{"id":2264,"date":"2017-02-28T14:32:19","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T22:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/industry\/blog\/uncategorized\/leading-retails-digital-transformation\/"},"modified":"2023-05-31T16:45:10","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T23:45:10","slug":"leading-retails-digital-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/retail\/2017\/02\/28\/leading-retails-digital-transformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading Retail\u2019s Digital Transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Technology\u2019s profound impact on how we live, work and think has sounded a clarion call to the business community: evolve or risk obsolescence.<\/p>\n

The mandate for a retail industry forever changed by it is no less urgent.<\/p>\n

Merchants determined to survive and thrive in a shopping landscape upended by a $355 billion e-commerce market, an endless aisle of products and smartphone-addled consumers are leading a digital transformation in the spirit of creative disruption.<\/p>\n

The moment calls for it.<\/p>\n

The digital age has hatched \u201cthe expectation economy,\u201d marked by \u201cever-accelerating customer expectations, applied ruthlessly to every purchase decision, experience and moment of attention,\u201d according to forecasting firm TrendWatching. And for retailers and consumer products organizations, attention must be paid.<\/p>\n

Just as technology has empowered us to simplify and customize every micro-moment of our hyper-connected lives\u2014from paying bills to personalizing playlists\u2014it\u2019s also catalyzing retail innovation and growth.<\/p>\n

Digital interactions increasingly pave the path to purchase. Hence, technology solutions backed by data-driven insights are critical to granting today\u2019s consumers what they want: Highly curated merchandise and shopping experiences.<\/p>\n

Savvy retailers and brands are driving a digital transformation informed by the demands of the expectation economy. It\u2019s rippling through their organizations\u2014from the C-suite to the store floor. They\u2019re tapping talent with digital chops, and cherry picking the best practices of Silicon Valley-style tech entrepreneurship to model their own incubators of innovation.<\/p>\n

The change comes as merchants and brands compete for ever-fragmenting chunks of the distracted shopper mind share.<\/p>\n

Consumers have the world\u2019s mall at their fingertips, 24\/7, with unprecedented limitless digital shopping choice, product and price information.<\/p>\n

Meeting their demands in the expectation economy means tapping technology to deliver and anticipate idiosyncratic needs and preferences in real-time\u2014from texting a personalized sale offer to a shopper\u2019s smartphone the minute they enter a store to offering them the lowest price on a web order based on their personal basket size, a la Jet.com.<\/p>\n

Suffice to say that one-size-fits all retail products and experiences don\u2019t cut it for shoppers these days.<\/p>\n

For retailers and CPG brands, a digital transformation is also being shaped by the rise of collaborative commerce, as shoppers increasingly want a hand in the product-development process.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re turning to technology to create and foster customized products and experiences such as startup Stitch Fix, the online styling service that ships items tailored to shopper tastes based on sophisticated algorithms, to sneakers that have been designed by consumers themselves in the 3D-printing workshop of a Converse store.<\/p>\n

But all the technology in the world is virtually meaningless without the adoption of a data-driven culture.<\/p>\n

Indeed, there\u2019s gold in them there data.<\/p>\n

But the key is mining the data via analytics to unearth actionable, measurable business insights. It\u2019s a top goal touching nearly every facet of the digital transformation unfurling at retail companies and CPG organizations today.<\/p>\n

In my next post, I\u2019ll talk more about smarter commerce in this expectation economy and the valuable role that technological innovation is playing whereby retailers can now capture ten times the insights in one-tenth the time.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, you can also access this new Microsoft resource on transforming retail <\/a>for the digital age. In this paper, we discuss the opportunities for the retail industry to grow, adapt and evolve to address the changing needs of customers and capture new business potential, and how Microsoft can help accelerate digital transformation.<\/p>\n

LinkedIn: Tracy Issel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merchants and brands determined to survive and thrive are leading a digital transformation informed by the demands of the expectation economy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1501],"post_tag":[],"content-type":[1483],"coauthors":[1051],"class_list":["post-2264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retail","content-type-thought-leadership"],"yoast_head":"\nLeading Retail\u2019s Digital Transformation - Microsoft Industry Blogs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/retail\/2017\/02\/28\/leading-retails-digital-transformation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leading Retail\u2019s Digital Transformation - 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