As the retail industry continues to embrace digital transformation, an omnichannel experience approach is no longer an afterthought but a priority. Traditional buying patterns have been disrupted by the massive growth of eCommerce. Now, retailers are turning to digital solutions like smart analytics to enable an omnichannel experience for customers.
An omnichannel retail experience refers to integrated channels that sell goods and services. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, customers expect in-store, online, and mobile applications to offer a personalized and continuous shopping experience.
One way that retailers are trying to bridge the gap between customers’ expectations and experiences is by gathering data across the entire customer journey. Through smart analytics, this data can be utilized to enable the omnichannel retail experience that a majority of customers now come to expect.
An Ocean of Retail Data
Retailers typically collect data from numerous sources, including:
- Web-browsing patterns
- Purchase behaviors
- Key demographics
- Session-based web information
- Social media trends
Gathering such vast quantities of data does come with a price, however. Many retailers are only able to apply a fraction of the data available to them, which limits their ability to enable omnichannel success.
This is due in part to not just the amount of data, but also fragmented and irrelevant data. For retailers to truly see value in omnichannel retail experiences, the data they gather must showcase a holistic view of the entire customer journey.
Traditional methods of data analysis cannot efficiently derive value from fragmented data from multiple sources. Many retailers are turning to cloud-based platforms and systems to simplify data collection and analysis, which then enables them to focus on strengthening their omnichannel efforts.
An Omnichannel Approach to Customers
Enabling the omnichannel retail experience is more relevant than ever, especially in building and maintaining customer relationships. In fact, a recent McKinsey study showed that 60-70% of adults are omnichannel consumers. In order to stay competitive in today’s landscape, retailers must turn to digital solutions while also ensuring their investments produce value. That’s where smart analytics comes in.
The major value-adds regarding smart analytics in retail revolve around understanding the customer, properly engaging them, predicting behaviors (such as a purchase), and monitoring outcomes of the full journey.
How Smart Analytics Enables the Omnichannel Retail Experience
In these modern times, it’s imperative retailers rely on an all-encompassing cloud platform like Google Cloud that features the ability to analyze massive amounts of customer data using smart analytics to deliver better customer experiences both online and in-store.
Utilizing smart analytics on Google Cloud Platform can better assist marketing teams and retail organizations to optimize the customer experience across channels, setting themselves up for success in areas such as:
- Increasing customer loyalty: Delivering relevant offers at the right time enhances the customer experience and keeps them returning over and over again.
- Growing revenue: Enabling seamless shopping experiences and paths to purchases via numerous channels enables top-line growth.
- Improving customer satisfaction: Customers expect a personalized experience, and a multichannel approach to visibility is key in catering to customer needs.
- Enhancing marketing effectiveness: Campaigns enriched with smart analytics capabilities such as artificial intelligence (AI) can provide key insights to which advertisements resonate with customers, providing marketers with critical data.
Whether your organization is already on the cloud or is seeking to migrate, Pandera is here to help. As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, Pandera’s team of experts help streamline your deployment and migration journey to the Google Cloud Platform with our proven methodology and solutions.
We assist retailers to accelerate their data modernization initiatives to enable an omnichannel retail experience for customers, allowing them to see results quickly and take advantage of data-driven insights.
Accelerate your analytics transformation through our Smart Analytics Playbooks, and find out how smart analytics can help your retail organization to enable the omnichannel retail experience by contacting us today!