PERFORM

PERFORM Network of Beneficiaries and Industry Partners.

Pioneering a New Era in Digital Retail A €3.9 million EU-funded project focusing on Digital Retail, the PERFORM EU Project has led research into novel and innovative business strategies to help retailers thrive in the digital landscape. We spoke to members of the PERFORM Training Network about how this project trained the next generation of digital retail managers in line with the ethos of Digital Europe to help build an innovation-based foundation for the future of the sector.

The retail landscape is changing dramatically as new digital technologies continue to emerge, highlighting the inflexibility of the established business model.

While the shift towards online shopping is proving highly disruptive, it also brings abundant opportunities to those companies ready to harness the power of technology believes Professor Markus Helfert, Director of the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) at Maynooth University. “Effective use of technology can help European retailers to compete with the major multi-nationals.

Improving the customer experience, the connection between customers and companies, is where European retailers can really set themselves apart,” he says.

Professor Helfert is the Coordinator of the PERFORM Training Network, an initiative 56

which brings together fifteen partners from across Europe, including universities and retailers. “The aim of this project is to prepare the next generation of digital retail leaders,” says Professor Helfert.

Cultivating Future Leaders This means equipping prospective leaders with the technical skills, knowledge and experience they will need to work in the retail industry, an area in which demand is growing for highly skilled graduates. The retail market contributes a significant amount to the European economy, employing over 30 million people and accounting for around 11 percent of GDP, but traditional retail companies need to adapt to trends in digital innovation if they are to compete with the major multi-national retailers and provide an attractive alternative to

them. “We don’t want to end up in a situation where large multi-national retailers completely dominate the retail market,” says Professor Helfert. The adoption of digital strategies and technologies can ensure that retailers of all sizes can find their space in this dynamic market.

The PERFORM project itself is a European Training Network, in which 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) are investigating a wide variety of different topics relating to the future of the digital retail sector, from audit tools, to compliance monitoring, to logistics.

This wide scope reflects the highly dynamic nature of the retail sector. “Over recent years the retail sector has fundamentally changed, a process that has been accelerated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Professor Helfert. While the ESRs are based primarily at the different universities

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and companies that make up the PERFORM Consortium, they have also worked with the project’s industry partners, gaining valuable experience of real world problems within the commercial sector. “All of the ESRs have completed at least one secondment, which has involved them working directly with companies. Therefore, their research has been carried out not in an academic vacuum but rather it has been very much informed by issues on the ground,” says Professor Helfert.

A major challenge for many retailers is the creation of an omnichannel system, where all of the different touchpoints by which they interact with their customers are interconnected, including both online and offline channels.

This is an important part of improving the customer experience, a factor that can help retailers attract and retain customers. “Physical retail has been moving towards what we call experiential retail, in which the customer experience - what you experience in the store - is more important than just the act of buying the product itself,” explains Rehan Iftikhar, an ESR based at the Innovation Value Institute at Maynooth University, Ireland. The customer experience should ideally be seamless, with no need to duplicate steps in a physical store that they have already completed online for example. All interactions between the customer and the retailer should be frictionless in order to maximise customer satisfaction.

This concept centres around the use of emerging technologies to enhance the customer experience in traditional shops. This is not about directly mimicking ecommerce, but rather identifying the specific characteristics in the physical environment that the retailer can use to improve the customer experience. “For example, a customer may be looking for information – how can we provide this information in a more efficient way? How we can provide offers, or maybe product comparisons and recommendations, that match the individual preferences of the customers?” outlines Daniel Mora, an ESR based at the AWS Institute for Digitized Products and Services in Germany.

Every customer is different of course, and their preferences will affect how and where they shop, a topic that ESR Anna Hermes, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria is investigating.

“Which factors drive customer experience?

How do individual characteristics influence where a customer shops? What are the ways by which retailers can optimize a customer’s omnichannel experience?” she outlines.

There are 15 ESRs within the PERFORM network, working on different projects around the common goal of using digital innovations to advance the efficiency and productivity of

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ESR 6, Robert Zimmermann delivering a workshop for our industry partners on touchpoint identification.

all areas of the retail ecosystem. This research is already bearing fruit for the project’s partner organisations, as Marcel Verhofnik, Head of Digital at INTERSPORT Austria GmbH, attests. “Through knowledge and practical input, PERFORM has helped us with creating better customer experiences and to optimize our omnichannel efforts,” he enthuses. Evelyn Moynihan, CEO of the Kilkenny Group, Ireland, another partner organisation in the project, is similarly positive. “The Kilkenny team are thrilled with the strategic partnership in place with the Maynooth PERFORM team; it has enabled our business by providing exciting

and innovative digital services to enhance our overall customer experience,” she says. “I am confident the outcomes we are achieving with the PERFORM team will deliver long-term differentiation for our brand and business.”

