NRF 2021 is going to be a first for all of us. I know I’m going to miss seeing many old colleagues and friends this month. NRF BIG Shows for me are just as much family reunion as they are industry conference. But as we’re all discovering, virtual conferences have some real advantages. And, in a way, it’s fitting that NRF is virtual—digital if you will. That’s because digital transformation is accelerating as it impacts the industry.
So, what does Microsoft have in store for you at NRF 2021? Here are four things to put on your “must-do” list:
Catch my session “Retail 2020: A year to never forget.” You’ll learn how Microsoft is helping retailers build more intelligent, resilient, and sustainable retail operations with some amazing retailers across the world.
Visit Microsoft’s virtual booth. You’ll have a chance to see how Microsoft is helping retailers to reimagine their operations and find ways to stand out in today’s new world.
Attend the interactive discussion room where we will talk about what data and artificial intelligence (AI) mean to your organization. AI can be a catalyst for real change in retail, taking massive volumes of data and sifting through it to find actionable insight on customer behavior and store operations.
Take a virtual tour of our Microsoft store and learn more about how we have pivoted our business model over the past nine months. Driven in part by COVID-19, we’ve taken our retail stores completely online, giving us new ways to connect with consumers and respond quickly to changing market conditions.
NRF is also a great place to learn about the newest trends in retail. Here are four trends to keep an eye on during 2021:
1. Data explosion and monetization
A whopping 40 petabytes of data an hour is generated in retail. To put that into context, 1 petabyte is the equivalent of 500 billion pages of typed text or 10 billion photos on Instagram. But that 40 petabytes an hour is not just any data—it’s the demand signal for the world. Now is the time for retailers to break down their silos of data, take control of their data estate, and turn it into a strategic asset.
2. New partnerships and ecosystems
Retailers have come to the realization that nobody can win on their own. 2020 was the year where we saw unlikely coalitions of the willing—just take the last mile delivery space as an example. We’re even seeing competitors working together in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.
3. Sustainability
Transparency, values, and ethics have never been more important to shoppers. 71 percent of consumers prefer buying from brands that align with their values, according to 5W Public Relations. Indeed, 67 percent of customers consider sustainable materials when making purchase decisions, and 63 percent feel a brand promoting itself as sustainable is attractive, according to McKinsey. It’s no surprise then that we’re seeing more and more retailers making major commitments in this space. Take Walmart, which made a commitment to achieve zero emissions by 2040, or H&M which has committed to all materials used in production being sustainably sourced or recycled by 2030. There’s more of the same to come in 2021.
4. Customer loyalty shocks
Consumers globally have reacted to the crisis and the ensuing disruption by trying out new shopping behaviors.
50 percent of consumers shopped a new brand
Two-thirds of European shoppers say they have recently tried a new brand, retailer, or shopping method.
And don’t forget, this year’s NRF is so big that there will be two of them. The online event is January 12-14, 19, and 21-22; and the live event is June 6-8, in New York City. We’re hoping that by then it will be safe for everyone to attend and enjoy things in person!
Editor’s note – Oct. 28, 2020 – The press release below was updated to clarify Cooler Screens’ current partnership with Walgreens.
CHICAGO, Il. and REDMOND, Wash. (October 28 (8am PT), 2020) —Cooler Screens and Microsoft Corp. announced a multi-year collaboration focused on bringing an immersive digital experience to brick-and-mortar retail environments. Through the collaboration, Cooler Screens will work with Microsoft to scale the delivery of its immersive digital media and merchandising platform hosted on Microsoft Azure to retailers and product brands. The companies will also explore additional integration opportunities to deliver enhanced experiences to customers.
Cooler Screens’ retail technology replaces traditional cooler doors with IoT enabled, high-resolution smart screens which use sensors both outside and inside of the coolers to track inventory and product placing. The solution uses “identity-blind” data from consumer interactions, combined with external data like weather to deliver more personalized experiences.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with an industry leader like Microsoft to drive innovation in retail and build the largest in-store digital media platform in the world,” said Greg Wasson, co-founder and chairman of Cooler Screens. “We are changing the way consumers shop for the better, and this collaboration not only gives us the capabilities to implement our strategy but also gives us immediate massive scale.”
“Retailers today are looking to use digital technology to transform their businesses and redefine the shopping experience for customers,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Through the power of Microsoft Azure, companies like Cooler Screens are meeting this important need by bringing immersive digital experience to brick and mortar stores.”
Cooler Screens are currently located in more than 50 Walgreens locations. Cooler Screens will expand its platform into 2,500 Walgreens stores across the U.S. in 2021, reaching over 75 million in-store consumers monthly, including 2.5 million on a daily basis.
“Walgreens is committed to enhancing our customer shopping experience through digital transformation, one of our key strategic priorities,” said Stefano Pessina, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO, Walgreens Boots Alliance. “Pairing the Cooler Screens digital media and merchandising technology with Microsoft’s Azure platform will bring a unique and innovative offering to Walgreens customers shopping the cooler aisle.”
Brands including MillerCoors, Coca-Cola, Red Bull, Chobani, Tyson Foods and Monster Energy currently advertise with Cooler Screens. The company is working with a number of leaders in the grocery and convenience store industry, including Kroger and GetGo, to bring more contextually relevant shopping to the stores.
To learn more about how Cooler Screens is working to transform the in-store retail experience, visit www.coolerscreens.com.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
About Cooler Screens
Cooler Screens is reimagining the consumer experience in brick-and-mortar retail. The company has developed a patented in-store digital merchandising and media platform that enables consumers to experience in-store what they love about shopping online. Enjoying simplified access to the latest and most relevant information, consumers can now make more informed in-store decisions to best fit their budgets, taste and health preferences. The impact for retailers is a dynamic way to increase sales by offering shoppers a better, more personalized experience at the last mile of advertising. For consumer product companies, Cooler Screens is providing a new platform to build brand awareness, market their products at the point-of-sale, and improve visibility with real-time analytics. Cooler Screens fully adopted Privacy by Design, a rigorous framework developed by global privacy experts and is now one of only 10 organizations with the PECB MS Privacy by Design certification. For more information, please visit http://www.coolerscreens.com.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
Microsoft to continue to support customers online, with retail team members working remotely and at Microsoft corporate locations
REDMOND, Wash. — June 26, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) (“Microsoft”) today announced a strategic change in its retail operations, including closing Microsoft Store physical locations. The company’s retail team members will continue to serve customers from Microsoft corporate facilities and remotely providing sales, training, and support. Microsoft will continue to invest in its digital storefronts on Microsoft.com, and stores in Xbox and Windows, reaching more than 1.2 billion people every month in 190 markets. The company will also reimagine spaces that serve all customers, including operating Microsoft Experience Centers in London, NYC, Sydney, and Redmond campus locations. The closing of Microsoft Store physical locations will result in a pre-tax charge of approximately $450M, or $0.05 per share, to be recorded in the current quarter ending June 30, 2020. The charge includes primarily asset write-offs and impairments.
