Shownotes
Recorded live at FMI 2026, Omni Talk Retail hosts Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton wrap up their conference coverage with Benjamin Bond, SVP, Strategy & Client Success at Simbe, from the Simbe booth.
In this final interview of the conference, Ben shares how Simbe thinks about long term strategy while working day to day with retailers to ensure value realization at scale. He explains why shelf intelligence succeeds when entire organizations align around the store associate, and how Simbe’s technology helps teams prioritize, act in real time, and run better stores.
The conversation goes beyond the robot demo to explore how retailers move from pilot programs to full chain deployments, how CFOs evaluate emerging technology investments, and why shelf data is becoming one of the most foundational datasets in retail. Ben also looks ahead to how Simbe’s platform, AI, and computer vision continue to evolve across grocery and other retail verticals.
Key Topics Covered
- Ben Bond’s role spanning strategy and client success at Simbe
- Empowering store associates with real time shelf intelligence
- Moving from pilot programs to large scale deployments
- Building the business case and ROI for retail robotics
- Operating models that drive long term retailer success
- The future of computer vision, AI, and multimodal platforms
- Expanding beyond grocery into additional retail sectors
This conversation closes out Omni Talk Retail’s live coverage from FMI 2026, recorded at the Simbe booth.
#FMI2026 #OmniTalkRetail #Simbe #RetailTechnology #ShelfIntelligence #RetailOperations #StoreExecution #RetailRobotics
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Transcripts
Welcome back.
Speaker A:This is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker B:And I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker A:And we are coming to you from the Simbi booth one more time here at the FMI show in San Diego.
Speaker A:Standing between Chris and I is Ben Bond, the SVP of strategy and client success at Simbi and also someone who I snuck into a party with last night by traveling across wet grass in our leather shoes.
Speaker A:How are you doing today, Ben?
Speaker C:I'm good.
Speaker C:We got there though, so that's all that matters.
Speaker A:We did.
Speaker A:We know how to make our way into a party.
Speaker A:It's all right.
Speaker C:Thank you for having me.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:I feel left out on this.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker B:All right, well, hey, I guess that's the way it rolls.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker B:So, Ben, it's good to see you again.
Speaker B:Like we said we interviewed you last year.
Speaker B:I'm curious, like, remind our audience of your background because your background's pretty interesting.
Speaker B:And then also like, what all do you oversee at Simbi?
Speaker C:Absolutely, a couple things.
Speaker B:Just a couple.
Speaker C:So strategy and client success.
Speaker C:So I spend my time balancing between thinking about the long term view of Simbi.
Speaker C:Where are we going?
Speaker C:How are we going to innovate in the market and help retailers on really a multi year time horizon?
Speaker C:The other side is client success.
Speaker C:Working with all of our, all of our clients every day, helping them get the most out of the technology and realize value.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:So we're a big believer.
Speaker C:We're not just going to have the best technology in the market, but we're going to work really deeply with our clients to help them maximize.
Speaker C:And so that's really kind of how I ended up in this position because I came from the consulting industry helping retailers solve problems.
Speaker C:This is transformative tech, but it's also emerging.
Speaker C:And there's a lot of questions that retailers need to solve for what do we do first?
Speaker C:How do we best do it?
Speaker C:That's where I spend my time.
Speaker A:So for a long time people have been saying robotics are the future.
Speaker A:But I think what's really interesting and one of the reasons why Chris and I have been so thrilled to be part of the Simbi journey is that it's really rolling out at scale.
Speaker A:Now you've deployed in several retailers, you're having a lot of success.
Speaker A:But what does that look like?
Speaker A:I'm curious.
Speaker A:You talk to so many, you're in charge of overseeing so many relationships with retailers.
Speaker A:What is actually happening in those stores that is giving them the success that Sime promised from the beginning?
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:I mean, this is about aligning an entire organization around, why are we doing this?
Speaker C:And this is not just about helping the industry, it's about helping the individual.
