Dave, and Sue at store 123 for their efforts in making our customers' experience better and raising the reviews and the ratings that we're getting;" or, "They have expanded the way they work with product in their departments, and we've seen an increase in the rotation and turns." These recognitions motivate individuals, both those recognized and also others to be recognized. If we see a peer recognized for something they did well, we're motivated to do that as well. It’s hyperlocal, talking to the entire brand, the region, the store, even the specific department within a specific store using the technology of digital signage. It will have a great impact on the ability to do personalized communication. It's a strong advantage in that effort. Goodman: If you're in a store and have the screen up and the employee is flashed up, their picture – then others can look over and see that employee's actually here in the store. That local effort would bode well between the customers as well. Tippets: You feel like you belong. If I'm recognized, the presumption is that not only the people in my store but somebody up the chain knows that I'm here, they know that I'm part of the organization and have been for five years now. These things are extraordinarily important to getting the best productivity out of your team members. Goodman: Reducing turnover, as well. Joe, we have the workforce technology that grocers are implementing. What have you seen happening in the last 18 months around workforce management technologies? Skorupa: The biggest callout is that 46 percent of grocers are investing today, or over the next 18 months, in education and training. Mike made some great points about education and training, which emphasize why grocers chose that with the largest percentage. It's a key element to touch on the question that you raised earlier, Jamie, for executing personalization efforts. Yes, there are a lot of things that speed to efficiency, that education and training can do, but there are other things that can be added beyond this core foundation. Personalization efforts in the aisles or at checkout for customer service can be added in the education and training effort and help stores create a more relevant, one-to-one experience, can help shoppers at the time they need it, and to be able to address shoppers in a personal way – knowing their purchase history, knowing their loyalty program history, and being able to help them in a very specific way. Education and training are a perfect way to help associates do a better job when customers come in for click-and-collect or curbside pickup. It's a perfect time for associates to have a personal greeting, to have an incentive to engage the customer, to be not only friendly but helpful, and inspire the customer to come back. Education and training provide the fundamentals for onboarding and getting up-to-speed, but also adding that extra level of personalization if the right company does it the right way. However, the biggest takeaway is that all six labor technologies listed make the point that one-third or more of grocery respondents plan to make a workforce technology upgrade in the next 24 months, and that’s across a wide spectrum of applications. Now, being realistic, investing in workforce technology is not going to solve the extreme labor problems that are currently occurring. The truth is that nothing can until a macroeconomic correction occurs. However, optimized workforce technology can help reduce the effects, especially in recruitment and onboarding new hires as effectively as possible as we've mentioned, then quickly educating and training them so the new hires can deliver a personalized and exceptionalized in-store experience to shoppers. Goodman: Very good points. Mike, going back to the digital signage play, does anything stand out to what Joe just said? Tippets: I want to echo what Joe said. It shows in the results from the study, nearly half of the audience surveyed is going to be investing in education and training. It's very common, especially in the younger generation, but when they want to learn how to do something, they Google it or YouTube, they go and find an example of what they're trying to do. They find what they want to do, not the history of why they do it, why it gets done, and the legacy information – they simply want that piece of information. When you think about education and training – I sound like a broken record – but you get back to that video and the short snippets. When I want to train somebody on a particular technique, I don't want to explain to them the history of how we used to do it this way, then we tried it a different way, and now we're going to try it a third way. What we simply want to do is say, "This is how you do it." Three to five, no longer than seven-minute video segments are easily found and consumed by the employee and will have the greatest impact. If you move across that spectrum of six items with task management, labor, scheduling, even recruitment and the awareness of benefits and resources, etc., digital signage can absolutely help in these areas. Whether you do an actual linkage between the workforce management system and the digital signage system to display real-time data – for example, upcoming shifts that need coverage, tasks that need to be done – make sure that we're aware of those things. Even something about how great it is to be part of this brand, ask them to bring a friend in to help with recruitment and onboarding. Remind them of things that the company does. A couple of our clients realized their employees didn't know that they supported walks for breast cancer awareness or the Habitat for Humanity programs. When they started to put up photos or small video segments on the employee-facing signage, it raised the employees’ personal pride in the organization. This can help with recruiting and bringing friends in to possibly work with us. It's a proven fact that if a piece of paper is hung on the cork board about a new benefit or a video segment is put up that talks about the new benefit, it will be more well-noticed if it's done as a video. Again, having that linkage and interaction back and forth between the digital signing system and workforce management tool, or tools that manage the employees is a huge benefit. Digital signage can bring that data up and put it in front of the people who can act on it, who can take action, will improve, fix, or benefit from it. Having that integration and that action is great. Goodman: I have to agree. Going