This time last year, I was having conversations with retailers around the world who couldn’t wait to tap the seemingly unlimited potential of AI. For many of them, though, translating that promise into bottom-line impact took time. While many retailers were already deploying AI tools to drive increased revenue and reimagine cumbersome business processes, most were still figuring out where to begin and how specifically AI could help them gain an edge in the market. Today, the conversations I have are more sharply focused on identifying AI use cases that can help retailers grow revenue and increase profitability across the value chain. To achieve these goals, retailers are beginning to develop a rich agentic world marked by a vivid tapestry of AI agents. In addition to agents for app development, compliance, information security, and other broad, cross-organizational business process needs, retailers are already deploying custom agentic solutions to improve core retail scenarios, like shopping and store operations. A new era of AI is here.

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This year at NRF 2025, we’re excited and proud to demonstrate how our data solutions, Copilots, and customizable retail agents are helping to lead this shift across every retail segment. We’re just as eager to showcase how easy we’ve made it for retailers to maximize the success of their AI investments on the Microsoft Copilot and AI stack—the most advanced platform for creating AI solutions that drive retail growth and profitability. Used by over 100,000 organizations worldwide, Microsoft Copilot Studio offers over 1,400 prebuilt plugins and connectors to integrate all of your data, APIs, and other third-party services. And with the unveiling of Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, organizations can simplify and scale their AI workloads with confidence. The same AI platform that we build our Microsoft Copilots on is now available to retailers. With the most versatile stack of AI development tools, we are committed to helping our customers push the frontiers of what’s possible with agentic retail and be ready for whatever the future may hold.   

In short, our mission is to help our customers become Retail Ready.  

What does it mean to be Retail Ready?  

In today’s rapidly evolving retail landscape, being “Retail Ready” means more than just keeping up with trends. It’s about being forward-thinking and making smart technology investments with the power to grow the topline while improving the bottom line. Together with our partners, Microsoft Cloud for Retail provides AI that is built for the future, ready now. With our deep customer relationships and comprehensive partner network, we are uniquely positioned to help retailers across all segments find new value with AI. Our solutions enable retailers to transform the shopper journey, empower the retail workforce of the future, create agile, sustainable supply chains, and unlock the potential of their data.

Personalized Shopping Agent improves the shopping experience for consumers with a context-aware conversational assistant to help them find the perfect products for their needs. Store Operations Agent puts safe, company-governed generative AI in the hands of store associates so they can spend less time searching for product information or answers to store policies and procedures and more time helping customers. And retail data solutions in Microsoft Fabric give retailers the power to unify and enrich a wide range of retail data sources, enabling real-time, actionable insights.

To learn more about how Microsoft’s retail agents and AI solutions are helping customer become Retail Ready, read AI-powered retail: Elevating customer experience and operational efficiency.

Transform the shopper journey

In today’s highly competitive retail landscape, personalization has become the standard. Bain Consulting Group estimates that retailers can increase revenue by 5% to 10% through AI personalization tools.³ But the stakes can be high. As the technology becomes more common, customers are beginning to expect tailored experiences and reacting more strongly to ineffective personalization. To deliver the optimal customer journey, retailers are increasingly turning to generative AI-powered solutions that help them answer shopper inquiries, manage virtual shopping carts, tailor marketing and product recommendations, deliver enhanced search capabilities, elevate customer service interactions, and more. By engaging with customers early in their shopping journey, conversational commerce agents and other AI personalization tools are boosting customer satisfaction and driving top-line growth.

• A prime example of the success of gen AI-powered conversational commerce is Walmart’s integration of OpenAI’s GPT-4 into its voice order and Text to Shop features. This innovation allows customers to search for items, place orders, and schedule pickups or deliveries with human-like, interactive responses throughout the entire buying journey.
• Recognizing that up to 80% of tire purchases start with a visit to a retailer’s website, Canadian Tire Corporation built a conversational commerce app using OpenAI Service and OpenAI’s GPT-4. Named CeeTee, the app helps customers identify the right tires for their needs early in the shopping journey, increasing opportunities for conversion and boosting brand loyalty.
• Retailers like Natuzzi and Gardens Alive are leveraging Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Dynamics 365 Customer Service to transform customer service with generative AI. These solutions enable personalized customer journeys by answering inquiries, tailoring recommendations, and streamlining operations, creating seamless self- and assisted-service experiences that win customer loyalty.
• The Dynamics 365 platform is enabling gourmet chocolatier Venchi to deliver a personalized omnichannel shopping experience to customers and improve clienteling at the point of sale.

Join Kathleen Mitford, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Global Industry Marketing on Monday, January 13, 2025 on the Big Ideas stage at NRF 2025 for Transform the shopper journey to learn more from Thilina Gunasinghe, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Bath and Body Works, Fabio Tormen, Chief Information Officer at Venchi, and Kathie Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer at Sitecore.  

Empower the retail workforce of the future  

At Microsoft, we’re dedicated to developing AI tools that enrich the employee experience with the access and insights they need to deliver exceptional customer interactions. Whether through the use of our Store Operations Agent or through a custom partner-developed implementation, retailers now have the power to elevate their retail workforce, making them more agile and responsive to customer needs, and employees are ready for AI. The 2024 Work Trends Index found that 84% say AI helps them be more creative and focus on the most important work.²  

I’m really excited about the unique and innovative ways our customers are deploying AI to empower their retail workforces. Here are a few notable examples:  

• Swedish retailer Lindex custom designed its Lindex Copilot to understand store associate roles and responsibilities and provide tailored guidance that helps employees deliver contextually relevant and personalized support.
• With their custom ChatCTC employee digital assistant, Canadian Tire Corporation is saving its 3,000+ corporate employees 30 to 60 minutes a day, freeing them from mundane tasks to focus on higher-value customer experiences.
• Using Store Operations Agent, employees at leading Nordic retailer Kappahl can now use generative AI to securely surface product information and store policies and procedures in seconds, increasing store associate productivity and upleveling the shopping experience for customers. 
• MediaMarktSaturn’s MyBuddy voice-navigated in-ear AI agent—developed in partnership with Accenture/Avanade and leveraging Personalized Shopping Agent—enables store associates to “shop” the store catalog for the best products for the customers. This solution boosts customer confidence and enhances employees’ product knowledge to make the most of conversion opportunities at the point of sale.   

Join me on Sunday, January 12, 2025 on the Big Ideas stage at NRF 2025 for Retail ready: AI built for the future, ready now, to hear from Walmart and Aaron Berg, Vice President, Digital Transformation at Walmart, and Cari Covent, Head of AI and Emerging Technology at Canadian Tire about the opportunities and challenges for organizations bringing generative AI to their workforces. 

Create an agile, sustainable supply chain

Reducing out-of-stocks isn’t the only way retailers can get ahead. Many retailers are discovering the benefits of a more sustainable supply chain, from increased customer satisfaction to growing supply chain resilience. Not surprisingly, IDC Retail Insights found that supply network optimization was the second-fastest growing digital transformation use case among retailers in the Americas, with a compound annual spending growth rate of 21.6%.⁴ 

Let’s look at a couple of the top supply chain focused retailers using AI. 

• The Netherlands’ largest grocer, Albert Heijn, set out to reduce food waste by (among other things) improving the efficiency and precision of its supply chain. Using generative AI tools that help food arrive to the point of sale at maximum freshness and dynamically discounting prices to encourage shoppers to buy before that food is no longer fresh, Albert Heijn is helping save more than 250,000 kilos of food from going to waste.
• SPAR ICS, the independent IT unit of SPAR Austria Group, created an award-winning, AI-enabled demand forecasting system. With the new system, SPAR Austria Group is optimizing its supply chain and achieving 90 percent inventory prediction accuracy.
• Leading Australian retailer Coles has launched a five-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to expand Coles’ world-leading edge computing platform, Intelligent Edge Backbone (IEB). Coles and Microsoft will co-innovate to explore how the IEB can connect and manage IoT devices across Coles’ supply chain and into stores to advance Coles’ sustainability goals, improve customer experiences, reduce stock loss, and boost team member productivity and safety.

