Consumer goods decision-making has become so complex that human talent alone is not sufficient. In order to scale, every data point must be digitized, analyzed, and put to work through AI and machine learning, to identify trends and patterns, and tell us what to do. Predictive analytics is at the foundation of proactive productivity, business agility, and market share growth.  

We are at the cusp of a huge shift in what it truly means to be a digital business. A digital business where you use technology to change how and why you operate, not merely leveraging it to optimize your existing processes. In the consumer goods industry, we spent more than a decade getting our data estate in order and hired data scientists en masse to help us make sense of it. Now we truly know why we were doing all the arduous work.  

AI turns data into shareholder value 

The volatility of macro events in recent years—and their accompanying challenges and disruptions—have had a serious impact on the retail industry and consumer behavior. Today’s consumers are driving the revolution of retail with new expectations in terms of experience and service. Consumer goods organizations are closely monitoring and predicting customer behavior to ensure their offerings are aligned today and tomorrow. There is so much data and it is changing so quickly that finding patterns and insights and putting them to work in a timely fashion is not possible without AI. While quick access to actionable data insights is key to understanding fast-changing consumer needs that enable better demand prediction and forecasting, the ability to insert those insights into your business processes in a timely manner is what will drive business and shareholder value.  

Digital ecosystems for greater transparency, traceability, and agility 

Consumer purchasing experiences are only as good as the retailer or brand’s ability to deliver the right product, at the right place, and at the right time so consumers can happily discover, fall in love, and purchase it repeatedly whenever and however they desire. The expectation of a seamless purchasing experience across multiple channels and shortened delivery times at little or no cost creates enormous supply chain challenges. We are not saying anything earth-shattering when we highlight once again that relying on historical models is not, and certainly will not, be enough to build necessary resilience and agility into supply chains. We must leverage AI to be predictive to proactively detect opportunities and risks across the entire value chain all the way from idea to design production, to the point of sale, and finally to the experience of the product itself. Retailers and consumer goods organizations must adopt a digital-first mindset, shifting the paradigm from a reactive way of doing business to one of long-term planning to sense, predict, and adapt to disruptions—preventing stockouts, missed sales, and avoiding overstocking. 

The complexity of forecasting demand amid market fluctuations has highlighted the need to shift from a traditional cost-driven supply chain based on siloed networks to a customer-centric supply chain of services, which allows synergies between channels and collaborative data sharing. An interconnected digital ecosystem across an end-to-end supply chain network is critical to bringing data together in one place with a holistic planning and logistic system for improved collaboration. Connected end-to-end visibility and collaboration across the supply chain network can prepare for and mitigate potential disruptions. Optimizing stock levels across all selling channels, tracking inventory from manufacturers to warehouses to transit route to point of sale, calculating shipping time for that inventory, and promising accurate delivery time to customers requires multi-tier visibility and collaboration. Compiling data in one place with updates in real-time enables the insight, control, and management needed for greater flexibility, transparency, and traceability.  

Data sharing between retailers and consumer goods vendors has not been optimal. Everyone protects their gold mine of data, and they should—data monetization is a business strategy, not a data strategy. However, retailers and consumer goods brands must find a way to work better together to both share the data and protect it so all parties can benefit. It is the ability to share information in real-time and orchestrate responses to risks and changes, in demand to ensure they are placing the inventory in the supply network at the right place and time. End-to-end visibility is a business imperative for better collaboration with suppliers for on-time fulfillment and the ability to anticipate fluctuations in consumer demand as well as bottlenecks in supply in terms of inventory and freight. Consumer goods companies and retail organizations need to find the correct balance of sharing data to improve demand planning and growth management. 

Generative AI to predict and remediate risks with actionable insights 

Supply chains have mostly been assiduously designed to be as lean as possible. That is no longer imperative. You must optimize supply chain through enabling true collaboration and using generative AI to mitigate disruptions, produce actionable insights, and orchestrate business processes to act on those insights in an automated way. Applied throughout the supply chain to improve inventory positioning, on-time delivery, accurate order fulfillment, convenient returns, and to reduce stock-outs, this orchestration will improve consumers’ experiences and help to ensure their brand loyalty.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI Copilot proactively alerts supply planners to risks and mitigation strategies and the best course of action: inventory restocking, inventory placement, demand shaping, and improving lead-time estimates. Predictive insights identify impacted orders, while Dynamics 365 Copilot helps act on these insights with contextualized email drafts. Now supply chain personnel can collaborate with impacted suppliers in real-time to quickly identify new estimated times of arrival and reroute purchase orders based on weather disruptions or geopolitical tensions. Dynamics 365 Copilot helps to identify reliance on suppliers in shock-prone regions leveraging external signals to predict and remediate external risks, to feed back into planning systems and improve demand forecasting accuracy. 