back to YouTube videos, my children are six and eight, whenever I don't know how to do something, they always say, "Mom, just YouTube it." And I'm like, "Is that how we get information now?" Tippets: That's right. Again, if you find what you're looking for, get that specific instruction or that finding, and get right to the point – it’s critical. Goodman: Joe, talking about all of these in-store staffing shortages has been a big topic. Do you think self-service tech will see greater inflammation in grocery to handle some of these shortages in the labor market? Skorupa: I do, and the study seems to confirm it, Jamie. Self-serve technology is hitting a tipping point for grocers. Our study finds that 30 percent will start a self-serve ordering kiosk project within the next two years, which is a huge number when you consider that only 4 percent of grocers say they have them in-place today. The study also finds that 25 percent of grocers plan to add a new self-checkout project in the next two years, which is significant because 25 percent of grocers say they already have self-checkout terminals in the stores. If you add those two numbers together, it indicates that self-service technology will ultimately become a must-have mainstream offering for grocers who want to match the 50 percent of their competitors that will have it in the next two years. So, that's a big shift for both ordering and self-service. Now, in addition to self-service technology playing a role to ease tight labor pressures, it also offers grocers the ability to personalize the self-service experience by using highly tailored messages, discounts, promos, etc. The interesting thing is that it can play a dual role in helping stores improve profit margins in challenging times and labor savings in personalized marketing. That's a big, important role that self-service technology can play today. Goodman: Mike, how do you describe or explain employee engagement to people? Tippets: It's one of my favorite topics to talk about. Employee engagement is the measure of two things: Is the employee willing to go the extra mile for the brand, and is the employee willing to be an ambassador for the brand? When they're asked what they do, do they talk positively, enthusiastically, and so forth? At the foundation of both is culture. Building a strong culture requires three things: communication, recognition, and growth. Communication, the employee needs to hear about the brand, about the business, and understand how important their role is to the success of the store, region, brand. There also needs to be regular recognition given for performance or human-interest things like birthdays, work anniversaries, community involvement, and things like that. Finally, and probably most importantly, there needs to be a path to improvement or growth. This usually coincides with promotions, but it doesn't have to align tightly. Simply said, nobody wants to be doing next year exactly what they're doing this year. They want to do more, they want to do what they do better, and they want to feel like they have improved personally, gained some new skills, are better at their job and have a greater understanding of the business. This growth or development is the third leg of employee engagement. Again, digital signage is a great way to deliver on all three. Touching on the self-checkout, these automations, and things that are happening quickly in the grocery industry, the employees need to know what this means to them. I'll be honest, my first experience with self-checkout several years ago was terrible. I didn't understand what I was doing, and I was having to put items here and scan them there, and so forth. It was a very uncomfortable, very negative experience. After probably the second or third try, an employee came over and explained a couple of things and then I realized how to make this self-checkout better. Informing the employees and communicating to them why self-checkout is important allows a team member to do the things that automation can't do, or interact with guests and customers, etc. Then, this also helps them understand when a customer is struggling with this in-store, with this piece of our automation, here's how to help them. It goes back to what Joe mentioned about building a customer experience. The employee experience is better because they're being helpful, they feel like they mattered and made a difference while they were there that day. Goodman: That's a great explanation. Joe, in your experience with the grocery industry, why do you think our study found one-third of the respondents felt that employee engagement is a top business challenge? Skorupa: Before I jump in, I just want to note Mike laid out a three-point plan for improving employee engagement that was well-informed. Mike, that's a topic you know a lot about, and I'm going to take notes on your approach. In the last year, regarding employee engagement, we've coined terms as a society like “the Great Resignation” and “quiet quitting.” Clearly, we hear demands by workers for new rules around workplace flexibility and grocers have the tools necessary to manage this challenge. With all the technology investments that are going in the workforce area, there are effective tools such as mobile HR applications and software to manage human resources and benefits functions. The key point is that employee engagement is not a top-down challenge, rather a bottom-up challenge. Empowering associates with self-serve functions such as vacation scheduling, shift switching, and filing HR benefits can be done through user-friendly software. Investing in technologies like this is viewed by employees as investing in their wellbeing and helps build employee engagement along with a full playbook of other measures. Moreover, it shows that the corporation cares. When a corporation under-invests in employees and under-invests in making things simple and easy for them to do basic HR functions or basic functions in their work life, they feel that. Their engagement is going to drop. Another way technology can generate improved employee engagement is by tracking store metrics and using it to recognize and reward employees, as Mike has mentioned, for outstanding achievements in sales, customer satisfaction, and compliance with clearly defined goals, but also rewarding employees as employees for doing key jobs. Having them gain public recognition from peers and from the public, seeing them singled out. These store metrics should be used to provide career path