Join Gina Claxton, Microsoft CVP, US Retail and Consumer Goods, Avanade, and 1-800-Flowers.com on Monday, January 13th on the Big Ideas stage for Selling roses: Avanade presents – the 1-800-Flowers story to learn how the business has flourished by staying agile and innovative, moving early to thrive in the .com era, and now doing the same in the AI age with the help of Microsoft and Avanade. 

Unlock the potential of your data

For retailers seeking to understand their customers, it’s hard to overstate the value of a data platform that enables them to leverage all of their data while minimizing risk through robust security and governance. In their 2024 Global Retail Survey, IDC Retail Insights saw data emerge as “the main internal concern for retail organizations as leveraging data for operational efficiency and customer experience personalization becomes key to competitiveness.”⁵ Conversely, the AI opportunities are seemingly limitless for the retailers who are able to unify and secure their retail data and turn it into customer value.  

Here’s how some of our customers are using Microsoft’s data platform and AI solutions to unlock the potential of their data: 

• The ASOS team is using Azure AI Foundry to develop custom AI solutions that pull and embed knowledge of trends as they surface, enabling them to curate and share items with shoppers based on a deep knowledge of the latest trends.  
• Saucony optimized customer acquisition during Black Friday and Cyber Monday via a custom AI model developed in partnership with Yobi, leading to a strong surge in new customers in just weeks.
• With the help of the Microsoft Fabric data platform, Chanel is deploying generative AI securely for critical tasks like content creation, personalization, quality monitoring, supply chain management, real-time translations, and sales aftercare.  
• Microsoft Azure’s suite of tools helped Brazilian retail chain Fast Shop prepare their data estate for AI transformation via improved data reliability, faster data delivery, enhanced data governance, security, and self-service access for its lines of business. 

Join Keith Mercier, Microsoft Vice President, WW Retail and CG Industry on Tuesday, January 14, 2025 on the Big Ideas stage at NRF 2025 for The future of AI in retail to hear how Microsoft, Lenovo, and Intel are equipping customers and partners with the solutions they need to implement AI at the edge. 

Eager to learn how you can become Retail Ready? Visit the Microsoft booth at NRF 2025 to see our AI demos in action, including hands-on experiences in the Copilot Agent Zone. And download Microsoft’s 2025 retail report The AI Advantage: How retailers are shaping customer experiences with data-driven insights, produced in conjunction with Cascade Insights.  

Learn more  

• Read about how Microsoft is empowering responsible AI practices.  
• Attend a Microsoft AI Tour event in a city near you.  
• Establish an AI Center of Excellence. 
• Follow Microsoft Cloud on LinkedIn.
• The Future of Retail with Dynamics 365 AI-Powered ERP and Service solutions
• AI-powered retail: Elevating customer experience and operational efficiency

¹ Yahoo Finance, Walmart is the 2024 Yahoo Finance Company of the Year, December 2024.

² Microsoft, 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, May 2024.  

³ Bain & Company, Retail and Gen AI: Now Scale Those Terrific Early Returns, May 2024.   

⁴ IDC, Retail Insights’ Industry Digital Transformation Market Forecast, 2024, doc #US50764024, July 2024.

⁵ IDC, Retail Insights’ Global Retail Survey, 2024: Findings and Implications, doc #US51558623, November 2024. 

The post Retail Ready: Agentic AI built for the future of retail—ready now appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Microsoft Cloud for Retail

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Around the world I’m hearing from retailers who are excited about the potential of AI. The most common question I was asked by retail executives in 2023 was where to start to find the most value. Retailers are looking for ways to begin working with generative AI that will allow them to learn quickly and scale effectively. I’m excited to share new tools that help retailers more easily incorporate AI across the shopper journey. Microsoft has lowered the barriers to building generative AI solutions that improve shopping experiences, support store associates, and enhance retail media campaigns. Through new Microsoft Copilot capabilities in Microsoft products, copilot templates for building applications, and retail data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft makes AI implementation more accessible to retailers of all sizes. Retailers can now more easily take the first steps with generative AI.

Let’s look at these new offerings in more detail:

Shopper value

Delight shoppers with more personalized experiences. Retailers can use a copilot template on Azure OpenAI Service to build more individualized shopping experiences across their existing web sites and applications (in public preview).

With applications built using the copilot template, shoppers can engage in helpful and natural conversations that guide them to precisely the goods they need, while saving them time. Generative AI produces experiences that leave shoppers with the confidence they have found the best items. Microsoft Cloud for Retail copilot template pairs the breadth of expressiveness found in a Large Language Model (LLM) with deep knowledge about a retailer’s catalog and expertise. This new approach to commerce comes from advances in generative AI, all built with Responsible AI principles in mind.

Enhance shopping through personalizing marketing with new Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (coming soon to public preview).

Our AI-first experience enables marketers to describe the desired marketing outcome in natural language and let generative AI suggest, build, launch, and monitor campaigns in real-time. Transform marketing workflows and improve campaign ROI by uniting business data with Copilot features that deliver outcomes faster and more efficiently. These Copilot capabilities will be available in preview in the first quarter of 2024, with general availability by the third quarter of 2024. Existing Dynamics 365 Customer Insights customers can sign up now for the early access public preview program.

Store associate value

Empower store associates to improve productivity, job satisfaction and customer experiences. Using a copilot template on Azure OpenAI Service, retailers can infuse AI into store operations, better supporting associates (in public preview).

Our copilot template for store operations helps build a generative AI-powered LLM based assistant that enables Q&A from store documentation such as store operating procedures and natural language-based task creation (form filling). Store associates can use natural language to quickly and easily access the information they need in the flow of work, increasing their productivity and efficiency. With this copilot template, retailers can more easily build experiences that enable store employees to quickly get answers to their questions on store operating procedures, HR policies, and benefits. In addition, store associates and managers can save time through natural-language prompt-enabled task creation and assignment.

Using the copilot template, in combination with Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dataverse capabilities, retailers are empowered to seamlessly connect data across multiple lines of business systems to generate AI driven recommendations and actionable solutions that will help store associates make the right decisions.

Consumer brand value

Provide consumer goods brands with tools to auto-generate and edit campaigns with Retail Media Creative Studio (in preview).

Microsoft is introducing generative AI to the Microsoft Retail Media platform (powered by PromoteIQ) through the launch of Retail Media Creative Studio, a comprehensive, end-to-end banner ad creative solution tailored for retail media, available in preview starting in January 2024. With Retail Media Creative Studio, retailers can unlock new revenue with optimized retail media campaigns across multiple retail media channels, such as the retailer’s owned digital properties and across the open web. The solution optimizes banner campaign performance using AI-powered algorithms and delivers a more personalized shopping experience.

The data solutions providing AI value to all

Make the most of retail data to uncover insights that lead to better shopper journeys with retail data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (in public preview).

One of the greatest, if not the greatest, challenges retailers face today is the need to unify data from disparate systems in order to gain insights from it. We are very excited to offer this industry specific set of capabilities in Microsoft Fabric that enables retailers to accelerate time to insight generation by unifying, enriching, and modeling industry data in Fabric. With seamless data harmonization, cross-application analytics, and AI applications, retailers can unlock the full potential of their data and drive their business forward. By using Fabric, retailers can consolidate relevant retail data from multiple systems into a unified, governed hub providing a secure single source of truth for all data and analytics needs. And, with retail data solutions in Fabric, retailers can use the same copy of data without needing to move it from its original source.

Our connector with Sitecore OrderCloud means that data for three important areas: product, customer, and orders, has been mapped to our industry data model, reducing engineering effort and accelerating time to insights.

Across the Microsoft Cloud, retailers now have multiple options when applying AI to key business outcomes across the shopping journey. From building their own solutions to leveraging the copilot templates, Microsoft Cloud for Retail integrates with retailers’ existing systems, seamlessly connecting a retailer’s customers, employees, and data. In each industry, Microsoft builds unique assets to verticalize the Microsoft Cloud and enable a broad partner ecosystem. Built on a foundation of trust and Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles, retailers can safely and securely unlock productivity across their entire business with Microsoft Cloud for Retail.

