Retailers that take the most intelligent stances on strategic planning and general management tend to be the most successful in practice, as every step taken should be measured, assessed and driven by purpose. When looking at the retailers which tend to have the most consistently positive financial results at the end of each year, it will quickly become clear that none of their strategies are lacking in intelligence, bravery and foresight. 

Now, as the retail sector has been forever transformed by the advent of new technologies, notably ecommerce platforms and websites, the rules of engagement have changed significantly, and in a relatively short period of time. These businesses will need to remain extremely agile to sustain growth in the coming years, and this begins with understanding where the trends are leading their operations and how to best keep pace. 

What the pros have to say
International Data Corporation recently released the results of its Worldwide Retail FutureScape study that stated omni-channel integration is going to become more highly demanded among businesses in the industry. Similarly, each channel is expected to require a bit more investment in the coming years, with IDC forecasting more than half of all retailers to launch mobile payment systems and programs to enhance their clients' experiences. 

"Relentless technology innovation underpins consumers' participatory behavior and expectations," Leslie Hand, IDC Retail Insights vice president, affirmed. "The most successful retailers will find opportunities by putting mobility, analytics, cloud, and social to work in their customer and operations strategies, adopting omni-channel integration technologies and IT governance, unifying customer engagement for hyper-personalized loyalty, adopting product intelligence for marketing and competitive insight, employing location-based services via analytics driven agile engagement and operations, utilize socially-networked on-demand delivery services, and gain share with private label merchandise."

Furthermore, the firm went on to explain that consumer-driven private brand growth will begin to truly take hold in the coming years, with retailers focusing on the development of products that fit a specific demand. Perhaps the most positive take away from this forecast report was the segment on security, in which analysts predicted that 50 percent of the largest retailers in the world will enjoy 50 percent fewer threats thanks to increased investment in protection. 

Riding the wave
Retailers cannot sit back and wait for trends to become a bit more palpable before diving in, as the sector and consumer preferences are likewise evolving at an extremely rapid pace going into the new year. Although some predictions listed above go beyond the next 12 months, foresight will be critical in planning and strategy building to ensure a brand's relevance is sustained over time. 

With the right level of research and planning, retailers can begin to enjoy the enhanced opportunities presented by a return in consumer spending and general economic improvements that have taken place throughout the past couple of years. Focus on agility and alignment and the sky will be the limit for financial and operational performance improvements. 

Client relationship management is one of the more important aspects of corporate oversight, and this has always been the case, but matters have become a bit more competitive and complex in the past few years. Now, organizations are leveraging these tools to keep a handle on a fast-moving, constantly evolving customer and corporate purchaser landscape, testing the meddle of those firms that have not yet fully embraced the digital commerce revolution. 

In a word, the use of these tools is increasingly imperative rather than optional, as so many companies have already started to deploy them and optimize relationship management in the process. Now, as retail customer intelligence becomes a higher priority for the average business, it is even more critical that businesses embrace the modern era of client communications and loyalty stimulation, with market competition only intensifying as the economy improves. 

How to get started
Forbes recently suggested several ways in which boardroom members can make a better business case for CRM software, affirming that these databases drive the value of corporate operations in the right direction. Now, there are different solutions that come with varying functionality, but the main point of the investment is to control information related to current and prospective clientele more accurately and efficiently than would be the case with traditional methods. 

According to the news provider, one of the strongest merits of CRM is the ability to ensure that various responsibilities and opportunities are not missed by employees or the business itself, which in turn fuels client experiences and loyalty for longer periods of time. There will be times in which certain members of the executive suite push back on the investments, stating that there is not enough clear value to be derived from the deployment of the technology. 

However, this is simply shortsighted thinking, and those who are championing the CRM solutions will need to make a specific business case to ensure that the investment gets pushed through in a timely fashion. The source suggested remembering just how financially challenging lost business can be, especially given the fact that it spreads like wildfire in the current market landscape, with customers going online to affirm their negative experiences. 

Forbes went on to explain that one of the clearest ways to push CRM investments through the provisioning cycle is to run a cost analysis of what poor retention of clientele can levy, and compare that to the price of the desired solution. In short, the latter will almost be less expensive than the prospect of losing business. 

