The Digital Avatars of the Grocery Stores!! The Story Continues Unceasing!! Getting groceries done was nothing short of a nightmare till a few years ago. Ages ago it started with the visit to the stores, ordering the stuff over the counter, waiting for the store-keeper to pack it, bill it and end it. Then came the super markets where frantic searches for the stuff needed were made, asking about something that was needed to be known and finally off to the billing counter with the booty, hoping that all the discounts that were promised on each rack got displayed onto the bill as well. The queues were a nightmare in themselves; perpetual & unending. There was a complete generation of people yo-yoing between super markets & corner stores deliberating what was more important. Get better things or save time. User experience was unheard of those days. Suddenly the supermarkets lost their charm when online ordering became easy enough from wherever & whenever. Continuing for years like this, choosing stuff, choosing the payment options and very conveniently also selecting the delivery times, doing grocery online made house-holds hassle free and this was a big switch, or so we thought. And today again the super markets draw us with promising technology. Shoppers have had enough of on-line shopping, they need to go off-line sometimes and check out the real stuff!!! In-store experiences, omnichannel experiences & all sorts of contemporary user experiences powered by Beacons application solutions, mobile apps and online tactics lure them enough!
The Transformation Continues Of course the cult Amazon Go store in Seattle, opened up late last year has to be the most millennial approach to doing grocery. Most would die to get into such a store for sure! The digital transformations of the grocery stores is all about offering engaging user experiences to all. Driven by a powerful combination of technologies and niches the metamorphosis of how the Grocery ecosystem operates is intriguing.
The Metamorphosed Grocery Ecosystem
Unforgettable user experiences & appropriate personalization rule the stores offering comprehensive & intricately designed mobile app powered solutions to the millennial age customers. The Customer Experiences In-store experiences become a mash-up of “being-there” as well as “being-online”. Visitors remain engaged with the systems with synced mobile apps and also tend to double-check other competitors from the store itself. Instore Finding the way within the store, being constantly engaged with messages, notifications & alerts, getting to know more about the products, easier check-outs and payments mark the base of a contemporary in-store experience. Instore conversations driven by beacons, in-store touch screens, phones & watches and the web interactions with suitable advertisements & popups coordinated with intelligent digital signage offer contemporary seamless interactions. Add to it the power of VR, AR and the bots, the circle is complete. Online Entirely on-line experiences too continue with a complete change in vision for deliveries of orders. Commercial drones are all set to become mainstream for groceries soon. An exciting declaration from Amazon about a brand new vision for delivering things using commercial drones says it all for the times to come. Though in preliminary stages, drones surface as the most promising way of doing things for e-commerce including grocery deliveries. Amazon Prime Air triggered the revolution which rubs off to Walmart and Google too. Amazon Groceries & Gourmet , Amazon Pantry and Google Express launch with a completely radical online-store development vision and established brick & mortar grocery stores like Walmart and Tesco go online as well.
Personalized notifications in sync with the behaviors & preferences captured through multiple channels driven by intelligent Retail Analytics shapes up seamless user experiences across channels.
The Workforce Experiences Workforce experiences across enterprises today are related to increased productivity & efficiencies. Integrating employee devices into the enterprise solutions with BYOD and protecting them with proper mobile device management policies go a long way in keeping the employees engaged to work. Improved Visibilities With the integration of Analytics into the Grocery workflow, real-time data is put on the fingertips of all making inventory management and sales & marketing flawlessly executed besides other critical components of this ecosystem. On-time KPI measurements are a very important way to improve efficiencies of the workforce. BYOD & Seamless Access for All Stakeholders Employees shift seamlessly between devices of choice in and out of the stores as BYOD becomes the new normal. Dealers & partners across the sales & supply chain gain the transparency into the ongoings helping them to be streamlined all the time avoiding communication bottlenecks. The Bottom-line Increased Efficiencies & Productivity • • • • •
Managers remain aware of issues as soon as they arise Predictive Analytics at help for avoiding tricky situations Managers are able to take important decisions on time Stakeholders remain connected to the correct information at all times Employees remain engaged and satisfied
Towards Transformed Enterprise Experiences For an enterprise running the grocery business, the approach to offering services to customers as well as experiences within the organization is of critical importance just as much as the integration of newer technologies to transform the way things are done.
Creating an Aware Enterprise All across the channels; the websites, the beacons, the apps keep capturing the patterns & trends facilitating continuous retail analytics. The actionable information thus generated helps increase visibilities of the key-people and in turn offer better services to the customers. A Connected Enterprise The digital transformation of the Grocery stores goes beyond integrating core tasks by making the system comprehensive with workflow syncs and data sharings. Systems like customer relationship management, sales force automation, supply chain management and GPS vehicle tracking systems couple tightly together. Adoption of Seamless Marketing Tactics Logical updates about customer behaviors & visits across stores, websites and actions through apps captured and analyzed logically help build customer loyalty with tightly integrated subsystems.
Core Technologies Transforming the Grocery Sector Technologies like Big Data & Retail Analytics curate data collected & generate actionable insights in sync with the beacons & sensors as well as on-line interactions powered by the wearables & smartphones for anytime-anywhere uses Add to it the robust networks & communication for seamless experiences across the channels; the technology mashup is indeed exceptional for the Grocery sector.
In a Nutshell As users across the grocery systems demand omnichannel experiences be it to shop or to work, the specialized software systems to cater to this industry keep up with the pace of the ever-changing moods of the markets and adapt technology into its fold continuously. What ensues is comprehensive systems catering to this niche keeping the way groceries are facilitated & done with trends of the times. And this is not the end. It never does end. Visit us and request A Free POC to test drive our services Sustainable solutions for startups Solution advisory services Enterprise mobile applications eCommerce applications VTS Beacons & iBeacons