Delivering the Kalibrate Standard: Stephen Polanski

In this blog series, we take a closer look at how our team supports our clients in achieving their strategic objectives. In some organizations, it might be going ‘above and beyond’ to get the job done – but we just call it ‘the Kalibrate Standard’.

This edition features Stephen Polanski, Managing Director of Global Business Development.

Tell us a little about your role.

I’ve been with Kalibrate for almost four years, and I manage a team that focuses on delivering location intelligence solutions to retailers, restaurants, and financial services brands. My work starts at the top of the funnel, qualifying opportunities, listening to client challenges, and helping shape how we approach them.

On any given day, I’m meeting with enterprise clients, understanding their needs, and making sure we’re aligning Kalibrate’s capabilities to solve their most pressing challenges.

How does your role interact with the rest of the team?

My role is often one of the first touchpoints a client has with Kalibrate. I’m there to listen, ask the right questions, and start building the trust that allows clients to share what’s really keeping them up at night. Once we uncover those challenges, I work with sales, product, and analytics teams to determine whether we’ve solved something similar before, or if we need to create a new approach.

That collaboration is critical, because every client is different. Sometimes their challenges fit neatly into what we already do, other times, we invent new solutions that can later benefit other clients.

What types of problems are the clients you work with trying to solve?

It varies, but most of the time it comes down to location-based issues: fleet and asset management, opening net new stores, understanding the impact of cannibalization, or moving a concept from one channel to another, for example, shifting mall-based stores to off-mall locations.

Enterprise clients in particular are focused on increasing market share, optimizing existing networks, and expanding in ways that balance opportunity with risk.

Give us an example of a particularly challenging client question.

One example is when a retailer asks, “How do I take my mall-based concept and move it off-mall successfully?” That kind of challenge doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all answer.

The tricky part isn’t just the question itself but building enough trust with the client so they’ll share all the details that matter. Only then can we assess whether we’ve solved something like it before or figure out a way to create a brand-new solution.

And how did you solve that?

Sometimes the answer is already in our toolkit, but often it requires tailoring or even inventing something new. When we build a new solution for one client, the best-case scenario is that it becomes something we can refine and scale for others.

It’s about balancing the client’s immediate need with the longer-term opportunity for innovation. That’s where the collaboration across Kalibrate really pays off.

Where do you see the future of location intelligence going?

The integration of AI into software, technology, and process is going to be transformative. It’s not just a buzzword, it will reshape the way location intelligence operates in the same way GPS completely changed how we navigate the world.

AI will allow us to analyze faster, test more scenarios, and deliver insights in ways that were unimaginable a few years ago. But the core challenge will stay the same: how do we combine powerful tools with human expertise to deliver solutions clients can trust?