Retail

Today’s shopper, thanks the internet, has better product knowledge than before, and sometimes even more than the salesperson! The readily available web information, blogs, social media, expert review sites, retail, and e-commerce sites have all come together to make a net-savvy customer fully loaded with knowledge.

Is this an opportunity or a threat? It all depends, on how you wish to use this change. There is a limit to how much a salesperson can do on his or her own, but technology can help multiply this expertise many-fold, especially while talking to the “informed customer” in this internet age, turning this into a big opportunity. Let us see how this can be made happen.

Most of the retailers today have embraced multi-channel commerce, which is a great sign. Now they can serve the customers in their channel of choice. Let’s dive deeper into challenges, benefits, and the technologies related to Omni-Channel Commerce.

Today’s shopper, thanks the internet, has better product knowledge than before, and sometimes even more than the salesperson! The readily available web information, blogs, social media, expert review sites, retail, and e-commerce sites have all come together to make a net-savvy customer fully loaded with knowledge. Is this an opportunity or a threat? It all depends, on how you wish to use this change. There is a limit to how much a salesperson can do on his or her own, but technology can help multiply this expertise many-fold, especially while talking to the “informed customer” in this internet age, turning this into a big opportunity. Let us see how this can be made happen.

Most of the retailers today have embraced multi-channel commerce, which is a great sign. Now they can serve the customers in their channel of choice. Let’s dive deeper into the challenges, benefits, and technologies related to Omni-Channel Commerce.

Challenges in multi-channel commerce, viz.,

• Siloed Operations between channels: As new technologies like IVR, e-commerce, m-commerce, mPoS, Kiosks, Beacons, etc started to emerge, retailers started to invest in these technologies in isolation. But with this piecemeal approach, the operations for each of these channels happen in isolation and creates plenty of operational challenges that need to be addressed.
• Duplication of effort and inventory: With isolated systems, come dedicated inventory needs. A retailer offering an e-commerce channel will usually show the inventory from a specific warehouse or a partial inventory from a specific warehouse. This leads to duplication of effort and inefficient utilization of the inventory.
• Poor knowledge of customers shopping in multiple channels: As each channel has its own IT system, there is duplication of the customer data, their preferences, behavior, and shopping patterns. The retailer will not be able to extract the maximum value from its knowledge of the customer across channels. The customer will also not get a uniform experience across the channels, leading to poor customer engagement and customer satisfaction.
• Inability to integrate loyalty, promotion, and other customer-facing programs: With different sales channels running in silos, accumulation and redemption of the loyalty points across channels becomes impossible or will be extremely difficult. This potentially leads to excess redemption by the customers beyond their limit or poor customer experience as they may not be able to redeem their loyalty across channels. Offering consistent promotions across channels becomes a manual process or becomes very difficult to execute at scale.
• Management inefficiency at the back-end, need for more people and processes: With each channel running on isolated systems, naturally involves additional duplication of human resources, software, IT infrastructure, logistics, and processes. In the pursuit of offering convenience to the customers, retailers run into huge costs and inefficiencies which do not provide them the additional ROI that retailers are looking for.

How Omni-Channel Commerce addresses them

Primarily address all shortfalls listed above by:

