Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
When five G comes in, constraint goes away, and then
that becomes possibilities. You know, you talked about meta that
needs a network bandwidth to be able to create that
three D experience for you. And so what cloud computing
did in the compute and the storage space which made
it unlimited. I think that's what five G is going
(00:24):
to do in the connectivity space and the IoT devices
all of a sudden, which are built around, you know,
constraints of network and compute. I think those constraints are
going to go away and that changes the game. Welcome
to the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. As you may know,
I've spent the last fifteen years covering technology and learning
(00:46):
how it works, demystifying everything from massive parallel processing to
advanced robotics and everything in between. Yet it's the conversations
with some of the most forward thinking leaders, those at
the intersection of technology and business that fascinate me the most.
(01:07):
I think it's safe to say that while all industries
have experienced disruption in the era of digitization, retail is
a special case. Our relationship with retail has changed dramatically
in just a couple of decades. The Internet and Worldwide
Web open up new, exciting and uncertain opportunities. Early on,
the mobile revolution turned everything we thought we knew about
(01:31):
online commerce on its ear, and today retail establishments have
to embrace and pioneer digital strategies in order to meet
customer expectations as well as forged back end systems that
support the business. Manny Surrey, as c I O alt Beauty,
focuses on those types of challenges. As an engineer, he
(01:51):
is eager to create systems that enable Ulti Beauty to
deliver upon the promise the company makes to customers and
that integrate with all other operation to add value to
the overall business. That's a tall order, but many likes
solving problems. I was excited to sit down with Manny
and talk about some of the projects he's focused on
since he joined Aulti Beauty in March of two thousand
(02:14):
twenty two. But first I wanted to learn about how
he developed a love of technology that propelled him into
his career. Manny, I want to welcome you to the
Restless Ones. Thank you so much for taking time to
talk with us today. Thank you, Jonathan. Glad to be here,
and I look forward to our conversation. Before I jump
(02:36):
into all things technology and retail, I want to first
get to know you a little bit better. When did
you first get interested in technology and at what point
did you decide that you wanted your career to be
in that sort of technological field. Yeah. When I was
growing up, Jonathan, I didn't know there was something called technology.
(02:59):
I thought everything was engineering. And my uncle, who was
my idol, he was a brilliant engineer, so I thought
when I grew up, I'll be like him. I realized
at a young age that one of my skills was
a problem solver. I never took anything as it can
be solved. There is always a way around it, and
(03:21):
you do whatever to do it. So I thought I
could be a mechanical engineer and continue to embrace that
as an interest and as an advantage. Later in the year,
in my engineering college days, I realized, hey, technology proved
to be a great means to solve it. Actually, there
was so much going on, and appreciated the possibilities technologies allow,
(03:45):
but also finite nature of it. There is logic embedded
in every technological resource and that can be applied to
more obscure problems, to solve for My curiosity and love
for challenge drove me to this. That's great. I love
speaking with engineers because of their tendency to view challenges
(04:07):
and to start to think of solutions to meet those challenges,
and that they almost see the world as a series
of puzzles and I find it fascinating. Yeah, and I
would say that the best engineer I knew in my
life was my grandpa. Actually he didn't go to school
when I thought he could fix and do anything. So
(04:30):
it's essentially, you know, orchestration of our intentions with things
we thought were material and now they are not, and
they are intelligent and they sense us and follow the instructions.
So I think that just opens up amazing possibilities. And
(04:50):
you must have seen so many different transformative technologies over
the course of your career, right, What were some of
those key points, not just the ones that we're at now,
but maybe things that you noticed along the way that
you thought this is changing everything. Yeah, we talked about
artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, electrification. I think what changed
(05:16):
the world was abundance. When I was growing up, there
was limited compute capacity and storage capacity, and you have
a computer in front of you, which has got so
much compute power, finite, so much storage. My first computer
was a three eight six processor, if anybody remembers, and
(05:40):
I had a whopping I think forty eight kilobytes of
memory or something. So you lived in those means, and
when you talk about some of this algorithms, it was finite.