See it all at NRF 2024 and beyond

According to AI adoption in Retail, the most recent research Microsoft commissioned with The Futurum Group, 87% of retail companies globally have implemented AI in their store operations. Clearly the adoption of AI is increasing as this new technology brings substantive rewards to organizations. Microsoft is here to connect with you, listen to your needs, and support developing your AI strategy. Learn more at the links below and reach out to a Microsoft representative at any time for conversation.

Join us to hear the latest on how Microsoft is helping customers by attending our sessions at NRF 2024 or listening on-demand after the event: 

• Retail Unlocked: Achieve more with Microsoft: Hosted by Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, Global Retail, Consumer Goods and Gaming industries, Microsoft. Sunday, January 14, 2024, from 1:00 PM to 1:30 PM Eastern Time.

Join this interactive session to hear about one retailer’s AI journey to date. Hosted by Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Retail, Consumer Goods & Gaming industries, Shelley Bransten, you’ll also learn about new AI-focused findings from Futurum Research and all new AI capabilities in Microsoft Cloud for Retail that will help power your AI transformation.

• Unlocking true customer-centricity: Optimizing touchpoints across the shopper journey with AI: Hosted by Kathleen Mitford, Corporate Vice President, Global Industry Marketing. Monday, January 15, 2024, from 11:45 AM to 12:15 PM Eastern Time.

Generative AI and large language models have captured the attention of executives across industries. While the technology’s use cases seem endless, smart retailers and brands must identify and prioritize the applications of generative AI that will be most valuable to their organization and partner with organizations who will treat their data with the highest privacy standards. Join us to hear how Microsoft is helping organizations large and small maximize their generative AI opportunities safely and responsibly.

• Unify your data to unlock AI opportunities: Hosted by Martin Kostal, General Manager, Microsoft Industry Clouds. Tuesday, January 16, 2024, from 1:00 PM to 1:45 PM Eastern Time.

Retailers are swimming in data all day. Even with sophisticated legacy technologies and cutting-edge data science, the majority of that data goes uncollected. Insights stay hidden—often in plain sight. But that’s starting to change. AI tools are enabling retailers to understand their customers, merchandising, supply chains, operations, and workforces better than ever before. Join us to hear about the myriad insights that retailers are drawing from newfound and increasingly precise data sources to run leaner, smarter stores.   

Additional Microsoft announcements at NRF 2024

• Read the Microsoft 365 blog to learn how to drive AI-enabled efficiency with Microsoft Teams for your retail frontline. 
• Read the blog from Martin Kostal, General Manager, Engineering, Microsoft Cloud for Retail.
• Read the Official Microsoft Blog, “Walmart unveils new generative AI-powered capabilities for shoppers and associates.”
• Read the official Microsoft press release “Microsoft unveils new generative AI and data solutions across the shopper journey, offering copilot experiences through Microsoft Cloud for Retail.” 

Learn more about implementing AI

• Read the blog “Unlock Retail Productivity with Power Platform and Dataverse” from Nirav Shah to learn how Dataverse and Microsoft Power Platform can help drive store associate productivity.
• Download the full Futurum Group research report.
• Stay informed about Microsoft Cloud for Retail.
• Follow Microsoft Cloud on LinkedIn. 

¹Retail reset: A new playbook for retail leaders, McKinsey & Company.

²IDC Infographic, sponsored by Microsoft, The Business Opportunity of AI, #US51315823, November 2023.

The post Microsoft introduces new capabilities that help retailers bring AI to the shopper journey and enhance store associate experiences appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

I invite you to join Microsoft at NRF 2024 to experience the next generation of AI and gain insights on how it’s already transforming retail—and learn about strategies you can use to embrace this wave of innovation.

Connect with Microsoft at NRF

There are many ways you can connect with us in-person at NRF. We look forward to seeing you!

• Visit our booth on level three at #4503.
  Conveniently located at the main entrance of the Exhibition Hall, immerse yourself in 29 innovative demos and experiences, meet and collaborate with Microsoft experts and our industry-leading partners on how you can leverage cutting-edge AI retail solutions.  
• Join us for our welcome reception.
  Welcome Reception on Sunday, January 12, 2024: Celebrate with our featured retailers and partners with an opportunity to connect over food, drinks, and networking, register now.
• Schedule a one-on-one meeting.
  Let your account representative know if you would like to schedule some time to meet with our product experts and Microsoft leadership, who are available to strategize and answer all your questions.

Big ideas sessions

We’re very excited to be hosting three sessions this year. We hope you stop by to hear the latest from Microsoft executives, and their featured panel guests. Mark the sessions on your schedule:

• Retail Unlocked: Achieve more with Microsoft: Hosted by Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, Global Retail, Consuer Goods and Gaming Industries on Sunday, January 14, 2024, from 1:00 to 1:30 PM EST. Join this interactive session to hear about one retailer’s AI journey to date. Hosted by Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Retail, Consumer Goods and Gaming Industries, Shelley Bransten, you’ll also learn about new AI-focused findings from Futurum Research and all new AI capabilities in Microsoft Cloud for Retail that will help power your AI transformation.
• Unlocking true customer-centricity: optimizing touchpoints across the shopper journey with AI: Hosted by Kathleen Mitford, Corporate Vice President, Global Industry Marketing on Monday, January 15, 2024, from 11:45 to 12:15 PM EST. Generative AI and large language models have captured the attention of executives across industries. While the technology’s use cases seem endless, smart retailers and brands must identify and prioritize the applications of generative AI that will be most valuable to their organization and partner with organizations who will treat their data with the highest privacy standards. Join us to hear how Microsoft is helping organizations large and small maximize their generative AI opportunities safely and responsibly.
• Unify your data to unlock AI opportunities: Hosted by Satish Thomas, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Industry Clouds on Tuesday, January 16, 2024, from 1:00 to 1:45 PM EST. Retailers are swimming in data every day. Even with sophisticated legacy technologies and cutting-edge data science, the majority of that data goes uncollected. Insights stay hidden—often in plain sight. But that’s starting to change. AI tools are enabling retailers to understand their customers, merchandising, supply chains, operations, and workforces better than ever before. Join us to hear about the myriad insights that retailers are drawing from newfound and increasingly precise data sources to run leaner, smarter stores. 

Showcasing transformation with our partners

Let’s shine a special spotlight on our partners and their collaboration with Microsoft at NRF. The remarkable speed at which our partners have incorporated generative AI, utilizing Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, is reshaping the retail landscape. Witness their impressive transformations and explore live demonstrations at our booth. Dive into the innovative solutions presented by partners who are seamlessly integrating Microsoft Cloud for Retail. Join us for engaging demo by 1M Robotics, showcasing autonomous robotics designed to enhance omnichannel, frictionless retail experiences. Along with Adobe, Accenture | Avanade, AiFi, Blue Yonder, and Sitecore, all harnessing the power of the Microsoft platform. Our ongoing collaboration with Sony highlights our commitment to a dynamic ecosystem, where we closely collaborate with partners to envision and bring to life the future solutions that retailers will rely on. And we are excited to welcome the new global payment partnership with Nuve, to deliver leading payment experiences for customers of its products, solutions, and services across many of its key markets. 

A big shout-out to all the partners featured in our booth at NRF:

• 1M Robotics
• Accenture | Avanade
• Adobe
• AiFi
• Blue Yonder
• Capgemini
• Cooler Screens
• EPAM
• Fractal
• FASHABLE
• Nielsen IQ
• SES-imagotag
• Sitecore
• Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

To NRF and beyond

This year’s NRF theme is “Make it Matter,” and we are eager to support what matters to retailers by bringing unique value, productivity, and growth to their business. We’re excited about what we’re accomplishing with our partners and customers in the retail world. Our team has been preparing for months to provide you the best, most informative experience possible at NRF. If you are not able to attend, our sessions will be available on-demand to registrants, and you can get in touch with a Microsoft representative at any time for more information on the ways Microsoft can help your retail business achieve more with insightful, intuitive AI tools.

NRF 2024

Join more than 6,200 brands for three days of learning, collaboration, and discovery

Discover more

Learn more

• Microsoft Cloud for Retail
• Generative AI will revolutionize revenue growth management
• From discussion to deployment: 4 key lessons in generative AI
• NRF overview, NRF full agenda, and NRF registration

The post Join Microsoft at NRF 2024 and power your AI transformation appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Just take next-generation AI for example. AI has been making waves in the retail industry, and it’s no wonder why. Next-generation AI and a host of other digital tools have sparked a whirlwind of innovation, transforming the way retailers think about how they operate. It’s a story with two sides—one filled with exciting possibilities and a few challenges to tackle.

