Category: Blog

Top New Technology Innovations

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“I believe that every life is valuable. That we can make things better. That innovation is the key to a bright future. That we are just getting started.” – Bill Gates

It is said that every generation owes itself one glorious revolution. It seems technology is impervious to this timeline distinction – from the steam engine to the printing press, from the stapler to the smartphone, it is destined to revolutionize our day-to-day lives, generation after generation. It is making clean energy at 1/100th the cost, eradicating diseases, saving and even creating new lives a tangible possibility.

The top new technology innovations of the 21st century (so far!):

DNA technology is helping produce miraculous fixes and even modify mutations that cause life-threating diseases. It is also increasingly used in criminal investigations, nanotechnology and gene-splicing.

ETP blog dnatesting-com
(Image courtesy www.dnatesting.com)

Solar technology is often imagined as solar panels installed atop the roofs of industrial and residential buildings. But, research teams are focussing on applying solar energy in various forms like solar roadways and solar power in space.

extremetech-com
(Image courtesy www.extremetech.com)

Connectivity is perhaps the most experienced form of new technology today. It is only going to be better, faster with hyper connectivity weaved into and across daily appliances at home and offices, transport modes and entertainment.

(Image courtesy www.discovery.com)
(Image courtesy www.discovery.com)

Online classrooms are providing the most important educational foundation that everyone needs, no matter their location, social stature, physical and mental limitations.

(Image courtesy www.wired.com)
(Image courtesy www.wired.com)

3D printed bridges, self-driving automobiles, virtual reality, bionic prosthetics, artificial intelligence and robotics – the future of technology is as comprehensive as it is engaging and incessant.

Shake The Status Quo – Boost Retail Conversions

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If retail was to be summarized in numbers, the key statistic would be the sale conversion rate. While determining the financial health of the retail business, it is vital to ascertain the conversion rate out of the total incoming traffic in the store. A steady incline in conversions is usually linked with increased in-store traffic in the future. The challenge lies in mastering the sophisticated combination of attracting more foot traffic and delivering personalized attention to individual customers.

Store display – How many times have you entered a store just because it looked intriguing and just too appealing? It happens. And it can happen for your store, if you put your best out in a spectacular display. Creative brand and product imagery can help a small kiosk win over a sprawling showroom. Excite passing customers with interesting display and incentivizing signage. Keep them changing as per seasons, occasions and promotions, to counter visual fatigue. In an overcrowded marketplace, if you could manage to get the prospects into your store – half the battle is won!

Sales training – This might sound very basic and an existent part of retail business, in varying degrees. But in the customer-centric retail arena, just warm greetings and polite pointing don’t make the cut. Your in-store sales staff and customer support agents need to be groomed, trained and empowered with the right technology to consult customers with confidence. When a customer is treated with a truly personable experience, it becomes the key distinguishing factor for her to return to the store instead of using other channels to make the purchase, next time.

Customer feedback – One of the best trends followed in the present social media age is being vocal about your likes and dislikes. Customers vociferously review, critique and comment on various subjects, including their retail experiences. Online/offline surveys work to an extent but it can’t be your only medium of accumulating customer feedback. A substantial, savvy and trustworthy multi-channel presence wins favor with all kinds of customers. It induces and initiates conversations that engage customers and prospects alike. Through this, retailers derive actionable feedback which helps fulfilling customer expectations and nurtures brand loyalty.

Globalized Expansion With Localized Experience

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Retail in a global economy has unlocked multiple channels and opportunities for retailers to enter or expand operations in developing growth markets. The diversification of business demand is critical to counter economic stagnation. But, the capability to safely and successfully port your brand across continents is harnessed through streamlined core operations. Retailers need to be more strategic, as each marketplace represents unique advantages and challenges. While India’s PPP ranking is high, its foreign investment policies remain restrictive. China’s increased demand for western goods needs to be carefully routed through its extensive tax regime.

