http://www.future.sblinks.net Your Source for Social News and Networking Mon, 24 Apr 2023 07:01:11 +0000 en http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/intelligent-stock-take-–-every-retailer’s-dream/
Most retailers are unable to perform stock-take during operating hours due to the use of an off-line POS system, which updates stock of inward and outward once in the night. Hence, at the time of stock-take, the system quantity is not live and real and hence can't be matched instantly. Further, due to time lag between count and system stock updating, a lengthy reconciliation process is attempted before a stock-take result is finally closed and count variances are posted to inventory and financial general ledger. Given this lethargic process, often stock take is delayed or neglected, leading to poor inventory control and management

Statistics indicate a 30% difference between physical and system stock in a retail environment, leading to poor customer satisfaction. Further, every stock-take count takes about two weeks to close after prolonged backward reconciliation process

Intelligent stock take is a process where you use barcode equipped mobile phones to scan items and instantly match with system stock. Intelligent stock take can be performed at any point in time, including during operating hours of a store.

Stock-take variances are reconciled instantly, and variances analyzed at the close of every stock-take count and disposed of with count adjustments or otherwise. Since it is online and real-time, intelligent stock take helps to identify actual stock items where there are variances, thereby reducing variance analysis time substantially. There is no need to do backward reconciliations and waste precious man-hours

Of our experience with clients using our Retail ViVA ERP, Intelligent stock take improves efficiency over 300% while reducing cycle time by about 90%, compared to traditional stock-take methods

Intelligent stock-take also helps to do risk analysis of items that are perpetually indifference and thus provides inputs for system and control improvisation ]]> Mon, 24 Apr 2023 07:01:11 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/intelligent-stock-take-–-every-retailer’s-dream/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/a-successful-21st-century-enterprise-21ce-must-be-“responsive”-enterprise/
The centricity of success has changed from machines and logistics in 20th century to software and enterprise systems in the 21st Century, which means that enterprise systems are directly and continuously and instantly shaped by what the market wants. An enterprise that can make its enterprise systems change flexibly almost co-terminus to market change is a successful 21st-century enterprise (21CE).

Unless 21CE's reinvent their process and business models constantly, their survival becomes difficult. It is just new normal that 21CE constantly reconfigure their resources and capabilities. Since 21CE are highly digital and offers complete digital experiences to customers, any reconfigurations invariably lead to their enterprise systems change. That's the flexibility 21CE is looking for, to have flexible enterprise systems. However intelligent a 21CE enterprise is, if it is not responsive, its intelligence can't be exploited. Every 21CE will be digitized and effectively become a software company or majorly driven by software algorithms, data, and analytics.

Enterprise systems to be considered flexible must allow for new functionality to be introduced easily and quickly. The biggest challenge of enterprise systems today is their scalability for new changes in a quick and self-service manner. The dependence on multi-party service providers makes companies wait for change and thus lose critical timeframes. Prolonged interactions with service providers frustrate internal stakeholders without being able to see the change instantly. Internal stakeholders in any enterprise expect systems that respond to their information capture and analytic needs in a manner that is the most natural or self-service manner to them.

Companies who develop this responsiveness will successfully navigate change and maintain their customer relationships and provide that unified customer experience to delight.

Then what kind of enterprise systems do 21CE adopt? They must be flexible which means it is self-configurable and fully on self-service basis. And to respond to change quickly and to re-configure business models, it must be driven by change at their end rather than waiting for an external service provider to make the change slowly. A low-code/no-code is the best choice any responsive enterprise must make which then gives them the agility to be dynamic and adapt to change instantly.

That's precisely the reason that Sathguru built sixteen of its twenty-six modules bundled retail ERP, Retail ViVA through its own no-code platform, to provide that flexibility to customers for making change on their own. ]]> Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:54:51 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/a-successful-21st-century-enterprise-21ce-must-be-“responsive”-enterprise/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/preparedness-for-moving-from-traditional-to-omnichannel-retail/
Blending of traditional business process with new age digital experience process requires careful planning and orchestration. The change management needs to be handled in a positive and proactive manner. The concept of intelligently joining the business as usual with newly sought-after channels with matching experiences needs to be supported by an agile ERP technology that can transform traditional business process quickly and on the fly. Most legacy retailers suffer due to their current ERP being incapable of matching other channel's modern experience base.

When customer becomes the centre point, all legacy processes must stand to change to meet customer expectations. Today's customer loves to engage and transact with multiple devices, sometime physical, sometimes digital and sometimes in combination. The young, affluent and digitally savvy customers are inquisitive about using the right channel that suits them at that moment. They switch their choices according to their convenience and the difficult promise to provide the same experience to customers merits detailed attention

Most retail ERP products do not cover all business functions, forcing retailers to choose multiple software and spend time and energy on integration to have omnichannel setup. This also enlarges the time a traditional retailer's desire to project themselves beyond their store to the customer. With agile ERP, the technology layer can be quite easier to adapt to creating newer experience in traditional channel as well. That's why we built most modules of our retail ERP, Retail ViVA, in no-code platform, providing that agility to enterprises to change their traditional business model quickly to match to modern channels design.

After all, Retail is no more about customer satisfaction, it is about consistent customer experiences and omnichannel is no more a top floor offering, it is just a shop floor offering.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan ]]> Thu, 06 Apr 2023 05:21:35 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/preparedness-for-moving-from-traditional-to-omnichannel-retail/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retailers-how-much-of-your-system-stock-is-available-to-customers/
Various decision support systems surrounding inventory movements across stores and warehouses can determine optimum stock movements between warehouses and stores, to ensure stock-outs are minimum or almost negligible.

Retailers need to get real-time visibility of their inventory as shoppers do transactions across multi-channels and replenish stocks depending on movements. Most retailers have thousands of stock-keeping units (SKU), and hence continuous monitoring becomes a daunting task. Merchandising module in retail ERP software precisely does this function of allocating inventory transfer depending on the movement of stock at stores and based on classification of fast, normal, slow, or non-moving. That's precisely the reason that our Retail ERP has got an advanced merchandising module that auto-suggests or triggers stock transfers between warehouses and stores or between stores in a proactive manner. Since most retailers operate on batch-integrated point of sales (POS) system, they do not get minute-to-minute inventory status, which then pushes stock transfers to the next day, after end-of-day (EOD) processing is complete. Our Retail ViVA ERP POS is online and updates stocks in real-time across all channels so that one can see stocks online and take quick actions towards replenishment. A matured merchandising module is key to avoiding stock-outs of out-of-stock (OOS) situations

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan ]]> Mon, 03 Apr 2023 08:45:47 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retailers-how-much-of-your-system-stock-is-available-to-customers/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/do-you-want-your-retail-company-to-be-one-connected-community-driving-towards-the-purpose/
Millennials today desire quick communication and feel very easy to connect with anyone to achieve their purpose. Often, in an organization, we see silos of human hierarchy, which functions in a not so connected manner, frustrating the Millennials. Instant communication tools have become the torchbearer to solve this important cultural issue and help businesses flourish. After all, time lost is customer lost or profits lost.