“Our sales have grown online as our product portfolio has evolved to largely digital offerings, and our talented team has proven success serving customers beyond any physical location,” said Microsoft Corporate Vice President David Porter. “We are grateful to our Microsoft Store customers and we look forward to continuing to serve them online and with our retail sales team at Microsoft corporate locations.”
Since the Microsoft Store locations closed in late March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the retail team has helped small businesses and education customers digitally transform; virtually trained hundreds of thousands of enterprise and education customers on remote work and learning software; and helped customers with support calls. The team supported communities by hosting more than 14,000 online workshops and summer camps and more than 3,000 virtual graduations.
“We deliberately built teams with unique backgrounds and skills that could serve customers from anywhere. The evolution of our workforce ensured we could continue to serve customers of all sizes when they needed us most, working remotely these last months,” said Porter. “Speaking over 120 languages, their diversity reflects the many communities we serve. Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this talent pool is stronger than ever.”
The retail team members will serve consumers, small-business, education, and enterprise customers, while building a pipeline of talent with transferable skills.
“The Microsoft Store team has long been celebrated at Microsoft and embodies our culture,” said Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan. “The team has a proven track record of attracting, motivating, and developing diverse talent. This infusion of talent is invaluable for Microsoft and creates opportunities for thousands of people.”
With significant growth through its digital storefronts, including Microsoft.com, and stores on Xbox and Windows, the company will continue to invest in digital innovation across software and hardware. New services include 1:1 video chat support, online tutorial videos, and virtual workshops with more digital solutions to come.
“It is a new day for how Microsoft Store team members will serve all customers,” said Porter. “We are energized about the opportunity to innovate in how we engage with all customers, maximize our talent for greatest impact, and most importantly help our valued customers achieve more.”
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as:
intense competition in all of our markets that may lead to lower revenue or operating margins;
increasing focus on cloud-based services presenting execution and competitive risks;
significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns;
acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances that may have an adverse effect on our business;
impairment of goodwill or amortizable intangible assets causing a significant charge to earnings;
cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities that could lead to reduced revenue, increased costs, liability claims, or harm to our reputation or competitive position;
disclosure and misuse of personal data that could cause liability and harm to our reputation;
the possibility that we may not be able to protect information stored in our products and services from use by others;
abuse of our advertising or social platforms that may harm our reputation or user engagement;
the development of the internet of things presenting security, privacy, and execution risks;
issues about the use of artificial intelligence in our offerings that may result in competitive harm, legal liability, or reputational harm;
excessive outages, data losses, and disruptions of our online services if we fail to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure;
quality or supply problems;
the possibility that we may fail to protect our source code;
legal changes, our evolving business model, piracy, and other factors may decrease the value of our intellectual property;
claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;
claims against us that may result in adverse outcomes in legal disputes;
government litigation and regulatory activity relating to competition rules that may limit how we design and market our products;
potential liability under trade protection, anti-corruption, and other laws resulting from our global operations;
laws and regulations relating to the handling of personal data that may impede the adoption of our services or result in increased costs, legal claims, fines, or reputational damage;
additional tax liabilities;
damage to our reputation or our brands that may harm our business and operating results;
exposure to increased economic and operational uncertainties from operating a global business, including the effects of foreign currency exchange;
uncertainties relating to our business with government customers;
adverse economic or market conditions that may harm our business;
catastrophic events or geo-political conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that may disrupt our business; and
the dependence of our business on our ability to attract and retain talented employees.
For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.
The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
For more information, financial analysts and investors only:
Michael Spencer, General Manager, Investor Relations, (425) 706-4400
It’s always exciting to go to an event like NRF! But there was something in the air that made NRF 2020 bigger and better than ever before. There were over 38,000 attendees who experienced three days of inspiring discussions and get a perspective on improving customer engagement.
This year we highlighted how retailers can gain a competitive edge with intelligent retail—by delighting customers, empowering first-line workers, optimizing operations and anticipating future market shifts and disruptions.
I had many interesting moments and conversations at the event, there’s so much innovation and momentum for positive change in the industry that it’s hard not to feel excited for the future. In the opening keynote, Satya Nadella spoke about tech intensity and how it will define the future of retail. Those retailers who can use data to get an omnichannel view of their customer can gain share, customers, and loyalty.
I was thrilled to be with Satya on stage to discuss IKEA and how they are using Microsoft Teams to drive cultural transformation. Moving from paper and outdated systems to Microsoft Teams have empowered employees to easily manage shift changes, tasks and help balance their work and their life.
I’ve rounded up a few interesting takeaways from the event in case you missed these moments.
Sustainability takes center stage
For me, one of the most memorable things about NRF 2020 was the opportunity I had to lead a Big Ideas session around the increasing importance of sustainability in retail and how technology can help the industry drive a more environmentally-focused agenda. Together with Arti Zeighami, Head of AI and Analytics at H&M, we presented a bold vision for the future of the industry that puts sustainability front and center by using AI and other tech-forward solutions as a catalyst. It was enlightening, fun, and —hopefully—inspiring for all who attended. For those of you who want to learn more and stay connected on our initiative, I would like to invite you to join our Retail and Consumer Goods sustainability forum which is a community for networking, sharing best practices, and collaborating with others who are as committed as you are to driving sustainable change in our industry.
A roadmap for the future: how we enable intelligent retail
NRF also brought Microsoft’s specific vision for the future of our industry to the fore. Here are a few highlights of how we are creating innovative and dynamic tech solutions to help solve real-world problems our industry faces:
Know your customers: The new consumer responds to a 1-to-1 approach. With Dynamics 365 Commerce, Fraud Protection, and Dynamics 365 Connected Store retailers can bridge the gap with connected solutions, AI, and real-time observational data to deliver insightful, safe, and efficient shopping experiences.
Empower your employees: It is now mission-critical to enable all of your employees with the right technology and tools. Connected solutions like Walkie Talkie in Microsoft Teams gives us a unique opportunity to help companies of all sizes and industries can help their employees do their best work, without sacrificing the security of their customer’s data.
Deliver an intelligent supply chain: So much of customer satisfaction rests in ensuring that you have the right products in the right place at the right time. To help tackle this problem, brands like Mars, Inc. are using partners like Footmarks, which designed its beacon-and gateway- based display tracking solution with Azure IoT Central to deliver secure, simple and scalable insights into what happens once displays begin transit.