Cloud came in and they said, listen, guess what I'm
going to give you unlimited And that's what I say,
abundant of compute and storage when you need it, and
(06:02):
when you don't need it, you can scale it down.
And that changed everything. We were doing artificial intelligence and
machine learning in the seventies and the sixties, but we
didn't have compute power, and all of a sudden it
became commodity. And what cloud allows you to do is
I would say, it's a community of servers and compute
(06:23):
so when you're not using and I can go use
it and I have just in finite of horse power
to run that. And I think that's made a lot
of us think differently. Even if you look at retail space,
you create your capacity in servers and in the back
based on your peak times, just like parking lots, parking
(06:43):
lots are not built around average time. They're empty all night,
right when the mall is closed or the strip mall
is closed, but they built around the peak times. And
that's how the retail is right. And I think that's
what cloud brought to retail, which was, hey, you don't
have to buy the week time parking lot, but when
your customers are shopping with you in the e commerce
(07:04):
and when your traffic comes in, I have this cloud
which lets you expand. So all of a sudden, that
constraint went away. And once that constraints goes away, you
express yourself in any form of fashion, and that's what
has started happening. All of a sudden. Startups had a
click of a button to say I can scale when
my customer shows up, and that started changing the game.
(07:28):
You get the same infrastructure, you get same kind of
velocity speed tools to do that. And I think the
cloud is abundance unlimited, and I think we're seeing that
in the connectivity too. I don't know anybody I know
who's not on an unlimited data plan in and I
(07:49):
think we assume wherever we go that I'll have unlimited
connectivity and compute and storage power and that's changing the game.
It's changing in retail, it's changing in every single industry.
I grew up as a software engineer, Jonathan, and you know,
last couple of roles I had were focused on retail.
It's the most exciting I think domain V as consumers,
(08:11):
Whenever the new iPhone or a new technology is released,
we are in the line next morning to say, hey,
I want it. That's what keeps retails so exciting to
be able to fulfill it and a matter of seconds
you will see thousands of people actually appreciate what you
build and deployed. Yeah, I think retail is probably the
greatest example of an industry that forms a relationship with
(08:35):
its customer. It's not the same sort of thing you
see in other industries where there's usually another degree of
separation between the in the customer and the company. This
is one where it's immediate and that relationship is of
utmost importance. Very curious that you began at Alta Beauty
in March of two. Can you describe what your time
(08:58):
there has been so far? Yeah? Absolutely so. First, I'll
just say that consumer journeys are no longer linear. Retail
ecosystem are now seamless for guests as they shift from
break and motor to digital. So tech must also be
fluid to serve as foundation for the entire ecosystem. That's
(09:20):
what attracted me here at Altar Beauty. Our stores will
always be dynamic destinations where we create human connections, discover, play,
care for and express yourself. And you know, tech place
a role in that. With our app guiding trial in
(09:42):
the aisles are systems connecting offering personalized options, and our
pos system ensuring smooth checkout and supply chain is ready
to deliver. It all comes together, so it's all about
human connection and technology can play a role on how
you connect with it. I also think that one of
(10:04):
the challenges when it comes to incorporating tech into a
retail experience, especially since to your point, you know that's
a very personal experience between retailer and customer, is making
sure that the tech doesn't get in the way of
the experience that it enhances, but it doesn't become a
wall between the retailer and the customer. I imagine that
(10:26):
has to be a big part of the challenge as well.
I would say this is retail domain is uh tough
domain for technology. I mean, the margins are thin in detail,
and you want to pass that value to your customer.