• Optimize inventory and management resources: With a single inventory view feature of the Omni-Channel solution, the retailer needs to hold significantly fewer inventories to achieve an equal amount of sales as compared to a multi-channel solution. With fewer systems, inventory, and processes to deal with will also result in lesser management resources, hence resulting in cost reduction.
• Click-in-store (to enable inventories from other locations): Today, if a customer wants a product that is not available at the store, they are currently shopping, they have to rely on making multiple phone calls to find out which another nearby store has it in stock. But with a single inventory view online or via mPoS, product availability across locations becomes a reality, which will ensure that the customer in-store buys the item with the same retailer.
• Brick & Deliver (shop at the store and deliver at home): For large appliances and fragile goods, the customer might want to shop and pay at the store, but would like the order to be delivered at their doorstep. With Omni-Channel solutions, these features can be built into the system rather than being a manual offline process which is inefficient and has multiple breakdown points.
• Click & Collect (shop at home and collect at the store): In Omni-Channel Commerce, as thee-Commerce/m-Commerce channels are integrated with stores, it becomes possible for a customer to order online and request that the order be kept ready at a specific store where the customer can come later to collect it. Not only does this offer great convenience to the customer, but also greatly increases the sell-through rate and reduces the need for additional inventory at an e-commerce fulfillment center.
• Ability to track inventory and customers across channels: To improve the sell-through rate, the ability to have a single inventory across the channels is very important. With a single inventory view, goods need not be blocked to a single channel where the demand may not exist. Similarly, by integrating the channels, the retailer can have a 360-degree customer view and be able to provide a seamless experience to the customer.
• Integrating channels, viz. Brick N Click: Multi-channel is a great start, but to maximize the returns integrating these channels either via middleware or via digital business platforms (like Brick and Click from Sonata Software) is imperative.
• Ability to learn from the online experience by in-store staff: With 360-degree customer view, once a customer walks into the store and identifies themselves, the in-store staff will be able to see their browsing history, past purchases and will be able to make relevant recommendations to the customer resulting in superior customer experience.
• Provide uniform experience and information to customers across physical and digital channels: With Omni-Channel solutions, the Product Information Master(PIM) will be the single source of truth, which will help the product information to percolate down to all other channels, hence providing uniform information to the customer. Single inventory views will also ensure that the customer has a reliable view of the availability, regardless of their channel of interaction.

Challenges in multi-channel commerce, viz.,

• Analytics to improve sales, customer loyalty, and experience: Digital technologies like Mobile, Social capture a lot of customer interactions over the internet. This information is vast and using analytics, retailers can analyze such data and convert it into actionable insights. Digital technologies such as the cloud, offer the ability to scale up the IT systems on-demand with low Capex. All these technologies will help engage the customer better and improve sales.
• Enabling social media integration to capture customer preferences, encourage word of mouth and get feedback: To get a 360-degree customer view, it is essential to capture the customer information available on their respective social media activities. By encouraging customers to share their shopping experience and product reviews and recommendations using their social accounts, will help to increase referral sales. Omni-Channel solutions make this social engagement and analysis possible.
• Empowering in-store sales with better customer knowledge and promotions: Using technologies like Beacon, retailers can offer targeted proximity marketing which can increase the conversion rate of the footfalls. Also, the targeted marketing ensures that the customers are not annoyed with irrelevant promotions. Other technologies such as NFC, Augmented reality can help increase customer engagement and increase sales.
• Enable customers to shop from multiple locations seamlessly, and on the go (mobile): Allow your customers to shop Anytime-Anywhere from Any device. Platforms like Brick & click have these kinds of features inbuilt. Today, people are spending more than 5 hours per day on their mobile phones and desktop/laptop. If a retailer can offer e-commerce/m-commerce, this will ensure that their shopping channel is available to the customer for a significant portion of their day.

Sonata Connected Retail specializes in developing platforms and frameworks to help you go to the next level of your digital transformation. Reach out to us right away, and we'll show you the way. 
 

Brick-and-mortar retailers faced three major challenges globally. The expanding presence of E-tailers, the growing proliferation of mobile, and staying relevant to their customers added to their woes. Read the blog to know about the own set of challenges that these problems brought on and how you can tackle them to give a holistic shopping experience to your customers across platforms, repeatedly.

Over the last decade Brick & Mortar retailers globally faced three big challenges. Firstly, they began to feel sidelined by the emerging and ever-growing lobby of e-tailers. Secondly, the proliferation of mobile devices and exponential growth of the overall e-commerce platform posed a challenge while obtaining a single view of the customer. Thirdly, they found themselves grappling with the challenge of staying relevant to their customers using social media and digital searches.

This led to eventual rapid adoption, albeit with a slow start, of strategies to counter these developments and for growth, viz.

