He’s got a proven track record in operational and IT management and motivational leadership as well as comprehensive experience successfully supporting growing and expanding businesses.
Rod is a keen football fan and ex-coach who is always looking to raise the bar in whatever he does and joined Sitoo as Chief Operating Officer in January 2023. He took time out to give us his thoughts on what retailers need to be doing right now and why he’s so excited about what the future holds for Sitoo.
Having come straight from a CIO position with Tiger of Sweden, what should retailers be looking for with their in store tech and software?
Retailers should be prioritizing solutions that gives them much more customer-focussed interactions in their stores than they currently have right now.
I’ll give you this example – in 2019 I worked on Black Friday in a Tiger of Sweden store using a very old point sale system. It was a nightmare. Even trying to do something simple like give the customer a discount took far too many steps. It was a nightmare to use and looked like a big concrete block. In terms of both aesthetic and customer experience, it fell way short of the mark.
It’s a big part of why I was drawn to Sitoo. The finesse of their solution and what it can do in a bricks and mortar environment is light years ahead of having to deal with a monolithic block.
And that brings me to my second point – retailers need to invest in solutions that are intuitive and simple to use. One of my daughters works in-store for Tiger of Sweden just now. With very little onboarding she was able to pick up using Sitoo in no time at all because the POS is so intuitive. This generation and the future generation who are going to become store associates don’t know what a user manual is because they’ve never had to use one. They expect to pick something up and know instinctively how to use it. It’s another reason why retailers need a best-of-breed mindset when it comes to retail solutions.
You’ve touched on why you were drawn to Sitoo, what impact are you hoping to have on the organization?
I’m driven by realizing potential, addressing challenges, and motivating people to do more than they think they can do.
I’ve played and coached football for a long time in my life and, out of my three daughters, I’ve trained two of them for a combined 11 years. One of my philosophies has always been to dare them to do things they didn’t think they were capable of and by this achieve a better result. This is the same approach I have to my work. I don’t know more than anyone else but I have the ability to coach people to hit their goals, whatever they might be.
This motivation, combined with streamlining processes and structure, is what I’m bringing to Sitoo.
What excites you most about the future?
Sitoo is already a game changer in the world of retail tech. I believe there’s enormous potential to keep changing the game – and push the bar to even greater heights – in the retail lifestyle and fashion space. It’s this challenge that drives me.
The capabilities the solution has in terms of add-on functionality and data accessibility – and what that data can be used for like understanding the behaviour of buyers in shopping malls for example – is second to none.
Sitoo, with interaction from other components in a retailer’s ecosystem, can provide a very strong customer experience that not only results in sales but the customer leaving the store thinking “Wow, what a great experience that was.”
Achieving the potential we have as an organization to scale, enter new markets, and bring what we do to many more retail partners is what excites me the most.
If you’d like to find out more about Sitoo POS and Unified Commerce Platform, and the different ways we can help your business, then we’d love to help you.
