Two decades of technological disruption have given shoppers more options than ever before, at home and on-the-go. With products available both online and off, they shop when they want,
how they want, and where they want.
Above all, consumers value speed.
of shoppers decide to buy within one hour of a mobile search.
of in-store shoppers value fast service over personalization and smart recommendations.
of shoppers abandon a purchase without prompt assistance.
Yet many retailers struggle to meet consumers' new demand for speed.
Stock Accuracy:
The Key to Retail Sales Growth
Whenever and wherever a customer demands an item, today’s winning retailers have it ready. This is only possible through unified retail and universal inventory:
Unified retail
bridges digital and in-store experiences into a seamless customer journey.
Universal inventory
provides item-level stock accuracy from factory to storefront.
Retailers who combine the two never miss a sale again.
Reality Check:
Most Brands Aren't Ready For Retail Primetime
Even if you've invested heavily to beautify your stores, drive traffic and increase loyalty, without item-level stock accuracy you still miss out on sales opportunities. These frustrations are felt by both shoppers and staff.
How many of the following situations have you experienced?
Your customer is waiting. You can’t locate the item they want. If the system knew it was lost, damaged or stolen, another one could have been reordered. You lose the sale.
Your product is moving fast. You have it in stock, but it’s held up somewhere between the loading bay and multiple storage areas. You can't get it to the sales floor in time. You lose the sale.
Your customer is in the fitting room and wants to try a different size.
You can’t confirm if you have it in stock or suggest a substitute article. You lose the sale.
Your customer inquires about a product that’s out of stock at your store. It's likely available at your other store across town, but you have no way of confirming in the moment. You lose the sale.
Your cashier is too busy sorting and scanning items to effectively engage your customer. You lose the sale.
It doesn't have to be this way.
The Unified Retail Solution
The good news: new RFID-based technologies let you reinvent your customer experience. By managing your inventory at the item-level and offering shoppers unified retail experiences, you can now achieve the following:
Sell Everything, Everywhere
With new knowledge about customer behavior and a 360° item-level view of your inventory, you have new powers.
- Offer flexible delivery and return options such as e-reservation, in-store pickup, and ship-from-store.
- Enable preemptive stock repositioning from across town, or even on demand while the customer waits — whatever is needed to clinch the sale.
- Offer the most effective merchandising and make the most informed assortment choices based on real buyer behavior and trends.
Gain Insight, Everywhere
RFID technology provides a clearer view of both the item and shopper journeys.
- Gain full visibility of the customer journey. Know the end-to-end lifecycle, real-time location and movements of all your stock.
- Understand which products are being considered, tried on, and bought so you can identify best sellers, improve your time-to-market, and troubleshoot problem items.
- Leverage in-store data and trends as leading indicators for your ecommerce operations.
Delight Shoppers, Everywhere
Both employees and customers benefit from a truly unified retailer.
- Reinvent the in-store customer experience by designing next-gen store formats.
- Support new forms of in-store engagement such as clienteling, guided selling, connected fitting rooms, self checkouts and line-busting applications.
- Free employees from time-consuming inventory checks so they can focus on assisting and selling to customers.
Requirements for Successful
RFID-Led Retail Transformation
Retailers should entrust their unified retail initiative to an RFID company with the complete solution: a scalable item-level unified inventory software platform, powerful employee apps, expert professional services, and flexible hardware services.
Item-Level Inventory Software Platform
The right RFID software platform must give you real-time, end-to-end visibility of your complete inventory from factory to storefront. It must seamlessly connect with your existing business, supply chain, retail and ecommerce systems.
Employee Apps
Your platform of choice should offer intuitive mobile apps that enable your frontline employees to use the full power of your newly gained universal inventory. Apps must work offline when connectivity is not guaranteed in storage areas.
Professional Services
A successful retail reinvention requires expertise in retail, RFID and systems integration under one roof. Your RFID service provider must have proven experience in unified commerce and supply-chain processes.
Hardware Services
Track-and-trace, inventory, and mobility application solutions are hardware intensive and frequently updated. Successful implementation requires understanding of hardware and network complexity as well as sourcing, support and financing.
Did you know?
- Recent large-scale deployments at retail leaders have shown that improving stock accuracy by just 3% results in a 1% revenue increase.
- Improving stock accuracy in sectors where size and style is critical, such as apparel and footwear, leads to a 5 to 15% revenue increase.
