siliconindia | | April 20208HOW IS DIGITAL REVOLUTION TRANSFORM-ING THE RETAIL SECTOR AS A WHOLE?Digital revolution has not only affected the retail industry, but also every customer driven medium. Customers are becoming more digital savvy. They like to interact by help of digital means. It might be on the purchase side, the cus-tomer service side or any kind of research that the custom-er does, digital has become the undeniable part of the cus-tomer's journey. Now, if we come to how it is specifically affecting the retail space, earlier, we went to stores and bought from the store itself; but now, customers are bet-ter informed because they can compare the prices online. Real time price checking is also there. Another important aspect where digital has impacted retail is how a customer experiences the product. It will be either a virtual experi-ence or a mixed reality experience, and it is affecting the users a lot.WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF TECH-NOLOGIES THAT ARE GETTING IMPLEMENT-ED IN THE RETAIL SECTOR?Retail has been an early adopter of all the modern tech-nologies. The use of technology to an extent helps the customer is distinguishing one product from the other. For example, there are furniture companies which can use mixed reality to show the customers as to how the furniture would actually look in their rooms. This is an added bonus for the customer.The usage of IoT to provide a holistic experience to the customer, especially in the electronics sector, has be-come common where systems are put on display. Current generation is very much social media driven and what others have experienced in a product matters to them the most. They go for reviews and ratings before the point where they actually buy it. HOW ARE THE BACK-END OPERATIONS IN THE RETAIL SECTOR GETTING FACILITATED BY TECHNOLOGY?While on one hand, it is getting more customer-oriented, on the other hand, there is increased self efficiency as well. Technology has facilitated the supply chain in the retail sector. Another is the in-store experience. e-Com-merce as a channel has not been much profitable for the retailers. Not many retailers have been able to gain equal profits from sales in stores and e-Commerce on the other side. Most of the retailers want customers to have more in-store experiences than selling it online. WHAT ARE THE WAYS IN WHICH DATA DRIV-EN INTELLIGENCE IS BEING USED IN THE RETAIL SECTOR?e-Commerce profitability, digitization of stores and other major changes are a resultant factor of data itself as the common term for it is data-driven retailer. Data driven intelligence helps a retailer to ensure customer loyal-By Rakesh Ravuri, CTO & Head - Engineering for Retail, Publicis SapientIN MYOPINIONCHANGING TRENDS IN RETAIL INSPIRED BY INNOVATIONS IN TECHNOLOGY In his two decades long career, Rakesh has held key positions across companies such as Electro Scientific Industries, Adea Solutions, Tesco, Amazon and Publicis Sapient, and even founded Eternal Illusions Graphics.
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