1. Spends on digital media began to hog the larger portion of the spends pie, gaining in priority over traditional marketing choices
2. Offering an e-commerce channel, and participating in market places
3. New digital marketing and customer engagement activities on the web including social media

Though these well-meaning initiatives addressed some of the concerns, they brought with them their own set of fresh challenges that prevented retailers from realizing the full potential of Digital Commerce. Some of these were:

1. The channels were silos in framework and hence added a burden on operational costs, besides bloating inefficiencies.
2. There were inventory challenges arising from poor optimization and lack of timely availability of stock.
3. The business suffered inaccurate Demand estimation across channels.
4. Due to lack of data integration, the businesses lacked visibility of customers using multiple channels.
5. Multiple channels led to managing deficiencies resulting in inconsistent customer experience across channels, leaving the newly established e-commerce channel wanting for more.

According to a report published by Google in 2015, a new acronym WWW assumes importance for retailers, and stands for ‘what’ the customer wants, ‘when’ they want it, and ‘where’ they want it.

Clearly, the immediate road ahead signals the need for integration and consolidation, which not just holds potential for resolving these issues, but will also pave the way for the next stage of Digital Commerce. And this is how it will look like:

One customer; one inventory :

One view of the customer and of the inventory portfolio can enable a seamless customer experience and manage unified inventory.

Channel & technology agnostic retailing

Breaking down channel barriers and deploying technology that talks to all channels would enable customers to shop from anywhere, anytime, using any device.

Enablement of Customer Insights with analytics

Injecting intuitive intelligence into data would help both the customer and the shop assistants in upping sales and satisfaction.

Improving shopping efficiencies and conveniences

By facilitating faster check-outs and offering a larger basket of choices to customers across channels, customers would likely shop again.

Mass customization of preferences

Leave it to technology to provide a customer level customized experience, almost catering to them as each market segment.

Creating innovations of shopping options and optimization of customer effort

A multiple-channel seamless shopping experience can facilitate customers to buy on the go.

Engagement of brands with customers through social media

The multiplier effect of social media has brought about a paradigm shift in disseminating information – transcending from the traditional ‘one to many’ to the ‘many to many’ mode of communication.

1. Devin Wenig, the president of eBay Marketplaces says, “The world of e-commerce and commerce are now just seamlessly merged, and everything is omnichannel”.

With these functionalities, Digital commerce would help every Brick & Mortar retailer transition from personal selling and touch-and-feel based retail to the digital medium that not just provides a seamless shopping experience for customers, but also maximizes growth in all channels For this to happen, retailers need to lay a robust foundation for a digital platform today in order to not just fully reap the benefits of an integrated platform, but to stay competitive as well.

An emerging component of online technology is the degree to which new technologies are responding to customer needs while serving good process and financial performance.Whilst there are a number of technological initiatives taking advantage of serving customers in this way, three good examples of this are:

Technologies that allow deep dives in to customer data, support effective analysis and drives focussed offers to well segmented customer groups .

1. For the retailer, this has the capacity to reduce costs, improve inventory productivity, improve conversion rates and basket size, and of course, increase sales.
2. For the customer, this reduces receipt of communications that are not likely to appeal and potentially irritate that customer. With the explosion of electronic communications, customers are increasingly likely to unsubscribe from retail sites that indiscriminately send customers unwanted offers.

Technologies that offer customers payment avenues that suit their requirements, without attracting interest .

1. Technology has allowed the development of risk managed payment systems that allow customers to immediately acquire product at no interest and without reverting to high interest credit cards and with real time application processes.
2. Options that include a revolving credit model and a modern day layby model are already biting in to the market, with retailers and not customers covering the cost and providers taking all credit risk and immediately passing net funds to retailers.
3. For the retailer, this provides rapid access to risk free provision of payment options at a modest cost.
4. For the customer, it provides new options to immediately access wanted merchandise without attracting high credit card interest rates

Technologies that allow and support customer access to all inventory carried, no matter where it is located across the retailer’s portfolio .

