Author: Omprasad Devadiga

Leveraging Technology to Drive Innovation in Retail

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

Technology to drive innovation
Innovation in retail has long been driven by new technologies and the desire to see what they can do. From video rental shops to Amazon, retailers have fallen over themselves to adopt tech that gives them an edge over the competition—and a bigger piece of the pie. Today, brick-and-mortar stores face much stiffer competition than their online rivals. After all, how can you compete with the convenience of shopping from the comfort of your own home? You could argue that you can’t. But I’m here to tell you there are still plenty of ways for physical retailers to use tech to innovate and get ahead in this brave new world. Here’s a look at just some of them:

Remember the days when customers visiting a store were greeted with a salesperson following them from aisle to aisle, making product recommendations and steering them towards the cash counter? It’s not that long ago that such practices were commonplace in retail. But today’s customers are more demanding than ever before—they want to be able to shop whenever and wherever they want, without being followed by a salesperson or being pushed into buying more than they need.

As shoppers now seek a more convenient method of shopping, it is imperative for brick-and-mortar stores to reinvent themselves by offering an omni-channel experience and creating a seamless shopping experience for their customers. While the use of technology can serve as an effective tool in achieving these goals, retail companies need to take the initiative to stay relevant and useful to customers.

The importance of leveraging technology cannot be overstated when it comes to transforming information into actionable insights in order to personalize interactions with shoppers. By doing so, organizations can create a superior customer experience that sets them apart from competitors who lack these capabilities.

The first step toward delivering this enhanced shopping experience is through digital technology that, among other things, enables data gathering at multiple touch points. This gives retailers access to a goldmine of customer information that helps businesses to remain relevant and useful to their customers.

But how do you use this data? How do you know what kind of information you should be collecting? How much should be collected? And how can it all be used effectively in order to improve the overall customer experience?

Data is truly a gift from heaven for retail companies—and not just because they can use it as part of their analytics efforts; data collection also provides important insights into consumer behaviour and preferences. With this knowledge in hand, companies are able to create personalized experiences for each individual shopper based on their shopping history and preferences rather than relying simply on demographic information such as gender or age range alone (which may not always accurately represent them). It also allows retailers greater insights into where there might be demand for new products/services or locations within stores, where consumers prefer spending time during different parts of their day (e.g., morning vs afternoon shifts) and so on.

The next step involves leveraging technology tools available today to transform that information into actionable insights. These insights can be used to personalize interactions with shoppers based on their unique browsing and buying patterns and to proactively address their changing needs throughout their journey, from purchase to return.

This is the heart of a customer-centric approach that can make all the difference in your store’s ability to get things right for your customers. With it, you will:

  • Use retail CRM tools to better understand how shoppers interact with your brand, which products they prefer — or don’t — and what messages resonate most with them
  • Use data analytical tools to help you identify common pain points across customers as well as groups within your base; this could include identifying which product categories are underperforming or where there are gaps in inventory (e.g., if multiple customers have been looking at specific items online but not buying them)
  • Use retail management software solutions such as the ETP V5.5 Store software coupled with the ETP Connect – a secured web services middleware or ecommerce management solutions such as Ordazzle powered by ETP, integrated with ERP systems from Oracle, SAP, Infor, and more so that retailers gain visibility into where/when orders come in from customers vs. where/when can they be fulfilled from.
  • Leverage mobile POS (mPOS) technology for providing value-added services including providing product information and price comparisons across channels. The ETP Mobile Store mobile POS software converts your store staff into intelligent assistants that can also help in inventory management by identifying which products are selling faster than others.

Additionally, retailers should use artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve customer service. For example, a retailer could install cameras at the entrance of the stores to monitor the flow of customers during peak shopping hours. This data can then be used to determine where additional staffing may be needed or identify bottlenecks along the customer journey so that employees can address them immediately.

Data analysis can also be used by retailers who want to deliver superior customer service as well as track consumer trends across the supply chain, helping them optimize inventory management practices and streamline production schedules.

