The retail sector features as one of the most dynamic and thriving sectors in the Indian economy. Digital technology is empowering retail to grow in stages which accounts for more than 10% of India’s GDP. Digital Transformation is changing the landscape of the retail industry in India like never before. The industry is adopting digital tools and technologies to stay abreast of the consumers’ demand irrespective of the b2b or b2c business segment. Integrating physical with digital experiences, e-commerce, on-demand grocery apps like Bigbasket or Grofers, online retailing, etc. are redefining retail spaces to a large extent. All about digital transformation adoption in modern retail which is moving faster beyond the usual hubs. Digital adoption is indeed playing a big role in shaping the retail sector moving to tier-II and tier-III cities, as well. As per IBEF (India Brand Equity Foundation)report, the Indian e-commerce industry is going to become the world’s second-biggest e-commerce market by the year 2034 and will overtake the US e-commerce industry.

Digital Transformation Adoption

Digital Transformation in retail means using digital technology, implementing a new business model conducive to business type (b2b or b2c) at the best affordable cost, that leads to the improvement of existing processes,  and increasing revenue streams for the same. At the process level, digital transformation adoption in retail means doing a job with zero effort and zero-skill as well as zero-learning curve! Because it entails the adoption of the right digital tools and technologies to kickstart the process in all departments. Thus, digital transformation means transformation in all the departments.

The three major elements of the retail operating and business model where  the digital transformation impacts are:

• Strategy – It means segmentation, positioning of products, operation formats, business models that talk about pricing, location, assortment, size, etc.
• Front end elements– customer-related ones like store layout, promotion, merchandising, customer-centric loyalty programs, marketing, communications, POS solutions, pricing, and so on.
• Back end elements – These elements include supply chain, digital procurement, logistics & warehousing, vendor management, mix & planning of assortments, finance automation, people.

Let’s gather significant detail on the adoption scenario of digital transformation in retail in India.

1. Shift from Legacy Model to Digital App

The legacy model of Indian retail would comprise the traditional mode of functioning in all the departments. People have to travel a long distance, spending tremendous time standing in an unending queue for placing orders, payments, etc. For instance, the entire supply chain (manufacturers, wholesalers, dealers, distributors, retailers) faces myriad challenges at respective levels. However, by adopting digital transformation, Indian retail is slowly bringing them into the digital mode. Digital apps in all the streams, customized digital solutions catering to departments, e-commerce, online order platforms, Cloud system, etc. are defining the retail sector in the country. The retail sector is opting for varied web and mobile-based applications, solutions, and varied digital integration within departments thereby facilitating the seamless experience for the stakeholders as a whole.

2. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is an integrated online marketing model that retail companies, irrespective of types,b2b and b2c, all leveraging their immense capabilities to achieve business goals. Digital Transformation adoption particularly deploys these technologies to tap niche markets as well as segmenting as per demographic details. Thus, digital marketing is an online, digital tool, which aims at getting leads, engaging customers, building brand –loyalty. The adoption varies from channels like website development, application(App)development, Google Adwords, social media marketing, mobile marketing, or SMS marketing, etc.

For instance, the Customer Analytics tool. Take the example of a leading Indian fashion retailer, Shopper’s Stop. The retail company started adopting digital transformation in 2017 delivering a seamless experience to both offline and online customers. Just that it collaborated with some digital marketing company who guided the step-by-step process of digital transformation adopting mandatory tools like AI-powered Predictive Analytics. This led to implementing the CMX capabilities (Connected Mobile Experience), throughout its 80 retail stores in India. Thus, this sort of tool gives a single view of the dashboard that displays the insights of connected customers in-store, their buying behavior, in-store tracking, online-tracking (if buying online), and interprets customers’ data providing valuable insights and predicting future trends. Thus, Customer Analytics is redefining the retail space across the country.

3. Digital Operations

Optimization of  Supply-Chain Management is another facet of digital transformation. Retail stores in India are adopting digital transformation where the digital capabilities of the IoT technology have unparalleled usage. The IoT technology along with  GPS sensors, RFI,  can help a retailer retrieve accurate data, for example, specific data about temperatures under which certain items are being stored, transit timings, etc. These data ultimately help in improving transportation quality, and one can act on time to check if certain products need temperature variations, adjusting high or low, as per requirement at that moment thus averting any sort of losses. Moreover, accuracy is very important when managing inventory in a retail store. Proper inventory management can only increase efficiency in a retail company. Digital Transformation is facilitating the adoption of Blockchain in inventory in the retail space in India. The digital technology, Blockchain, can automate the whole process of inventory management, accurately automating the process of product shortage and product surplus based on real-time consumer demand. This automation saves huge investment in managing costs smartly.