Know your customer  

The volatility of consumer demand, and the increasingly complex path to purchase, combined with the continuous wave of disruptions affecting supply chain logistics (commodity and component pricing) make demand forecasting incredibly challenging. With our Smart Store Analytics solution, we’re providing retailers with e-commerce-level shopper analytics for the physical space. Microsoft’s partnership with AiFi—the world’s most broadly developed computer vision-powered store operator—provides check-out free solutions and also delivers actionable insights on AiFi smart store data with predictive models that optimize store layout and product recommendations—shelf placement and inventory—but also informs marketing and trade promotions to move inventory more efficiently through the stores. AiFi powers autonomous stores at stadiums, convenience, and grocery stores using AI to enable shoppers to check out without waiting in line to pay. 

The multiple ways customers and consumers interact with brands and retailers—gathering data at each of those touchpoints, and gaining insights to improve their experience—allows brands and retailers to strengthen their relationship with consumers through collaborative data sharing using AI to provide accurate suggestions and recommendations enhancing the customer experience and deepening brand loyalty.  

Sustainability 

Consumers—more environmentally conscious than ever before—are the driving force behind a “greener” future. They want to shop from retail and consumer goods organizations that are transparent and sustainable.  

There is a growing role of data and AI in operationalizing sustainability efforts in terms of reducing costs while gaining greater resilience and efficiency in reducing environmental impacts. Using data to operationalize sustainability will reduce costs and drive efficiencies. Businesses are also choosing to extend their mission beyond shareholder value to encompass broader ecological and societal issues.¹  Investing in next-generation demand planning that leverages AI insights and machine learning capabilities helps improve forecasting accuracy. Gaining analytic agility in planning ensures that supply more precisely matches demand and increases in-store availability by reducing overall inventory levels.  

Digital is business  

AI is a game changer. At every level of your business, investing in data and AI should be the highest priority to improve net margin, free up working capital, improve customer satisfaction, anticipate changing demand to maximize revenue, manage costs and improve efficiencies to protect margins, and optimize end-to-end networks to balance inventory and service.  

So how do you decide where to start? The first step is to identify the type of data you want to collect. Remember—data monetization is not a tech strategy, it is a business strategy. The next step is to assess what technology and tools you have in place to gather that data. From there you can investigate the technology and AI options that will get the results you need. 

Learn more 

• Read our blog “Digital Imperatives for Market Tectonics in the world of Consumer Goods” and how leading with customer centricity can drive your engine for change. 
• Consumer Goods Technology’s recent article highlights how consumer goods companies are using OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model for consumer goods business intelligence discovery.
• Visit Microsoft for the consumer goods industry for more solutions. 

Enabling intelligent brands

Evolve with the ever-changing consumer preferences.

Start innovating today

¹ “Perspectives, The future of the consumer industry, Buying into Better^TM,” Deloitte, 2023.

The post New era of value realization is here—put your data to work with AI appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Across the labor market, trends such as “The Great Reshuffle,” “The Great Resignation,” and “Quiet Quitting” are reflecting the widespread burnout, dissatisfaction, and desperation among frontline workers. After years of carrying our economy through the pandemic with lower pay, less autonomy, and fewer resources than their desk working colleagues, more than half of retail workers in non-management positions reported not feeling valued as an employee, according to a Work Trend Index (WTI) Special Report.¹

These challenges represent an important opportunity for retailers to better equip, develop, and engage the workers most critical to their success and survival. By investing in frontline retail workers with the same tools, training, and resources already afforded office workers, businesses can attract and retain high-value talent to drive superior customer experiences and sustainable business growth. Let’s explore some ways retailers can get started.

Explore Microsoft Cloud for Retail

Become a resilient retailer—and drive sustained profitability and growth—with Microsoft Cloud for Retail.

Get started today

Equip your frontline with tools to efficiently communicate, collaborate, and deliver

According to a WTI Special Report,¹ 60 percent of frontline retail workers are excited about the job opportunities tech creates, yet more than a third say they feel as though they do not have the right tools to do their job effectively. What does this mean for retailers? A wide playing field to equip an eager workforce with tools to improve communication and collaboration while driving task and workflow efficiency.

Communication and collaboration across retail teams

In fast-paced, customer-facing roles, almost nothing is more important than clear communication. From retail workers serving customers at the storefront counter, to those stocking goods in the back storeroom, having the right information at the right time can mean the difference between a happy recurring customer and a costly customer service complaint. To support the seamless flow of real-time information across disparate and remote teams, frontline workers need tools that provide:

• One unified and secure communication platform to support all touchpoints:
  • 1:1 conversation between colleagues (real-time inventory request).
  • 1:1 conversation with customers (virtual fitting).
  • Team or department meeting (team huddle across stores).
  • Corporate communications (town hall meeting).
  • A feedback loop from the store to various functions across the retail organization.

• Centralized access to key resources and intel to drive transparency and inclusion:
  • A centralized, digital home base, customized to your business and team.
  • Equal access to corporate information and updates across all teams and devices.

