Culture and Technology: Opportunities and Barriers to Retailer Success

By Gray Taylor

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Once a year I have the distinct privilege of sitting down with industry leaders for the NACS Executive Committee Strategy Conference, where retailers lay out the strategic concerns currently keeping them up at night.

Starting about seven years ago, technology began entering these presentations more and more frequently. Increasingly, there became dominant interest in the ability to utilize technology to:

• Adopt new business models
• Free up our labor to do value-added tasks
• Test and learn on new innovations

New culture and technology shifts have emerged as connected opportunities and barriers to our success, with one not truly successful without the full support of the other. It is a complete transformation to the old operations adage of “have a good site, clean bathrooms and modern presentation, and you will do just fine.” It is also an early indicator that our competitors in adjacent verticals are racing to out-innovate us.

You probably already know that Conexxus is your nonprofit technology organization, dedicated to facilitating the free flow of quality data throughout your enterprise and into the digital world. Hopefully you know this because you support our work as a Conexxus member.

Our technology partners who step up to support our mission as Annual Diamond Sponsors deserve an extra round of applause from our segment, as these companies champion us above and beyond to ensure that Conexxus’ technology expertise is available for the whole industry to improve their operations. Annual Diamond Sponsors have a vested interest in advancing industry standards that reserve technology investments from repetitive integration costs so that retailers can invest more heavily in the capabilities that directly support profitability. And as the most entrepreneurial retail segment in the U.S., standards make “big chain” functionality available to even our smallest operators.

In short, Annual Diamond Sponsors bolster and amplify our efforts to modernize our technology stacks so that we can better compete in a world with increasingly blurred definitions of convenience. Take some time to reach out and schedule meetings with our Annual Diamond, Emerald and Garnet sponsors about their strategies for improving your profitability—and while you are chatting, please take a moment to thank them for their significant contributions to the future of the convenience retail industry.

Conexxus 2021 Diamond Sponsors: Bulloch Technologies, Gilbarco Veeder-Root, Hughes, Invenco, Kickback Rewards Systems, PDI, NACS, Mako Networks

Conexxus 2021 Emerald Sponsors: APG Cash Management, Cenex, Impact 21, Verifone

Conexxus is a nonprofit, member-driven, technology organization dedicated to the development and implementation of standards, technologies innovation and advocacy for the convenience store and retail fueling market. Conexxus membership collaborates on key present and future industry challenges and innovations, including API development, standardizing age verification and e-commerce initiatives.

Joining Conexxus as a member will advance your organization’s technology to improve business processes, reduce costs and increase productivity for the convenience and fuel retailing industry. We provide the future-looking industry technology standards you need to thrive in the age of disruption, while saving your employees’ time and your organization money. Our work efforts improve your profitability by reducing the cost of internal IT ownership and improving the competitiveness of our members. Instead of attempting to solve these broad-reaching technological issues internally, find more at www.conexxus.org/join.

Gray Taylor is the executive director of Conexxus. He can be reached at (512) 508-3469 or [email protected].