Lee Valley Tools is a family-run business that takes pride in doing things right. For 40 years, the company has specialized in crafting rare, high-quality hand tools for woodworkers and gardeners. Recently, it expanded into crafting tools of all kinds. The manufacturing division, Veritas, is equipped with 50 machine tools, operated by a staff of 120 employees.

The company has long been diligent about measuring the productivity of its staff and the utilization of equipment. Lee Valley Tools truly believes that quality is a data-driven profession. To maintain control over its engineering specifications, Lee Valley Tools must collect quality data to identify the patterns behind any past or potential problems.

Over the years, Lee Valley Tools has become extremely rich in data but struggled to make it usable. The Lee Valley team would record data on whiteboards, spreadsheets, and in written reports, which quickly became disconnected. With so many sources of data, it was easy to miss something and difficult to find the root cause of a problem. Employees spent countless hours drafting reports, and by the time the reports were filed, the information was often outdated.

Lee Valley Tools needed to find an organizational tool that could pull together existing data on an ongoing basis and would help chart the future. With the visual capabilities of Microsoft Power BI, the Lee Valley team gets the information they need, when they need it. They can now better understand the financial and operational impact of their manufacturing processes.

Knowledge powers each decision at Lee Valley, and real-time data provides the best source for improvement. Within a short time, Lee Valley Tools transformed its data into tangible and actionable information. The real-time data is accessible through a holistic digital dashboard fed by different dropdown menus for each contributing work center in manufacturing.

Lee Valley’s new organizational tool has a positive effect on employees, too. By using Power BI, they can arrange their data in a clear, easy-to-use dashboard that supports better, more informed decision making. With their source data arranged on one customizable interface, employees can take the hours they once spent writing reports and apply them to more useful tasks. Power BI has changed the way Lee Valley employees look at data. Productivity and quality have improved. They’ve reduced their backlog and back orders, and they’re now looking to the future.

Lee Valley is in the middle of a significant digital transformation. With the tools provided by Power BI, the company has new ways to collect and visualize data to help solve problems. It is currently establishing a digital roadmap of its business to share a single view of its customers and the enterprise.

Lee Valley Tools now lets data guide them to better, more informed decision making. It plans to grow business and relies on Microsoft Power BI to help chart the future.

Learn from more real-world examples how an agile, cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solution helps you aggregate your data into customizable, easily searchable databases and dashboards so your users can quickly access the information they need:

Click here to download the e-book.

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Another year and yet another exciting week of retail innovation for us at NRF 2019!

I had some really interesting discussions at this year’s show—both at Microsoft events and out on the floor with retailers, customers and industry experts. The National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show was the perfect place to explore some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in Canadian retail right now—from creating amazing customer experiences to finding new ways to stand out in a super competitive time.

Of course, not every Canadian retailer could carve three days out of their schedule to make it to New York for the convention. In case you missed it, I captured some key takeaways Canadian retailers should think about in the latest episode of The Voice of Retail Podcast, a weekly podcast hosted by retail pioneer and veteran Michael LeBlanc and produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.

As I was hosting some of the most influential Canadian retailers during the show, one of the recurring topics that came up in our discussions was about building a successful A.I. retail strategy. More specifically, how exactly to build an A.I. strategy focused on:

• Knowing Your Customers Better Than They Know Themselves
• Empowering Your Employees to Provide the Best Customer Experience Possible
• Equipping Your Supply Chain to Anticipate and Exceed Customer Demand
• Reimagining Retail to Create New Experiences

Everything we discussed with top leaders in Canadian retail is actually available today in the A.I. Retail Playbook – a report co-authored by Microsoft and PSFK (a NYC based thinktank).

Until next year – see you at The Big Show in 2020!

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There’s also a great amount of fun and excitement in the surround events that companies plan to host their customers. They do this as a way to entertain and engage their clients, but they also serve to keep clients busy and less available to spend time with their competition.

That’s all well and good if you’re thinking from a self-serving perspective. To me, that seems less about helping your customer and more about boxing out your competition.

I take a different approach to the surround events I create. Working with the Retail Council of Canada, we develop a tour of stores in New York. It’s great to walk through the big conference center and see all the new, bright and shiny technologies, but that’s not the same as seeing how innovative Retailers are doing business. Over the last several years, our tour has become a reason that many Canadian retailers join us during their participation in NRF.

