In-store customers account for 50% of all eCommerce activity, research by Salesforce found, so closing the online-offline gap is critical for customer experience.

In response, retailers pursuing omnichannel with Retail Pro are turning their technology gains into customer-facing conveniences for unified commerce that puts shoppers first.

Here are three ways you can pass on the benefits of full data visibility in Retail Pro to your customers.

1: Show store inventory availability online

 
79% of shoppers research products online before buying in stores. Analysts are calling the trend ROPO – Research Online, Purchase Offline.

With so many shoppers choosing this blended approach to shopping, you can use your inventory data in Retail Pro to give customers online visibility into a product’s availability at their local store and secure the sale.

2: Make personalized recommendations

 
Though personalized recommendations generate only 7% of online visits, they result in 26% of online conversions – well worth the effort.

You can analyze customer history data in Retail Pro to personalize your marketing with recommendations based on items they recently or frequently purchased.

Effective recommendations are those that complement what the shopper already purchased from you, rather than simply other iterations of items the shopper has already browsed or bought.

3: Blend channels into one holistic shopping experience

 
For on the go consumers, the real shopping is done on your website.

They see your store as a fulfillment center where they will try on or pick up what’s needed on their way to do other things.

Integrated ecommerce and store POS can help you create a streamlined experience for these busy shoppers: shoppers can plan ahead and fill up their online shopping cart, and then access it at your store POS to complete the purchase and get the goods.

Omnichannel at Kanmo Group

Kanmo Group took this kind of holistic approach to managing data with Retail Pro Prism.

“To truly benefit from our omnichannel strategy, Kanmo Group has to look beyond simply engaging customers through offline and online means. When you look at the customer behavior in Southeast Asia, you will see that shoppers love to fill up their basket online – but they still prefer to complete the purchase in physical stores,” commented Bhavin Patel, Omnichannel Director of Kanmo Group. “We want to give our customers flexibility to collect and check out the ‘basket’ they created by communicating with a salesperson or through the real-time Retail Pro Prism POS system.”

Customers can fill up their shopping cart online. If they are in the area, they might choose to visit a nearby Justice store and complete their purchase there.

Going Omnichannel with Retail Pro Prism

 
Retailers pursuing omnichannel are taking on the monumental task of integrating all their data sources into a 360 degree view of their business.

With full integrability in the Retail Pro platform, omnichannel is becoming attainable reality rather than simply rhetoric.

Accurate, real-time communications in Retail Pro help you keep your inventory and customer information up to date across the entire business, so you can make better decisions from holistic, integrated business insights.

Whether you’re leveraging Retail Pro for your brand stores, ecommerce, kiosks, outlets, franchises, store-in-store, or pop-ups, Retail Pro is one solution for all your retail and helps you unify commerce in a way that puts shoppers first.

To see what it will take to unify commerce with Retail Pro Prism in your business, contact your Retail Pro Business Partner or request a demo today.

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Wednesday, October 17th, 2018 at 10:30 am .

As your business continues to expand, it is critical to adopt a retail solution that is scalable, integrated, available, mobile, and secure.

The Retail Pro® POS and store management platform and SAP Business One® ERP software are designed with change and growth in mind.

The integrated solution allows you to tailor and customize your software to support your changing needs.

You can lock down critical preferences and security settings across stores, while still allowing individual locations to modify their key details with easy-to-use personalization tools.

An integrated solution like Retail Pro and SAP Business One will give you innovative ways to reach new customers, maximize efficiency, and drive profitable growth – and will keep growing with you as you grow.

Want to see how Retail Pro and SAP Business One can help you grow?

Learn more >

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 2:11 pm .

Looking to improve inventory productivity and control?

Watch this webinar from Retail Pro International and Management One, the retail consulting brains behind Retail Pro Planning Open to Buy software, to see principles and tactics that will help you manage inventory better and compete profitably.

Part 2: Metrics That Matter

• Discover science-based forecasting techniques to maximize retail productivity and financial performance
• Compare your performance against benchmark data from top performing stores around the country
• See how metrics like GMROI, inventory turnover, initial markup pricing and gross profit can help you achieve better results in your store

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Tuesday, September 25th, 2018 at 9:45 am .

