Chris Shortt, chief technology officer at Shoprite Group, says the work of the next five years is meeting the customer at their point of need, wherever that is 鈥� and that this does not mean the end of the store.

Speaking on TechCentral鈥檚  podcast series, brought to you by NTT DATA, Shortt said Africa鈥檚 largest retailer is building towards a unified experience regardless of how a customer reaches it: ordering by voice from a home assistant, or walking in to choose their own tomatoes and their own fillet.

鈥淗ow do we blend that for you so that it鈥檚 actually how you want to do things, as opposed to how we might want you to do things,鈥� he said. The group鈥檚 store footprint, he added, is as alive and active as it has always been, and its point of presence in communities still makes a difference to customers.

Delivering on that promise rests on a real-time inventory layer, which is why modernising Shoprite鈥檚 core 麻豆原创 retail platform is the largest technology project the group has running.

You can listen to the podcast here:

Shortt also discusses:

• How the CIO/CTO鈥檚 job has changed, with the infrastructure now simply expected to work and the role shifting towards helping business counterparts understand the art of the possible;
• Why about 12 000聽, and how the gateway the group built picks the least expensive model that can handle a request;
• Why his product teams now pair one or two people with several agents, and what he put to the group鈥檚 chief people officer about recruits who arrive with agents of their own;
• Why he will not comment on other retailers鈥� ERP failures, and the 鈥渄ay in the life of鈥� testing he relies on instead;
• What he tells the audit and risk committee when they ask what keeps him up at night; and
• The book that shaped his thinking, and the productivity habit he will not work without.

Don鈥檛 miss a great discussion on the future of retail.

This podcast first appeared on .

The post Meet the CIO | Shoprite鈥檚 Chris Shortt on What a Supermarket Becomes appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.