Is Everything Really Enough?

Indira Rani
VP, Distribution Sector 
IBM India / South Asia

Today, vendors very well understand the importance of maintaining a consistent shopping experience across every retailer touchpoint, including POS, mobile phones, kiosks, websites and digital signs. Given the circumstances today, POS systems have moved beyond simple transactions and record-keeping to encompass cross-channel access which is critical to satisfying the overall shopping experience. Vendors and retailers are concurrently rolling out incentives to acquire and hook consumers. But they are well aware that the present offerings cannot be considered as everything and with passing time, change in lifestyle and advancement of technology they have to be future ready with retail having even more variants. 

Priority Area for Retailers...

From the retailer's point of view, retail is important due to, “Better and deeper understanding of customers and their need is the cornerstone of organized retailing. Being in a highly aggressive market, retailers who have better insights of their customers will have a competitive advantage. They are, therefore, trying hard to get closer to their customers and provide them with more customized services and offerings,” explains Indira Rani, Vice-President, Distribution Sector, IBM India/South Asia. 

Retailers are also trying to infuse more intelligence into their systems to be more agile, nimble, and robust. They aim to simplify their operations to better manage the entire operation.

New innovations from Vendors to boost retail mechanism...

The retail industry is changing to capitalize on the central role that technology plays in people's lives. Today's consumers are constantly connected and often hold more technology in their hands than exists in an entire store. The frontline store employee is now significantly disadvantaged in serving consumers. At the same time, shoppers expect more from the in-store experience, including personalized, convenient and immediate service. They want the retail shopping environment to be as interesting as online experiences.

“HP is uniquely positioned to deliver on the in-store retail expectations of today's tech-savvy shoppers and employees. No other company's in-store technology has the depth of understanding on the future of user interfaces and how consumers use technology in their lives. HP supports all stages of the consumer shopping experience, from home, on the go and in the store: Points of interaction, points of information and points of transactions (fixed and mobile, touchscreens, printers, kiosks and POS),” says Vinay Awasthi, Senior Director, Product Category, Personal Systems Group, HP India. He further says that customers can leverage a common management portfolio across the enterprise and store environments from HP. The same HP tools that can manage the POS systems, managers' workstations, kiosks, etc. in the store can be used to manage corporate clients within the enterprise. There is no need to train IT personnel on a separate client-management tool for the store. 

Speaking on the innovations on the retail front, S. M. Ram Prasad, Deputy General Manager, Sales & Marketing, Epson India, affirms, “The Indian retail industry in the last two to three years was more in the nascent stage and therefore, the initial strategy adopted by most of the retailers is primarily to drive traffic using price as the key driver. But as it evolves into more mature channel and key customer touch point, the focus will be on the shopping experience – by which I mean not just the ambience but also the quality of information a customer gets to make a wise choice before he buys. Epson will be focussing on these aspects by bringing our best practices adopted by us in retail in the developed markets like Europe US and Japan.”

Intel has been working with diverse retailers across the world to develop tools and mechanism that enhance customer experience at the point of sale. Commenting on Intel's initiatives, Sandeep Aurora, Director of Marketing, Intel South Asia, says, “One of the mechanisms we have used effectively is called iPOS or Intelligent Point of Sale. This tool helps consumers find the right PC, on the shop floor, suitable to their needs. We also work with retailers to manage the PC category - assorting the right products, shelving it in the right manner and training the sales staff so that the consumer finds the retail experience easy, convenient and above all satisfying their need. This has helped retailers improve their turnover and profitability. We introduced a joint Intel-NIIT Retail Sales Personnel training and certification programme last year. This has received excellent response. We intend to scale it to reach more and more retail staff to help them increase their job skills and knowledge.” 

IBM has been working with clients in the retail sector to help develop customer-centric solutions that can help deliver superior shopping experience, while driving operational excellence throughout the retail organization. Emphasising on this, Indira Rani says that IBM's smarter commerce approach, for example, recognizes that the sale is just one aspect of the experience. As with traditional commerce, the customer is at the centre of all operations. Smarter commerce turns customer insight into action, enabling new business processes that help companies buy, market, sell and service their products and services.

Snapshot of Retail Formats in terms of RoI...

Though the profitability of each format of Retail and its RoI depends on its own relative merits and customer value proposition, for a brand with products suited to different needs and price segments, vendors need to be working with multiple retail formats simultaneously to maximize its brand reach and customer experience. The Exclusive Brand Stores tend to offer the optimal environment to showcase technology, while LFRs are growing rapidly and have high penetration in metros. They are now making rapid inroads in the tier-II markets. They offer a pleasant shopping environment with trained staff. “We work with them to enable the right merchandize and messaging so that their customers make the right product choices. Small format retailers are the backbone of India's retail business. They help us expand to new consumers, smaller markets and upcoming townships. The core proposition of small format retailers is convenience and customer service so in some sense each of these formats offers a different value proposition for a different consumer set,” asserts Sandeep Aurora.

Finally...

E-retailing is certainly in vogue, but the next front will be a fine amalgamation of physical and online retail where the consumers are increasingly making their pre-purchasing research online and coming into the physical retail environment with a good knowledge of products. This provides a new challenge to retailers who need to now be one step ahead of their customer, be much sharper and knowledgeable. They will need to create a stronger value proposition which goes beyond just price and availability. Retailers will have to continuously differentiate through engaging customer relations and service delivery. There will be a high growth on e-retailing as well as reference retailing through social networking sites and niche blogging sites.  

Moumita Deb Choudhury