Retail Analytics: Breaking Through the Hype and the Noise

This is point of scale, the podcast covering disruption, innovation and what is happening next in the world of retail, from transactional security to omnichannel enablement? What does it mean? Why is it important? The world of retail is evolving here. Why from the people who are making it happen? This is point of scale presented by market scale. Hello and welcome. This is point of scale presented by market scale. I am your host head of retail here at market scale, James Prebble. Thank you for joining us today. A point of scale is a podcast dedicated to diving into the innovation products and organizations that are changing and shaping the retail technology space. From the in-store experience to ecommerce, we cover it all straight from the leaders and experts that are making it happen. On today's episode Among all of the buzzwords in the world of business and there are many, there are probably two that reign Supreme when it comes to being overused to emphasize your organization as being on the forefront of your industry, data and analytics enterprise organizations from us to IBM are feeling the air waves, presenting business leaders with solutions to manage their data better or to maximize analytics to deliver better insights. And while these terms have become some sort of business magic across many industries, mass merchants like Walmart, Costco and target have been utilizing countless terabytes of in-store and online purchase information to drive their decision making for the better part of two decades. While we may not immediately think of these brands as being on the forefront of technology, in terms of retail analytics, no one has been doing it longer or better than your neighborhood big box store. Joining us today to discuss the fascinating world of retail analytics, I am honored to welcome Paul Sproles to a point of scale. Paul currently serves as the director of category management for Ocean Spray cranberries. Prior to joining ocean spray, Paul has worked in some of the most recognizable organizations in the world of consumer goods, including Reckitt benckiser, Pfizer, chemical, kimberly-clark, Procter Gamel and Gillette. Paul is a close friend of mine and a mentor, so it is truly an honor to have him on the show today. Joining us from the retail capital of the world. Bentonville, Arkansas. I'd like to welcome Paul Sproles to point of scale. Paul, Thank you for joining me today. James it's an absolute pleasure. I am thankful. I'm going to get some time with you today. I would say that there are very few people who do what I do who have the joy of doing what I do. And it probably sounds like the dumbest thing you may have heard. But I think since the start of my career, whatever, as you said, those words are what drives me every day. So to get the opportunity to talk about something that sounds quite boring for the average person out there, I'm excited to be here. Well, I don't think you host a podcast about retail technology like I do. Without engaging in that nerd that you just described, as well. So you are in a familiar circle when it comes to that aspect of, of retail analytics truly being your passion and I would say it truly has been your professional passion for your entire career. But the term retail analytics is, is very vague. So for our listeners, when you hear the term retail analytics, what does that mean to you specifically? So I've often said that, there are many disciplines within corporate America, right? There are supply chain, finance, revenue management, sales operations. A lot of those are extremely well focused. There's a very linear request response action to it. Retail analytics is knowing everything about everything that's ever been done. Always it is. It is the ability to know everything that has happened in consumer mindsets, the economy. When you're a retailer, it's also about projecting out the future on a day to day basis. The reality is we are a very marketing driven world. We are a consumption based culture, $336 million people, making decisions every single day that are causing people to be either hired or fired based off of that output. And retail analytics is the idea that we can solve. What I would say is the unsolvable, right, which is anticipating the human experience through purchasing. It's a baffling concept. I think when people start to realize that, you know, every second, there are hundreds of millions of people making decisions that we try to put analytics behind. We try to find data points that tell a story. And I think it's a beautiful artistic concept. It's also very difficult to actually put in supply chains. Very focused right there. There are nodes, there's outputs, there's timing. You need to be in full, et cetera. Those are things that are I think people could wrap their hands around. But when I try to explain to people what I do, I, I need to I need to provide advice through analytics and the research to everybody. Right? there's people upstream in the marketing and brand teams. There are innovation groups that we work with that are trying to figure out what the next x popular demographic is going to want to purchase in the My categories juice. But it's also about projecting out what might happen when we have torrential rains. Does that affect watermelon flavor sales? You know, know, I have to know regionally, do are there giant sporting events that go on in Tacoma in order to figure out how much inventory needs to go to? So so I wish there was an easier answer. Jim