What is the need for supply chain management in retail business?

The retail sector accepted different challenges in 2018, including digital transformations at the government rules, modern technology wise and also in terms of working capital for visibility. Success in 2018 and going, will depend majorly on reputed brands’ with online retailers’ ability to manage with their respective customers

The Indian retail industry, which accounts for over some minor part cover of the country’s GDP and around 8 per cent of the employment, has shown many opportunities in 2017, exclusively with the entry of different brands and new experts.

A massive grow in brands, stock keeping units (SKUs) and digital transactions in the last decagon has increased the opportunities and also, thrown challenges in terms of space required, working capital availability, trackability regarding consumers, transactions and taxations. The current variations of change in taxation has developed a short-term uncertainty.

Customer retention and purchase, exceeding the regular and walk-in customers, continues to be another big challenge along with boosting cost of manpower and limited show of retail assistants. The wanted and demand has passed from unskilled labor model to semi-skilled and skilled labors.

Most amazing things, lack of use of technology has attended to humongous amount of badly in online retail, also leading to grow in leakages, ending up with shrunken profits.

 We need to focus on solutions, anticipating the upcoming markets and how the various ecommerce or online industry should be riding the newer waves.

Trends in 2018 and Moves:

Technology is giving a best Opportunity to Engage with Consumers Directly

Technology is growing at a faster pace than what was imagined earlier. The brands and retailers who are able to engage with their customers and stake holders will be successful. Both Online marketing and offline marketing are growing faster. Measuring the RoI is possible only if the engagement is percolating to end consumers.

Omni Channel Continues to Boost

The growth in retail is understandably visible in both offline and online. One can’t afford to ignore one and target only on the other. Most brands counting that of FMCG should be able to help their consumers on both channels. Beyond this, they should be able to know the consumers, their needs and grievances, irrespective of the channel that they have chosen to shop with.

Creating an Engaging Experience is Remarkable

Engaging consumer’s experience and brand engagement is important. Customer engagement is moving to be the next biggest challenge. Especially when the market is highly scattered and many business deals are happening at the multi-brand outlets, brands and retailers should be able to know the technology and avenues that could help them to identify their consumers/customers.

Personalization is the Key to Brand and Retail Success

The crucial of personalisation in retail, cannot be supposed, to be a need only in online stores. Personalisation is about significant a customer well and able to project their wants and expectations to allow the engaging experience. Personalisation should be expend to offline retailing too. While online transactions are increasing, it is also true that large portion of the retail still happens via offline. Even online-only stores are opening up more offline stores. Knowing the customer at the point of sale is close to build an exciting experience.

Social-connect-share-buy Trend

Customers are more social and their judgements are really boosted by social community. Brands should be capable of being connected on social platforms, share their products and should create it possible to tread in customers to purchase then and there. The experience is further improved by delivering as rapidly as possible by connecting all offline stores that sell those products. A brand/retailer is now capable of making these outlets virtually a mini warehouse. Thus, being able to deliver from the nearest store, quickly, will delight the consumers.

Small to be Successful in India and Small is Back Globally

India is control by small format stores. Many of them, originally, were worried about getting wiped out due to many reasons including the threats from online and large format stores.

But the trend throughout the world is demonstrating the reality that small format are back and will showcase success. Even large formats are opening small formats along sides, to be in the competition.

Convenience, smaller quantities and repeat buying habits along with the awareness of fresh and new models are increasingly becoming the reasons for smaller format trends coming back.

Success in 2018 and moving, will dominate mostly on brands’/retailers’ capability to engage with their separate consumers. The right-thinking brands and retailers will target and put efforts on developing a future by adopting technology that guides in integrating in-stores, mobile-stores, cloud, analytics and social media in a unified technology to boost customer engagement.