Increase frontline operational efficiency

Another critical set of tools for driving frontline success is technology to help improve task and workflow automation and efficiency. More than a third of retail workers polled by the WTI said they wanted technology to help with shift scheduling, onboarding, and automating repetitive in-store tasks.¹ Yet across industries many frontline workers are still using paper-based, manual methods for tracking things like daily tasks, schedules, orders, and inventory. Not only are these methods tedious and inefficient, but they take valuable time away from higher-value tasks like customer engagement and increase the risk of errors and accidents. Retailers can enable frontline workers to streamline and automate tasks and workflows with data and analytics tools designed to improve efficiency, such as:

• Task and workflow automation:
  • Digitization of undocumented and paper-based tasks, workflows, and processes.
  • Automation of manual and repetitive tasks, workflows, and processes.
  • AI-assisted reminders, updates, and guidance (virtual bots).
  • End-to-end virtual appointment tools (integrating scheduling, forms, and analytics).

• Integration with line-of-business applications and industry devices:
  • One unified front-end platform for all frontline applications.
  • Native integration with third-party applications for one streamlined experience.
  • Bidirectional flow between one platform and your systems of record.

• Centralized shift and task management across teams and departments:
  • Simplified shift management from any mobile device.
  • Easy clock-in and clock-out access from any mobile device.
  • Streamlined task delivery and reporting between managers and workers.

• Real-time visualization of retail data and insights:
  • Self-service analytics and AI to help frontline workers make real-time decisions.
  • Simplified polls, surveys, and forms to maintain a feedback loop across teams.
  • Easy task tracking and reporting to keep teams organized.

Safeguard your retail business 

Once frontline teams are equipped with the right devices and tools to do their best work, businesses need reassurance that these tools will be protected against outside security threats. With shared devices commonplace among frontline retail workers, identity management and security are paramount to maintaining accurate records and protecting employee and customer data. To help streamline and improve security across the retail value chain, retailers and their IT teams should look for tools that support the following:

• Simplified deployment and management at scale—regardless of role:
  • One integrated solution to manage all endpoints across personal and company-owned devices.

• A streamlined user experience to save workers time and improve accessibility:
  • Single sign-on across devices and applications.
  • Manager-controlled password reset and device management to lower the burden on IT and expedite frontline support.

• Identity, endpoint, and application security across operating systems and devices:
  • One unified solution to manage endpoints, data security, and device compliance.
  • Centralized control of frontline devices and applications.
  • Coordinated enforcement of policies that protect personal and company data across shared devices (shared device sign-out).

Develop your retail talent to drive fulfillment and close the technical divide

While frontline retail workers are largely optimistic about the job opportunities tech creates, nearly half have reported being worried about losing their jobs if they did not adapt to new technologies—and 55 percent report experience learning new tech on the fly, with no formal training or practice.¹ With a growing skills gap threatening business growth and a large percentage of frontline workers eager to grow in their careers, retailers are well positioned to benefit from investments in frontline training and development. What’s the best approach? The following recommendations are best practices for accelerating onboarding and upskilling across the frontline:

• Simplify training and onboarding to set up workers for success:
  • Make training and onboarding available on one, unified platform.
  • Provide training and onboarding in person, online, and across devices.
  • Ensure training and onboarding are accessible for workers with disabilities and available in multiple languages.
  • Enable frontline managers to upload custom learning content and recommend courses to meet team-or role-specific needs.

• Promote continuous upskilling and development:
  • Make it easy to discover, share, and engage with the latest learning content.
  • Help workers find the right learning content with interest-based, personalized recommendations.

• Aggregate and assign learning content:
  • Bring together content from various sources into one platform and sync learning assignments to keep employees up to date on required training.

• Share knowledge and expertise across the organization:
  • Store and share corporate, skills-based, and technical information and training on one unified platform.
  • Use AI to automatically identify, process, and organize content based on individual and team needs and interests.

Engage your frontline teams to promote transparency, inclusion, and wellbeing

The last and perhaps most important step in supporting the frontline is ensuring that workers feel valued, engaged, and motivated to do their best work. However, WTI reports that 61 percent of retail workers say messages from leadership do not make it to them, while another 31 percent believe their voice is not being heard when communicating workplace issues.¹ These figures represent two important problems for the retail industry:

• There is a lack of transparency between leadership and the frontline.
• Important information from the frontline is not making it back to management.

While both of these problems signal a breakdown in communication across the business, one threatens worker productivity, while the other introduces organizational risk. A lack of transparency from leadership to the frontline contributes to workers feeling undervalued and makes it difficult for them to be productive. Meanwhile, silencing the voice of the worker disrupts an important feedback loop from the frontline to management—withholding key information, like an inventory issue, that may go unaddressed until a larger problem arises. To tackle these distinct but interrelated problems, businesses can invest resources in several key areas:

Build company-wide dialogue

• Facilitate two-way dialogue between leadership and the frontline:
  • Provide one unified platform to facilitate dialogue and share information across teams and departments, across all devices.
  • Encourage leadership to send regular updates to employees at all levels, and keep information and messaging consistent and accessible.
  • Enable frontline workers to directly communicate with leadership and provide a consistent, timely response.

• Strengthen connections between employees:
  • Build and support communities aligned to shared functions, interests, and values to promote networking, knowledge sharing, and a sense of belonging.

• Host forums for company-wide engagement:
  • Make company meetings more accessible by allowing employees to join online across devices or asynchronously via recordings.
  • Use platforms with accessibility features such as translation, transcription, and closed captions.