James. I think there's. It's as easy as new minus old. Divided by old is the percentage change, but it's as complex as, you know, machine learning and a.I., trying to figure out what James Prebble will want to buy on a Thursday after he had his first child. Knowing there's a Green Bay Packer game on and you're like, OK, I guess he wants pizza. So that's the quick answer to it. The correct answer would be Johnsonville brats and Miller Lite. So it was a Thursday after my first child was born and the Packers were playing on Thursday night football, Miller Lite and Johnsonville brats. They should have just called you directly to get the answer instead of trying to figure it out through math. My bad. That's a great. I know that explanation does kind of sound like trying to answer nothing and everything. At the same time and find that balance. But that's really what I was trying to get at in my introduction, is that there is so much data out there, especially in the world of mass retail, that a lot of times, you know, it can feel like we're just collecting data for the sake of data. I often think that that's what a lot of companies get caught up into. But then there are truly insights that can make or break massive multinational billion dollar organizations from the insights that this information can deliver. Right exactly. And so so in that spirit, with all of the information that is available and again, what I was getting at in my introduction is that today it seems like or rather every day it seems like there are new sources of information and new amounts of information that you have to deal with. I always think about one of my favorite book title from one of my favorite books, which is the signal and the noise by the statistician Nate Silver. And I think that perfectly encapsulates it. So with everything that you have at your disposal from an information standpoint, you know, what do you look for to keep you grounded? What are the kpis? What are the sources of information that you are really relying upon on a daily, monthly, quarterly annual basis in order to really get those insights? This is probably not the answer you were expecting, but the only KPI is do I understand the stakeholders? And the problem I'm trying to solve? Because you're absolutely right. The reality is even a company like ocean spray, which is nowhere close to the size of Procter Gamel or Walmart or those, we have so many tools. It's a complex option to try to figure out how to use every tool correctly and to get it out efficiently, et cetera. So what I've learned is that you can go out and, you know, famously go look at the billion points of light and you can try to hone it in and somehow create fire or you can try to figure out what you're trying to solve. And I think that one of the things that I do is I remember all the time to say, I'm dealing with humans. Humans make the decisions, right? So can I tell you a story, Jim James, that you are exact height, exact weight, that you are a special person? I can put an entire story together that is absolutely, perfectly true. And you can still tell me it's not you can still say so what? You can still say. But someone else told me. I'm taller and richer. So what I try to do is on a constant basis, I look at, you know, I work on multiple I have multiple brand managers, salespeople I deal with. Everyone is treated uniquely. One time I was asked what my superpower is and my superpower is empathy. My ability to understand where you're coming from helps me solve the problems that you need to be solved, which is what most of us really want, right? Everybody wants to be rich and tall and all that. I get it. But we want the problem solving. Some days you're dealing with people who really just need something to walk into a room and say, I did something good, right? So sometimes you need to give your buyers, your internal people, a victory. Sometimes you need to solve a problem that doesn't seem like it's right in their way. I remember when I was in the milk industry with Dean foods, it was this constant state of like, how do we get more distribution? How do we get more distribution? How do we get more distribution? And after really listening to our buyer talk, he didn't really care about more distribution because he sold so much milk. It was impossible to fathom. But what he did have a problem with was logistics. He dealt with far too many manufacturers. He was tired of dealing with all the trucks. He was tired of dealing with people coming, calling them up, saying, why don't we have a product, et cetera. So I put an entire program together for this buyer around going to exclusive vendors in the communities that you already do, the bulk of your large, large volume milk. And next thing you know, Dean foods has a huge rush of new, new supply for other areas of our business. And it was as though I had unleashed an explosion in that buyer. He was like, I didn't even know that was what the problem. I was trying like he didn't realize that's your problem for you listening to us was this other problem. And I tried to solve that. So you're right. The reality is there is if you just look at Walmart, the amount of ones and zeros that come out of that place is overwhelming. Add that to third party vendors who are providing video analysis 24 hours a day for us. You got all the in-store technology that Walmart now has that's tracking all of our behaviors. There's credit card data, loyalty data. It's too much if you don't know what you want to do. Right it's like anything else. I've got 1,000 projects