If you are a dispersed organization by geographies, it is also important that we connect them closely to bridge the geographical distances. The use of instant communication tools makes and feels everyone is connected, and distance gets buried. You see an inclusive organization and inclusiveness is very important to drive that one purpose for which the organization is striving for.

There are external communication tools that organizations use to get this connected community culture in an organization. What if it is embedded into your ERP auto triggering group communication for action and allow the community to address that instantly. Rather than using a general instant collaboration tool, it is better to use an ERP embedded tools that senses and auto groups people to communicate, avoiding all the pollutive overload that these types of tools can create. Get the alerts in-group community form, exchange ideas quickly by way of chat, act, and flourish is the norm these tools set, and it works, and it works to efficiency!

Social communication tools have become a habit for people in their personal lives, so will be corporate and ERP embedded communication tools as well. Employees, who see them as one community through these tools, will want to use them, rather than seeing it as something they are forced to use.

We embedded our "Tetra" tool in our Retail ViVA ERP precisely for this reason so that the whole organization can see, feel and act as one community, driven to one purpose

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan ]]> Thu, 30 Mar 2023 11:29:54 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/do-you-want-your-retail-company-to-be-one-connected-community-driving-towards-the-purpose/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/workflows-defining-process-person-relationship/
Workflows can also be routed depending on conditional aspects, and thus, it can take multi-route depending on previous action results. Workflows help to prevent frauds, improve efficiency, and push action by people. Workflow can push things in an inbox or push an e-mail notification or push a notification in any collaboration software enterprise uses. A well-structured workflow provides visibility to know where the bottlenecks are, and who is overloaded with several workflow approvals. This analysis helps in improving process efficiency and thus improve process completion time with the aim of better customer satisfaction

Because of the dynamic business needs of modern enterprises, workflows often need to be tied to conditions that users want to impose. Workflow designs need to be flexible enough for users to add or delete conditions and point to the human resource hierarchy for escalations. Timeliness is a customer efficiency concept and workflows can monitor process time by triggering escalations for inordinate delays

In our Retail ViVA ERP, we have left workflow configuration at user levels with plain English like commands for conditional workflow definition. More intelligently, workflow understands human resource hierarchy and can point to better governance management. Workflows can be immediately triggered, scheduled in summary, or escalated push, and users will be able to configure them on their own, maintain them and achieve governance and regulatory compliances.

Does your ERP have a flexible workflow definition linked to the HR hierarchy?

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan ]]> Tue, 28 Mar 2023 12:12:58 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/workflows-defining-process-person-relationship/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/tetra-brand-identity/
Tetra fishes school together in unison and instantly changes direction without colliding is always a sight to watch in any aquarium. They move so seamlessly as if they all have one single mind. In this unison approach, they never collide with each other. What a way they perform their act of schooling and moving. This marvellous piece of their movement is the inspiration of our logo and name of our collaboration tool.

Our Tetra favours one(same) way of thinking and one(same) way of doing and one(same) way of communicating. This one way of doing, without any collision of mind, favours utmost business collaboration and paves the way for grouped people to achieve that one purpose. In the 21st century designed flat organization structure, our Tetra facilitates all of them moving in unison as if there is one commandant, but they are more controlled as self-commandants in the same tandem to achieve that one purpose.

No one has ever figured out the complexity of how Tetra fishes move in unison without colliding, leaving the impressive unison movement as a treatise to your eyes. Similarly, our ERP handles the complexity of grouping or schooling relevant people to facilitate collaboration, making it simple and awesome to use and achieve the purpose.

Our Tetra is a pleasurable experience for every user, leaving all the complexity handling within Retail ViVA ERP. Enjoy the flow of our Tetra when you use our Retail ViVA ERP ]]> Fri, 24 Mar 2023 06:13:00 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/tetra-brand-identity/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/tomorrow’s-erp-will-be-those-that-empower-citizen-developers/
Technology is transforming year after year, and we have seen some intuitive and beautiful technology showcases in simple applications. But when it comes to ERP, it is always the case of big, long, highly validated, and continuously synchronized screen captures with multi-woven approval flows. Younger users are demanding change and severe change. They want to be citizen developers to develop themselves as situation demands. They do not wish the central IT to control what they need, but would like to define, design, and demonstrate what they need by themselves.

Their needs are genuine, as businesses need to be responsive to market dynamics. And market dynamics are very fluid and fuzzy, due to strategic and competitive forces. Hence, the time to change is minimal. But young users are willing to strategize within limited time as situation demands but want the system to be an excellent companion to be able to adapt to dynamic changes.

ERP vendors have spent millions of years, developing several screens and process flows. Will 2020 change the dynamics of these persistent efforts being questioned? Can ERP vendors provide responsive systems where citizen developers can make changes by themselves in minutes or seconds and achieve their objectives? Will just an excellent user interface provide good user experiences in the future? Will the ability to change by themselves will topple all the other goodies that ERP vendors are offering today? Will the cloud be restrictive for citizen developers without having the flexibility to make design changes that they desperately need?

My prediction is that 2020 will start the revolution for ERP users to demand very dynamics solutions that they can interpret, re-design, re-deploy, and re-energize themselves. And by 2023, we will see all the ERP vendors, who have rigid screens built-in on the great maxim of best practices being questioned, being voted unhealthy from user needs perspective, and being rejected unwieldy from user needs perspective. ]]> Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:01:12 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/tomorrow’s-erp-will-be-those-that-empower-citizen-developers/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/using-ai-for-supporting-contextually-relevant-and-on-demand-information/
When you are in the moment of strategic decision making, you often find that you are short of that one or two unanticipated critical relevant information to make the right decision. The pre-set analytics or data visualizations need to be re-drawn to another created moment aborting the current moment where a reasonable amount of time invested in making a decision. A second moment has its own warm-up time and thus, cumulatively, we spend more time to make the right and intelligent decision. Most corporate decisions are made not in one moment, and delay in decision-making is one of the most inefficient processes that pull down an organizational success. Unless you have context-relevant information on demand, you need another moment and another moment and so on.
Any information system should facilitate providing information to users as they demand so that all moments are fulfilling with full set of information to make the right decision. This way, you don't need to anticipate a variety of information needs and prepare for it. The foundation information for the decision making can get prepared in advance, but all artifacts of information surrounding them should be accessible on demand.

