Highlighting what’s to come in retail, Stores Magazine’s “Coming Soon” article points to a mixed bag of trends from changing demographics and advanced technological capabilities to top-of-mind priorities like sustainability and diversity. Retailers must reinvent their brands and find their role in serving shoppers, investors, the community and other stakeholders in this new age of inter-connectivity. Defining that authentic value proposition and brand personality can be challenging, particularly for retailers that have been established for years and are literally reinventing themselves in a new age. The good news for retailers is that there are multiple paths to success. However, one constant is that retail technology is an essential component for success, no matter the path taken to arrive there. Here are some of the capabilities accessible via retail technologies and why they are critical to success.
Demand for visibility – Whether driven by sustainability demands, a desire to achieve transparency across the supply chain, or the need to better understand specific customer segments, integrated technologies will be the tools capable of delivering this kind of insight. From multi-site reporting and analytics systems to real-time inventory tracking and customer queue technologies, significant systems are required to offer true visibility.
Delivery of an exceptional customer experience – Whether it’s personal touches like happy birthday messages, targeted educational content or “wow” in-store experiences that give shoppers a visit to remember, retail technologies from touch screens to interactive kiosks, video walls, augmented and/or virtual reality or mobile capabilities are essential.
Multi-channel adoption – From interacting on the latest and greatest social media channels to creating in-store and online shopping experiences that are flawless and fully functional, mobile and e-commerce technologies will be critical to success. Retailers must be able to access data in real-time to instantly serve up inventory availability and track orders dynamically to deliver on shipping or BOPIS logistics.
Retail’s greatest challenge in the coming decade will likely be prioritizing which technologies to deploy first and achieving full integration in light of existing infrastructure and legacy systems. Waiting for first movers' results seems to be creating laggards who may find it difficult to catch up to their competitors once they have begun to transform their stores.
We invite you to explore some of our customer success stories to see some of the ways a Telaid’s clients are leveraging technology to redefine their brands and stores.
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