Customerland

Sensorized Stores, Smarter Retail

• mike giambattista • Season 4 • Episode 52

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The future of retail isn’t just about shiny tech on the sales floor; it’s about the unseen engine that makes every experience feel effortless. With Verizon Business’s Katie Riddle, we unpack how sensorized products, unified IoT platforms, and edge AI are transforming inventory accuracy, employee workflows, and the shopper journey—while forcing retailers to rethink bandwidth, security, and the true cost of scale.

We start with the ground game: real‑time visibility. As RFID and low‑cost sensors spread through stores and DCs, managers can spot low stock, recover misplaced items, and treat shelves with the same precision we expect from ecommerce analytics. Katie shares how Verizon’s ThingSpace creates a single pane of glass for devices and environments—HVAC, refrigeration, digital shelf labels, and more—turning disconnected data into actions that cut waste and improve availability.

Then we zoom out to the network layer. Smaller formats benefit from fixed wireless access, larger boxes lean on private 5G, and everyone needs fast, reliable Wi‑Fi. That mix matters because AI tools and retail media networks are hungry. Natural‑language search for associates, computer vision for measurement, and privacy‑safe attention analytics all demand low‑latency compute at the edge. Katie explains how to separate mission‑critical systems from media traffic, prove in‑store ad lift with 5G Video Insights using existing cameras, and fund the initiatives that actually move the brand forward.

None of this works without robust security and a plan that outpaces growth. Every new endpoint expands the attack surface, so zero trust, segmentation, and managed detection become table stakes. Sustainability rounds out the story: sensors that prevent spoilage, energy‑smart operations, and circular programs that align with how customers want to buy. The takeaway is clear—technology is your brand now. Overbuild the right way, measure what matters, and protect the experience end to end.

If this conversation helped you see what’s next, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review so more retail leaders can find it.

SPEAKER_01:

Our stores are heading towards, and even our DCs uh for the same reason are heading towards kind of the sensorization of product. So in the future, you know, in the next five years, every product is going to have a sensor on it. And that will enable us to have complete inventory transparency that will enable, you know, the the associates and store to know, you know, where things are, if they've been misplaced, if there's out-of-stock, low stock situations. Um, and that can all show up on this things-based platform and and really be able to give us a much better view of what's happening in the store.

SPEAKER_00:

Today on Customer Land, I'm back with Katie Riddle, who is global retail strategy lead at Verizon Business. I say I'm back because not only is this uh uh the second and a two-part conversation we started much earlier this year, but we've spoken multiple times in the meet in the interim, just trying to reset this conversation up. So, with all that, Katie, thanks a million. Been looking forward to this for a while.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be here, and uh, there's so much to talk about of what's going on in the retail industry right now.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, um, I think we left off the earlier conversation by saying we had only scratched the surface of what we really needed to talk about. So I've been collecting notes and taking notes, and I've got, you know, I've got two sides here of stuff to go through, but um, maybe be helpful just to set a little bit of context for listeners um what Verizon Business is, because Verizon is a super well-known brand, but maybe Verizon Business is less so, and then your role there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. So, Verizon Business, there's two parts of Verizon there's consumer, which everyone's familiar with, and then there's the business or organization. And the business organization um does enterprise level uh networking, security, IoT services uh for you know large businesses like a you know a Target or a Walmart, um, small and medium businesses, and then the public sector. So we do a lot of business with the government and with um federal, state, and local um, you know, emergency services and things like that. So um it's um, you know, several billion of our, you know, of our global, you know, billions of dollars that that Verizon is worth. Um, and but it is the smaller half of the equation. Um, and as far as what I do, um I sit at the nexus of of kind of three things. One is Verizon's own store innovation. So I'm in very tight contact and and communication with our store innovations folks and how we're evolving our stores, how customers are shopping, what we're doing to service them better, what we're doing to make our associates' lives easier and better. Uh, then the other part is uh the that enterprise level retail organization of clients. So, you know, I I basically talk to everyone from A to Z that is a Fortune 500 uh company uh within the retail uh spectrum. And then the last thing that I touch is product development. So I take all the feedback that I'm getting from our consumer side as well as uh our clients and feed that back into the product organization to make sure that what they are delivering meets retailers' needs and isn't simply a horizontal solution that's a kind of a force fit. Uh, we want to come up with solutions that that meet the business outcomes that retailers really need. So uh that's that's what I do, and that's what Verizon Business does.