Retailers have access to a wealth of consumer data thanks in part to social media. By leveraging this information, companies will be better equipped to serve customers’ needs by providing the products and personalised promotions they want when they want them—even before they know what those desires are.

The ability for companies to quickly identify consumer trends allows them to not only plan, but also to identify cross-selling opportunities.

Conclusion

Digital transformation is no longer an option for retailers, but a business imperative. If you’re not leveraging technology to drive innovation, the process of change will still happen — your competitors and customers will be the ones who lead it.

5 Changes That Will Make A Big Difference To Your Omni-Channel Retail Business

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

Omni-Channel Retail Business

Omni-Channel retail businesses offer a multichannel approach to sales by providing a seamless customer experience across all channels. Whether the customer is shopping online via a mobile device, laptop, tablet, or a brick or mortar store. The goal is to offer a fantastic shopping experience that makes them come back for more.
This article will help you incorporate five significant changes you need to make that will make a big difference to your omnichannel retail business.

1. Invest In An Intelligent Omni-Channel Retail Software

An omni-channel retail software has the power to grow your omni-channel retail business quickly and effectively. The software aims at offering a unified and optimized customer experience by a seamless integration of all customer touchpoints. It smartly integrates back-end retail business operations with supply and demand channels, ensuring that your retail business always offers its customers the products they are looking for. Further, omni-channel retail software improves the overall customer experience and offers multiple purchase channels like mobile, web, and in-store. Customers can conveniently carry out purchases via different channels and select a convenient mode of transaction (cash, card, etc.).

2. Prioritize Your Customer’s Needs

All retailers know that the customer makes the most significant difference to their omni-channel retail business. Customers are the heart and soul of retail businesses, and prioritizing their needs is a must.

Retail businesses must focus on offering a fantastic customer experience to their customers irrespective of their purchase channel. Creating a great customer experience involves knowing your customer’s purchase behavior and purchase cycle. It also involves ensuring that the products they like are always in stock.

Retailers must focus on increasing customer loyalty via customer loyalty programs, special discounts, sales, and coupons. This makes the customer feel valued and unique. Once you tap into your customer’s purchasing needs, you tap into maximized revenue for your retail business!

The omni-channel retail software assists retailers in discovering and prioritizing their customer’s needs.

3. Use Customer Data Strategically

Customer data is valuable information. It consists of important customer information such as contact details (name, gender, age group), past purchase history, purchase channel, and more. Accessing this information and using it strategically makes a big difference to your omni-channel retail business.

How’s that? Successful omni-channel retailers strategically capture this data and turn it into action.
Intelligent retailers systematically align messages, objectives, designs, and information across platforms to ensure a unified retail working channel. This results in redesigning the shopping journey and turning it into a seamless and all-encompassing experience.

If you are confused about where to begin, your first step can be investing in robust omni-channel retail solutions such as the one offered by ETP.

The software is packed with powerful features that help retailers use their customer data strategically.

4. Maintain Brand Consistency

The worst thing an omni-channel retail business can do is offer an inconsistent and disconnected brand experience across different channels.

Retailers must remember that consistency is the key to creating a successful brand. It involves creating a solid brand image and a quality brand experience in-store via a mobile app, brand website, or social media channels; you must ensure brand consistency.

5. Enable Smart Inventory Management

If customers are the soul, then an updated inventory is the heart of your retail business. Every retailer will agree to this. Retailers must always stock their retail business with the products that customers love.

It is why retailers must invest in comprehensive and robust stock management solutions.

Intelligent inventory management solutions help retailers in inter-stock transfers, warehouse to store stock transfer, store to warehouse transfers, direct to store deliveries, etc. Retailers can perform local purchases; retailers can stock up customers’ favourite products. Inventory management solutions also show product availability in a real-time format, allowing customers and retailers to discover which products are in stock and out of stock. Any changes in the inventory instantly reflect on all touchpoints.

ETP’s omni-channel retail software perfectly integrates with ETP’s omni-channel inventory management solutions, indeed growing your omni-channel retail business.

Grow Your Omni-Channel Retail Business with ETPs Omni-Channel Retail Software

ETP’s omni-channel retail software is here to simplify and accelerate your retail businesses.