More retailers today are recognizing value in the raw data they collect from every transaction and seeing the need to use it more strategically to create a unique customer experience that will boost their bottom line and keep customers coming back for more.

The challenge then becomes knowing which data to single out from the torrent of data you have available: which data should a retail company track which would give direction for marketing efforts and lead to more conversions and repeat sales? And how do you put that data to good use?

Here are 4 ways you can take advantage of data gathered in Retail Pro POS to personalize your customers’ experience and boost your bottom line.

1: Collect better data with user-defined fields

Relevant data is where data-driven profit begins, and user-defined fields in Retail Pro POS give you flexibility to add the fields for which you want to gather data.

You can start by collecting the basics, like customer names and emails, and put that to good use immediately to personalize your communications.

Or, get more detailed with information like skin tone when you’ve just helped them pick out the perfect face makeup, so your marketing team can make more tailored offers on items like lipstick or blush.

Plus, you can grow your bottom line more efficiently by reaching out to past and repeat customers. This is where collecting emails at the POS really makes a difference.

Retail Pro Prism’s scriptable XML/CSS user interface lets you collect the data you’re interested in to better understand your customers and reach them more effectively.

Because you can entirely reconstruct the POS workflow to reflect your operations, you can create a popup prompting the sales associate to ask the customer for this information, helping you increase the amount of data points you’ll have to analyze.

2: Upsell with customer management features

Upselling is easier than selling to a customer for the first time and can help a store’s revenue grow faster. It should make customers feel as though they are winning – not as if they are simply shelling out more money. And when they’re winning, you’re winning too.

A quick glance at a shopper’s purchase history (or all those customer details you’ve started collecting!) in Retail Pro can equip your sales associates with the information they need to determine what products your customer would find most interesting and relevant, and make the offer for an upsell when they’re in the store.

Make it clear why you deserve these customers’ business, and why you offer a better value proposition than competitors. Most importantly, let them know how they’ll profit too.

3: Report on and analyze all your data for deeper insight on what your customers want

Getting holistic, real-time data in the hands of key decision makers allows them to take immediate action and improve performance in your stores. And when you give customers what they want, they come back for more.

To help you maximize the value of your data, intuitive dashboards and clear graphic visuals in Retail Pro Reporting allow you to summarize performance, analyze results, and explore trends.

Plus, when you integrate all your data sources in Retail Pro Decisions – like data from your database, ERP, CRM, external statistics, Google Analytics, social media, and any other data to which you have access – you can better understand what happened, why, and what’s coming next.

4: Integrate POS data with your CRM and personalized marketing platform to build loyalty and boost sales

Analyzing transaction data as a whole, like what customers purchase from you, when and how often, can be more useful for your longer-term marketing efforts, to better segment your shoppers and create personalized email offers based on their purchase history.

Personalized marketing solutions like AppCard for Retail Pro use transactional data from Retail Pro to trigger behavioral-based campaigns and keep shoppers engaged with your store.

It can help identify brand advocates and nurture prospects with AI-driven, highly personalized offers that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers.

Watch our recent webinar: How to Use Loyalty Data NOW to Boost Holiday Sales

By combining those data points, retailers can infer a level of interest and reach out accordingly. Remember, actions can speak louder than words.

Proactive retailers are constantly striving to increase visibility into exactly who their customers are, how they’re interacting with your stores, and what they want. And, with Retail Pro, you can collect and act on the data you need to drive more sales.

Want to see how you can put POS data to good use? Request your demo today >

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Thursday, September 20th, 2018 at 3:52 pm .

The first step toward unified commerce is to integrate the data from every store, channel, and device so you get one complete view of what’s happening in your enterprise.

With the integrated Retail Pro® and SAP Business One® solution, you can do exactly that.

The Retail Pro POS and store management platform has an open API so it plays nicely with all the other retail technologies you use as part of your strategy, like eCommerce, vendor dropship, loyalty, Business Intelligence.

When used in tandem with enterprise resource planning software like SAP Business One, this powerful solution enables you to streamline in-store and head office operations and technologies by seamlessly integrating key business processes into a single, unified system.

With data shared seamlessly across your retail tools, you get more complete omnichannel visibility, which means you can make smarter, more informed decisions to optimize your inventory, employees, and customer engagement efforts.

