Addressing Retail’s Experience Challenges with Data

 

As a Senior Manager on the Strategy and Insights for Retail and Consumer Goods team at Salesforce, Caila Schwartz’s goal is simple – help retailers gain a competitive edge via actionable data and insights.

Schwartz joined Retail Refined for a conversation with host Melissa Gonzalez on how that goal takes shape in practice, diving into the ways Schwartz and her colleagues attempt to get retailers up to speed with the ever-shifting retail landscape.

The pace of that evolution has picked up even more than normal during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the shift to a greater shift on eCommerce, changing customer expectations and more have forced retailers to adapt sooner than they might have expected.

“I think about where we were almost a year ago, and we were talking about the role of the store. We were saying, hey, the store has three main purposes – it’s for experience, it’s for product discovery, and it’s for fulfillment,” Schwartz said. “Now, all of the sudden, it’s become exclusively around fulfillment.”

That’s caused foundational shifts to inventory-management solutions and more tailored to this fulfillment role, and Schwartz said that’s far from the only major shift retailers have seen among consumers, who have also adopted digital behaviors faster than ever before.

Gonzalez and Schwartz also explored the creation of engaging, tailored experiences, emerging and growing technologies like AI, and Schwartz’s forecast for the months ahead.

Listen To Previous Episodes of Retail Refined Right Here!

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

Radar
Physical Retail’s Next Infrastructure Layer: Item-Level Intelligence with Radar
June 4, 2026

Physical retail is under pressure to become as measurable and responsive as e-commerce. While retailers have spent years optimizing digital channels with real-time data, store teams have often had to make decisions with incomplete inventory visibility and delayed operational signals. That gap matters because stores still account for 80% of U.S. retail sales, making…

Read More
Healthcare in Pakistan
From Institutional Excellence to Population-Level Access: How Pakistan Can Bridge Its Healthcare Divide
June 1, 2026

Healthcare systems are under pressure almost everywhere, but the strain is especially visible in lower-resource settings where demand is rising faster than infrastructure. In Pakistan, that pressure is playing out across a system that has to serve more than 250 million people with limited public investment. Public health spending remains below 1% of GDP,…

Read More
Engineering
Scaling Experiential Learning in the Curriculum: How Iron Range Engineering Transformed Engineering Education
June 1, 2026

Engineering has transformed nearly every part of modern life, from the phones in our pockets to the systems powering global industry. But the way engineers are educated has often moved far more slowly than the profession itself. Employers are asking for graduates who can navigate ambiguity, communicate across teams, and contribute meaningfully from the…

Read More
vascular surgeon
When Geography Meets Purpose: How One Move Reshaped a Vascular Surgeon’s Career
May 28, 2026

Medicine isn’t what it used to be—not for the people practicing it. Independent physicians are becoming the exception, not the norm, as more doctors move into hospital systems, corporate groups, and academic networks. At the same time, the pipeline of specialists isn’t keeping pace with growing patient needs, particularly in complex fields like vascular…

Read More