And then you know there's so much buzz around a
(10:47):
lot of different technologies, so and all that cloud of clutter,
how do you pick something which works for your customer
in a meaningful way. Like you said, you know that
they're moving that frictional point for the customer on how
they want to interact. You can't do everything, so it
becomes really important for me and my team to make
(11:08):
sure that we invest in something which is directly related
to customer, not because it's a cool technology. It needs
to work for our customers right away. Everything needs to
start from there, not from technology. It needs to start
from the customer experience and the problem you're trying to
solve for your customers, whether it's a product, whether it's
(11:29):
a service. Making that even more challenging, I think is
the fact that this is kind of armchair psychology on
my part, But you can see some generational differences on
how people like to interact with things like retail. For example,
in my experience, the younger generations, they like having that
(11:49):
level of abstraction, the app that helps them interact as
opposed to having more face to face conversations with people,
and so it's great to have that as an avenue
for those customers. And then older customers might prefer that
hands on experience of interacting with a person face to face.
(12:09):
I think that's where technology also has an enormous opportunity
in the retail space, is to help create a great experience.
No matter what your preferences are when it comes to
your retail experience, Yeah, it's all about opening what we
call omni channel, how customer wants to interact with you.
(12:31):
The customers who want to walk in the store and
they don't want to talk to anybody, they just want
everything on their phone. And then there are customers like
you said, who want to come in and they want
to get that consolidative sort of things. So we have
that spectrum in our stores, right. We want to continue
to invest in all channels. It's not one or the other,
it's how we create options for our customers. Manny, I
(12:54):
have have kind of a simple question for you. Let's
say that you're at a casual setting and someone asks
what do you do for a living? How do you
describe your job to someone who's not you know, a
CTO or c I O or C suite executive. So
mom in law was here and she said, so what
do you do now? Okay, for her, I always say, Hey,
(13:19):
when you go in an Altar beauty store, when you
check out and you get your loyalty points on your wrap,
that's what we do. Okay. That's a simple answer for
consumer facing because that's how they see us. But I
will tell you this, Jonathan, that more than fifty of
my effort is not on that. It's on the back
end systems. It's the financial systems, it's the HR systems,
(13:42):
it's a network, it's the hardware, it's the cloud computing,
it's a taxation system, it's a merchandizing system. That's all
in the back But it's hard for a consumer on
the street to explain, but you know, it sums up
for them as their interaction point. So when they see
Alta their interfaces either through an app or walking in
(14:03):
the store and being able to check out, get their
coupons and get their rewards and things like that. So
that's how I explain it. That's the tip of the iceberg.
We had a forty plus associate company and we equally
put the same effort bigger into making sure the tools
our associates have from tech perspective is what our customers have,
(14:27):
so that they can help and support the customers. Conventional
thinking says you have to pay more to get more
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(14:50):
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clare dot com. Can you maybe tell us about something
specific that you've worked on since you started over at
(15:13):
also beauty one of these projects that are on in
the background that are invisible perhaps to a consumer walking
into a store. One of the biggest capital project we
have internally right now is changing our E r P systems,
So we are actually rewiring our entire financials, entire merchandising
(15:35):
system right now. It's a three year journey. We are
on year one and actually in the next fifteen days
we're going to start rolling out our first release, which
will change our coal financial systems. These things are all connected.
You know, when you make a purchase in our store,
what happens with that transaction? That transaction, Yeah, it takes
(15:56):
your payment, but that payment has to book as a
revenue as profit, so it flows right into our financial system,
and it also flows into our inventory system, into our
merchandising system. It also affects our loyalty points. We also
touch our taxation and then all these systems need to
(16:17):
adjust for that one transaction you just did, and that
needs to get posted and calculated right, and we want
to make sure we have technologies where we can do
that very very quickly. As we enhance new way of shopping,
whether you're buying directly through our website or in our store,
how can you post that quickly and not have a
(16:39):
friction point internally to be able to do that. We
talk about bopus buy online, pick up in store. And
you would think it's a simple transaction, It's got major
operational components to it. When you hit that button, there
is a whole orchestration which happens in the systems along
with people. That order is communicated to the store associate,
(17:01):
so they go pick up your order, but then also
you know, the loyalty points get triggered. So there is
a big orchestration going on over there, and I think
the back end systems are as important as the front
end systems to remove that friction point. So we are
on a journey. We call it so s O R here,
and we've talked about it. It's massive transformation which is
(17:25):
actually gonna change the foundation on how we do internally
work and which is going to manifest itself in faster
capabilities on the front end, which is the apps and
the pos in our store system, because now we can
build some of those capabilities way faster and very quicker
because the back end system is ready to sort of
take on some of those new transaction style, if you would.