4. Payments

Digital Payment services are playing a significant role in the Indian retail sector. Cash payment is not any more popular now for inherent challenges involved. Retail digital transformation adoption in India relies a lot on the online payment system. People in India are doing shopping, businesses across the retail segment over their mobile phones, most of the time. Retailer- e-commerce sites, or retail online stores, are allowing online payment services to end-users and customers thereby increasing the shopping, momentum, conversion rates on sites. GooglePay, PayPal, Apple digital wallet, PhonePe, are a few examples of the popular digital wallets and payment modes in retail in India.

5. Customer Care

Customers are the core of retail business anywhere. In India, addressing day-to-day problems faced by customers in varied areas, for products, for services, etc., the legacy model is existing in the form of call centers. But, by adopting digital transformation in their customer care department, retail in India can redress many challenges using digital methodologies. Applying digital transformations to the customer experience, retail companies can address, can empathize, as well as can minutely understand almost all the varied touchpoints of their customers. Digital transformation allows data interpretation and can show the way improvements can be done. Retail companies have to emphasize customers’ data and find out their preferences, patterns, behavior, etc. This also facilitates forming a model specific to provide a holistic customer experience. All sorts of customer data provide valuable insights on them, leading to determine areas to invest yielding significant ROI.

6. Business Models

The retail sector in India is widely adopting this facet of digital transformation which is rather no-capital-intensive physical store. Many retailers just do not need to have their websites, because they can sell their products on third-party sites like Amazon, Shopify, Woocommerce, etc. Thus, these retailers can leverage their host site’s logistics, pools of shoppers, inventory, payment services as well as, the analytics about customer data. As per an estimate, in India, e-commerce is growing faster than brick-and-mortar retail outlets, paving the way for digital retail to boost its share of trade from the current 5 % to 15 % approx. by the year 2025.

Challenges

In the retail sector in India, a common challenge is an extensive lack of getting an accurate customer insight for the business. Most often, this data is entangled, trapped inside the organizational silos of marketing, sales, finance, customer service departments. This prevents from providing holistic views and insights of the customers. Moreover, retail businesses see customer experience merely for customer acquisition and customer service. They miss out on the broader parameters that can catapult businesses to a  higher level. Another significant challenge that is restraining their growth is the reluctance to invest. For any business returns, substantial capital investment is needed from time to time. And it is a worldwide fact how digital transformation is catapulting retail businesses across the globe.

Conclusion

The Indian retail industry has awakened now and widely adopting digital transformation, however, in phases. Even the neighborhood Kirana stores, small retail stores amounting to small businesses across the country, are slowly but steadily empowering employees, customers, adapting to the current change. No doubt, digital transformation is truly about getting the best ROI and promising a bright future growth in the sector.

To understand more about the retail industry challenges and trends that are shaping digital transformation, visit our exclusive site pages.

Are you a business owner and selling your product online or wish to sell online? Are you selling your business, product, or service, in the virtual world, or would like to do it? Where is your shop located? What is its address? You may end up giving the website link that will drive customers to your e-shop. That’s what you do in the world of eCommerce. You may be a retailer, a business partner, or a startup who is keen to sell or provide service through digital commerce. Hence choosing the right platform is not only crucial for current needs but future needs, too. You need scalability and ease of flexibility with an eCommerce platform.

While there are a host of platforms, we have handpicked some of the popular ones and highlighted some of the important features that you should look upon while making the decision.

Cross Comparison of eCommerce Platform for Key Parameters

1. Big Commerce

Big Commerce is the Cloud-based- eCommerce platform that provides a cost-effective ownership choice and very flexible APIs. In NASDAQ it appears as BIGC, Big Commerce is a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eCommerce platform with a comprehensive tool, features leading B2B and B2C businesses creating customized catalogs and price lists for customers amongst other notable capabilities. Headquartered in Austin and three offices in San Francisco, London, and Sydney, Big Commerce provides a beautiful, creatively engaging platform to companies from multiple industries across 120 countries across the globe. There are customizable templates that do need any coding skills and can be incorporated to design stores, sell as well as buy products.

Some pros are –

• Good for selling on multi-channel.
• Highly flexible and, scalable.
• Sound design themes and cart features.
• Robust SEO performance.

2. Shopify

Shopify is a web-based application, a popular eCommerce platform for all big and small brands. It offers many readymade templates that businesses can create an online store without any prior technical knowledge. They can design their store-looks, customize templates as per their unique needs. Shopify supports all kinds of credit cards for payment.