It promises to create extraordinary customer experiences by personalizing physical and digital retail channels, thereby creating an excellent value for retailers and end customers.

Is mPOS a smarter alternative to the traditional POS?

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

Is mPOS a smarter alternative to the traditional POS? | mPOS

During the past two decades, most retailers in Asia Pacific and India have already replaced the typical manual billing systems with robust and dynamic POS software solutions that support multiple payment gateways, easy checkouts, and improve the overall customer shopping experience. These traditional POS systems play a critical role for retail businesses as they offer several business-specific features like inventory management, sales reports, and integration with backend retail operations.

However, modern customers nowadays expect to make their retail purchases quickly and without any hassles. So, retailers cannot solely depend on POS software and must adopt Mobile POS solutions as well into their businesses.

Both mPOS and POS software play a crucial role in facilitating a retail businesses’ productivity and sales. Retailers looking to scale up their in-store shopping experience must rely on both these solutions for a higher profit-generating business outcome. They need to include mPOS systems into their retail operations as these prove to be a more innovative and modern alternative to POS solutions.

This article aims to help you understand why Mobile POS software or mPOS is a more intelligent alternative to POS software.

KEY FEATURES | BENEFITS | SUCCESS STORIES

of ETP Mobile POS

Take me there

The most important aspect of this mobility revolution is centered on customer personalization, portability, and easy access to a more connected, mobile internet. These factors play the most crucial role in mobile point of sale for retail operations where the retailers want to gain customer sales and satisfaction over their products, especially in the luxury and lifestyle environment.

With ETP being able to deliver a complete Mobile POS solutions program, that seamlessly has complete billing, inventory look up, and retail mobility solutions over iOs or android based smartphone devices, retailers can now easily manage their customers’ buying history, allow customers to add loyalty points, look up stock, generate invoices based on their purchase or put the bills on hold, collect payments securely, and more importantly reduce queues, thereby maintaining safe distancing between customers at the stores.

ETP’s Mobile POS solution, ETP Mobile Store makes your business transactions simpler and convenient! With intelligent features like easy deployment, endless aisle item search, product lookup, and quick and convenient billing, this mPOS system eases your daily transactions. It promotes customer satisfaction, thereby increasing your sales and profits.

3 Important Differentiators for Retail Brands to Stay Ahead of the Competition

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

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The retail markets across the globe are becoming increasingly competitive for 2 major reasons. On the one hand technology has disrupted the industry in multiple ways and on the other hand customers shopping behaviors have changed dramatically. Additionally, both these factors are influencing each other to further pose more challenges and create opportunities for retail businesses. In this intensely competitive scenario, retail brands need to differentiate themselves so that they emerge winners.

Below are 3 important factors that can help retail brands differentiate themselves:

Supply chain –

Simply put, getting the customer what they want and where they want it is a serious concerns for most retailers as the complexity of processes and operations increase with the different channels and random ways the customer goes about shopping and ordering products. New omni-channel fulfillment options such as click and collect or BOPIS, endless aisles, reserve online and pick-up in-store, and a few other combinations have emerged over the last couple of years. Moreover, same day delivery, drone delivery, collection from preferred location, anywhere returns, and so on, have also come to the fore lately. Offering these fulfillment options requires retailers to have a solid supply chain system that can reduce the chances of stock-outs, damages and other potential risks. Thus it is important for retailers to focus on the supply chain and use technology to optimize it so that there is a smooth flow of the product from manufacturing to the consumer.

Customer relationship –

As stated earlier, technology has influenced the shopper. Customers today are more informed and demanding than about a decade ago. In addition to that, they are spoilt for choice thanks to the variety in products, different channels of shopping, payment methods and accessibility to information. The customers are on the driving seats and retail brands need to be ready to fulfill the demands of the customer on their terms. This will be possible only if companies keep their customers at the focal point in the business. They will have to build deep and long lasting relationships with the customer and take appropriate efforts to understand and know their customers’ preferences. Using technology to capture and analyze customer related data and with proper customer segmentation and profiling, retailers will be able to design and create tailored offerings to the customers in terms of products and related services.