1. The notion of an endless aisle is central to retailers achieving omni-channel capability.
2. A broad selection of support technology is now available, all it requires is a focussed and determined approach to strategy and implementation by retailers.
3. For the retailer, it has the capacity to improve sales, improve inventory productivity and drive for improved customer satisfaction. It also has the capacity to materially expand product choice at a local level.
4. For customers it largely removes the irritation and disappointment of wanted items being out of stock.

As online selling and technologies have positioned customers to research product, understand global pricing, expand their available choice and even break down the seasonal barriers to local product offers, these new technologies are ground breaking in terms of delivering efficiency, improved profit as well as a clear advantage to their customers, a great step forward in sustainability for retailers who take advantage of them.

Gartner has been talking about digital in retail for a while now, so the awareness on this has been building over the years. But over the last one year, one of biggest transitions we’ve seen is that digital has finally entered the conversation as a definite parameter for consideration when retailers evaluate any technology solution.

Today,when we speak to our retail customers, we find that they actively look for solutions that support Social Media Analytics Cloud (SMAC) and IoT. They want to know, for example, if our platform provides out of the box integration with popular social media platforms; if our eCommerce solution supports SaaS etc.

Overall, retailers today are able to better appreciate the power of digital technology to transform all aspects of their business. There is growing awareness that a strong technology backend is crucial to be able to evolve at the pace that today’s environment demands.

From Sonata’s perspective too, our approach to digital transformation in retail recognizes these emerging needs. Our unique approach of platformation of retail operations has enabled us to steer the discussion from piecemeal fixes towards a focus on driving business transformation through a platform that is open, scalable, compatible and Agile.

We’ve seen considerable uptake across our Ready, Accelerate and Custom approaches.

Brick and Click, our retail platform has resonated with customers, who have been able to recognise its value in enabling them to take the quantum leap to the digital world by getting the best of store & online retail on one seamless platform. We have seen a very enthusiastic response from customers across retail segments such as fashion, apparel, consumer goods and industrial goods and across geographies such as the US, Asia and Australia.

One great example is a hard goods manufacturer in Asia that was looking for 10X growth. It implemented Brick & Click to help it scale, improve time to market, integrate to third party logistics and payments, but most importantly, to provide a unified experience to its customers. It has not only overachieved on its growth target, but has reported greater customer satisfaction, enhanced business potential and informed decision making as the other big advantages.

Similarly, another a leading apparel brands for active wear that operates in Australia and the US implemented Brick & Click to support current operations and fulfil the aspiration of expanding to other geographies. Another example is a leading New York-based contemporary fashion brand was facing multiple challenges with its existing platform that was not designed to support omnichannel sales. Brick & Click enabled the company to launch promotions easily and seamlessly across all channels and also simplified engagement with end customers consistently across channels.

Overall, our ability to position Sonata as a IP led company rather than as a services company has been a big plus, that has helped us changed the nature of our conversation with our customers.
In the next year, we expect to keep pushing the envelope in helping retail customers transform their businesses, ably backed by the IP and Platformation strategies.

Retailers typically use a variety of applications from different vendors for processes such as POS, Warehouse Management, Partner Balancing etc., in an effort to deliver maximum value and create a differentiated experience for customers. Integration of these various applications with the underlying Microsoft Dynamics platform is crucial to facilitate seamless flow of data. While integration with Microsoft products is much simpler, connecting to third party applications can be slightly tricky.

However, this integration is extremely crucial for retailers, both from a business efficiency point of view, as well as to ensure a single view of customer data. The traditional approach of point to point integration between Dynamics and the third-party applications is not efficient for several reasons. One, this method isn’t scalable. It needs to be redone completely as business needs evolve. Secondly, it requires considerably greater effort, making it costlier, and difficult to maintain. Thirdly, it creates several dependencies since applications are coupled more tightly.

