Solving Problems the Digital Way

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—On this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, “Undertaking a Digital Transformation,” NACS hosts Carolyn Schnare, director of strategic initiatives, and Donovan Woods, director of operations for the Fuels Institute, discuss the digital future with Gunter Pfau, founder and CEO of Stuzo.

“Digital transformation is all about digitizing everything within your business, and that’s both internal to the business and customer-facing,” Pfau said. “We think about it as building the business as a set of software powered services, all with APIs, and some of those APIs will only be accessible internal and some of those APIs will be accessible to partners and to customers.”

As today’s consumers are digital citizens,  retailers have good reason to be interested in transforming their digital footprint. “Millennials and Gen Y, that group between the ages of 23 and 38, they’re digital—they use their phone for everything,” Pfau said. “Then we have this new group coming up, Gen Z between the ages of 8 and 23, which have grown up as digital citizens.”

The digital transformation is “a long-term effort,” Pfau said. “This isn’t something that’s easy but it’s a complete evolution and rethought of the business architecture, the technical architecture that’s powering the business…it’s a multi-year endeavor. … Think about the physical store and all the amazing customer experiences that happen in that store. For digital to really work, for you to truly evolve into this next phase that consumers are demanding, your digital store front needs to be just as robust and just as awesome as your physical storefront.”

Each week a new Convenience Matters episode is released. The podcast can be downloaded on iTunes, Google Play and other podcast apps, and at www.conveniencematters.com. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners more than 110,000 times in 90 countries.

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