Disruptions in Retail: Things Every Retailer Must Know!

 

The past decade has witnessed a tremendous change in the way consumers shop for products. From heading to a brick-and-mortar store, and waiting in long check-out queues, to getting the products delivered to their doorstep, or placing the order online and getting it from a pick-up location, the shoppers have transformed in the most remarkable way.

The booming e-commerce industry has become a threat to retailers. Consumers crave for rich, seamless, effortless, and personalized shopping experiences. To provide this, retailers must focus on positioning themselves by giving the customers “what they need” with minimal obstacles and human interaction.

 

So, What’s Changing in the Retail Sector?

 

Digital transformation in retail has transformed brick-and-mortar stores into intelligent shopping ecosystems. Here are the major advancements currently happening in the retail sector:

 

AI-powered Assistants

 

AI-powered retail assistants help retailers leverage data more effectively and give the customers personalized advice based on the data. This saves a lot of time for the customers and makes their decision-making easy.

In-store Experiences

 

Customers find it more convenient to shop online. Thus, to attract them into retail stores, retailers create entertaining and interactive in-store experiences. They make use of AR, VR and AI to build customer experience strategies and deliver an augmented intelligent shopping experience.

Just Walk Out Shopping

 

It is an era of just walk out (JWO) shopping, where shoppers pick up whatever they want to buy from a retail store, and leave without having to wait for the cashier to bill their purchase. They have the app downloaded in their phone, which they scan at the store upon entering. The items they add in their cart get directly charged from their account.

Cloud in Retail

 

Retailers use cloud, AI and IoT to integrate their online and offline interactions. They gain insights about customer preferences, intentions and buying behaviour, to deliver better physical shopping experiences.

Hyper-personalization

 

Providing relevant, personalized experiences to the customers is the key to have recurring customers. Retailers add value to the customer experience, by using intelligent personalization in their customer experience strategy. They use technology to impact customer journeys and improve customer relations.

What Are the Challenges of Implementing Change?

 

The major obstacles that the retailers face while adapting to the current technology-driven culture are as follows:

·         Lack of understanding of the latest competent technologies

·         Resistance to implementing change

·         Lack of technology investment

·         Insufficient skill sets to gather and manage big data

·         Struggle to implement new turnkey technology solutions

·         The dearth in clarity of their technology status

·         What Retailers Must Do to Keep Up with the Disruption?

 

Digital transformation and the changing technology trends will be leading the retail industry in the years to come. Retailers must embrace the cultural shift and changing perspectives, to deliver exactly what the customers are looking for.

Start out small by implementing concepts such as data-driven personalization, inventory strategies, self-checkout systems, analytics monitoring, etc. Implementing the right technology can help retailers to improve the efficiency of operations and deliver better customer experiences.

Need help in starting your retail digital transformation journey? Gateway Digital is a reliable digital transformation partner, offering real-time digital retail solutions to bridge the gap between retailers and customers. To know more, visit www.thegatewaydigital.com.

Mastering Enterprise Digital Transformation: Building Blocks of a Successful Strategy

 The Millennials and Generation Z of this hyper-connected economy value transparency and honesty more than anything. They look for real-time information at the click of a button and crave to have a direct relationship with brands.

To cope with this, businesses must focus on enhancing customer experiences by engaging with them in new ways. While some businesses handle this smoothly, many face pressures to keep up with the changing trends and deliver more value to their customers.

When it comes to adopting digital transformation, most enterprises and their CxOs do not know where to start or what to do. This blog is a guide for all such CxOs and decision-makers to implement digital transformation solutions to their business.

Building Blocks of Successful Enterprise DigitalTransformation

Core Mission: Digital transformation is about defining and implementing new goals and visions to transform the organization as a whole. List out the challenges you face and define your core mission.

Willingness to Bring Change: Digital transformation is a serious change management process and the people in the organization must be ready to face the change and take measures to successfully render it. It will affect all areas of your business and you must be ready to withstand the challenges and pain that follows.

Transparency in the Organization: Understand that this transformation cannot happen overnight and it will require participation from all the departments. Hence, everyone in the organization needs to be aware of and involved in the transformation plan.

Broader Leadership Vision: Consider all the possible technologies and tools and the opportunities and impacts they bring to various aspects of your business. Be open to experimenting with different business models and tools to figure out what works best for your organization.