One of the best ways to facilitate this change is through a platformation approach. As opposed to traditional ‘pipe-based’ approach where data flows from production to the consumer in a linear manner; a platform-based business is a non-linear business. This works well for the scenario such as retail, where are multiple technology partners. One purpose of the platform is to create value for every participant. Business then can scale up infinitely in theory.

We took a similar approach recently for one of our customers, a leading chain of convenience stores in Finland. The brief was to implement a solution to seamlessly integrate data from multiple third-party applications with the Microsoft Dynamics AX backend. Integration of the huge volume of transaction data from these applications with the Microsoft Dynamics AX backend was a challenge. Besides, the customer was keen to automate this process.

Our approach was to:

1. Develop integration points for real-time integration as well as batch integration, based on a schedule.
2. The integration covers both Inbound (data flow to Microsoft Dynamics AX ) and Outbound (data flow to the third party legacy application) data

The client has seen several benefits from the integration using a platform approach. Some immediate benefits include:

1. 100% data accuracy
2. No data contingency with legacy applications
3. Secure transactions
4. Faster updation of data from across applications and legal entities into backend application (AX)
5. Manual intervention reduced by 80% due to automated operations
6. Short settlement times across legal entities for intercompany transactions

If you’d like to know how Sonata can help you make the most of your Microsoft Dynamics implementation, take a look our website: Dynamics AX Retail Solutions or write in to us at info@sonata-software.com.

Less than a week from now, 200 speakers from India and abroad, over 750 companies, more than 100 exhibitors and over 2000 delegates from India and abroad will gather in Mumbai for one of the most significant retail industry events in India. The 14th edition of the India Retail Forum, IRF 2017, will be held at the Renaissance, Mumbai on 19 and 20th September 2017.

The impact of this event promises to be huge given the dynamic nature and growth of India’s retail industry. Retail contributes 10% to the GDP and 8 to 10% to employment space. Besides, the market size is expected to nearly double by 2020.

This year’s theme - Shaping the next level of Retail consumption in the world’s fastest growing major market’ is very apt. Also, the India Omnichannel Forum 2017 happening in conjunction with IRF underlines the growing importance of an omni-channel presence for retailers.

Themes such as Analytics and Retail, Cloud in Retail, Shopping on the go, IOT – Reinventing retail and Supply Chain – solving supply efficiency, optimizing customer engagement and locking customer loyalty are certainly very key to the retail industry. So, it is great to see that these will be covered as well.

In general, here are a few big trends in retail that we have been observing recently. One, our retail customers actively look for solutions that support Social Media Analytics Cloud (SMAC) and IoT. They understand the importance of strong technology backend to be able to evolve at the pace that today’s environment demands.

We’ll be keen to hear more from the industry on the trends that they are seeing when it comes to technology adoption in retail. Sonata will be attending the event along with our partner SAP.

If you’re planning to attend the event, and would like to meet us to know more about how some of our retail customers are using technology as an advantage, do write in to us at daniel.m@sonata-software.com to schedule a meeting.

Meanwhile, so check out some interesting case studies: http://www.sonata-software.com/microsites/hybris#insight

The last two decades have seen an unprecedented transformation in the retail industry. The good thing is that the customer demand remained intact. In fact, it is growing steadily. However, there has been a transformation in people’s buying behavior and lifestyle choices.

Competitive pressures are also phenomenally high. E-commerce players have disrupted the market. At the same time, physical retailers too are experimenting with new formats to bring down costs and build sustainable business models.

On their part, customers are spoilt for choice and are more demanding. They seek the best quality, amazing variety and the freedom to shop seamlessly across channels, devices, and geographies.

For retailers to survive and thrive in this scenario, they need to make the right technology investments to power their journey. Many retailers are already taking action. As per Gartner’s 2018 CIO Survey, 54 percent of respondents listed ‘expanding unified commerce (Omni channel) initiatives’ as a technology-driven strategy for the next 18 months. ‘Leveraging social media engagement’ and ‘increasing customer engagement’ were at 54 and 51 percent respectively in the same survey.