SPEAKER_00:

So you can see why there's just an awful lot to talk about. So, as often happens in these kinds of conversations, the real challenge is to keep it from sprawling out of control and dog legging and rabbit trailing off into space somewhere. So I'll work hard to do that. But if it happens, so be it. There's just a lot to talk about here. Um, let's first start with your perspective on I'm kind of struggling for the right word here, but I think you have to call it infrastructure to support all of these new technologies in retail. Um, infrastructure is not a sexy word, it's not even a sexy concept, frankly, but it underpins almost every one of the technological innovations that you and I see in retail. Some of the really cool things are out there. It all requires infrastructure to make it work. And I think it might be helpful to just get your perspective on say what that looked like three years ago or even a year ago, what the what the tasks, responsibilities, duties looked like then, what they look like now, and where you think they might be going in the short term, because things are changing very, very fast.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a big question because things definitely have changed a lot in the in the last couple of years. Um, I would say we we see a lot of business transformation. So we see a lot of uh desiloification of uh of business, and that can be everything from the CMO of an organization is actually now speaking to the CIO, making sure that what marketing needs to implement that the IT organization can then um you know put in place in store or in their call centers or whatever that might be. So, you know, it's breaking down those those walls of between you know different functional areas. It's also breaking down the walls between, you know, data, um, you know, different data ponds that organizations have. And really, once that all comes together, that's what we call enterprise intelligence. You know, once you have, you know, unified, integrated systems that run across organizations. And I think that's something that a lot of businesses have spent the last couple of years really trying to achieve. So I think that's one thing, um, just the unification and integration of the business. The second thing would be, you know, connectivity. Um, so what do you need to support the business? What do you need to support, you know, corporate infrastructure? What do you need to support store infrastructure, distribution center and infrastructure, fleet infrastructure if you own, own your own, you know, delivery fleet? Um, so I think, you know, those needs, um really what you know a lot of of retailers are doing right now is they have found whatever they can find in the the local market in terms of you know broadband connectivity. Um, but they're starting to see that you know that is not going to suffice in the even right now, but eat but but well into the near term. So starting to look at things like fixed wireless access for you know uh for retailers that have a lot of smaller format locations, things like uh private uh 5G for uh larger uh footprint uh stores. And then the last thing that I'll mention is in the next you know year or two, even if you're planning for the future today, I mean, I would almost say double what you think you are going to need in the future, because as AI, really, as you said, we're scratching the surface now. Um, all of the queries and the data lakes and things that are going to be needed to access to make AI tools work for both associates and for customers, that's gonna, you know, require so much more bandwidth and and low, low latency connections than we ever uh imagined. Um, so I think, you know, it's it's whatever you're planning for the next couple of years, you know, plan big because you're going to need, I think, more than we can even imagine right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting. All right, we're gonna put that one down there under future predictions. You said something a minute ago about the desiloization, which we're gonna turn into an actual word. Um, and uh because um of a necessity of it, but that's something that technology providers, specifically in the retail space, have been nudging loudly uh enterprises to undertake with, you know, I I would say even now limited success. So it's really interesting for me to hear you say that you're seeing some of that kind of collaboration and cross-polinization out there because it's uh you know, people are fighting corporate cultures and the the technologies that don't play nice together, and a whole host of you know your personal bonuses that rely on a whole different set of KPIs, trying to to bind these or at least give uh the data pawns, as you say, access to one another. So these are giant hurdles, and I'm I'm uh I'm loving the fact that you're saying you're seeing progress there. That's a really big deal. And I think uh coming from your perspective at the top of the pyramid, so to speak, but you have that really high-level perspective, um, that's really encouraging.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think, you know, one thing that we're starting to see is all of the um sea level areas of the company becoming a little more co-equal. So it used to be, well, in terms of technology at least. Um, so it used to be that, you know, the I the CIO or CTO, you know, basically owned all of the the IT and you know, the technology and the connectivity, you know, within the company. And they um, you know, drove, you know, tried to assess what the needs were and you know, drove the solutions. But it's starting to to um we're starting to see movement where, you know, the COO, the operations organization, the the marketing or marketing and digital organizations, you know, they all have needs that have to be satisfied by that technology, whether that's in store or you know, in other channels of of the retail ecosystem. And so they have to, we see the business um driving technology needs more than they ever have before. And that what that also means is funding those initiatives more than they ever have before. So, you know, potentially there's a lot more partnering with the CIO, CTO organizations with funding that they want to create, say, a you know, ARVR experience in store. Well, that's not something that IT would necessarily bring, bring forward on its own, but the business is driving ideas like that and and and even funding you know ideas like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Seems like so many of these conversations, like you're saying, the the C-level executives are becoming, well, at least at least technologically speaking, more co-equal, but that so many C-suite conversations now are out of necessity technology questions. They're technology discussions. You can't avoid it. It is no longer simply the purview of the CTO or CIO or CMO if they have a request for something. There's this, there is kind of a holistic need out there. So uh just to restate it, I'm pleased that at least in your corner of the universe, you're seeing progress in that direction. Because a lot of people, um, a lot of technology providers are still kind of going, oh, this is a great solution if only we could get A to talk to B, left hand to right hand, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think they're realizing too, at the very basic level, that technology is part of your brand, because technology is a lot about how people interact with your brand or are serviced by your brand. And if you don't have great technology that's making life easy and sometimes even enabling people to not even notice it's there, then you know, your brand kind of suffers from, you know, things like slow POS or, you know, lines, you know, cues, or, you know, things like that, or or mispricing, you know, where when you could have had, you know, digital shelf labels. So um, yeah, it's it's part of the brand these days.

