RESTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW) today released it’s top six predictions for the retail industry in 2017, building on the company’s predictions from 2016, all of which proved remarkably accurate. Retailers will again strive to match Amazon’s sales and fulfillment model, engage new channels, geek up their stores, and use technology to refine inventory management and anticipate customer desires in 2017.
Oliver Guy, Software AG’s Global Industry Director for Retail, noted: “Retailers will again strive to match Amazon’s sales and fulfillment model, engage new channels, geek up their stores, and use technology to refine inventory management and anticipate customer desires in 2017.“
New Tribes of the Amazon-ization
There will be further
“Amazonization” of retail, with new market entrants – as well as
existing retailers - finding new ways to sell, fulfill and deliver
products to eager, often impatient, consumers.
You Won’t Need a Remote for Channel Hopping
Retailers will
quickly adapt and connect into new channels to engage with customers,
using avenues including “conversational commerce” – Amazon Echo or Bots
in Facebook Messenger.
Find More Stuff
Real-time inventory will be a reality, as
more retailers realize that a rip-and-replace program for core
merchandising, warehouse and store systems is not the best – or the
quickest - way forward; the smartest retailers will look for other
approaches like using in-memory caching combined with high speed
messaging in order to provide real-time inventory levels across every
location, channel, store and shipment.
Stores Geek Up To Attract Customers
Customers want
to see techie gadgets when they go into brick-and-mortar stores, and
retailers are going to be adding cool things like robots that give them
directions, kiosks for in-store ordering, and magic mirrors for trying
on clothes.
Eat Your Heart Out, Jamie Oliver
IoT will start to creep
into your kitchens as devices like Amazon Echo, Hiku and others allow
consumers to add things to their shopping lists. Conversational commerce
will be a precursor to Artificial Intelligence and then “cognitive
commerce,” which will appear over the next few years.
We know what you want
The arrival of “anticipatory customer
experience” will allow retailers to manage customer expectations earlier
and earlier in the sales process. This, in turn, can help retailers
solidify an emotional attachment to their brand, offering customers what
they want before they know they want it.
Oliver Guy concluded: “As retailers get to grips with real-time inventory, geek up their stores to attract new customers and begin to predict what customers want early in the sales cycle, they will have a much easier time taking advantage of the ‘retail moment.’ All of this entails being able to orchestrate across systems in order to be able to fulfill the customer promise.”
About Software AG
The digital transformation is changing
enterprise IT landscapes from inflexible application silos to modern
software platform-driven IT architectures which deliver the openness,
speed and agility needed to enable the digital real-time enterprise.
Software AG offers the first end-to-end Digital Business Platform, based on open standards, with integration, process management, in-memory data, adaptive application development, real-time analytics and enterprise architecture management as core building blocks. The modular platform allows users to develop the next generation of application systems to build their digital future, today.
With over 45 years of customer-centric innovation, Software AG is ranked as a leader in many innovative and digital technology categories. Software AG has more than 4,300 employees, is active in 70 countries and had revenues of €873 million in 2015.
Learn more at www.softwareag.com.
Software AG, 11700 Plaza America Drive, Reston, VA, 20190
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