At the same time, retailers who decide to rely on legacy technologies may save costs in the short-term but will have to face consequences in the long-term. Here are some of the biggest pitfalls of relying on legacy technology in the age of digital commerce?

Inability to Integrate Touchpoints

With legacy systems, data is often housed in separate silos that don’t talk to each other. As a result, these systems make it difficult to integrate all the customer touchpoints, especially external ones such as social media. This lack of integration makes it hard to provide a seamless experience throughout the customer buying journey.

Complex Vendor Management

Retailers typically need to work with a large ecosystem that includes multiple vendors and customers. Managing these multiple systems and vendors makes it tough to create a unified experience. It not only adds to management overheads, but it also fails to create a seamless experience.

No Single View of Customer

Having customer data stored in disparate systems that don’t talk to each other means that the organization doesn’t have access to a single, real-time view of customer engagement, especially across different channels. This severely inhibits its ability to provide a superior customer experience that is differentiated and can drive loyalty. This also leads to a sub-optimal in-store customer experience since the engagement is not backed by online engagement data.

No Single View of Inventory

In the world of retail, especially in areas such as fashion or perishables such as grocery, effective inventory management becomes an important factor to drive profitability. Having real-time visibility into inventory across the supply chain and different channels is important to ensure that inventory is at the optimum level. Also, the ability to track inventory across channels allows for better insights and planning.

Scalability

In retail operations, demand is often dynamic, with seasonal highs and lows. For example, there might be a sharp spike in sales during the festival season or when there is a sale. Legacy systems are often unable to handle these occasional peaks seamlessly, leading to crashed websites or billing systems, and consequently poor customer experience.

Constraints to Modernisation

Legacy systems do not lend themselves well to the adoption of newer digital technologies such as Cloud, IoT, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Chatbot, Augmented Reality etc. A modern core infrastructure that can communicate seamlessly with newer software and hardware is imperative.

Higher operational costs

Legacy systems are generally more difficult to maintain and require more manpower and resources. Also, there is a greater chance of system breakdowns, which means that repairs etc. are needed more frequently. Therefore, operational costs are often higher for legacy systems as compared to lean, modern platforms.

Security concerns

Over the years, the threat landscape has been evolving considerably, with newer, more sophisticated viruses and security threats that legacy systems may simply not be equipped to handle. Modern systems are far more effective in dealing with these security threats.

As the world advanced towards a highly digital environment, it becomes important for retailers to upgrade their infrastructure and future-proof their business to drive greater profitability and superior customer experiences.

Options, convenience and personalized shopping experiences. A brand new world beckons! Do you feel that your brick and mortar store needs a digital makeshift? Do your retail business operations need to be optimized, fulfilment of orders and customer insights provided for its (retail business’) smooth functioning?

If these Qs rankle in your mind, Brick & Click’s (BnC’s) most certainly the sounding board you need. Embracing technology to move with a differentiated digital-led store-centric system, paves the way for the customers to seamlessly transition across channels, while enhancing customer data available to build personalized engagements from scratch – because there’s much more to purchase transactions than the conventional act of selling and paying for products customers buy.

Also, giving your customers the benefits of shopping at your store physically or via online channels or both, allows for a flexible fulfilment of orders. Did you once lose a sale because your product was not available or did a walk-in customer not find what he was looking for? Fear not. With this new modern retailing platform (BnC), you (retailer) can quickly take the order online and get it delivered to the customer’s preferred address, or with the cutting-edge technology available today, redirect him to the nearest store, where the product’s available.

BnC is very supportive of omni-channel buying habits of customers today, making way for a seamless research, search, and buying options at different times and locations from any number of devices. For instance, checking for availability and price for comparison with other retailers using their mobile phones, or using all channels, such as, store, catalog, call center, and web can be done to make a purchase. This is how customers benefit from a shopping experience that is seamless, connected, and personal.