Retail brands are adapting to local culture, skill-sets and eco-systems. They balance localization with customer expectations by fine-tuning store models and personalizing online strategies. For example, Walmart in America is focused on bargains and selection; the same is true in China, but for different items. Real estate is much more expensive in China, so Walmart purchases a small plot of land and creates several levels, like a mini shopping mall, instead of a single level that is spread across what seems like acres in America. However, the quantities are kept smaller in China as most houses in China are small and do not have room to store bulk purchases. Samsung plays an active role in understanding local appetites, customs or preferences to meet customer needs – In Bulgaria, yogurt is an important part of the local diet so they developed an oven able to produce the perfect homemade yogurt in seconds.

Regional retailers are also flexing their marketing muscle to maintain growth, as global players increase footprint in their respective regions. The future will lead to increased localization efforts by foreign retailers to fortify market positions. Consequently, regional retailers would focus on strengthening existent customer connect while emulating the proven best practices of the larger retail competitors. Technology has played a vital role in enabling globalization across multiple industries including retail. From manufacturing processes established at different continents for cheaper labour and raw material costs to end consumer analytics for determining the right product and market matrix; retailers can expand their supply strategies and introduce cost-effective innovations to operations. This helps optimize business capital expenditure to support local market efficacy and boost global expansion.

Retailers – The Sleeping Giants Of e-Commerce

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– Naresh Ahuja

ETP blog retailers-the-sleeping-giant-of-ecommerce

At ETP, as we work with retailers across 20 countries and over 25,000 stores and 500 brands, we have seen tremendous depth in their skills in merchandising, brand management, sales and supply chain management, their understanding of their diverse customers and employees, their ability to manage cycles and seasons and still produce a profit, their infrastructure management, their cash management, so on and so forth.

In the last one year, we have seen these giants waking up to their potential in the eCommerce space. With all their powerful management and execution capability, they could be the game-changers of this new “omni-channel” retail world. Like all large organisations with a legacy and systems and processes in place, they may not be as nimble as the pure-play eCommerce players, however they seem to have got it now and are ramping up their organisations’ technology, culture and capability to play the eCommerce game. At the same time, the eCommerce players have grown and are struggling with the lack of the same competencies that the larger retailers have.

It is a fascinating new battle front and the next couple of years will tell all. My guess is that the winners will be the ones who leverage the core competencies of retail and deploy the technological savviness of eCommerce.

 

This article has been written by:

Naresh Ahuja ETP Naresh Ahuja, Chairman and CEO, ETP Group

Naresh as the Founder, Chairman and CEO of the ETP Group leads the company with a clear focus on bringing enduring value to customers through best practices mirrored in software applications. Spanning 25 years of focus on retail domain expertise and IP development, ETP today, has a strong customer base of market leaders in more than 20 countries across Asia Pacific, India and the Middle East, and is on its way to becoming a global leader in Retail Software Solutions.

Top 5 Questions To Ask Before Investing In Retail POS Technology

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etp-blog-4-important-benefits-of-retail-pos-software

As technology continues to thrive around the world, businesses need to reevaluate their offerings and operations. In retail, the POS is where the ‘business promise’ is realized by the customer. Today, it represents much more than a system to process purchases and can be used as a powerful tool to fulfill both customer and business expectations. So here are the key checks to be made before ringing in a new retail POS system:

Does it provide true integration with enterprise data?
Julia, a customer, approaches the POS terminal to complete her purchase. Paul, the cashier, feeds in Julia’s name or swipes her membership card to access her buying history. The system interface now displays her purchase patterns and past sale analysis. Paul makes recommendations basis the most frequent bought items, preferred modes of payment, and current offerings on her loyalty credits and identifies promotions to cross/up-sell. If a product is not available in-store, he views, ships and tracks products directly from other stores or the warehouse to Julia’s desired location. Through an integrated POS system, Paul accesses real-time enterprise CRM and inventory data, store sales reports, product performance and business analysis. It empowers him to fulfill customer expectations and thus drive demand optimally.

