Keeping Up With a Pro gressing Market is Key to Success

Keeping Up With a Progressing Market is Key to Success

Sanchari Roy, the Marketing Manager for MEA at Barco, speaks to Arabian Reseller about her career journey so far

Tell us about your philosophy, when it comes to your domain of expertise.

Marketing is a domain that has always been innovative and dynamic in nature. With the changing dynamics of business across the industries my philosophy has always been ‘update your knowledge and related skills and keep practicing new ways to market your product or solution with changing market dynamics’.

Why did you choose IT to advance your career?

We are a generation that witnessed massive transformation in technology. From my childhood, I have been intrigued by how suddenly new technologies replace the old one and then new innovations can transform it to a complete different experience. During my post graduation days, I was doing an internship with a cloud based storage service provider and that is when my interest for technology led my path to advance my career in IT.

Have you witnessed any transformation in the technology industry?

Since I started working, cloud has be been that one transformation which eventually changed the business dynamics. Today from hardware to software everything can be opted as service and companies can flexibly operate on OpEx by introducing the subscription model. This has been a huge transformation over last decade.

Where, according to you, is the next technology transformation going to come from?

AI is the most promising technology transformation that we are looking forward to. With advancement of machine learning we are going to witness a new era in technology.

What is your advice to women looking to break into the field of technology?

Today, technology is dynamic and as big market as any other major industry. So I would advice anyone who is looking to advance their career in technology to self learn. Today the technology that is been taught under different technology discipline are going to be either transformed to next generation or going to be obsolete in next few years. So to keep up with such progressing market, one always needs to be updated in their understanding of new technology and changing market requirements.

Are you involved in any sort of charity work?

I am involved with few NGOs in sponsoring and sometimes volunteering towards different social causes like providing Health and Hygiene to underprivileged area and women education in my home country.

What is next for you in terms of your career in the tech industry?

Being an integral part of tech industry, I am always privileged to witness and learn the new innovations at an early stage. Barco as a technology company is always an innovator when it comes to advancing the existing technology or investing in new technology. I am glad to be part of this cutting edge solution company and looking forward to be part of Barco’s journey of ‘enabling bright outcomes’.

What do you do to unwind after a busy day at work?

Growing up as an avid reader, good content is always my companion. Now with the ample availability of different OTT platforms a good content is just one click away. So I unwind my busy day with some good content, surfing though different social media platforms or meeting my friends.

What do you think the industry should do to encourage more women to enter the tech industry?

In my experience I see women are more inclined towards tech industry and any other industries. However irrespective of any industry, equal opportunity and equal pay grade model will always encourage women to take up more challenges and different roles in any industry.

AI Will Increase Retail Competitiveness and Sustain Long-Term Growth

Written by Ranjith Kaippada, Director, Cloud Box Technologies The COVID-19 pandemic has on the manufacturing floor, prodgiven way to challenges across uct design, inventory and in-store industries and has brought some management, customer behavior businesses to a standstill. Each and relationship management, industry is taking time to adjust and others. What is evident is and return to business and operthat AI will help retailers think ate within new dynamics. The reand plan more strategically intail industry is one of the hardest stead of following a reactionary hit sectors with physical outlets, trend to meet customer deshopping centres and malls mands. closed to public or reopened with a string of constraints has taken While AI algorithms are put into its toll on revenues. use to predict fashion trends, be Retailers were not prepared have a more analytical approach to make the sudden and swift to product design and forecastchanges for various reasons ing. It can be suitably used to enand had ill-prepared IT environsure that the manufacturing unit ments. Many were not equipped is up and running with a mini- with online and e-Commerce mum downtime by predicting any platforms which would be the emerging production faults or most appropriate way to conduct abnormalities in machine behav- business during a lockdown. It ior. Inventory can be a deterrent was e-Commerce giants and local for retailers where huge amounts online platforms that upped their can be trapped in inventory cap- game and utilized the situation to ital. AI helps in controlling this their advantage. Artificial Intelli- by analytical forecasting and can gence (AI) was incorporated into definitely enable waste reduction. these online platforms. Under- it color or style, retailers can now standing behavioural patterns Another area where AI will make and playing it out accordingly. strong inroads is with supply Going forward, AI that will play chain planning. It is estimated a vital role in many areas within to transform into a more collab- retail. orative process that will involve material management and quality According to a recent survey by control, distribution and transResearchandMarkets.com, arportation. What it really means tificial intelligence in the retail is that AI is grasping available market is expected to grow at a data across these functions and CAGR of 35.9% from 2019 to enabling teams to make real time 2025 to reach $15.3 billion by decisions. For instance, when a 2025. The market by itself is dispike in demand in a particular vided into software and services. location is noticed, AI capabilities It covers a variety of retail aswill enable a more effective and pects including, supply chain and rapid distribution mechanism, as logistics, predictive maintenance well as the transportation teams

are able to plan and prepare themselves for the situation more efficiently. Moving into the consumer realm, AI will now play a very significant role in understanding consumer behavior very relevantly at this point in time in the e-commerce sphere to engage and convert users. It will have a very strong impact on how brands will interact with consumers be it personalization of the customer experience, retargeting customers, visual search capability, identifying customer leads, chatbots and virtual assistants and advanced customer relationship management. It is not surprising how AI has been put into action presently in many countries to check on people walking into public spaces and highlight body temperatures to tackle the COVID-19 pandem- ic needs with AI enabled cam- eras. While it is also being used in stores to count customers, heat mapping to detect popular areas within stores, as well as to improve security and loss preven- tion. In a nutshell AI brings along operational agility and efficiency while reducing risks through visibility, lowered costs and higher quality products for the retail industry. With changing times, what retailers now need to focus on is a system to undertake some radical restructuring and foresee the possible changes they need to implement while moving into the future.