To solve this problem, we built "Tulsi," our AI-powered on-demand information bot, which then brings up information from our Retail ViVA database to the user's command. In any moment of your meetings, you can get all contextual information to make your intelligent strategic decision.

A real on-demand information system is the one retailer look for today. Like a stitch in time saves nine, a decision in time may save hundreds of dollars! A modern Retail ERP system must have on-demand information provision for saving precious management time.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan ]]> Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:41:38 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/using-ai-for-supporting-contextually-relevant-and-on-demand-information/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/new-hire-digital-onboarding-can-it-give-the-personal-touch-2/
We are living in an experience economy, and we are also living in the digital economy. Experience is something that leaves you with memories of the past or which gives you great satisfaction during usage. Experience can also be about implicit trust and faith in something like a brand due to continuous good experience gained over time. But then, the experience can be gained from another person or digitally gained by using a gadget or website or a service on the web. As a universe, we seem to weigh good digital experience as equal as personal experiences, if one must conclude from the popularity of social media. Else, the least we conclude is that digital experience is becoming an acceptable norm in the absence of direct personal experience possible.

Companies that adopt digital on-boarding to their new hires must create them with experience as the backbone. They want their new hires to enjoy the digital experience and gain positive emotions, beliefs, and motivation for the purpose and people in the Company. New hires digital onboarding experience can also set the right motto of the company's drive towards "Digital First & Digital Always," right from day one. I have often advocated digital onboarding as a tool to know and gauge digital familiarity of new hires and chart a course of training needs for their improvements. After all, the world is turning digital, and if we cannot coach our employees to be exceptionally digitally savvy, we are not going to be strong in the marketplace. ]]> Tue, 14 Mar 2023 07:12:51 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/new-hire-digital-onboarding-can-it-give-the-personal-touch-2/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/is-your-retail-erp-system-designed-to-provide-unified-commerce-capability/
As different channels emerged, companies that were running old and legacy ERP systems struggled to cope up to online and did patch systems to present online as a discrete web development, unintegrated to their legacy ERP systems. Soon CIO and business users realized that they are unable to provide unified customer experience across channels. Alongside with the proliferation of technology and its adoption by younger generations, customer experience as a "movement" started gaining momentum. Customers were demanding good experience and repeated their purchase, where they felt good experience was the norm.

Retailers, who felt happy that they are offering omnichannel experience, fell short of providing unified commerce. Unified commerce is about unifying all platforms as if it is a single platform, both in the front-end experience as well as the back-end ERP applications of a Retailer. Most Retailers failed to unify their back-end for omni channel capabilities. Most often, they had multiple administrators managing store, web, and mobile configurations of offers, promotions, and discounts. Contradictions in offers were visible due to time lag in configuration updates.

While designing our Retail ViVA ERP, we kept the critical maxim of single administration for all channels, be it physical store or web or mobile. What customers see is the same across channels as administration is unified for all. ]]> Tue, 21 Feb 2023 11:09:21 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/is-your-retail-erp-system-designed-to-provide-unified-commerce-capability/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/customers-moving-from-relationship-to-true-loyalty/
Customer loyalty refers to strong patronage to a single brand of products or services that a customer gets affiliated to, irrespective of significant noise about competition circling her/him. The critical point to note here is about not being influenced to switch to another brand or service. The loyalty is so strong that it is a deep commitment to re-patronize consistently

In my example, when I need to do international travel, I just lead to Emirates to book my tickets without even looking at what prices other airlines are offering. I do not get motivated to browse umpteen travel sites that provide a price comparison of various operators. Beyond just mere loyalty, this is genuinely blending your confidence onto a brand implicitly

In a Customer Relationship journey, the first step is to build a relationship with customers and then convert them to true loyalty status. To move Customers from relationship to loyalty, customization, and personalization come into play from the service provider angle. In return, the Customer becomes the brand ambassador to others, echoing brand uniqueness time and again.

Relationships are benefits that a customer enjoys over and above the product or service, she/he acquires and views it as her/his personal gain for being a regular customer. When such a relationship attains a solidarity position where he is unattracted to switch loyalties, she/he turns into a truly loyal customer. As the customer reaches true loyalty status, her/his perceived demand would be to get special treatment. If a brand can satisfy that aspiration of a truly loyal customer, the longevity gets further strengthened, and a solid bond gets established. This unshakeable bond makes the customer own the brand as if it is her/his own and fight for righteous demand if things are seen not being up to the regularly experienced brand status ]]> Thu, 16 Feb 2023 06:47:32 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/customers-moving-from-relationship-to-true-loyalty/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-success-of-retail-retailing-is-in-the-real-tail/
The art of tailing a customer closely emerged as a 21st-century practice amid digital traceability, privacy, personal data concerns, and security. However, since data is the new oil, every data of real or potential customers was crunched, and several dots connected to understand the customer's mind and thinking. The creation of personalized choices of offers or promotions was easy then and targeted against a specific customer of choice, inducing them to make the buying choice.

While data collection and privacy are the hot debate on the questionable side, customization, or personalization is the welcome development from the customer experience angle. Personalization made customer jobs easy in most cases, saving good amount of time for the customer. Predictable models of "what next" for a customer's desires got developed and probably, made customer decision-making easier of curated choices presented. While customer derived value out of personalization, Retailers derived benefit of knowing customer behaviour and predicting their next behaviour or sometimes influencing their future behaviour to their advantage.

