| |September 20198IN MY OPINIONSMART RETAILCONVERTING SHOP VISITORS TO CUSTOMERSBy Dr. Dinesh Chandrasekar, VP, Chief Solutions & Innovation Head, PacteraIEstablishment in 1995, Pactera delivers state-of-the-art Business / IT consulting, solutions, and outsourcing services to a wide range of Fortune 500 clients spanning multiple industries including the Financial Services, Technology, Telecommunications, Travel and Transportation, Energy, Life Sciences, Manufacturing and Retail & Distribution sectors.n the past few years the skyrocketing growth of e-commerce has been hav-ing a direct impact on the operations of Retail. The shift of the shopping expe-rience, mainly grocery shopping, to digital implies that brick-and-mortar stores will con-tinue to experience mounting pressure.This is where smart retail steps in. Smart retail is a revolution in re-tail that has been enabled by a smart device, namely the smartphone. It en-compasses smart technologies that provide consum-ers with a better, faster and smarter shopping experience. Features of Smart RetailSmart Retail helps retailers in tracking the customer across the various stages from discovery, interest and study to comparison and ordering, and in im-proving the overall customer experi-ence. Some of the salient features of Smart Retail include:· Digitization: Digitization helps retailers in improving their operations by solving challenges such as lack of visibility into inventory in a multi-lay-ered distribution network.· Internet of Things (IoT): IoT enables retailers to keep track of their inventories, custom-ers, assets and em-ployees thereby im-proving the supply chain efficiency and in-store experience.· Immersive Experiences: Smart Retail offers retailers the option of manag-ing augmented real-ity (AR) and virtual reality (VR) solutions for experiential marketing and upgrading their in-store and online experiences.· New Supply Chain: Smart Re-tail helps in overcoming the chal-lenges in retail supply chain manage-ment by monitoring the movement of products across the supply chain with greater accuracy.Key Components of the Smart Retail Ecosystem Smart Retail addresses the need of consumers for faster product delivery by integrating the physical and virtual retail worlds. This creates an end-to-end data-linked ecosystem from the product manufacturers to the interme-diaries to the final consumers. Some of the key components of the smart retail ecosystem are as follows.· Data integration: This includes using the combined data gathered to improve the efficiency of the decision making. · Social media: Consum-ers place a high importance on brand recommendations and so-cial media is an ideal platform for product recommendations.· Predictive analytics: Pre-dictive analytics is helpful in using the pooled data and creat-ing a personalized experience for each consumer along with sugges-tive selling based on past preferences and purchases.Dr. Dinesh Chandrasekar
< Page 7 | Page 9 >