The newest member of our leadership team, Marshall Brooke, joined us in 2023. He brings with him a wealth of experience, most recently as Senior Technical Architect at Digital Field Solutions. We sat down with him to talk all things technology.

What interested you in joining PlanIT Retail?

I really liked the leadership at PlanIT Retail and their philosophy. It’s a small company of focused developers and retail experts who are all very hands on, self-motivated and with a keen desire to own the problem. Historically I have always worked for either small companies or small teams within larger organizations. It’s really rewarding building products with the same team from inception to release, and I enjoy the shared sense of accomplishment.

I always associated software with helping businesses solve existing problems. I don’t believe I would ever have created a Facebook, as it was not fixing a problem, but it was built to accomplish a social mission. We aim to make PlanIT Retail the to go solution for retail supply chains.

I'm also excited by the prestigious client list that PlanIT Retail has been nurturing for 10+ years. It's an enormous opportunity to have the chance to add value to these great clients and brands.

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The nature of the data is fascinating, and it calls on all aspects of the modern-day tech stack to harness the potential it holds.

What problem does PlanIT Retail solve?

Historically, a lot of the work in the retail supply chain is done on an abundance of individual Excel sheets, not integrated but shared via email and saved locally. Users deserve a modern UI experience to harness the wealth of data they manage, and the process needs to be centralized into a cohesive suite of products. The whole process can be much more streamlined and efficient.  

The nature of the data is fascinating, and it calls on all aspects of the modern-day tech stack to harness the potential it holds. We're in the big data space, with huge numbers of past data points that need to be analysed, actionably forecasted and reported.  Users need to have instant access to thousands of these data points instantaneously and without losing their workflow.

Performance is a must-have feature in this sector and requires acute optimizations on both the front and the backends. As forecasting is a primary task there is also a massive opportunity to utilise emerging AI technologies to automate many of the existing manual processes. The driving force behind the products we're developing is to give the users the same sort of experience their customers appreciate on ecommerce platforms.

What technologies do you use at PlanIT Retail?

As we operate in a data-rich environment, databases are front and centre in our tech stack. We use SQL Server, Postgres for OLAP/OLTP and ClickHouse for the more demanding OLAP requirements of analytics and aggregations because it's ridiculously fast.

SQL is the ubiquitous language in PlanIT Retail as it’s used heavily by both developers and business experts. As we move data between different layers, we preserve this by utilising SQLite, so along the delivery pipeline everyone always has access to the data in a familiar environment.  

We leverage python for our ETL pipelines and for data wrangling and forecasting. Our API services utilize .NET and for the front-end we use React and the usual suspects in the web world. The overall objective is to give our end-users the best possible data-rich and visual experience.

How do you keep up with new technology?

I first got into software as a kid when I got a Commodore 64.  The C64 came with a small booklet about the basic programming language, and I thought I’d give it a go.  Being able to interface with a computer, inputting my name and having it output in a loop onto the screen got me hooked. I’d read a few books about languages and studied computer science at school, mainly moving a turtle around on the screen using the Logo language, if anyone remembers those days...

When I first got a job as a developer, I used to fill lever arch files with white papers, primarily from Microsoft. When the digital world came online there were blogs powered by RSS which was great until Google killed Reader (I think people still resent them for that). Nowadays I tend to scan X for content links, and YouTube has a pretty firm grasp that I’m a geek!

I am constantly in awe of the incredibly high level of content that the tech community produces both in terms of current affairs and educational streams. It's very easy to spend an hour or so in the morning with a large bowl of tea and see what’s what in the tech world, all via high quality video. At times when you watch a 10-minute video on a certain topic or technique, you can actually calculate how much time it will save you.

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What we do is all about solving problems and choosing the right tool for the job.

What have you learnt?

In the early days of my career I was much more invested in particular languages and technologies. I would always be looking for that silver bullet that would give me everything I needed without compromise. With so much choice available these days and an ever-changing landscape, I'm much more comfortable with the notion that what we do is all about solving problems and choosing the right tool for the job.

There is so much information available it can be mind boggling, but you get used to evaluating new technologies and it becomes easier to establish which "Lego" bricks work in your environment. It’s easy to get sucked into the latest technology or framework, but you learn to filter out the noise and create stronger guarantees about the choices you make. It is also interesting how people-orientated the industry has become. Software has morphed from its geeky perception into the very fabric of business life. Some of the most engaging content creators are people who also write lots of code.

What advice would you give your younger self?

The industry moves incredibly fast, so you will never be done learning and can never assume that what you already know is enough. With the breadth of current and emerging technologies, choose what works for you and - most importantly - makes you happy.  You’ll never know everything, but knowing how to reference and find information is a vital skill. Current AI advancements are incredibly exciting, but your creativity is irreplicable, after all AI was made by people.