Smart Retail Webinar: Embrace To Survive The Digital Storm

MRCA Event

Smart Retail Webinar: Embrace To Survive The Digital Storm

Organised by TM ONE in collaboration with Huawei and MRCA, the webinar addressed the dynamics of the digital economy and adapting to a new retail attitude as well as the role of cloud-based solutions transforming the retail sector.

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icking off the webinar, Joshua Lim of MRCA said that the pandemic has pushed the retail sector from evolution to revolution, transforming the dynamics of the retail sector. He added that currently online purchases have increased to 72 percent compared to a decrease of 44 percent of shopping at physical stores in Malaysia.

The webinar features topics on smart shops, customer analytics, omnichannel shopping experiences, enterprise-wide inventory visibility and fulfilment agility as well as building effective customer loyalty.

THE NEXT FRONTIER BY STAN SINGH, SECRETARYGENERAL OF MRCA

Stan shared about the progress of the digital age amidst the pandemic storm and the storm of digitalisation. He adds that the dilemma with retailers currently is where to start the digitalisation journey. Stan explained that despite the size of the business, the retail cycle never changes for all businesses – it comprises sales, analysis, planning, buying, receiving, warehousing, distribution and in-store.

Stan highlights key internal challenges businesses face today include lack of overall business visibility, from end-toend, misaligned business and IT processes, the movement of inventory, unknown shrinkages or loss of stocks, fraud detection, systems reliability, and lack in vendor’s service and industry. Other key concerns include data management, security and controls, data collection, people management, decision-making, and launching effective strategies.

Key external challenges faced by retailers include the increasing complexity of business, shifting demographics, household spending and downsizing, changes in social and lifestyle behaviour, and more educated customers. Other key areas of concern include new channel formats, trends and lifestyle changes, targeting selected customers, borderless retail landscape, manpower management and competition, brand building and regulatory compliance.

He reminds retailers that digitalisation is not for the future, but is happening now. Stan explains that currently the world, especially the retail industry is experiencing four types of revolution, namely a digital revolution, knowledge revolution, social revolution and information revolution. With internet capabilities available to the masses, information is available to the general public.

Stan says that there are 10 technologies impacting the retail industry namely artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition, cyber security, augmented/ mixed reality, big data analytics, robotics and automation, voice and video technology, blockchain, internet of things, and Trust architecture. He encourages retailers to embrace the disruption and do it the new way. Stan reminds retailers that customers have unlimited choices today, and knowing customers’ buying habits is a key success factor in the retail industry. He also points out retailers’ need to embrace omnichannel retailing to provide customers with easy access to purchase products and services.

In foraying into e-commerce, Stan advises retailers to understand the business terrain, have an idea of

the land mass, consider connectivity infrastructure as well as cost of delivery and cost retention, among others. He adds that five retail trends to consider in the coming years include brand experience, new shopping technologies, chatbots, as well as leveraging on cognitive computing and augmented reality.

Stan shares that digitalisation has rocked the foundation of every industry, rewriting the rules of engagement, removing many barriers to entry, widening competition, and overturning business models. He adds that this disruption, which exists at the intersection of widespread sociological, technological and economic change, have been swift and at times ruthless.

“The future of business of retail will not be about having a large variety of products, as it has been in the past; rather, it will involve winning over consumers with thoughtful curation of products and experiences and innovations through the eyes of the consumer,” he highlights.

SMART FASHION WORTH BUYING BY DATIN PATRICIA PEE, CHIEF STRATEGIST, AFAB GROUP OF COMPANIES

Datin Patricia says that the pandemic has accelerated the digital revolution. She adds that with the retail industry facing challenges to stay in business, the use of technology has helped businesses and consumers to stay afloat and stay in touch.

“With the ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO), the easiest way was to go into e-commerce. But those companies who have gone down the digital road have realised that whatever they envisioned did not come to fruition as expected,” she highlights.

That is because consumers are now more sophisticated and business has now gone beyond just e-commerce. “You have to go beyond e-commerce to engage with customers. The reality is that retail digitalisation, because of the sophistication of consumer behaviour, is going to be all about content and engagement,” she adds.