around this house. I have to focus on what I want to get done and too many people get caught up with, look at all this amazing data. Well, what are you doing with it? Right so my favorite book is The book of why it's about causation versus correlation. It's about trying to hone in on the test, the hypothesis you're trying to solve for not every test. That's I just don't have that kind of time. So you're right, it's a lot. You have to choose what's important. Solve the problem you're facing at today, which will not be the same problem you're going to face tomorrow for business person y instead of business person X. So if I appreciate that answer and I couldn't agree more, which which is shocking because I introduced you as my mentor at the top of the show. But, you know, I know that everyone makes a reference to this piece when they're having a discussion on analytics. It feels cliche at this point, but it reminds me of the scene in Moneyball where they're sitting around the scouting table. Brad Pitt keeps repeating, he gets on base and they talk about how the player, you know, isn't reliable if he's playing third on that day instead of first. But the problem the A's are trying to solve is that no one gets on base. And so they were getting players that get on base. Would you say that that's sort of our. Our new normal that we have right now is that there's all these sources of data, but maybe not any of those are relevant to the actual problem that you're trying to solve. And what we have in this complex business world as an issue is far simpler than that. Maybe we don't know the issue we're trying to solve. I think you not only hit the nail on the head, but I think that, you know, often I get asked like, aren't you just going to have your job taken away by a machine that's way smarter than you and can process way more information than you? And you've got data scientists on, you know, across the street at Walmart's home office. You've got, you know, AI and all these companies doing absolutely amazing stuff. But again, if you don't know a, what you're going to solve for, but a different way to solve for it. If taking your baseball analogy, there's baseball is the greatest statistical sport in the history of our country. Right? everything's been measured now it's getting even better. But when did they put on the shift? Right when did they take the shortstop, put them on second, take the second baseman, put them in right field. Someone came up like they had the math. Tony Gwynn always hits it like not Tony Gwynn. He always hit the hole. But, you know, if 90% of the hits go to right field, well, let's just someone had to go let's just put the second baseman in right field and put the shortstop at second. We'll put third baseman at shortstop. That's the kind of stuff that human interaction, thought process, just having a creative mind is a big enough solution for so much of it. But James, I think there's so many people that start a process the same way that what got you here won't get you there. And they just keep ramming their head into that same mall going, nah, I'm just going to keep doing the same thing. And it's like, and then someone goes, hey, put him in, put him in right field. And everybody's like, what? I should have thought about that. So sometimes it's, it's about saying, what? What can we do that hasn't been done? What theories do we have? I know you guys have told me we can't do that, but let's just go try it. Right? so I think you're absolutely right. I think the overwhelming amount of information can seize people, right? It it can put people in a paralyzing situation. And what I try to do is use information to the benefit of the theory and strategy I want to go after. So I'm much better at going and saying, hey, I need this, this and this. I have a salesman who I work with is brilliant at that. It is. I know that there's the ocean, but I need those three fish and we jump in the water and go get his fish for him. So I think it's AI think it's almost a more intellectual thing than the amount of information available, which some people think is intellect, but it's not. Right exactly. That seems to be the reverse logic that, you know, why would I trust your Excel breakdown that you have here when I've got a team of 30 MIT graduates doing computer magic? to answer this question for me, it's the counter is actually far more not just intuitive but productive and better at solving solutions. It brings up an interesting follow up question. All of these technological advancements and you referenced so many of them that are now providing us with that data. A.I., the integration of video technology into the space of retail analytics, kind of both as providing new analytics and also as a verification of other analytics. There have been upgrades in data management, database management data, illustration and visualization tools. Are these tools more, in your opinion, more of a recognition of a market and a great opportunity for some really smart people to make some really cool tools and make a lot of money? Or have you seen that there have been technological or different products introduced into this space that have truly, profoundly improve the amount of insights that we are able to gain from this information? So here's the analogy I'll give you. I get about once every year or two, we get asked to rethink our third party data provider, right? And so we get six companies to come in and every one of them is PT Barnum. Every one of them has got this amazing, you know, visual impact. They've