By: Jim Roddy, President & CEO at the RSPA
The show is called RetailNOW but based on the many future-forward conversations and new technologies showcased July 26-28 in Las Vegas, you’d have every right to call it “RetailNEXT.”
The discussion I found most thought-provoking was the main stage keynote led by retail strategist and Top Retail Expert Carl Boutet. For the past two years, Boutet has been embedded in the RSPA solution provider community, attending RetailNOW and Inspire and engaging with many RSPA members.
Among Boutet’s key points were that VARs and ISVs are no longer just solution providers; they need to also provide insights to their merchants through data analytics. And he emphasized this transition is accelerating faster than past retail IT channel transitions, so our community needs to act with urgency.
Because I was interviewing Boutet on stage, I couldn’t take copious notes but lucky for me (and you) Boutet shared with the RSPA Board a detailed report titled “Diversifying RSPA Membership for the Next Retail Technology Cycle.”
Among Boutet’s insights and recommendations most applicable to VARs and ISVs:
- The forces reshaping commerce are compressing a 25-year cycle into something closer to 5-8.
- The escape from commoditization is business intelligence. RSPA members must be repositioned from installers of products to stewards of the merchant’s intelligence.
- When the box is a click away and the software is self-serve, the installer’s margin goes to zero. The escape is not a broader catalog, which only deepens the Sea of Sameness. It is a different contribution: helping the merchant become intelligent.
- Most SMB merchants are drowning in reports and starved of decisions. They do not lack data. They lack integrated instrumentation as a guide.
- A deployment that produces no new intelligence is a commodity sale competing on price.
- A VAR who sells the same commodity stack a merchant can buy online in just 10 minutes has already lost.
- As commerce becomes machine-mediated, a merchant being legible and preferable to algorithms matters as much as being attractive to shoppers.
- Agentic Engine Optimization is a concrete new VAR/ISV service line: structuring a merchant’s product data, availability, and machine-readable trust so agents can find and choose them. Someone will sell that to SMBs; it should be the channel.
- What cannot be commoditized is trusted judgment running on mature data. The channel is that human layer for millions of merchants.
All that might sound daunting, but the good news is you don’t have to navigate this brave new world on your own. Current RSPA VAR and ISV members have cut a path for you to consider following.
Three of those members – Brett Bennett of POSitive Technology/OpSuite, Jerry Abiog of Standard Insights, and Jeff Riley of Retail Management Hero – hosted the Tuesday afternoon breakout “Turning Data into Dollars: Analytics Opportunities for VARs and ISVs.”
Among my notes from that session:
- POSitive was the POS provider – and essentially the data administrator – for the recent FIFA World Cup held in North America. Bennett said one of the biggest challenges FIFA faced was managing and moving inventory when teams win or lose. That inventory needs to be shipped from City X to City Y pronto. Post-World Cup, POSitive cleaned the PII (Personally Identifiable Information) from the data they gathered, enabling FIFA to sell the data collected to CPGs and World Cup sponsors.
- Standard Insights was part of a solution for Pizza Hut, helping the chain predict when and how much pepperoni and other items to order to help them reduce food waste, one of a restaurant’s biggest expenses. Abiog said the ISV who used his solution now white labels it for other restaurants, enabling them to generate recurring revenue on top of their software sales and payments residuals.
- VARs and ISVs need to help merchants clean, normalize, and monetize their data. Hardware and software are the sensors to gauge the data coming in. You can structure the data to provide better analytics.
- The insights you provide shouldn’t be limited to only what has happened. Provide predictive analytics that show the merchant what to order and when.
- The first step towards moving in this direction is asking merchants about their pain points (e.g. returns problems, inventory problems, too much overhead determining next actions). Abiog recommended initially addressing only one or two pain points to avoid scope creep.
- Bennett recommended challenging the customer to look at a new report you generate for them once a week based on their data. Get them to understand the need for clean data to have a clearer view of their business moving forward.
- The second step is unified data, bringing the merchant’s disparate data into one source for insights.
- Then determine how those analytics can save them money and make them money, such as selling data to CPGs.
- That framework can help you make money, too, because it’s one you can apply to other merchants and charge a recurring revenue fee for access.
Bennett warned, “You need to get your customer data clean and ready in the next 18-24 months because this agentic freight train is coming down the tracks.”
For VARs and ISVs who don’t want to be flattened by the aforementioned AI locomotive, Abiog and Bennett offered this: You don’t have to go it alone. RSPA partners have helped them, and they are ready and willing to help you, too.
To get started on your path to data analytics proficiency, visit the new RSPA AI Resource Hub. And to connect with an expert RSPA member, email Membership@GoRSPA.org.
RetailNOW 2026 By The Numbers
I’m jumping the gun here because we don’t have official final numbers yet, but the initial data from RetailNOW 2026 is strong:
- The nearly 170 exhibitors was the second most at the event since 2018.
- The Expo Hall featured about 40 first-time exhibitors.
- RSPA has added over 200 new member companies over the past 14 months, including about 40 in the month of July 2026 alone.
- The attendee mix of about 1,500 included 500+ VAR executives and 400+ ISVs/software executives.
- Led by member Christine Leduc and a team of eager volunteer members, the RSPA Scholarship Program raised a record $20,265.
You might have noticed in some areas I added qualifiers like “about” instead of exact numbers because the show experienced a late surge of interest like I’ve never seen before. For example, a new exhibitor joined the association and purchased their tabletop display on Monday, the second day of the show and after the Sunday night welcome reception.
Thank You, RetailNOW Attendees
My expectations of the general mood at RetailNOW were greatly exceeded – just like the daytime temperatures in Las Vegas exceeded 100 degrees all week.
What had been weighing me down was a recent RSPA Membership Advisory Group conversation where members summarized the state of the retail IT channel as “tariffs, oil, and turmoil.” And in pretty much every discussion with an RSPA member leading up to the show, they mentioned to me the word “uncertainty.”
While many show attendees did confess 2026 had been and continues to be rocky for them, they raved about the oasis they found at RetailNOW and how the event set them and our industry on the path to a stronger future.
I visited close to 30 exhibitor booths on the final day of the show, and pretty much everyone praised the quality of the high-initiative, growth-oriented VARs and software providers they met during the week. They appreciated the mix of longtime partners, the opportunity to engage with potential partners they’ve been working on, and meeting with many new VARs and DISDs (Direct Independent Software Developers) who represented about 25% of RetailNOW attendees this year. One vendor described RetailNOW 2026 as “almost too much opportunity.”
Two first-timers stopped me in the hall to express their delight – and their surprise. They both detailed how welcomed they felt by everyone they encountered, marveling at how attendees openly shared best practices, experiences, and ideas with each other.
The goal of RetailNOW, and RSPA more broadly, isn’t to beat the tar out of your competition eating lunch at the table next to you. It’s everyone working together to lift the value-add business model in the retail IT industry.
You did that this week. We did that this week.
You lifted the spirits and raised the collective IQ of the retail IT channel. For that I can’t thank you enough.
RetailNOW 2027 is back at Caesars Forum July 25-27 in Las Vegas. I hope to see you there so we can continue to positively shape our future together!