SPEAKER_00:

An earlier conversation, you had mentioned the concept um that I don't think was quite a reality yet in your world, but I could be wrong. That um that what brands, especially enterprise level organizations, really need because of the complexity they're dealing with is something that looks like a single pane of glass into the various kind of operational collections. And um I mean, as a as a concept, that rocks. I mean, that's that's transformative for for a lot of of really complex organizations. Is Verizon I should just say I ask, where is Verizon in kind of developing that capability?

SPEAKER_01:

So we actually have a dashboard um pane of glass that is uh available today, um, but it's centered around our IoT capabilities. Um, and that can be anything from you know, in grocery, you know, fresh, you know, refrigeration, uh, freezer, freezers, things like that, um, as well as like the physical plant of the building, um, whether that's HVAC or leak sensitivity or door swing sensors that that sense people in uh unauthorized areas. But IoT is also the digital shelf labels that I just mentioned. Um, you know, it can be, you know, devices, it can be anything. And basically the the tool is called Thingspace and it is uh device agnostic. So it's basically sort of a plug-and-play um easy way to connect all of your IoT devices and see what's going on within your store. And the reason that I find that really valuable is because our our stores are heading towards, and even our our DCs uh for the same reason are heading towards kind of the sensorization of product. So in the future, you know, in the next five years, every product is gonna have a sensor on it. And that will enable us to have complete inventory transparency that will enable, you know, the the associates and store to know, you know, where things are, if they've been misplaced, if there's out of stock, low stock situations. Um, and that can all show up on this Thingspace platform and and really be able to give us a much better view of what's happening in the store. Because today we have kind of this when we when we look at e-commerce, we know what people are doing on e-commerce pages. We know when people put things in their cart or take them out, or even you know, eye tracking in some cases. So we really know what's happening at a very um granular level. We don't have that in store today, which is why, you know, I really believe as the cost of RFID comes down and in the per sticker uh area um and this you know pervasive connectivity, you know, is available in store. Um, I think that that one pane of glass is really going to tell us a lot more about this sort of data desert in the middle of the store. But it is available today. It's just that uh not everything is sensorized. And so I think it's got a couple more years before it's got that really 360, you know, view of everything in store. But it can still do a lot today with IoT uh in the store and monitoring store operations and and everything that's going on within the store from a physical perspective.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's really right now, it's just it's only because not everything's sensorized. So the market hasn't quite caught up to the to the the uh the big technology yet.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd like to kind of go back to something you talked about a little earlier, and that is that organizations should be looking at planning for more compute power, more bandwidth, more power overall, than they're probably currently thinking about. Right. And and what's driving that kind of prediction? Because that's that's a big deal. I think you know, uh people who are managing the budgets for this thing, if they're listening to this podcast, they're probably going, uh-oh. You know, if Katie Riddle, who sits at the top of Verizon business retail section, is saying we may be under budgeting for this, maybe I should pay attention to it. So let's talk about some of the things that you see driving that increased need.