got a consumer user interface. Everything is absolutely amazing. It is absolutely amazing. But what I tell them is the it hits the road when people use it on a daily basis. Right so I think there's been plenty of amazing stuff that's come out. Right field agent does some amazing work right here in Arkansas using crowdsourcing, you know, consumers going in and taking visual cues for the information you're looking for. So if you're constantly wondering why things are not working out for you in the Southern Atlanta market, you can have field agent at the drop of a hat. They will have 30 people in the entire store. And in 30 minutes you've got, oh, that's what's happening. There's no more stores there. They those stores don't exist or whatever the output is. Right so there's plenty of them that are great. I think that the and this is going to probably be a little strong, the malaise that a lot of people who work in corporate America have, the difficulty of all that information coming in makes it very easy for third party companies to go, well, I can make a whole lot of money trying to solve this problem. And they all solve a problem, which I'll be honest, is primarily fear based, right? There's too much information. So if you can funnel it through a straw, then I can go and deliver that output to my leadership and be like, see, the straw said to do this. And too many people are not comfortable enough saying, I see your Faberg egg, but I'm going to raise you common sense, right? I'm going to raise you going to the store. I will tell it probably told you this, James, when we were together. I tell it to everybody I talked to. I will learn more in a store than I will ever learn from third party information. Right I'm then in inside the walls of where the people are doing the things that they are doing right. I, I just can't imagine not seeing a store and smelling it and feeling it. And if you think about Dead Poets society, right, he gets them on top of the table and says, look at the world this way. So when I'm working on a product that is based for children, why am I going to be walking around in my five, 9 and 1/2 frame and not looking at it from a child's standpoint? Right if I'm trying to build a store to make it more accessible to a child's wonderment to purchase products from mommy and daddy, the reality is I want to be thinking like them, right? So my old buyer would say, well, they don't have jagged things come out that might like poke them or like, right. Think about how they walk into a store, think about how they knock products over, think about what things they want. Right so I think there's beautiful things out there and I don't disagree. I probably could see hundreds of them tomorrow, James and all of them. I wish I could have the time to learn, have the intelligence to use it when it's necessary to use it, have other people understand the background as to how it was built, executed in the output. But sometimes taking a picture inside the store saved me 10,000 words and millions of hours of work for people to go. Oh, that's why. Not to mention millions of dollars likely. It's likely saved you millions of dollars because rather than do a deep dive on some tool that is providing you constant video stream of that store in Southern Atlanta, we just went to the store to figure it out and and, you know, realize that, well, you know, nobody walks to this side of the store for x reason or for y reason, but it does lend the question that is is, you know, a little less. Well, I would say, you know, there's a balance when it comes to mass merchants. But definitively for B to see online consumers, we are now seeing a world that is far more decentralized in terms of how people are shopping, that they are not going to a physical location. How do you incorporate that experience on places that you can't touch, see or smell? Because those decisions are being made while someone is making purchases online. How do you take that same mentality into the ever growing, ever important world of e-comm? Well, I mean, that's going to be the next 15 to 20 years of who's going to make the most money. It's getting we are, you know, Amazon at this point where our knee jerk reaction to oops, I need that. And then you just punch it and you go, I think that there's going to be a need to solve for that. Luckily, there's been enough hiccups for the entire system that it's know, still most shoppers do still love it. Right there's the treasure hunt mentality. There's seeing new items. There's just getting out and having a, you know, a 30 minute walk with your spouse while you guys shop together on a Friday night. So there's still plenty of that now on your own. With regards to your question, it's going to be very interesting. Now, what I do is I actually use this software myself, right? So I go in and every Sunday I put in an order on walmart.com for my groceries. And I'm learning a whole lot do it because I, I enjoy going to pick up the 30 things I get each week. I still go shopping after that, though, right? So it's still a behavior I have. But what I'm learning is why this is pissing me off, why this isn't working. This is this isn't making me feel like you guys know who I am. And it's interesting because you're seeing a lot of development there. So you're seeing adjustments in it. And warehouse clubs are doing an amazing job at finding, you know, e-comm business, not just from business members, but from consumers. So I think it's going to be a benefit. I don't know how long it's going to be like I'll probably be