COVID-19 has brought about a sudden change in our behavior and attitudes as large-scale health crises tend to do. Spending on essential supplies skyrocketed while spending on luxury almost became zero. Even when the vaccine is found and this invisible enemy is defeated, the ghost of COVID-19 will loom large in our lives. Global consumption patterns of the retail industry are not likely to bounce back to the pre-covid days in the foreseeable future.

Apart from changing consumer behavior, consumer safety is also a big challenge for retailers as they open their stores once more. How does one keep the clients and staff safe? When is the best time for consumers of the at-risk demographic to shop? How to store merchandise so as to reduce congestion at different counters?

Let’s look at some of the ways technology can be leveraged to make the transition to a post-covid world easier for retailers worldwide. 

Footfall Analytics

Contact tracing has been an important tool in the fight against COVID-19. Depending on the location, people use govt-issued contact tracing apps or third party applications available online. But what about the people who visit the stores – how can customers be traced to mitigate risk without spending a fortune on a custom analytics solution that might impede their privacy? A footfall analytics solution could be the answer to this problem.

Footfall analytics have been used in retail to identify customers and their consumer-journeys at stores. This system can provide anonymous aggregate footfall analytics to help companies see where customers or employees spent the most (or least) amount of time, and in turn, helps improve merchandising decisions. This data can also be used to identify peak and non-peak hours accurately and promote social distancing to control the occupancy rate of each individual store. 

Demand forecasting

Traditional forecasting models of retail analytics solutions that use historical data such as buying behavior, seasonality, etc. have been particularly hit due to the coronavirus pandemic. Demand forecasting needs to replace its legacy algorithms with short-term forecasting models. These retail analytics solutions use models that take in real-time sales data from a Point of Sale (POS) system and analyze key demands, shortages and forecast necessary adjustments at the store level. 

Customer-facing applications

Many large retail chains have adopted customer-facing applications with varying degrees of success. But in 2020, these technologies have started getting customer acceptance like never before. Applications such as virtual queuing, contactless payment, self-checkout, and retail chatbots have been increasingly used by retailers and their customers. Retailers are leveraging technology such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) to offer hygiene centric shopping experiences. 

In the future, people will remember the times we live in as “The Pandemic Reality”. A time when every industry had to innovate rapidly to keep itself afloat. The retail industry is no different – the industry has to focus on how to safely open its doors to customers while also maintaining its supply chain. 

Black Rock IT Solutions has worked with retail giants around the world, helping them create footfall analytics solutions and sales forecasting solutions that have helped them tide through these unprecedented times. If you need a reliable and experienced IT partner to help your business meet future market conditions, drop a mail to sales@blackrockdxb.com

The post Leveraging Technology for a Post-COVID Retail Industry appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.

Imposing personal safety adherence measures such as redesigning the floor layouts, marking safe social distancing, etc. are immediate solutions, but they may end up creating discomfort in the long term. In this scenario, adopting technology can help retailers tackle these challenges while reducing costs and improving efficiency.

In this article, we look at how retail analytics can play a significant role in helping businesses to overcome these challenges.

In-store analytics

In-store analytics empowers retailers with interactive, dynamic, and real-time dashboards with insights into the customer’s in-store behavior. For instance, customer interaction in a specific zone or an area in the store. In-store analytics’ unprecedented potential to track and analyze customer store behavior patterns enables retailers to adopt better in-store product placement strategies ensuring customer engagement and, in turn, a superior customer experience. These insights coupled with geographical data can also help stores to evaluate the COVID-19 exposure in the geographies where their stores exist. 

Footfall analytics

Measuring the number of visitors will enable the retail stores to analyze and compare store performance over a period of time with respect to customer visits. People analytics can be leveraged to assess employee – visitor ratio, employee performance, schedule employee shifts, predict visitor trends, and forecast optimum recruitment intervals. Various departments such as facilities management, operations, inventory management, and supply chain management, can utilize the insights generated to make faster and smarter decisions. 

Customer sentiment analysis

Capturing customer sentiment on the retail premise helps retailers gauge the efficiency of the services they offer. Customers can be asked to share their feedback using their mobile phones at the entrance or exit doors about various parameters such as safety, comfort, and confidence. They can also run sentiment analysis on data from facial analysis, social media networks, and different online forums. These can help them to improve their offerings and enhance the customer experience.

Cross-platform analytics

Customers today are more empowered and connected than ever before. Retailers must track customer intent much before they visit the store by analyzing their behavior from across touchpoints such as a desktop webpage, native & third-party applications, and mobile sites in one place. This cross-platform analytics will help retailers understand how the customer moves through various channels before they visit the store for purchase. They expect companies to provide seamless experiences across channels that reflect their history, preferences, and interests. Understanding the whole customer journey and discovering their behavioral insights allows retailers to create a consistent and unified experience through all the different channels.

In Conclusion

Retailers who want to thrive in the future must leverage the vast potential that retail analytics offers. They must make smarter and faster decisions based on meaningful insights from retail analytics to ensure increased revenue, higher profits, enhanced customer engagement, and superior customer experience.   

Black Rock IT Solutions has developed retail analytics solutions to help global retail enterprises operate more efficiently. Experion’s expertise and experience in assisting organizations to realize their strategic and operational goals has enabled us to gain an edge in the workings of the retail industry. To know more about how we help businesses ensure business continuity and enhance customer satisfaction amidst the COVID-19 crisis, drop a mail to sales@blackrockdxb.com.  

The post Retail analytics – uncovering the path to success for retailers appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.

But at Experion, the sun still shines a little brighter! 

Keeping Our Word

Despite the challenges that COVID-19 has heaped upon us, we believe in sticking to our promises, be it to our employees or our clients. One of the ways in which we proceeded to do that was by ensuring that those who were promised positions in the company were able to join us exactly when they expected they would before the pandemic. 

The new recruits were onboarded – albeit virtually, and the experience turned out to be rewarding for all those involved. The virtual onboarding experience was carefully planned and executed by the HR team, who worked tirelessly to ensure it went smoothly. The recruits were onboarded with all the usual processes in place – in fact, thanks to the extra effort put in by everyone at the company, this set of joiners felt even more welcomed than usual, and that’s really saying something! 

The team first tracked all the joiners by giving them a call two days before the onboarding. They then scheduled the video conferencing sessions and had the first call to have a casual chat with them and exchange the relevant documents. Since this experience was a new one for both parties, they had a conversation about what would be done differently this time and held an ice-breaking session where they invited the participants to share interesting experiences they’ve been through.

The joiners were then taken through the regular induction programmes – presentations were shared detailing the history of the company, the values we represent and other handy information as well. They were also given a chance to meet the Operations Management Team, where they met individuals from top management and were able to ask questions and interact freely with them.

Welcome To The Family

As a special treat, they also had a 1-hour interaction session with our Executive Management Team – our CXO’s and directors took time out of their busy schedules to warmly welcome our new recruits and they had the privilege of being able to have a one-on-one conversation with the entire team. This concreted their feeling of being a part of the blackrock family, and they received insights that most others wouldn’t have, in the pre-COVID-19 times.

To wrap things up, they were introduced to their buddies, who in turn introduced them to their team and their respective project heads. The buddies assured them that they were always available for any questions they may have, and were instrumental in helping them find their feet as they navigated the task of beginning work from a remote location. This cooperation and camaraderie resonate loudly with our core value of professional competence and respect for individuals. 

The post Experion: Embracing Virtual Onboarding for New Recruits During COVID-19 appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.