Customer expectations have changed by many shades with the adoption of online retail. This
has also made necessary revisions to the way the supply chain operates. The real-time information and in-time delivery have blurred the lines of a customer’s loyalty to a single brand. For a single retailer, this might be a set of challenges to deal with. But for the opportunistic competitors, the digital economy provides innovative business models that are continually emerging and capturing market share.
Strategic priorities of a digital economy
In the era of digital economy, strategic priorities have changed for the retailers. Today, their priorities revolve around customer experience, service to a single segment, emergence of digital supply chains, smart stores, and monetization of new customer offers. The digital economy no longer accommodates process errors and poor customer experience.
With inclusive dynamism demanded by the retail environment, retailers are metamorphosing
into Intelligent Enterprises. Through this transformation, retailers hope to become more customer-centric with personalized experiences, while also extracting value across the digital supply chain.
Why intelligent enterprises
Technological Impact
The consumer goods and retail industry are being deeply affected by the technological impact along the value chain. These include the way consumer good manufacturers work with retailers, present their offerings to consumers, and execute in the various channels of operation. The retail industry has to keep up with the customer expectations, both by adopting new technology to deliver a better customer experience, and to establish a voice among consumer technologies.
Beyond Automation
Intelligence is not limited to automation. It includes integration of the enterprise technology with other core-department tools, external vendor tools, and consumer technologies. It involves use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to extract data and provide insights as well as predictive trends that would empower each employee in-line. Employees exposed to such intelligence begin with the front-line executives at the PoS counters, billing section, and those in sales, and go right up to the C-suite.
Better Customer Experience
Retailers are constantly exploring ways to personalize customer experience for each individual. A classic example to evaluate such efforts is one by Adidas. With its digital-first strategy, Adidas rolled-out a “speed factory” wherein machine learning is used to enable delivery of custom sneakers in just 24 hours. This helped provide a superior, personalized customer experience at a scalable level, which increased productivity and engagement with employees, partners and consumers. It also used SAP to generate smart insights from scanners and IoT data, creating personalized sporting goods. Further, machine learning and predictive analytics help optimize and run a sustainable business.
Operational Excellence
Operational excellence is dependant on more than one variable. With an enterprise, some critical determinants lose sight in the maze of prioritization. A centralized database that can democratize the power of analytics is what makes an Intelligent Enterprise inseparable with operations. SAP Analytics CLoud Smart Predict does this for retailers.
Why SAP
SAP has pioneered in supporting retailers to build an intelligent enterprise. It connects intelligent technologies to integrated business applications and customer data to create intelligent insights from every customer touchpoint and optimize their business.
Intelligent Enterprises enable next generation business processes and help retailers uncover unspoken customer needs, new value-adding buying experiences – personal and in the moment – and drive new levels of efficiency across the retail value chain to compete effectively.
Your action plan
As imperative as being an intelligent enterprise is for retailers, it’s also important to remember that being an intelligent enterprise isn’t simply implementation of latest technologies. The technological implementation should be based on direct needs and challenges of the retailer. Also, the current level of digital maturity should be assessed before the implementation.
Savantis, an SAP Gold Partner, has created immediate and long-lasting business value for different retailers in the US. We work closely with organizations to understand the key challenges they are facing so that we come up with an implementation plan that addresses their needs directly and enables them to transform into an intelligent enterprise.
Our domain expertise and years of experience has enabled us to help Sports Basement become the first SAP retail customer to go for SAP S/4HANA conversion. They can now leverage the speed and flexibility enabled by the platform. Read more about how they embarked on this digital transformation journey in this case study.
Please feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions.