Management considerations
Once the business case has been made and CRM solution approved by the boardroom, retailers will be able to position the systems properly to strengthen customer intelligence and knowledge of current and prospective trends among their target markets. The trick is to ensure that management – from a policy standpoint – is prepared to deal with the challenges of attaining and sustaining optimal performances in the relationship management category. 

Regardless of which industry is being discussed, the most intelligent operations tend to enjoy the highest possible revenues and profits each year, and the ways in which firms gather insights have been forever changed by modern business intelligence solutions. In many ways, retailers appear to be the best-positioned to derive value from big data and other modern analytics tools, specifically because of how consumer-related market fluctuations can be better analyzed and predicted than others. 

Retailers can find a breadth of resources that can help to generate valuable, indicative data regarding the preferences, behaviors and demand of their current and prospective clientele. The trick is to not only understand where to find this information, but how to get it moving through the evaluation and analysis chain fluidly and ensure that it is pushing decision-making in the right direction with timely, accurate and valuable insights. 

The video question
Forbes recently reported that video analytics might act as the next frontier of retail customer intelligence, with retailers finding unique and revolutionary ways to take data garnered from these pursuits and realize its value. According to the news provider, although this is still a relatively new pursuit for most involved, the diversification and enhancement of strategies have already become clear, leading even more competitors to get moving on these prospects. 

"It's an interesting development," Professor and Director of the Master of Digital Media Program at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University Richard Smith, told the source. "Grocery stores actually used to have big windows with one way mirrors around the roof of the store. It was partly because of loss prevention but also to get a better sense of their customers."

It might be important to note here that the uses of business intelligence solutions are relatively boundless, and companies can apply the software to virtually any type of operational procedure for improvement purposes. Forbes pointed out that retailers can mine data generated by the cameras in their stores to predict which types of customers might go to certain areas of the facility more commonly, then adjust their product placement accordingly. 

Although this might seem a bit too complex for a retailer to take part in, the solutions are becoming commoditized, opening the doors to all types of businesses regardless of what their IT capabilities might be currently. 

Making it count
The most important consideration to remember when sculpting a modern retail customer intelligence strategy is the identification of needs and objectives, and alignment of investments with those requirements. Big data and other analytics programs are certainly more palatable today than in the past, but there will never be a time in which decision-makers do not need to commit resources to the establishment of sound policies and strategies to guide these investments in the right direction. 

With help from a proven provider of customer intelligence solutions and support, retailers can step into the modern era of strategic oversight for stronger performances each year. 

The retail sector has become more digitally driven in recent years, adopting a breadth of new technologies that have helped bolster intelligence related to trends, management optimization and more. Software, as well as advanced payment processing tools, have been two of the highest priorities among decision-makers of late, and for good reason, as these investments have been found to strengthen operational and financial performances. 

However, some analysts and researchers have feared that demand would begin to either level off or decline given how quickly retailers in several nations invested in the solutions, as is the case with virtually every high-impact technology that become commoditized. Luckily, retail management software markets are proving resilient, with demand growing in a breadth of nations and the future looking bright for more digitized operations in the sector. 

Big news in the UK
CSO Magazine recently reported that a study conducted by Martec and commissioned by a software provider found that nearly three-quarters of retailers in the United Kingdom are actively pursuing new technological deployments. According to the news provider, investment in retail management software and relevant technologies went down between 2008 and 2013 in the U.K., but this latest report indicates that the pedal is back to the metal. 

For one, the source pointed out that ecommerce systems were targeted by 26 percent of retailers in their current provisioning strategies, while the majority have at least one significant software-related initiative in the process of being deployed. Not surprisingly, upgrades to in-store and digital systems combined for another 26 percent of investments in this regard, driven by the need to remain relevant in an increasingly Internet-driven market. 

Finally, CSO Magazine pointed out that retailers are looking for more reliable systems, as many have been frustrated by bugs and other issues in certain products and services. 

Will this trend continue?
Research has continued to indicate that, even when demand begins to slow down, the market for retail technology, including intelligence and management software is going to move on an upward track for the foreseeable future. Retail decision-makers who have not yet considered investing in or deploying advanced technologies to streamline payment processing, customer relationship management and other matters should do so soon to remain competitive in the digital markets of today and tomorrow. 