Reimagine retail: Revenue from digital commerce is growing five times faster than in-store sources. With our Microsoft PromoteIQ commerce marketing program, retailers can now dramatically increase revenue from their digital vendor marketing programs, while remaining fully in control of monetization and engaging brand partners.
It’s a pivotal time to be working in retail and NRF 2020 proved it. If you did attend or weren’t able to this year, I’d encourage you to try to make it for the 2021 event, where we are sure to gain a whole new set of insights and inspirations for a bold path forward.
I also encourage you to read this white paper where you can gain new insights into what consumers expect in today’s digital world.
The retail industry has been going through tremendous change and transformation over the past decade. Many have speculated that traditional brick and mortar retail is dying, and that customers are moving completely to online platforms for their shopping needs. This is, however, not the case. According to a report by the National Federation of Retail, retail storefronts in the USA have continued to grow at almost 4 percent annually since 2010 along with the steady double-digit growth of online retail. Along with this, nearly all of the top 50 online retailers also have physical stores.
Even though e-commerce growth continues to outpace physical stores, the value of growth is still much higher in physical retail outlets. E-commerce in a majority of cases is also not a standalone channel but used in conjunction with traditional and emerging channels to service customer needs like buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) or Click and Collect. Location is still a major part of customer shopping habits, but with this we have also seen that customer expectations around shopping have changed. Gone are the days of store agents being the exclusive experts in product knowledge. Customers now have more access to product information, price visibility, and availability than ever before. With this comes the need for retail to look at customer engagement across all channels and ensure their business is enabled to deliver on these new heightened expectations. In the next few years, e-commerce will no longer be a major differentiator for retailers, but rather enabling unified retail commerce is required to succeed in the world of ever more demanding customer expectations.
But this is easier said than done. Many retail businesses are struggling with disparate commerce systems that create more of a disconnect with customers than opportunities to engage. Even though unified commerce is not a new concept, many retailers have found it difficult to understand where to start.
It is with this in mind that Microsoft announced Dynamics 365 Commerce, an evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail, that will become broadly available on February 3, 2020. This release adds e-commerce to our solution and is built from a proven content management system used by Microsoft online storefronts for years. Dynamics 365 Commerce is, however, not limited to e-commerce, but sets out to simplify the process of unifying customer shopping experiences through an end-to-end commerce platform that brings together e-commerce, in-store, back office, and call center along with enabling easier integration to emerging channels through an API driven headless commerce engine.
Microsoft and Forbes also recently undertook a joint executive and consumer research program that highlighted the changing expectation of consumers and how retail business can better cater to these evolving needs. Let’s explore how Dynamics 365 Commerce is helping retailers address these prevailing needs in their businesses.
Delivering exceptional and personalized customer experiences
Customer experience is not only one of the top growth drivers in retail but according to the recent Microsoft and Forbes study, is also considered to be the top strategic priority amongst retail executives, for 33 percent of retail executives. The challenge is defining what comprises exceptional customer experience for each individual business, as customer expectations vary by retail micro-vertical, product category, and the customers themselves. It’s up to retailers to best identify how the experience aligns to their brand promise. Once customer experience is defined, retailers need to be able to deliver on this promise by having technology that enables next generation customer engagement and doesn’t limit their ability to innovate and create differentiating experiences for customers.
According to the Microsoft and Forbes study, offering personalized shopping is becoming more and more prominent with over 49 percent of consumers aged between 18 to 24 saying they are more likely to purchase from retailers that offer personalized shopping experiences. The goal of personalization is to create a bond between the retailer and the customer by providing products and/or services based on previous engagements across all retail channels. This elevates the engagement beyond a simple transaction to an experience more akin to an interaction with a trusted partner or friend.
There is a major dependency on technology to achieve this next level of personalization. Retailers require connected and real time insights into customers and operations. Dynamics 365 Commerce natively brings together all aspects of customer interaction across e-commerce, call center, and in store as well as easy integration to emerging channels to help retailers gain a comprehensive view of customers. Couple this with out-of-the-box integration into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and retailers can not only offer AI driven recommendations based on customer purchase history, favorites, and trends, but also provide in store agents with tools to see a 360 degree view of the customer and enable rich engagement throughout the sales journey.
Ste. Michelle Wine Estates is the largest premium wine distributor in the United States. They’re renowned for making some of the best wines in the world and pride themselves in delivering amazing wine tasting experiences at wineries for their 14 distinct brands. Ste. Michelle recently went live with Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver an end-to-end retail solution for their business. Being able to track customer engagement across modernized e-commerce sites to their wine clubs and call centers mean that Ste. Michelle can offer more personalized customer recommendations and experiences in their tasting rooms.
“We found our answer in Dynamics 365 Commerce. We now have a centralized repository where our data works together to provide a seamless experience for our guests along with better insight into our operations.” – Francis Perrin, Chief Marketing Officer, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates
The importance of enabling omnichannel and streamlining operations
The days of customer engagement on a single channel are long in the past. Customers expect to be able to shop wherever, whenever and through whichever channel they choose. Retailers also recognize the importance of omnichannel with 47 percent of executives from the Microsoft and Forbes survey ranking this as one of their top three priorities.
Many retailers still struggle with enabling an omnichannel experience due to complexities of internal technology and disconnected or disparate systems. Dynamics 365 Commerce makes this much simpler as it was built in the cloud to deliver a native omnichannel solution for retailers.
Columbia Sportswear Company has a portfolio of brands for active lives and is a leader in the global active lifestyle apparel, footwear, accessories, and equipment industry. They chose Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver enhanced experiences for their retail customers.
A connected commerce solution is not just important in how customers engage and shop in retail, but also how a unified solution can enable better engagement from firstline workers and ensure optimal operational efficiencies across your supply chain. Dynamics 365 Commerce allows retailers to streamline their operations with infused intelligence that permeates throughout their business. Store staff can gain better insights into stock availability, cross application support for task management between Commerce and Microsoft Teams, along with commerce analytics that allows managers to track performance and insights to help them make better decisions.
An established and well-loved brand, Dr. Martens has grown over many years to become a global lifestyle footwear brand with sales to 63 countries across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia. Like many established businesses, they had a plethora of old IT systems and processes that have served them well, but could not support their ambitious growth plans. Dr Martens looked to Dynamics 365 Commerce to bring a range of isolated solutions together and deliver a single source of truth for their business to operate from.
Dynamics 365 Commerce at NRF 2020
This week saw another great showing of Microsoft retail solutions at NRF 2020. Along with a great range of 1st party and partner innovations, we showcased the advancements and innovations present in Dynamics 365 Commerce. This included the announcement of our official release date on February 3, 2020 and the native integration of intelligent solutions from Microsoft including Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, and Microsoft Power Platform.
If you would like to learn more about our offering for Dynamics 365 Commerce, please visit our official web page or contact us for a demonstration or more information.
