This year’s Retail-Week Hackathon challenge is to simplify the multichannel shopping experience for customers. This is an opportunity for the whole retail industry in the UK to participate in and to benefit from fresh ways of thinking and the creation of products that can click with consumers and bring competitive advantage.
The rise in use of technology continues to transform shopping, and Retail is in the top three industries facing disruption as a recent survey shows that at least 40% of businesses will fail at staying digitally agile.
Cisco is delighted to be selected to compete in the Retail-Week Hackathon and has entered a fantastic team with an extensive track record in the rapid prototyping of ideas across a range of technologies and markets to deliver new disruptive, innovative products for our customers. One such example of this was the recent CHILL (Cisco Hyper Innovation Living Labs) immersion event in San Francisco where we collaborated with some of our key customers to help define and shape the future of IoE within Retail, and created a range of new innovative products, tools and services.
To thrive in the a world where the Internet of Everything (IoE) is disrupting every industry, firms must place
a premium on greater foresight, experimentation, and fast execution. In this environment, winners will be agile organizations that utilize the people, process, data, and things approach of IoE to innovate rapidly and create value for their customers.
Open innovation is a key strategy for Retailers to adopt in dealing with the rate of change within the industry and the Retail-Week Hackathon is a great example of this approach.
Why is simplifying the multichannel shopping experience for customers important?
Exponential change is creating a maze of shopping journeys. In the age of the Internet of Everything (IoE), new connections are creating unprecedented opportunities to innovate, as well as challenges. Cisco estimates that IoE will expand the 13 billion connections among people, process, data, and things today to 50 billion in 2020 – which will drive exponential change and complexity. Retailers need to examine how the shopping journey (product research, purchasing the product, receiving the product, and obtaining support) has evolved from the pre-Amazon.com era through omnichannel e-commerce and on to the IoE era.
Shopper interactions once added up to a total of three linear shopping-journey options: in-store, through a catalog, or prompted by print or broadcast-media advertising. The advent of e-commerce expanded this number and now, IoE promises many unique variations of possible shopping journeys. As the next wave of technology innovations such as wearables, augmented reality, smart labels and things like the Amazon Dash button become prevalent, consumers’ digital lifestyles will evolve and these shopping journeys will multiply further. This complexity is not only unprecedented, it is increasingly unmanageable for retailers using standard management approaches and technology strategies
From a Retailers perspective, customers who are multi-channel consumers spend more money than single-channel consumers and are more loyal. Retailers can create a lasting competitive advantage by offering a simplified, multi-channel experience.
From a Customers perspective, they desire an effortless shopping experience that lets them browse and shop in the way they feel most comfortable through the most appropriate channel for them at whatever stage of the shopping journey they are on. Indeed, they will expect this as a given and will not draw distinctions between one channel and another.
Simplifying the multichannel shopping experience is not just a convenience for shoppers but an imperative for retailers – and the Retail industry as a whole needs to develop strategies to rapidly adapt. That’s why Cisco is involved with the Retail-Week Hackathon.
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Great blog Bob!