How New Retail is amplifying reliance on super cloud technology with omnichannel capabilities like NetSuite
It is not altogether surprising that China was the first economy in the world to bounce back from Covid-19 losses. Its default setting has remained a robust customer-centric mindset that pushes symbiosis with technological integration. Long before the pandemic became a catalyst for digitization efforts by businesses globally in 2020-2021, China had already begun to unlock the next wave of innovative retail revolution, in 2016.
How?
In a letter to stakeholders of Alibaba, Jack Ma first spoke of “New Retail”, asserting its need to be a strategic priority for innovative disruption. It meant integrating offline and online experiences seamlessly, that not only increased customer delight, but had the potential to reshape consumer behavior. The pandemic further triggered a surge in the adoption and engagement with new retail apps, launched by both internet-based and traditional retailers in China. In a report published by JP Morgan on consumer trends globally, even though US consumers spent $211.5 billion on e-commerce, in the second quarter of 2020, up by 31.8%, it came nowhere close to how much Chinese consumers spent.
In order to propel new retail growth, customers must be at the centre of gravity for the best value proposition, which means, driving growth by studying underlying customer trends.
In a report published by PWC in 2019, evaluating investment opportunities for corporates and Private Equity firms, it was found that the rise of singles, combined with the revolution in customers for ‘healthy and green living’ (in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities), demanded innovation.
What did the largest ecommerce player do?
It listened.
Case in point: Alibaba organized Singles’ Day in 2018, where the company brought together brands with pop-up stores, integrating AR (artificial reality) mirrors and smart speakers where consumers could see themselves wearing clothes without even trying them.
Since Covid-19, we have seen beauty brands reinventing themselves to find alternatives to testers—creating QR codes and AI to try lipstick shades digitally.
However, in China, a result of the omnichannel approach, customers could purchase a product by scanning the QR code and checkout with Alipay, practicing hands-free, socially-distant shopping, even before the pandemic. What has also been encouraging is user adaptability with enhanced omnichannel capabilities. E.g.: 38% of those aged 45 and older were shopping more online than they were before the pandemic.
With a consistent need to remain customer focused, New Retail is amplifying the reliance on superior cloud technology with omnichannel capabilities like NetSuite.
As a leading provider of cloud-based technology used for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) NetSuite enables a powerful omnichannel experience that is agile, accurate, and authentic. With customers keen on personalized experiences more than ever, the fully-integrated, end-to-end solution has been able to empower companies to meet expectations across the board and future challenges.
Some of the key benefits that leverage NetSuite’s omnichannel capabilities are:
- Eliminating siloed systems: In order to patch up disparate systems, software solutions are added to satisfy immediate needs, however, if critical information remains stored in silos, inefficiencies can become routine and would require manual entries that are prone to errors. For a true omnichannel experience to meet the new retail customer delight sector, and keep pace with growing demands of your business, a fully-integrated system like NetSuite can tie together native integrations with a wide range of software. This includes CRM, ERP, ecommerce, HCM, WMS, and a lot more. Not only can you connect online with in-store experiences but also have a large range of industry-specific software designed with preconfigured dashboards, predefined KPIs, sample reports, and more, which companies can customize to meet their needs. Furthermore, premade connectors like NetSuite SuiteApp Marketplace helps you retain different software like Salesforce or a third-party ecommerce platform!
- Have better visibility throughout your business: According to supply chain professionals’ visibility remains one of the biggest challenges across businesses. In order to keep up with competition, most companies need insights in order to be better prepared to market fluctuations. What companies get with NetSuite is a 360-degree view of customer touchpoints wherein teams can track orders, sales can look for opportunities to cross-sell or upsell, finance can take care of invoice management, and a lot more. The customizable dashboards and on-par-reporting capabilities allow a more holistic view of the business from anywhere around the world.
- Add and access new customization abilities: The ERP is highly flexible and customizable, which means, it also enables companies to translate business requirements into functionalities that give best-in-class omnichannel experiences. SuiteCommerce Advanced gives developers an open code source to enhance pixel-perfect design capabilities, customizations, and unlimited layout control. What’s more, you can also get access to preview changes at the testing stage before the upgrade goes live.
- Enhance with next-gen marketing tools for greater omnichannel experience: With a robust marketing solution strategy provided through the CRM, you have complete access to customer data in real-time, eliminating any potential gaps and enabling collaboration between teams. You can also get a full picture for loyalty purposes and target marketing, as it streamlines multi-channel campaign management (email, social media, website, etc.). Through a single secure interface, update customer data in real-time, forms, SEO, lead reporting, landing pages, and more.
- Make use of flexible fulfilment options: Fact—Cross-channel inventory visibility is essential for real-time business intelligence, and order flexibility to support a mix of wholesale distribution, ecommerce, manufacturing and retail orders. A wide range of fulfilment options are possible with NetSuite that include store fulfilment, drop-ship, continuity/subscription programs, empowering companies to deliver the perfect order with omnichannel inventory visibility, monitoring, and distributed order orchestration. Add to this, the robust warehouse management system (WMS) which provides enough flexibility to work with external and internal fulfilment providers.
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