Elevate the voice of the frontline

• Promote and facilitate ongoing feedback:
  • Implement solutions to facilitate consistent and proactive outreach to employees for feedback on individual and team sentiment, company culture, leadership performance, and process improvement.

• Reward and recognize colleagues:
  • Encourage managers and their teams to provide recognition, share accomplishments, and give thanks across teams and departments.

• Ensure digital tools are accessible to everyone:
  • Implement solutions with broad accessibility features such as multi-lingual support, recording, transcription, and closed captions.

Reinvesting in your frontline is the best way to safeguard your business’ future

However businesses decide to invest in their workforce, the benefits will always outweigh the cost. As retailers look to navigate the next frontier of economic changes and evolving customer demands, they will continue to rely on their frontline workers for the knowledge, experience, and care they provide our businesses and customers. Armed with a greater understanding of frontline needs and aspirations, businesses now have an opportunity to support their workers more holistically than ever—with the tools, training, and engagement they deserve to sustainably grow and thrive with the businesses they support.

Learn more

To learn more about driving better business outcomes by investing in your frontline, check out the Microsoft Teams for Retail website. Learn more about the WTI Special Report referenced in this post. And for the latest on how Microsoft and our partners are helping retailers elevate the customer and employee experience, follow Microsoft Retail on Twitter or download the eBook.  

WTI Special Report: Technology can help unlock a new future for frontline workers

New data shows that now is the time to empower the frontline with the right digital tools.

Read the report

¹Technology Can Help Unlock a New Future for Frontline Workers, Work Trend Index Special Report.

The post How to invest more holistically in your retail workforce appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

COVID-19 significantly altered consumer and user behavior—heightening online shopping and social media brand engagement. Consumer trends that may have once shifted over months or years are now happening more rapidly, faster than organizations can keep up with.

Technology is the engine for change

The need to leverage digital technologies to build agility into the core of a brand’s business has never been more apparent. Technology-driving business adaptability is the fine line separating brands that are surviving and thriving from those that are losing ground. Powerful and innovative leaps forward in areas such as data management, analytics, modeling, personalization, collaboration, and intelligent automation are giving organizations the tools and resources to not just survive, but to thrive in this new landscape.

Cloud-based solutions are the perfect enabler for engaging consumers in new ways—creating and delivering highly personalized contextual offers and uncovering customer insights via advanced analytics across multiple channels. By utilizing new data-driven models and offerings, companies can unlock new sources of value among customers, suppliers, retailers, and other third parties to create new value propositions.

PepsiCo has faced new market demands head-on, utilizing machine learning and analytics to adjust how they operate across their 23 billion-dollar brands—PepsiCo’s machine learning journey:

“Data is the lifeblood of the company, we have 23 billion-dollar brands across multiple product segments. We rely on insights from machine learning to bring together our knowledge of the industry, the market, and our in-depth understanding of the shopping habits and preferences of consumers. It enables us to make informed decisions that ensure consumers get the products they want, helping us consistently meet consumer demand and drive growth for PepsiCo.”—Michael Cleavinger, Senior Director of Shopper Insights Data Science and Advanced Analytics at PepsiCo.

Lead with customer centricity

Implementing integrated customer management practices, such as customized marketing and sales strategies founded on shopper behaviors and driving tailored customer experiences, are now even more critical for organizations to compete and succeed.

Even with heightened efficiency and collaboration, many consumer goods organizations struggle to keep up with the increased pace and expanding breadth of retail demands that morph and evolve daily. With outdated practices and outmoded models, some companies have begun to view their customer management resources as being on the brink of collapse as they attempt to engage leading retailers. Restricted and limited by their current system, they are overwhelmed and under-resourced.

Manufacturers today need to adopt different approaches that consider retailer and shopper perspectives about products, mix, volumes, and other factors. It is no longer enough to work off historical performance to aid in forecasting. Leveraging machine learning and AI, revenue growth management teams can easily simulate and model alternative growth opportunities and better balance revenue and profits against volume, penetration, and market share.  

Proctor & Gamble took this lesson to heart when they began to approach their digital transformation, moving their manufacturing processes to the Microsoft Cloud—P&G’s incredible digital manufacturing journey:

“Together with Microsoft, P&G intends to make manufacturing smarter by enabling scalable predictive quality, predictive maintenance, controlled release, touchless operations, and manufacturing sustainability optimization—which has not been done at this scale in the manufacturing space to date. At P&G, data and technology are at the heart of our business strategy and are helping create superior consumer experiences. This first-of-its-kind co-innovation agreement will digitize and integrate data to increase quality, efficiency, and sustainable use of resources to help deliver those superior experiences.”—Vittorio Cretella, Chief Information Officer, P&G.

Navigating to a better bottom line

Like P&G, all manufacturers can use greater forecast quality and agility through digital. They need to create a proactive inventory strategy—driven by real-time monitoring at the stock keeping unit (SKU) level, creating standardization across the organization, and including a central operational process library, redesigned workforce compositions, and more.  

Brands need to identify, measure, and monitor both channel and customer “cost-to-serve” metrics, critical to enabling fact-based decision-making and decide how best to carry out customer management initiatives. Additionally, advanced analytics allows companies to produce results that can be implemented within the customer’s operating model constraints.

