Consumer expectations and demands have long dictated the changes that come to the retail landscape. The retail industry is continuously evolving to stay afloat and meet customers increasing needs, and face both new challenges as well as opportunities spurred by the emergence of new technologies. A broader trend seen in the retail sector in 2019 is the move by many retailers to move away from predictive analytics and adopt prescriptive analytics. Predictive analytics helps to forecast the likely outcomes from a set of past customer actions. Using valuable insights gleaned from data analytics, many retailers have conducted marketing campaigns, effectively targeting customers. But now it is time to deploy prescriptive analytics as the competition gets hotter. Prescriptive analytics and retail have a new relation. In short, this form of analytics will suggest intelligent recommendations to shoppers.
Visual retail analytics has put an end to unintentional garbling and ensures a quick understanding of the core issue. By making data more meaningful and illustrative, brands can entice the audience and build more positive relationships. Those who already implemented this strategy on a large scale have managed to boost their sales and reduce inventory levels. Product assortment analytics creates a massive impact on in-store sales and conversions. Earlier, retailers who have either poorly planned or neglected their product assortment strategy have witnessed a drastic decline in sales. Product assortment analytics can aid businesses to integrate their customer behavioral data with their purchase history to segment customers and serve them in a much better way. AI technology will mark its presence in almost every software product in the coming year. AI has so much potential, but an equally vast array of offerings and opportunities make it difficult to predict where exactly it will play the most significant role. Analytics, cognitive computing, and chatbots are some practical areas where AI can be implemented.
Today we are about to witness yet another burst of technology innovation. In mid-to-late 2019, the largest carriers will deploy the latest generation of wireless internet, 5G. For retailers, 5G means video analytics will become real in a hurry. Possibilities include using artificial intelligence tools to send smartphone alerts to the manager and associate when VIPs enter a store. Video analysis will enable to check customer traffic patterns and what brands people wear and are interested in. Inventory visibility, enabled by visual analytics, can accelerate data understanding from manufacturing to fulfillment to shelf placement. With actionable, visual analytics, it is becoming easier for all stakeholders to use these new insights for strategic advantage. Between the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and artificial intelligence, there are now powerful options to improve inventory accuracy, and the top-line and bottom-line benefits are massive.
This edition of Retail CIO Outlook features companies that are at the forefront of offering retail analytics solutions like Blix, AInnovation, and Stream It. Retail CIO Outlook’s editorial board has assessed and shortlisted some of the most prominent organizations in the industry that solve retail analytics challenges by implementing the current technological trends in the space. We present to you – “Top 10 Retail Analytics Solution Providers in APAC – 2019”.
