By Jim Roddy, President & CEO at the RSPA
“Lack of candor blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got.” Jack Welch, legendary GE CEO
The late Jack Welch would have approved of the straightforward message that kicked off the 2025 Retail Management Hero (RMH) Partner Conference, held Nov. 4-6 at The Curtis Denver.
RMH CEO Jeff Riley could have focused his “RMH State of the Union” on the ISV’s impressive +39% annual sales growth or the company’s recurring revenue growth to a robust 83% of all sales.
Instead, Riley shared with the nearly 100 attendees – dozens of VAR partners plus several vendors who work with RMH – a story that most corporate PR departments would squash in an instant.
Riley said during last year’s RMH conference in New Orleans, 10 of his top partners called a meeting where they reported to him a serious product shortcoming. This wasn’t a nice-to-have-feature conversation. As Riley described it, “We learned we needed to do an engine transplant.”
The result was a significant strategic change, the overhaul of a core software feature, staff departures, staff replacements, standing up a new business, and shifting away from contracted developers – serious heavy lifting for the 29-employee ISV.
“We lost a year of development,” Riley said. “We didn’t want to release a lot of new features because we knew it was a risk to do so. That was really hard for us because we wanted there to be innovation. We don’t like saying ‘no,’ but we had a risky situation we had to deal with first.
“We are on the other side of a chasm, but it was a chasm that we crossed this year. The silver lining of the pain we went through last year is that we’re building for the future.”
It’s gutsy to say that on the main stage kicking off your annual event. The easy road for Riley would have been to avoid the “transplant” story altogether.
But retail IT VARs are excellent BS detectors who require absolute candor from their vendors as the foundation of a true partnership.
Riley further detailed how changes from the past 12 months will affect the RMH ecosystem going forward. “We as a management team got together on an almost daily basis over the past month and talked about our product roadmap and where do we go from here,” he said.
“Our goal is to modernize RMH products while addressing critical customer feedback areas. We need your continued patience. We will get there.”
He then shared a Product Vision slide that included this commitment: “Throughout this evolution, we will maintain an unwavering focus on customer and partner experience using RMH products to guide our efforts in delivering continuous product improvements.”
Let’s go back to Welch’s quote at the start of this post and modify it to serve as a guiding principle for software providers in our channel: Lack of candor from ISVs blocks smart ideas, fast action, and your VAR and vendor partners from contributing all the stuff they’ve got.
The entire retail IT channel is interconnected, so you don’t want to burn any bridges – or flood them with a river of BS.
To thrive in our industry today, get candid with your partners.
How to Beat the 800-Number Guys
Riley offered an assessment of how VARs and ISVs can compete against the margin-obliterating, VC-backed, 800-number, one-size-fits-all POS providers who don’t have a channel.
“They have tens of millions in marketing to spend. They have inside sales and customer success resources galore,” he said. “But you (merchants) have to find them, you have to make sure you understand their requirements, you have to know your business and explain it to their inside sales person.
“How we win is we know the customer, we have a high-touch sales process, and we custom-build the solution for them. Yes, it’s hard, but that’s why we are able to win business. Use the advantage of your wisdom and your experience.”
Riley said he recently asked an RMH VAR partner how many of their integrations were custom. “Every single one of them,” was the reply.
A VAR attendee then offered from the audience how they frame their solution: “We say, when you buy RMH, you’re buying a house. When you buy from one of these (800-number guys), you get sheet rock and nails and you have to put it together.”
I talked with an RMH VAR during breakfast here at the conference who shared with me a story about his tailored solutions. One of his retail merchants has six locations ranging from 1,600 square feet to 400 square feet inside a resort.
There’s not always one “best practice” across all their locations. One example he shared with me related to cash handling. Some locations handle cash through a service; other locations in more rural areas don’t have that service available or fees for that service are too high for their low volume.
The 800-number guys struggle to tailor their offering. That’s where independent entrepreneurs like RSPA VAR and ISV members specialize.
“Measured Approach” with AI
Riley stated that RMH isn’t heavily investing in AI just yet, citing an MIT study that 95% of Gen AI projects fail to generate a return.
“Retailers don’t have a lot of excitement for being early adopters of AI and investing hard-earned margin into something that’s failing more often than not,” Riley said. “We are just following the market and taking a measured approach.”
Riley said RMH is utilizing AI internally, the development team to assist with productivity and in marketing for a variety of applications.
In a breakout session, RMH VP of Partner Success Israel Morrison shared a punch list of how the ISV is practically applying AI in sales and marketing:
- Competitive intel
- Sales pitches/presentations
- Content generation
- Brainstorming
- Segmentation and prospect scoring
- Email, social media, and website automation
- Sales bots
- Industry and retail best practices intel
- Summarizing sales calls
- Train new reps
Morrison walked attendees through a sales pitch and proposal template to build a client proposal. In about six minutes, the group filled in blanks about the merchant, the VAR’s unique value proposition and proposed solution, competitive context, ROI, and output preferences.