Retailing is the business of fulfilling customer demand for goods through multiple channels of customer convenience and often giving the customer similar or same experience across those channels. However, modern retail places more reliance on digital, and thus data becomes the backbone of every decision-making. Modern Retail ERP software is omnichannel ready and can present a 360-degree view of customer data combining customer actions across the various channel, including customer non-actions ]]> Mon, 30 Jan 2023 06:24:23 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-success-of-retail-retailing-is-in-the-real-tail/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/strategy-from-top-floor-to-shop-floor-is-it-really-communicated/
Most corporates do not have a smooth and fulfilling workplace communication method. Whoever sets the strategic plan, they do not have a credible communication channel or mechanism to communicate that down the line. The remote workforce does not get the context of strategic planning and is far from owning, involving and executing it. Finally, the strategic plan ends up in a spreadsheet and the creators' update and analyze it periodically, without any informed participation by all in the organization

One must examine the questions as to how a strategic plan will get aligned to the Mission and Vision of a corporate and how does the plan get integrated into the day-to-day works of every employee in Retail organization. After all, several critical components of a strategy get executed at the bottom of the pyramid in any organization. A corporate must drill down its strategic plan to levels of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and attach to various associates linked to their functions. While doing so, they must inter-align the larger picture of Mission and Vision to every KPI through which associates can gauge how their KPI achievement contributes ultimately to the Vision of a Corporate. This will not only help associates to know about the Vision but also develop a pride of having committed to the Vision of Corporate that she/he works. This pride will ultimately enhance engagement and long-term loyalty ]]> Fri, 27 Jan 2023 09:30:10 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/strategy-from-top-floor-to-shop-floor-is-it-really-communicated/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/new-hire-digital-onboarding-can-it-give-the-personal-touch/
We are living in an experience economy, and we are also living in the digital economy. Experience is something that leaves you with memories of the past or which gives you great satisfaction during usage. Experience can also be about implicit trust and faith in something like a brand due to continuous good experience gained over time. But then, the experience can be gained from another person or digitally gained by using a gadget or website or a service on the web. As a universe, we seem to weigh good digital experience as equal as personal experiences, if one must conclude from the popularity of social media. Else, the least we conclude is that digital experience is becoming an acceptable norm in the absence of direct personal experience possible.

Companies that adopt digital on-boarding to their new hires must create them with experience as the backbone. They want their new hires to enjoy the digital experience and gain positive emotions, beliefs, and motivation for the purpose and people in the Company. New hires digital onboarding experience can also set the right motto of the company's drive towards "Digital First & Digital Always," right from day one. I have often advocated digital onboarding as a tool to know and gauge digital familiarity of new hires and chart a course of training needs for their improvements. After all, the world is turning digital, and if we cannot coach our employees to be exceptionally digitally savvy, we are not going to be strong in the marketplace. ]]> Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:43:05 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/new-hire-digital-onboarding-can-it-give-the-personal-touch/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retailers-do-you-want-to-hire-an-attitude-or-skill/
Skill relates to the application of a body of knowledge to perform an activity or a task. To execute an activity most proficiently, one must go through constant training to sharpen their skills. The speed and quality of output often measure one's skills.

In the current experience economy, Retail employees are involved in constant interaction with customers. Else, they are involved in designing systems that Customer interacts digitally. Either way, customers must get a good feel of their interaction and it must leave a lasting experience in their minds. Customers then revisit in expectation of another good experience and so on.

Modern-day jobs are relationship and network-oriented and the thriving slogan of success is "People relate to People." Any relationship can only thrive if attitudes are positive and soothing to fast forward further and build a strong bond of lasting value. Thus, attitudes become so essential and relevant for retail jobs as most often, all employees deal with customers directly in some form or other.

It may be easy to reskill a person or impart new skills absolutely from scratch, but it may not always be probable to change the attitude of a person in the near or medium term. People change their attitudes through constant persuasion or by experiencing negative results toward their current attitudes. Hence, it may often be challenging to re-attitude a person immediately in the near or medium-term and make him believe entirely in new behaviours. ]]> Fri, 20 Jan 2023 11:10:40 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retailers-do-you-want-to-hire-an-attitude-or-skill/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-journey-of-native-embedded-analytics-why-where-is-it-today/
As these tools became popular, we noticed corporate houses performing various analytics for top management by way of relevant charts. This kindled human reaction to those visualization and thus was born data-driven decision making. Senior management makes strategic decisions based on data visualization presented to them. However, in the early days of these tools, the analytics visualization was restricted to senior management, and scarcely, the operational team had access to these analytics platforms. Dashboards were not used by the operational team, least to create it by themselves for their own data analytic needs. However, all the analytics were batch driven then, not providing helpful insights on a real-time basis. It is like the report card of our children which we get every quarter from the school to know what scores they have got and being blank until the end of the quarter to see how the child is progressing in studies.

With the advent of the Millennial and Gen Z workforce, the appetite for self-service and drive for making decisions on their own gained momentum. Their independent cum collaborative working styles required that they own their data, network about their thoughts on data analytics in close circles, and pursue actions from their consideration. Self-service analytics and on-demand analytics came into play to their advantage. On-demand analytics is not possible in batch mode, and the absence of embedded analytics was an apparent frustration to them. All the frontline analytics vendors rushed in to fill the gap with connectors that can export data almost in real-time to provide real-time analytics. Some created common platforms to connect reputed ERP, and other popular cloud software and others provided a generic model of configuring connectivity between systems to pull data almost instantaneously. The Embedded Analytics became the basic norm, not even as a unique feature beyond the primary offering.

However, still, the third-party embedded analytics had its limitations of not being fit for fast throughput online customer-facing data roll situations like stock market transactions or online revenue management systems or the like. Further, some of the online ERP systems cater to high volume eCommerce transactions, and embedded analytics fell short of configuring for alerts integrated with workflows linked to those transactions. ]]> Fri, 13 Jan 2023 09:10:23 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-journey-of-native-embedded-analytics-why-where-is-it-today/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/citizen-developer-who-is-she-what-she-needs/
Traditionally, we have been following the concept of central IT department being the torchbearer of software development, and they become the intermediary broker between end-user who desire a systemic digital process and a software development firm that is capable of that digitization. However, in the whole process of ideation and exchange, several communication pollutions creep in leading to delays and imperfect output. While generalizing this aspect, there are also smart tools that create excellent collaboration capabilities across involved stakeholders, but still, more must be done for a user to feel satisfied that they have got precisely what they envisioned. The three-way communication and collaboration process are the misery triangle resulting in the output that is not to the expectation of the user who conceived the digitization.

