WHAT IS IN STORE?

WHAT IS IN STORE? HERE ARE THE TOP TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR RETAIL IN THE COMING YEAR

The coronavirus crisis has had a disruptive impact on the retail sector. With consumer confidence very low and consumers staying mostly out of stores, many retailers, especially with a large physical footprint, have been forced to go out of business. The pandemic has accelerated the shift from brick-andmortar to online retailing, and the research firm IDC predicts retail technology investments will continue to reflect digital transformation efforts, as retailers reserved the capital for technology investments by reducing spending on store opening and remodels.

The Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region has shown the fastest growth for ecommerce compared with other regions around the world, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the hub of the action. According to a report from Visa Middle East, the UAE is the most advanced eCommerce market in the MENA region and sales in the UAE are projected to grow by an average of 23% annually.

Digital technologies will no doubt be more important than ever for retailers to offer a seamless experience to customers. There are many technology trends, which are already taking shape that retail CIOs will have to tackle in 2021. Are retail IT organisations prepared for a tectonic shift in business operations, address disruptions in the supply chain, and support both e-commerce and in-store fulfillment?

“Certain industries have leapfrogged their pace of digital transformation, and retail is one of them. With the growing use of emerging technologies, the retail industry has been able to modernise their service delivery model, accelerate automation in process and operation,” says Manish Ranjan, Program Manager for Software and Cloud at IDC Middle East, Turkey and Africa.

The retail industry witnessed an explosion in the e-commerce platform where various retail organisations used cloud-based solutions, AI/ML and analytics to have data-driven customer strategies. By leveraging RPA, AI, and intelligent process automation (IPA) to automate back-office and front-office, retail organisations strived to achieve operational rationalisation.

Various organisations also invested in modernising their overall supply chain during the current pandemic by revamping their distribution and delivery system through warehouse automation and strategic delivery partnerships, says Ranjan.

“In a fiercely competitive field, where e-shoppers can switch to a competitor with a single click, e-tail firms realise that their digital presence is now an integral part of their brand — they must ensure a digital experience that is slick, reliable, and engaging. As such, the applications that feed user experiences are no longer backroom tools, but vital operational components,” says David Noël, regional vice president, Southern Europe, Middle East & Africa at AppDynamics.

He adds retail IT teams need to be familiar with the baseline metrics used to measure the performance of their applications and websites. “It is important to take a fresh look, as they may have changed from last year. It is useful if you can configure your environment to auto-scale itself to cope with surges in user engagement. Also, take time to account for user behaviours. For example, casual browsers have a different impact on your resources than those searching for a specific product.”

According to Avinash Gujje, Practice Head – Infrastructure, Cloud Box

David Noël

Technologies, artificial intelligence is the future of the industry where it is going to change the way business is done. “Now more than ever, we see that Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are trending solutions which are being adopted by some of the retail giants. It helps keep pace with the way consumers are shopping and provides a platform for greater consumer engagement and elevating the shopping experience. It is also being used to drive sales and maximise ROI.

“Other areas that will give retail industry and boost will be robotics, drones and selfservice technology.”

While digitisation of the retail industry is the most ubiquitous retail trend, RedSeer Consulting sees two interesting new technology trends that are making headway. The first one is quick commerce, a hyperlocal play that has seen mass adoption, especially for essentials such as groceries and medicines. “The other one is c-commerce, which is chat-based selling that is slowly and steadily gaining traction across a myriad of sectors across retail. With more consumers shopping online, there is a need to enhance the customer experience across the value chain, which is possible through c-commerce,” says Sandeep Ganediwalla, Managing Partner, RedSeer Consulting.

How Covid-19 accelerated digital transformation in retail

Zinnov, a global management and consulting firm, has recently released the finding of

Avinash Gujje

its study titled, ‘digital engineering in retail,’ which estimates that the retail sector alone has invested in three years’ worth of digital transformation within a span of six months at the height of the pandemic.

“Digital adoption has taken a giant leap during these Covid-19 times across businesses and is playing a major role in how they operate across departments. From logistics to consumer behaviour, to in-store management, the very fabric of retail operations has changed. Without a doubt it has given a major boost to digital transformation adoption and implementation globally,” says Gujje from Cloud Box Technologies. Ranjan from IDC shares a similar opinion: “The retail industry is going through a massive transformation due to Covid-19. The pandemic caused accelerated adoption of e-commerce and evolution of omni-channel business model. This major shift is further driven by rising consumers demand for a wider range of omnichannel fulfillment capabilities for online orders such as home delivery, instore purchase, and store pickup options.”

He says various local and small retailers who never had an online presence invested in their digital platform by launching their mobile apps and online retail platforms. Various retailers have already invested in “click-and-collect” contactless omnichannel services platforms.

Ganediwalla from RedSeer says postCOVID, it was a sink or swim situation for retailers. “Either you adapt to the

Sandeep Ganediwalla

new situation by pivoting your business model or face the possibility of failure. As consumers shifted to online channels to meet their demands, so did retailers. This meant that traditionally offline retailers who may not have considered digitisation as a core strategy at the time, started to take the plunge to go online.”

Post-pandemic lessons for success in 2021

What new approaches should retailers take to beat the downturn and sustain long term growth?

“In my opinion, there are two aspects to how the retail industry will work towards surviving the downturn and creating opportunities for the future. From the business model point of view, there will be a lot of caution while reinvesting in the commercial growth and they will make very strong efforts to restructure their costs, where financial stability and streamlining their expenses will be important,” says Gujje from Cloud Box Technologies.

On the other hand, across the board, the retail sector will have to focus on understanding the effectiveness of technology and begin to invest in viable solutions that will help them achieve operational efficiency, maintain customer retention and spruce up customer service. From e-commerce and the use of advanced POS systems to machine learning and robotics, the list is large and retailers will have to rework their business solutions while moving into the future, he sums up.