Visit our website today to learn more about how you can unify commerce with Retail Pro and SAP Business One.

Learn more >

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Tuesday, September 18th, 2018 at 9:56 am .

Retailers struggle with “shrink” — thefts from retailers that includes shoplifting and employee stealing — to the tune of $46.8 billion in 2017, according to the National Retail Federation.

Retailers lose an average of 1.33% of sales, on average annually to shrink.

However, artificial intelligence (AI) is now being integrated into technology solutions, which increases retail security and helps prevent theft.

Video Analytics

Video analytics is being transformed by AI.

Because AI does away with the need for pre-programmed algorithms, sensor technology can capture a large amount of metadata in real time.

As a result, AI allows video analytics to do much more than just alert users when a person or object has crossed a barrier; security cameras can specifically identify a person entering a store or department through facial recognition software, for example.

Retailers can even intercept known shoplifters by using cameras running analytics software.

The devices quickly and efficiently scan approaching vehicles and their license plates and then cross-reference that information with persons of interest to alert security teams.

By applying advanced video and data analytics to existing POS video and data streams, retailers can also curb loss by identifying the products that go without scanning at check out.

The electronic point-of-sale (POS) system can be connected to the surveillance system to track the entire POS activity and identify potential irregular operations.

Two other major causes of retail shrink result from “sweethearting” and self-checkout.

“Sweethearting”— when a cashier allows a customer to pass through the register lane without paying for a product — can include covering barcodes, stacking items one on top of the other, and skipping the scanner and directly bagging the merchandise.

AI fights sweethearting by applying advanced computer vision algorithms to the existing camera feeds, to see and analyze what is happening at the checkout and track each item.

It associates every item within a transaction to the transactional data feed from the POS system to flag anomalies.

Self-checkout fraud includes customers bypassing the scanner, tampering with price codes and leaving merchandise in the basket.

An intelligent computer vision system automatically reconciles what should be on the transaction receipt and the items being scanned in the video.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The IoT connects devices as varied as smartphones to wearable devices to products on the retail shelf.

As the use of IoT increases at a business with the expansion of sensors and devices — including from security-related devices — the volume of data being created will increase rapidly, which will require AI-enabled software and machine learning to analyze that information meaningfully.

For example, some businesses are implementing wearable devices for employees that can learn habits and create patterns based on usage.

An employee who strays from a regular routine sends a flag to security, which may then choose to investigate.

Despite Hollywood’s eagerness to portray AI and machine learning as dominated by robots, in reality, machine learning is a part of everyday technology.

Its ability to synthesize data and help humans draw conclusions makes it a tool with a bright future in retail.

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Monday, September 17th, 2018 at 7:35 am .

In a day and age in which “automation” and “self-service” are terms often applied to retail sales, it’s eye opening to learn that millennials seem to prefer an in-person, brick and mortar experience, particularly because this is the first generation that is truly digital.

These young adults spend $600 billion in the United States, according to Accenture.

It’s therefore worthwhile for retailers to understand this group’s unique characteristics and requirements and tap into what they want from the stores they frequent.

Personalization tools can greatly help retailers connect with the millennial shopper, but retailers need to understand these shoppers’ mindset.

1. Millennials come prepared and want sales associates to add value to their research

First, sales associates must offer value to the transaction.

While older shoppers may welcome a friendly sales pitch or having the associate function as a sounding board for potential purchases, millennials are looking for experts and answers to questions.

They’ll often have done their homework online, and having read reviews are coming in-store to “touch and feel” and discuss features and comparable options.

It doesn’t hurt if the retailer makes them feel a little special, as well.

For example, retailers can use intelligent appointment scheduling (IAS) combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize a customer’s upcoming birthday and send a celebratory message in advance with coupons, gift suggestions – or a link to set up a wish list that can be shared with family members.

2. Millennials are on the go, so catch them when they’re on their iPhone (which is always)

Second, millennials rely on mobile devices to compare prices.

While many retailers offer in-store promotions, having mobile scanning capabilities rather than printing out coupons is a must for this age group.

They are also active users of social media and will interact with a brand – but, once again, it should add real, tangible value to the shopper.

Accenture found that millennials view social media relationships with retailers as transactional, and a way to get deals.