Leaders in consumer goods manufacturing must recognize that due to the shifts in consumer behaviors, some of their retailer partners are thriving and that better-aligned metrics and intelligent processes, along with closer collaboration with retail partners, can be a powerful tool to address challenges that the “new normal” has created.

Get the solutions you need

By bringing together data, insights, inputs, engagements, and other metrics—manufacturers can harness powerful, customized tools to consolidate their data pipeline, implement automation plans, and manage their data flow to drive improved performance and more.

Learn more

To learn more, visit Microsoft solutions for the consumer goods industry.

The post Digital Imperatives for Market Tectonics in the world of Consumer Goods appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Certainly, a lot has changed in two years. For example, take a look at this 1500-square-foot store that is unlike any food market most shoppers have ever seen. Retailers have been implementing cloud and edge infrastructure and creating connectivity to enable a modular approach. Stores are truly the new hubs for retail operations. They are points of purchase, fulfillment centers, and experience centers. These shifts are impacting how stores are laid out, what is on their shelves, and what’s expected of employees. 

In the store of the future, each store acts independently and swiftly improves and updates the experiences it offers to consumers while providing all the benefits of being a part of a larger retail ecosystem.

Infrastructure view

To make this possible, successful retailers must build a digital foundation for their stores that acts as a modular, flexible framework. This infrastructure framework leverages the same hardware and software assets to deploy multiple use cases in the store. It enables retailers to balance multiple internal initiatives, integrate point solutions, and coordinate technology capabilities such as edge-architecture computing. We find that many if not all retailers prefer adopting a hybrid approach in lighting up store services. Whether it is due to distance from the cloud, networking constraints, cost-saving, or maintenance considerations, many retailers choose to have edge capabilities to allow the store services to produce outcomes at a faster rate. Coupled with the need to interact with on-premises devices such as cameras and the internet of things (IoT) devices, some edge pre-processing skills are also needed.

COVID-19 taught retailers that we don’t know what the future brings. Their north star is to have a modular, solid, and secure platform where they can plug and play as needed. Retailers want a holistic view of a store, where all parts—from endcap to cash register, and out-of-stock detections—play together in real-time, orchestrating data, and putting it to work. And all of this is at the retail associate’s fingertips. Retail customers need a blueprint to lay over their store footprint to define and map Horizon 1 to Horizon 3 scenarios. They need an orchestration platform where all solutions (homegrown and purchased) can be implemented and interact with each other, and most importantly, orchestrate the data and insights across all point solutions.  

Evolve the business strategy

These changes are more than just technology. In this fluid environment, management must reconsider store operational and financial boundaries, so that profit and loss (P&L) and operating cost elements are managed and balanced and take into account each store’s contribution towards online fulfillment, storage, brand building, returns, and marketing.

Whether it’s a fully autonomous store, scan-and-go, smart shelves, smart carts and baskets, curbside pickup, or ultra-fast delivery, technology is a means, not an end, to your store of the future. It is the how not the why. The “why” must align with your business model and your competitive advantage to justify the investment. In our opinion, the fastest way to unlock the value of the store is to have a deliberate data monetization strategy.

Learn more in our recent blog: 5 keys to the frictionless store of tomorrow.

Support the changing role of the store associate

Store associates are part of the transformation as well. They’re expected to nimbly work with new tools and understand the data to support their customers and support the increased efficiency of stores. To do this, stores need to reduce task redundancy and provide education, training, and best-in-class tools to communicate.

Leading retailers invest in empowering, engaging, and continuously re-training the frontline as they automate routine tasks and manual processes. Retail leadership is finding new ways to shift towards employee-centric business models to ensure they are the employer of choice for many while simplifying processes, reducing effort, and increasing productivity. During this time when talent is hard to find and even harder to retain, retailers must find a way to meet the expectations of both employees and customers. Retailers need their workforce to be digital, data-fluent, and diverse.

Reframe. Your customer is the only channel

Once you start to leverage data, the magic begins. You know who each customer is, whether they are online or in the store. You start to personalize, engage with customers smoothly in the store, and consider these use cases that materially support the customer while also providing data to the stores that can increase their hyper-connectivity:

• Automated and frictionless checkout. Microsoft Global ISV partner AiFi has now deployed the largest network of autonomous stores across an array of verticals such as grocery stores, universities, and sports venues.
• Omnichannel customer service.
• Intelligent store returns and recycling.
• Display tech for personalized engagement.
• Mobile tech for personalized engagement.
• Digital shopper engagement.
• Customized manufacturing for in-store personalization. 

Digital and physical shopping no longer exists in silos. Instead, shopping has become a completely connected experience.

Become hyper-connected by placing data at the center  

Since most of the business value from your store of the future strategy will come from data monetization, your data stack is the foundation for digital transformation. You need to consider how to operationalize data, and how to take data and bring it to the right places. For example, data needs to reach your employees’ hands. There are countless sources of data that can enrich use cases that impact product availability to consumers, including digital shelves, inventory management, and returns. The data has to be effectively everywhere, secured, and managed well everywhere. And it must be put to work. That means data stores need to be available wherever they are needed—whether on-premises or in a cloud provider. This includes a portfolio of relational, non-relational, and other data-relevant technologies for building applications where they are needed. 