  Some pros are –

• Easy drag & drop interface.
• Data security of store and customer.Level1 PCI compliance, SSL encryption of 256 bit ensure Shopify to be a safe and secure platform.
• Provision of a full CMS thus enabling businesses to manage the whole functions, layout of their online stores.
• Accessible via mobile or desktop, both.

3. WooCommerce

It is the platform that runs an eCommerce site and affiliate site under a common roof. Created in the year 2011, as an open-source plug-in, it has a large plug-in library that online business-sellers can leverage and customize as per their local needs. In fact, being a free WordPress plugin, it allows online sellers to freely convert their WordPress Sites into customized online stores. There are many extra paid features, integration options that efficiently streamline the shopping carts.

 Some pros are –

• SEO’s best platform is WordPress.
• One-Click selling app.
• Availability of so many WordPress experts.
• Greatly customizable and multiple integration & marketing options.

4. Magento

Magento is a popular open-source, B2B  eCommerce platform and is widely used among big brands like Procter & Gamble, 3M, and many more. Its modest price and massive features like extensions library, numerous integrations make the platform a preferred choice among brands. Though coding is an inherent part of this platform, it is highly customizable and you can ‘do’, ‘undo’ till the time you get your desired store-layout.

   Some pros are –

• Feature-rich such as a versatile content management interface.
• One-click selling.
• Many users communities
• Highly customizable, scalable, and flexible towards choice of hosting

5. WIX

WIX eCommerce platform is a popular choice among small entrepreneurs and businesses. The platform has evolved a lot in the last few years, and its easy-to-use, server-less computing, hassle free-coding, very affordable pricing, simple set-up all in together make this platform an attractive choice for all. WIX has features offering multi-channel-integration, dropship, print-on-demand, abandoned-cart-recovery, 72 free themes, etc. You can move to a mobile editor and personalize your mobile interface.

Some pros are –

• Beginners’ friendly platform.
• On-Page Support for innumerable requirements.
• Easily capturing leads & building customer relationships.
• Easy set up and can accept payment from website only.

eCommerce Platforms – The Pillar to Host your Business

So, you must be clear by now how eCommerce platforms are helping businesses globally and connecting a buyer to sellers under the same roof. Moreover, you have many choices, and only after doing a fair share of comparisons among them, you narrow down to one where you will start your store online or online business. In short, eCommerce has become the biggest growth driver in the world of business, marketplace on a global scale. As per Statista, 2.14 billion people will go for online purchasing of goods & services in the year 2021. There are many other eCommerce platforms but the best are those that manage to create larger value quotients for the users, for the stores, for the businesses, and the network around them. After all, you are not interacting with a mere piece of technology but a modern, apt business model that will deliver you the results as expected.

Are you a business owner, a startup, or an entrepreneur looking to launch your eCommerce store? Explore our comprehensive package of branded eCommerce store solution today!

According to a recent report from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the unfamiliarity and complexity of the mobile device and associated technologies create security concerns for consumers who want to be confident that their personally identifiable information and actionable financial information (e.g., account numbers, PINs, security codes, and passwords) are protected in storage and while being used to process a mobile payment transaction, whether that storage is on the mobile device or in the cloud.

“Consumers aren’t the only ones who need to be mindful of mobile security,” an independent business analyst recently told Yahoo news. “The business owners on the other side of the mobile transaction need to be just as cautious.”

With online and mobile shopping having a banner year in 2013, retailers are rapidly adopting new strategies – and technologies – to make shopping easier for consumers. But with this effort comes the need for retailers to choose carefully the software, technology, and associated vendors that will make this transition to mobile as seamless and secure as possible.

According to countless experts in the field, there are important steps retailers must take to ensure mobile payments made via smartphone credit card processors are as safe and secure as possible in 2014, which is expected to be a turning point year for the growth of mobile payments.

Ensure Your PCI Compliance is Up to Date

Even though security measures are already built into mobile credit card readers, there are extra precautions retailers can take to ensure cardholder data is protected. In fact, retailers that use merchant accounts for processing credit card transactions are contractually obligated to safeguard customers’ credit card information. Every business dealing with credit card processing must meet Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance standards in order to continue accepting cards from their customers.

PCI standards are not laws, but rules that retailers must follow. If they do not retailers may face fines from PCI or lose the ability to accept cards, according to CreditCardProcessing.net (CCP.net), which provides how-to guides and tips about credit card processing for small businesses. Retailers with merchant accounts can review CCP.net’s checklist to ensure they are PCI compliant in order to accept credit cards from customers as payments.

