Mobile Retail is About More Than Your Phone
Furthermore, the associate’s seamless, real-time access to inventory information not only benefits the customer and makes her experience more personal and valuable, but also provides the retailer with opportunities for incremental revenue per visit and increases the likelihood of repeat visits. Couple these with the ancillary benefits of increased employee engagement and this looks like a winning proposition all around.
Consumers Are Ready ... Are Retailers?
Consumers have embraced mobile technology and their daily habits continue to change dramatically as a result, yet most retailers have been slow to adapt to this change.
The future will belong to those retailers with the following:
- an organization designed with an outside-in customer focus;
- disciplined yet flexible internal innovation processes;
- the ability to run multiple customer experiments in parallel;
- a commitment to operational excellence across the value chain;
- the flexibility to adapt and respond to market volatility; and
- the foresight to anticipate changes and adjust their business and operating models accordingly.
Are retailers ready for this new mobile-enabled world? Only if they're prepared to move quickly, pilot often, fail forward, fail faster and rapidly incorporate lessons from frequent experimentation.
Dianne Inniss is the retail strategy and solutions lead at ThoughtWorks Retail, a community of individuals whose purpose is to revolutionize software design, creation and delivery.