For many retailers around the world, the busiest quarter of the year just finished with holiday shopping through Black Friday and Cyber Monday to Boxing Day. From supply chain optimization, to digital distribution, and in-store analytics, the retail industry has wholeheartedly embraced IoT technology to support those spikes in demand; particularly in scenarios where brands need to build flexibility, hire strong talent, and optimize the customer experience in order to build brand loyalty. In our latest IoT Signals for Retail research, commissioned by Microsoft and released January 2020, we explore the top insights from leaders who are using IoT today. We discuss growth areas such as improving the customer experience, the use of artificial intelligence to achieve break-through success, and nuances between global markets around security concerns and compliance.
Building retail IoT solutions with Azure IoT Central
As Microsoft and its global partners continue to turn retail insights into solutions that empower retailers around the world, a key question continues to face decision makers about IoT investments; whether to build a solution from scratch, or buy a solution that fits their needs. For many solution builders, Azure IoT Central is the perfect fit, a fully managed IoT platform with predictable pricing and unique features like retail specific application templates that can accelerate solution development thanks to the inclusion of over 30 underlying Azure services. Let us manage the services so you can focus on what’s more important, applying your deep industry knowledge to help your customers.
New tools to accelerate building a retail IoT Solution
Today we are excited to announce the addition of our sixth IoT Central retail application template for solution builders. The Micro-fulfilment center template showcases how connectivity and automation can reduce cost by eliminating downtime, increasing security, and improving efficiency. App templates can help solution builders get started quickly and includes sample operator dashboards, sample device templates, simulated devices producing real-time data, access to Plug and Play devices, and security features that give you peace of mind. Fulfillment optimization is a cornerstone of operations for many retailers and optimizing early may offer significant returns in the future. Application templates are helping solution builders overcome challenges like getting past the proof-of-concept phase, or building rapid business cases for new IoT scenarios.
In addition to rich industry insights like those found in IoT Signals for Retail, we are proudly releasing three case stories detailing decisions, trade-offs, processes, and results from top global brands investing in IoT solutions, and the retail solution builders supporting them. Read more about how these companies are implementing and winning with their IoT investments and uncover details that might offer you an edge as you navigate your own investments and opportunities.
South Africa Breweries and CIRT team up to solve a cooler tracking conundrum
South Africa Breweries, a subsidiary of AB InBev, is the worlds’ largest brewing company and is committed to keeping its product fresh and cold for customers, a challenge that most consumers take for granted. From tracking missing coolers to reducing costs, and achieving sustainability goals, Sameer Jooma, Director of Innovation and Analytics for AB InBev turned to IoT innovation led by Consumption Information Real Time (CIRT), a South African solution builder. CIRT was tasked to pilot Fridgeloc Connected Cooler, a cooler monitoring system, providing real time insight into temperature (both internal cooler and condenser), connected state and location of hundreds of coolers through urban and rural South Africa. Revamping an existing cooler audit process that involved auditors visiting dealer locations to verify that a cooler was in the right place, and tracking the time between delivery and installation to an outlet are just two of the process optimization benefits found by Jooma.
“The management team wanted to have a view of the coolers, and to be able to manage them centerally at a national level. IoT Central enabled us to gain that live view.” – Sameer Jooma, Director: Innovation and Analytics, AB InBev.
Learn more about the universal cooler challenges that face merchants and consumer packaged goods companies worldwide in the case story.
On the “road” to a connected cooler in rural South Africa, a field technician gets stuck in the sand on his way to the tavern.
Fridgeloc Connected Cooler at a tavern in Soweto, South Africa.
Mars Incorporated Halloween display campaign unveils new insights thanks to Footmarks Inc.
For most consumer packaged goods companies, sales spike during holiday times thanks to investments across the marketing and sales mix, from online display advertising to in-store physical displays. This past Halloween, Jason Wood, Global Display Development Head, Mars Inc., a global manufacturer of confectionery and other food products, decided it was time to gain deeper insights into an age-old problem of tracking where their product displays went after they left the warehouse. Previously, Mars was only able to track the number of displays it produced, and how many left its warehouses for retailer destinations. They found the right partner with Footmarks Inc. who has designed their beacon and gateway-based display tracking solution with Azure IoT Central to deliver secure, simple and scalable insights into what happens once displays begin transit. Several interesting insights emerged throughout the campaign and afterward.
“Information on when displays came off the floor were surprising—major insights that we wouldn’t have been able to get to without the solution.” – Jason Wood, Global Display Development Head, Mars Inc.
Learn more about challenges Mars and Footmarks faced scaling, pricing, and managing devices for display tracking in the case story.
Foormarks Inc., Smart Connect Cloud dashboard for Mars Wrigley showing display tracking solution using IoT sensors for the 2019 Halloween campaign.
Microsoft turns to C.H. Robinson and Intel for Xbox and Surface supply chain visibility
In advance of the busy 2019 holiday season and the introduction of many new Surface SKU’s, the Microsoft supply chain team was interested in testing the benefits of a single platform connecting IoT devices on shipments globally, streamlining analytics and device management.This Microsoft team was also thinking ahead, preparing for the launch of the latest Xbox console, Xbox Series X, and for a series of new Surface product launches. With Surface and Xbox demand projected to grow around the world, the need for insights and appropriate actions along the supply chain was only going to increase. The Microsoft team partnered with TMC (a division of C.H. Robinson), a global technology and logistics management provider who partnered with Intel, to design a transformative solution based on their existing Navisphere Vision software that could be deployed globally using Azure IoT Central. The goal was to track and monitor shipments’ ambient condition for shock, light, and temperature to identify any damage in real time, anywhere in the world—at a scale covering millions of products.
“The real power comes in the combination of C.H. Robinson’s Navisphere Vision, technology that is built by and for supply chain experts, and the speed, security, and connectivity of Azure IOT Central.” – Chris Cutshaw, Director of Commercial and Product Strategy at TMC
Learn more about the results from the recent holiday season and what Navisphere Vision can do for global supply chain visibility in the case story.
NRF 2020: Retail’s Big Show is happening in Manhattan from January 12 to 14. Azure IoT and other experts including retail solution builders Attabotics, C.H. Robinson, and CIRT will be in attendance.
As Walgreens embarked on plans to create a new type of retail experience for customers more than a year ago, it realized that an innovative approach to training employees was in order.
Walgreens employees were used to consulting with customers on the best beauty products, filling photo orders, dispensing medications and providing personalized health and wellness information. But selling fresh produce, delivering groceries to vehicles and helping customers find ingredients for dinner — that was all new, and potentially challenging.
So to prepare employees to handle around 2,500 new food items at its revamped “Kroger Express” stores, Walgreens is piloting an immersive, mixed-reality training program using Microsoft HoloLens 2 and tablet devices.