Hyper-connected retailers realize that we have long passed the point where developer teams can write code that anticipates every situation. There simply isn’t enough developer talent to sustainably develop and maintain an exponentially growing codebase. Instead, hyper-connected retailers develop their data platform strategy to include data models, connectors, data governance, and AI. AI success is predicated on connected and integrated data sets, and AI becomes the new code. 

Examples of use cases:

• Digital shelf displays.
• Electronic shelf labels and live personalized pricing.
• Shelf management technology.
• Real-time inventory tracking.

Your smart store—a store where you can change the customer experience overnight—is within your reach. It requires placing employees, customers, and data at the core, to feed a dynamic retail platform that provides insights and analytics that powers our core business processes.

Learn more

Follow Microsoft Retail on Twitter and visit our Microsoft Cloud for Retail website to get the latest on how Microsoft and our partners are helping retailers deliver a seamless experience across the entire shopper journey.

The post Create your smart store of tomorrow, today appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

I would like to share five keys to thinking about creating your store-of-the-future and frictionless shopping experiences for consumers. The future of stores is bright, and it must start today.

1. Frictionless stores must be part of a larger business strategy 

Whether it’s a fully autonomous store, scan-and-go, smart shelves, smart carts and baskets, curbside pickup, or ultra-fast delivery, technology is a means, not an end, to your store of the future. It is the how, not the why. The “why” must align with your business model and your competitive advantage, to justify the investment.

2. Data monetization is where much of the value of frictionless stores will come from

Your business strategy for frictionless stores will need to consider every point of data in a new way. My favorite way to think about it is the example of shipping costs in the world of e-commerce. Some retailers think of shipping costs as a cost to be minimized. Other retailers think of it as an investment to gain invaluable insight into my family’s household consumption patterns. Retailers that encourage me to order Tide pods as soon as I run out versus persuading me to build a larger basket to save on shipping, can monetize that data in a variety of ways. They can build a retail media business, or they can put that data to work to generate offers and promotions for me at the exact right time, increasing the existing revenue or just protecting it from competitors.

Similar to what we saw with correlating shipping data to consumption patterns, the incredible number of insights generated by physical stores can be leveraged to build predictive models for demand forecasting, workforce optimization, and energy optimization to improve store layout and planograms—the list of benefits goes on and on. All these improvements must accrue to building your competitive advantage. If your brand’s key value is going above and beyond in customer service, then the investments in frictionless checkout should enable you to re-allocate associates’ time to customer service.

Data monetization is a business strategy for long-term gain powered by technology. It’s not a technology strategy.

3. The focus on creating frictionless experiences for consumers in the store must be equal to the focus on removing friction from your business processes

That’s the only way it will work at scale and in the long term. What do I mean by that?

Just like you can’t have a great customer experience without a great employee experience, you can’t get business value from new consumer experiences in the store unless you create connections to your business processes, enable the flow of data, develop insights, and inject the insight into workflows—be its inventory management, returns management, retail media, marketing, planning store layouts and more.  

I call this frictionless inside and out.

4. There is no one definition of frictionless experience for the consumer nor for the retailer

I have a confession to make. I don’t mind waiting in grocery lines, chatting with the store associates as I think, daydream, and glance at the covers of the magazines I won’t buy. Also, the pandemic keeps reminding us that we don’t know what capabilities could become essential almost overnight and for what target audience.  

Retailers are taking many approaches to enable frictionless shopping experiences in their stores, and there won’t be “one size fits all.” Depending on store format, locations, and geographies, you might have just-walk-out, leverage smart baskets or smart carts, implement ‘scan-and-go’ or some combination of them.

Startups and retailers are driving incredible innovation and thinking of things we don’t know we really want yet. It wasn’t that long ago that two-day delivery seemed like the height of convenience luxury. Watch this Microsoft for Startups program on-demand recording, Transforming Retail with Autonomous Stores, featuring four amazing companies changing retail: AiFi Inc., Storekey, Shopic, and Explorium.

5. Your store of the future is a business strategy that requires digital DNA

Reimagining the customer experience in the store is not about point solutions. Companies that take that approach are doomed to chase the next best thing and may never see a positive return on their investment. You must prioritize making all the solutions work together to drive true business value for your shareholders and amazing unified, omnichannel, and omnipresent experiences for your customers.

You need to build a business and digital agility powered by digital culture to continually source, evaluate, and deploy solutions from innovators. And these solutions must be orchestrated with the rest of your ecosystem, adding value to your business processes, and preparing you for what’s next. And if there’s one thing we know, there will always be something new just around the corner. This means retailers need an ecosystem approach that ensures that every solution works in an orchestrated fashion.  

Learn more

I contend that the store of the future is boring. It’s not about guessing the next ‘must have’ capability. Your store of the future will update shopping experiences overnight, just like our phones do. Are you ready to make this happen?

Follow Microsoft Retail on Twitter and visit our Microsoft Cloud for Retail website to get the latest on how Microsoft and our partners are helping retailers deliver a seamless experience across the entire shopper journey.

