Digital and Data Transformation in the Retail Sector

A few years back, McKinsey published an article titled – “A transformation in store”. It focused on how new, emerging digital technologies were finding their way into the retail store to help brick-and-mortar retailers compete against modern, powerful, well-funded e-commerce companies.

The article focused on the role of in-store data and analytics, how decision-makers in the retail industry must work towards understanding the needs of “each and every individual customer,” and how marketing campaigns must become more personalized. After all, e-commerce firms like Amazon take all of this for granted. All marketing campaigns targeted at “you” are based on what “shopped or clicked on” in the past.

Their recommendation engines are completely personalized. It is as if they were following you inside the virtual retail store, capturing your intentions and what you’re searching for with blinkers on! Can we mimic that kind of data-gathering experience in a brick-and-mortar store?

The answer is a big YES. With the right in-store technologies, it is possible to “understand” each and every customer who walks into a retail store, and then plan a series of steps including marketing campaigns, inventory planning and in-store placements based on what you’ve learnt from all this data.

According to one market research report, the global retail analytics market size is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.2% from USD 4.3 billion in 2020 to USD 11.1 billion by 2025. One of the growth drivers is the increasing need for “personalized dashboards” to enable data-driven decision-making to accelerate growth and compete against e-commerce players.

The Role of Data Analytics on e-commerce operations

Personalization of services has always been critical in the retail industry. Earlier retailers depended on their gut feel and personal interaction to understand their customers. But today, with the customer sometimes not even visiting a store, the challenge for the brick-and-mortar store has become that much more difficult. But it hasn’t made the life of the online store any easier for there is much choice on the Internet too. To ensure repeat custom, retailers have to focus on increasing customer delight to retain their loyalty and revisit the store, online or offline.

Some of the ways in which retail businesses can benefit from data and analytics include:

  • Improve Personalization: Data analytics and machine learning can help e-marketplaces analyze user behavior, the products they check and their purchases. This helps in customizing promotions such as discounts or offers on those specific products. If a purchase was not made, this can also help understand why and rectify the problem to improve sales.
  • Recommendation Engines: Based on the purchase made by the customer, the marketplaces and online stores can also recommend related products or products with higher pricing
  • Improve Product Classification: This is very critical for cross-selling and upselling. A good machine learning tool can help with improving product classification to improve customer experience on the site and make it easy to locate the product they are looking for.
  • Heat Maps: The system can track the user’s movement from the time of entry to the time of checking out with or without making a purchase. This can help analyze buyer behavior and suitably promote products or improve pricing to encourage purchase.

Digitech Labs team of retail and technology experts work closely with e-commerce customers to help them improve customer footfalls, and conversion from interest to sale and improve revenues by leveraging data and analytics to provide bespoke solutions..

Brick and Mortar Retail Stores

Data gathering is a little easier in an online store but retail outlets too can leverage video analytics to capture customizer behavior and use it to improve the shopping experience. Video analytics is emerging as a very important solution to capture customer behavior in a store and empower the store staff with the required data about the customers to improve service.

This can help retailers stand out in this cluttered space and improve their product mix, ensuring that they stock the right products at the right prices. They can push targeted communication to improve conversion rates.

INDRAi from Digitech is a CCTV-based solution that specifically provides video analytics solutions for retail stores with low conversion rates to analyze buyer behavior and preferences and improve conversion rates.

INDRAi, a CCTV-based video analytics solution for the retail industry, empowers offline stores to leverage digital technologies solutions as well as capture customer data, customizing marketing communication and increasing customer delight.

Traditionally, physical stores relied on the memory and capabilities of their shop assistants to service their customers, understand their preferences and win loyalty. In a digitized world where they compete not only with other physical stores with similar limitations but also e-commerce portals with access to Data Analytics capabilities, they can find it challenging to provide the kind of shopping experience that customers are getting used to online.

With INDRAi, retailers can now provide shoppers with the benefits of online shopping while letting them enjoy the excitement of browsing physical stores.

Key Benefits of INDRAi

Profile Your Walk-In Customer

Offer personalized customer service and greater engagement to your in-store customers with INDRAi, a CCTV-based software-solution for more targeted marketing. The software captures videos of how customers behave in their store and enables profiling them, their preferences, and category-wise engagement. This can help in creating shopping experiences that increase customer engagement and satisfaction.

Analytics for Improved Product Mix

With INDRAi, retail chains can capture details of product movement and conversion rates from traffic to engagement and sales in different outlets and stock accordingly. This can also help with creating marketing campaigns such as discounts, promotions, new product launches with customized communication even to the level of deciding the color and the font that will appeal to them.

Employee Performance Analysis

INDRAi can facilitate the assessment of the performance of the shop floor assistants, the time they spend with the customers, their productivity, their interaction and effectiveness with customers, engagement levels, the number and duration of their breaks, speed of billing and happiness to index. This can be used to provide training and improve their performance as well as satisfaction levels.

INDRAi – A Cloud-Based, Flexible Retail Analytics Solution

INDRAi is a cloud-based solution requiring a CCTV/IP camera in the store that can be connected to the cloud server through any network. A POS device receives alerts using a web-based application that is device-neutral.

The data generated can be processed and analyzed in the store on an Edge Machine or sent to the cloud through live streaming in real-time while ensuring data security and compliance with the customer’s data governance policies.

Retail Segments INDRAi is Best-Suited For

The solution is ideal for segments with high engagement but low conversion such as:

  • Apparel
  • Sportswear
  • Fashion
  • Cosmetics
  • Mobile phone and electronic retail
  • Food products
  • CPG retail
  • Durable goods