You’d think that a company like Microsoft would focus only on technology, (primarily our own technology), but that’s not what we do. Our goal is to create value for the Retail industry in general, and the members of the Retail Council of Canada specifically.

A month before NRF I travel to New York to scout out stores that have some cool technologies, but I also look for an equal number of locations that have unique design elements or an engaging customer experience.

This year the trip will include the Adidas store in Soho. It focuses on the community and fashion forward designs including some from Pharrell Williams.

When we start out on the tour we offer some advice on how our guests can get the most from our event. The first idea is to have a look at the concepts being presented in the stores we visit, and consider how they might have an application in their own locations. Of even more importance, is the opportunity we create for our guests to network with one another, talk about what they they’ve seen, and learn from one another.

It takes a lot of planning to manage a tour of 50 people from more than 20 companies but there’s a lot of value that comes from this. It’s certainly fun to explore stores in New York, but it’s even better when you watch these people start coming together as they compare notes and ideas. This is the type of thing that helps to grow an industry and make us all more successful.

Of course, I also encourage you to visit the Microsoft booth where we have some very interesting stories to share. Here’s just a taste –

• How an autonomous retail robot helped customers quickly find products in a giant store
• How an AI algorithm – originally developed for fundamental research in particle physics – helped retailers reduce out-of-stock rates by 80%
• Using image recognition to identify what your customers are wearing and recommend new clothes based on their personal style

I look forward to seeing you at NRF.

For more information on how Microsoft is helping retailers transform their business, download our whitepaper.

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The research company IDC explains that a new generation of shoppers are defined as the 5I consumer. They are Instrumented, Interconnected, Informed, In-place and Immediate. These consumers demonstrate that they are very comfortable in a world where the line between the physical and digital experience is becoming less well defined each day. They will become the foundation for the success of true Omni channel shopping. Understanding this helped me connect the dots between my idea about “borrowed technology” and the way traditional retailers could embrace Omni channel. Recent surveys show that 83% of shoppers use their Smart Phones while shopping. This is why IDC refers to them as “Instrumented”. By engaging shoppers with their own phones, retailers can create an immediate, in-place engaging experience.

Imagine being able to receive an offer for a new salad dressing while you shop in the produce aisle. Or, tapping a shelf label with your phone to see consumer reviews or a video of someone demonstrating the product before you decide to buy. This takes in-store marketing to a new level. Instead of printing a coupon for a future purchase as you leave the store you’re able to influence the customer at the most critical moment – their point of decision. Tuku Inc. a Microsoft partner has developed very inexpensive NFC tags that can be attached to displays or signage that can generate rich media content on the shopper’s smart phone. No need to install high priced video displays, (the customer has one in their own pocket). Even better, the interaction generates data that allows the retailer, or a participating supplier to collect and analyze information about their products and the way that shoppers are behaving when they’re making their purchase decision.

Phones aren’t just replacing video displays, they are also becoming a means of exchanging currency. That means the traditional Point of Sale (PoS) is being disrupted as well. Recently a global convenience store chain implemented a digital wallet and asked Plexure to help them leverage innovation to drive shopping frequency and basket size. By analyzing real-time purchase transactions, weather data and current location they created tailored messaging to individual customers and generated a 47% increase in average transaction value.

Most of these ideas are made possible because the shopper uses their own technology (the Smart Phone) to make their experience more engaging. Each of the interactions provide the retailer with valuable information that they can use to have a better understanding of shopping behaviors, manage their operations more efficiently and grow their business.

Physical stores aren’t going away. In fact, pure play eCommerce companies are investing in bricks and mortar locations themselves. Amazon recently purchased Whole Foods along with opening several of their own bookstores. Other eCommerce players like Warby Parker and Birchbox have opened their own locations. From the other direction, traditional retailers like Walmart are acquiring eCommerce businesses, (they recently purchased Jet.com). All of this goes to show that a convergence of the physical and the digital is well underway. With Smart Phones, the passport to this new world of retail is literally in the palm of your hand.

Learn more about transforming your businesses by blending online and digital experiences

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Millennials – those generally born in the early 80s to mid-90s and early 2000s – represent both an enormous opportunity and a great example in helping to address this question. IDC calls them the “5i” shoppers: Instrumented, Interconnected, Informed, In-place and Immediate. What is significant about Millennials is they were the first generation born into a truly digital society, but they continue to spend most of their retail dollars at brick-and-mortar stores. Why?