The post 5 keys to the frictionless store of tomorrow appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

While all of us experienced incredible disruption in the past year, retailers and brands emerged as one of the frontline heroes that kept us fed and alive. From farm to fork, from source to store—goods and products still had to flow. Meanwhile, the expectations increased, and many of these products were now expected to arrive directly to our doors. Imagine directing the global flow of goods from your living room. Imagine if your manufacturing plants now had to shift to protective gear and sanitizer production in a matter of days. Imagine if your store associates transitioned to online customer care agents, as customer questions exploded overnight. Retailers and consumer goods brands do not have to imagine. They lived it. Pre-pandemic, two Unilever factories produced about 700,000 hand sanitizer units each month. By May 2020, over sixty Unilever factories were manufacturing about 100 million units per month, while keeping factory employees safe and healthy. Read the Unilever Microsoft case study

As one CEO put it: “What keeps me up at night isn’t supply chain logistics or sales. It’s the well-being of my workforce—because I know our company lives and dies by them.”

There is a lot being written about resilience, well-being, and burnout. Jennifer Eggers, the author of “Resilience: It’s Not About Bouncing Back,” describes resilience as the power to be energized and elevated by disruption. Microsoft WorkLab shares that personal resilience requires agency, compartmentalization, and joy. Mayo Clinic research found that employees need to be invigorated by 20 percent of every day’s work activities.¹  A joyful 20 percent of an employee’s day provides them the energy for the other 80 percent. With each percentage point below that, the risk of burnout rises by 1 percent. And a beautiful thing is that we are all different and find joy in activities that are unique to us. For me, 20 percent of time spent learning something new and mentoring my team is the joy that keeps on giving. Read this Microsoft WorkLab article.

If personal wellbeing results in productivity and resilience, and the key to resilience is 20 percent of joyous moments during the workday, what steps can we take to recharge our batteries?

Grow each employee’s sense of purpose

Nobody feels a sense of purpose when they engage in avoidable repetitive tasks, such as typing in data that could be scanned, or manually counting inventory. Productivity increases overall company profitability, but it also increases the value we feel in our work and sense of purpose, which leads to joy and resilience. An executive from Walgreen Boots Alliance said it best, “Having the tools, resources and technology to do your job more efficiently and effectively definitely makes employees happy” Watch this Microsoft video. Below are examples of consumer goods companies growing their employees’ sense of purpose:

• Mars Petcare redefined how it upskills its frontline associates to handle day-to-day preventative maintenance on the company’s pet food manufacturing machinery and equipment. When COVID-19 struck globally, Mars Petcare immediately developed what was internally nicknamed its COVID-19 Playbook, to do whatever was required to keep associates safe and operations running at nearly full capacity. My yellow lab, Lucy, would like to formally thank Mars Petcare for ensuring her Greenies kept on coming without interruptions. Read the Mars Microsoft case study
• Land O’Lakes partnered with Microsoft to pioneer innovations that support farmers and rural communities through AI-based tools, and improved broadband. We all benefit when farmers have access to real-time information, and spend their time and energy efficiently to feed the world. Read Land O’Lakes Microsoft case study.

Design for employee experiences and well-being

Raise your hand if you tried to buy, or bought, a household appliance in the past year. Then, consider how many frontline manufacturing or store employees started their most recent job during the pandemic as brands rushed to fill the unexpected, elevated demand. With the influx of new employees, employee on-boarding experiences and initiatives for employee well-being, such as one-on-one check-ins have never been more critical.

The 2020 LinkedIn Global Work Trends report highlighted the importance of employee experience, as well as the demand for people analytics to improve employee experiences. Microsoft recently announced the availability of the Microsoft Viva Employee Experience platform, or Viva EXP. Microsoft Viva keeps employees connected with their company mission and sense of purpose (remember our first point—we need to know our purpose). With Viva EXP, employees connect with one another and access role-relevant resources. It gives managers additional ways to not only identify signs of burnout but also ways to mitigate it. Training, a company knowledge base, and other resources, become easier to develop and find. I personally look forward to the integration of Headspace into the Microsoft Viva Insights app, to grow how often, and regularly, I have daily mindfulness moments. Read 2020 LinkedIn Global Work Trends report.

• Unilever, a global consumer goods leader with more than 400 brands and 155,000 employees, has a long history of taking its employees’ wellbeing very seriously. The company adopted Microsoft Viva to provide individuals, managers, and leaders with data-driven, privacy-protected visibility into how work patterns affect employee wellbeing and productivity. These insights help Unilever improve the employee experience and promote greater work-life balance. Read Unilever Microsoft case study.

Reinvigorate joy@work through new skills

People who are challenged, thrive. LinkedIn research has found that 94 percent of employees are more likely to stay in their companies if they continuously improve their skills. Can you create a learning-purpose-joy pipeline in your company?

