RESTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW) today shared its view of trends in the retail industry based on its interactions with customers and market observations.
Oliver Guy, Retail Industry Director, Software AG, noted: “The worlds of e-commerce and brick and mortar retail are now seamlessly merging with retailers evolving towards an omni-channel approach to their businesses. Mobile, cloud, analytics and social media will be fully integrated into a unified merchandising system designed to vastly improve customer engagement. The notion that ‘the store is dead’ is not, in our opinion, the future – rather, stores will become highly technology-enabled to deliver a super-personalized customer experience and become the hub of omni-channel customer-centricity. These new predictions highlight our view of the retail industry in the coming year.”
1. Fewer Stores, More Stuff
Brick and mortar stores will add
fewer new outlets as they dramatically reinvent themselves to address
omni-channel challenges. Existing stores will take a “hub and spoke”
approach, acting as pick up and fulfillment centers and offering
“gold-star” customer service. The “endless
aisle” concept will extend shelf space to the brand’s full catalogue
of products and accessible content.
2. It’s All About You
Customer-centric personalization will
be the must-have differentiator for retailers and will become much more
targeted. Retailers will deploy customer-centric technologies such as
easy sign-up, RFID-tagged loyalty cards, which send personalized rewards
over mobile phone when in-store. They will tap into internal
information, known preferences, and social media data to better
understand and delight their customers.
3. The Price is Right
Differentiation by price will be much
more dynamic in nature in order to beat the competition, as customers
become more aware and more sensitive to price. Real-time electronic
shelf pricing will replicate customers’ online experiences, as well as
optimize inventories and reduce labor costs. Real-time personalized
discounts and special offers will further motivate shoppers to head to
stores.
4. Mission Control for “Omni-Everything”
Today’s customers
expect to get what they want—where and when and how they want it—and
only omni-channel offers them a consistent experience no matter how they
choose to interact with the retailer. The complexity of omni-channel
processes and how these interact with multiple systems will need further
control; a kind of “mission control” center where retailers can see and
control every activity across all channels.
5. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Predictive analytics
in retail will enable stores to know, with a great deal of certainty,
what customers are going to want and when. Predictive analytics tools,
especially when combined with streaming analytics, offer retailers the
ability to manage queues, customer expectations and inventories before
there is an issue.
6. The Internet of Total Satisfaction
The Internet of Things
(IoT) is going to revolutionize the store of the future, with its
sensor-oriented devices enabling the most detailed and targeted customer
centricity. Retailers embracing IoT will have visibility into
inventories via electronic shelf sensors; the ability to create smart
signs that are weather- or facial expression-relevant; and the tools to
make every loyalty customer feel coddled and important.
7. Immersion Therapy
Futuristic technology will immerse
customers in the shopping experience. Technologies such as Microsoft’s
Hololens will allow customers to augment reality while in-store.
They will be able to try on clothes, or design their ideal kitchen,
virtually, while sharing their experiences with friends and family. iBeacons™
and anonymous analytical face detection will enable retailers to
interact in real time with customers, as well as track their behavior.
8. Clean-up on Aisle One
Real-time monitoring capability
will be critical for the store of the future, in order to sense,
correlate and automate processes from staffing to inventory. Smart
sensors will detect activity and provide visibility across a store
coupled with streaming data and real-time analytics, allowing for
actionable and automated responses to things like a spill in a grocery
store or a run on umbrellas in a rainstorm.
9. Buy Me Now!
Retailers will further customize and
personalize instant gratification “buy buttons”, which can be found
anywhere from Twitter
to Amazon, with the expectation that these will translate into higher
earnings. But they will need to make strategic technology investments to
ensure real-time inventory is understood and the complex processes
involved in new channels are orchestrated correctly.
10. Last Item in Stock
Real-time inventory visibility will
dominate as retailers strive to keep the customers informed of stocks at
all times. Retailers will control inventories by applying technology
that shows inventory levels across all channels.
About Software AG
Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW) helps organizations achieve their business objectives faster. The company's big data, integration and business process technologies enable customers to drive operational efficiency, modernize their systems and optimize processes for smarter decisions and better service. Building on over 40 years of customer-centric innovation, the company is ranked as a leader in 14 market categories, fueled by core product families Adabas-Natural, ARIS, Alfabet, Apama, Terracotta and webMethods. Software AG has more than 4,400 employees in 70 countries and had revenues of €858 million in 2014 - www.softwareag.com.
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