She shares that over the last 3 years, AFAB has been developing an innovative application, coupled with global strategies and strong partnerships and alliances with strategic organisations, to ensure that AFAB’s application is able to scale globally. Known as REKA, the application is actually a digital fashion channel with the tagline “Smart Fashion Worth Buying”. The technology in REKA includes an artificial intelligence-driven (AI) virtual tailor which enables consumers to take their own measurements and get their clothes tailored by designers of their choice. “REKA goes beyond e-commerce and has a complete network solution,” explains Datin Patricia.

This technology is meant to reduce waste in the fashion industry. “When people pre-order, fashion labels do not have to mass produce, and there will not be any unsold inventory, and this helps eliminate textile waste,” she adds.

“We empower designers to do their business more efficiently, and we enable customers to have their clothes individualised and customised,” says Datin Patricia.

She reminds retailers that collecting data is useless unless they know how to make sense of it and use it to make business-sense.

She cautions retailers that when engaging customers on a daily basis, it cannot just be all about sales. Therefore, AFAB’s strategy is to provide consumers with the latest news and developments in the fashion industry within the mobile application.

REKA is now a trusted

MRCA Event digital platform partner of the Commonwealth Fashion Council and the Council of ASEAN Fashion Designers. Through these partnerships, REKA has access to sellers and buyers in 62 countries across ASEAN and the Commonwealth.

PANEL SESSION: ADAPTING A NEW RETAIL ATTITUDE AND HOW CLOUD-BASED SOLUTIONS ARE TRANSFORMING THE RETAIL SECTOR

The session featured Maznan Deraman, Head of Innovative Solutions & Cyber Security Services, TM One, and Eng Chew Han, Business Development Director at Huawei Cloud & AI APAC.

MAZNAN DERAMAN

In sharing about TM One’s Smart Retail Solutions, Maznan started by touching on the traditional, modern and next generation retail. The traditional retail was manual, while the modern retail comprises some form of automation. However, in the next generation of retail, there is hybrid integration. He added that the next generation of retail will be internet-based and omnichannel as well as AI-driven on an integrated platform with cloud-based solutions.

He pointed out that consumers are increasingly embracing digital retail, with a total of 50 percent of Asian population or 16.5 million online shoppers. Brick and mortar stores sales are affected with only 8% growth year-on-year. In charting the digital journey of retailers with TM One’s solutions, Maznan explained that the new generation of consumers would use multiple shopping mediums. He added that having a single integrated platform will enable superior customer experience and allow retailers to offer the latest and on-demand products to their customers. He points out that integrated solutions hosted on the Cloud is able to help retailers to access comprehensive information of their customers, inventory levels, and operational transactions based on customers’ demands.

Maznan shares that in order to ensure a successful digital retail plan, retailers must know their customers, and catch the attention of customers with superior experiences. He adds that the key elements in transforming the brick and mortar retail business into e-commerce centric digital retail includes traffic, cost, users, and technology enablement.

On how Cloud can help transform retail into digital retail, Maznan explains that retailers will be able to better manage end-to-end retail operations more efficiently, while improving customer experience driven by data obtained online and offline. He highlights that TM One Smart Retail Platform Ecosystem empowers customers to do targeted marketing activities based on data obtained throughout their user journey. All these data-driven solutions are Cloud-ready and can be easily scaled up and integrated with third-party retail ecosystems.

He advises that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can also be used in the retail industry to improve processing time and reduce human involvement in labour intensive processes, such as invoicing. With RPA, there is a potential to reduce processing time from 5 minutes to 30 seconds per invoice.

ENG CHEW HAN

Eng explained how the retail industry has evolved since 1850 to the current landscape. He elaborated that from Huawei’s experience in China’s retail industry, it has entered into the second half of the third sweeping wave of development, which comprises an integration of online and offline retail formats.

To leverage on AI and extract information that is useful, Eng explained that Huawei helps e-commerce enterprises to build an accurate user model for individualised recommendation and achieve precision marketing based on in-depth mining and analysis of data such as massive user access and transactions. Key services offered by Huawei include MapReduce Service (MRS), Machine Learning Service (MLS), Deep Learning Service (DLS), Data Ingestion Service (DIS), and Cloud Data Migration (CDM).

“The solutions we have today are trackable as long as it is placed in a proper manner,” says Eng.

He reminds retailers that when everything is online, consumers are also able to share their experiences with other consumers.