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Despite reports to the contrary, the store is not dead, it is being reinvented

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Customers no longer shop chan-nels — they just shop — and their shopping styles are as varied as they are. However, one thing remains constant: regard-less of when, where or how they choose to shop, speed is of the essence.

In order to meet shopper demand for near instantaneous delivery, retailers are testing and deploying a host of flexible options designed to leverage their physical footprint as mini distribution/fulfillment centers. Whether it is buy online ship to store; buy online ship from store; or buy online pickup in-store, the introduction of these new models lessens the last mile of fulfillment and cuts delivery costs — while simultaneously adding complexity to in-store operations.

With the dawn of flexible fulfillment, associates are tasked with picking, packing and in

some cases shipping, digital or-ders in addition to their traditional customer service duties. Beyond the strains on the workforce that these new last mile deliv-ery options introduce, retailers must also invest heavily in their technological capabilities and in-store environment to ensure customers are kept abreast of the status of their order and can quickly locate in-store pickup locations.

Despite its operational chal-lenges, flexible fulfillment is a win/win for retailers — custom-ers get their orders faster, while the organization reaps massive economic benefits. In fact,

WHILE THE PAST YEAR has seen numerous accounts of the retail apocalypse, the physi-

cal store is still alive and well. What is however buried six feet under is the old way of

doing business. Retailers can no longer expect shoppers to be organically drawn to their

stores, they must provide exciting and memorable in-store experiences, with the shop-

per at the center, if they are going to survive and thrive in this volatile and ultra-competi-

tive landscape.

Introducing next-gen technology like omnichannel fulfillment, workforce and task

management, and location-based marketing can help retailers differentiate and person-

alize the experience for consumers. However, it is not as simple as flipping a switch.

New tech must be unified and have the ability to scale and evolve. As retailers introduce

new technologies to the store, they need to continuously examine and reinvent their

physical operations to ensure they are getting the most out of their investments.

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76% of retailers report that an omnichannel fulfilment strategy improves customer retention/fre-quency rates, increases margins (68%), and improves customer satisfaction (68%), according to RIS’ “Supercharging Omnichan-nel Fulfillment” report. With so many ancillary benefits, it is not surprising that nearly half of retailers (46%) have up to date click-and-collect technology in place or are in the middle of a major upgrade.

As retailers build out their click-and-collect capabilities, they must remain cognizant of shopper expectations for the ideal pickup experience.

Retailers report that an omnichannel fulfilment strategy improves customer retention/frequency rates. Source: RIS, “Supercharging Omnichannel Fulfillment”76%

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Seventy-four percent named quick service a top priority, while 61% cited easy to find counter/location, 55% separate pickup line, and 53% pickup close to door, according to UPS’s “Pulse of the Online Shopper.”

The most common in-store pickup scenario is either a dedicated pickup lane/counter or retrieval at customer service. However, leading retailers are exploring dynamic options that not only eliminate associates from the pickup experience, but also add a new level of excitement to an otherwise mundane task.

Walmart, for example, intro-duced its in-store pickup towers last year in a limited pilot and thanks to an extremely positive response from shoppers, plans to more than triple the number of towers by year’s end.

Walmart’s massive click-and-collect pickup towers are vending machine style kiosks that allow shoppers to retrieve digital orders seamlessly. All shoppers need to do is scan their receipt and in less than a minute a door opens and their online order is ready for retrieval. Inside the floor-to-ceiling, self-serve towers a combination of robotics and simple conveyors work in concert to retrieve orders at breakneck speed.

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” Walmart reported when it

announced the scaling of the solution. “More than half a mil-lion orders have been retrieved through the towers since we first introduced them. We’re rapidly expanding this pickup program by adding more than 500 ad-ditional pickup towers to stores across the country, bringing the total to more than 700 by the end of the year.”

Managing the WorkforceWhile tech solutions like Walmart’s pickup tower help alleviate some of the strain on in-store staff, there are numerous areas in the store where legacy workflows burden employees, taking them away from helping customers and providing top-notch service.

Associates are the key differ-entiator of the in-store experi-ence. They can help personalize the path to purchase, giving brick-and-mortar locales an edge — but performance is critical. If their services are lacking, they can leave a shopper wondering why they didn’t just save time and buy online. By failing to give associates the next-gen solutions they need, retailers risk disap-pointing customers.

Mobile devices are the con-duit to provide many of today’s workforce management solu-tions and help retail stores blend a digital experience into their physical environments. Twenty-five percent of retailers offer up-to-date mobile devices for associates/managers while only 17% have no plans or interest in deploying them, according to RIS’ “28th Annual Retail Technology Study: Wake Up Call For Digital Transformation.”

Retailers are investing heavily in mobility, but that investment can fall flat if devices are not optimized to their full potential. Keeping mobile devices in top working condition is a critical factor in empowering employ-ees. Easy-to-use chargers and up-to-date batteries are vital to ensure optimum run time and associate productivity. Mobility allows workers to access critical information and systems from the sales floor, breaking them free from fixed cash wraps and the back office. And, in the case of fast food retailer Taco Bell, allows them to learn and train where it matters most — the kitchen.