Creating positive buzz, and becoming a topic of conversation with this group, is hard work.

3. Millennials expect every experience to be technologically inerrant

Third, millennials want a seamless, integrated experience more than other generations.

The transition from in-store visit to smartphone and back again must be frictionless.

In fact, the entire experience must be seamless: From research phase to delivery to possible return/exchange.

Retailers will need to partner with technology, data, analytics and process specialists to give millennial customers what they want in terms of service.

For instance, a third-party logistics provider can supply same-day delivery services for online purchases as well as a buy-online, pickup in-store program.

Scheduling solutions company TimeTrade conducted a survey and analyzed census data to conclude that retailers lost $150 billion in potential sales in 2016 by failing to provide shoppers with personalized service.

Most interesting is that millennials would pay up to 20% more for better, highly personalized retail experiences.

By investing in personalization, retailers will not only appeal to millennial customers, but they’ll also open the door to others as they become more comfortable with omnichannel retail.

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Monday, September 10th, 2018 at 7:26 am .

3 things are clear to retailers:

1. Most of your sales come from existing customers.
2. The best way to increase repeat sales is to focus on cultivating customer loyalty.
3. Success for your loyalty marketing program depends critically on shopper enrollment.

Yet, many retailers are still seeing low numbers in loyalty program enrollment, and more still are faced with problem programs that do very little to alter buying behavior and incentivize future purchases.

On Wednesday, September 12th, join Retail Pro International and AppCard for a live webinar to see how you can start using loyalty marketing techniques now to boost holiday season profits.

• Why personalized loyalty marketing works
• How to capitalize on holiday foot traffic to supercharge enrollment
• Loyalty marketing tactics to increase purchases now and during the holidays
• How to leverage loyalty data to keep customers coming back

Save your spot now to hear proven marketing tactics to increase program enrollment and how to leverage the shopper data you’ll generate to keep customers coming back after the holidays.

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Friday, August 31st, 2018 at 8:15 am .

How a customer experiences your brand when they visit your stores is a strong indicator as to whether they will become a repeat customer or leave you for competitors with better service.

Elements of customer experience range from baseline solid replenishment so customers get the products they want, all the way to the heights of experiential retail where they get to test your products in the store – and you can use Retail Pro capabilities to improve each phase.

Here are 3 ways to improve your store experiences with Retail Pro.

1. Give them the goods

First and foremost, shoppers come to you for products.

If you don’t have what they want, shoppers may go for brand alternatives in your store.

Or, they might choose an alternative retailer to meet the need you couldn’t.

We know your team is doing its best to keep shelves and racks stocked with the latest and the best, and Retail Pro can be a strong help in this area.

To help you minimize lost sales due to out of stocks, use replenishment capabilities in Retail Pro.

For every item in your inventory, you can set minimum and maximum quantities.

These quantities specify the minimum and maximum amounts you want to have on hand at any given time.

The Best Replenishment utility allows you to automatically create purchase orders or transfer orders to ensure you have enough stock in each store when your quantities are above or below these numbers.

You can define formulas for different stores, departments, vendors, or styles.

Formulas use sales history records to ensure you have enough stock on hand for the period of time defined by the formula.

The wizard tool in Retail Pro helps you set up formulas quickly and easily.

You can read more about this on the My Retail Pro user portal blog: Automate Inventory Replenishment with Retail Pro® Auto Utilities

2. Show customers they’re worth your time

When you have enough personnel on the sales floor and at the cash wrap, shoppers intuitively get the message that they are worth your time and staff investment.

You can train your sales staff to keep an eye on queue length and whip out Retail Pro POS on a tablet to open up additional check stands so you make sure your customers get a good last impression.

Another way you can show shoppers they’re worth your time is by training your team to actually take time with customers before they get to the POS.

If the Min/Max features failed you or you just sold the last pair of high rise skinny jeans in your customer’s size, your sales associate can use Retail Pro to see if your other locations have those jeans in stock and place an order from the mobile POS.

That way, you can do a stock transfer from another location and the customer can pick up those jeans at your store in a few days.

Or you can place the order from your online store and have it delivered to the customer at her home.

Lyn Evans

Retailer Lyn Evans created that kind of no-disappointment experience for their customers.