The program, part of a broader partnership with Microsoft, will use a three-dimensional model of the reconfigured stores and various scenarios to teach employees how to restock products, determine if an onion or banana is past its prime, help customers redeem grocery coupons and deal with unfamiliar customer service situations — for example, offering a substitute grocery item if something the customer wants is out of stock.
“We feel that this very immersive, interactive technology helps team members grasp new ways of learning beyond what I’ll call the paper exercise,” says Steven Lamontagne, vice president of physical design and formats for Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance, Walgreens’ parent company.
The HoloLens training, developed by Microsoft partner Altoura, is first being tested at a Walgreens store in Knoxville, Tennessee. From there, it could be expanded to another 34 stores in Knoxville and 17 in Northern Kentucky and the greater Cincinnati area that are part of a pilot with supermarket retailer Kroger. About 20 Kroger Express stores have opened since the pilot launched in late 2018.
The Kroger Express stores are being remodeled to accommodate the new products, and Lamontagne says HoloLens 2 training offers the benefit of familiarizing employees with the new store layouts even before renovations are finished.
“By using a 3D model for the store, a team member gets to see what the future is going to be like after their store’s remodeled, and they’re immediately within that new physical environment,” he says.
The effort is part of a multipronged partnership between Walgreen Boots Alliance and Microsoft, announced a year ago, that Walgreens envisions as transforming the modern retail and pharmacy experience. As part of the partnership, Walgreens and Boots stores — located in the U.K. and other regions — are migrating their on-premises data warehouses to Azure to improve operations and lower costs.
Walgreens Boots Alliance is migrating on-premises data warehouses into Azure Synapse Analytics — a service that merges enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics — to improve operations and modernize business processes.
The company is also using Azure Synapse to bring together data from disparate sources to understand customer needs and optimize supply chains. Azure Synapse will enable Walgreens to analyze vast amounts of data in real time while applying machine learning to get insights that help employees provide customers with the products they want while preventing unsold inventory from cluttering the back office.
The revamped Walgreens stores are also implementing an anonymous shopping path system, developed by Microsoft partner Acuity, that uses Bluetooth beacons on carts and baskets to understand how customers are moving through the reconfigured stores. That data is then aggregated in Azure, and Microsoft’s Power BI visualization tool is used to identify patterns — for example, how customers are shopping during the holiday season — and help determine whether the new store formats are meeting customers’ needs.
For now, the most visible aspect of the partnership with Kroger will be the rows of grocery items alongside the cosmetics and pharmacy goods. The Kroger Express stores will carry produce staples, dairy, meat items, meal kits and organic products. Customers can also order groceries online and have them delivered curbside at the pilot stores.
With more than 9,200 Walgreens stores around the United States, close to 78 percent of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a Walgreens or other Walgreens-owned store, Lamontagne says, so giving customers the opportunity to purchase food items made sense.
“If you think about the high-frequency purchases you make in your life, food tends to be one of them,” he says. “Having a range of Kroger products and leveraging their expertise within the Walgreens box really gives customers a new retail experience. This allows them to be able to fill their pantries and their fridges, and get a credible range of products to make a meal for their family.”
Of all industries, retail is undergoing one of the most significant digital transformations. Various forms of computing are rapidly becoming embedded in every aspect of retail, from corner stores to the world’s largest retailers. Revenue from digital commerce is growing five times faster than from in-store sources, and global digital commerce sales now comprise 16.4 percent of total retail sales.
At the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference next week in New York, Microsoft will unveil our latest solutions to empower retailers all over the world to take advantage of this transformation. Central to these announcements will be our new vision for digital commerce and the toolkit that enables it. Our goal is to be a technology ally to the retail industry, to help retailers thrive — with more relevant and optimized e-commerce experiences, enhanced shopper-level personalization and expanded monetization opportunities. Today, we are announcing two new Microsoft solutions for retailers that do precisely that: Microsoft PromoteIQ and Microsoft Bing for Commerce.
Introducing Microsoft PromoteIQ
One of our key offerings for retailers is the Microsoft PromoteIQ commerce marketing platform. This is the next step in our journey of evolving our digital commerce offerings since announcing the acquisition of PromoteIQ in August 2019. Using Microsoft PromoteIQ, retailers can now dramatically increase revenue from their digital vendor marketing programs, while remaining fully in control of monetization and engaging brand partners.
Commerce marketing is a highly effective way for retailers to create powerful new high-margin revenue streams that can fund innovation elsewhere in their businesses, as well as provide brands with a powerful toolkit to market their products to shoppers. But competing for brand dollars with other marketing solutions can be daunting. Microsoft PromoteIQ helps make it easy by delivering an end-to-end commerce marketing platform with enterprise-grade capabilities to manage and scale vendor-funded digital marketing — whether on-site or off-site. The platform includes an extensive analytics suite to deliver audience insights and help brands understand incremental sales lift. It also includes integration with Microsoft Advertising, which opens up a powerful new source of incremental demand for retailers. With Microsoft PromoteIQ, a retailer remains fully in control and is finally able to turn commerce marketing into an essential growth engine for their business, funding new capabilities and innovations while strengthening their partnership with vendors and brands.
The Home Depot did just that. The world’s largest home improvement retailer needed to maximize the 170M monthly visits to homedepot.com, the fifth-largest ecommerce site in the U.S. They partnered with PromoteIQ to integrate a commerce marketing platform to manage and scale vendor-funded digital marketing efforts. Since the program launched in early 2019, customer engagement has increased by 35 percent and promoted products have seen double-digit growth compared to 2018. Numbers tell an important piece of the story, but it’s also great to see that the customer and vendor relationships are now stronger than ever. Customers are presented with relevant advertising for products they may need for their home improvement projects, and even may see content for complementary projects like décor to complete their room. Vendor partners now have enhanced marketing controls to drive better conversion, increase visibility, and learn from real-time performance insights.
Microsoft PromoteIQ offers great solutions to help retailers — and brands as well. For brands, the Microsoft PromoteIQ platform provides a robust offering for comprehensively managing advertising campaigns with key retailer partners, across campaign management, targeting, optimization and analytics.
At NRF we’ll showcase customer examples and show the Microsoft PromoteIQ platform. If you are interested in learning more about the Microsoft PromoteIQ commerce marketing platform, please visit www.promoteiq.com.
Introducing Microsoft Bing for Commerce
Another important introduction for retailers is our new solution for an essential enabler of digital commerce: product search. Today’s shoppers expect convenience, to the point that 80 percent of them will abandon a site that produces poor search results. Microsoft Bing for Commerce is an intelligent search, personalization and product recommendation solution that helps gives retailers the power to meet today’s shopper expectations and grow revenue, thanks to more relevant and customized results that drive conversions.
