My name is Bill Bittner. I am the principal at BWH Consulting. If you have feedback on the book or would like to contact me for any other reason, please use the form on the left. I look forward to hearing from you.
My first exposure to the supermarket industry was, like many people, as a part time employee when I was a teenager. For me, it was the start a lifelong career. I graduated college with a minor in computer science and began working in the IT department of A&P (The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., Inc.). As my responsibilities moved from programming to systems design I realized I needed a better understanding of business requirements and earned my MBA from Rutgers University. I spent over thirty years with A&P, managing development activites for projects ranging from purchasing to point of sale (and reclaim).
Retail is about to go through a huge change. The big thing I have learned working with technology in the people intensive world of retail is that technology evolves faster than people. It takes people time to realize what they can do with new technology and to accept it in their everyday lives. Over the past 15 years we have seen data communications move from hardwired connections between stores and their central office using proprietary terminals to wireless connections offering consumers “enhanced reality” through their smart phones. Not everyone has kept up with these changes, many people have never logged into Facebook or ordered online, but the data is beginning to show an accelerating rate of conversion. Today’s college graduates cannot remember a time when they were not connected to the Internet. Physical presence is no longer necessary for collaboration and many small businesses exist only in cyberspace. It has taken time, but the accelerated conversion to a virtual world is only going to hasten the need for change in the retail landscape.