Author: Nikki Baird

Nikki Baird is the vice president of strategy at Aptos, a retail enterprise solution provider. She is charged with accelerating retailers’ ability to innovate. She has been a top global retail industry influencer for several years, with a background in retail and technology. She is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and has been quoted as a retail subject matter expert in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Huffington Post, and National Public Radio, among many others. Nikki brings perspective from all sides of the retail technology equation: she has been an industry analyst for nearly fifteen years, co-founding Retail Systems Research, the premier boutique analyst firm focused on the retail industry. Prior to co-founding RSR, Nikki was an analyst at both Forrester Research and Retail Systems Alert Group, where she covered retail industry and technology topics. Prior to that, she was director of marketing for StorePerform, a store execution management software provider, and director of product marketing for Viewlocity, a supply chain software provider focusing on adaptive supply chain execution and exception management. Nikki came to Viewlocity from PwC Consulting, now IBM Global Services, where as a senior manager she led IT strategy consulting engagements for retail and CPG clients. Nikki has an M.B.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, focusing on operations and IT. She also holds a bachelor of arts in political science and Russian, with a minor in physics, from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Can Walmart win small?

The small-format Neighborhood Market has recently been Walmart’s star performer, showing a 5.5 percent comp jump in the recent third quarter, and is set for expansion. In what ways does Neighborhood Market have to shift away from being a mini-supercenter that best leverages Walmart’s buying power?

What video analytics can do

While privacy remains a big concern around in-store video analytics, stores are too much of an investment and cost too much to operate to run in the black hole of information that they increasingly appear to be in — especially compared to online. What advancements do you see in the use of in-store video analytics?

It’s time to get serious about supply chain collaboration (again)

When supply chains only went in one direction — from supplier to store — existing definitions of supply chain visibility could make sense. But when every point in the supply chain becomes a potential fulfillment hub, that philosophy gets completely upended. Do retailers need to expand their view of supply chain visibility to include inventory accuracy?

Flipping the perspective on in-store technology

At a freewheeling session at last month’s Retail Connections in Dallas, one executive said (paraphrasing slightly): “I don’t want to invest in in-store technology in order to make my store associates more efficient or more knowledgeable. I want to use technology to make it possible to deliver the same experience that I provide to my top one percent of customers — to ALL of my customers.” Should stores think more about extending elite customer service through in-store technology and less about associate/customer parity?

Where have all the retail data scientists gone?

At its recent annual analyst meeting in Steamboat Springs, CO, SAS referred multiple times to four key user groups – business management, business analysts, IT staff, and data scientists. Data scientists? They are a class of user that appears to have all the frequency of unicorns and dragons in the retail enterprise. Is the lack of strong data analysis talent a big hurdle for retailers trying to capitalize on data insights?