Marketing and branding –

It is a no brainer that if retailers are not able to get their marketing right, they won’t be able to click. Retail companies are pumping in huge investments and efforts into their marketing and branding strategies and execution. But with so much noise around it is difficult to get noticed. In order to stand out, retail brands must adopt for a unity in diversity approach. Firstly have uniform branding and messaging, secondly identify platforms where their customers are most likely to be and thirdly promoting the brand message across these platforms will help retailers reach the desired audience with higher chance of conversions. Taking this to the next level by designing and creating offers and promotions that are hyper personalized, localized and unique will have customers wanting for more. As customer attention spans are small, retailers need to get their act together and render the maximum impact in a short time.

Also Read: What Retailers Need To Understand About The Omni-Channel Customer Experience

From past to present to future, retail is going to be about ‘location’

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

etp-blog-retail-location

Traditionally, the retail industry has been focused on selling products that have been produced and in order to be able to sell those products, it was necessary for retail marketers to follow the principles of the AIDA model. In other words, they had to draw attention of consumers towards new products in the market and spike their interest in those products by various methods. Their very next move was to cultivate that interest into a desire for the product and then drive consumers towards taking an action, in most cases, purchasing the product and thus completing the sale for the business.

Times have changed and the traditional model of retail has undergone a massive disruption where the focus has moved from selling to understanding and then fulfilling the needs of the customer. The retail industry of today has the customer in the driver’s seat, and for retailers it is all about getting to know the customers’ desire better and create products and services that are able to satisfy those needs. Having said that, the basic principles of marketing in retail – attention, interest, desire and action, still hold good but the context of application of these principles may have changed since the modern day customers are mostly aware and attuned to what they want and generally from where they are going to purchase their products or receive the service(s) they seek.

While the retail industry has treaded this journey from a traditional being to what we call as omni-channel retail in the modern day world, there is one factor that principally, still has a formidable impact on the success of any retail business. And that is ‘location’. Let’s deep dive into this conundrum.

Again going back to the past, while the retail market was product/service oriented, the essentiality of getting these to be noticed by customers compelled retailers to look for the best location to station their offerings, generally a busy place where prospective customers usually frequented. And this importance on the physical location is still a foothold for most retail brands who are running their brick-and-mortar stores. Because, in spite of the rise of e-commerce and mobile commerce, most consumers still prefer to shop at stores and many stats have proven this fact.

Now that’s just one aspect in the context of the location where in the physical location plays an essential part in the success of the retail business. Today, retail is about omni-channel and about unified commerce, and the customer is at the epicenter of the business. The rat race to win the customer is on and the location factor plays an important role to win this race. However, here is where the other aspect in the context of the location comes handy. Taking some cues from the past, getting the products/services to where the customers are is still the right thing to do. But with the advent of the internet and mobile devices and social media, the customer has now become the location as he/she is all over. So today, it is not only about the physical presence, but also the virtual or online presence of the retail brands and moreover, the presence in the right places and channels that’s what is extremely critical. Getting the right product at the right time at the right price is necessary but also at the right place is more than half the battle won. The remaining bit is getting the right message/communication across at the right time and through the right channels or mediums to the customer will enable retailers to have maximum impact and stand out from the rest, to seal the deal with their end customers.

Also Read: Omni-Channel Success: Bridging Gap Between Customer Expectations And Omni-Channel Retail Execution

Why do you need a franchise management software?

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

etp-blog-franchise management software

To begin with, franchising is a retail business model that involves two parties – the franchiser and franchisee. The franchiser permits the franchisee to use its brand name and business model, based on certain terms, conditions and clauses involving revenue that are agreed upon. Franchising is a very popular business model especially in regions where foreign brands use franchisees to expand their presence in the market.

Since this business model involves 2 parties, complications and issues are bound to arise due to the involvement of separate entities collaborating over a business. Further, since the franchiser is the owner of the business and is allowing the usage of his brand and products, he would definitely want to have an overview and manage the franchisees. This could be tricky if not tackled the right way. Enter – franchise management software.