encouragement, to provide a basis for promotions and raises, and doing this tracking of store metrics in a new way that encourages employee engagement, as opposed to simply focusing on store sales and store performance and other corporate goals, is a key. Realistically, the technology is far from a magic bullet that can solve employee engagement. However, it is a key tool in managing the problem and turning the corner during this period of a tight labor market. It’s certainly one that retailers are doing some significant investment over the next two years. Goodman: Mike, anything to add? Tippets: I was going to say the same thing. In that area, grocery is not unique, it's part of the retail industry and it's very critical. Frequently, we've been working with customers and clients that want to invest in some technology – whether it's digital signage, automations, or any other technology – and they run into a series of financial questions: What's the upside? What am I going to gain if I do this? If I invest these dollars, what is the upside? We've done some studying on that. I have to be honest, I do have a passion for this and my passion began years ago when I read a book by Kevin Kruse called “Employee Engagement.” It's a quick read and an excellent book. This triggered us to think about sitting across the table from a CFO who looks us in the eye and says, 'why would I spend money on that particular technology?' To solve this, we did some research, came back, and feel that the average frontline employee costs about $3,000 to replace. That covers exit costs, replacement costs, productivity hits, and so forth. We spent quite a bit of time, talked to a lot of people, and brought in numbers from different industries and areas of the country, but it came back to somewhere right around $3,000. If we're looking at an industry that has turnover as high as 50 percent, that turns into real money. Every time an employee walks out the door, I'm looking at $3,000. As Joe said, no single piece of technology is suddenly going to reduce turnover from 50 percent down to zero. However, if you stop and think – if you save one employee at each store each year, what have you saved yourself? Then, you can start to do the math and build up from there. Again, $3,000 is our ballpark, but you can certainly sit down and do your own calculations with your own wages, employee benefits, and different things like that. The other thing I'll note is Gallup did a report back in 2020, about two years ago, and said that engaged employees result in 20 percent higher sales. The study was not grocery-specific, it was retail, broad retail, but noted 20 percent higher sales and 21 percent higher profits if you have engaged employees. There's a real correlation to real money. Customers will pay a small premium for a quality experience. They're not going to pay a huge premium, but 5-6 percent has been quoted over the years as what a customer will pay to get the really good experience they seek. The engagement of employees has a strong financial benefit and upside. Goodman: Mike, we're going to turn the conversation a little to talk about marketing and how grocers can improve their efforts. Let's move from the back of the house to the front of the house. What can we do with this digital signage to help with personalized marketing? Tippets: Well, when you start talking about the front of the house, you're talking about communication, about that goal of making it feel like an audience of one where the message was specific to me. We place ads where the demographic's going to look, whether that's online, in print, billboards, etc., and we also try to say something that is relevant to them. Digital signage is a dynamic tool that helps us achieve that communication. Content can change on a digital signage screen much faster and easier, obviously, than a poster that was hung up. The brand can ensure compliance with each of the regions and the stores when you have a digital system like digital signs, which is another big one. You can change that content based on time of day, outside temperatures, promotional goals, regional objectives – there's any number of inputs to change what is put on the screen or the order, and the number of things on the screen is based on a variety of inputs. There's always been talk about identifying a customer who has our app on their phone as they walk by the screen, and then we can do something really personalized. However, privacy concerns have slowed down the idea of knowing who's near the screen based on their digital footprint like a cellphone or what have you. We can still adjust content on the fly with digital signage, and that flexibility gives us the opportunity to be hyperlocal, and really personalize that message. Goodman: Joe, how important is convenience to shoppers and how can digital signage help with that convenience factor? Skorupa: I'm going to take a bit of a divergent role here, Mike, I’m not debating with you, but going to approach it from a different perspective. The element of convenience is definitely something that digital signage can certainly help with in the store and make that seem like a personalized experience because of the increased convenience. Obviously, if you do convenience, make it quicker, easier, better, that's going to improve the shopping experience and customer satisfaction. One good way to use digital signage in the store is to communicate key messaging to the customer that will make the shopping trip quicker and easier. This is of particular importance when it comes to changing out and indicating prices and promotions, for example, and even the special sections, where they're located, seasonal items and seasonal displays in stores. This doesn't sound like a hard thing; every store's been able to do it over the years, but there's also a compliance issue with this. There's a number of studies that show that on any given date when a seasonal promotion is set to run, a seasonal section inside a grocery store, 30 percent of stores in the large chain will be out of compliance. If you make it easier for the store associates to make this happen, make it digital, make it on signage that can be changed with software, that makes it easier for the shopper to get what they need. I can't imagine a more frustrating experience for a shopper than to know that a promotion is coming and then to see that it's not actually happening in the store they go to because that store is out of compliance. Digital signage can help that. I consider that to be