Tech Trend #1 – Conversational Commerce

The number of brands and retailers that are adopting conversational commerce technologies is growing rapidly. They are using conversational commerce to build customer loyalty, drive interaction, and grow brand engagement.

Conversational Commerce refers to the intersection of messaging and voice apps and shopping. Meaning, the trend toward interacting with businesses through messaging and chat and voice apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Talk, WeChat, Amazon Alexa, etc.

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Tech Trend #2 – Total Experience (TX)

In order to stand out against the competition, companies need to differentiate their product and service offerings combined with their omnichannel engagement model.

How will companies evolve their experience strategies in the future? How will they include a more all-inclusive view of the various aspects that impact the delivery of truly differentiated brand experiences?

Total experience is a strategic approach that combines multiple experience disciplines. The goal is to provide a more holistic experience for all stakeholders who engage with a brand, including customers, employees, users, partners, suppliers, shareholders, etc.

TX combines four key experience disciplines:

  • Customer experience (CX): How customers interact with and feel about a brand.
  • Employee experience (EX): How employees interact with and feel about their company.
  • User experience (UX): How users interact with and feel about a product or experience, usually in digital commerce.
  • Multiexperience (MX): How an experience is enhanced and delivered simultaneously across multiple channels, devices, locations, and touchpoints.

TX is based on the concept that all experiences are somehow interconnected, and no single experience operates solely in a vacuum. The idea is that a retail employee experience will impact an in-store customer experience. Likewise, an online user experience will affect the employee experience and so forth.

Even though the desired delivery of one experience depends on the successful execution of another connected experience, most companies manage these experience disciplines separately with dedicated teams and software solutions operating independently from one another.

Tech Trend # 3  – Privacy-Enhancing Computation (PEC)

PEC techniques – which protect personal and sensitive information at a data, software, or hardware level – securely share, pool, and analyze data without compromising confidentiality or privacy.

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Tech Trend # 4  – Decision Intelligence (DI)

To deliver exceptional experiences, brands not only need to develop an insights-driven strategy supported by the implementation of real-time analytics solutions, but they also need decision intelligence.

Decision intelligence combines traditional data analytics solutions and various decision-making techniques with artificial intelligence (AI), business intelligence (BI), machine learning (ML), contextual intelligence, and automation.

DI solutions help scale an organization’s ability to improve decision making by gathering actionable intelligence, generating business recommendations, structuring how decisions are made, modeling how outcomes are evaluated, and improving feedback management.

Decision intelligence does not replace humans in the decision-making process but augments the organization’s ability to make faster, better, and more consistent business decisions. These solutions will be game-changing in brand marketing for customer acquisition, merchandising for price optimization, and customer experience and relationship management.

 

Tech Trend # 5 – Smarter Devices

Growing computer power is enabling us to create smarter devices. We now have intelligent televisions, autonomous cars, and more intelligent robots that can work alongside humans to complete more tasks.

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Tech Trend # 6- Autonomous Fulfillment

With the continuing meteoric rise of ecommerce, brands have found it challenging to manage supply chains and fulfillment while keeping prices low and meeting consumer expectations of same-day or next-day delivery. To cope with heightened demands, warehouse operators are increasingly investing in automation—specifically, autonomous mobile robots or AMRs.

Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) technology increases productivity and enables increased fulfillment speed while lowering labor costs. However, as AMRs make their way to fulfillment centers and even larger format stores, what will retail look like in the future?

AMRs can perform several warehouse and order fulfillment functions, including executing pick strategies, transporting goods and materials, and guiding/helping associates as they perform their tasks. Rather than rely on magnetic strips or tracks, AMRs use sensors and maps to interpret the environment, navigate the warehouse floor and detect/avoid obstacles.

Autonomous mobile robot technology can help transform warehouse operations by reducing walking and picking time, making automation easy to integrate, directing workflows to improve accuracy and efficiency, enabling flexible capital expenses, and augmenting human labor.

Tech Trend # 7- Composable Applications

In the continuously changing business context, demand for business adaptability directs organizations toward technology architecture that supports fast, safe and efficient application change.

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Tech Trend # 8- Distributed Enterprise and Rising Outsourced Tech Cost 

With COVID accelerating the rise in remote and hybrid working patterns, traditional office-centric organizations are evolving into distributed enterprises comprised of geographically dispersed remote workforces.

While the outsourcing model has been traditionally less expensive for companies than direct hiring models, rates of both onshore and offshore outsourced remote worker models are increasing dramatically.

Increased outsourced costs, coupled with considerable demand for highly specialized IT professionals, put additional pressure on CIOs to provide viable solutions to meet IT goals and digital transformation initiatives.

In addition, CIOs are finding it more challenging to keep their in-house positions filled as the deficiency in available skilled labor in the marketplace means that the most talented resources are going to the highest bidder.

Sophelle Strategy Services

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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