SPEAKER_01:

And first of all, I want to acknowledge that you know, we meet anybody where they are today and take those steps. You know, we understand that the a lot of times these things have to be phased approaches that you can't necessarily get to tomorrow, you know, immediately today. So I just I just want to say that that, you know, I don't expect, you know, organizations to go out and spend$50 million, you know, tomorrow on on, you know, whatever it is, but you know, a 10, 10, 20, 10, you know, type of arrangement. Um, you know, we know that that's the way things have to be sometimes from a budget perspective. So I would say the thing, the reason that, you know, I'm sort of making that bold prediction is that um we still don't know what AI is going to do within organizations. So, you know, we have tools that you know we're putting out there for the associates, for customers, so that they can start searching for things in plain language. Um, and that takes a lot of compute. Um we see everyday stories about you know companies building new data centers uh, you know, everywhere. Those are eating up a lot of power. Um, you know, so at the same time they're easy eating up power, they need connectivity as well. Uh, because these queries have take a lot of data to go back and forth. And the other thing is is, you know, the compute aspect, we don't want to have to go back to data centers for every piece of compute. We want to do computing at the edge, which is something that we do offer uh because that results in a lot faster return of information. And in order for AI to be valuable, it has to be very fast. It can't be, you know, that you're waiting a couple seconds, you know, for answers. It has to be very fast. So I just think we're we're scratching the surface, we're on the tip of the iceberg in terms of what AI is going to cost us because AI is going to do great things for us in terms of productivity gains, uh in terms of customer satisfaction, but it's going to cost us, you know, and that's not just in development of the tool or whatever itself. It's of all of the infrastructure that supports it. And I I just don't think that we all have our arms around uh what that will actually mean in terms of infrastructure.

SPEAKER_00:

Makes me think that um your team and my team should put their heads together and maybe index what those costs are now and what they're predicted to be over the next few years. Could be an interesting project.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to talk about one of the other giant compute sucks. Wrong word, but you get where I'm going with this. Um, retail media networks. Every every organization has one. If they don't, they will soon. Um, the commerce media networks that are expanding beyond just physical stores or even just, you know, uh uh House entities is sprawling. The money that's being poured into retail networks and similar networks is giant and doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon. I mean, you know, when you saw a couple of years ago when these things first emerged, people predicting that it was going to suck the life out of digital media and like where's all the budget going to go? And well, it can't possibly be true. Turns out it's not only is it true, but that was probably a small view of it. Um, but all of that takes compute, all that takes infrastructure, all of that takes um, you know, the the behind the scenes, the under-the-hood, the behind the curtain work that Verizon does. So can we talk a little bit about what you see behind that curtain, what's working, and what it takes to make it work?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. I think most retail media networks, you know, have started with, you know, e-commerce and and in-app um type ads, you know, trying to either position them, you know, as you're shopping or as you're browsing, you know, if you're making a grocery list at home, putting those ads in front of you. And I think they've reached, you know, a good level of success doing that. I think the thing that people have not been doing as much is putting up the digital displays in the stores. I haven't seen those as much as I would have expected. Um, and there's so many different form factors for those digital displays. There's ones that are just horizontal rails, there's, you know, tiny ones that are the size of a paperback book, you know, there's huge ones, you know. So, you know, those require connectivity. Um, and you know, I think the reality is for larger format stores at least, um, we're gonna see a mix of cellular connectivity, 5G connectivity, and Wi-Fi supporting things like this. Because you don't want, even though your retail media network is making you a lot of money, it's not necessarily a critical system like POS is. So you don't necessarily want them running on the same network or being serviced in the same way at the same speed. Um, but going back to retail media networks, um, we really, you know, even if you did have uh a lot of monitors in the store and you made it, you did design them in a way that was, you know, fairly unobtrusive to the shopper, you still need proof that they're working, that that eyeballs are on those screens. And that's another thing that we are doing. We have a product called 5G Video Insights. And what that does is it uses cameras, usually existing cameras, anything that's an IP camera, um, to watch people as they are approaching a screen. Um, and we're not doing any facial recognition just to avoid that conversation. Um, but just, you know, aggregating the data of watching people as they approach the screen. Did they watch the ad for, let's say, Oreos? And, you know, when they watch that ad, did they put a bat a bag of Oreos into their cart? So that's the way you really prove back to the CPGs who are doing this advertising and paying you as Kroger, as as Target, or whoever it might be. That's the way you prove to them that this is valuable. Um, that's the way you prove to them that that that placement on an NCAP or or what wherever that high value placement might be, that that's worth the extra money to place your items there. So that's another thing that Verizon does, you know, not only providing the sheer connectivity for the retail media networks to run on cellular connectivity, on Wi-Fi connectivity, but also providing some of that, you know, IoT, you know, camera, um, which is camera vision, which is backed by AI. So it's it's using AI to aggregate activity and watching, you know, what people are doing in order to prove out the value of the RMN, which I think is something that you can do in a very um, you can make some assumptions and do today, but it it can remove some of those assumptions from the from the ball field.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And you know, what you just mentioned, every one of those steps is in itself a giant data load into the system. I mean, collectively, you're talking about an awful lot of of bandwidth needed there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, video requires a lot of bandwidth to process. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Just huge. And if it's going back and forth to be analyzed the whole time in real time or close to that, you know, you can just imagine the pipes you need.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So looking across everything Verizon's working on right now, networks, sensors, insights, security. What's the larger story you think retailers need to hear right now?