This is what will ultimately help retailers attract new customers and retain existing ones, and so build for a profitable and growth-filled future. While the project is set to reach its conclusion towards the end of 2021, research into the future of digital retail is set to continue at the Innovation Value Institute, which will help guide the ongoing evolution of the sector. The retail sector is

ESR 14, Shubham Jain demonstrating the mixed reality application developed by PERFORM ESRs.

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PERFORM Project Objectives

PERFORM’s objectives are to prepare the next generation of Digital Retail Leaders and help European retailers transition to the digital era of retail. To achieve these objectives, 15 Earlystage researchers (ESRs) receive training in the areas of customer experience, digital retail technologies, business models and supply chain. By combining academic knowledge and industry expertise, the project contributes towards the understanding and shaping of omnichannel retail.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 765395.

Project Partners

The project partners can be found here: https://www.perform-network.eu/consortium/

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Prof. Markus Helfert Innovation Value Institute Maynooth University E: markus.helfert@mu.ie E: info@perform-network.eu W: https://www.perform-network.eu/ • The Innovation Value Institute (IVI) is a multidisciplinary research institute focused on digital transformation and technology adoption based in Maynooth University. Founded in 2006 in collaboration with Intel, we have a strong track record of industry collaboration, both locally and internationally. We have demonstrated excellent dissemination capability including education and training, and have developed a close working relationship with Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland and other research centres.

Professor Markus Helfert

transforming, and the PERFORM project is helping to shape that transformation. The institutions participating in PERFORM will keep working beyond the end of the project, and will continue to help retail companies to transform. The ongoing development of the new technologies which are reshaping the industry is a prime consideration in this respect. With the current pace of technology development, it is difficult even for experts in the field to keep track of new advances, and to identify how business models need to evolve.

The PERFORM project provides support to help retailers adapt to often rapid changes in the behaviour of their customers.

PERFORM project hosted the European Digital Retail Summit which was a great success with 235 registered participants, 2 excellent keynote speakers, 35 presenters and an expert panel.

This event focused on providing high quality contributors in a timeframe that suited both academics and retailers, while also using a platform that facilitated inter-participant networking and communication. The summit provided a forum for researchers and industry representatives to discuss cutting edge digital innovations for retail enterprise.

There is no shortage of high-quality retailers in Europe, however it can be difficult for SMEs to compete in today’s commercial landscape

Through knowledge and practical input, PERFORM has helped us with creating better customer experiences and to optimize our omnichannel efforts. - INTERSPORT Adapting to Retailers Current Challenges Many of these behavioural changes pre-date the Covid-19 pandemic, however lockdowns and restrictions on social mixing have accelerated the general move towards online shopping, including among some sections of the population who may previously have preferred to visit a physical shop. The ESRs on the PERFORM project conducted a significant amount of research on the impact of the pandemic, aiming to help retailers deal with the challenges they face. All of the ESRs wrote blog posts exploring solutions to key issues raised by the pandemic, and they were shared across mutliple platforms.

More than 35 research papers have also been published as a result of the project are available on the project web page. In June of this year, the

where major multi-national online retailers have fundamentally changed the way the retail sector works. By helping European retailers make the transition to the digital era, Professor Helfert hopes the project will help them to capitalise on new opportunities. “The retail sector is really changing. We aim to help European retailers to compete and grow,” he outlines. This work will continue beyond the end of the PERFORM project, with researchers at IVI leading a digital research cluster involving a range of companies to provide ongoing support and research. Professor Helfert stressed that, rooted in the knowledge base built by the PERFORM project, this group will continue to collaborate with retailers, working with them to navigate the best pathway for their business’s digital transformation.

Professor Markus Helfert is the Director of the Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth University, Professor of Digital Service Innovation at Maynooth University, and Principal Investigator at the SFI Centres Lero and Adapt. He is project coordinator of the MSCA Project PERFORM . His research focuses on Digital Transformation and Data Governance.

ESR 5, Gabriele Obermeier conducting an exploratory interview with an industry expert.

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