Exploring the universe
Evolution and perspectives
The global pandemic has accelerated the potential closure of many companies and, of course, it has seriously impacted the retail sector. However, those who survive this difficult period that we are going through will emerge stronger tan ever.
Analyzing the situation with the perspective that time brings, COVID19 has had both negative and positive impacts. And from the latter point of view, it has considerable accelerated the digital business transformation.
According to Fujitu’s report “Digital Transformation Trends 2020-2021: Global Retail Industry” ”, most retailers plan to use social media (79.1%), digital marketing (79.1%) and smartphones apps (68.0%) to improve customer experience. And from a more typical IT Responsable perspective, network security (57.2%), web and database security (both 55.7%) and fraud prevention (55.2%) are among the top ten strategic challenges for CIOs.
However we must not forget that challenges in the retail sector are not static, quite the opposite, they are totally dynamic. We only have to see the impact that COVID19 has had in the past year to realise that client behaviour is not the only thing that influence buying data. Customer preferences and expectations are now complemented with other elements that shape the context in which retail companies find themselves.
We are talking about a truly innovative sector in continuous transformation, in which there is an endless exploration of a universe where we can find new business models.
The client is omnichannel and demands personalised experiences.
The client comands and they want to freely decide what is convenient for them. From the purchase in store, to the BOPIS model (Buy Online and Pick up In Store) o BOPAC (Buy Online, Pick up At Curbside) through contactless purchase options, self check-out or home delivery. And each one of them entiles various problems at the logistics level. This represents a challenge for many of today’s retailers whose management systems are not prepared to face it. Retailers need to be able to show the customer the actual product available at the time the customer wants to check it out and through all posible channels. Although stores used to be the main point of the customer experience, they must evolve to respond to changes in new buying patterns.
This paradigm blurs the line that separates the physical store from the online one, forming a common universe in which we, at Axazure, have a lot to contribute.
Integrate people, systems and data
to be more profitable.
It is precisely the integration of people, systems, processes and data one of the main challenges for retailers to facilitate the administration of:
The stars of the Galaxy. Technology solves many needs both traditional and new ones.
Given this demanding and changing scenario, technology is precisely the lever and the enabler that we must count on to satisfy the needs of companies in the retail sector.
However, employees continue to represent the most valuable asset when defining customer experience. That is why they must be given the necessary management tools so they feel supported and capable of giving their best.
What is intelligent retail?
Facing all customers challenges, consumers preferences and the need of employee satisfaction it is a must to enable intelligent retail models..
Supported by Microsoft technologies, at Axazure we offer end-to-end solutions that enable intelligent retail, restructuring our strategy in four different areas that are alinged with the expectation of the retail sector:
Getting to know the customers, is key for reatil companies to create satisfactory digital experiences in which there is no short of friction. In such a way that the buyer journey will enable us to unlock new opportunities with data and predictive artificial intelligence.
Training employees, allowing secure digital collaboration throughout the company, reducing time, travel and costs. Enabling not only the collaboration of store employees (which represents 80% of the workforce) with the offices, but also with customers.
Managing an intelligent supply chain, obtaining visibility of the entire supply chain end to end, using technological solutions already available.
Reimagining retail, it is the next level for the most cutting-edge companies. Creating innovative customer experiences, enabling new lines of business, optimizing operations and automating processes..
The universe in your hand.
Integrated solutions for retail
It is absolutely fundamental to take advantage of the changing capacity of technology to continue helping the retail sector to face both, current and future challenges.
At Axazure we are capable of providing businesses with fully customized solutions as well as the ability to measure and quantify results in all their phases when we implement national or international projects.
Dynamics 365 Commerce.It offers customers the opportunity to buy when, how and where they want and from the device they want. Offering them a fluid and coherent interactive experience on all physical and digital channels. Complete management of the digital store capable of optimizing operations and building customer loyaltys.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. It provides an integrated view of customers, connecting all their data with ease – transactional, observation and behavioral data – through the different channels and in real time..
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. Protects online revenue by reducing fraud, increasing acceptance rates, and improving the overall customer experience through an AI-based cloud solution that learns from patterns and practices.
Power Platform. It allows you to quickly build custom applications adding both data from management systems and customer insights, using a powerful codeless or “Low Code” approach.
All of them are strongly supported by the pay-per-use and Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud model, inheriting the security, robustness, service integration and scalability of the Microsoft Azure public cloud.
Particularly, in terms of integration, Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform have managed to integrate natively under a single manufacturer (Microsoft) a stellar alignment to cover any business process.
Finally the various Dynamics 365 tools and modules share a common data model (Common Data Service), now known as Microsoft Dataverse.
The most revolutionary thing about Dataverse is that it is a SaaS data service that is easy to use, easy to manage, compliant, secure, scalable and globally available.
It allows you to integrate data from multiple sources in a single warehouse so it can be used in Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Power Virtual Agents (all of them part of the Power Platform) along with the data that is already available in Dynamics 365 applications. In this way, companies can seamlessly navigate through a wide universe of data, including relational, non-relational, files, images, searches, and data lakes.
From Axazure we offer our expertise to take advantage of all this information, making it available for our clients as a extraordinary business asset and together create with each customer a united and firmly committed crew to the success of one mission: a satisfactory implementation of business solution that helps and support retail companies to modernise management, employee training, customer attraction, optimizing operations, reducing costs, developing new business opportunities and accelerating the digital transformation of your company.
About the Author: Equipo Axazure