Let’s dive deeper into how can a franchise management software fit into the franchise model of a retail business.

A franchise management software can be perceived to be a platform that facilitates collaboration between franchisers and franchisees, as well as assists in increasing engagement between the two parties regarding various aspects of the business such as marketing, sales, branding, CRM, inventory management, reporting, operations, and so on. The software essentially establishes business rules and processes in mutual agreement between the two parties. Using these processes and business rules as a base, franchisers can look to grow their business further by hiring more franchisees. Moreover, the software with preset rules and processes allows the franchiser to monitor performance based on real-time analytics, and streamlining operations as well as exercise control over the franchisees, and also capture and store market data and trends for further analysis and bench-marking. The franchisees on the other hand can use the software to automate their business operations and also keep track of their business performance and provide necessary reports to the franchiser. Also, the franchise management software can help to connect multiple franchise sites through integrated communications.

Here are some aspects where a franchise management software can benefit your retail business:

Inventory and supply chain management:

A good franchise management software generally enables access to inventory data to help you in forecasting the inventory levels. Purchase orders can then be placed to replenish stock. The software could help the business keep track of the supply chain process from order placement to stock replenishment, allowing to foresee and mitigate risks/issues that can arise in the process.

Customer management:

Customer loyalty and retention is extremely important for every retail business and it is dependent on the quality of customer service in your franchisee outlets. A solid franchise management software aids customer relationship management by providing capabilities such as customer registration, loyalty programs, customer information look-up, inventory look-up, customer feedback, and so on that enable you to attract and retain customers in the long run.

Process management:

A good franchise management software helps in the inspection of your franchise outlets following certain industry audit standards and checklists. By having capabilities of storing historical information of your outlets, you can use the information as a benchmark for performance tracking and inspection. Moreover, tracking sales data, employee data and performance, inventory data, and other important information, you can map out any discrepancies as well as keep a tight control on the processes and operations.

Also Read: Top 5 Questions To Ask Before Investing In Retail Pos Technology

Retail and the importance of integration

Posted on by Omprasad Devadiga

etp-blog-integrationisolation

Operating an e-commerce website should not be considered as a separate and isolated business practice instead it is an extension to the retailer’s physical presence that helps drive sales and improve the bottom line. More often than not, it is the inability of retailers to understand the necessity of integrating their physical stores with their e-commerce website or marketplaces, which could cost them dearly in terms of sales, revenue, and clientele.

E-commerce websites, if implemented efficiently could help increase footfalls at the physical stores by enabling retailers to implement newer and innovative strategies such as Click and Collect, Click and Deliver among others. However, operating an e-commerce website in isolation cannibalizes their own physical stores. There’s a reason why most of the e-commerce and online market players make losses despite of clocking healthy sales. To improve the online sales, retailers often indulge in offering hefty discounts and free deliveries, without realizing that it causes the overall sales to take a hit. They should realize that to compete with marketplaces and e-commerce giants, they are not needed to have a price war with the existing players. Indulging in a price war might increase the number of visitors to the website but it also makes customers search for newer avenues where they can find the desired product at a lower price.

Retailers should rather focus on customer loyalty, inventory management, assortment planning, promotions planning and in-store shopping experience which can certainly be done by integrating the e-commerce website with the physical stores. Integrating the two helps in getting real time updates regarding customers, sales and inventory, while allowing the retailers to come up with innovative business strategies. For instance, retailers can implement click and collect that could increase the chances of cross selling and upselling along with serving the aforementioned purposes. This in turn would help retailers in improving the bottom line while being on the right path of growth that ensures sustainability and scalability.

In most cases, cannibalizing can have catastrophic repercussions on the overall performance of the business. It is better to research on the possible outcomes of having an e-commerce website along with preparing an efficient plan to integrate it with the physical stores using the right technology, such as ETP Connect. This being done, there does not exist the minutest possibility of missing out on the advantages of going omni-channel.

Also Read: Omni-Channel Technology Solutions For Your Retail Business