Store Operations
The mobility-optimised, profitable, customer-focused retail store of the future is here. Bringing together:
- an improved connection with customers,
- staff better connected to each other across different departments,
- real-time inventory and stock management linked into a responsive supply chain management system,
- the latest in in-store technology including technology to support the growing move to dynamic pricing models,
- staff mobility
…data collection and how a retailer reacts to the information has the opportunity to improve and deepen meaningful connections with clients, lower the cost of ownership of stock and assets, and improve profitability in a sector squeezed by increasing fixed costs and competition from online.
VisionID works with dozens of retailers, big and small, to improve the way their stores operate and how different parts of the business communicate with each other and the outside world (customers, suppliers, regulators, and more).
Visibility of operations
Empowered staff give improved customer service and delivers increased productivity per employee. Without having to leave the customer, your member of staff can assist with product enquiries there and then. Staff mobility can continue to be optimised in order to improve operations within a retail environment.
With empowering, mobile-optimised tech like the Zebra TC51 Touch Computer, staff members can check stock availability at all times, let the customer know that a particular product is available, connect with another branch to reserve their stock, and even communicate with the company warehouse to dispatch items direct to the customer’s home.
If staff can access/share data in real-time using mobile technology such as the Zebra ET55 Tablet, your business has the opportunity to reduce lost sales it may not previously have been able to fulfil without the technology.
Retailers can increase sales by “presence and locationing” solutions, loyalty cards, dynamic pricing, and “click and collect services”.
“Presence and locationing” pinpoints your customer’s location in store and can send their smartphones relevant messages in real time on offers related to their purchase history. VisionID helps retailers build up individual snapshots of customers and their buying habits with real-time data-capture at the checkout.
VisionID’s system automate data capture processes whether a customer has a loyalty card or not. By understanding buying habits on both the individual and the store level, this helps to improve process efficiencies within the business as a whole, particularly in the area of stock purchases based upon prediction of future orders.
Increased profitability
Better inventory management across the business:
- reduces the cost of ownership of stock,
- frees up cash flow which would otherwise have been potentially invested in underperforming stock, and
- increases profit margins.
Dynamic pricing, much like that seen in the travel industry and major internet retail sites, is coming to bricks-and-mortar retailers offering a host of benefits.
VisionID will help you build up a picture of shoppers on an individual level for tailored loyalty-card-linked dynamic pricing. This offers a dynamic pricing architecture for customers who have not signed up to you card-based discount schemes yet.
“The obstacle to creating such 'smart' pricing strategies in store has been the stubbornness of the paper price tag,” reported the Guardian newspaper in 2017 as it predicted the rise of dynamic pricing in countries like the UK and Ireland, currently “behind the curve” in dynamic pricing. The practice is well developed in France where systems allow up to 90,000 price changes a day with shelf edge labelling.
With dynamic pricing, retailers in London reported an increase in both revenue and profit (by 2.5%) and a reduction in waste (30%) when they trialled out the technology in their food aisle.
Our retail consultants can help you introduce the technology of dynamic pricing with shelf edge labelling, linking it to beacons: small wireless devices in your store that send promotional messages to your customers’ smartphone apps.
The future of retailing starts now
For over a decade, real-world retailers have felt like the enormous amount of data collected by internet retailers ,has put them at a disadvantage through their inability to have access to the same tools.
The technology to challenge the internet retailers, improve the customer experience, get customers spending more per trip, and for a meaningful customer-supplier relationship to form and grow is here at Vision ID.
Real-world retailers are able to connect with customers in a much more personal way. The people serving your customers and asking them questions are an asset no internet retailer can match. Better supply chain management and increased staff mobility, married to an understanding of individual and group buying patterns means that:
• you’ll always be in stock of the products customers expect,
• cash flow will be freed up with tighter purchasing quantities allied to demand,
• and you can widen and deepen the range of products you sell based upon customer intelligence and a real-time knowledge of actual inventory levels using cash that may otherwise have been spent on stock you didn’t need that doesn’t sell as quickly.
Give us a call on +353 (0)52 618 1858 or contact us through our webform.
