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Industry Map Retail: Discover New Digitization Opportunities for Retailers

New technologies are rapidly changing the way we shop. What does this mean for retailers?

February 26 2021Eike Folkerts

Consumers are rapidly changing the way they shop – they are embracing newer technologies, smarter devices, and quicker services. When a consumer wants to buy a new product, it does not start with walking into a retail store – today’s consumer will browse online, talk to friends and family, look into social networks, make a decision, place an order and get the product delivered at their convenience.

IM-Industry-Map-Retail-1

Even seasoned retail companies are grappling with this change from analog to digital, from a single traditional channel to an Omni Channel Connected World. Some of them are becoming leaders in digital innovation to serve the consumer seamlessly, while others are focusing on transparency in prices, customized targeted offers, clear product information, value-added services that not only recognizes or rewards the customer but creates a WOW.

Some of the evolving trends that are visible in retail include:

  • Retailers are going to invest in both front and back office related to supply chain, inventory, track/trace, and delivery/fulfillment
  • Collaboration with employee and Social shop are an opportunity to engage with shoppers, build relationships, and drive sales
  • Expect workloads to shift more quickly to the cloud vs. on-premises 
  • Retailers look to play catch-up more effectively using data that they have been only collecting and storing
  • Cloud-based integrated data platforms evolve to build customer profile and serve them on edge in near real time
  • Digitally native retailers are going to gain more profit as well as brand loyalty globally
  • Modernizing the core, pursuing a journey to cloud, and deploying resilient security protocols will be a priority of the decade along with above and more

Only those retailers, who manage to offer their customers a unique customer experience will be successful in the end. In order to achieve this, a retailer's added value is increasingly geared to the customer.

What are the various disruptive ways of engaging with the customer? How to build an efficient assortment strategy? What are the pricing models we use that will fit across all the channels? How retailers can scale up themselves to become omnichannel retail? How can cloud technologies help retailers’ business agility? What does a digital branch and headquarter offer me? And many more.

Some answers and solution attempts to those questions may deliver our newly created “Industry Map for Retail”. The map is embedded in an entire city showing the connection to other relevant industries as Banking, Logistics, Health, Automotive…

Technology for seamlessness in the customer journey

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The “Retail Map” visualize relevant industry-specific solution with five strategic key areas as supermarket, headquarter, logistics, datacenter and production. The included solutions are built to provide seamlessness in the customer journey, based on the right technology that will enable the retailer to stay ahead of the curve. To understand retail let's focus on certain challenges in each of these process areas and how it can be mitigated using our solutions.

Physical Store

The role of physical store is changing faster than expected. Consequently, Retail as a Service is used to describe this shift in behavior. Retailers are turning to technologies to create a new customer experience and improve customer engagement with the brand. We have envisioned the future stores which will use IoT, Robotics, Magenta Business POS, Digital price tag, Digital Signage, Queue Management and more to compete with ecommerce players as well as to gain edge over competitors.

Headquarter

As the retail market becomes more complex, retail organizations have more complex structures that require more sophisticated internal solutions. Retailers have many options to mitigate these bottlenecks with our solutions such as App for employee communication to promote better collaboration, Robotics process automation solution to reduce recurring routine processes, expert on-demand to get right skill IT experts on an immediate basis, and many more. 

Logistics

Retailers need to re-design their supply chain that will meet the consumer demand with higher efficiency. Logistics is going to follow a circular flow, offering responsive and flexible fulfillment options for consumers. Our service offerings such as just-in-time inventory auto-replenishment diversified sourcing and more using next-gen technology such as blockchain and sensor-based tracking using GPS.

Data Center

Navigating the new disruptive technologies and understanding how they can be of benefit is a significant challenge for retailers and hence feeling the pressure to keep up with the pace of technology. The cloud is playing a critical role in maintaining enterprise IT resources. Unlike the traditional datacenter, cloud infrastructure provides flexible, cost-effective, and scalable options to retailers across the globe. We help retail in bridging the cloud gap with two different ways – Either by “Future cloud Infrastructure” (Private cloud by TSI), or through managed cloud services for hyperscale’s like Microsoft, AWS & Google.

Production

Demand fluctuation, human error, the sudden breakdown of production equipment is some of the common challenges production units face frequently. However, in this competitive edge, these challenges could cost the retailer more than before. Our smart production solutions such as automated production lines, digital manufacturing apps, digital factory solutions Digital manufacturing readiness check, and more helps in mitigating the above challenges effectively.

T-System Industry Map you will not only find the solution but also learn how we understand the challenges retailers are facing and how uniquely it can be resolved with best of breed industry solutions.

Visit and explore our retail industry-specific solutions map! Each process consists of more than one solution to address a specific concern for retailers. You can also find more details in the form of a one-pager, solution video, presentation, flyer, whitepaper depicting the functionality and business benefits.

We are looking for your feedback.

About the author
Eike Folkerts – Head of Business Development Retail, Media & Services

Eike Folkerts

Head of Business Development Retail, Media & Services , T-Systems International GmbH

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