One year after Microsoft launched a global skills initiative aimed at helping people acquire the digital skills needed in a COVID-19-impacted economy, we are extending our commitment. The effort maps in-demand jobs to required skills, provides access to learning paths, enables people to earn low-cost certifications, and provides job-seeking tools. You would not be surprised to find out that among top 5 most utilized in-demand, role-based LinkedIn Learning pathways last year were for customer service specialists and sales development representatives. Read about the Microsoft global skills initiative.

Microsoft Viva also enables retailers and brands to build a learning culture by simplifying how employees access LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, Learning Management Systems, third-party content providers, and each company’s own content. Continuous learning not only provides employees with new skills and keeps them engaged, it also provides growth opportunities.

• For the first time in its 175-year history, Danish brewery Carlsberg offered live, online training sessions that reached employees across Asia, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe. The success of this training initiative has led to a novel approach to growing the company’s employees’ skills, no matter where they work. Read Carlsberg case study.
• Swedish-Swiss multinational ABB focuses on robotics, power, heavy electrical equipment, and automation technology. “The developers who take the Microsoft training tell us they now have the industry-leading insights and tools to apply AI to our products to create entirely new offerings,” says Marc Leroux, Head of Client Success at ABB. “They understand how to build for the future, how to deliver the most value for our customers, and how to bring those benefits to scale. This is huge for the future of our company.” Read ABB case study.

The opportunity to pay back our frontline heroes has never been clearer. We owe them the opportunity to do their best and succeed through purpose, wellbeing, and JOY. Remember our formula: Personal well-being results in productivity and resilience, and the key to resilience is 20 percent of joyous moments fueled by learning and growth.

Learn how Microsoft empowers every Consumer Goods company to achieve more and enables their employees with the right tools.

¹ JAMA and Archives Journals. “Physician Burnout: Time Spent On Meaningful Pursuits May Cut Risk.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 May 2009.

The post Ode to joy at work—Recharging our resilience with focus on employee experience and wellbeing appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

With shoppers returning to the stores, retail investments are flowing to omnichannel priorities to digitize stores, support frontline workforce across all channels, connect inventories across platforms, and accelerate fulfillment.

Recent research conducted by The Economist shows that retailer respondents saw the pace of, and investment in, digital transformation accelerate during the pandemic.¹ Improving the customer experience was the industry’s biggest driver of digital transformation and investment. Retailers are developing, acquiring, and utilizing in-store technologies that give shoppers a new level of convenience, a more personalized experience, and a more consistent offline and online experience.

In 2021, Walmart Canada chose SES-imagotag Retail IoT Cloud platform, the global leader in shelf-edge solutions, to bring accurate pricing and product information to the shelves in their 328 stores—with an eye towards providing Walmart Canada’s customers with consistent prices and promotions whether they are shopping or checking out online, or in person. The SES-imagotag VUSION IoT Cloud platform runs on the Microsoft Azure IoT platform.

“At Walmart Canada, we’re on a mission to innovate and provide the best possible shopping experience. We’ve accelerated and prioritized digitizing the environment in a way that removes friction for our customers and associates. Part of this effort is rolling out electronic shelf labels to more Walmart Canada stores across the country,” Sam Wankowski, Chief Operating Officer of Walmart Canada.

Microsoft WorkLab research shares that the key to employee wellbeing and resilience is a sense of purpose and control over their work, which grows when employees engage in fewer avoidable manual tasks, and engage in higher-value tasks that increase their sense of purpose at work. One example of higher-value tasks is helping customers. The SES-imagotag digital store shelf technology enables centralized price monitoring and managing, which in turn helps the retailer improve safety, provide consistent and timely pricing and promotions, and optimize product assortment in the stores. It improves employee satisfaction by freeing up time from cumbersome low value-added tasks and allowing them to focus on customer service and merchandizing tasks.

“At Microsoft, we’re deeply committed to connecting the end-to-end retail experience. We look forward to partnering with SES-imagotag in the rollout of their VUSION solution, built on the Microsoft Cloud, to Walmart stores throughout Canada. The rollout will enable Walmart Canada to boost in-store efficiency as well as provide accurate pricing at the shelf ultimately delivering a better experience for customers and employees in their stores.” Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, WW Consumer Goods and Retail Industries at Microsoft.

During the pandemic, retail played a huge role in ensuring continuity and resilience, providing customers with access to food and other essential products and services, and offering employment and wages to a huge global workforce. Many customers shifted their spending to e-commerce channels, in the biggest test to date of the sector’s work on digital transformation. The SES-imagotag solution, based on the Microsoft Azure platform, is helping Walmart move forward with its digital vision.

“We are delighted to be working with Walmart Canada. They are by far a champion in the industry and a leading example for other big-box retailers in need of in-store innovations. This is an exciting opportunity for us to deliver our VUSION Retail IoT Cloud platform that will allow them to remain agile and competitive in a very dynamic market,” says Philippe Bottine, CEO North America, SES-imagotag.

Learn more about how SES-imagotag helps retailers transform their physical stores into high-value digital assets, growing automation, and making organizations more data-driven and connected.

Learn how Microsoft empowers every retailer to achieve more to improve customer experience and enable their employees with the right tools.

¹ Economist Intelligence Unit research.

The post Physical meets digital on Walmart Canada shelves, with SES-imagotag IoT technology appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.