Retail Today Interview

Retail Today Interview

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  The Q312 BMIIndia Retail Report to mine extensive customer profile and forecasts that total retail sales will transaction data to recommend exact, grow from Rs22.5 trillion this year to focused and targeted coupons, Rs28 trillion by 2016, a rise of nearly a promotions and campaigns across all quarter. Little wonder then that channels,” explains Shijo Sunny retailers are investing in technologies Thomas, of Fujitsu Consulting India. like CRM to ensure that they retain “These are delivered through and grow their customer base. integrated campaign execution tools These are exciting times for retail that deliver personalised messages CRM, with innovations and through email and mobile media. breakthroughs delivering immense Promotions can also be delivered potential to retailers as they seek to through proximity-based devices, bring newexperiences to customers wherein stores broadcast promotions while building stronger engagement to shoppers’ mobilephones within a with their brands. defined location. Mobile furthers the New technologies like clienteling, real- shopper experience by enabling stock time engagement and customer ordering, product information, lifecycle management are giving a augmented reality, mobile payments positive boost to sales and marketing and coupons. Retailers have initiatives. CRM has developed from a extensively implemented loyalty simple process of keeping customers management in order to invite repeat informed to its role today, which is custom. centred on making customers feel “The next level of CRM applications special — the foundation of the retail provides integrated loyalty code. CRM applications equip retailers management, allowing shoppers to to manage, engage, influence, earn and redeem loyalty points motivate and analyse their customers uniformly across all channels. across all channels profitably. “To do this CRM technologies allow retailers
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  Social CRM technologiesare also create and manage an end-to-end increase its impact exponentially,” he playing a big role in capturing customer engagement programme adds. customer feedback on product or . CRM applications at the most basic brand experiences. The sheer volume level ensure that customer profile and of data generated by social media transaction data is centralised and interactions requires distillation by accurate. This helps retailers to technologies that handle big data provide efficient and consistent analytics. customer service while creating a seamless customer experience. These ”Tablets and smartphones are great applications also help retailers to clienteling tools to proactively engage derive trends and insights from customers by offering them customer data, resulting in a better personalized services while they are in understanding of habits and shopping the store. “These can add an additional patterns. Retailers can then focus "These solutions are a great way to 5-10 per cent to annual sales," asserts more attentively towards multiple combine all your marketing and sales Aneesh Reddy, cofounder of Capillary subsets of their customer population activities and maximise revenue per Technologies. “Many retail stores by creating a large pool of repeat customer effectively," says Reddy. across the world have implemented business. “Retailers who use CRM have this successfully by putting these witnessed a five- to seven-per cent instruments in the hands of their sales On a Cloud growth in sales within the first six to 12 staff, allowing them to access a Cloud technology has enabled retailers months of implementation. Using an customer’s entire purchase history by to rapidly adopt CRM with minimal integrated approach, retailers can simply entering his or her information investment in infrastructure. Top-of- identify and connect with customers and then helping with known the-line products, such as SugarCRM, over social platforms, make them their preferences. In many restaurants, the offer subscription-based solutions on brand ambassadors and incentivise staff are using these devices to check public and private Clouds; the end them for mentioning their brand in what customer has ordered in the past users need nothing more than a web- posts, sharing your posts or generating and recommend dishes which will be browser to access the system. Cloud likes.” more appealing to them.” According to technology not only ensures data The rich data information gained from Shashi Saurav, of Sales Babu, “CRM security and built-in disaster-recovery this can be used by analytics to directly affects retail supply chain mechanisms, but it also allows for a generate powerful insights that should management [SCM] because a anytime-anywhere access to users further help with personalised competitive market requires a highly across the entire retail and distribution advertising and better loyalty reward disciplined supplier base. CRM has chain on a range of devices including offers. Add a customer lifecycle model changed the game when you focus on laptops, PCs, mobile phones and to this data and you have a very potent suppliers because SCM is based on tablets. One recent example of this plan to reach out and influence your sales order booking, which gives great technology is SoCoMoLo (Social Cloud customers throughout the year. Reddy clarity in product movement and also Mobile Location). says that while a plain bulk campaign makes a company focus on can generate three per cent in sales, a streamlining its secondary sales at customer lifecycle based campaign has retail stores, and dealer management.” the potential to at least double this figure. “And this is just the beginning; One for Consumers integrated CRM can add many other With so many channels of engagement customer engagement initiatives and available, retailers are fast adopting integrated CRM solutions to help them
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  “A Cloud-based CRMapplication, The value of CRM is easily measurable cross-selling opportunities; or possibly integrated with POS systems, allows a by looking at each customer’s lifetime increasing new customer acquisition retailer to make sure that a sale is value by taking into account all of his by 50 per cent by reaching out to a consummated by offering real-time or her transactions. In addition to new target audience. contextual offers and suggestions that lifetime value, customer capital can be You can evaluate the effectiveness of take into account the customer’s prior measured by including activities such your CRM by measuring the additional history and social media activity. as reviews and ratings, social media sales it generates. “To demonstrate Another benefit in having a Cloud endorsements and recommendations, this, we use Test & Control solution is that it allows the retailer to and this improves customer equity. methodology to measure the impact," expand in a much more cost-effective