Richard Brandt joined Sitoo in January 2023 as the Chief Commercial Officer. With over 25 years experience as a leader in sales, he has a wealth of experience in sales as well as driving business, personal, and operation development.
We took some time out to get to know Richard better, to find out why he chose Sitoo, and to see how he thinks Sitoo is changing the game for ambitious global retailers.
Here’s what he told us…
How did your journey bring you to Sitoo?
Like a lot of the best things in life, It was very much a case of being in the right place at the right time. For the past eight years I was working at the CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) company LINK Mobility in various commercial roles, the last four years I spent leading the sales excellence team on group level. During my time there we grew rapidly both in terms of markets we operated in and employees. This brought with it its fair share of challenges but it was a lot of fun and brought with it some great successes.
I’ve been a fan of Sitoo from afar for a number of years. When the opportunity arose to look at the sales processes at Sitoo, discover more about the details behind the company, and hear about the vision they have from the CEO, Jens Levin, I knew it was something I had to be part of.
I knew it was something I had to be part of!
What made you choose Sitoo?
I want to be a part of the journey Sitoo is on. I know the challenges retailers are facing, I know where they want to go, and I see Sitoo as the missing piece for many of them. A lot of retailers are stuck in IT environments they don’t want to be in. But, because there are always so many parts to change – especially if they are switching to a best-of-breed approach – they see it as being an impossible task. I’m here to say it isn’t. I strongly believe in the freedom to choose and this means, as a supplier, we should be able to accommodate what our customers need without them being tied into sticky, nasty setups which is what I’ve seen happen with a lot of other tech companies.
How important is that freedom of choice you mention?
If you’re a retailer and you don’t have this then, in the next ten years, you’re not going to thrive. You need to be in control of your decisions and your strategic positions and you cannot be limited by legacy.
If you can’t put yourself in a position to have a unified approach to your sales because of legacy systems then you’re dead in the water. That’s my biggest belief. A lot of brands are still stuck with systems that aren’t fit for purpose. It’s limiting them from growing, from generating more revenue and from being innovative and efficient.
You need to be in control of your decisions and your strategic positions and you cannot be limited by legacy.
What’s this ‘freedom to choose’ has for retailers?
I would say first and foremost it comes down to creating the kind of customer experience everyone wants. We all know what it’s like to go into a store and come out empty handed because they didn’t have what we wanted in stock or they didn’t have the right size. Our customer journey ends right there and the store loses a sale. We’re not happy and the retailer isn’t happy.
Catching this lost revenue is where we can help and, of course, being able to make a sale wherever the customer stands. There’s absolutely no need anymore for retailers to be sending customers to cash registers to stand in lines. Finalize the sale where the customer is and send them on their way with a great experience.
What would you say to retailers who are stuck with a legacy system?
It’s time to act now and the longer you wait the scarier it’s going to get. You have to look at the costs and risks of not changing and when you do, you’ve got to make sure you look at the hidden numbers.
Of course everyone will look at how much it costs today, how much changing might cost, how much time a change project might take but all of these are pretty straightforward answers.
What people often don’t look at are things like how much training it takes before a new employee is able to use the POS efficiently, what store associates that cannot provide the great service, due to lack of information, is costing, and what field service and support is costing. For example we know that store associates can pick up and use Sitoo with little to no training whereas legacy systems can take months to learn. We also know that Sitoo requires no field service, no time for updates and upgrades and hardly any time with support.
Another hugely important metric that’s rarely taken into account is the lost sales we touched on in the previous question. How much are lost sales, due to the lack of unified data and omniflows, costing the business? When you get the full picture, it becomes much easier to see all the reasons why change has to happen.
When you get the full picture, it becomes much easier to see all the reasons why change has to happen.
What excites you the most about Sitoo?
The journey so far has been incredible yet I firmly believe we’ve only just scratched the surface and the potential of where we can take the product and the company.
We help retailers in every part of their business whether it’s omnichannel, inventory management, simplified IT, or it’s a store manager getting new recruits up and running in the POS in 15 minutes. In every part of their business, we can both cut costs and increase revenue, all while creating a fantastic customer experience.
It’s why I’m incredibly excited to see how far we can go and how high we can keep raising the bar.
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.