What about omni-channel functions?
Consumer expectations are not just getting the right product at the right price at the right place at the right time, but also the right interaction and the right service everywhere! An omni-channel point-of-sale system streamlines business operations across physical and digital retail platforms. Customers value instant connect with the brand and staying informed, updated and engaged seamlessly across channels. So, while shopping in-store or on a smart device, they are greeted with personalized communication on products, prices and promotions. Retailers also manage multiple touch-points through a centralized supply chain and intuitive system interface. The capability to delight customers across multiple channels lends to a bigger market share and favorable social quotient. The sustained engagement and accessibility also fosters loyalty and distinction from the competition.

So is it completely mobile?
Often times, even the best shopping experiences are ruined by long queues at the checkout counters. In the age of instant gratification, the sight of a long waiting line would deter walk-ins and even lead to basket abandonment. Installing more POS terminals is an impractical solution in terms of added expense, floor space utilization and viability during low rush hours. mPOS technology extends the functions and capabilities of the POS system on smart devices, as an application. It helps in-store staff to approach the customers, consult them basis their CRM profile and conclude the purchase from anywhere in the store. The invoices are electronically transmitted with enough time left to receive valuable feedback from customers. Happy customers often spread the love to other prospects and drive demand. Saving in-store floor space and using cost-effective smart devices optimizes operational costs further.

But will it support business growth?
Retail is growing, markets are expanding and opportunities are abundant. Considering the time it takes to set-up or upgrade enterprise technology software, it is essential to ensure the POS system is future-ready. It needs to be easily scalable and secure with the flexibility to adapt to different markets and industry dynamism. The ROI increases steadily with low administration costs and virtual system updates across the enterprise. The POS system processes are seamlessly automated across channels, providing centralized control. This helps deliver uniform brand experience, uncompromised customer service with complete operational visibility.

Vendor or partner?
Implementing technology is a long-term commitment which requires equal collaboration between the solution partner and the retail organization. While a software vendor might support to the point of implementation, a solution partner will share business goals towards innovation, growth and profitability. It is vital to choose a solution partner who has created a solid foundation in the industry with the experience of working with retailers of similar size and scope of operation as you. Your investments are better protected with a company which has reached the scale to support you globally but keen on continual customer satisfaction to accommodate your unique requirements. The solution partner should be able to dedicate expert teams with in-depth best practices knowledge. This helps structure the implementation, training, consecutive project phases and support in line with the business projections.

Mobile Technology Redefining Retail

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Recently, Flipkart – India’s leading e-commerce marketplace offering over 15 million products cross 70+ categories, announced it would convert into a mobile app-only format within the year. Flipkart’s mobile traffic was at 6% a year ago, but it has increased more than 10 Times since then. The move makes sense as India is the third-largest internet market in the world with more than 243 million users, trailing China and the US in that order. Boston Consulting Group expects more than 580 million people in India to use the internet by 2018, 70-80% of them accessing the web on mobile phones.

Mobile technology has brewed exponential change in retail operations. We dive deeper into the main and most successful components of the same:

Mobile Point Of Sale (mPOS) technology has removed physical limitations on a sale check-out and created more in-store floor space. mPOS technology empowers the in-store staff to use wireless, intuitive mobile and tablet applications to accept payments on the spot. For example, the ETP MobileStore MPOS application integrates in-store item record, customer data, sales person information, product barcodes and multiple payment transactions with electronic invoice capability. This enables features like queue busting, mobile CRM, easy customer/inventory lookup, price check, quick customer service, customer registrations and promotions gratification. mPOS reduces walk-outs and reverses the trend of small basket check-outs through up/cross selling, based on personalized customer profile and secure, faster modes of payments.