(17:50):
It's interesting to me because you're saying that, you know,
that sets up for potential future implementations of technology that
are going to transform retail, and we're starting to see
hen of that now, and I see emerging concepts things
like the metaverse. We already know that ultra Beauty uses
augmented reality style applications for the use of digital filters
(18:13):
that essentially allow you to see what different kinds of
cosmetic products look like on a person. So are these
the transformational experiences you're talking about? Do you have any
hints about what we could see in the future. Yeah,
So we used to have retail Jonathan, which was purely retailed.
Those lines are blooding Amazons of the world, Googles of
(18:34):
the world, Apples of the world. These are huge tech giants.
They have amazing R in D budgets and they invest
a lot in that and they somehow our competition too,
write in terms of technology because that can solve a
lot of things. So retail domain is not retail domain.
I think it's becoming more of tech domain as well.
(18:56):
Amazon wanted to be a retailer online and now there
the tech company. We at Altar we think like that
as well, making sure that we have the latest and
the greatest of technology to solve for our customers on
how they remove some of these friction points. And sometimes
it could be technology which sits outside our ecosystem, but
(19:17):
if they are appreciating it, we want to enable that
capability with an our ecosystem. You talked about meta. If
there is a channel customers want us to be there,
we're going to be there. So you know, if customers
want to shop on meta hours, yeah, we'll have an
altar store for them over there and they can try
out products and interact. I think it's a social platform
(19:41):
and very very exciting. I have a headset and I'll
tell you I'm in Africa on my weekends just looking
at all the things and it's just amazing. Now, obviously,
we are still years out from a truly coherent, immersive metaverse,
so it's not like the is something we're going to
see tomorrow, but it does get you thinking and something else.
(20:04):
Another technology that we love to talk about on this
show is obviously five G connectivity. It's something that we're
seeing transform various industries. I'm curious how has increased connectivity
in general and the roll out of five G in
particular affected retail. Yeah, I'll go to the key word
I said before, abundance. Five gs. Abundant. It's bringing this
(20:29):
super fast speed and we don't have to put fiber.
That changes the game for telecoms. They don't have to
dig up roads and they don't need to have wires
and anything. Right now, five G that kind of speed,
I mean, you're not talking about any megabits you're talking
about two gigabits per second. Okay, on the fiber, we
(20:49):
feel tall when we have a one gigabit coming into
our home and we say, hey, I've got enough to
watch my four K and Netflix and forty five devices connected.
But five G is changing that, Okay, it's bringing what
cloud computing did in the computing space. I think five
G is going to do that in the connectivity space.
(21:10):
The generation of IoT we have right now works with
limitation of your network. So your door camera bell is saying, hey,
I can give you four K, but I'm only going
to give you to any second snippets because I don't
want to suck out all the BANDWID. But when five
G comes in, that constraint goes away, and then that
(21:31):
becomes possibilities. You know, you talked about meta that needs
a network bandwid to be able to create that three
D experience for you. So it needs to be able
to download at a speed of very high network and
I think five G is going to enable that. And
it also gives you freedom without the wire of same
(21:52):
capability and so what cloud computing dead in the compute
and the storage space, which made it unlimited. I think
that's what five G is going to do in the
connectivity space and the IoT devices all of a sudden,
which are built around, you know, constraints of a network
and compute. I think those constraints are going to go away,
and that changes the game. I remember a few years
(22:14):
ago thinking that it was amazing to walk into a
retail establishment where they would have an interactive kiosk, for example,
so that you could engage with the retailer using that
kiosk and answer questions and things of that nature, and
that that was benefited because it had that hardwired connection
to the back end systems and you were able to
do it. But in the world of five G, that
(22:36):
requirement goes away, which means now you have the capability
of doing that on the customer's own device. You have
freed them up, you have untethered them to that one
specific location within the storefront. And that's something that I
think a lot of retailers are just starting to come
to grips with. Yeah, and it's the imagination, you know,
(22:57):
how far you can do Right now? Five g's on
our phone and our tablets. But I think what it's
really really going to enable is going to shower this
planet Earth with this unlimited abundance of connectivity, so every
device can go full throttle and get whatever it needs.
