Shopkeeper tending a customer in a clothing store
Read Time, 2 min.

There is a simple truth at the heart of the retail sector – if you don’t look after your customers, someone else will. The fight for customers has intensified in recent years and shows no sign of cooling down. The retail success stories of the future are expected to be a smart and seamless blend of physical and digital.  

The key is to appreciate and embrace the role of data in obtaining a deep understanding of your customers. It can show you the patterns in their behavior and preferences and can help you create personalized services and offers that will hit the target. With so many shoppers operating on a digital-first basis – researching products, prices, and availability online – there are lots of opportunities for retailers to make use of across channels.  

New Black has helped G-Star RAW and Grandvision to serve their customers with immersive and consistent brand experiences. Their EVA Unified Commerce Platform enables seamless shopping by combining (m)POS, e-commerce, clienteling, order management, and inventory & fulfillment. All while ensuring compliance with (inter)national privacy and fiscal legislations. The result has been a significant increase of in-store conversion, more click and collect orders leading to upsell, and a higher employee satisfaction. 

Immersive and digital experiences can help inspire and engage your customers, with tools like augmented reality demonstrating how digital and physical work so well together. 

Hevolus has been helping the Italian luxury goods brand Salvatore Ferragamo to use mixed and augmented reality with the Hevolus Remote Selling Solution. Customers can interact with a digital twin of the item they are browsing, allowing them to customize a pair of shoes just for them. The data generated by these augmented encounters has allowed Salvatore Ferragamo to further enhance the customer journey, optimize space in physical stores, simplify purchase methods, and improve the overall customer service experience.  

Hevolus is helping Würth Italia to engage customers with “phygital” content and spaces in the hVERSE accessible through the web on any connected device. Würth can offer its customers a virtual tour of the company, demonstrate tools and train customers on the use of the Würth systems. New customer acquisitions grew 50% YoY. Learn more about Hevolus hVERSE. 

Bridging the gap between digital and physical retail allows you to simplify the shopping experience for your customers, overdeliver on their expectations, and increase the overall customer lifetime value.

Empower Retail Success with Azure Marketplace

Empower your retail business with the full range of apps available on Azure Marketplace. Uncover the keys to success.

Discover more related articles per industry:

Education

Finance & Insurance

Government

Healthcare

  • Scientist looking at a screen with data

    European Health Data Space aims to unleash the full potential of health data

    Background A key challenge in healthcare today is that both patients and clinicians have difficulty accessing the health data they need. This has multiple implications. For patients, it prevents them playing a more proactive role in their own care.  For clinicians, it affects their productivity and the quality of the care they can provide. In […]

  • A woman undergoing a scan

    Predictive maintenance is improving quality of life for cancer patients

    With cancer affecting more than 17 million people annually, a figure set to rise dramatically in the coming years, efficient and cost-effective treatment is essential. Since deploying Microsoft Azure IoT, IBA Worldwide, a leading developer of medical equipment for cancer treatment, has been able to reduce the cost of maintenance and improve repair times for […]

Manufacturing

  • The Best Coffee Is Brewed In The Cloud

    The Best Coffee Is Brewed In The Cloud

    Modern coffee is complicated. Gone are the days when a quick cup of ‘instant’ in the morning would satisfy most of us. Coffee is a living, breathing culture, and with it comes a burgeoning set of consumer expectations. Meeting and exceeding them determines whether coffee businesses sink or swim in an industry where you’re only […]

  • A photo of trees

    Future society: The utility company turning up the heat with AI

    One Swedish utility company is undergoing a journey in energy innovation―empowered by dynamic collaborations and AI technology. Frosty commutes from work in wintery Nordic cities are endured knowing that a toasty home awaits. Keeping city energy consumption steadily regulated is key, not just for an economical and warm home for residents, but to minimise environmental […]

Retail

  • Duty free shop

    Dufry: cultivating a culture of data through cloud technology

    One of the largest travel retailers in the world, Dufry is committed to digitizing its operations and becoming a fully data-driven company. In support of this target, Dufry is using Azure as a scalable, dynamic platform helping it reach a single source of truth. “We absolutely love data, but we don’t believe in using it […]

  • a person standing in a room

    Delivering seamless commerce with a complete omnichannel solution

    With retail moving beyond a transactional model, customers are looking for retail experiences that meet or exceed their growing expectations. Retailers are tasked with better understanding customer needs and preferences in order to create personalized and friction-free shopping experiences. This is only possible by removing the barriers between traditionally isolated channels, like e-commerce and physical […]

Discover more related articles per dossier:

Customer Stories

Digital Transformation

  • 2 persons standing

    5 Key Insights about Modern Manufacturing

    The pace of change in manufacturing is relentless. An unstoppable wave of technological innovation is sweeping across the industry, redefining the processes and structures it leaves in its wake. No sooner are new milestones glimpsed, than they’re reached and surpassed. It is an industry outliving itself. Riding this wave – rather than being overcome by […]

Security & Privacy

Tips

  • female shopkeeper looking at her work tablet

    Create flexible retail supply chains that are built to last

    In a powerful storm, a tree that does not bend is likely to break. In 2020, the pandemic put storm-like forces on global supply chains – and many of them simply broke. There were shortages of many household items and commercial supplies, with many retailers forced to ration sales of some products.  This showed how […]