not only a customer satisfaction issue, but actually a convenience issue, convenience for the shopper, but also a convenience for the store associates as well. The top business opportunity driving tech investment over the next 18 months, as we've noted, is personalized marketing capabilities. Several other opportunities on the list can be leveraged to help this effort of personalized marketing. I've already mentioned the importance of analytics, also decision making, expanding mobile capabilities, and major store upgrades. Each of these initiatives can be put into the service of the number one opportunity on the list, which is developing personalized marketing. There are a number of ways that retailers can tackle this problem. Digital signage is certainly a big one and combining digital signage with some of the other technologies on this list can go a long way toward supercharging your personalized marketing experience. Goodman: Now we're going to talk about a fun subject, robots. Joe, in your Retail Insight titled “Why Retailers Are Learning to Love Robots,” you talk about them helping out in grocery and listed a few that were testing robots. Have any of these programs taken hold and continued today? Skorupa: We're still in the early days of that. When I did that blog or report, there were a handful of grocers that were rolling out robots and had been beyond pilot tests, some of them were wide roll outs. Schnucks, for example, is one that has stuck with it and made it chainwide. Several others have found benefits to it. We really should view robots as being part of convenience in the store, if robots can help determine on-shelf availability by computerized vision scanning of the shelves and sending messages to alert associates that there are stock-outs, this will certainly help not lose business to stock-outs. Robots are really part of the move towards self-service in a way. Amazon's Go stores, with some of that technology being adopted by other retailers, that is just walkout technology. That is also a part of the movement towards self-service. As we pointed out earlier, in our study data, self-service technologies are top targets for investment over the next two years and becoming mainstream. As that happens, robots will eventually prove themselves and be part of that whole automated store process that is slowly but surely taking shape and is eventually coming. Goodman: Mike, what considerations do you think grocers need to take a look at when talking about computer vision, robotics, and other autonomous technologies? Tippets: To put it simply, they need to have a robust network infrastructure in place. This is moving from needing to have a cable to the cash registers to needing to have a strong Wi-Fi infrastructure. These automation technologies, whether it's a robot running the aisles to find out what's out-of-stock, or a process automation activity that is mobile and needs to be in different parts of the store, that Wi-Fi infrastructure is going to become critical. If you have a robot roaming the aisles, you can't have dead spots because the robot will pause and not be useful. Planning, executing, organizing, and designing your Wi-Fi infrastructure. It's very early, but do consider what's called private wireless, which is the concept of using cellular connectivity within the actual four walls of the store. Cellular technology was far better designed than traditional Wi-Fi for moving around shelves, fixtures, and different things. Private wireless is something that's coming, and as 5G is becoming more widely developed and adopted, you'll see that coming and it'll be a real boon for this automation. It offers the ability to have, whether it's a mobile robot or the ability to put cameras in different parts of the store to watch certain activities and then react to the situation, whether it's out-of-stock or other. That networking infrastructure is something that they have to be very in-tune to. Goodman: There's exciting things coming down the road. Joe, reviewing a few of the key findings we reported, do any of these stand out to you or do you have any recommendations for grocery retailers that are with us today? Skorupa: It would be a mistake for us to view the tight labor market as the only challenge. I do recognize that it is a super-high problem and retailers are struggling with it, and it's really a new problem. Labor has not been an issue like this in the retail industry for a number of years, but it's not the only thing that's keeping them up at night. I do want to cite that when we asked grocers to use their own words to describe the things that are keeping them up, they cited inflation, rising costs for operating, and inventory as major concerns. They use such adjectives as tough, dynamic, volatile, chaotic, and exhausting. We're going through a situation today that might be described as, “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” From the investment plans that we've cited and talked about, retailers have some effective tools that can reduce the negative impacts, and they're certainly investing in them so that they can have a brighter future. Tippets: Looking at the key findings, I'm most excited about the fact that the store, the brick-and-mortar location, and the in-store shopping experience is still a strong focal point. There's a lot of challenges associated with that, which we've been talking about. I'm an amateur barbecue pit master and outdoor cooking guy, and I enjoy going to the store, talking to the people at the fresh food counters, getting ideas, exchanging thoughts – that experience and investments to make the in-store experience and the challenges that we need to overcome, that's exciting. I look forward to the opportunities to work with retailers of all types – grocery specifically – in making that experience better, more sustainable, profitable, and capable, depending on what the challenges are. Skorupa: Mike, on your point about stores, 87 percent of grocers have some form of curbside pickup. To be honest, that was a huge pivot by stores to be able to stay open and succeed during the lockdown. You're right, stores found a way, and 87 percent is a huge number. It probably went from single digits to 87 percent in just a short period of time, so stores are resilient. Goodman: That's certainly true. I want to thank our speakers today, our audience, and our sponsor. I hope everyone has gleaned some insights and has a lovely rest of your day. Thank you all.

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