Hello and welcome to conneXion online 2018. conneXion time is my favorite time
of the year, where we share ideas and touch base. It is of course strange for
me not to say: "Good to see you," because I can't see you and I miss it.
But like in our hybrid plan, where we do not have to choose between in-cloud and
in-house, we can have the best of both worlds.
This year we meet online and next year we will meet on premise.
And let's remember the reason why we are meeting this way this year is because we at
LS Retail wanted to spend every working hour on delivering to you our
hybrid plan and our cloud strategy. That decision has paid off.
The hybrid plan is materializing as we speak.
LS Nav 2018 has been released. It has the same code-base as LS Nav 365, which is
based on Microsoft Dynamics Business Central. By using a single codebase, these
solutions provide you with a flexibility of choosing, when it suits you, to be in
cloud, in-house or hybrid. With that mission accomplished,
we can put the focus on the challenges ahead and design a way to turn them into opportunities.
What does the world of retail look like?
The talk of the industry right now is all about whether tech companies will dominate retail and
wipe out brick-and-mortar retail companies. By tech companies
I mean e-commerce companies, like Amazon and Alibaba, that are based on technology
and have taken advanced analytics into their services. A battle between online
and in-store. We're getting a lot of scary news about retail stores closing,
while sales reports of e-commerce companies are soaring.
Well, like Mark Twain said, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
When we look at the news of closing of malls and shopping centers, the fact of the matter
is that these stores need to be retrofitted to cater to the in-store
shopping experience. It's more about outdated real estate projects and less
about losing business to e-commerce. People will always want a marketplace to
meet and experience, like they have done for centuries. To support this theory
we're getting news of e-commerce companies wanting to branch into
brick-and-mortar retail. Amazon recently bought Whole Foods and Alibaba bought Sun Art Retail Group.
The numbers tell us that e-commerce holds only 10% of the retail business,
while prick and mortar retail still holds 90%,
although e-commerce is growing very fast.
In my mind there is no battle, no war - it is not either/or, it is both things.
And they have the possibility to enhance each other
in many ways. And I say possibility, because action needs to be taken. Things
cannot stay the same. Classic department stores cannot just rearrange the deck
chairs on the Titanic in the hope it won't sink, because shopping has changed.
The in-store consumer wants immediate personal attention. Personal, meaning
relating to a single person rather than to a group. And he expects personalized
experience. Personalized, meaning something that has been made for a
particular person. According to Carrie Ask, the president of global retail at Levi-Strauss,
85% will leave the stores if they
don't receive personal attention. Because of e-commerce, they also expect the
retailers to have a single profile on them, making the service personalized.
They want it all and they want to be able to jump seamlessly from online to
in-store experiences. It is an interesting twist that people experience
more personalized service, when shopping through digital devices, than from the
face-to-face encounters. This is because online they sign in, give their personal
information, and then advanced analytics can be applied. This results in a more
personalized service. Therefore, they also expect that when they come to do their
in-store shopping. We forget that because of
e-commerce people do a lot of browsing online, so when they turn up at the store
they're more ready to shop than before. Their intent to purchase is over 50%.
People are now getting used to retailers engaging with them from the moment they
start browsing online. Therefore, in-store retailers must step up their act.
They must do the same when people walk into their stores. The good news
about the fact that e-commerce will keep on growing is that it will make parts of
retail and hospitality more cost- efficient. More consumers will spend
proportionally less on simple necessity products and services.
Therefore tomorrow's consumers will have more disposable income to spend on experience
retail and dining. Shopping experience that is more personal because it's in
person and in-store. Hence ecommerce will fuel in-store shopping.
As everything about shopping is changing, we want to change.
The online shopping experience is not the same as the in-store shopping experience,
but they can complement each other, if they are seamlessly
interconnected. That is the task at hand. One of the challenges that e-commerce
needs to solve is to lower the abandon rate. People fill a basket but don't
check out, because there are factors like shipping cost and delivery time that
make them hesitate. In-store, this is less of a problem if you provide personal attention.
For example in fashion, it's all about getting people to try on things.
If they don't try it, they probably won't buy it. In e-commerce you
have two senses to play with, sight and sound. In store you're adding smell and
touch, and in hospitality you're using all of the five senses, as taste comes in.
In-store you also have the chance to provide personal service and attention
that makes the consumer feel appreciated and worthy.
The new world of retail actually looks like this: The consumer is in the middle
with a smartphone. On one hand he has online shopping, providing personalized
experience, data-driven, digital. On the other hand he is in store shopping,
providing personal experience, people driven, physical. And through his
smartphone he can share his shopping experience with family and friends
through social media. And what the consumer expects is a seamless shopping
experience between the shopping channels. The retail transactions should all be
stored in one database. Then the possibility exists to apply relevant and
timely enhancers, using advanced analytics, unifying the online and
in-store shopping experiences. This is what we call unified commerce, where
personalized and personal meet.
At the heart of unified commerce, we find loyalty. The seamless shopping experience
can only be delivered if we get it right. What is loyalty all about? Everyone has a
loyalty program and most are based on points and rewards. The problem is that
people are highly unaware of their points balance. An estimated 100 billion
dollars in points are left unredeemed each year. Loyalty can no longer be only
about points and rewards. What people are after is to be personally recognized,
feel special. Basically - be loved. Money can't buy you love,
according to the Beatles. Loyalty is a relationship, not just a scheme
We want to turn our thinking around. We want to ask, how can we be
loyal to our consumers - not, how can our consumers be loyal to us?
This will create a loyalty of a different kind, where the consumer wants to share with
us his personal information, so that we get a chance to provide him with a
seamless shopping experience he desires.
You want to create a great brand experience, as a retailer and as a brand owner.
You want to show your consumers that you are loyal to them and that they
are loved and appreciated by you. But they must experience it. All research
agrees on this. So, how do you make that happen?
Not by choosing separate best-of-breed systems, each with their own database.
Not by choosing between digital and physical,
but by choosing unified commerce.
This is the key to LS Retail. Our speciality is to centralize and unify all the
customer information into one place, one database.
LS Retail is the customer data platform that allows you to know your customers and, with advanced
analytics, know what they like and when. That way you can be loyal to them, love
them. And that will win you and them the lottery.
You will be seeing LS Retail leading this road of unified commerce.
Our solutions will support this vision
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