These factors form the basis of says Reddy. “In this process, a group of manner," says Salil Godika of Happiest calculating ROI, and retailers can use customers with the same Minds. Retailers can also look at them to set benchmarks in light of the characteristics are identified and split integrating niche Cloud CRM CRM investments they have made. into two groups — a test group applications to augment their core “Calculating the investment side of ROI containing most of them and a control relationship management capabilities. is comparatively easy," says Indraneel group with the remainder. The test For example, a retailer using its ERP Fuke, director of Bhea Technologies. group is exposed to communication application’s CRM module can “One needs to factor in recurring designed using an integrated CRM integrate it into niche CRM costs, such as software licences and approach, while the control group applications for reviews and ratings, subscriptions, and onetime costs, like does not receive any targeted social media integration and customer CRM implementation, hardware — communication and relies instead on analytics. Cloud CRM solutions ensure which are zero for Cloudbased CRM — conventional methods of messaging, that even small- and medium-sized and training costs.” However, like newspaper & TV ads, to influence retailers harness the benefits of their calculating the return side of ROI their purchasing decisions. The customer data at attractive and requires a little more effort. There purchasing behaviour of these groups flexible pricing options. Platforms from needs to be clarity over the business are then evaluated for a defined Cloud CRM providers, such as objectives a retailer sets out to achieve period on parameters like rate of Salesforce, not only offer retailers fully through CRM — these objectives could response per campaign, frequency of scalable Software-as-a-Service CRM, be set at increasing customer visits, average bill value and basket but also a platform to develop its retention by 30 per cent through being size, and their contribution to total custom CRM applications. more responsive to feedback; or sales. This test can be conducted increasing the wallet share of existing across a number of clients, and we Return on Investment customers by a quarter by identifying have seen an average increase of 5 per
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  cent in salesfrom the group exposed Loyalty Factor For Ranjit Satyanath, a senior to integrated CRM.” Technology has added new channels of technology manager at Shoppers Stop: customer interaction, and retailers “CRM is an integral part of our leveraging new systems are finding business. We run a loyalty program they can reach even distant customers called the First Citizens Club, and three as a means to grow their business. “It quarters of our top-line revenues is said that 70 per cent of buying come from its 2.5 million members” decisions are made even before the Shoppers Stop developed the first contact with the retailer through deployment of its bespoke CRM over social media,” says Kranti Kiran its ERP system in-house. “This helps us Avadhanula, director of CRM solution track the buying behaviour of our management at SAP. “Companies that customers, and also helps us source are able to better manage their brand products based on what the market perception in social media are able to wants. Likewise, we also run speed up their business growth. promotions based on what our Retaining an existing customer is far consumers need, rather than doing more economical than gaining new generic promotions. As a matter of ones; thus, by running loyalty reward importance, our CRM product provides programs, companies can defend their us with feedback from customers. “We customer base and ensure repeat built a program whereby we give business.” customers three times the loyalty Spring Air uses CRM to build customer points for purchases made during the loyalty and gain a complete view of its Diwali promotion period. This helped customers, says Ashok Sharma, the customers build a large reservoir of regional CEO of the sleep supplies points, and saw phenomenal success retailer. “CRM helps is to manage last year; we see no reason why we budgets, time bounds and target cannot repeat it this year.” audiences for promotional activities In order to manage the relationship that stimulate purchases. We also use with consumers, the company rolled retail CRM to automate routine out a mobile app last year that is operations, such as printing cards and designed to make promotions letters, and send e-mails, and to create available to customers when they need monitoring dashboards to ensure that it, rather than when the company customer needs are being met. It can wants to communicate it to them. define the most valuable customers, forecast sales for different product groups and analyse statistics.”
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  Harminder Sahni, managingdirector of retail major Globus, with a footprint of says Meheriar Patel, Globus Stores’s Wazir Advisors, says: “Technology for 36 stores across the country, uses CRM CTO. mobile devices is becoming developed with a partner for fuelling For Dinesh Kumar, director of increasingly popular CRM. The mobile its loyalty program. The cards are Browntree Retail: “Our CRM approach phone becomes the loyalty card, available in silver, gold and platinum has helped us build the trust of meaning that customers don't need to categories and form a central customers in our brand as they are carry another card in their pockets. All repository system for the company. aware that we listen to their queries, transactions are conveyed through the “Around 60 per cent of our business and that any problems with regards to mobile, and the retailer saves a lot of comes from our repeat clientele, and service or product will be addressed. the costs for filling forms, card therefore loyalty is a big bet for us and CRM has made a significant issuance and replacing old or lost we are constantly looking to innovate. contribution to our growth over the cards. Also the service provider offers In fact we will be making an three years we have been in operation. storage and management of data, and announcement soon about a new Providing products on request, solving analytics, again saving a tremendous loyalty program that will enhance the issues in a given time frame and amount of costs for the retailer. customer experience even more. responding to queries promptly has Capillary is the market leader in this While I can’t disclose much now, we given us tremendous increase in space and offers CRM services as will have features like a customer footfall.” CRM is certainly the Software As A Service. A retailer pays a being able to check their points on a technology that is win-win, for rental charge on a monthly basis for mobile device, and we are also retailers and customers alike. each store using the service.” Fashion planning to introduce prepaid cards,”