The retail industry—a sector that has weathered dramatic changes over the last decade—faces a growing list of unique challenges.
For companies that create IT solutions, the industry represents a $19 billion opportunity.
In episode 202 of B2B Tech Talk, we are joined by
Ramon Garrido, market development leader for
HP to talk about:
- Improving the customer journey using retail technology
- Pain points in the retail industry
- What the HP Engage Edge platform offers retailers
Customer priorities for improving the customer journey
The retail industry has focused recently on improving the customer journey. And when we talk about the customer journey, that encompasses a whole lot—every single touchpoint that a customer encounters on their way to purchasing a product.
Ramon highlights four priorities for retailers:
- Personalizing customer experience - Creating a buying experience that resonates positively with each customer.
- Product availability and visibility - Keeping products, especially high-demand products, available in stores and on shelves.
- Leveraging store resources and staff - Using data to improve the store experience and enable associates to enhance customer interactions.
- Refreshing POS infrastructure - Updating legacy equipment to better serve customers in an optimized multichannel or omnichannel way.
5 pain points in the retail industry
Ramon specifies 5 problem areas in the retail industry that need to be solved and that can be solved with the integration of retail technology.
#1 Workforce management
Being able to optimize labor forecasting, scheduling and staffing in a data-driven way so that you can make adjustments in real time. This would improve retail productivity and optimize operation costs (number one cost in business = employee salaries).
#2 Customer engagement
Being able to track data alerts when a customer needs help and address their concerns immediately. This would improve sales conversions and the overall customer experience.
#3 Promotion effectiveness
Capturing customer data so that retailers can understand the sales effectiveness of different product categories.
#4 Loss prevention
Being able to track assets in the store and ensure that someone pays for the product. Currently, loss prevention is a $50 billion problem in the U.S.
#5 Inventory management
Increasing the accuracy of retail inventory to mitigate the loss of sales which would improve margins by 8%.
What is the HP Engage Edge Platform?
The short answer is it’s a commercial computer.
What makes it valuable is its data ingestion software. It collects data points from different local sources across the store using sensors, analyzes the data to provide insights and creates a call to action as needed.
Using this data, retailers can improve many elements of the customer journey and achieve positive business outcomes.