Taco Bell’s continuously evolving, limited-time only menu requires a masterful coordina-tion of marketing and its nearly 200,000 employees. To train staff throughout the franchise, Taco Bell traditionally relied on paper-

Customers named quick service as a click-and-collect priority. Source: UPS, “Pulse of the Online Shopper”74%

Retailers rank their task management technology as up-to-dateSource: RIS, “28th Annual Retail Technology Study: Wake Up Call For Digital Transformation”33%

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or PDF-based training materials that were expensive to produce, difficult to track, and challenging to update on the fly.

“We used to mail out materi-als to all restaurants when we launched new products,” says Michelle Kay, senior manager of people development and learn-ing, Taco Bell. “We were running into a lot of challenges around shipping times, changes, compli-ance, etc.”

To streamline the distribution of training materials, Taco Bell turned to a platform that allows it to house, update, and track em-ployee engagement with training materials. Equally important, the platform operates on both a laptop and a tablet so workers can learn in a dynamic setting, such as the kitchen, allowing them to train where the materials will make the most impact.

Beyond training, task management software helps associates achieve goals, as well as collaborate and share knowledge with fellow workers. While 33% of retailers say their task management technology is up-to-date, almost the same amount (26%) say they have no plans to implement the software, according to RIS’ “28th Annual Retail Technology Study.”

GameStop shows what can be accomplished after imple-menting this vital capability. The

video game retailer went live across the chain in fall 2017 with a new communication and task management solution designed to streamline operations and increase store-to-store commu-nication. The solution rolled out to its more than 4,000 U.S. store locations and GameStop saw an immediate improvement in store-to-store and headquarter-to-store interaction.

The communication lines between headquarters and GameStop stores have become extremely targeted to ensure messages reach each impacted individual on the front line. Send-ing tasks to all of its stores has been reduced from an effort that previously took hours, down to mere minutes and the workforce solution is able to scan incoming e-mails and assign tasks to the appropriate individual.

“Now that we have task management we can take im-ages and attach to the task,” says Ayotunde Gibbs, director, IT, global store systems, GameStop.

“We are seeing more compliance with tasks and managers don’t need to go to every store to see the displays, they can see it in e-mail.”

Enhancing Employees Beyond helping employees do their jobs, cutting-edge retailers are providing top-of-the-line tech tools to help floor associates ensure customers have a digitally infused experience in-store and out. Nordstrom recently closed a deal to acquire BevyUp who’s digital selling platform will be in-corporated into a new, integrated mobile Nordstrom employee app set to roll out in the coming year.

“We’re investing in providing our salespeople with a mobile suite of capabilities that enables them to be relevant, informative and accessible to our customers,” says Brian Gill, technology senior vice president at Nordstrom.

Store associates and stylists use BevyUp’s mobile clienteling app, Style Boards, to provide customers with a personalized, omnichannel experience.

Location-Based MarketingWhile one-to-one relationships between store staff and shoppers continue to soar to new heights, old-school marketing approaches

“We are seeing more compliance with tasks and managers don’t need to go to every store to see the displays.”

–― Ayotunde Gibbs, Director, IT, Global Store Systems, GameStop

“We’re investing in providing our salespeople with a mobile suite of capabilities that enables them to be relevant, informative and accessible to our customers.”

–― Brian Gill, Technology Senior Vice President, Nordstrom

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are being reexamined and reinvented to align with retailers’ personalized, customer-centric strategies.

Retailers continue to ag-gressively spend on marketing technology to tailor the path to purchase for fickle shoppers. In fact, the number one technol-ogy retailers boast as being up-to-date in their e-commerce roadmap is e-mail, mobile, text marketing/messaging (46%), according to RIS’ “28th Annual Retail Technology Study.” This technology becomes infinitely more powerful in the store en-vironment, as retailers connect with mobile-obsessed shoppers and provide tailored content based on their specific loca-tion — 39% of retailers named location-based sensing for mar-keting/communication as a top technology for 2020, according to the RIS study.

Retailers are building their tech muscles to identify shop-pers when they visit physical locations and communicate to them via a shopper’s own mobile devices. A number of leading

retailers are experimenting and deploying location-based market-ing solutions to blend digital and physical shopping including:

• The Finish Line enhanced its mobile application with geo-fencing technology, allowing it to communicate with shoppers when they are in, or near, a brick-and-mortar location.

• Nike will debut a new concept called “Nike app at retail” later this year. When a shopper enters a store they will be automatically recognized and exclusive products and promo-tions sent to their mobile device.

• Macy’s targets customers with personalized offers and messages through the Macy’s In Store Mode in its app. In addition, the app’s mobile checkout option allows shoppers to avoid the cash wrap entirely. The depart-ment store plans to introduce the

service at its full-line stores by the end of this year.

• Home depot has put geo-fencing technology, which lever-ages mobile location technology, “around brick-and-mortar stores to surgically target our custom-ers with the right ads,” says Home Depot’s president of online Kevin Hofmann. “It allows us to spend marketing dollars in both offensive and defensive ways based off customer mobility patterns.”

The much ballyhooed retail apocalypse is not upon us. In fact, the reverse is in effect. Old-school, customer-centric service is being resurrected and retailers that properly invest in the in-store experience are bringing personalized service back to the forefront and winning the hearts, minds and wallets of today’s easy-distracted shoppers.

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For nearly two decades, GTS has been providing advanced mobile device batteries and chargers

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39% Retailers say location-based sensing for marketing/communication is a top technology for 2020 Source: RIS, “28th Annual Retail Technology Study: Wake Up Call For Digital Transformation”

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