To thrive in this shifting landscape, we need our frontline workers more than ever. They’re the driving force behind the retail industry’s success. That’s why Microsoft is committed to building purpose-built solutions that empower these frontline heroes. We’ve seen strong and consistent double-digit growth in frontline workers’ monthly active users of Microsoft Teams in the retail industry this year.

Microsoft empowers the frontline workforce

We are committed to investing in innovative solutions with next-generation AI to help frontline workers thrive.

Read the blog

The magic that happens when technology and our incredible retail workforce join forces is transforming the very fabric of our industry. We’re diving headfirst into the world of AI and cutting-edge tools, and it’s like discovering a whole new realm of efficiency, productivity, and customer-centricity. With streamlined task management and automated workflows, our frontline teams get to dedicate more energy to what really counts—delivering that top-notch service that keeps customers coming back for more.

Enhancing frontline operational efficiency with AI and digital tools

Retail workers have a crucial role in interacting with customers and keeping things running smoothly. But all too often, they face challenges like working understaffed shifts and dealing with outdated systems. These obstacles slow down store operations and prevent store teams from focusing on the most important parts of their job.

Digitize routine store processes

Retailers can leverage Store Operations Assist to equip store associates to better serve customers, providing teams access to advanced retail workflows, data, and insights. Today we’re introducing Store Operations Assist embedded in Microsoft Teams to make it even easier for store teams to stay in the flow of work. Store associates can easily move between Teams and Store Operations Assist through a shortcut on the Teams app bar on mobile.

Store managers can also identify open items such as open shifts that need to be covered with a new Shifts plug-in for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Soon Microsoft 365 Copilot can ground prompts and retrieve insights for frontline managers leveraging data from the Shifts app in addition to user and company data it has access to such as Teams chat history, SharePoint, emails, and more.

Retailers are truly finding their stride through a clever blend of resilience and evolution. Stores are rethinking the way they function, with AI capabilities and digital tools streamlining operations and freeing up store associates to focus on customers. Companies like L’Oréal are taking digital tools to transform the way their frontline workers do their jobs.

Leveraging modern communications to connect stores and corporate

Effective communication from corporate is essential to the success of retail store workers, yet getting the right message to the right people can be challenging. That’s why Teams unifies communication on one platform, for easier information sharing and collaboration. Communication across the retail chain is evolving, moving away from the old model of isolated stores and distant corporate offices with the emergence of a connected ecosystem.

Plan centrally, manage regionally, and execute locally

Announcements in Viva Connections lets managers target communications and create notifications for store associates within the home experience of Teams. This new feature makes it easier to target operational communications with timely updates, providing an easy way for store managers to create, publish, and deliver announcements out to frontline teams. Announcements are coming to tablet and mobile experiences in September 2023, and the ability to view announcements on desktop is planned for future releases.

Provide a tailored home experience

To further enhance the home experience in Teams for retailers with many frontline employees that span multiple brands, we recently announced that an organization can now create multiple home experiences to represent each brand’s essence. This feature allows companies to provide a tailored experience that reflects each brand’s look and feel and customize the dashboard for their unique needs. Multiple home experiences are now available through the Viva Connections app in Teams. Learn more about the recent enhancements to home experiences in Teams.

Connect retail frontline teams with instant communication

The larger and more dispersed the frontline workforce is the harder it is to communicate with the right people at the right time while still focusing on the task at hand. With out-of-the-box integrations with industry devices including Honeywell, Samsung, Zebra, and now Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola, retailers can enable their entire frontline workforce, from supply-chain, warehouse, to in-store teams, to easily communicate with multiple departments using Walkie Talkie in Teams by pinning up to five channels on the Walkie Talkie home screen starting in September 2023.

Streamline communications to engage the frontline

Retail leaders also see the benefits of AI capabilities in being able to streamline tasks and enhance communications like producing local brand and marketing communications for store teams. And now, with Copilot in Microsoft Viva Engage, corporate communicators can receive suggestions to further personalize messages, adjust tone and length, and even suggest relevant images to help drive great engagement on the frontline. Leaders can also utilize Copilot to analyze engagement metrics, assess sentiment, and recommend responses. Learn more about Copilot in Viva, coming later this year.

Making it simpler to create trusted frontline experiences

For retail organizations, simplifying processes is critical to alleviating burnout and freeing retail workers to focus on higher-value tasks. By streamlining workflows, automating mundane tasks, and integrating modern technologies, retail companies can empower their frontline to shift their focus from routine operations.

Deploy Microsoft 365 apps on shared devices to help protect customer data

To take some of the complexity out of managing in-store devices, for organizations using Microsoft Intune, they can use Microsoft Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory, shared device mode to enable a single sign-in and sign-out experience for Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Microsoft Power Apps, and more apps in preview starting September 2023. This allows frontline workers to wipe their device quickly and compliantly for the next shift. Learn more about how Intune continues to innovate for a simplified frontline experience and deeper administrative control. And organizations using SOTI or VMware Workspace ONE as their endpoint management solution can now also enroll Android devices in Microsoft Entra ID with shared device mode. SOTI’s support for shared device mode will be generally available for Android starting September 2023.  

Frontline retail solutions from Microsoft

The retail industry continues to demonstrate resiliency, balancing the need to drive operational efficiency while creating incredible customer and employee experiences. Through this delicate dance, the industry isn’t just weathering the current storm, but also setting a course for a promising, sustainable future powered by its frontline. Whether it’s improving communication between store associates or enhancing store operations with AI, Microsoft has solutions to equip frontline workers to meet evolving industry demands.

• Discover how you can connect your customers, your people, and your data with Microsoft Cloud for Retail.
• Explore additional Microsoft Teams frontline solutions for retail.
• Learn more about Microsoft’s next generation AI set to transform the frontline.
• Connect with an expert to learn more about Microsoft frontline solutions.

The post How next-generation AI and digital tools transform the retail frontline appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Welcome to 2023—a new year packed with opportunities (and challenges) for all of us in the retail industry. During the past three years, we’ve experienced unprecedented economic, societal, and technological change, but for all that change one thing is clear—retailers are turning to digital technology like never before. Why? Because digital is what will make the difference between retailers that thrive and those that get left behind. Not only is it a way to navigate the headwinds we’re facing today, but it’s also a way to embrace the innovation that will define our tomorrow.  

Retailers in every category will need to weave technology into the fabric of their business so that they can do more with less. Every retail leader I speak to is clear-eyed about this. It’s what we call “Resilient Retail.”

Understanding Resilient Retail

To better understand what sets resilient retailers apart from the competition, we recently commissioned a study with Futurum Research. We surveyed 1,200 retailers with revenues of more than USD200 million across North America, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Malaysia, Japan, and Australia. When examined closely, survey results suggest that retailers who consider themselves “resilient” or “very resilient” use a mix of advanced technologies—AI, retail media advertising capabilities, dynamic pricing capabilities, shopper and operations analytics, and autonomous and automated stores, to name a few—in greater proportion than those who report their companies are “not resilient at all” or only “somewhat resilient.” What’s more, those retailers also:

• Focused more on the end customer experience.
• Put the frontline worker at the heart of everything they did.
• Saw supply chain disruption as the top threat to future resiliency.

Be sure to join Futurum Research founding partner and principal analyst Daniel Newman and I on January 19, 2023 for the Microsoft Retail Digital Forum to learn more about the study and gain insights into what is driving resiliency among leading retailers.

Keys to resiliency

Now, the case for resilience in retail is clear. It’s why we’re so committed to helping the retail industry build it through solutions like Microsoft Cloud for Retail. On that note, I’m excited to announce two new capabilities focused on the digitization of the physical store and the front-line worker experience specifically.

1. Smart Store Analytics

There are many petabytes of data generated every hour in retail yet customer touchpoints are often not linked to each other and systems and data are siloed and disconnected. It means that most retailers are only set up to leverage a fraction of the data that is available. There’s no better example of this than the retail store. It’s why Microsoft is partnering with AiFi, the world’s most broadly deployed computer vision-powered autonomous store operator, with 100 locations deployed worldwide. Our vision is to become the smart store solution for retailers worldwide.