Root for advantageous opportunities by growing your customer base, customer loyalty and revenues; improve employee productivity and enterprise operations efficiency and; pander to the demands of both B2B/B2C commerce and business models. In addition, make the most for your Retail business by gathering, processing, and analyzing data to glean insights that can help you understand customer sentiments and trends better, which can help you craft superior experiences for them and create adroit business processes.

BnC provides retailers with best-in-class, future ready technology which is well equipped to handle IoT, Machine Learning and Big Data to leverage these latest trends. Also, predictive retail analytics, optimized and personalized insights that are integrated into the platform, help achieve:

1. Better merchandising
2. Sales forecasting
3. Inventory management and
4. Operations management

For eg., by leveraging personalized insights, you can help customers to identify products and services that will have their needs met before the purchase takes place.

The technology that is used in BnC, captures a lot of the data across all the applications, giving you signals to analyze to therefore help optimize those operations. Sonata’s BnC is therefore your gamechanger, where you (retailer) don’t have to rethink every aspect of your business or business operations – be it from sourcing and pricing strategies to inventory planning, and customer experience management. So decide, isn’t this the cleanest sweep you can make as a retailer by getting Brick & Click?

If you’re wondering what the Retail industry is bound to offer up to its customers, then this is definitely for you. Here are 5 sure shot trends that will be made ubiquitous across the retail industry:

1. Personalization – This is bound to continue to be a priority for retailers even in 2019. Retailers who enables shoppers to build products from scratch and customize them down to the very last detail will thrive. For eg., Dresden, an eyewear retailer obtains plastic waste directly from Australian beaches and worn out fishing nets and upcycles them into affordable frames. Dresden allows shoppers to create their own pair of sunglasses which enables them to interchange the lenses and frame parts (that usually come in a number of colors and sizes).The result? Shoppers can purchase eyewear that’s unique, stylish, and environment-friendly.Image/Mobile commerce is making waves and social media is most certainly going to be a bigger part of that in the future. A photo of an item can be used to initiate a visual search which cater to better personalization. Further using immersive technologies like augmented reality has begun capturing interest of consumers – all leading to heightened personalization recommendation, better promotions, loyalty points, etc.
2. Retailers will predominantly rely on robots – Companies such as Amazon are investing in robots that can aid in shipping and packing items. This particular retail giant had robots in almost 20% of its fulfillment centers in 2017, with numbers expected to skyrocket.Additionally, chatbots are offering other ways of purchasing through social media platforms, such as, Facebook Messenger. All kinds of brands from H&M to Pizza Hut are dabbling in shoppable chatbots.The benefit chatbots have over social media shopping that is picture based, is that most keep the customer within the messenger platform to complete their best buy, permitting conversations that run forth and back about a purchase, numerous recommendations and additional product info that can help with conversion.
3. Retailers choosing to up the ante on social media strategies will prosper - The proliferation of Instagram Stories, Messenger and Facebook Live apps will essentially change the online interaction between retailers and customers. Merely posting updates or photos to a reputed social profile will not cut it anymore. Retailers will need to step up their social media play and utilise apps and social networks to relate stories, while engaging with fans in real-time.
   
   The role of technology is envisaged in this eg: A German fashion brand called Born Originals has a humungous Instagram following, being featured even, on the official Instagram for Business account.This brand creates customized sneakers and leather goods that have beauty as well as the capability of being fully functional. It’s hardly any surprise then that their Instagram posts do amazingly well. Their account is filled with beautiful photos from Born Originals and their customers alike.The Company also makes wonderful use of Instagram Stories.
4. Data is steering and will drive retail decisions - As technologies such as Big Data and Machine Learning continue to ripen,Data’s role will be pivotal in retail- decision making. Deep-thinking retailers and foreseers will continue to explore ways to leverage after collecting data in their Marketing, Sales, Customer Service operations. For eg: Walmart is at present using Machine Learning and Big Data in several of its business slants. Forbes reported that the retail behemoth “already uses machine learning to optimize the delivery routes of their associate home deliveries.”In addition, Walmart is using facial recognition to identify frustratedor unhappy shoppers. This data can therefore be used to headoff associates to open other new checkout lines.
   
