Providing Digital retail technology

Sowmya Iyer, Head-Marketing & Alliances, Opel Global, shares about how the company’s digital transformation solutions help retail organisations to enhance their customers’ experience at sheer price of the Internet.

What kind of transformation solutions have you given to Indian Retail industry?

We cater to the retail industry through our product ‘JUNO Retail’, which is a ‘Managed Digital Transformation Solution’ based on our flagship framework iTaaS that helps the retailers to manage their entire customer engagement lifecycle management process. We capture the customer details and interests by integrating the in-store Wi-Fi connection with a specific app for retailer and inbuilt Social CRM and Customer Analytics aligned with the Internet cost. The Wi-Fi Internet not only helps in capturing the customer demographics, but also enables retailers with digital marketing platform and analytics. Our digital marketing consulting helps retailers make better decisions with the data captured.

Who are your retail clients?

Our clientele includes multi and single brand outlets, luxury showrooms, specialty restaurants and hotel chains in Tier I and II cities.

What kind of technology requirements do retail brands need from you?

Seventy per cent of the retail companies in the country are investing in digital marketing and that is helping them know their customer better. Customer demographics, preferences and interest patterns help the retailers come up with suitable and personalised experiences, targeted promotional schemes and activities, thereby retaining the existing customers and gaining new customers. Our Social CxM integrated JUNO captures exactly those details and our consultants help retailers make best utilisation of the captured data.

What kind of challenges do you face while giving these technology solutions to retail clients?

The biggest challenge we faced initially was, often retailers used to get confused on investments involved in digital technology solutions. Therefore, we decided to undertake the SaaS approach and started offering the same at the price of the Internet. This has made it easy for us to approach retailers as now they just need to replace their Internet network with our solution to get digital.

Over the years, CRM, ERP etc have been taken by cloud technology. How do you find cloud computing helpful for retail?

Earlier, implementing technology used to require huge investments in IT, as well as manpower to manage them. But with the advent of cloud technology, the IT investments have been reduced to a bare minimum as an operating expense rather than a capital expenditure. The cloud technology helps the retailers digitally transform their customer engagement to a personalised experience at very low cost. It is the same cloud technology that has been used by Opel to offer digital transformation solutions at the price of the Internet.

What other innovative technology solutions have you devised for Indian retail?

The retail industry is undergoing a revolution, with groundbreaking technologies guiding both the consumer and the merchant throughout the customer journey. Whether the shopper is at home using a PC, searching for a product on a mobile device, walking nearby a store, or browsing the aisles in the store, retailers have access to a number of new technologies to enhance the experience at every touch point. Hence, we intend to introduce to retailers a variety of new technologies that includes personalised solutions, wearable technology, visual search and augmented reality.

What is the percentage of retail brands adopting technology in retail?

In India, 70 per cent of brands are semi-automated and 20 per cent have basic IT infrastructure. IT penetration in retail industry is growing at a pace of 15 per cent year-on-year (YOY) especially after the advent of SaaS and Cloud Computing.

Where do you see the technology solution market in retail? What is the percentage of growth?

Today, every business has become customer centric. Retail industry is no exception. The organised retail sector emerged as one of the fastest growing sectors after 2000. Customer is looking for value not in terms of fair price, quality, ambience and information, but also in terms of convenience, selection, entertainment and service. Technology plays a major role in enhancing customer experience in all these segments. Technology also helps in streamlining the supply chain in accordance with customer behaviour and preferences, capturing near real time analytics so that the retailers are aware of the current market trends.

What are your future plans?

We intend to introduce more customer engagement solutions for retail industry to have a single window offering 360 degree perspective of their customer behaviour and analytics at a fair price in rule with the Internet.