Beacon is a hardware technology of nominal cost and it is small enough to be installed anywhere in the store. This battery-friendly device uses Bluetooth to transmit messages or prompts to smartphones and tablets around the store location. With the requisite permissions, beacons integrate with the company’s analytics software and access the customer’s buying history. The messages can be targeted according to past sales, current customer location, average time spent in the store, and more. It seamlessly combines the data captured from both online and physical store, directing online preferences to the retail store. According to customer research, 63% of respondents can be persuaded to enter a store by a push notification sent to their smart device via beacon technology.

The mobilization of shopping with m-commerce has grown exponentially across the world due to the swift adoption of smart mobile devices. The unique selling point remains the convenience of shopping anywhere, any time with multiple payment options. Big data analytics has helped retailers fuel their mobile marketing strategies through data-driven insights. It has helped brands reach consumers who cannot access conventional retail touch-points.

Macy’s became the Retailer of the Year 2014 by embracing image recognition, beacons, mobile wallets and event-driven mobile commerce, bringing added convenience and excitement to the shopping experience in a way few other retailers can match. Mobile technology would continue to thrive, develop and stimulate retail transformations that evolve the customer experience. In the near future, models like social media retail, virtual showrooms and 3D printed customization are going to head the next stage of change.

Asian Retail – The E-Commerce Effect

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Last year eCommerce sales in Asia grew 36% to $615 billion, making it twice as big as the U.S. online retail market. The most illustrious example of this phenomenal growth would be the eCommerce giant Alibaba breaking records with the largest global IPO and raising $25 billion. eCommerce has redefined retail, independent of physical establishments and creating a profitable platform for global expansion. Increasing internet and smartphone penetration has made eCommerce and m-commerce the prime medium to reach consumers in both developing and developed markets. The exploration and expansion of e-commerce in retail has brought powerful technical, logistical, commercial, strategic, behavioral and social dynamism in the market. The popularity of eCommerce is due to many factors, the most basic being easy access to global products, more competitive prices and marketing information with the enjoyment of instant gratification while consuming digital products and services e.g. music, travel tickets, e-books, etc. When these factors are combined with the convenience of avoiding queues and shopping in the comfort of homes and offices, cash-on-delivery at doorstep through personalized service, discounts possible through direct channels, incentivized promotions, and so on, eCommerce becomes not just an off-shoot of retail but the main driver of the industry in Asia, and across the world.

Nike’s brand president Trevor Edwards recently commented on Nike’s mobile traffic exceeding desktop for the first time – “eCommerce has been a winner both from a growth and a profitability standpoint. We are going to continue to invest in digital. We believe that’s where the consumer is and is going. And that’s where our brand is and is going. So we’re going to continue to invest there. But from an economic standpoint, it’s been a very positive driver for business both at top line and bottom line.” He believes this is a signal that the company’s long-term efforts to cash in on cross-channel promotions are starting to take effect.

Following are some pivotal eCommerce trends in Asian retail:

China will exceed $1 trillion in retail eCommerce sales by 2018, accounting for more than 40% of the total worldwide. China’s eCommerce market is forecasted to be larger than those of the U.S., Britain, Japan, Germany and France combined. The future development of China’s eCommerce channel is closely linked to technology developments and also the behavior of Chinese consumers, including the way they research and order products online, and their preference for speed and convenience.

The number of internet users in India soared from approximately 20 million in 2004 to nearly 250 million in 2014. An analysis of the demographic profile of internet users further testifies that eCommerce will rise rapidly in India in the coming years. Around 75% of Indian internet users are in the age group of 15 to 34 years. This category shops more than the remaining population. With a new pro-business government, the eCommerce sector is maturing and a number of serious national and international players are entering the market.

The highest B2C eCommerce growth rate in South East Asia is seen in Indonesia. The fourth most populous country in the world, Indonesia has a relatively low penetration of internet users, evaluated below 30% in 2013. However, by 2016 the number of internet users is projected to top 100 million, with online shopper penetration also increasing. Shopping via smartphones is also on the rise, with some merchants reporting as much as one third of total online sales coming through m-commerce.