With our Smart Store Analytics solution, we’re providing retailers with e-commerce level shopper analytics for the physical space. A smart store is defined as a brick-and-mortar retail establishment that uses a variety of smart tech to track shoppers and shopping behavior all the way from product discovery through purchase. As retailers introduce new smart store formats, new customer signals and insights emerge. Through these insights, they can optimize everything from store layout and product recommendations to shelf placement and inventory. And ultimately, deliver a frictionless shopping experience for consumers. See how Zabka is leading the way with this experience.

“Autonomous stores enable us to operate these stores more like an e-commerce (retailer). A physical retailer will be able to manage the store in a way that’s way more optimal for the consumer, from assortment selection to personalized promotions involving Zabka Nano products like ready meals, snacks, juices, and smoothies.“

—Tomasz Blicharski, EVP of the Management Board of Zabka Group, Managing Director of Zabka Future

2. Store Operations Assist

Retail always has been and always will be a “people business,” with many of those employed on retail’s frontline. As we all know, an investment in frontline workers’ experience is ultimately investing in the customer experience. Empowering store associates with the right tools, data, and insights can increase conversion rates and customer satisfaction. And as in-store shopping continues to come back strong, many retailers are making it a priority to empower their store associates with the technology needed to complete an increasingly complex set of tasks.

Store Operations Assist equips store associates to better serve and engage customers and be more productive by providing a single pane of glass with access to all the operational day-to-day activities—from curbside fulfillment to customer service scenarios—in the physical store. This application also allows store leadership to manage these operational store activities with dashboard-based analytics and insights.​

National Retail Federation’s big show

For those of you traveling to New York for the National Retail Federation BIG Show 2023, I look forward to seeing you there. And I look forward to showcasing these new Microsoft Cloud for Retail capabilities and more! Here are my top 5 ways to learn more and engage with Microsoft at the show and beyond:

1. On Sunday, January 15, 2023, I’ll be sharing some incredible examples of resilient retail in action from retail leaders at Alpha XR and Zabka on the Big Ideas stage.
2. Monday, January 16, 2023, we’ll have our Corporate Vice President, Azure and Industry, Microsoft Corporation, Alysa Taylor, talking about what every retailer must know to navigate today’s landscape.
3. Visit the Microsoft booth at NRF to experience resilient retail in real-life.
4. Join us for Retail Digital Forum on Thursday, January 19, 2023.
5. For more information about Microsoft announcements at NRF, be sure to read How Microsoft Teams empowers your retail workers, the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, how the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform enables resiliency for retailers, and the latest on Retail Media Advertising omnichannel solutions.

Here’s to an incredible 2023 and here’s to building Resilient Retail together!

Stay informed about Microsoft Cloud for Retail and follow us on social.

The post Resilient Retail appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

With the February 1 general availability of Microsoft Cloud for Retail, I’m optimistic we’re going to meet this challenge head-on with technology that will help retailers connect their customers, their people, and their data with a partner they can trust.

What is Microsoft Cloud for Retail?

Microsoft Cloud for Retail is an industry-specific cloud that will help retailers meet this new age of digital optimism. Customers have asked us for purpose-built retail solutions designed to allow their businesses to do things they’ve never been able to do before and with a level of speed and specificity beyond what they’ve expected in the past. Our long history of scope and scale in the retail industry has been brought to the cloud. And we’re helping to accelerate business growth by providing a complete set of retail-specific capabilities across the Microsoft Cloud portfolio.

It starts by unifying disparate data sources across the end-to-end shopper journey, allowing retailers to maximize the value of their data, and resulting in one holistic view of the consumer. Once connected, data and AI help retailers better understand and elevate the consumer shopping experience. In providing more relevant and streamlined experiences throughout the retail value chain, retailers can build a real-time sustainable supply chain and empower their frontline workforce.

“With Microsoft Cloud for Retail, our increased knowledge of individual customer journeys will further strengthen our customer relationships and turn GNC into people’s primary destination for health and wellness.”—Scott Saeger​, Chief Information Officer, GNC

Entering the 2022 retail space

Looking ahead, I’d like to share four future-looking opportunities that retailers can be optimistic about in 2022, all of which will be enabled with Microsoft Cloud for Retail capabilities and our rich ecosystem of partners.

1. Maximize the value of retail data

Realize the true value of retailer’s data by unifying disparate data sources across the shopper journey, discovering insights that enable better experiences. There are 40 petabytes of data generated every hour in retail—it’s effectively the demand signal for the world.¹ Yet, customer touchpoints aren’t linked to each other—systems and data are siloed and disconnected.​ And most retailers are only set up to leverage a fraction of the data that’s available.

With Microsoft Cloud for Retail, we’re using data models to bring multiple systems and applications together, unifying disparate data sources to establish a singular, in-depth profile of each shopper​. Capabilities here include unified customer profile, shopper and operational analytics, intelligent fraud protection, and retail media.

“When you make decisions based on data, you know that you’re going to put the right products in the hands of customers when they need it. And we’re going to have happy employees because they won’t have to manage inventory that’s not needed in their stores.”​—Anne Cruz​, IT Manager for Supply Chain and Merchandising, Alpha XR

2. Elevate the shopping experience

Transform the shopping experience through data analytics and new store technology to create more engaged shoppers with stronger lifetime value. In today’s highly competitive retail landscape, personalization has become the standard. While 95 percent of retail CEOs say they are strategically prioritizing personalization, only 23 percent of consumers think they’re doing a good job.²

​With personalization at the heart of satisfying shopping experiences, Microsoft Cloud for Retail helps drive conversion by enabling personalized recommendations and search results. Capabilities here include real-time personalization, intelligent stores, unified commerce, digital advertising solutions, and seamless customer service.

“We wanted to better understand customer preferences and how they change over time. Those are incredibly important things for a business of our size to understand.”​—Sashi Kommineni​, Director of Enterprise Analytics, Chipotle Mexican Grill

3. Build a real-time, sustainable supply chain

Create a resilient and sustainable supply chain by connecting data across the ecosystem to identify issues and optimize performance. Today’s consumers are frustrated by empty shelves. In many ways, 2021 was the year of the supply chain—or “supply pain” as it became known. According to McKinsey, in the fall of 2021, over 60 percent of consumers faced out-of-stocks and only 13 percent of those waited for the item to come back in stock. Among those who faced out-of-stocks, 32 percent ultimately switched retailers to make their purchase. That means that many retailers are not only losing out on sales but facing reduced customer loyalty.³

Supply chain transformation starts with the recognition that a retailer’s data holds the key. Yet despite retailers sitting on a treasure trove of data from across their supply chain, many can’t use it to their full advantage. With Microsoft Cloud for Retail, we’re helping retailers to better predict demand using AI to optimize inventory and optimize order management to give customers choice across channels. What’s more, we’re helping retailers record, report, and reduce things like carbon emissions as they strive to become more sustainable. Capabilities here include supply chain visibility, demand planning and optimization​, and flexible fulfillment.

“We’ve had rave reviews from our customers about the great experience using our curbside pick-up at the store. They’re blown away by the communication and the level of service they’re getting via Teams, and the resulting trust means more overall shopping.”​—Paul Medeiros​, Associate Dealer-Owner, Canadian Tire, Niagara Falls

4. Empower the store associate

Equip store associates with solutions to enable real-time store communications, workforce management, and store automation. Retail always has been and always will be a people business, with many employed on retail’s frontline. If ever there was any doubt about the importance of retail’s frontline, then their herculean efforts during the past two years have put those doubts to rest. These superheroes shouldered much of the change we’ve seen and experienced, with minimal training and astonishing grace. Survey results from Microsoft’s recent Work Trend Index show that 60 percent of frontline workers are excited about the new opportunities that digital tools bring to retail, but 34 percent feel they still don’t have the right technology.⁴

Investing in frontline workers’ experience is investing in the customer experience. For example, industry-specific solutions like Microsoft Cloud for Retail can surface stock and supply chain data on mobile devices so an associate can quickly see availability of an out-of-stock product and arrange to have it shipped to the customer. Retailers that have transformed frontline capabilities in this way have seen unprecedented returns in customer satisfaction. Capabilities here include real-time store communication and collaboration, retail workforce management, process automation, and career development.