Partner and Collaborate: Hire and partner with experts who provide digital transformation services and products to help you guide through your journey. Collaborate with companies who already use innovative technologies and tools and appoint them to align your efforts to your goals.

Breaking down Silos: Break down silos in your organization by building cross-organizational teams and aligning all the departments to a single shared vision. This will empower your employees and improve workforce engagement.

Onboarding Data Experts: Data is the new oil in this digital era and it needs to be leveraged to its maximum. Hire new resources if you need, and get data scientists and experts onboard to utilize the data in the most fruitful manner.

New Ways to Innovate: Experiment with various technologies and ways to disrupt how you function currently. Research on what works and what doesn’t by implementing new innovative technologies and tools into your business functions.

Studying your Audiences: Your digital transformation strategy needs to be customer-centric. Analyse the behaviour, interests and expectations of your customers and transform your business in a way that it enhances their experience.

Reusing Existing Tools: Before investing in new business models and tools, go through your existing tools and figure out ways to utilize them. Enhance your existing systems by incorporating new ways of carrying out certain tasks and aligning them to your vision.

Cloud Adoption: Make it easy for your employees to access data and work from anywhere and anytime by adopting cloud. This will improve productivity, scalability and efficiency of the teams while keeping the data secure.

Modular Approach: There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for digital transformation. You need to craft a suitable plan by considering your business goals and requirements. If you need help, get the support of a digital transformation services provider.

Track and Analyse Performance: Once you have implemented certain changes in your organization, monitor the impacts of your efforts. The insights will help you make the necessary amends in your plan to achieve the desired results.

Wrapping Up…

Digital transformation, when implemented in the right manner, can bring agility, speed and adaptability to your enterprise, which can never be replicated. Need help with starting your digital journey? Gateway Digital is an expert technology partner offering digital transformation solutions to businesses across industries. To know more about their offerings and expertise, visit www.thegatewaydigital.com or write to hello@thegatewaydigital.com.

How to Tackle Security Risks in Digital Transformation

 

Every business in the current era of digital transformation face this crucial question: Are you going to let digital risk hold you back from adopting new technologies, or are you going to manage the risks and move forward?

Data breaches and cyber-attacks have grown rapidly in the past several years, with attacks becoming more sophisticated and meticulous. Businesses across the world, irrespective of their industry or organization size experience data loss and malware attacks. Organizations that do not have sturdy cybersecurity policies or advanced security solutions are prone to these attacks. What makes the business more vulnerable to such attacks is their lack of resources and technical capabilities to tackle them.

 

As businesses move into a digital ecosystem, there are many ways in which hackers try to invade a business- from shared devices to mobile apps via messages and emails. And unfortunately, the traditional security systems that they have relied on, such as firewalls, anti-malware systems and sandboxes would no longer suffice.

According to a recent report on Cybersecurity in the Age of Digital Transformation, cybersecurity is the top challenge and the top concern for CIOs and CISOs planning to engage in digital projects. Implementation of innovative technologies such as AI/ML, cloud, IoT, etc. involves a hefty amount of data. Businesses require advanced security solutions that are capable to scan all the data and protect the systems from possible attacks or malware.

Managing the Digital Risk

Businesses need to develop security strategies to mitigate the risks associated with transforming into a digital organization. The CIO and CISO of the organization must adopt a strategic approach and align their security strategy to the business priorities, objectives, and values. The security teams of the organization must have a complete understanding of the risks involved in the process. Every organization needs to have a Security Operations Center (SOC) team to prevent, detect and remediate threats. These teams must set priorities and make effective decisions without hampering customer experience.

How Can We Help?

Gateway Digital’s cybersecurity division offers business-driven security solutions that provide organizations with a unified approach to manage, detect and respond to security threats. Our advanced cybersecurity solutions are designed to provide cyber defence from known and unknown threats. With the right mix of cybersecurity consulting services and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, we save businesses from threats before a massive loss or breach becomes unrecoverable.

Our cybersecurity models provide AI-driven threat protection, coordinated remediation and consultation, security monitoring, forensic analysis, vulnerability and penetration support, response orchestration, compliance support, and many more services. Our Cyber Security Operation Center (CSOC) provides 24×7 support to millions of users around the world while reducing business risk, cybercrime, and fraud.

Want to thrive in this high-risk digital world? Let us manage the risk for you, while you adapt to the transformational change. Tell us your requirements at hello@thegatewaydigital.com and visit www.thegatewaydigital.com for more.