Morrison then copied and pasted the template details into Microsoft CoPilot, and it almost instantly produced a bulleted summary document that included a compelling headline, executive summary, and details for the VAR to pick-and-choose from for their final document.
New Payments Partnerships with BOLD, MiCamp
RMH announced two new payments-related partnerships, both involving RSPA members:
- RMH has selected BOLD Integrated Payments as their preferred dual pricing partner. The agreement was facilitated by VAR partner (and RSPA member) Modus Technologies. “We want to make life easier for our partners now, and dual pricing is hot right now,” Riley said. “Dual pricing is a huge revenue opportunity for all of us, and it’s here to stay.”
- RMH has joined MiCamp’s MiPOS program which includes free POS placement with a signed dual-pricing merchant agreement. Additionally, MiCamp’s 500-person salesforce will refer POS opportunities to RMH which the ISV will share with VAR partners who will work directly with that merchant offering support during the sales and post-sales process. “Why would I say no to an opportunity to hand out leads to you every month?” Riley said.
Practical Retail Innovations Panel
I was honored to moderate the main stage panel “Practical Innovation: Leading the Retail Conversation” featuring friends of the RSPA Anthony Presley of ISV TimeForge, Dan Jablons of VAR/ISV Retail Smart Guys, Fausto Paulino of Touch Dynamic, Natasha Polito of ISV CMS Max, and Sanket Patel of VAR Modus Technologies.
Some of the top takeaways from the discussion included:
- AI tools retailers have already successfully adopted include voice agents to assist with inventory lookup and data analytics tools to help thrift stores price incoming merchandise appropriately.
- All panelists agreed that AI should support the associate, not replace the associate. Many consumers are comfortable using technology but often times they still want a person to advise and assist them in-store.
- Rising costs related to tariffs are causing some retailers to push their refresh intervals from 3-5 years to 5-7 years.
- Some VARs in a strong cash position purchased hardware and peripherals before the tariffs hit so they – and their merchants – would not be immediately impacted by new import taxes.
- A new payment-related solution tracks customer credit card data across purchases and then uses AI to offer a targeted suggestive sell at the point of purchase.
- RFID is becoming more prevalent and helping more retailers understand their inventory better – what’s here, what’s moving, and what needs to be ordered.
RMH Annual Award Winners
Six RSPA members were among the partners recognized by RMH for their contribution to the ISV’s channel over the past 12 months:
- Partner of the Year: POS Unlimited
- Developer of the Year: EZB Solutions
- Vendor of the Year: Star Micronics
- Distributor of the Year: Business Integrated IT (BIIT)
- Recurring Revenue Champion of the Year: Modus Technologies
- Industry Focus Partner of the Year: Simple POS, in the pet shop vertical
More Notes from the 2025 RMH Partner Conference
- During a breakout on dual pricing, Pratik Patel of Modus Technologies offered this idea that other solution providers could benefit from: “We don’t keep for ourselves all the money generated from dual pricing. We use some of it to reinvest in the customer. We find creative ways to help the store generate more revenue. One thing we did was talked with a local marketing company that typically offers a content and social media package for $200 a month. We got them to offer it to us for just $125, we added it to our dual pricing bundle, and we charge our merchants only $50 a month for it. It’s a partnership at the end of the day.”
- Dan Jablons – in addition to being owner of Retail Smart Guys he’s an actor who has appeared in many commercials, movies, and TV series like Curb Your Enthusiasm – shared his presentation “Improv Your Life” based on his experience. “One of the most important lessons in improv that applies to business is support,” he said. “When I’m on stage doing improv, my number one thought is, ‘How can I support those on stage with me?’ When you’re talking to anybody about what you do, support is the key. The moment you put your attention on the other person – if you purely view the conversation from their perspective versus selling them, it changes the entire presentation and changes how they feel about you.”
- Tae Kang of POS Unlimited, RMH’s VAR Partner of the Year and a longtime RSPA member, shared an anecdote about a recent glitch-free install his company executed for a 75,000 square foot ethnic grocery store. However, the grocer chose for its on-site restaurant a solution from an 800-number giant – and that launch didn’t go as planned opening day. While Tae’s team was on site to provide support for POS Unlimited’s solution, the best the restaurant manager could do when things went sideways was beg for help from whichever agent answered his 800-number call.
- Morrison shared that RMH is migrating from referring to its partners as “resellers” to “solution providers.” He detailed the five attributes of a solution provider: product knowledge, technical aptitude, industry expertise, willingness to collaborate, and a customer-first mindset.
- Sponsors of the RMH 2025 Partner Conference included several RSPA members: BlueStar, BOLD Integrated Payments, eMobilePOS, Shift4, Simple Technologies, Sola, Star Micronics, TimeForge, and Touch Dynamic.