The Generation Z employees are technology savvy but may not all be technically savvy to write code and fulfill their digitization needs by themselves. In the alternate, they can design solutions based on their needs due to their digital intimacy right from the early stage of their learning. They crave for something that can help design by themselves and invisibly code by themselves for their needs, without indulging in code writing. LowCode and NoCode platforms are born to serve this need and have become quite popular in the recent past. Every fortune 100 technology company is into the race of creating these platforms to capture this steeply increasing market need.

Most platforms today are mainly LowCode, wherein most development work is performed through non-code writing tool with final finishing touches done by a qualified code writer. LowCode method of development is agile and shortens the whole software development lifecycle to successful implementation. There is also NoCode platforms which can do one hundred percent of the work of software development and bring up solution in a ready-to-use form without a code writer writing a single line of code. In the LowCode, the pain of the misery triangle remains but at much-reduced level, while in NoCode, the freedom of self-service excels. ]]> Tue, 10 Jan 2023 04:05:30 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/citizen-developer-who-is-she-what-she-needs/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/do-engaged-employees’-matter-for-excellent-customer-experience/
Gartner defines customer experience as "the customer's perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier's employees, systems, channels or products." Forrester Research defines customer experience as: "How customers perceive their interactions with your company." Primarily, in a nutshell, customer experience refers to gatherings from interaction and consequent perception formed in the minds of customers. Customers form an opinion about the Brand in isolation and also compare it with the competition. If their view is superior to the one they have on competition, the positive experience gets established in the minds of the customer.

Let us, for a moment, think which channels are responsible for creating a better or bitter experience in the customer's mind? It must be either digital or physical interactions or a combination of both. Whichever be the channel, it is the human mind that is behind the creation of both. In physical, human plays a predominant role in creating a pleasant experience. In digital, human indirectly plays the role of designing it for an enjoyable experience. When an employee is fully engaged and motivated to perform beyond his normally expected lines, she/he strives to create a good experience for the customer. The moot point to understand is how employee engagement drives creating an excellent customer experience ]]> Mon, 02 Jan 2023 05:45:00 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/do-engaged-employees’-matter-for-excellent-customer-experience/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/customer-financing-will-it-convert-those-on-the-fence/
Customers find products affordable when they can pay through a payment plan. Retailers, in turn, provided multiple financing plan options, so that customers can choose the plan that best suits their requirements. Customers are also able to plan small installment payments in their weekly or monthly pay checks, and their personal budgeting becomes much more comfortable and manageable.

Anyone who does customer financing, be it Retailer by themselves or through a third-party financier, takes the credit risk into its books. If the Retailer is financing, then it becomes a trade-off between increased sales versus delinquency that they need to handle for bad debts. Making Customer financing through third party finance has the benefit of increased sales while not taking any delinquency risk. However, the service and customer relationship are at the discretion of a third party, which might affect long term customer loyalty. One another smart way to handle this situation is for Retailers to finance customers by themselves to keep service and customer relationships at a high degree but securitize the receivables at the back end to reduce their credit risk.

While building Retail ViVA, the 26 modules integrated Retail Management System; we integrated a full-fledged Ready Finance module to provide Retailers the option to provide customer financing. The module covers score track, credit limit generation, credit disbursement, portfolio monitoring, re-aging, tele-caller follow-up, bailiff, repossession, and re-sale as an end-to-end credit management module. It also facilitates third-party financing and portfolio securitization as well. Giving the benefit of commencing customer financing any time is the key objective behind the incorporation of this relevant module into our Retail ERP product.

I have the first-hand experience of involving in over 200,000 customer financing accounts per annum for the last 20 years and have seen the dominant role customer financing plays to enhance sales. I have seen the ratio of customer financed sales nearing seventy percent and delinquency ratios well under two percent. Securitization is an ideal situation of double benefit where a Retailer builds strong loyalty by believing in customers to advance credit while simultaneously reducing the risk of delinquency. We have seen several customers availing repeat financing which demonstrates true customer loyalty. Customer financing pushes customers to Retailers rather than Retailers struggling to pull customers inward.

]]> Tue, 27 Dec 2022 09:29:06 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/customer-financing-will-it-convert-those-on-the-fence/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-power-of-one-is-smarter-than-the-pieces-of-many-/
Modern business applications come with connectors for external systems to draw and put data, thereby creating permanent connectivity between two different software systems. Application Programming Interface (API) or other similar interfaces help achieve interaction between multiple systems. However, when two systems interact, there is more exposure to security risk due to users using different connectivity and what is technically known as transport security. Further, cloud hosting has created another new concept known as a hybrid cloud where you connect with multiple systems residing in various clouds, also exposing to security risks. While one can mitigate these security risks through proper security protocols, a risk exposure remains even though mitigation measures are put in by way of encrypted transport protocols.

Let me take, for a moment, example of buying a new motor vehicle. We test-drive many and finally settle for one. We may like individual features of some but may not find all those loved features in the final one we decide. However, we settle for the final one only because it has the most features that we liked, while it certainly lacked few that also we loved. Similarly, in software products, the easiest way to avoid much of security risks, cost of integration, cost of unification and cost of attaining equilibrium in version update between different software is to opt for single solution.

But the future of software is drawing us to same conclusion. When NoCode platforms mature, users can create or add features of their choice to an existing software they use. If the software is built entirely on NoCode platforms, they can add whatever they need or desire.
Visit Website:
https://retailviva.com/
]]> Thu, 22 Dec 2022 06:14:30 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-power-of-one-is-smarter-than-the-pieces-of-many-/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/how-to-emotionally-invoke-employee-seeking-system/
Every human has an active SS. Let us take the example of receiving a surprise gift. It is human tendency to open the gift and seek what is inside. The SS invokes the urge and expectation to know what is inside and motivates us to open the gift for understanding. Seeking urges one to look for places where resources are available. Every google search is a seeking system invoked, and we go and find a website that can provide us information to learn or study or discover.

Similarly, in the corporate world, structured ways can be created to invoke the SS in every employee. It can be during one's day-to-day activities or as part of Learning & Development (L&D) or as part of group introspection or combination of them. Every attempt must invoke the element of surprise or curiosity to invoke the SS in an employee. Hence, it is essential that on the job SS can be created that links up to employee's behaviour and advocates the right training with the extreme curiosity of looking forward to that. If it is linked to L&D, the curiosity and desire must be inter-locked to employee self-development, and self-motivation environment must be created to seek out. Whichever way we look at it, the Human Resource system must be capable of addressing this SS concept by inter-linking organizational process and results into creating the right curiosity and desire.