Retailers can now leverage the power of Bing intelligence and Microsoft AI to searches on their websites, applying insights from millions of shoppers around the world. This puts advanced query understanding into the hands of retailers — helping to decipher the natural human language of shoppers on their sites and create a shorter path between shoppers and the product they’re seeking.
Microsoft Bing for Commerce includes product recommendations that are relevant and personalized, as well as visual search innovation that helps satisfy emerging shopping behavior. Microsoft Bing for Commerce offers all of these intuitive capabilities on PC and mobile and does this with Microsoft’s dedicated approach to privacy and data compliance.
Microsoft Bing for Commerce is now available in public preview for large retailers as a stand-alone offering and will soon be available as a part of Dynamics 365 Commerce. More information is available at www.microsoft.com/bing/commerce.
It’s a time of unprecedented growth and transformation for the retail industry. We’re excited to see our partners and customers grow their businesses by taking advantage of the opportunities in digital commerce.
If you are at NRF next week, please visit us at the Microsoft booth on Level 3, #4051.
The last several years have brought massive change – and opportunity – for the retail industry. Gone are the days when retailers chose when, where and what to sell; now consumers are in the driver’s seat, and retailers are being challenged to figure how to best engage with them. Additionally, they’re juggling pressures driven by industry trends such as the drive for more sustainability in retail, the proliferation of data, increased energy around “anywhere commerce,” the need to better equip store associates with technology and much more. But change often accelerates innovation, and because of this I believe that there’s never been a more exciting time to be a retailer at the intersection of retail and technology.
Microsoft continues to innovate side by side with retailers to help them embrace their biggest opportunities and enable intelligent retail by empowering businesses to take control of their own digital evolution. Our solutions enable retailers to transform across all parts of their business – from how they better understand their customers and empower employees, to putting the right technology in place to deliver an intelligent supply chain and ultimately reimagine their businesses. In the last year and a half, we’ve established ourselves as a trusted partner to some of the world’s largest retailers such as Walmart, Kroger and Walgreens Boots Alliance, among others. And we’ve empowered their transformation by providing the platforms on which to build innovation for all parts of their businesses.
We’ve learned a lot along the way both through our retail customers as well as our own physical retail presence about how technology can help this industry both embrace its biggest opportunities as well as tackle its biggest challenges. And today we’re sharing how our first-party innovations are helping to drive the future of intelligent retail across all parts of a retailer’s business.
Gaining a better understanding of your customers
If customers are the heart of the retail industry, data is the oxygen. Data has the potential to profoundly impact every single aspect of retailers’ businesses, including – and perhaps most importantly – how they respond to customer demands with differentiated and unique experiences.
We’re helping retailers surface actionable customer insights with data solutions like Azure Synapse Analytics, which helps retailers not only analyze vast amounts of data, but also apply machine learning to quickly surface insights that can drive immediate impact for their businesses, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, which helps maximize customer lifetime value by surfacing a 360-degree view of the customer to drive personalized engagements at scale. This means that even the most complex retailers, with thousands of suppliers in their end-to-end supply chain and millions of item-store combinations, can quickly make the decisions needed to not only run their businesses most efficiently but also delight customers in the process.
And with Dynamics 365 Connected Store, retailers like Marks & Spencer – which is piloting the solution in a store in London – can generate data within its physical stores that produces the same kind of actionable business insights as it gets from its digital storefronts. M&S is achieving this by analyzing data from smart devices such as video cameras and IoT sensors to provide real-time and predictive insights on everything from the current length of the checkout line to the traffic around endcap product displays to help associates make better decisions. We’re welcoming new retail customers into our Connected Store preview every day, so sign up here to request access.
One of the customer demands becoming more and more evident as retailers reason over their data is the desire for a seamless shopping experience regardless of where, when and how they choose to buy. We’ve invested in helping retailers bridge embrace this concept of commerce anywhere (aCommerce) with Dynamics 365 Commerce, the evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail and a true multi-channel solution that transforms the customer experience by unifying retailers’ back-office, in-store, call center and e-commerce experiences. One experience across all channels – that’s what customers are demanding today. The result? More personalized engagement with customers, employees who are better equipped to provide the best customer experience possible and deep insights to empower advanced decision making across every piece of a retailer’s business. I’m excited to announce that Dynamics 365 Commerce, currently in preview, with become generally available to our retail customers on Feb. 3.
Empowering employees with the tools they need to better serve customers
Despite the rise of e-commerce over the past couple of decades, we know that most shopping – across generations even – still happens in person. Research from Forbes Insights shows us that 60 percent of consumers still prefer to shop in physical retail environments, and this number stays fairly consistent across generations. This means that first-line workers are still one of a retailer’s most valuable assets – many times, they are the first impression a shopper gets of your brand and they play a significant role in customer acquisition and retention.
Retail associates need modern tools and experiences in order to remain productive and deliver the best customer service possible while on the store floor. With Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud, and new first-line capabilities coming to Microsoft Teams later this year, we are in a unique position to help this often-overlooked part of the workforce get their jobs done. Today I’m thrilled to announce that we’re adding even more productivity and collaboration value into Teams, including task targeting, publishing and reporting, new workforce management integrations to streamline shift management and a new Walkie Talkie feature. By building push-to-talk functionality into Teams, we’re helping our retail customers turn company-owned smartphones and tablets into a secure walkie talkie, extending the range of traditional walkie-talkie communication and streamlining licensing and provisioning for retailers’ IT staff.
Finally, as we extend modern tools and experiences across the first-line workforce, we know that we need to make it easy for IT to manage and help enable a secure and compliant experience for all employees. I’m excited to disclose enhanced identity and access management capabilities – such as shared device sign-out for Android and inbound provisioning from leading workforce management providers such as SAP SuccessFactors and Workday – that will make onboarding retail associates and operating shared devices more secure and scalable, something our retail customers have been asking us to add for some time now. And, later this quarter, retailers will be able to enable SMS sign-in to Microsoft 365 and custom applications for retail workers and empower their store managers with delegated user management capabilities, making it easier to reset passwords and manage workers’ identities without additional demand on IT staff.
Infusing more intelligence into the supply chain
A retailer’s supply chain can play a major role in customer satisfaction – outdated supply chain processes can mean delays, unfulfilled orders and more. By connecting devices and collecting data, retailers can analyze that information to create new insights and ultimately a truly intelligent supply chain that enables them to provide the best service possible to customers. This is the Internet of Things (IoT), and as IoT becomes more mainstream it continues to be a huge driver of data for retailers today. In fact, our IoT Signals for Retail study found that 92 percent of retailers have adopted IoT and are using it in various stages of trials and deployments, with the most common IoT scenarios being driving store analytics (57 percent), supply chain optimization (48 percent) and security and loss prevention (46 percent and 45 percent, respectively).