Every store is equipped with iPads that show their company website at all times to allow for cross-selling from other stores.

If a customer wants a certain style or color that is not available at their location, a store associate will save the sale by helping the customer place the order from the store’s iPad before they go.

A good customer experience starts with giving your customers what they need without friction or disappointment.

The next step up is to get to know individual customers so you can pinpoint what else they might need and want.

So, while your sales associate is looking up stock availability from Retail Pro on an iPad or iPod Touch (or any other mobile device), they can also look up the customer’s transaction history and make recommendations for cool sweaters or tees to complete their look.

It’s extra little steps like these that show your customers they’re worth your time, and they leave happy.

3. Get Creative

When you’ve got the basics of good inventory management and great customer service in place, you can devote mental energy to creating an immersive, interactive experience in your stores.

And Retail Pro is honored and humbled and grateful to be a part of what awesome retailers like you are doing in your stores.

Oakley

VP of Oakley Retail, Erik Searles, shared with Chain Store Age how Oakley is using technology to draw customers into the brand’s innovation.

Oakley uses digital technology and mobile devices to give customers a more active hand in creating a product personalized to their needs in its new in-store custom and prescription eyewear centers, which are launching in all Oakley stores.

The eyewear is built on the iPad and then right in front of the customer, ready to take home.

Oakley is also utilizing mobile POS to help customers via quick transactions on the spot, rather than having them finish an interaction with an Oakley expert and then go elsewhere to pay.

United Colors of Benetton

Global head of retail design at Benetton, Michele Trevisan, shared with Retail Focus how they’re infusing beauty and color into their retail experience – and how it’s facilitated by the use of modern technology.

“When we started the project, the brief was not just to do another flagship store; the idea was to create a brand amplifier, a place where the customers can become users of the brand’s philosophy, not just simple consumers. Therefore, we decided to use three drivers for the project: attract, explore and inspire.”

Inside the store, two digital applications were created with the intention to simplify the customer’s activity, reducing the waste of time.

The first one is the mobile payment system that, thanks to the use of WiFi tablets and mobile POS, allows an exclusive payment via mobile and card only, potentially everywhere in the store, reducing the time spent in a queue.

The second is represented by three digital interactive tables showcasing content on selected products, on Benetton brand initiatives and, thanks to the use of an integrated RFID antenna, they release technical information about the products that are placed on the table top.

Do something amazing

These are just three ways you can improve your customer experience with Retail Pro.

But retailers like you are creative, visionary people with many idea of how to improve your in-store experience.

Retail Pro is ready to go there with you.

Doing something amazing with your Retail Pro? Tell us about it!

Write in to newsletter@retailpro.com to share how you’ve been improving your customer experience.

Haven’t experienced Retail Pro for yourself yet? Request a demo today.

Images: Oakley, United Colors of Benetton

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Thursday, August 23rd, 2018 at 2:21 pm .

Business Intelligence is high on the agendas of modern executives.

At the 2014 Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit, Gartner Analyst Michael Smith reported that a survey of CEOs and Senior Business Executives in North America showed that their two top technology investment focus areas were:

• Business Analytics (71%)
• Enhanced Business Reporting (56%)

There can be a number of different factors driving executives to make investments in Business Intelligence, but one main reason stands out.

According to Smith, executives still report a huge gap between the information they need and the information they get.

They get the results — the data that looks into the past without allowing them to understand what in their internal processes and external environment they need to focus on to improve for the future.

The data they get describes what happened.

But it doesn’t predict what will happen.

And it doesn’t prescribe which actions to take.

In most cases, data is already being registered and logged through decentralized transactional systems such as the ERP solution or the CRM, marketing, or warehousing solutions.

Information is managed by each functional area, but it may be siloed and not accessible for executives to understand right away.

And it may not allow for analysis across the diverse transactional solutions within the company.

This requires a dedicated setup that is built for analytics.

But how do you differentiate which data is most valuable for you to use?

Get Whitepaper

This blog is an excerpt from the Retail Pro Decisions whitepaper, From KPIs to Profit: Understanding Your Leading Indicators for Better Retail Results. Get this whitepaper today to read more.

Get whitepaper

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Friday, August 17th, 2018 at 10:28 am .