Ways To Leverage Smart IT Solutions For Your Retail Business

Automation in the retail space increases efficiency, improves service quality and reduces costs for all parties involved. Realizing this fact, retailers are trying to offer innovative products and solutions based on automation technology.

Smart IT solutions for your retail business

Digitization of tasks

Digitization increases the efficiency of manual and tedious, time-consuming internal tasks. While most forward-thinking retailers have already implemented IT applications and solutions at scale, the advent of IoT has given rise to newer solutions that take efficiency and quality improvement to a whole new level. IoT-based solutions such as the use of components such as RFID tags, NFC, sensors and smart devices are poised to disrupt the retail space in a big way to differentiate themselves from the competition.

Automation of key processes

Automating critical processes such as inventory management, filling out employee time sheets, invoicing, entering information from various PoS terminals into the accounting platform, financial management, point-of-sale transactions, can increase efficiency and bring major cost savings.

Personalize the customer experience

The main goal of applying automation technology is to improve the customer experience. In this day and age of choice, customers who feel dissatisfied or have to put up with the difficulty of completing a transaction leave. As such, retailers strive to create high-value, personalized interactions with customers.

Integrate the digital ecosystem with real-world commerce

The most common manifestation of the integration of the digital ecosystem with brick-and-mortar stores is customer applications that assist shoppers when shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. Such apps make shopping easier by detailing product features, offering demo videos, and providing customized offers based on geolocation.

Audit and revision of internal procedures

A sure way to increase internal efficiency and reduce costs is to reduce internal processes by adopting Lean methods. A thorough audit is required to identify supply chain strengths and weaknesses and to identify and quantify waste. Creating a comprehensive lean value stream focused on minimalist practices improves transparency and facilitates control and elimination of avoidable practices.

Optimize your workforce

Automated, algorithm-based work scheduling tools calculate store workloads and optimize staffing with a high level of accuracy. Custom-made algorithms take into account factors such as store format, operating hours, backroom configuration, work regulations, ergonomic considerations and all other factors to smoothly schedule shifts. Investment as such a solution also provides great motivation for workers, reduces the turnover rate and significantly reduces human resource costs.

Embrace analytics to improve processes

The application of IoT-based sensors has taken data analysis to a new level. Retail analytics solutions now aggregate data from video cameras, beacons, Wi-Fi, POS systems and other components and subject that data to big data analysis. They could measure various elements of the buying process, such as the products that each customer viewed, tried and compared in detail. This information, available in easy-to-digest reports and charts, enables retailers to optimize their inventory and eliminate slow-moving inventory.

Conclusion

More importantly, such processes become automatic and precise, with a high degree of accuracy, thereby reducing the costly trial and error methods usually associated with the processes.