Channels are dead. Period.
Omnichannel experiences are now non-negotiable. Retail technology investments saw a 300% YoY increase in Q2 ‘21 to $31.5 billion, as more consumers turned into omnichannel shoppers (CB Insights).
Consumers are no longer following a linear path to purchase. Retailers are trying to solve the pressing issues of broken customer journeys and inconsistent engagement. And these issues often arise when a consumer switches between different online and offline channels – a behavior that has become commonplace in the post-pandemic world.
Today’s channel-agnostic consumers expect to be able to seamlessly switch between channels. They expect to progress in their journey without friction points such as repeatedly having to specify their current need, price point, brand or taste preference, and so on.
Retailers across key functions have to make countless decisions and course-correct as context changes. What products to recommend, what is the right assortment mix for the season, what items to re-stock, how much to sell them for, and when and how much to mark down are some of these crucial decisions that impact customer experience, profitability, and key business metrics.
Another key challenge that retailers are facing today is the inability to personalize an experience as per a consumer’s real-time intent and context. A Forrester report revealed that personalization ranked the highest in the list of tech investments in 2021.
In fact, 89% of digital businesses are investing in personalization. But there’s a problem. Only 40% of consumers feel that the information they get from brands is relevant to their tastes and interests. This massive gap exists because personalization has evolved from tactical segmentation to strategic individualization, and most retailers are playing catch-up.
To solve these challenges, retailers must adopt a more forward-looking approach to decision-making. Retailers are no strangers to big data analytics. This technology has been a focus area for the better part of the last decade. But the problem even today is, most companies are using data primarily to make tactical business decisions, making them reactive rather than proactive with their data strategy. They’re still data-driven instead of decisioning-led.
Point solutions don’t cut it, as they hinder retailers from future-proofing their digital strategy, creating new competitive advantages to remain relevant, and staying ahead of ever-evolving customer behaviors. What’s needed today is AI-powered decision-making at scale across marketing, eCommerce, merchandising, inventory management, pricing, and supplier management.
To meet this need, we’re going to unveil the industry’s ONLY Algorithmic Decisioning Platform at NRF 2022 – Retail’s Big Show, Booth #6403. Algorithms take away the pain of decision-making from individuals across key retail functions by not just making decisions but also executing them autonomously. Here’s how the platform cuts across different functions.
Algonomy’s Algorithmic Decisioning Platform
Commerce leaders can:
- Create a unified, seamless experience across search, recommendations, category pages, content, email, and offline channels
- Hyper-personalize search results and category pages based on behavioral data, such that no two shoppers see the same results
- Help shoppers find visually similar products and provide complete-the-look recommendations based on product images, without manual merchandising
- Fill recommendation gaps even for products with no behavioral data and fast-changing catalogs
- Pre-load a customer’s basket with items they’re likely to re-buy and boost basket sizes
Aldi, one of our clients, is surfacing more of their catalog to shoppers without compromising on relevance, achieving 46% higher revenue per visitor and 10% higher average order value. Read more.
Marketers can:
- Act on unified customer data across stores and digital for a single source of truth
- Drive real-time, journey-based engagement across email, SMS, stores, mobile app, online store, contact center, kiosk, direct mail, and social media
- Auto-discover micro-segments
- Acquire new customers that resemble their star customers
- Grow loyalty and frequency through individualized interactions
- Spot and reverse churn behavior
- Algorithmically test campaigns and auto-optimize without manual A/B tests
A supermarket chain and a Forbes 500 private brand with over 100 stores achieved 3% incremental sales and 2x digital adoption with Algorithmic Decisioning. Learn more.
Merchandisers can:
- Accurately forecast demand based on customer, economic, and social environment
- Plan assortments and availability across stores and digital channels based on customers’ current and evolving needs
- Optimize markdowns to reduce inventory and margin erosion
- Steer insights-driven supplier collaboration by automating end-to-end processes, from onboarding and ordering to pricing and promotions
- Curate and segment merchandise for a hyper-local and hyper-personal experience
A multinational conglomerate leveraged our Algorithmic Decisioning Platform for merchandising, resulting in a 95% improvement in sales forecast accuracy, 12% increase in sell throughs, and 30% reduction in excess stock. Read more.
Data and technology leaders can:
- Leverage a lakehouse of structured and unstructured data for a single source of truth
- Use pre-built, retail-specific models to unearth deep insights for varying business needs and digital transformation strategies
- Get easy access to persistent, unified data for advanced investigation and custom analyses, with minimum data preparation
- Drive robust data governance with access control and encryption from a single point, eliminating the overheads of managing data governance on multiple tools
Pizza Hut UK enjoyed a whopping 92% efficiency gains with zero lag time in reporting and 100% data integrity across sales, operations, HR, and digital. More details here.
Seize Every Retail Moment with Algorithmic Decisioning
Retail decisions need to become self-driving – where algorithms consider the context, understand your goals, and orchestrate decisions that put the customer first. More than 400 retailers and brands across the world have achieved this target state with Algonomy. Want to learn more?
Meet our retail experts at NRF, Booth #6403, to discuss your 2022 plans and explore Algorithmic Decisioning use cases for your business. Book a meeting here.
