The retail industry is constantly growing; in this digital world, the rising market competition and the ebbing of brand loyalty are the major challenged faced today. Even though Global retail sales were approximately 23 trillion in 2017, there have been several major retail companies across the globe that have filed for bankruptcy in the same year. But there are also many retailers who have managed to survive and grow their business in spite of all of the challenges. Global retail sale is projected at around 30 trillion U.S. dollars by 2023.
When we concentrate on the Indian retail industry, it accounts for 14 to 15 percent of the GDP and 15 Percentage of employment. With over 6000 plus shopping malls operating, India is the 12th largest retail luxury market in the world, benefiting both Indian and foreign markets. But still, the Indian retail industry is not developed to avail of the available opportunities. There are so many challenges faced by retail outlets. Here are the few major challenges in the retail outlets that we summarized from various start-up programs conducted around the country and our solutions for the same.
1. Lack of Tech, Infrastructure, and logistics :
The Feasibility and adoption of technology are the major challenges faced by Indian retail outlets. Technology for everyday purposes like billing and payments, inventory check and prevention of shrinkage, Supply Chain Management, etc. Adoption of tech like RPA will help to become more efficient in the usage of Workflow Management, Return Processing logistics, and infrastructure in the retail industry. Cocola Japan is one of the best examples of this.
2. Improved customer experience :
Creating a negative experience being one of the most affected factors of a customer’s likelihood to repeat the store again. Customer experience is the most important factor in brand loyalty.
Having proper queue management systems and adopting technology for centralized customer data help the management and retail store managers to build a seamless and better experience.
3. Maintaining customer loyalty :
As I mentioned above having centralized customer data would help loyalty programs to become easy and effective and putting relevant data into use retailers can not only reward the customers but also can integrate data at all action points - including in-store sales, Online data, etc. Creating an omnichannel customer experience.
4. Better internal managing system :
Managing retail operations is complex and its internal communication is not an easy task. This challenge can be seen in large scale retail companies with a large number of outlets. Having a check of outlet inventory, New stocks, avoiding shrinkage, etc would be a challenging everyday task. Opting for an ERP system could be a perfect solution for the management and this would help centralize all the business data and provide real-time and extensive reports which ensure a smooth run across all the divisions.
5. Employee retention and engagement :
Customer retention isn’t the only important factor for a retailer, Indian retailers spend more than 7% of the sales towards the personnel cost and 70-80% of the total manpower is contributed towards store operations. So employee retention is also an important factor and solution maybe increasing employee engagement within the company by providing regular training and other activities that would optimize their competencies.
We recommend that you choose a system that is tailor-made to your business, Get in touch with us and know how our experts can help your business in your growth journey.