We live in a knowledge economy, and a learned employee is a gainful employee. Employers who care for creating the right launchpad for active learning is providing purposeful employment. In the knowledge economy, humans want to thrive in the seeking system permanently for perpetual improvement. In our company, we give utmost importance to invoking the SS. One question which dares and stares at us every year is what is that we have put into our employees by way of they seeking more than what they already tried and have in them. We have been very successful in our approach of self-development, and that is demonstrated in our four years of consecutive Great Place to Work certification.

Visit website:
https://blog.retailviva.com/how-to-emotionally-invoke-employee-seeking-system/ ]]> Tue, 20 Dec 2022 06:30:18 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/how-to-emotionally-invoke-employee-seeking-system/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/enterprise-content-management-–-a-cure-or-a-curse/
Traditionally, enterprises managed content in a scattered manner, some in the storage location of individual employee's computers or the more organized ones pointed storage in one central drive in their network. However, this is rule-based, and success depends on employees following the rules to store as per corporate policy and procedure. They were indexed to search but did not have any associated taxonomy tags to group them for easy retrieval. Keywords search within content was also not possible easily.

Cloud-based content management systems coupled with file sharing and file synchronization services became quite popular during the last decade and occupied center stage in corporate adoption. However, there were concerns about security for adoption at a faster rate and became more popular as an employee's personal cloud content management system quickly. Some of them have improved and are addressing the gaps for being a full-fledged enterprise content management system with robust collaboration features. Multiple users collaboratively manage web and enterprise content, synchronizing their thoughts, actions, and expectations. ECM systems have brought the vibrancy of active collaboration for concerted effort and shared storage, avoiding duplicate storage of the same documents within a single network. The deduplication of document circulation has saved a substantial amount of space and corporate bandwidth usage in their buy operational timing. In one of our client locations, the average saving on deduplication noticed was close to 50% of data circulating over email. ]]> Thu, 15 Dec 2022 05:58:54 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/enterprise-content-management-–-a-cure-or-a-curse/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/is-bopis-emerging-as-the-future-of-retail-2/
BOPIS calls for a real-time stock update and online visibility of stocks to customers across a retail enterprise and swift movement of stock replenishment in an automated manner. Most legacy retail ERP systems have end-of-day batch run to update stock balances and are not suitable for BOPIS enablement. Customers demand service, would like to shop online, and desire to pick-up in the next two hours. Retailers would not be able to service customers confidently if their stock update is not in real-time and cannot guarantee stock delivery to a customer due to poor visibility of stock at store or warehouse at any moment. Further, legacy retail ERP do not practice stock reservation for ordered but undelivered. Stock reservation is one of the fundamental business processes for omnichannel readiness for a retailer. Fundamentally, BOPIS to be successful, online stock visibility is a must, as echoed by Gartner in Retail CIO new year resolutions, 2020.

COVI-19 pandemic initially put the logistics and supply chain in disarray for two reasons; firstly, they were all diverted to serve emergency medical supplies; and secondly, they were unable to operate at one hundred percent efficiency due to lockdown conditions. Hence, customers opted for BOPIS as an alternate strategy. Further, customers find BOPIS as an effective way to shop due to the saving of shipping costs. Customers found park-in or curbside pick-up as a natural and time-saving option while giving them the comfort of contactless payment options. Since safety also played a predominant role as to how customers shop, BOPIS became one of the apparent choices for items that customers required immediately for consumption or use.

Customers can be given the best experience in BOPIS by giving them clear instructions about their parking lot at park-in or curbside slots and can gain a no-wait experience which otherwise they experience by standing in the line at brick-mortar. BOPIS experience so far had proven that more than 75% of BOPIS customers also shopped more items when they came for pick-up, thus providing an opportunity for cross-selling and up-sell.

Visit Website :
https://blog.retailviva.com/is-bopis-emerging-as-the-future-of-retail/ ]]> Wed, 07 Dec 2022 03:45:01 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/is-bopis-emerging-as-the-future-of-retail-2/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/100-marks-in-100-days-for-serp-ranking-of-retailviva-com/
We have pets at home, and they love to play with us. They demand attention and importance. My friends have been telling me how they have been playing with their pets all through the day due to lock down and working from home. Similarly, you should treat your website as a digital pet and bestow attention and importance. The importance it seeks is to wine, dine & dance on the first page of Google and every website's heartthrob is Google SERP ranking.

Google and Bing have their algorithm to show up a website on the first page or first in the search listing. It is a golden principle that no search users go beyond the second page of search engine listing and most do not even go beyond the first page. Hence, your website must get listed on the first page of google search so that your site comes up for the relevant keyword. The process of growing natural traffic to your website both qualitatively and quantitatively is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). When we started our google SERP ranking improvement project for www.retailviva.com, our objective was to get ranked on the first page. We are a team of four that wanted to attempt this. It is all started on 17th April 2020 with our first meeting to debate and discuss and lay the path forward to achieve this. The first step was to understand google webmaster guidelines in toto. This strategy much helped us to understand all the little nuances that we need to care for in a website. ]]> Mon, 05 Dec 2022 03:51:07 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/100-marks-in-100-days-for-serp-ranking-of-retailviva-com/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/4s-brand-identity/
The logo is a simple combination of number 4, and alphabet S. S stands for steps, and in total, the logo indicates four steps. The four sequences of steps involved in making a chart depict the letter "4" with four different icons. Each icon represents one step.

In Retail ViVA, a user can easily prepare a view of their focussed data set in any InfoGrid through a simple drag & drop of relevant columns to a group. Users can also use advanced filters to narrow further their focussed data set through filters. Users keep creating several InfoGrid views for various use case needs. Retail ViVA stores all the InfoGrid configurations into its database. Our 4S analytics tool takes user-created InfoGrid views as the base.

Step 1 is selecting the right InfoGrid for chart preparation. The top limp of the vertical slide of letter 4 represents this indicating the selection of InfoGrid from the Retail ViVA database.

Just below that top limb, Step 2 is the selection of an appropriate chart that suits the right visualization of selected InfoGrid. The bar chart icon in the lower limb of the vertical side of letter 4 represents this.

Step 3 is about completing all settings relevant to the selected chart, like titles, labels, orientation, grids, data labels, and the like. The second icon, which is horizontally next to step 2 icon, represents this.

Step 4 is about saving the prepared chart for publishing in the presentation layer for user consumption. The downward vertical limb below step 3 icon represents this.