“With Tasks in Teams, we can create a culture of relentless customer care and make sure that the right behaviors are in place in the pursuit of that goal. If we get the customer care element right, the business result will speak for itself.”​—Cahir Mullan​, Franchise Partner and Optometrist, Widnes Boots Opticians

Partnering for the next era of retail

Building digital capability is the new currency driving every retailer’s resilience and growth. Not just for this pandemic but for future events, and the years to come. That’s why digital co-innovation is a massive focus for us. We want our customers to build their own digital capability and become independent with us, not dependent on us. But we also know that we can’t do this on our own. That’s why we have an incredible ecosystem of industry partners who extend the value of Microsoft Cloud for Retail with additional solutions that address their most pressing challenges. 

This partner ecosystem is a growing network of solutions that uses a common data model format to integrate seamlessly and natively with the entirety of our Microsoft Cloud for Retail. And of course, these partners would not have our seal of approval without the same security, privacy, and regulatory standards we rely on to maintain a bedrock of trust. We are honored that so many partners trust Microsoft to be their platform partner.

Thanks for the trust in us

Digital technology has a critical role to play in advancing the retail industry forward, and I am grateful for the trust our customers continue to place in Microsoft as their digital partner of choice. With Microsoft Cloud for Retail as our vehicle for industry innovation, along with an amazing ecosystem of Microsoft partners, I couldn’t be more excited for what lies ahead for all of us.

Finally, I invite you to join us for our Retail Digital Forum on January 19, 2022, where we’ll be sharing inspiration from some of the customers and partners working with us on all these future-looking opportunities.

Don’t forget you can stay informed about Microsoft Cloud for Retail, and you can also follow us on social. Welcome to Microsoft Cloud for Retail.

Sources:

¹Get more value out of your data in the cloud—Accenture.
²Personalizing the customer experience—McKinsey and Co.
³US consumer sentiment and behaviors during the coronavirus crisis—McKinsey and Co.
⁴Work Trend Index—Microsoft.

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Like so many of you, I got my first job in a retail store (after babysitting) and like many around the world it was my first introduction to the workplace. Retail always has been and always will be a people business with many employed on retail’s frontline. If ever there was any doubt about the importance of retail’s frontline, then their herculean efforts during the past 18 months have put those doubts to rest.

These superheroes shouldered much of the change we’ve seen and experienced, with minimal training and astonishing grace. Some of those changes are here to stay. Today, we see in-store workers shopping among us for orders placed online for curbside pick-up or delivery. We interact with grocery clerks that manage the growing number of self-checkout stations while answering our questions and a whole lot more. Yet, a recent Forbes survey found that fewer than 1 in 4 frontline workers indicate they have the right technology to do their job.¹ With this amount of change, and ever-increasing customer expectations, retailers are asking Microsoft to help them identify innovative ways to improve the frontline employee experience, focus on well-being, provide their associates with the flexibility and certainty they need, speed up on-boarding, democratize access to learning, and help reduce unsustainable employee turnover rates (the average turnover rate in retail is slightly above 60 percent according to the National Retail Federation).

So, what can retailers do? We see leading retailers investing 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 equally hard to retain, retailers are finding it challenging to meet the expectations of both employees and customers. It’s time to reimagine the retail workforce—where it’s done, how and by whom. Retailers also need to invest in order to turn their workforce into an adaptive workforce that is digital, data fluent and diverse.”² Jill Standish, Global Lead, Retail at Accenture.

Today, many retailers are doing just that. They are investing in new frontline capabilities to grow the loyalty of their employees and customers:

• UK retailer Marks and Spencer is using technology to streamline work and free up time so that associates can serve more customers: “We have built a culture around serving our customers how they want to be served. Today, a huge part of that is developing digital capabilities in our physical stores,” Sacha Berendji, Group Property, Store Development and Technology Director.
• Alpha XR Boots Alliance (WBA) is digitizing vital workflows for Boots opticians “to create a culture of relentless customer care” according to Cahir Mullan, Franchise Partner and Optometrist.
• The 500-store strong Canadian Tire launched curbside pickup to many customers’ delight.
• Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) customers can now schedule online Virtual Outfitting sessions to assemble bikes, find the right hiking boots, gear up for camping trips, and more.

Lastly, I love this quote from Pamay Bassey, Chief Learning and Diversity Officer at Kraft Heinz: “The real value we see is that Microsoft Teams is inclusive and democratizing.”

Microsoft Teams brings information workers and frontline workers together on the same platform, enabling them to be aligned on achieving company goals. Teams enables retailers to recognize their frontline heroes with Praise badges, give them flexibility in their schedule with Shifts, and empower them with clear executional details with Tasks. Teams also democratizes access to learning, giving everyone the chance to thrive and grow. Another benefit of Teams for retailers is the ability to connect corporate head offices to frontline teams – whether it’s a CEO video of the week, communications about new store policies, or sharing opportunities for associates to contribute ideas and feedback. Now, with the general availability of Viva Connections mobile coming next month, this connection will be easier and more inclusive. Viva Connections delivers a single, company-branded destination for frontline workers to access company news, tasks, resources, shifts and more in the flow of their work. This helps give the entire workforce the ability to access news and join in company culture like never before.

To learn more about exciting announcements on how Microsoft is supporting the frontline in a hybrid world, please check out the news from Emma Williams, Corporate Vice President, Modern Workplace Transformation.

I recently chatted with Corine Vives, Avanade’s Executive Global Retail & Consumer Goods Industry Lead about trends in the future of work that retailers can capitalize on today. We discussed flexibility in recruitment and retention to elevate the customer experience, seizing the opportunity to rethink retail operating models by modernizing workplace technology, and continuing to blur the line between the online and in-store customer experience. Read more about the trends and how you can engage Avanade to help you think through your own frontline transformation.

The millions of retail frontline workers are the human face of every retailer. I’m incredibly proud of our work to innovate with retailers as they seek to reimagine how retail frontline employees experience their work. I learned early in my career that every good and bad decision we make in retail shows up in the store somewhere. It’s time we took really good care of its most important asset, people.

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.

References:

¹https://www.forbes.com/forbes-insights/our-work/empowering-the-firstline-workforce/

²Reimagine the Future of Retail Workforce Management | Accenture

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It is hard to believe summer is already here and I’m preparing for my BIG Ideas session at the upcoming virtual NRF Retail Converge event. Honestly, I can’t wait to talk more about ‘retail’s new clock speed’ and how we’re helping retailers unlock a new wave of cloud innovation. Although retail leaders continue to refine their ‘retail playbook’ they’re increasingly asking, “how can we go faster?” And there’s five key areas where they’re looking to do that:

1. Employee wellbeing—how is everybody doing?
2. Personalized shopping experiences—who took my cookies?
3. Sustainability—what’s our plan? Or if we have one already, how do we execute it?
4. Innovation—what can we learn: from East to West?
5. The future of our business— how much industry convergence and new ecosystems are we going to see?

Beyond looking at all five of the above some more, I’ll also be sharing details on our amazing industry cloud Microsoft Cloud for Retail. And hosting a short fireside chat with two incredible CEOs – Navjit Bhasin, CEO, Newmine and Tom Ripley, CEO, Lids—who talk about how they’re embracing our cloud to move fast today and future-proof beyond 2021. 

The industry is talking: Microsoft Cloud for Retail

Back in January at NRF, we announced Microsoft Cloud for Retail. Our vision: to deliver seamless experiences across the entire shopper journey. Since then, we’ve been hearing great feedback. Customers have been kicking the tires and loving what they see. Partners have also been joining the fun, testing their solutions with Microsoft Cloud for Retail. What’s more “customer zero”, our very own Microsoft Store team has launched and is showcasing Microsoft Cloud for Retail features and capabilities that are helping influence our future product roadmap. And with all this great feedback, our engineering team is hard at work to keep improving the product and bring new capabilities to market.

Announcing even more new capabilities

I’m excited to announce we have some additional new features being released this month as part of Microsoft Cloud for Retail public preview.