retired by the time it becomes a constant, right, where my brain can just say, inside of my brain, the chip will automatically order the things that I didn't even know I didn't know I needed. But it's big business there. There are category analysts. There are people out there whose job it is to try to figure out, you know, your repurchase rate. They're trying to figure out your how much online content can I shove to you before you're mad at me for shoving it to you? So I think you're going to find a lot of that. I mean, clearly, when you go on, some retailers are far better at it. And what I'm looking at, you know, I'm pathetic, I guess. And I still like van's shoes and I go on vans about once a month and to see if I can find anything on clearance, they should by now know my behavior pattern. Right Paul's cheap. Paul gets on here. So you know what we're going to do? We're going to shove him. Discounted vans, but we're also going to add on t-shirts or something else. So there's a whole lot of work that needs to be done. I think to your answer, though, we are having people now whose job it is. We have someone on our team of six that does aecom and that wouldn't have been done 20 years ago, right? Even when walmart.com or Costco came online, you would have just had the sales person kind of do it 5 minutes a year, like it was no big deal. Now, on a six person team, we have one person dedicated to walmart.com. So it's becoming far more important as of business. It's still extremely low. And that's primarily because I'm in food, right? That's a different business model. If you're talking paper goods or other things that are a little bit more, I can order it and have it shipped in two days. We're still a consumption based food consumer, so when I want my avocado, I want it now. So so it's coming along. It's not as it's not as easy as I think people say, right, the revolution of 1990s with regards to technology and the internet was going to be that there was no such thing as a standing bank. Right and there's more banks around here than I can possibly imagine seeing. And that's not just here. That's everywhere you go. Right? so even though you can do things technically and digitally, doesn't mean that we all transfer over there. Maybe it's a safety net to still have the physical aspects of it. But so we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully going to be retired by that time. Well, so on that note, I think that the pandemic obviously affected retail in so many dynamic ways. I hesitate to even go into it because I think we'd be listing out a laundry list. But for your business, your world and retail analytics, that interruption and it was massive and there was a ton of data around how people acted during that, those strange times. How much reliance do you really take in what happened in those odd times and how we should think about consumer behaviors during the pandemic coming out of the pandemic? Because, you know, I guess what I'm asking is, was it just weird and we're going to kind of not act the way that we were acting during COVID because we didn't want to go outside because we were scared. We might catch something that could kill us. Or has there been trends consumer behavior, in mass merchant sales that are here to stay that were expedited by the pandemic? How do you differentiate between the two? You know, like you said, going back to the bank example, there are still Walmart stores. There's going to be more of them. Likely there are still target stores. There's going to be more of them likely. And we're going back into them now. How do you differentiate all of those things that were happening in the pandemic and whether they're really worth paying attention to or not? Yeah, that was what everybody was sitting around worried about, right? Everybody is sitting around going like, you know, everyone's selling through the roof. Right? there was no company. Everybody was out of stock because everybody was buying anything they could find. Right so it was this massive, chaotic thing. There are some things that did change, though. I think this is pulse roll's opinion, not the world of Ocean Spray or anybody I represent. Some things did change. I personally think that, you know, if you look at going back to latchkey kids and then moving up to the internet, what you saw was a transition of learned skills going away in our culture. And then the pandemic gave us 24 hours a day for a year and a half where we just didn't have much to do right. We all watched Tiger King enough and got all that out of our system and whatnot. But then people started making bread, right? They started learning how to make drinks. Right so you have people now who are absolutely amazing at cocktail parties and things like that. Food making food was a lost art. It was something that no one wanted to do. We're far too busy. It's not you know, it's not effective for me. Et cetera. And what COVID allowed a lot of people do is figure out, like, I can eat healthy, I can do it in a reasonably quick time. I only need five ingredients. And you're telling me I can have, you know, an amazing chicken dinner? Yeah, absolutely. So to me, I think there was a major educational change over the last two to three years that I, I believe will continue because of the pride people get from cooking. Now I'm a cook, so I probably think that a little bit too much, but I think that transition will stay with us, which will add another couple of generations of people who take pride in what we used to have in this country. Right was