
Retail technology: How to get senior buy-in for innovative new projects
4 experts share their top tips…
A search for “retail innovation” on Google returns 68 million results. With so much noise around this topic, in-depth research is essential before deciding where your focus should be. But however well you’ve researched the technology landscape, and no matter how confident you are that you’ve found the right solution to help your business evolve, without senior buy-in, your project could be dead in the water. In this post, 4 retail technology experts share their top tips for getting key decision-makers on board.
Paul Armstrong, HERE/FORTH
Paul Armstrong is the founder of HERE/FORTH – a company that advises business leaders on the best use of emerging technologies. Paul also writes for publications including The Guardian, Forbes and Wired on topics surrounding technology, media and innovation. Here are his top tips…
1. It's all about comfortable investment. Asking top brass or even middle brass for money, time and resources is all risky. Instead of creating a massive spreadsheet and baffling people with numbers and potential, I start from the other end and ask them what they would feel comfortable investing in the project. After this you can push for more information on return on investment - sometimes it is needed, other times it is more for the wow factor. Knowing which can save you time, money and heartache upfront.
2. Talk about “nothing risk”. Doing nothing can be a strategy in itself. Doing nothing can save a lot of money, but you risk mediocrity, or worse still, being disrupted. Disruptive technologies are speeding up - standing still and looking at others is one strategy, but often the learnings are more helpful to the companies doing the projects than the results. Ask your project approver to help you create a list of outcomes if you do nothing. This often opens eyes up and you can start to mitigate fears and concerns early on to unlock more money.
3. Use “and if” early. The majority of the time you are able to unlock some money. Discuss with approvers early about what will happen if you achieve goal X. Can you agree beforehand that Y amount will then be freed up? Or if the goal is not achieved, the rest of the money will go into another project. This approach focuses approvers on decision-making and results lust but locks them into “contracts”, which means negotiating for more budget after a project is easier and faster.