Smart Retailer Strategies to survive in retail market

Did you know that the global smart retail market is estimated to grow from USD 21.6 billion in 2020 to USD 62.5 billion by 2025?

The retail industry has emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-paced customer-centric industries. The key factors fueling the growth of this market are the increasing use of automation to offer shopping convenience to customers and the rising adoption of IoT solutions backed by artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies by retailers.

WHAT IS A SMART RETAIL MARKET AND HOW CAN IT ENRICH THE RETAIL INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE?

A smart retail market refers to the hybridization between traditional shopping methods and smart technologies that are designed to give value to both consumers and retailers. Through the Internet of Things (IoT), data is accumulated by way of communication between implanted devices and computers. As a result, consumers may enjoy a safer, faster, and personalized experience.
Smart retail technologies have the potential to improve consumers’ shopping experiences by providing superior and customized retail services. The key to the future of retail industry lies in the adoption of IoT.

SMART RETAILER BENEFITS

Visibility

In the case of smart retail, visibility refers to the presence of relevant data across the retail stores. With information readily available across all levels, both the retailer and automated systems will be able to take note of current trends, make more accurate choices, or detect errors before they occur.

Superior safety

Security videos positioned throughout the stores helps businesses to reduce thefts, vandalism, shoplifting, control inventory shrinkage, and increase employee safety. IoT enabled cameras and sensors aid retailers to safeguard their business by providing 100% security coverage. IoT solutions help to improve security by detecting and preventing fraud even before they occur.

Efficiency

IoT solutions in retail can help by eliminating the loss of productivity through reduced downtime. Employees can be managed more effectively to prevent deficits in customer service or product distribution in the retail store. The smart retailer can analyze and evaluate productivity losses to streamline business processes, thereby making it more efficient and productive.

Live video feeds

With IoT based system in retail stores, you can view the live video feed from any location around the clock. Live video system lets you monitor your business what is going on at your business, from anywhere. It allows you to access live footage on a remote platform making it an effective choice for businesses.

Secure storage

In the case of smart retail, video recordings are stored in a secure cloud server that can be accessed easily by authorized users from anywhere. It prevents loss of critical footage and evidence due to device tampering or system failure as the videos are instantly secured off-site resulting in no risk of damage to the footage.

Smart synchronizing

All the uniformity can be maintained across the stores and synchronized opening and closing can also be tracked. Retailers can get a complete view of the store performance and plan the actionable reports on when the store opens, uniform adherence, and mandatory SOP compliances with ease. This kind of video analytics in retail streamlines the entire business as a seamless function.

Quality

Using IoT, the efficiency of the retail stores to control and maintain the quality will be improved. It further eliminates questions regarding what the customer can expect and establish consistency in business products or services. Therefore, the quality of any given smart retail store will yield higher output than any of those produced by non-smart means, which sometimes produce inadequate results.

HOW SMART RETAILERS ARE LEVERAGING IOT SOLUTION FOR THEIR BUSINESS?

Smart retailers invest in IoT based security surveillance solutions for actionable intelligence to improve security and in-store experience of the customers. IoT solutions offer numerous advantages to the retailer regardless of your business size. A few of the IoT offerings for the retailers are stated below.

Footfall analytics

Although footfall tracking is a subset of video analytics, it is of paramount importance to a retail business. Footfall tracking with the help of cloud-based analytics provides a hint of consumer behavior like what do the customers do in the shopping area, their shopping habits, how many people shopped at a particular time by capturing the real-time data and helping the retailers to take the actionable decision in framing the marketing policies. It provides deeper insights into consumer buying behavior and popular products among the consumers. The marketing team can use this information to upgrade their CX strategies to make it more personalized and relevant with the advanced analysis obtained from people counting.

Centralized monitoring

Real-time monitoring has been one such issue faced by the retailers for a long time. IoT can help enhance the business and assist the retailers in centralized monitoring across distributed sites for business efficiency. Through IoT solutions, one can get useful insights into the task execution to identify improvement areas and take actions to avoid inefficiency. A notification alert to the administration heads on SOP deviation provides real-time updates and visibility. It improves productivity, ensures safety, and enhances customer experience. With centralized monitoring, the retailer can purview on a customer’s journey to identify their needs and concerns better. It gives you a high-level overview of all of the touchpoints between brand and customer.

Video analytics

With the development of IoT enabled video analytics, businesses can avoid huge investments in human resources to monitor enormous volumes of video data. Video analytics in retail applies artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities that allow cameras to monitor people, objects, and learn business parameters. It has the power to understand and detect specific visual patterns. For example, if there’s a fire emergency in the store, it will instantly alert store managers about it. Connected with sensors and devices, businesses can obtain and achieve actionable insights with video analytics. The video analytics system provides relevant actionable insights to a store; popular zones, redundancies, peak hours in security measures with enhanced productivity and efficiency of the retail stores.

Intrusion detection

Smart retailers are now ready to monitor any intrusion or threat 24/7 through IoT based solutions. The advanced IP cameras transfer the feed over a secured cloud network. If there is any breach or mishap in the store premises, the smart sensors and cameras will alert the authorities and immediate action will be taken for security assurance. IoT-based solutions integrated with artificial intelligence and machine learning can easily review or retrieve video for settling disputes in case of any security related issue. It monitors the daily operations and gets notifications on any deviation with real-time alerts on intrusion or threat detection.

Compliance adherence

The retailers can easily maintain the hygiene of the store by sustained monitoring of various parameters like the dress code compliance, store opening or closing time, etc being followed or not. These small details can make or break the retail brand and can have an impact on brand labeling. IoT cameras can detect inefficiencies and report them, making it easier for store managers to implement actions to mitigate such occurrences. IoT solutions can track the levels of cleanliness maintained at a particular store, thereby making it easier for the retailers to check whether the sop compliance is adhered by the employees or not.

Enhanced In-store Engagement

IoT-enabled devices help retailers to track various customer metrics, parameters, and reports thereby extracting valuable information even without directly discussing with customers. It also keeps them engaged and interested in the unique offerings of the outlet. In-store digital displays can also be updated instantly based on the metrics of the type of consumers that walk into stores, thereby enhancing shopping experience of the consumers. Customers can rate their shopping experience based on various parameters based on their in-store experience. These ratings can help in improving the services offered to the customer. Audits can also be performed to increase transparency and visibility at stores which would lead to better customer experiences.

IoT solutions are critical in enhancing operational efficiency and making retail stores technologically superior. Smart retailers supervise and understand the mindset behind every purchase and target every customer personally on a real-time basis.

IoT solutions give a full-service to the smart retailer to create a seamless shopping experience and ensure growth in business for a more reliable and secure option for physical security.