craftsmanship. And I think food and drink is a craftsman's thing. That's why we have so many people who are into bourbons and whatever stuff people do. I'm not. But so I think some of that's going to change. I think one of the things that I've seen feels like it's going to continue is in analytics. We used to have this thing about how you shopped and it was like, are you on a quick trip? Are you on a market like a big basket trip? Are you on your pop in and pop out trip? Now there's a trip called If I see it, I buy it. And that is because we have become a society, most of us, especially those who have houses a little bit more, less so with apartments if. If you told me that everybody I knew had a case of soda, juice, paper towels, toilet paper, that your garage, your extra room is now a storage facility. You just don't think about it. You don't care. Right and so I think the idea of especially because I deal with the club a lot. Club, channel, Costco, BJ's and Sam's, there was this idea that you only went there once a month when you got paid. And you would never go back. Right? that was your big fill up trip for the month and you buy your 6 pounds of mayonnaise or whatever people buy. But I think that if you look at me. I love x item. If I see it and I know it's a deal, right? As long as you're not paying an exorbitant price, people just feel totally comfortable doing it. I have a refrigerator now in my garage that I got during the pandemic. There is always stuff in the refrigerator that never would have been there before. So I think there's a couple of things that we. James can see a change that I think is good, which is value is always King. So if that value means I'm buying 24 sodas instead of three, but I don't have to drive to the store again or that I know I have it, that's a value that I think is worth there. And then I think the pride of craftsmanship should benefit the retail industry for a long time coming because that sewing, knitting, art, things that we all learned, those things should stay with us because we were falling a little bit behind the pride train from the 2000 to the 2015. It was a very. Just move as fast as you can and then hope by Friday night you can sit down and have Pizza Hut. So hopefully that's the case. The reality is the rest of it's probably too far in the tooth, too. We don't have enough time behind us yet to know if it's going to completely stay. Gotcha you know, that I think that's a brilliant answer and it probably is too soon to tell. But you know that people are trying to figure it out already. Which which is where the money is at, probably. Yeah, absolutely. Now, we've been talking in a lot of abstracts about insights and analytics. I want Paul Sproles favorite story on when your insights saved the day or made a profound impact, you know, to really kind of encapsulate in a very tangible way what we've been talking about this entire time. I think that the milk example and about the points of distribution not being the issue, but really supply chain being the issue is a great example. But is there a favorite example of yours on when insights really championed the right decision? So I'm this is a very prideful pulse girls moment. I, I can't wait. I am a true nerd for analytics. I am truly a bizarre cat because I will spend my free time trying to figure out stuff that I want to know that maybe one day we'll solve a problem, but it might not solve a problem. But I'm still passionate to find that. So why? Why I'm bringing that up. There are 28,000 items in juice in the United States of America. We are a juice culture. I didn't know that many either. And one of the things that I'm very passionate about is figuring out. More about who you are. And the reason I say this, James, is marketing historically has been a I'm going to get in trouble for this. It's a lazy way to use funds to try to sell you things. That's why we have generations. Generations is a crazy concept, right? You're a millennial and I'm an ex. What does that mean? I'm exactly like the other 85% million people like me. Nope but it's easy for companies to go then spend money and say, well, we're attracting the millennial, right? So and all of that is based off of the census. Well, the census gives us data by the zip code. I have all that information. Everybody's got it. I don't know too many people who are using it, and I deal with a bunch of nerds all day long. So I actually am in you know, I'm in the process of testing it and running with it. I have people who can now ask me questions and say, you know, tell me about the customer in Rogers, Arkansas, and I will tell you their income levels. I will talk to you about the rule. I'll talk to you about where they live. I can talk to you about their backgrounds, but I can also then transition that into actual pos, actual sales data, and I can say whether or not it matters, right? So we can all say that certain demographic, age group, income level act like this. And then we use that as a national level to come out with a product. And I can say we have 72 stores that look and act the exact same as Rogers, Arkansas, spread across the country based off of their zip code level information and say this is the opportunity gap for us to go get. So in moments, I'm able to then take all the information that comes at me. And instead of saying, well, you know, 100% juice customer, is this right? Well, it's 80 million people. You're telling me that I can only talk to you about you at one level? No, I'm going to talk to you at the zip code level. So I'm going to