Despite its relatively small population, Singapore ranks high in eCommerce indexes due to its developed infrastructure. The highest internet penetration in the region, the world’s highest ranking in ease of conducting business and one of the top 3 best logistics infrastructures in the world with a high-performing payments system make Singapore an attractive market for online retailers.

Vietnam makes for a fertile eCommerce market and as close to 87 million aspiring consumers are taking advantage of increased broadband availability and steadily growing incomes. Its eCommerce industry was valued at $300 million in 2011, but global reports estimate that it has grown and will continue to mature at a rate of 75 percent each year until 2015.

South Korea is the third-largest retail eCommerce market in Asia-Pacific, after China and Japan, and the seventh-largest retail eCommerce market worldwide. Retail eCommerce sales in South Korea are expected to reach $36.76 billion in 2015.

Japan is a strong and mature eCommerce market, with a high proportion of urban population and significant internet penetration rate at almost 80%. 75% of the population have purchased products online, and 89% of this group have done so from a mobile device.

ETP Group – Getting It Right In Retail

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In 2014, 50,000 retail associates used ETP Retail Software Solutions to serve 180,000,000 consumers, selling USD 15,000,000,000 of merchandise. Over 300 global brands in 20 countries, across 10 time-zones, in 200+ cities, at 25,000+ stores, in 5 languages, run on ETP. More than 500 enterprise software projects were successfully implemented for leading retailers throughout Asia Pacific.

Founded in 1988, ETP Group is a leading retail software solutions company headquartered in Singapore with a presence in 20 countries across Asia Pacific and the Middle East. ETP’s value proposition is its ability to create innovative retail software solutions, to deliver domain expertise through its  best practices knowledge base and expert team of consultants adding up to 1800 man years of retail expertise in various retail verticals: Apparel, Fashion Footwear, Sports Goods, Luggage and Hand Bags, Time Pieces, Luxury Goods, Mobile Phones and Accessories, Electronics and Multimedia Communications, Furniture and Home Furnishings, Jewelry and more.

ETP’s Retail Software Solution – ETP V5 is an enterprise class, scalable and secure platform for large to mid-sized retailers. ETP V5 includes forward looking innovations in omni channel store solutions, marketing campaigns and CRM, supply chain management and warehousing, merchandise planning, assortment planning and OTB with powerful analytics solutions. With a simple and user-friendly interface and a range of mobile, social media and web apps, it is tuned to the new generation of retail employees.

ETP’s 25 years in the retail space has resulted in ETP building a powerful and solid domain expertise, demonstrable through its renowned best practices templates, which are used during the implementation of the ETP V5 solution. Companies looking for advanced technology to improve their business efficiencies and a long term, stable partner find value in ETP.

On The Horizon – Retail 2020

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“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates

Retail is changing, as an industry, as a business and even as a concept. The rapidly evolving dynamics of demographics, emerging markets and raw materials, disruptive technologies, changing lifestyles and consumer expectations are some of the key elements to bring about this change. As the renowned scholar is quoted above, these conditions cease to be a challenge if retailers actively participate in building new self-sustaining retail ecosystems that explore opportunities to convert people not sales.

“Leading retailers will be those that are the best conversationalists and are good at listening to their shoppers’ needs, along with communicating a secure and self-confident image to their consumers. They will need to re-act quickly, be where the shopper is and offer relevant messaging all in the timeframe that is important to the customer.” says Al Meyers, Director of Retail and Consumer Practice, PwC.

Citing a Jones Lang LaSalle Report – Real developments will come through new ideas and a more sophisticated execution of those ideas. Consumers want emotion and they want realness; a poor imitation will fall flatter than a bad joke. They want local and global, they want ethical, they want smooth seamlessness, they want great design. They want more authenticity and they want more lively change.

Naresh Ahuja, Chairman & CEO, ETP Group , represented similar views at the 5th Annual Retail Congress Asia Pacific 2015. During the panel session, he elaborated on how customer experience and satisfaction, in the final mile of fulfilment, is one of the most critical factors for retailers.