Retail industry is not only extremely competitive, but also highly susceptible to being adversely impacted by macroeconomic conditions. Building business resilience and staying agile in order to quickly adapt to market changes is the best way for a retail business to survive, especially when the going gets tough.
Leveraging the latest cloud technology can go a long way in helping a retail business build the necessary resilience. Here are a few basics to follow:
1) Choosing a unified platform that interoperates with other solutions: There are many SaaS solutions in the market, and it is easy as well as a common practice today to mix and match solutions from various vendors for various needs. This, however, creates the problem of data silos and insufficient access permissions, which hampers the productivity of employees who may not have the right contextual information they need at the right time. It also prevents you from having a complete oversight of the business.
With a unified platform, for say, customer experience (CX), all your sales, marketing, and support teams will have access to the same set of data and context that provides them with a complete picture of a customer’s journey with them, in turn helping them engage better with a customer. For example, a salesperson can know if a customer has had any support issues before approaching them about new offers. The platform that you choose should also integrate seamlessly with other applications you use. For example, the updates you get from your logistics partner for delivery of items should be integrated with your CX platform, so that your customer-facing teams can also track the items, and be ready to resolve any issues that may arise. Further, integration with communication platforms such as WhatsApp can help you send tracking details to the customer.
Quicket, one of the largest ticketing platforms in South Africa, achieved growth-driving benefits like improved back-office efficiency, business process automation, and lightning-quick customer support by adopting Zoho One, a unified cloud platform. Zoho One provided significant savings in Quicket’s IT spending as well as increased staff productivity by cutting down time spent on administrative tasks. Quicket customised the Zoho apps in several ways, such as telephony system integration, to automate complex sales workflows while ensuring consistent brand messaging for potential customers. They were also able to better track their sales team’s productivity. With Zoho Analytics (business intelligence solution), they get insightful reports on the entire business—from financial forecasting to sales and monitoring customer service.
2) Leveraging low code/no code platforms for reducing the time to market: During the pandemic, there was a rise in adoption of low code and no code (LCNC) platforms. This enabled businesses to quickly implement new processes, launch new apps, and adapt to new ways to connect with their customers. Upskilling your workforce in the use of LCNC technology can further help improve productivity and efficiency of the current employees.
Adoption of a LCNC platform, with appropriate guardrails, can provide the much-needed agility to a retail business, and help them capture new market opportunities in a short period of time.
Yellow Africa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk0EHrr4WwE) is a company based out of Cape Town that aims to make solar electricity accessible to the poorest of households in countries like Malawi and Uganda. It built an ERP system called Ofeefee on Zoho Creator(https://www.zoho.com/creator/), a low code platform, in just five months. On Ofeefee, they can track every step of the product journey: procurement, inbound delivery, inventory management, outbound logistics, account management, commissions, billing, payments, payroll, rewards, and more. Yellow was able to build incentives for every action an agent or employee performed, increasing productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of their staff and sales agents. The Android app for Ofeefee was created and deployed within a day by an employee who had no previous programming experience.
3) Balancing automation and human interaction, and smartly adopting AI: While cloud technology can help automate many processes, it’s important to ensure human interactions while dealing with the customers. Building customer loyalty by providing customer delight is the key to retaining customers and building business resilience.
Developments in AI have leapfrogged over the last year, especially with the advances made in Generative AI technology. While it can help in some functions, there are security risks involved with not having a proper policy in place while implementing AI in your organisation. A smart way to go about using AI will be to use it contextually and in a way that helps make business decisions. For example, integrating AI in your CRM can, for instance, tell you the best time to contact a potential customer based on analyses of your customer interaction data.
Adoption of the right technology, which will empower employees while helping them deliver customer delight, is bound to be the core differentiator for success in the retail industry.
Contact Us
VUKA is the trusted media partner to key professionals, policy makers, suppliers and
manufacturers. We provide unparalleled opportunities for industry-wide connection.