First, Intelligent Recommendations is releasing in general availability next month. An incredible 76 percent of consumers say they are willing to buy more from brands who deliver personalized products, value, or services. Intelligent Recommendations enables retailers to deliver a shopping experience that provides relevant, context-driven discovery, and personalization. Intelligent recommendations can help uniquely tailor experiences and increase conversion by helping customers find more of what they want, where and when it is needed, both using historical information, as well as real-time signals.

Intelligent Recommendations comes with several patented capabilities, such as “Shop similar looks” and “Shop by description” that expands the relevant possibilities and further elevates shopper experiences for retailers, while making the integration and onboarding simple, very composable, and extensible. Using the Intelligent Recommendations simple APIs, schema and some sample code, retailers can get plugged into a state-of-the-art recommendations service started and finished within a matter of days or weeks. And for more advanced analytics tasks they can seamlessly bring Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Apps data to our unified analytics service using Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse.

Second, we are releasing Dynamics 365 Commerce and Power Virtual Agents Integration ready for public preview. This new integration allows retailers to improve customer engagement, enable continuous support and deliver proactive customer interactions. Retailers will be able to streamline engagement across commerce channels and customer service tools to gain better understanding of customer interactions for both insights and ongoing improvement of the customer experience.

Third, I am thrilled to share the great partner progress we are seeing with Blue Yonder and Zebra’s Reflexis Shifts connectors, which are starting private customer previews next month. These strategic partnerships with retail’s leading digital supply chain and workforce management providers will simplify access to scheduling and time and attendance capabilities through a new connector. This connector will surface information into Shifts in Teams so that employees are empowered to manage their schedules directly without having to switch apps. For example, Blue Yonder’s connection to Shifts enables the Marks & Spencer associates to see and swap shifts, review their schedule and make changes as needed, leveraging the richness of Blue Yonder’s solution in the back end while combining all its employee solutions in one place.

And we’re seeing incredible momentum with Teams. Year over year, Teams daily active users in retail grew more than 280 percent to support their accelerated digital transformation in response to the pandemic. Frontline workers have increased their reliance on the Teams mobile app to perform their jobs. I learned early in my own retail career that every good or bad decision we make in retail shows up in the store somewhere. Nothing has been more inspiring than the work we’ve been doing to empower the industry’s frontline workers. With Microsoft Teams we bring information and frontline workers together on the same platform to be able to innovate quickly. Just take REI who launched a new virtual outfitting service to help customers assemble bikes, find the right hiking boots, and gear up for camping trip. Frontline associates have emerged as true heroes in the past 18 months. We are focused on enabling them to be recognized with Praise, giving them flexibility with Shift management and empowerment with Task management as well as democratizing access to learning to give everyone the chance to thrive and grow.

That’s not all though on the Microsoft Cloud for Retail front. Our incredible ecosystem of industry partners is building out the extended value of Microsoft Cloud for Retail with additional solutions to address the most pressing challenges the industry is facing today. Many of our leading partners are working with public preview now, check out the progress.

Customer zero: Microsoft Store

Since opening its doors in 2009, Microsoft Store has been a showcase for Microsoft technology, launching new products, and growing existing ones. Today, Microsoft Store is benefiting from Microsoft Cloud for Retail across its business. Microsoft Store is transitioning its web platform to Dynamics 365 Commerce and Adobe’s Experience Manager. Today, the platform is live in Singapore and will shortly launch in the U.S., followed by more markets over the next 12 months.

“Running Microsoft Store on Dynamics 365 Commerce not only simplifies the operational back-end processes through automation and significant reduction in the number of web management tools but provides the opportunity to improve and introduce new customer experiences with more speed and flexibility”, says Tuula Rytila, CVP Microsoft Digital Stores.

They’re also leveraging capabilities from Dynamics 365 Customer Service Hub, Microsoft Teams, and Power Platform, to digitally serve thousands of customers through 1:1 appointments with Personal Shopping, Business Consultations, and Personal Setup. Coupled with digital events enabled through Dynamics 365 Marketing Event Management and Teams Live Events that have hosted millions of attendees, customer reach has never been greater, all while achieving high customer satisfaction.

Behind all these new experiences are a diverse workforce of Microsoft Store associates leveraging Microsoft Teams as their primary interface for engaging in operations and collaboration. Teams is streamlining communication, adding clarity, saving time, and improving the culture. Through Teams Shifts, associates can view their day-to-day work schedule through a single screen. Teams Templates enables replication of Teams with the same Channels and Tabs across a variety of organizing structures. Teams Praise is also used every day by associates to give kudos and celebrate wins. In the next year, associates will also be able to track their daily activities and update their work schedule through Team Tasks and Shifts and access a single catalog of learning opportunities through Viva Learning in Teams, enabling them to succeed in a digital-first environment.

“We are energized about the opportunity to innovate in how we engage with all customers, optimize our talent for greatest impact, and most importantly – help our valued customers achieve more,” says David Porter, CVP of Microsoft Store.

What’s next?

Here’s the four things I encourage you to do as we continue the journey to Microsoft Cloud for Retail together:

• Register for NRF Retail Converge, and join our Big Ideas Session, June 21, 2021.
• Join us for Retail Digital Forum, June 22, 2021.
• Stay informed about Microsoft Cloud for Retail. Learn how you can connect your customers, your people, and your data.
• Follow us on social.

The post Explore the new wave of cloud innovation at NRF Retail Converge appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

2020 was the year in which we experienced disruptive change at a pace and a scale that we could never have imagined. Yet it was also the year in which many retailers embraced digital like never before. Take REI for example, which launched a new virtual outfitting service to help customers assemble bikes, find the right hiking boots, and gear up for camping trips using Microsoft Teams. Retailers who laid their digital tracks early were more agile, resilient, and ultimately positioned for growth. I’m optimistic about the future of retail and excited by the opportunity faced in retail. But as we all know, the journey past the COVID-19 pandemic has only just begun.  

That’s why I am thrilled to announce the availability of Microsoft Cloud for Retail public preview beginning on March 31.  

Microsoft Cloud for Retail at-a-glance

At Microsoft, we are committed to helping retailers by working side-by-side with them to co-innovate and co-develop next-generation solutions that address their most pressing business opportunities. Retail is 31 percent of the world’s GDP and that data is the demand signal for the world. Microsoft Cloud for Retail data services consolidates disparate customer data sources—your data, your suppliers’ data, the data you don’t even know about yet—to uncover actionable insights in minutes, not days. Discover retail insights from all data sources—data warehouses, data lakes, and big data analytics systems—with a single, unified experience at any point in the shopper journey.

Microsoft Cloud for Retail uniquely connects experiences across the end-to-end shopper journey, using a set of capabilities that deliver more relevant personalized experiences and operational excellence for sustained profitability. Few retailers have the budget or infrastructure to “rip and replace.” Microsoft Cloud for Retail starts with a modular framework so retailers can innovate as they go. This modular and deployable solution activates both end-to-end services like curbside pickup or standalone services like Intelligent Recommendations. Microsoft Cloud for Retail is designed to give retailers the flexibility to adopt the capabilities they need to address their most pressing business needs, be it better knowing customers, empowering employees, building resilient supply chains, or reimagining retail.

“We are excited to explore Microsoft Cloud for Retail as a crucial tool to bring together our stores, product, and marketing systems and unlock the power of our data,” Britten Maughan, SVP of Product and Partnerships, Lids.

Let’s take a closer look at how we are integrating capabilities across the shopper journey.

Demand generation

Driving interest and awareness in your product or service is the beginning of the shopper journey. Using the right digital marketing channels with the right solution is critical in attracting new customers.

• E-commerce personalization. Showcase how well you know your customers by delivering a shopping experience that provides relevant, personalized results through Intelligent Recommendations and product search. Intelligent recommendations can help uniquely tailor experiences and increase conversion by helping customers find what they want. See how it comes to life.
• Digital advertising. Target, attract, and convert more shoppers by delivering engaging, personalized experiences thereby increasing customer loyalty and return on digital marketing ad spend with Microsoft Advertising.