We’re making building and deploying IoT applications in retail environments easier than ever with new Azure IoT Central solution templates that help retailers simplify IoT deployments to start driving immediate impact. Today, the Azure IoT Central Micro Fulfilment Center template joins five existing retail-focused templates – including for scenarios across connected logistics, digital distribution centers, in-store analytics and smart inventory management – to help retailers more easily optimize their fulfilment processes through a managed service that includes everything a retailer needs to get started today.
Reimagining retail business models and customer experiences
The success of today’s retailers’ physical store environments rests on their ability to disrupt themselves and their own status quo by pushing into new business models and providing new experiences and formats that engage customers and keep them coming back for more.
We understand this better than most technology vendors, because we’re continuing to move through this same transformation journey with our own Microsoft retail stores. Over the past several years, we’ve digitally transformed and extended our physical retail store strategy from an exclusively consumer storefront to a commerce engine that connects with all customers – from commercial enterprises to small businesses and consumers. Partnering with enterprise sales, we’re offering new experiences in and through our stores targeted toward our enterprise customers such as J. Crew, Office Depot and Marks & Spencer. Our stores are also at the forefront of adopting new Microsoft technology across cloud, predictive analytics, machine learning, cognitive services and more to solve our most complex challenges – and we’re learning from those experiences to ultimately pass those lessons along to our customers. And of course, that’s a two-way street – we’re also learning from our retail customers to inform how we manage and operate our stores too, which is indicative of the true partnerships we strive to establish with every retailer we work with.
While reimagining retail can lead to the kind of business transformation we’ve seen in our own store, it can take different forms as well, such as how retailers are tapping into new revenue streams and digitizing their own physical stores to drive new customer and employee experiences.
Microsoft PromoteIQ is an end-to-end commerce marketing platform enabling retailers to create a new critical growth engine for their businesses through at-scale vendor marketing programs. With Microsoft PromoteIQ, retailers can empower their brand partners with powerful marketing technology to natively promote products to in-market shoppers, reaching them at the right time to increase digital sales – all supported by a deep analytics suite to deliver impactful audience insights. And now, thanks to the integration with Microsoft Advertising, we can offer our retailer partners a powerful new source of incremental demand for their programs. Take Home Depot, for example. While you may expect the world’s largest home improvement retailer to do most of its business in person, HomeDepot.com is the fifth largest e-commerce site in the U.S. Consequently, the company needed a solution to help it maximize the nearly 170 million visitors per month its site was seeing by integrating an end-to-end commerce marketing platform with capabilities to manage and scale its vendor-funded digital marketing. Since deploying PromoteIQ, Home Depot has seen very positive results, including double-digit sales growth for promoted products through this program.
Of course, reaching customers at the right time is only half the equation; a retailer must also be able to deliver on what that customer is looking for. In fact, 80 percent of shoppers will abandon a site that produces poor search results. And that’s why we’re investing in this critical piece of digital commerce – product search. Microsoft Bing for Commerce is an intelligent artificial intelligence-driven solution for product search, personalization and product recommendations that gives retailers the power to meet today’s shopper expectations and grow revenue through more relevant and customized results that drive conversion. We’re also enabling our retailers to meet customers where and how they want to shop through visual search innovation included in Bing for Commerce, to help capture sales from new, emerging shopping behaviors.
Connect with us at NRF
Microsoft will have a significant presence at NRF once again this year, headlined by our own CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote session to open the show. You won’t want to miss hearing his perspective on business and cultural transformation, and how our retail customers are putting our technology into action to reimagine their businesses. And if you’re attending the show, make sure you stop by our Microsoft booth (#4501) to see how we’re bringing intelligent retail to life across all parts of a retailer’s business and how you can achieve the same – we’re offering complimentary envisioning workshops, where retailers will have an opportunity to work directly with us to create a shared vision and digital road map to unlock a future of endless possibilities.
You’re also invited to attend one of our sessions on the show floor – I’m leading a Big Ideas session where I’ll share my thoughts on the increasing importance of sustainability to the industry and how technology can help accelerate retailers’ sustainability visions. In addition, my colleagues Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president for Microsoft Business Applications and Global Industry, and Emma Williams, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office Vertical Solutions, and I will participate in the FQ Lounge at NRF along with many other “women rocking retail” for panel discussions about diversity and inclusion in the retail industry (we’re proud to be a sponsor of this space as well). And of course, visit Microsoft’s NRF page to keep up to date on the latest developments.
As we embark on a new year (a new decade, in fact!) and look ahead to next week and another National Retail Federation conference and expo, I am inspired to pause and reflect for a bit on the successes of the past year. And the highlights that first come to mind are not from Microsoft but rather from our customers and partners – those retailers and companies supporting the retail industry with technology that have truly embraced our industry’s new normal – constant disruption – with fresh thinking and innovation.
We often hear that every company is becoming a software company, and this feels especially true for the retail industry right now, as many across fashion, fast-moving-consumer goods, food service and more are building their own net new digital capabilities.
Shelley Bransten.
We refer to this concept as tech intensity – not only using technology for technology’s sake, but also using it to build net-new capabilities to propel your business forward. And it’s why we believe that the next big innovations aren’t going to come from technology companies but rather be driven by retailers as they work to find new paths to revenue, keep up with customer demands and ultimately reimagine their businesses.
According to a study we recently conducted on the global impacts of this concept of tech intensity, more than half of retailers are already doing this – building first-party IP with advanced digital technologies – and the vast majority believe that doing so is the most effective way to build a competitive advantage, particularly in the areas of customer experience and delivery of goods and services.
Taking a new technology-enabled approach to business is the formula for retail success today, and between Microsoft and our global network of partners, we’re helping our retail customers do just that to address some of their greatest opportunities. All our technology and partnership investments are deeply rooted in the four critical priority scenarios our customers have told us they want most from Microsoft:
Know your customer
Empower employees
Deliver on an intelligent supply chain
Reimagine retail
We call these our priority scenarios, and here are just a few examples of customers and partners bringing them to life.
Know your customer: Deliver unforgettable experiences that make you stand out from the crowd
Retail begins and ends with the customer, and it’s so important that retailers use technology in ways that create new, engaging experiences that keep them coming back time and time again.
H&M
Our work with global fashion retailer H&M Group extends across different pieces of its business, including fueling new customer experiences. But one area of collaboration with the company that is currently top of mind for me is sustainability. H&M Group has a strong focus on sustainability, with a vision to lead the change toward a circular and renewable fashion industry, and because of this H&M launched a garment recycling program in its stores in 2013 with the goal of preventing customers’ unwanted clothing from ending up in a landfill.