Be Sure to Select Only Encrypted Card Readers

Look for a partner that supports the highest form of encryption technology, preferably end-to-end. All top-of-the-line mobile credit card readers today will have some form of mobile encryption. The top two, PayAnywhere and Square have slightly different security measures in place. PayAnywhere, North American Bancard’s mobile POS solution is Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) compliant and has end-to-end encryption. While industry competitor Square Inc. also follows PCI and DSS standards the company offers reader encryption mainly for stored and public transmission of data.

With end-to-end encryption, personal data processed on a credit card reader is essentially wrapped in protective security layers until it reaches the processor. Much like shipped products are bubble wrapped so as not to be broken until they reach their destination, end-to-end encryption certifies credit card data is protected so it cannot be accessed until it reaches the processor destination. This encryption ensures personal data safe from a swiped credit card remains safe and secure in the transaction process.

Sharing Isn’t Always Caring

When retailers use credit card processing, it’s important to remember the android or iPhone suddenly becomes much more valuable. Retailers, quite frankly, need to ensure they keep their phone to themselves. Phones processing credit cards should be used by the only by the retailer and dependable employees. Since customers have now come to trust digital computer registers are secure, retailers can begin to instill the same confidence in mobile credit card processing by taking reasonable steps to ensure their card reader is used responsibly for business, as opposed to their child’s YouTube toy.

Work Those Review Sites to Ease Customer Worries

It’s a known fact that when in doubt, consumers tend to look online for reviews. Some studies now suggest customers trust reviews as much if not more than friend recommendations. This provides a unique opportunity for retailers to diminish holiday shopper fears once and for all this year.

Merchant Account Reviews, a Web site that reviews merchant account services and equipment, acknowledges that customers might have concerns about giving out credit card information to be entered into iPhone credit card readers. Retailers can ease customer worries by letting them know that none of their credit information is actually stored on the iPhone via review sites. Explaining that all transactions are transmitted directly to a secure payment gateway will put the customer at ease knowing that the transaction is secure.

Then there’s your general review site such as Yelp.com or Google Places where customers self publish reviews. Use these spaces as an opportunity to address the fact that you are using a credit card processor and why this makes you the best retailer around. Whether it’s a speedy checkout process or a tech savvy staff, retailers can use these review sites as a place to not only emphasize the convenience and safety of using mobile credit card processors, but also to attract customers into their stores and brand themselves as the hippest new retailer in town.

It’s an exciting and promising time for the mobile payments space, experts agree. And as long as consumers and retailers remain educated on best practices and optimal mobile security efforts, this industry is going to see unprecedented growth next ear and beyond.

In the new Android handsets accounted for 28 per cent of the market, beating Apple’s 21 per cent but still below market leader Research in Motion (RIM), which holds 36 per cent. NPD attributes the increase to the number of vendors using the operating system, marketing campaigns and new investment in the sector.

“Recent previews of BlackBerry 6, the recently announced acquisition of Palm by HP, and the pending release of Windows Phone 7 demonstrates the industry’s willingness to make investments to address consumer demand for smartphones and other mobile devices,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD.

“Carriers continue to offer attractive pricing for devices, but will need to present other data-plan options to attract more customers in the future.”

Of the major carriers AT&T had the largest slice of the smartphone market, with almost a third of its customers using advanced handsets. Verizon’s share stands at 30 per cent, with T-Mobile and Sprint at 17 and 15 per cent respectively.

Android may have problems in the future however. Apple is widely expected to unveil a new generation of iPhone next month and, if the leaks are accurate, it could well prove to be a huge hit.

Resource:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2262773/android-handsets-outsell-iphone

Apple has officially opened up pre-ordering for its iPad tablet system.

Consumers can now place their pre-orders for the highly-anticipated device, which is scheduled for an official release on 3 April. Analyst estimates have placed early sales as high as 50,000 pre-orders.

The initial release would be limited to the US and only the Wi-Fi-enabled model. The company has said that 3G-equipped models and UK availability will be arriving later in the month.

First announced in January, the iPad has generated more buzz than any Apple product release since the iPhone. Like the handset, the iPad will operate almost exclusively on a touch screen interface, though a keyboard-equipped docking station will also be offered.

When it does arrive, the iPad could face stiff competition in the market from several competing tablets. Asus and HP have already unveiled prototype tablets, while Google and Dell are rumoured to be working on tablet models of their own.

Resource:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2259465/apple-opens-ipad-pre-orders