The 4S brand identity represents simplicity with which users can prepare charts and enjoy analytics of their data without any IT knowledge. The video below clearly depicts the simplicity of 4S tool and how users can make charts within 30 seconds.

https://youtu.be/eTTHYLtr4Ew
]]> Wed, 30 Nov 2022 08:10:39 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/4s-brand-identity/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/what-is-retail-transformation-and-why-is-it-important/
What is retail transformation?

Retail transformation is a process in which a chain of activities is modelled to increase sales, boost customer satisfaction, and minimise the cost involved in operations. This is achieved through extensive digital transformation and a thorough understanding of the customer journey to success.

The importance of retail transformation

The retail industry is undergoing significant changes, and digital transformation is the critical driver for the retail sector to remain a competitive marketplace. Modern retail brands use a mix of automation and personal attention to delight the customers and keep them coming back. Retailers need to leverage customer data to analyze customer behavior and make the marketing impactful. Retailers need to use the latest technology to optimize the value chain of their business. Retailers must also use data to avoid costly mistakes. The modern retailer needs to focus on long-term digital transformation plans to remain relevant and set new benchmarks of success. ]]> Fri, 25 Nov 2022 13:57:49 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/what-is-retail-transformation-and-why-is-it-important/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/is-it-time-for-your-retail-store-to-convert-to-open-to-buy/
What is Open-To-Buy?

Open-To-Buy is a concept to bring more transparency into the retail business. It is a tool that addresses the most critical question of how much to replenish and when to replenish stocks as they deplete. Retailer's significant investment goes into their inventory buys, and Open-To-Buy addresses how much to buy. It is always future-oriented and adjusts the plan based on past trends and the vendor's history of supplies. It is derived based on sales budgets to procurement budgets to actual sales in dollar terms. Often, an Open-To-Buy is combined with an assortment plan to answer both questions of how much to buy and which items to buy in each inventory category. Open-To-Buy is not used for daily basics or essentials as they go by standard replenishment at re-order levels. ]]> Thu, 24 Nov 2022 03:50:10 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/is-it-time-for-your-retail-store-to-convert-to-open-to-buy/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/why-online-shopping-is-more-popular-than-physical-shopping/
How online shopping has changed the way we shop

One of the primary reasons why people are inclined towards online shopping is the fact that prices online are the same or slightly cheaper than those in physical stores. Thus, there is much less to worry about bargain or price comparison. Also, several businesses provide discounts online. This includes coupons, discount codes, and vouchers. Discount offers are one of the reasons why people buy more when they buy online. It is simply amazing to see the way people buy items online. Sometimes, they are prepared with the best offers such as cashback and points. People can get amazing discounts on their food and shopping items such as t-shirts, sneakers, gym sets, electronic items, groceries among other things.
Why online shopping is popular

Online shopping provides customers with highly personalized services at their doorstep. Because of changing lifestyles and seeking convenient shopping methods customers opt for online shopping. Online shopping fulfills a wide range of choices like variety, affordability, and personalization. Online shopping provides customers the unique opportunity to select from different colors, sizes, and preferences that are specific to their needs. Additional options make the shopping experience more delightful. There are lots of shopping platforms that give a wide choice of choices and convenience for customers. Another reason is ease. The ease of downloading and configuring mobile applications makes online shopping a lot easier. We help our customers white-label mobile app and their customers can download the Retail ViVA mobile app from the play store or app store in minutes to start shopping. Retail ViVA comes with ready-to-use e-commerce and m-commerce modules that can be rolled out within hours/days.

Conclusion

Online shopping not only improves the physical shopping experience but also helps one to understand the product offerings better. Online shopping is an entirely delightful experience and will continue to win the hearts of the people who enjoy and love this treasure trove.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan ]]> Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:59:09 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/why-online-shopping-is-more-popular-than-physical-shopping/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retailers-are-you-an-intelligent-or-a-responsive-retailer/
Retail is the largest B2C industry in the world, generating nearly USD25 trillion in revenue. With the onset of smartphones in 2010, the retail sector has seen an extensive transformation, with almost every business segment doing well, except a few. Mobile and e-commerce segments thrived while physical stores continue to dominate as usual

An Intelligent Retailer creates the best digital systems and processes to serve its customers the best and aspires to achieve competitive positioning in the marketplace. The intelligence of the Intelligent Retailer comes from its intelligence-gathering through data analytics. However, if such an intelligent retailer is not agile, it may take some time for the intelligent retailer to change to new normal. A Responsive Retailer responds to customer's buying behaviour in real-time, thereby keeping a watchful eye on the shifting market trends and still strive to be an Intelligent Retailer. A responsive retailer is always agile, quick to change parallel to the evolving dynamics with consumer preferences or market vagaries or regulatory constraints.

What is an Intelligent Retailer?

According to Lexis-Nexis, an Intelligent Retailer is one who, through data, facilitates decision-making by considering customer needs in context. It is based on Intelligent Analysis, where cognitive technology uses analytics to create contextual understanding. This enables the retailer to understand consumer behaviour, purchase preferences and make offers that are relevant and attractive to the customers. It further helps the Retailer to make automatic product recommendations to the customers for her/his emerging lifestyle requirements. ]]> Fri, 11 Nov 2022 05:26:03 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retailers-are-you-an-intelligent-or-a-responsive-retailer/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-bright-ideas-in-whose-mind-it-is/
Bright Innovation Ideas: What is it?

Bright innovation Ideas are ideas, particularly new ones, in various fields that have brought significant improvements to everyday life. It can be very short- or long-term projects to apply new technology for the benefit of humanity. It is about imagining the unimagined or proving the unpractised so far, through the articulation of tangible benefit that we can obtain than what we are used to currently. It has the novelty value of something never seen or thought or experienced or proved or practiced. Some of them are very simple ideas, and a few complex as well. One great way of building bright innovative ideas is to think continuously one after other, improving your previous idea in building blocks over time. Constant quest for the next level of creativity drives this continual innovation

In Whose Mind It Is?