   And that’s just precursory. Forbes outlines, that a veritable application from Walmart seems to denote that the retailer wants to use Internet of Things (IoT) tags “to monitor product usage, auto replace products as necessary and monitor expiration dates or product recalls.”
5. Delivery, in-home services and consultations will penetrate the market –Consumers today no longer want to step out of the house to make their purchases.Several merchants (especially those selling commodities) will make attempts to connect with customers in their homes and engage with them.
   
   Companies such as ‘Enjoy’, that hand-delivers and is involved in setting up electronics for consumers, will branch out, and other retailers, such as grocers, will ramp up home delivery services. IKEA very recently purchased TaskRabbit, a platform that connects service providers with consumers who can verily assemble furniture, conduct appliance installations, and more. It is very clear that IKEA intends to build on its offerings-that of in-home services, and purchasing TaskRabbit is a bold step towards this.

The future is promising for retailers who adapt well and cater to the needs of their customers.The retail merchants who will reap rich rewards will therefore be those who evolve and move in step with them (customers). It is important for retailers to win, whether it’s a big one or a series of small wins because both help achieve the creation of that ideal unified commerce.

The New Year is back with bang again and it’s that time of the year again to see what’s been buzzing in the Retail world. Care to know what’s the YoY growth story in the Indian and US markets? Or which has been better, online or in-store shopping? Which was preferred – mobile commerce or traditional shopping? Feast on this!

According to the Indian Mirror, the Indian Retail industry grew at a CAGR of 13% to reach $950 bn in 2018 and is expected to be boosted by 60% to reach $1.1 trillion by 2020! With the luxury wielding mindset among youth becoming the norm, and the high purchasing capacity of the upper class society in tier 1 and tier 2 cities, it is also projected that we are on a growth trajectory in terms of being the world’s third largest consumer economy by 2025.

As compared with the Indian Retail industry, US Retail Sales climbed 4%, while US Retail spending rose to about 16.6% to $123.73 bn, marking some of the outstanding growth rates in recent years.

It’s also not surprising that with the holiday season that went by, about 80% of millennials chose to go to a traditional brick and mortar store and it was not that far apart when compared with percentages for other generations. This not only disproves the theory that all retail stores will disappear from sight, but that retailers can build expert tech solutions to better in-store traffic and have an added benefit, as people stop by with families to spend more time with each other or that friends prefer to “hang out” at their favorite retail outlets.

What bestirs retailers now and what has served as a silver lining in Retail is that Companies are finally catering to their consumers’ wants and needs and adapting accordingly. Plenty of retailers are really building consumer-first strategies and listening to, beginning with “buy online for in-store pickup” requests by making way for such an availability. Also in this way, those retailers who continue meeting the ever changing demands of the customer buy letting them shop wherever and however they want will strike gold in 2019.

While the options to shop from anywhere anytime have an uptick in this new trend, it was seen that a majority of internet users (about 53%) bought gifts on Black Friday whereas 40% said they bought most of their gifts during holiday sales days, such as Cyber Monday. Concerning this digital behavior, only 25% of holiday sales took place digitally, and 85% of accounted sales occurred in physical stores, Gartner indicated.
Ideally, shoppers like to see the products they purchase in person, especially during festivals and holiday seasons. Also, brick-and-mortar also provide emotional relief and help shoppers savour the experience by appealing to their rich tastes – which are hard to replicate online. About 42% of shoppers, from a survey study conducted by Bazaarvoice said that they shop at physical stores for the ambiance.

Both Retailers and e-tailers note that predictions for 2019 stand thus: A phenomenal rise in online sales with brick and mortar stores falling closely behind. Seize your moment now and pave the way for unified commerce, and a slew of new retail platforms that Sonata has, to help you win in this fast but capricious economy. Click here to find out how to do this.