With a more proactive approach to upgrades and overhauls, these businesses can often gain a competitive advantage over others in their fields. 

As experienced merchants would know, huge consideration is assigned to the supply chain. 

Determining whether a certain target audience will purchase more of Item A than Item B necessitates scrutinizing a number of factors, including, but not limited to:

• How in-store traffic is affected by each of the four seasons
• Whether the product in question sold well over the past two years
• Which demographics have historically bought Item B
• If people tend to purchase Item B in bulk or not

A product's success depends on how well it's marketed and how efficiently suppliers produce and deliver it to retailers. If hundreds or even thousands of relationships exist throughout a single company's supply chain, then it must apply predictive analytics to assess risk and determine value. 

Viewed as a strategic asset 
Accenture Senior Managing Director and IndustryWeek contributor Mark Pearson noted that, out of 1,000 senior executives surveyed by the research company, 97 percent comprehend how data analysis will impact their distribution and procurement considerations. However, only 17 percent of those respondents claimed to have used such tools in regard to separate facets of their supply chains. 

One of the ways in which companies are leveraging data analytics has expedited the time it takes for products to be delivered to market. More than half (61 percent) of noted that analysis software allowed them to reduce order-to-delivery cycle times, a huge boon for merchants pressured by omnichannel shopping.

Predicting the future 
While the aforementioned capability describes analytics solutions capable of parsing through and presenting raw data in an intelligible manner, how are retailers utilizing predictive programming? Apparel Magazine noted how location-aware beacons and radio-frequency identification technologies are being deployed in brick-and-mortar stores throughout the facility. To get a good idea of how they work, consider the following scenario: 

• Emily walks into an apparel store and turns on her smartphone
• A beacon registers the smartphone's Internet Protocol address and follow her movements throughout the outlet
• She stops in front of a particular sweater and gives it a 4-second kino test
• She repeats the same tangible exam with four other sweaters, taking 10 seconds on average to feel them over

While placing the four sweaters she held longer back in the rack, Emily purchases the sweater she felt for four seconds. The retailer identifies that the sweater she purchased was wool, deducing that Emily will most likely purchase wool sweaters in the future. 

As merchants continue to invest more heavily in ecommerce software and merge these systems with brick-and-mortar functions, they'll be expected to provide adequate support to customers. 

Despite the fact that the majority of retail customers have access to the Web, many of them don't want to spend time searching for information regarding specific products or services. Customers often measure a merchant's capabilities by how well it can assess requests. 

Waiting too long 
Retail Customer Experience noted that the average U.S. adult spends 364 minutes on the phone every year waiting for a call center employee to satisfy their inquiries. That's almost six and a half hours listening to elevator music. The source cited statistics from Populus Research and Kana Software:

• The average amount of time employees spend addressing one compliant is one hour, four minutes
• Almost three-quarters (71 percent) of U.S. consumers have filed inquiries in the past three years
• An unsettling majority of respondents (69 percent) had to submit complaints multiple times 
• Getting issue resolved typically required people to make requests for service three times on average
• While 33 percent of survey participants claimed they used email to deliver inquiries, another 39 percent used their phones
• A mere 7 percent voiced complaints on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Yelp

Basically, it's taking too long for businesses to address customer concerns. Some may point to a lack of adequate technology, while others may place the blame on inadequate training. Maybe the manner in which systems are set up breed redundancies. The fact of the matter is, there isn't a single issue that's encouraging exorbitant wait times. 

What can be learned from small businesses? 
It turns out that specialty retail companies may be handling customer issues much better than their larger components. Business News Daily contributor Nicole Fallon referenced a survey of 1,200 consumers conducted by CorvisaCloud, which found that 50 percent of respondents asserted the best customer service is often provided by small enterprises. 

Overall, what are these businesses doing well? 

1. They create a "people first" culture, according to Fallon
2. Develop a strong first impression by having people answer calls instead of machines
3. Use retail analytics to zero in on customers who may not have had the best experiences
4. Chart each interaction between individuals and the brand 

With these four points in mind, merchants are in a strong position to reassess their customer service operations and implement changes as they see fit. 

