Why Retail IT VARs Need To Be Problem Solvers First, Tech Providers Second
Your merchant clients’ goals of providing enhanced customer experiences require solutions tailored to how their employees use technology and how they want to engage with their customers.
The link between you and the experience your merchant IT client provides to their customers might not be immediately apparent. Solutions that help deliver exceptional customer experiences are in demand, however, and your ability to provide them can give you an advantage over your competitors.
According to Kevin Kogler, president of Microbiz, a retail solutions ISV, for retail IT VARs to successfully provide solutions such as these, they must begin with a change in mindset from being a technology provider to being a problem solver.
Kogler provided an example of how a solution can enhance the customer experience to VARs attending the Retail IT VAR Of The Future conference with the story of how he bought his latest pair of running shoes. He went to the store with his daughter to purchase a gift card, and during the transaction, he looked at a shoe on display. The sales associate asked if he was interested, and when Kogler was unable to recall how long it had been since he bought shoes, the associate looked it up on a tablet. The associate also asked what type of runner he was and showed Kogler recommended styles on the tablet. Kogler bought a pair of shoes paying for them without having to walk to a counter — the sales associate completed the sale on the tablet.
Kogler said the interaction was a positive one, and although this type of engagement isn’t a fit for every merchant, customers will have similar experiences with early adopters of these solutions and demand is “going to trickle down to other types of businesses.”
With retailers moving throughout the last decade from a single channel to multiple channels and then integrating those channels to offer omni-channel shopping, today’s consumers can — and expect to — shop when, how, and where they want. The trend toward mobility is accelerating the evolution of the customer experience. The Boston Retail Partners (BRP) 2015 POS/Customer Engagement Benchmarking Survey reveals 63 percent of retailers are planning to use mobile devices by 2016, leveraging both store-owned and consumer-owned devices for transactions.
The BRP survey also found four out of the top five IT priorities for retailers in 2015 are related to improving customer engagement. Following the top priority of payment security (63 percent of respondents), the survey found retailers list real-time retail (44 percent), unified commerce services (44 percent), customer-facing technology in the store (34 percent), and mobile POS and services (24 percent) as next highest-ranked priorities.
Retailers plan to address the pain points reflected by those priorities by implementing solutions in the next three to five years. Solutions that deliver realtime inventory and real-time customer purchase history will require centralization of data through the consolidation of servers, operating systems, and communications in a data center or in the cloud.
Retailers, many of whom have not been able to achieve a unified service platform to date, also plan to invest during that same time frame in functionality such as inventory visibility across all channels and buy-anywhere-ship-anywhere capabilities. Although only 3 percent of retailers surveyed currently can identify customers from their mobile devices when they walk into a store, 72 percent plan to implement this over the next five years. In addition, retailers want to arm associates with the ability to make personalized recommendations, to have prior purchase visibility, and to accept mobile wallet payments.
“It’s important to sit down and listen to the retailer and hear how their employees really use technology, how they want to use technology, and how their customers are engaging with them, and then to design something that really fits their needs,” Kogler advised. He pointed out IT decisions are no longer driven by the IT department: “Customer engagement is driving technology.” He said it’s important to understand what the marketing department and business units are envisioning, rather than just the IT department. “If you really understand a customer’s needs but also what’s available in the market for that customer, you can find a really compelling solution today.”
He reminded retail IT VARs, however, not to get comfortable: “Change will continue.” In coming years, retailers increasingly will demand the ability to deliver personalized messages before, during, and after a transaction; will sell merchandise not in stock via mobile-empowered sales associates, digital “endless-aisle” kiosks, and ship-fromwarehouse capabilities; and will create a system in which the physical store and online commerce complement each other, working together to provide the right merchandise to shoppers and to facilitate orders, pickups, and returns.
Kogler also said the opportunity related to data analytics will continue to grow in retail. “Think about all the touch points with customers and all the data that’s going to be generated,” he said. “Retailers will need to parse through this data to come up with actionable insights. It’s a tremendous amount of data analytics.”
Kogler urged VARs to look ahead: “Don’t just focus on the tool set you have today but also do some research on what else is out there in the market. Cool things are being offered.”