SPEAKER_01:

I think uh retailers need to hear that they do need to plan ahead for the next two to three years, and they need to plan for infrastructure. Like I said, that's more than they need today. But I think the other thing that we really talk to a lot of retailers about and do a lot of a lot of research, you know, on a yearly basis is that security. Security issues, um, cyber theft, you know, uh cybercrime, you know, is is still skyrocketing. For every step that, you know, we take to block out bad actors, they are, you know, figuring out something else, another approach to committing, you know, cybercrime. So, you know, I think that's something that is worth spending time to think through. And as you add all of these endpoints, all of these IoT devices, all of these mobility devices for associates, you have, you know, consumers in store that are using your Wi-Fi. As we have all these endpoints, the security threat gets worse and worse. So that's something that we can really help with. Um, we have a gentleman who sits on, you know, the president's, you know, cybercrime, you know, council. I'm I'm saying that the wrong way, but um, you get the idea. Uh, and you know, we we see something like 75% of the world's internet traffic. So, you know, it's something that we can really start to see things, you know, happening before they start to really, you know, pick up pick up steam. And that's something that we can help real retailers with. We we can help avoid all of the brand damage that's done when there are breaches. We can help, you know, the financial, you know, implic implications for any breaches, especially for ransomware and other things. So I think, you know, not only planning the overall infrastructure bigger than you think it needs to be, but I think the security needs to match that.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm I'm trying to put a timeline on that, and I'm not sure it's it's possible, but you know, um, because I get asked this question a lot, you know, where do I see as if my opinion has any validity, where do I see things going over the next 18 to 24 months? On the other hand, I think you're a great person to talk about that. You know, what are some of the hurdles? What are some of the things that you see retailers should be paying attention to, should be planning for? You've already said, you know, increase your your energy data load planning uh more than you think you will. But are there any specific column of traffic bumps in the road ahead that you think retailers may not see, but by virtue of the fact that you sit at that 30,000-foot level, you can see them where people down here at street level may not?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not sure that there's necessarily, you know, a whole lot more than what I've mentioned. I will bring up um sustainability though. So sustainability, we're starting to see a lot within the retail industry. And it's going beyond, you know, at first, um, I think a lot of uh companies in general, not just in retail, were sort of doing, you know, okay, we're looking at our carbon footprint, you know, we're, you know, doing things, but they were sort of vague. And I think even more than ever before, customers really want to vote with their dollars and and go and go with retailers that live up to the same values that they both share. So I think you start to see the circular economy within retail. So you start to see a lot of used clothing um coming back. You know, I know that Maidwell does that, which is part of J. Crew. Um, there are so many companies that are starting to bring back clothing. I believe Patagonia does that. Um, so you know, that's just an example within the grocery industry. You know, you see a lot of uh things to to uh battle food waste. Um we saw IKEA, not that they're a grocer, but we saw IKEA sign a deal just recently uh with a company that will take all of their cafeteria waste, all of those delicious Swedish meatballs that they uh have left over at the end of the day, and they take it and they um make energy out of it somehow. I think it's some sort of biomass uh play. Uh so so that that you know food isn't isn't actually wasted. Um, and you know, I talked a little bit earlier about IoT sensors with um with the freezers and refrigerators and grocery stores, you know, avoiding problems before they even happen, you know, seeing things that need preventative maintenance before they even uh break down uh in terms of refrigerators and freezers. So I think we're gonna see even more measures that really have very meaningful, um, you know, meaningful measurements and meaningful impacts uh that are sustainability related. And I don't think that's on anybody's bingo list for, you know, 2026 necessarily, but I think it's this quiet thing that is uh growing and growing and growing, and we're gonna see more, you know, uh more initiatives into 26, 27, 28.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm stuck on the Swedish meatballs. Hard for me to believe that they couldn't sell every one of those things. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Katie, thanks so much for your time and your insight, and I'd say your perspective because it's unique and it's valuable. And um maybe for version three of this conversation, it won't be another six months. Maybe we can do it sooner, but I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

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