Resilient Retail – Microsoft Industry Blogs

Welcome to 2023—a brand new 12 months filled with alternatives (and challenges) for all of us within the retail business. During the previous three years, we’ve skilled unprecedented financial, societal, and technological change, however for all that change one factor is obvious—retailers are turning to digital expertise like by no means earlier than. Why? Because digital is what’s going to make the distinction between retailers that thrive and people who get left behind. Not solely is it a option to navigate the headwinds we’re going through right this moment, however it’s additionally a option to embrace the innovation that may outline our tomorrow.  

Retailers in each class might want to weave expertise into the material of their enterprise in order that they will do extra with much less. Every retail chief I converse to is clear-eyed about this. It’s what we name “Resilient Retail.”

Understanding Resilient Retail

To higher perceive what units resilient retailers other than the competitors, we lately commissioned a examine with Futurum Research. We surveyed 1,200 retailers with revenues of greater than USD200 million throughout North America, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Malaysia, Japan, and Australia. When examined intently, survey outcomes counsel that retailers who take into account themselves “resilient” or “very resilient” use a mixture of superior applied sciences—AI, retail media promoting capabilities, dynamic pricing capabilities, shopper and operations analytics, and autonomous and automatic shops, to call a number of—in higher proportion than those that report their corporations are “not resilient at all” or solely “somewhat resilient.” What’s extra, these retailers additionally:

• Focused extra on the tip buyer expertise.
• Put the frontline employee on the coronary heart of the whole lot they did.
• Saw provide chain disruption as the highest menace to future resiliency.

Be positive to hitch Futurum Research founding companion and principal analyst Daniel Newman and I on January 19, 2023 for the Microsoft Retail Digital Forum to be taught extra concerning the examine and achieve insights into what’s driving resiliency amongst main retailers.

Keys to resiliency

Now, the case for resilience in retail is obvious. It’s why we’re so dedicated to serving to the retail business construct it via options like Microsoft Cloud for Retail. On that be aware, I’m excited to announce two new capabilities targeted on the digitization of the bodily retailer and the front-line employee expertise particularly.

1. Smart Store Analytics

There are many petabytes of information generated each hour in retail but buyer touchpoints are sometimes not linked to one another and programs and knowledge are siloed and disconnected. It signifies that most retailers are solely set as much as leverage a fraction of the information that’s out there. There’s no higher instance of this than the retail retailer. It’s why Microsoft is partnering with AiFi, the world’s most broadly deployed laptop vision-powered autonomous retailer operator, with 100 places deployed worldwide. Our imaginative and prescient is to develop into the sensible retailer answer for retailers worldwide.

With our Smart Store Analytics answer, we’re offering retailers with e-commerce stage shopper analytics for the bodily area. A sensible retailer is outlined as a brick-and-mortar retail institution that makes use of quite a lot of sensible tech to trace customers and purchasing conduct all the best way from product discovery via buy. As retailers introduce new sensible retailer codecs, new buyer alerts and insights emerge. Through these insights, they will optimize the whole lot from retailer format and product suggestions to shelf placement and stock. And in the end, ship a frictionless purchasing expertise for customers. See how Zabka is main the best way with this expertise.

“Autonomous shops allow us to function these shops extra like an e-commerce (retailer). A bodily retailer will have the ability to handle the shop in a approach that’s far more optimum for the patron, from assortment choice to customized promotions involving Zabka Nano merchandise like prepared meals, snacks, juices, and smoothies.“

—Tomasz Blicharski, EVP of the Management Board of Zabka Group, Managing Director of Zabka Future

2. Store Operations Assist

Retail at all times has been and at all times will likely be a “people business,” with lots of these employed on retail’s frontline. As everyone knows, an funding in frontline employees’ expertise is in the end investing within the buyer expertise. Empowering retailer associates with the fitting instruments, knowledge, and insights can improve conversion charges and buyer satisfaction. And as in-store purchasing continues to come back again sturdy, many retailers are making it a precedence to empower their retailer associates with the expertise wanted to finish an more and more advanced set of duties.

Store Operations Assist equips retailer associates to raised serve and interact prospects and be extra productive by offering a single pane of glass with entry to all of the operational day-to-day actions—from curbside achievement to customer support situations—within the bodily retailer. This software additionally permits retailer management to handle these operational retailer actions with dashboard-based analytics and insights.​

National Retail Federation’s BIG Show

For these of you touring to New York for the National Retail Federation BIG Show 2023, I stay up for seeing you there. And I stay up for showcasing these new Microsoft Cloud for Retail capabilities and extra! Here are my prime 5 methods to be taught extra and interact with Microsoft on the present and past:

1. On Sunday, January 15, 2023, I’ll be sharing some unimaginable examples of resilient retail in motion from retail leaders at Walgreens and Zabka on the Big Ideas stage.
2. Monday, January 16, 2023, we’ll have our Corporate Vice President, Industry, Apps, and Data Marketing, Alysa Taylor, speaking about what each retailer should know to navigate right this moment’s panorama.
3. Visit the Microsoft sales space at NRF to expertise resilient retail in real-life.
4. Join us for Retail Digital Forum on Thursday, January 19, 2023.
5. For extra details about Microsoft bulletins at NRF, make sure to learn How Microsoft Teams empowers your retail employees, the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, and the most recent on Retail Media Advertising omnichannel options.

Here’s to an unimaginable 2023 and right here’s to constructing Resilient Retail collectively!

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