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Staying ahead of the curve in the retail sector is nothing short of an ordeal.<\/p>\nStaying ahead of the curve in the retail sector is nothing short of an ordeal.<\/p>\n
A fundamental element in beating competition entails developing capabilities critical for the future.\u00a0 To this end, it is critical for organizations to reinvest the savings achieved through IT Cost Management<\/a> into building those critical capabilities.\u00a0 Before finalizing the areas to invest in, retailers need to adopt a market-focused approach, where they need to distinguish the trends emerging across industries that have the potential to deliver value for the business.<\/p>\n Five key trends are transforming the Retail industry.\u00a0 Three of these trends focus on the customer, while the other 2 aim at perfecting the implementation capabilities.\u00a0 In developing a robust Retail Strategy<\/a>, we should fully evaluate these trends and deliberate on potential implications on our business.\u00a0 These are the areas where market leaders in the retail sector are concentrating on in terms of making targeted investments:<\/p>\n Reinvesting costs saved in these 5 areas helps to boost revenue, enhance efficiency, and improve the customer experience.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s, now, discuss the first 3 areas.<\/p>\n Business Intelligence<\/a> comprises the capabilities, know-how, systems, tools, excellence, threats, and procedures employed to assist an enterprise develop a thorough understanding of market performance and commercial environment.<\/p>\n Like other sectors, retailers are making huge investments in developing capabilities and applications to gather, consolidate, and analyze the data required to carefully evaluate customer activities, spending tendencies.\u00a0 These advanced analytics tools and capabilities assist the retailers interpret the impact of their business decisions\u2014e.g., pricing, promotions, and new product launch\u2014identify customers\u2019 changing behaviors, and tailor their offerings to fulfill their customers\u2019 requirements.<\/p>\n Latest hardware and software POS solutions are another area to invest in IT to stay ahead in the retail game.\u00a0 Retailers can use these advanced POS systems\u2014e.g., wireless POS\/portable terminals, kiosks, and self-checkout terminals\u2014to increase revenues and decrease expenses during the customer point of sale process.<\/p>\n These next-generation systems facilitate in decreasing customer transaction times, integrating new customer management abilities\u2014e.g., loyalty programs and personalization features, and driving operational efficiencies.<\/p>\n Cross-channel integration involves the integration of customer transaction channels onto one platform\u2014for instance, it entails the blending of operations-related applications and cross-channel interaction systems.<\/p>\n Cross-channel integration goes beyond creation of a common brand identity and look and feel. \u00a0By enhancing retail, supply chain, and back-office systems across the value chain\u2014from merchandising and POS systems to business intelligence tools\u2014integration across channels allows retailers to offer consistent online and in-store pricing, inventory visibility across channels, advanced in-store kiosks, and mobile commerce solutions.\u00a0 This also helps in objectively developing a consistent customer experience across all interaction channels\u2014web, physical stores, call centers, and catalogs.<\/p>\n Interested in learning more about the 5 key trends transforming the retail sector?\u00a0 You can download an editable PowerPoint on Retail Strategy: IT Investment<\/strong> here<\/u><\/a> on the Flevy documents marketplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can download this and hundreds of other\u00a0consulting frameworks<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0consulting training guides<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0FlevyPro library<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Staying ahead of the curve in the retail sector is nothing short of an ordeal. A fundamental element in beating competition entails developing capabilities critical for the future.\u00a0 To this end, it is critical for organizations to reinvest the savings achieved through IT Cost Management into building those critical capabilities.\u00a0 Before finalizing the areas to… Retail Strategy: Directing IT Investments in the Right Areas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":4857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84,82],"tags":[1530,1544,1546,1548,193,453,1545,1547],"class_list":["post-4730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-information-technology","category-operations","tag-cross-channel-integration","tag-it-cost-management","tag-markdown-optimization","tag-pricing-optimization","tag-pricing-strategy","tag-retail-strategy","tag-retail-transformation","tag-supplier-collaboration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4730"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8741,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730\/revisions\/8741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nBusiness Intelligence <\/strong><\/h2>\n
Next-Generation In-store Technologies<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Cross-Channel Integration<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Are You a Management Consultant?<\/strong><\/h2>\n