The scientific basis of an idea-producing living being was first elucidated in 1959 by Leon M. Lederman at the University of California. He further refined it in a seminal book, "Beyond the Horizon: What Our Brains Do at Night." Scientists have discovered that our unconscious mind is constantly doing the day-to-day work of filtering most of the information contained in every minute. The amount of data that reaches the conscious mind is compressed down by mind into a few important elements that we can process and hence become active. The product of this interpretation is that our unconscious mind, the lowest level, contains much more or better information than the conscious mind, the highest level. ]]> Thu, 10 Nov 2022 10:03:40 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-bright-ideas-in-whose-mind-it-is/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/ways-to-enhance-customer-experience-through-good-after-sale-service/
The customer experience journey

A customer journey, which customers experience when interacting with a product or service brand, is divided into two phases - engagement and satisfaction. Engagement is the first, where customers acquire products. This phase is where customers provide feedback, try out different products and begin to purchase. Satisfaction builds upon the existing satisfaction when customers find it easy to engage with customer care. The satisfaction from customer care engagement is vital for a company, as enhanced customer satisfaction there would lead to an additional robust sale. Therefore, an excellent customer experience is essential for any company by improving after-sales service.

The importance of customer service

People buy from a company for reasons beyond its products or services. The entire experience of dealing with the company should be seamless, rewarding, and of good quality. Customer loyalty is a crucial success factor in today's fast-paced world. Product companies from industries across all the geographies compete for their customers and high-quality sales force. Although customer-centricity is an essential element in a business, it can become a real challenge when the sales force focuses on customer acquisition rather than retention. ]]> Wed, 09 Nov 2022 03:05:53 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/ways-to-enhance-customer-experience-through-good-after-sale-service/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retail-customer-touch-points-what-are-they/
What are the Different Types of Touchpoints that Retail Customers Encounter?

The advancement of technology in the retail industry has made shopping simple for customers. Online order is an online sale and involves on-the-spot payment for products from the company. It reduces the need for a customer to visit stores and provides them with ease of shopping. In Pre-purchase online, retailers allow customers to pre-purchase an item online, not to stand in long queues at the time of store pick-up. This also assures the customer of speedy delivery of their purchase. A different type of touchpoint is where customers interact with a brand before they engage in a specific activity of buying or recommending. Then there is a physical store visit where a customer interacts with store personnel. There are also communications of various forms that reach the customer or prospective customer which also creates an impression. These communications may be related to products or related to the ethics or culture of the Brand. All of these are Customer Touchpoints, and each of these touchpoints creates a positive or negative impression on the customer's mind.
What Are the Possible Reasons for Negative Touchpoints?

The customer may feel disappointed due to the treatment retailers provide them. Fakes, flaws, poor quality of product/service, shoddy services, delayed delivery, bad customer service, excessive claims on advertising, non-empathetic marketing, stocking issues, product recalls are some of the aspects which create negative impressions in customer's mind. Most negative perceptions by customers are often the result of lack of experience, intelligence, professionalism, or lack of technical skill at the retailer level. Customers may leave the store/service station/online, and the retailer may never know about it. They could feel cheated or misled by the Brand. The key to achieving an optimal level of customer loyalty is by analysing the root cause of negative perceptions and taking steps to rectify the issue. ]]> Mon, 07 Nov 2022 11:37:51 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/retail-customer-touch-points-what-are-they/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-power-of-qr-codes-in-retail-how-useful-are-they/
What are QR codes, and what can they do?

QR codes are like bar codes but more secure, and most electronic devices have them. Most mobile phones come with the in-built capability to read QR codes and display their content or action. For example, you can scan QR codes in shops to find products or their features. This helps the customers to find the right one quickly. You can use QR codes for promotional purposes such as sending a discount coupon, free games coupons and other offers etc. Customers can confirm delivery by scanning QR codes. You can make payment easy through the use of QR codes. The ability to embed even call-to-action information in QR codes makes it multi-purpose oriented and Retailers can exploit this feature to their best of imagination in making it easy and intuitive for customers and other stakeholders. As mobile devices are becoming more powerful and are equipped with advanced scanners, retailers can even convert a QR code to a barcode for easier scanning. Further, retailers can customise application needs according to the technology of QR code through their innovation.

]]> Fri, 04 Nov 2022 04:31:56 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-power-of-qr-codes-in-retail-how-useful-are-they/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/does-your-company’s-loyalty-program-actually-work/
Does your company's loyalty program work?

Loyalty programs are not just about customer acquisition; it is about customer retention and beyond. It is essential to do the homework before you roll it out. Many companies report great success but fail to analyse the sales data to prove it convincingly. As customers want more and more, loyalty programs should be the number one priority to them. If your customers are not getting their fair share of discounts and perks, you need to re-evaluate your loyalty program design. What do you want to achieve with your loyalty program? Are you looking to generate more business, get new customers, grow your existing customer base or some combination of these?
https://blog.retailviva.com/does-your-companys-loyalty-program-actually-work/ ]]> Thu, 03 Nov 2022 04:14:51 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/does-your-company’s-loyalty-program-actually-work/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-guide-to-retail-promotions-what-why-and-how/
What types of Promotions
Some of the promotion types adopted by Retailers are:

1. Double Discount: Double discounts provide ultimate happiness to the customer, and he/she may purchase more quantity compared to what he/she intended to buy. This process is called two-for-one, which works as a bonus discount. Double discounts happen when the quantity of a product is being offered to a consumer at the same price it was being sold at before the offer.

2. Percent Discount: Here, the consumer is given a discount of percent of his/her entire purchase amount.

3. Category Discount: Sometimes, a specific category of products are put under discount to make customers buy more of those category items.

4. Value Discount: A fixed value is offered as a discount on items purchased, with a minimum purchase value indicated.

5. BOGO Offer: Buy-one-get-one offer is an attractive one and is offered in various forms like Buy-one-get-one at half price or Buy-one-from-category A and get one free in Category B or Buy five for the price of 3 or Buy Item A and get x% of discount on item B. ]]> Mon, 31 Oct 2022 05:31:23 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/the-guide-to-retail-promotions-what-why-and-how/ http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/no-you-should-not-say-“no”-to-nocode-it’s-rocking/
What is NoCode?
NoCode solutions are end-to-end solutions used by people who are not programmers to create and update web applications and websites using pre-configured graphical user interface artifacts. NoCode allows non-developers to modify, build and deploy software programs without knowing how to program in a programming language or working as programmers. When non-programmer wants to change an existing software program, they can't do it. With NoCode, one can easily make any change as they choose.

]]> Fri, 28 Oct 2022 05:52:25 +0000 RetailVIVA News 1 http://www.future.sblinks.net/News/no-you-should-not-say-“no”-to-nocode-it’s-rocking/