Stores and operations

Retail associates or frontline workers are critical to the success of any retailer. They are the face and humanity of every brand. That’s why we’re so focused on putting retail-specific tools into frontline employees’ hands so they can deliver best-in-class, multichannel experiences in an environment where safeguards and privacy standards are built-in. At the same time offering retailers the ability to create digital and smart stores to automate processes and use real-time data to improve operations.

• Associate operations and collaboration. Empower your frontline employees to manage their tasks when they are in the store or remote while using robust communication, collaboration, and sharing capabilities, as well as use shared device management for business continuity. Check out this demo to see how this comes to life with Microsoft Teams.
• Digital and smart stores. Use real-time observational data to improve in-store operations, keeping check-out lines short and shoppers happy. Optimize your retail space by analyzing customer movement and product status to maximize sales. Watch this demo to see the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Store.

Purchase

Be it online, in-store, or via social shopping, at the point of purchase we offer connected tools to drive conversion, with on-site advertising, social selling capabilities, and secure payment enablement.

• Anywhere commerce conversion. Enable shoppers to purchase whenever, wherever, and on whatever device they choose supported with intelligent tools to deliver personalized, intuitive, and relevant shopping experiences. Maximize customer conversion and increase your average basket of goods with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce and Bing for Commerce. Watch how this comes together.
• Loss and fraud prevention. Protect your revenue from fraud using artificial intelligence (AI) to understand and detect patterns of fraudulent transactions across the shopper journey. Provide your employees tools to help decrease fraud costs, improve the customer experience, and streamline operational efficiency with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.

Fulfillment and service

How do you get the physical product into the hands of the customer? Streamlining operations to make the delivery process as seamless as possible, with integrated customer support to help consumers at any point in the sales cycle.

• Multichannel fulfillment. Delight customers with streamline curbside pickup and buy online pick up in-store (BOPIS) operations with simplified payment processing and customer notifications. Increase employee effectiveness with optimized time management and infusing intelligence across your sales operations with AI capabilities that improve customer experience and drive better ROI. See what’s possible when Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce and Microsoft Teams come together.
• Integrated customer service. Streamline customer service while empowering your employees to foster lasting relationships with customers via insights and delivering consistent engagement across online and offline channels.

Post-purchase

The journey then continues with our insight’s capabilities enabling retailers to better understand customer demand signals and cross-channel behavior with intelligent post-purchase analytics.

• Shopper analytics. Unlock data insights across every touchpoint of the shopper journey enabling better customer insights, better operations, and overall a better customer experience. Use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Azure Synapse to bring together multichannel data in real-time to create a full view of your customer, so you can take relevant actions to increase customer loyalty.

Merchandising and distribution

These customer insights feed into and inform the supply chain process of demand planning, inventory management, pricing, and distribution. Our intelligent supply chain capabilities are designed to ensure channel operations are optimized so when consumers enter into the next sales cycle, they receive the right product through their preferred engagement channel.

• Inventory management. Build a resilient supply chain by creating a centralized system that provides omnichannel inventory data in real-time. This translates into smarter fulfillment orchestration and helps you achieve optimal stock levels. Delight and satisfy customers by placing inventory and resources in the right place at the right time to fulfill orders in the shortest lead time, at the lowest cost.
• Retail media. Generate new revenue streams from your website. Retailers are increasingly investing in retail media centers or vendor marketing to use retail media, vendor marketing for e-commerce, to generate high-margin revenue by running promoted products on your website in an unobtrusive way with full control over the shopper experience. You can do all of this with Microsoft PromoteIQ.

A rich partner ecosystem

Our incredible ecosystem of industry partners expands the value of Microsoft Cloud for Retail with additional solutions to address the most pressing challenges the industry is facing today. There’s excitement among our leading partners about Microsoft Cloud for Retail public preview in March.

“Retailers have been undergoing digital transformation for years but have struggled to realize their aspirations. Microsoft Cloud for Retail shows the breadth of retail-specific functionality that Microsoft has to offer, while addressing the need for modular solutions that reduce wasted time and money spent integrating systems. Accenture’s ai.RETAIL solution is fully integrated on Microsoft Cloud for Retail to rapidly deliver profitable growth in challenging times by using leading AI-powered algorithms. With ai.RETAIL on Microsoft Cloud for Retail, retailers have the speed and flexibility to gain a deep understanding of their customers, scale personalization, optimize the supply chain, and manage risk across the business,” Jill Standish, Retail Global Senior Managing Director, Accenture.

“TCS is partnering to leverage Microsoft Cloud for Retail, and streamline as well transform the customers’ business using TCS Algo Retail™ suite,” Shankar Narayanan, President & Global Head – Retail, Consumer Goods, Travel, Transportation & Hospitality, TCS.

This is just a glimpse of Microsoft Cloud for Retail, built to adapt to you on your terms, modularized to enable the digital transformation of your unique business. To learn more, I invite you to register for Microsoft Ignite, and join our Retail Session, March 3, 2021, where I will present additional details on the public preview, have a fireside chat with some special guests, and bring along some of our key retail team members for an “Ask The Experts” session. I hope to see you there!

Sign up for Microsoft Cloud for Retail public preview today and welcome to Microsoft Cloud for Retail.

The post Announcing Microsoft Cloud for Retail: Built for what’s next appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

This year’s National Retail Federation BIG show was something different—entirely virtual. But it came off quite smoothly, demonstrating how powerful digital transformation can be. It even had some advantages over an in-person event. I was able to see more sessions for one. And without aching feet.

Still, even with the more accessible digital format, not everyone could attend the show or hit every session (and I did miss seeing friends and former colleagues from the industry.) Here are a few of my big highlights including an incredible private preview of Microsoft Cloud for Retail:   

COVID-19 is the new chief innovation officer

2020 was a year where we saw retail change at a pace and a scale that we could never have imagined. A key theme I discussed was the lessons learned from 2020. Some experts say we’ve seen 10 years of digital evolution in the past 10 months. That’s in large because COVID-19 has become our new chief innovation officer. We saw disruptions across supply chains, the advent of remote work at scale, incredible growth in e-commerce penetration, and advances in sustainability. Not to mention a continued explosion of data and shifting customer loyalty. 

During a fireside chat, I spoke with Chris Putur, EVP, Technology & Operations at REI, the outdoor gear retailer. Like others, REI has had to adopt new health protocols; adopt new digital business models such as curbside pickup or virtual outfitting; and found new ways to work from home – going so far as to sell a corporate HQ to reflect the new hybrid work model.  

Microsoft Cloud for Retail Makes it’s debut and more

Forbes’ article on NRF 2021, Exploring 5 Top Retail Trends at NRF, mentions vertical clouds and soon we will have a retail-specific clou. Microsoft Cloud for Retail connects experiences across the end-to-end retail value chain using integrated and intelligent capabilities. It will bring value to the industry by connecting and unlocking the power of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics, Advertising, and Power Platform to help solve the most urgent challenges retailers are facing. Our ambition is to empower the retail industry to seamlessly connect their customers, their people, and their data. Learn more in my recent blog about our new retail cloud or on Microsoft.com.

On a similar note, I couldn’t have been more excited by the customer momentum and new product capabilities announcements from our modern workplace and Microsoft Dynamics 365 teams.

The Retail Prophet’s predictions

We hosted an online chat with Doug Stephens, who as the CEO of Retail Prophet advises the leadership of global brands on what’s next for retail. Some of the key points Doug made:

• We’re seeing the end of the beginning in e-commerce. In Doug’s view, the past year has taken e-commerce to a new level of maturity. He noted that while e-commerce is a $3 trillion retail economy globally, there is another $27 trillion out there for e-commerce to capture.
• The rise of “apex predators.” Doug says that sectors such as banking, healthcare, and education are vulnerable to disruption and are being increasingly invaded by retail behemoths Amazon and Wal-Mart, creating what he calls “retail apex predators.”
• Every company is an “experience company.” Every retailer has customers, and every customer has an experience with that retailer. That means putting data science and artificial intelligence in the hands of focused internal teams who can find new ways to connect customers to the retailer to survive in a time of “apex predators.”

To stay current on Microsoft Cloud for Retail news, visit our web site. Stay informed about Microsoft Cloud for Retail to learn how you can connect with your customers, your people, and your data.

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