Research points out that millennials are extremely interested in experiential environments, seeking to customize their worlds. Their loyalty often depends on a customer-centric experience that’s tailored to deliver on their wants and needs right away – and they want it yesterday! Their underlying need is that they want to feel engaged and valued as customers.

So, how do we accomplish this?  By offering a unique value proposition in the form of Microsoft Dynamics for Retail. Tapping into the power of Dynamics and partner solutions, leading retailers worldwide can deliver the connected, personal, and relevant experiences their customers expect.

Utilizing Dynamics, a company can bridge that gap between in-store and digital experiences with seamless CRM and e-commerce solutions. The aim, of course, is to hit millennials with an exciting customer experience that makes them want to engage and pull-the-trigger on a purchase. One major focus is leveraging interactive in-store components like digital signs, kiosks, touchscreens, and videos, making it easy for customers to get what they want, when they want it.

Another focus area is mobile. Retailers desperately need to turn “show-rooming” into sales opportunities with Omni-channel marketing strategies. Tapping into how customers use their mobile phones while shopping inside their store can yield immediate results.  Many shoppers go into stores with smartphones in hand, looking for discounts, reading reviews over social networks, checking product details – and maybe even buying from a competitor’s website, all while using store Wi-Fi.

To take advantage of this behavior and combat potential competitive encroach, retailers can use Wi-Fi splash pages to promote special in-store offers, or use mobile location technology to push messages or offers to consumers when they are physically near a store. By knowing a smartphone user’s precise location within a store through Bluetooth beacons, retailers can deliver highly relevant and compelling content that can influence purchase decisions, while giving them more information about what customers are looking at, and for how long.

So while today, digital transformation dominates the conversation, we must not forget that there is another paradigm shift occurring – how buyers are drifting away from the coldness of the retail online space and into the warmth of brick-and-mortar. How well companies address this shift today could ultimately determine their future success, helping them stay competitive and relevant in the ever-expanding digital frontier.

To learn more, hear about how Pier 1 operationalized technology quickly to their ever-evolving business needs.

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The two-day event featured some notable industry speakers and an exhibit hall where nearly 2000 attendees visited with wide range of suppliers that focus on the Retail vertical. This year Microsoft returned to the event with a renewed focus on how we enable “The Customer Journey”. In our booth we partnered with three great partners; Infusion, Orckestra and SweetIQ. With them we developed a three-part story that spoke to each step of a customer’s interaction with a retailer.

SweetIQ is a Microsoft Cloud Partner and ISV that specializes in a Local Marketing Intelligence Platform that helps Retailers: Drive in-store shoppers, Increase online findability, Gain competitive insights and Optimize online-to-offline conversions. analytics on Azure and visualizes the data using Power BI. Their pedestal in the booth was associated with the title “Target”, where attendees learned about how this solution helps to build brand awareness and inform the retailers’ marketing campaign.

Orckestra is a Montreal-based partner that has been integral to eCommerce successes with clients like Sobeys and Panago Pizza. The title for their area was “Orchestrate”, which in addition to having fun with their name, is also the way in which they enable retailers to run their on-line and in-store business through merchandising and marketing solutions based on Dynamics AX.

The in-store element of our booth showcased a mobile POS solution developed with Infusion. Using the scenario of a customer who had added an Xbox to the wish list on their mobile device, we showed how geo-fencing can deliver interactive promotions on digital signage. It also gave us the opportunity to demonstrate how a store associate can use a mobile device to process a transaction. This was a story that really captured the interest of our visitors.

To help ensure a steady flow of booth traffic, we worked with the RCC to learn the names of the companies that would be in attendance. With that information, we were able to pre-arrange a number of visits with clients. Our executives also worked the floor of the conference to connect with industry contacts as a way to engage them in our booth.

With an audience of nearly 2000 attendees, the traffic in the booth was fantastic and generated some solid leads. The event was also a great opportunity for Microsoft to make a statement about our commitment to the retail industry and where we see ourselves in the Canadian market. Working with the Retail Council of Canada, we supplied two HP ElitePads that were used as items available in the event’s Silent Auction. Proceeds from the auction are used to fund scholarships for Canadian students pursuing a career in retail. Our willingness to contribute these devices not only demonstrated our commitment to the future of the retail industry in Canada, it was a nice fit with the ongoing relationship that we are building between Microsoft and the Retail Business undergraduate programs at the University of Alberta and Ryerson University, both of whom were also present at the conference.

Feel free to reach out if you have any question:
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/daverodgerson
Twitter: @drodgerson

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