Recently, and with the help of Microsoft Azure and partner Ombori, H&M reimagined its garment recycling program in the U.S. with new “smart” recycle bins that offer engaging experiences to customers. The new bins are outfitted with an Ombori digital screen that serves up discount codes and engagement opportunities (pictures, social prompts, etc.) to customers who donate, and digital scales within the bins allow each store to quantify the impact its customers are having in real time.
And collecting garments in stores is only one of many H&M Group sustainability initiatives; join me Jan. 13 at NRF 2020 to hear from Arti Zeighami, head of advanced analytics and AI at H&M Group, about how the company is working for a global fashion industry where sustainability and AI go hand in hand.
Intermarché is partnering with Microsoft, Accenture, SGS and Transparency-One to provide a more personalized customer experience.
Intermarché
France’s third-largest grocer, Intermarché, prides itself on living its motto: “Mieux produire, mieux consommer, mieux manger,” which translates to “to produce, consume and eat better.” Through a partnership with Microsoft and partners AccentureSGS and Transparency-One, the grocer is leveraging data from “farm to fork” to help improve every Intermarché customer’s understanding and ability to measure and control the impact of his or her own consumption.
By implementing Azure Machine Learning and eventually other Azure AI services, Intermarché will be able to personalize offers to shoppers based on their dietary preferences (for example, low-cholesterol diets, gluten-free diets and more) as well as provide more transparency into the supply chain of its organic products, making healthier, sustainable living affordable and accessible.
dunnhumby
UK-based partner dunnhumby, a leader in customer data science, works with leading retailers and consumer-goods companies to use data science to help them deliver better shopping experiences for their customers. And we’re thrilled that, through a global strategic partnership, dunnhumby will move its customer insights products – used by the likes of Tesco, Unilever, McDonald’s, Nestle and many more – to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Combining dunnhumby’s tools, such as Shop on Lab, with the Azure cloud platform will allow many more retailers and consumer-goods companies to unlock and share insights into their businesses. The processing power of Azure and the machine learning data science of dunnhumby can offer the right insights at the right time, so action can be taken quickly on company performance, new trends and innovation, brand switching and loyalty.
Empower your employees: Enable your people with the tools to deliver extraordinary customer service
Retail associates are often the first point of contact for customers, so it’s important that they’re armed with the right information and training to provide the best experience possible.
A partnership between Walgreens Boots Alliance and Microsoft is helping WBA to cut costs, improve operations, modernize business processes and train employees.
Walgreens Boots Alliance
Almost a year ago, we announced a partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) to transform health care delivery. Today we’re sharing updates on how we are making progress with this partnership. Cloud modernization is well underway, helping WBA to recognize cost efficiencies in the cloud in several ways.
WBA is migrating on-premises data warehouses into Azure Synapse Analytics, improving operations and modernizing business processes. The company is also using Azure Synapse to analyze vast amounts of data in real time while applying machine learning to get insights that help associates provide customers with the products they want while preventing unsold inventory from cluttering the back office.
We’re also working together on two new pilot projects to enable more empowered employees and better customer insights in Walgreens stores. WBA is currently testing a new way for store associates to receive training on new scenarios presented in stores where it carries fresh food products – such as culling produce, executing curbside grocery pickup and more – via an immersive mixed-reality experience using Microsoft HoloLens 2 and a training solution from partner, Altoura.
The mixed reality training replaces document-based training, lowers costs traditionally associated with getting employees up to speed on new processes and ensures employees have access to the latest and greatest training in real-time to better serve customers.
Additionally, to better understand Walgreens’ customers and their needs, the company is conducting anonymous footfall tracking via carts and baskets with Microsoft partner Acuity’s Atrius system. The Atrius system helps Walgreens better understand the consumer journey using Bluetooth low-energy beacons to learn how customers are navigating its new format stores and using that information to better optimize the shopping experience for consumers.
Deliver on an intelligent supply chain: Close the gap between demand and fulfillment to delight your customers
So much of customer satisfaction rests in ensuring that you have the right products in the right place at the right time, and infusing data-driven intelligence into your supply chain can help make all the difference.
Mars, Inc.
For most consumer-packaged goods companies, sales spike during holiday season due to investments across the marketing and sales mix, from online display advertising to in-store physical displays. This past fall, Mars Inc., a global manufacturer of confectionary and other food products, decided it was time to gain deeper insights into an age-old problem of tracking where its product displays went after they left the warehouse.
Previously, Mars was only able to track the number of displays it produced and how many left its warehouses for retailer destinations. To help tackle this problem, it found the right partner with Footmarks, which designed its beacon- and gateway-based display tracking solution with Azure IoT Central to deliver secure, simple and scalable insights into what happens once displays begin transit.
With the Footmarks solution, Mars is now equipped with information on how many displays were in warehouse, how many were in transit, where they were headed, when they were put in market and how long they remained in use. With this insight, sales teams were able to access live updates to ensure displays were at the right stores, ensuring customers were always able to find their favorite snack foods when they were shopping.
Reimagine retail: Imagine the impossible and then make it happen
Consumer demands are changing, and retailers need to evaluate how they can change, too – from the experiences they create for customers to their core business models – to succeed and compete in today’s industry climate.
AWM Smart Shelf solutions create compelling experiences for customers around the world.
AWM
AWM is powering the future of autonomous shopping with AWM Frictionless, a Microsoft Azure-based solution that provides a seamless shopping experience by allowing consumers to shop as normal and then check out by simply walking out of the store, bypassing the traditional checkout process. AWM Frictionless is already deployed at several multi-billion-dollar retail organizations in the U.S. and Mexico, with hundreds more expected to come online in 2020.
Other Azure-powered AWM Smart Shelf solutions have been deployed in 16 countries around the world for scenarios such as demographic reporting, on-shelf inventory intelligence and custom shelf-edge LED displays that support ads, electronic shelf labels and planogram functionality.
Trakomatic
Trakomatic is a Microsoft partner in Asia that is digitizing brick and mortar stores with its Azure AI-based solution that provides more personalized, VIP-caliber shopping experiences to customers. Once a shopper opts in by signing up for the service, she has the option of adding her photo image to her profile. If she does, Trakomatic’s video analytics, AI-powered facial recognition and intelligent sensors, all on the Microsoft Azure cloud, do the rest, recognizing her as she enters the store and personalizing the experience – from targeted offers and digital signage that changes based on her preferences to alerting store associates so that they are prepared to provide the VIP experience she expects.
Visit us at NRF 2020
I’m inspired each and every day by our customers’ and partners’ innovation and can’t wait to see how they will reimagine retail next. To see more of this kind of innovation in action, visit us next week at NRF 2020. And be sure to check out more details on our latest retail innovations on the Official Microsoft Blog.
