Moving Retail Tech Beyond the Pilot Phase

Retailers rarely manage to scale new storefront technology beyond a basic pilot phase. Demo modes simulate perfect conditions, but they completely ignore the chaotic reality of a live store. This operational gap kills widespread rollouts. Mark Propes, Chief Business Development Officer at Vusion, and Hitha Herzog, Chief Retail Analyst at H Squared Research, join Jeremy Goldman to pinpoint exactly why these retail trials hit a wall, and how brands can actually make in-store tech work. “Are you really building something that's durable enough and rugged enough for what happens in the aisle?" From fragile lab environments to a cracked data foundation, they break down the roadblocks stalling retail innovation. INSIDE THE EPISODE: - Why teams must build store tools for physical durability rather than treating them as fragile science experiments - How central strategic alignment solves the 95% failure rate of AI pilots - Why you must clean up baseline inventory metrics before touching advanced AI - How to shift evaluation metrics away from abstract vendor marketing and toward real operational numbers Stop blindly throwing disconnected tools at your tech stack. Listen to the full conversation above to see how teams turn experimental pilots into operational realities.