2016: MADE-IN-ITALY RETAILERS INVEST IN TECH

MIA-EQUIPMAG

November: time to take stock of the technology investments in Retail made during 2016! On the one side, the Osservatorio Digital Innovation in Retail from Politecnico of Milan published the results of their yearly survey concerning the digital transformation started in 2016 by SME and Top Retailers; on the other Milan Forum Retail which took place on November 29th and 30th, welcomed mass-retail stakeholders to discuss “In-store innovation and mobile experience prone to customer engagement”.

The lack of a clear innovation strategy, warm cooperation initiatives with external players, the focus on the customer experience in digital retail stores, mobile developments, these are just some of the topics sprouting from the survey. Some significant data that Wins wants to consider: 93% of the interviewed Top Retailers sample invested in developing at least one back-end solution (CRM, electronic invoices, ERP, BI), 80% of them innovated some aspects of the in-store purchase experience (new payment methods, couponing, digital signage); similar trends are shown by small and medium retailers, even though in this case a view of the full potential of omnichannel is still out of focus.

Forum Retail offered an agenda focused on new on-line opportunities, future trends in payment methods, on-store hybrid purchase processes (i.e. a mixture of on-line and mobile digital interactions in brick-and-mortar stores), each an every of these topics has one main character: the customer. Wins attended the event to understand the needs of the market, create new partnerships and trigger new ideas, despite the current offer being cutting-edge already.