I think there's going to be a mind shift on
(23:17):
how we write applications. It's gonna take us as human
beings to realize, hey, listen, the connectivity is not a
constraint anymore, and we can build things assuming that. Like
your water in your house, right, you open a tap
and you assume there is going to be water. You
never are like, hey, it's gonna run out. So I
(23:38):
think connectivity five G is going to enable that at
a high speed. One thing I really like about five G,
which as a technician, you know, as a techie, I
will say, this is also the pain time. What I
mean by paying time in Layman is when you open
an app, it thinks for five ten seconds before it
gives you that burst of high speed. Five G also
solve for that, So the pink time times are I'm
(24:00):
always ready, I'm always hot. I think the infrastructure is
going to be there before the apps come in. So
the next couple of years, I think we are all
going to be not even talking about LT five four G.
We'll all be five G and we'll assume that, and
then then we'll come the revolution of the apps and
other IoT devices, which is going to say hey, I
can assume now unlimited, and that's going to change the game.
(24:24):
And to your point, many a lot of Internet of
things devices currently, they're designed in such a way where
they collect bits of data and they send that data
on and it's typically it's a small group of packets.
It's not like they are streaming enormous abounts of data.
But with five G, the fact that we have these
opportunities to collect data points, to analyze them, and to
(24:45):
incorporate that into business strategy that I think is another
enormous transformative change in retail in general. And without this
tech foundation, it's that that ability to collect an analyzed data,
it's just not sable. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And
like I said, you know, I love this era on
planet Earth. I'm glad I was born in this era
(25:07):
and a lot of things are happening. And what's going
to happen is as you enable this five G connectivity,
there's going to be a lot of transmission of these sensors.
They're going to share their information and then you start
orchestrating and say hey, listen, I'm gonna make more meaningful
sense out of all this data which is going on.
I think technologies and tools which are happening in the
(25:29):
data space is going to start making sense of some
of this data which we're going to collect. Yeah. I
think part of that has been driven by necessity. Clearly,
the pandemic shifted things, especially for retail, but shifted things
across all industries and required lots of very quick, nimble
approaches to the problem. And one area where I'm starting
(25:51):
to see a lot of innovation in particular is managing
supply chain. And to me, the emergence of technologies that
can gather day about supply chain and send it in
real time with a depth of information necessary for business
to act on that information and be able to adjust that,
(26:12):
to me, is sort of the gold mine right now
for the technology. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, if you
look at companies which are doing great right now, they
have amazing supply chain lodge Stakes as their foundation. We
are really ramping up game and I think this was
pre COVID that we were building our own distribution centers
(26:33):
and we are investing heavily in modernizing our sort of
play there, and we work closely with our partners and
brands to make sure that there is a seamless flow
of products to our stores as well as to their
home when you order online or through our e commerce platform. Yeah,
I agree with you, Many. I think what we got
was sort of a wake up call where people who
(26:55):
worked in logistics and supply chain were well aware. But
now it's an under aniable truth that all of these
different parts of a business are incredibly important to the
entire ecosystem, and you can't just sort of pick and
lift one out and pretend like it doesn't have an
impact on the rest. And I think that realization, that awareness,
(27:17):
that acknowledgement is what is going to really change business
in the future. Before I get end my conversation with Many,
I needed to ask him a couple more things. I'm
curious in your experience, what do you think is the
most misunderstood technology. When I'll say this, you will not
(27:41):
believe me, But I will say this. I said this
to my daughter, and I think I proved it to her.