Speaker C:Everything goes back to the shopper.
Speaker C:But also the store team is so important.
Speaker C:We take great pride and as do our most successful retailers, that we are really creating a superpowered associate.
Speaker C:We're helping them be sort of omnipresent.
Speaker C:They know what's happening in their whole store all the time.
Speaker C:We're helping them to prioritize what they're doing in real time.
Speaker C:That's a game changer for them and it's actually transforming how they feel about the career that they've chosen for themselves.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:And what does that look like from.
Speaker A:You said you're bringing the organization together.
Speaker A:What does that mean?
Speaker A:What does that look like?
Speaker A:Who's coming together to really, truly empower that store associate?
Speaker C:So this technology touches almost every part of the retailer organization.
Speaker C:We think that this is one of the foremost foundational data sets in retail, in addition to pos, consumer engagement and supply chain inventory.
Speaker C:So we really want to look at how is the retailer operating holistically and actually top down.
Speaker C:We look at the board, the CEO, the full C suite, what are their strategies in the marketplace and how are they going to win?
Speaker C:And then we then look at how we enable each one of those priorities.
Speaker C:Obviously, day one, we go into a store, we're helping that store run better.
Speaker C:There's a ton of opportunities of just sort of day one efficiency, but then also we ladder it up.
Speaker C:This is technology that we have to kind of start small and choose sort of that high value, low effort type opportunities, but then also plan that 1, 2, 3 year view of how do you really level up as a retailer.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker B:So, Ben, you were joking before we started today, you said like, you never know what kind of curve balls that we're going to throw your way.
Speaker B:So I've got one for you today.
Speaker B:I'm going to make you stretch a little bit here.
Speaker B:So I'm curious because there's a lot of priorities on the plate of the average CFO they've got to look at.
Speaker B:Do I invest in store remodels?
Speaker B:Do I invest in other tech?
Speaker B:Do I invest in labor?
Speaker B:What is the pitch that you make to CFOs to say, you know what Simbi needs to be on the roadmap to some degree?
Speaker B:How do you do that?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And what's interesting in our situations, because this is so such new technology, relatively for many retailers, it's not something that they plan for.
Speaker C:So now we're coming in and having a conversation of saying this wasn't something that you were looking at this year.
Speaker C:Here's why you should really be looking at it.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And we want to look at that two ways.
Speaker C:One is just from an individual technology investment standpoint, is this a good idea?
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:And so we will build a business case ground up for that retailer.
Speaker C:And we also go through a lot of value realization work to show this is a fantastic investment.
Speaker C:That's not simple, though.
Speaker C:Sorry.
Speaker C:Life is not that simple.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And that's not how CFOs operate.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:They're making, they're pulling the levers, they're deciding the trade offs and they have a long, long list of things that they want to look at and there's going to be a cutoff point.
Speaker C:And so we help them with that and we'll actually take a step back and say, let's look at your holistic investment portfolio and we'll stack it up and we'll build a business case for other technologies and we'll look at the trade offs.
Speaker C:You know, I think what we've seen from a retail technology investment standpoint, we haven't seen another technology that has as good of a business case as ours.
Speaker C:There's others that come close and there's a little bit of puts and takes depending on the retailer in the sector.
Speaker C:But overall, this is one of the top.
Speaker C:Additionally, we just have to think about what is the financial profile of that retailer today and you know, are they going to favor more operating expense versus capital expenses and also just what is the return on investment and the time horizon of that investment.
Speaker C:What's great about this is most of our retailers are looking at this as a recurring expense.
Speaker C:Now that's great because it's really capital efficient.
Speaker C:It's one device per store.
Speaker C:It ramps up, it ramps down very quickly.
Speaker C:And the value realization is coming in almost immediately.
Speaker C:So you think about like a totally new store, a remodel, like, these are massive investments that take a long, long time to pay off.
Speaker C:We're coming in month one.
Speaker B:And you're committed to them, to your point.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:We come in month one, very small expense, relatively.
