On April 4, Mi9 Retail sponsored and attended Unified Retailing 2019, held in New York City. The conference, hosted by Columbus Consulting International, brought together retail’s brightest minds to connect and learn how to profitably balance unified commerce with the customer experience. The topics attendees were most excited about included:
Advanced Analytics
Before investing in a unified commerce platform, retailers should ensure that the retail solutions they want to deploy were developed with advanced analytics at the core. Dismantling data silos has become the key to running a more efficient and profitable business.
Customer Centricity
At the show, discussions revolved around rapid technological change, rising customer expectations and increasing competition. Tech-savvy consumers no longer interact with brands in a linear manner but instead tend to use multiple channels and contact points. Omni-channel is the new normal, making it critical for retailers to invest in tools that enable them to create the channel-less experience their consumers demand.
What’s more, Amazon has become the standard for customer personalization and the key to success is to get all customer data into a single database to conduct big data analysis. Getting a deeper understanding of customers and their shopping habits is essential to both meet and exceed their expectations. Retailers should also consider embracing the 4 Es of retail (“Emotion”, “Engagement”, ‘Expertise”, “Exclusivity”) to offer the stellar customer experience today’s shoppers expect.
Supply Chain Transformations
Retailers should not underestimate the importance of optimizing their end-to-end supply chain. With so many customers now embracing new fulfillment options, such as Buy Online Pick-Up in Store (BOPIS) and Buy in Store, Ship to Home (BISSTH), today’s supply chains have become increasingly complex. To efficiently predict and fulfill customer demand, retailers must utilize modern demand management solutions and have a seamless supply chain management process in place used consistently across the organization.