But technology people think it's complicated and complex. It's not.
It's not. It's logic once you jump into it. It's
not rocket science. When you're a kid and you bring
(28:03):
somebody and you say, hey, start typing on a keyboard.
It looks impossible on how you're going to orchestrate all
your fingers, And three days into it, you're not even
looking at the keyboard. You just form that habit. A
lot of folks are afraid on our technology is complicated,
it's painful. And I will also say this, I think
it's fun. I think it's a blast. When you get
(28:23):
into it, it absorbs you into it. So one of
the big misconception is technology is complicated, it doesn't work,
and you need a lot of hours and college education.
And no, I think in a couple of weeks you
can do something. You can write your app, and you
can write your logic and you can do things, and
those things are available now. Yeah, I think many to
(28:44):
your point, if you've learned about the technology, then you
don't go in with that misunderstanding. Yeah, well, then what
would you say it means to be a restless one?
We call this the Restless Ones, and we kind of
have our own definition in mind when we say that.
But when you were invited to be a guest on
(29:05):
the Restless Ones, what does restless one mean? To you
curiosity and then you know, always challenging the statuscope. This
is how it was done, this is how it was successful,
but look at new ways to continuously solve for it.
We've witnessed, Jonathan in our lifetimes uberization of everything. It
(29:27):
just sorts, not the replacing the taxi and stuff and
bringing that, but uberization is happening in every single thing.
We talk about Bitcoin, it was one application of blockchain
in that domain, but we are seeing a lot more
examples of that. A I m L is the same way.
We are applying that sort of technique in every single
domain now. And how we do things. You know, you
(29:49):
you go buy a coffee mug and they say, hey,
it's got a m L to keep your coffee hot
or whatever. Right, So I think the patterns evolved in
one certain domain are now becoming available and trying to
solve problem in other domains. And I think that's really
really powerful saying how you apply these patents versus one
(30:10):
particular application into several other domains. Yeah. I like that
answer a lot. I feel like the idea of just
because it's been done this way doesn't mean there's not
a better way. I feel like that really does get
right to the heart of what it means to be
a restless one, not being content to just do things
because that's how they've always been done. Incredible, Many, it
(30:34):
has been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
Thank you so much for joining the show. Hey, thank
you so much for having me and likewise, I enjoyed
our conversation today. Thanks thanks again to Many Story of
Alta Beauty for joining the show. Well, many of my
(30:55):
guests work in industries where disruptive change may go largely
unnoticed by the general public. The retail space is different.
Retail companies have been striving to create customized, personalized experiences
for decades, and technology has played a critical part in
making that possible. Today, with the combination of connectivity and
data management, retail organizations can cater experiences to a degree
(31:18):
that simply wasn't scalable in the past. Perhaps, if you
ran a shop in a small community where over time
you've got to know everyone there and what they liked,
you could provide that level of service to all your customers. However,
with five G, it's possible to bring that level of
service even to large stores in huge cities. App developers
(31:40):
can create an entirely new way to shop and interact
with the retailer, and businesses are able to get deeper
insights into their customers and use those to guide strategies
on a granular level. And the ability to leverage that
technology to drive efficiency behind the scenes is a game
changer as well. Thank you many sorry for sharing your
(32:01):
experience and your perspectives on this show. Be sure to
join me for future episodes of The Restless Ones where
we'll talk with more pioneers in tech and leadership. I'll
see you then. T Mobile for Business knows companies want
more than a one size fits all approach to support.
I want the world, so we provide three sixty support
(32:23):
customized to your business. From discovery through post deployment. You'll
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