The retail industry isn't undergoing changes just for the sake of doing so. Consumer expectations transform almost every year, causing merchants to make fundamental adjustments to their operations in order to keep their customers satisfied.

While some of these changes involve the introduction of new technologies, others consist of strategic thinking. There are a number of trends that are reconstructing the way in which people interact with retail brands. While omnichannel is one of the major topics of discussion among industry players, FirstBiz contributor Gautum Kulkarni noted several IT processes that are somewhat under the radar.

1. Customer delivery proposition 
Implementing ecommerce software is a growing practice, prompting more people to purchase goods online. In order to expedite product transportation, merchants are acquiring workforce management tools with automated features.

Many customers dislike the fact that a number of retailers only deliver items during the conventional work week. In order to mitigate this issue, smart logistics administration software creates schedules that abide by government labor standards. For example, the system may rotate truck driver schedules that allow a portion of the staff to work on weekends, while receiving two days off in the middle of the work week.

2. Payment security and processing programs 
Whether a specialty retail company in California or a nationwide merchant, selling goods in foreign markets is becoming more of a reality. This means companies require ecommerce software capable of measuring currency exchanges and keeping transactions protected between endpoints. 

Authorizing credit or debit card numbers domestically carries a risk, but bringing these operations overseas can pose even more dangers. Leveraging payment systems that encrypt card data the minute an order is submitted is essential. When a computer receives authorization, the code should be tokenized so that only the secured payment database can translate the information. 

3. Personalization 
Breaking away from the technological realm, Retail Customer Experience contributor Chris Petersen noted that personalization has become a prevalent element of the retail customer experience. He noted that many specialty merchants, such as Nike, have allowed people to design their own shoes online.

The fact that the athletic brand is willing to produce footwear to a person's exact specifications requires a fundamental readjustment of its production operations. It certainly puts Nike ahead of its competitors as far as delivering tailor-made items goes. If there's one trend shaking customer expectations, it's personalization. 

Although plenty of retail customer intelligence analysts have eagerly predicted the demise of physical shopping, such a time has yet to arrive. 

Instead, enterprises focused on selling specialty merchandise have been leveraging a blend of ecommerce and brick-and-mortar outlets to optimize customer service. Big-name merchants providing a variety of goods to consumers have yet to completely abandon tangible retail storefronts as well. 

Why brick-and-mortar still matters 
Some uneducated critics have gone so far as to say that ecommerce transactions dwarf sales made in physical stores by 80 percent. However, Forbes contributor Laura Heller referenced a statistic developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which discovered online purchases accounted for a mere 6.4 percent of total retail sales during Q2 2014.

While this percentage is rising every year, it still doesn't change the fact that an overwhelming majority of people continue to buy goods at tangible locations. So, why is that? Heller outlined several notable factors that impact the shopping experience:

• Many people research goods online and then physically test their usability, wearability or durability at a physical location. Although many online merchants offer free returns, that doesn't mean consumers enjoy the hassle of packaging an item and delivering it back to warehouses. 
• There are plenty of sales "professionals" who irritate customers, but such aggravation is typically caused by the salesperson's social ineptness. On the other hand, there are those who work retail floors with a casual, amiable demeanor, providing their own opinions regarding certain products. This is the kind of experience the typical customer is searching for. 

Something more should be said about the salespeople who go above and beyond. Heller noted that while the Internet can provide a plethora of information, specific data can be difficult to find. She referenced an occasion when she visited a shoe store, during which a customer representative called the manufacturer of a specific brand to provide Heller with more information. 

GameStop still on its feet, still running 
One specialty retail outlet that still maintains relevancy in this day and age is GameStop, which distributed more than $3 billion worth of goods in fiscal 2013 through thousands of its brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S., GameSpot reported. 

While the source also noted that the enterprise announced plans to close 120 stores across the nation, the statement coincided with assertions that it intended to open specialty outlets, such as Spring Mobile and SimplyMac locations. In addition, GameStop Technology Institute SVP Jeff Donaldson maintained the merchant intends to install technology that will make for an even more interactive in-store experience. 

Brick-and-mortar isn't going anywhere, at least for the foreseeable future.