tell you by item where you live. What are the things that we can do to help? Walmart, Costco, bj's, Sam's club, Albertsons put a better assortment of products together to solve the problems in that community. Now, it's still not perfect, right? I still don't have James DNA and your mentally odd theories on what juice you're going to use for whatever time of day it is. Right we all still have those emotional things that happen to us. But the closer I can get to walking up behind you and going, hey, James, James, I know you want grape. Like that's a much more articulate spend than James. You're you're a 30 plus year old millennial. You enjoy x, you're like, no, I don't. So that's the thing right now where I'm able to then use talk to my sales people, I'm able to talk to the accounts and say, I think that I've got theories that are going to help you figure out what actual items you can promote in your store, at what times that make the most sense. And so I'm extremely excited about this. It's been a year in the making for me to work through 28,000 some odd items, as well as all of those zip codes and creating the indexes that I want in order to say I feel comfortable saying that this shopper is different than this shopper in these areas, but not in these areas. So it's going to help really refine the focus. It's going to make sure that we don't ship pallets of product to support a consumer who loves tropical to the wrong stores. And then we don't sell enough of it. And then everybody's mad that we're not selling enough of it. It's not efficient for us. It's not efficient for Walmart. It's not efficient for consumers who really wanted mango. It's like, my bad. I just assumed you were a millennial. So you love tropical. So? so I'm super pumped up about this. This is something that I will probably never share with anyone because I'm a selfish I'm just joking. I'm super excited about that. It's going to be a lot of fun to be able to do some stuff that is, is, is what makes me wake up in the morning. It makes me work till 8:00 at night because I'm like, I'm going to figure this out. So that's what I'm doing right now. And it's working out in the few tests that I've put out, and I think I've gotten some pretty positive feedback about it. Well, congratulations. Exciting stuff. From one nerd to another. No, I. Those I think that it would blow people's mind those insights are there. And on the flip side, you did it right. It goes back to the root of what we were talking to. You didn't do it by introducing some AI program into a mass retailer that sorted through 9 billion points of data per second. In order to come up with it. You look people up by their zip code, and I think that gets to really the theme we are going for in this conversation, this episode, why it is such an interesting industry, because yet technology, natural technological improvements, in my opinion, this millennial's opinion, are a good thing. You know, the iPhone isn't bad because I spend more time flipping through social media on it. It's still an amazing tool. I need to not flip through social media as often as I do. That's not an iPhone. That's the iPhone. Didn't make me make that decision. There are some people that might argue that it does, but in my opinion. And so on the flip side, when it comes to data and to insights, you know, it's not about the space age technology. It's about the problem that we're trying to solve. And that's your key phrase. I won't steal the trademark from you on the podcast, but. Paul, any thoughts that you want to close on today. Before we conclude the show? My hope is, is that people start to feel comfortable with the amount of technology that's coming right. The reality is, is that you're still a person, you still have ideas. It's OK that there's $3 trillion lines of data that come out of Walmart every single second about everything that could possibly be done and then you can be overwhelmed with it. The reality is, is that and I try to talk to people when I'm training them, I teach it at a community college once a semester is find your passion within what you do and the analytics are there to help you solve for that. So some people are like me and I'm a nerd in certain ways and other people are like, I'm really fascinated by in-store marketing. I'm like, well, make that your thing. Don't be overwhelmed by the idea that there's just too much and I can't do it. And then you end up seizing like find your passion. The rest of it comes along as soon as you wake up excited to do whatever you're doing, then all that information is just a super awesome benefit that allows you to then solve for it. But if you're not interested because you're paranoid and seizing it, the idea that there's too much technology, you're going to be overwhelmed by that technology. So everybody just like, calm down, you're smart, people love you. It's OK. So that would be my final summation of technology and retail. America, just slow down. It's not that menacing the leading mind on retail analytics and also your source for daily affirmation. Paul Sproles. Paul, I can't Thank you enough for joining us today. Truly from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much. This was a beyond interesting conversation. We'll have to do it again sometime. And Thank you for joining us. On point of scale, if you are interested in your organization having its own branded podcast series similar to point of sales, visit us at market scale once again. Thank you, Paul. And for point of scale, I'm your host, James Prebble. Thanks again.