Speaker C:And we're putting up huge return very quickly.
Speaker C:It's well said.
Speaker A:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker A:Ben, the other thing I want to talk about quickly is, you know, we're here in the booth, we're seeing tally 4.0 roll by us and make its cute little noises.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:So let's go beyond the robot demo.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A: stores to rolling this out to: Speaker A:What does it take for them to be successful, to get to a full thousand store deployment and continue to see success with the technology?
Speaker C:So we look at as a partnership operating model.
Speaker C:So we're showing up as Simbi and our entire company is rallying around this retailer.
Speaker C:We are looking for the retailer to do something similar.
Speaker C:We want that retailer to identify shelf intelligence as a strategic priority.
Speaker C:And we're working most closely with the stores organization, particularly because on day one, in our earliest clients, we're taking a lot of action in the stores.
Speaker C:We're helping their stores run a lot better.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:That said, as we look at how they advance over time, this is every function, but also it's really something where we need that top down leadership alignment.
Speaker C:And that's not just sending an email, that's actually believing in this and incorporating into the operating rhythm of the retailer as they're thinking about what they're gonna prioritize that day, that week, that month, how their stores are operating is effectively how their business is running.
Speaker C:And they need to reaffirm the criticality of that to their teams, but also then ultimately take actions on those insights.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I think goes back, I imagine to the whole getting everybody involved up front and really championing this technology across more than just the CFO or the CIO or cto.
Speaker A:Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker B:All right, Ben, before I let you go, I got two questions for you.
Speaker B:All right, first one, three years from now, how do you think Tally is going to be different than it is today?
Speaker B:Like what's it gonna be doing that it doesn't currently do?
Speaker C:So there's Tally the robot and then there's Simbi the intelligence platform.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:And there's how we bring it all to through AI and computer vision.
Speaker C:So even right now, we are investing deeply in each individual retailer's business.
Speaker C:But ultimately the sector, each retail sector has very unique products, very unique fixtures and we are constantly committed to continuing to have the best computer vision in the industry, full stop.
Speaker C:And that relates to basically everything you can see in the store.
Speaker C:So we're always pushing into new.
Speaker C:I mean we're very shelf centric today.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Because that's where a lot of the business is, that's where the value is.
Speaker C:But you think beyond the shelf, there's a ton of other inside opportunity.
Speaker C:So we're always going to be pushing in that direction.
Speaker C:We also really believe in ourselves as a multimodal platform.
Speaker C:So there's the robot itself, but then there's everything that we overlay around that.
Speaker C:We're already taking some huge steps forward there.
Speaker C:It's only going to keep going.
Speaker C:And so you're going to see more and more of those modalities at scale with SIMBI deployments.
Speaker B:That's a great point, too, that we should make sure the audience hears, too.
Speaker B:Like, even though we're at a grocery conference, you guys are deployed at a lot of different retails and retail verticals.
Speaker B:Talk about that real quick, too, before I let you go and ask my final question.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, obviously grocery is sort of where we grew up as a company, but, you know, mass hypermarkets, home improvement, we're going into soft lines.
Speaker C:We're really building out an RFID business.
Speaker C:And each of those sectors have really unique considerations, not only from how we can create insight in the physical environment, but also how they operate themselves, and we need to deeply embed to be successful with them.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:All right, my last question.
Speaker B: So, FMI: Speaker C:I think.
Speaker C:I think we can do that.
Speaker C:Hopefully we just don't get lost in the first place.
Speaker C:All right, yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker B:I'm going to hold you to that.
Speaker B:I'm going to hold you to that.
Speaker A:Well, thank you so much, Ben.
Speaker A:And a big thank you to Cindy again for helping us make all of this coverage possible these last few days.
Speaker A:Thank you to all of you who've been following along with us for the last several days.
Speaker A:We really enjoy being able to do this, especially with great partners.
Speaker A:So until our next conference, be careful out there.