Retailers Need Great Ideas

Retail Innovation

Success in retail today is about innovation through omnichannel strategy – new markets, new channels, new capabilities, new processes, and new business models.  Retailers need innovation to meet their customers’ growing demands. Sophelle delivers that innovation for retailers by developing comprehensive strategies and processes that maximize agility, minimize risk, and accelerate their ability to launch innovative products and services, enter new markets, implement scalable operating models and optimize channel operations.

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Omnichannel Strategy

To meet customers’ high expectations, winning retailers transform their business with a connected and coordinated omnichannel approach. Sophelle’s consultants work closely with clients to uncover new opportunities and create cost-effective, high-performing, capabilities-based  strategies tailored to each company, enhancing all channel touchpoints by making them appear and operate as one unified brand. The result is an innovative, seamless omnichannel experience that exceeds expectations in stores, online, and throughout the customer journey.

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Data Drives Retail

Data may be a four-letter word. It’s coming from every direction: mobile, online, in-store, and through partners. Managing all that data can be overwhelming. Properly utilizing it, however, is critical to creating an optimal customer experience. Data drives personalization – the key to effective communications and sticky shopping experiences. Data drives forecasting – learning from the past to see the future. Data drives testing – so decisions are made on science, not whims. If data isn’t driving your retail business, Sophelle can help.

A recent survey reported that more than 37.5% of large organizations said that analyzing big data is their biggest challenge.

Customer Experience

Retailers must understand the entirety of their customers’ journeys to manage it to its fullest potential. Failure to do so exposes risk of customer defection. Winning retailers are identifying key points in the customer journey to differentiate and make the experience compelling.

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The Evolution of the Store

Although the news has been dim with stories of store closings and the increasingly difficult task of competing with Amazon, new trends have started to come to light. Stores are beginning an evolution of experience. Although retail may continue to see store departures and over-saturated brands taking a step back, it is also seeing traditional ecommerce companies take a step into the store. From Rent the Runway to Fabletics and now Amazon, customers are proving they still like to touch and feel products before they buy them. In fact, a recent study from the National Retail Federation in partnership with IBM says generation Z prefers to shop in stores.

Today’s shopper is in control of her own destiny and is identifying areas of change such as:

  • Shoppers want more information about the products they’re buying – where and how it’s made; what their friends and influencers think about it
  • Shoppers want more personalization – balanced with privacy
  • Shoppers want better and faster service – to be assisted, not sold
  • Shoppers are valuing their time more – they expect a unique experience
  • Digital solutions are raising the bar – minimum wage store associates need much more assistance than they’re getting today to compete with multi-million dollar, cloud-based, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
  • Successful stores will offer what shoppers can’t get online – experiences, physical discovery, personal interaction
  • Sophelle helps its clients deliver customer experiences that compel shoppers to visit and buy in stores.

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