The Future of Retail Technology with Martin Shave – Microsoft Business Applications Industry Lead
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The future of retail technology With Martin Shave – Microsoft Business Applications Industry Lead Listen to Episode How we buy things is changing. These days, you can book a cab using This pace of change affects every retailer. Even the specialists. an app, no need to make a call or talk to someone if you don’t feel Whether selling cars, clothes or washing machines. And being able like it. For a retail customer, the experience of purchasing goods has to provide a connected experience solely through an e-commerce changed because of such apps. There was already a significant shift site is a challenge. If you want to buy a new car, you may do initial to buying online, further accelerated by many shops not being open research online, but you still want to sit in the car, get a feel for it, look during the pandemic. But we are seeing the pace of change, and at the trim, play around with the seat. New technology can help with innovation, increase. this experience. Mixed reality, for example, introduces an element of interactivity. You can see a customisable 3D image of what you want to buy through an app on your phone or desktop, even down to the trim of your choice. This elevates e-commerce into something more valuable to your customer. 2 / 6 Will consumers always need an element of physical retail experience? In some cases you do want to touch, taste, or even smell (that ‘new car Beacon and proximity-based technology, and opting into apps, helps smell’) the products you are buying, so the future of commerce isn’t retailers capture customer information. Details of shopping habits add solely an online one. to this to create a unified customer profile. But capturing customer information is one thing, actually doing something with it is another. For retailers, one of the benefits of transactions happening online is And remains a challenge for many. that they collect more data about a customer. They can use a custo- mer’s digital footprint to know more about them, enabling them to The easy bit is how you capture data about an individual’s online offer a more personalised experience. shopping habits – what they’ve bought, what they’ve browsed and what they’ve saved as favourites. New developments in technology aim to offer retailers this same insight into customers in-store. This is going to be important as people The next step is taking this in-store. An app on someone’s phone might start going back to the shops. be capturing proximity data, and know how long a customer has been standing by a particular item in the shop. This information is gold dust to retailers. 3 / 6 Capturing and converting the buying moment Consumers’ shopping habits often take them both online and in-store. They look at a product in person, let’s say a washing machine, whilst shopping around on their phones, checking out different models or looking for a different price point from an online supplier. Retailers need to combat this. To stop the customer walking out of the shop and buying that product somewhere else. In-the-moment marketing helps here. In-the-moment marketing simply means that at the point of engagement, retailers can target customers and offer something personal to them. For example, the person standing in front of the washing machine whilst checking out models and prices from other retailers on their phone. Proximity data can trigger other actions by analysing the data you hold on that customer. Data that allows you to predict buying behaviour and trigger personalised offers whilst they’re standing there – and before they move off to buy the product elsewhere. 4 / 6 The tools Microsoft have to facilitate in-the-moment marketing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce helps retailers connect the buying A key tool, recently announced at the Microsoft Ignite Conference, is experience. It provides a unified view used to upsell and cross-sell Customer Journey Orchestration. This technology allows you to make items based on historical preference. more intelligent decisions around how to interact with a customer at a particular moment. It uses Dynamics 365 to make these decisions The customer data platform - Microsoft Customer Insights - takes within seconds before communicating with a customer in real time. all the data about a customer to create the single customer view, This makes for effective in-the-moment marketing. enabling retailers to predicts behaviour and communicate more personally with each customer. Retailers can improve the buying experience by considering customer engagement in-store and online together – as a unified strategy. Half Microsoft also offer tools for marketing, multi-channel retailing, push the battle is to capture data in the first place – the other half is in notifications, POS (point-of-sale) devices such as POS Clienteling, and using it. With the latest technology, you can create a unified customer other features. profile and target people with personal and consistent offers, anywhere they buy. 5 / 6 Contact HSO Contact Michael Lonnon [email protected] 07849087668 1st Floor, Enterprise Point, Altrincham Road, Sharston, Manchester. M22 9AF | T +44 (0)161 300 6060 | [email protected] HSO is a leading global technology and professional services company, delivering successful business transformations, using Microsoft cloud business applications, data and analytics, that improve results of our customers. As a Microsoft Solution Integrator, HSO innovates, designs, implements, integrates, optimises and manages business processes and applications based on Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure. With over 1000 professionals throughout Europe, North America and Asia, HSO combines innovative technology with extensive industry expertise in retail, distribution, manufacturing and (field) services and unique global delivery capabilities to help customers achieve and maintain competitive advantage (anywhere) in today’s digital and global world. HSO has been part of Microsoft’s Inner Circle since 2007, the top 1% of best performing Microsoft partners worldwide. Visit www.hso.com for more information .