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What Is Retail Transformation and Why Is It Important?

Modern Retailers need to be ever ready to respond to changing preferences of customers. Retailers must evolve the right strategies so that they can capitalize on consumer buying preferences. Retailers must be able to spot the right opportunities and respond quickly to customer demands. Retailers need to evolve agile processes that make shopping easy and convenient to shoppers through the right mix of automation and physical interventions. Retailers must strive to digitally optimize the entire customer journey with embedded analytical data for an actionable feedback loop.

What is retail transformation?

Retail transformation is a process in which a chain of activities is modelled to increase sales, boost customer satisfaction, and minimise the cost involved in operations. This is achieved through extensive digital transformation and a thorough understanding of the customer journey to success.

The importance of retail transformation

The retail industry is undergoing significant changes, and digital transformation is the critical driver for the retail sector to remain a competitive marketplace. Modern retail brands use a mix of automation and personal attention to delight the customers and keep them coming back. Retailers need to leverage customer data to analyze customer behavior and make the marketing impactful. Retailers need to use the latest technology to optimize the value chain of their business. Retailers must also use data to avoid costly mistakes. The modern retailer needs to focus on long-term digital transformation plans to remain relevant and set new benchmarks of success.

The four key pillars of retail transformation

Electronic data capture, E-commerce, In-store Shopping, and motivated employees are four key pillars of retail transformation. Understanding how consumers live, buy, and interact with brands and knowing the preferences of the consumer would allow retailers to predict, connect with, and engage with them. The retail organization’s culture and data points connect here to get complete insights. Retailers must understand their customers’ buying behavior so that they can improve the offering to the customer on a personalized basis. Retailers need to understand customers in ways that help them give tailored shopping experiences to the consumers. A connected experience where customers can see the inventory, pick the product, pay for the product on their phones, and at the store would help shoppers who have limited time and money to make their purchases. Agile processes designed with high efficiency in mind is needed to achieve the above objectives. Finally, employees who make the magic happen are trained to integrate themselves into these four pillars of transformation. In a nutshell, Retailer’s organizational culture, Retailers Customer success journey, Retailer’s business model, and Retailer’s employee engagement would matter the most to achieve a perfect retail transformation.

Retail transformation strategy

Retailers are fighting the battle between brick-and-mortar and online commerce. Young customers are shifting to a more digital experience and self-service platforms. Most retailers have already started to deploy AR and VR technologies to improve customer experience. Moreover, shoppers spend 5 to 6 minutes in each store visit, and at least half of the purchases are not made offline. This is set to drive the demand for visual merchandising and help the retailers improve the overall shopping experience. Visual merchandising helps in delivering an enhanced shopping experience for customers through deploying AR technologies such as beacons and digital display screens. In the online commerce space, various mobile and e-commerce technologies are being tried to impress customers and lure them into coming back again and again. After all, both experiences are connected to create long-term customer value and build continuing loyalty with the customers. Retail ViVA, our Retail ERP, is made with the objective of agile retail transformation in an integrated manner.

Conclusion

Retailers can move forward with the right strategies, which are guided by three simple vital points. First, assess the current strategy; then look at future trends that customers and suppliers expect from you; then shift strategy to align it to customer and supplier expectations. This is a continuous improvement cycle, and thus, the evaluation must be perennial.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan