Navigating Personalized Omnichannel Strategies to be Future-Ready in Retail

A Benelux perspective on how to leverage data and insights on customer expectations

The future-ready business

In an era of uncertainty, our clients and prospects need to be ready for anything: ready for any economic, political, social or environmental shift or shock, at any time. Cognizant therefor commissioned Economist Impact to launch the Future Ready Business Benchmark program. The program examines businesses’ preparedness for success regarding four thematic focus areas: firm fundamentals, technology and innovation, talent and environmental, social, and governance (ESG).

One of the study’s three identified critical success factors is capturing value from rapid technology acceleration and data.

In this regard, we see a trend for empowering digital workers, as 96% of global respondents are prioritizing technology investments that augment, rather than replace, workforces. 34% of respondents sees this as business-critical. 91% of respondents named the democratization of technology as a priority (26% as a business-critical), as workers themselves can best highlight areas in which the technology offers the most value and their participation in the creation of tools means a higher probability in the adoption of them.

After Cybersecurity, “Anticipating and adapting to changing customer needs” and “User / Customer experience” round out the top 3 regarding strategic priorities for global technology investments.

This article further zooms into Cognizant’s perspective on value realization from technology investments for the Retail sector in the Benelux.

Data and advanced technology as the key to create personalized omnichannel shopping experiences

The Benelux region is known for its high consumer purchasing power and its advanced logistics infrastructure, making it an attractive market for retailers.

Beyond these traditional parameters, the global industry is being disrupted by the rise of digital channels and technology innovations, and consequently a new wave of customer expectations.

Our Future-Readiness research effectively indicates that for the global retailer, “Data-driven operations and mind-set” (40% business-critical) and “Digital first business model” (36% business-critical) are respectively the company’s number 1 and number 5 top strategic priorities.

These developments ring in an exciting and dynamic time of change for retailers in the Benelux area, as the region is a leader in digital adoption and innovation, with a significant number of consumers who are open to trying new technologies.  

Indeed, consumers are increasingly looking for an exciting, connected, and personalized shopping experience and therefore retailers must now focus on creating a human-centered approach and developing strategies that will enable them to create a seamless customer experience across all channels.

Retailers must also consider how advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and robotic process automation can be used to provide a more engaging customer experience, as our future-readiness research shows that respectively 70% and 79% of the global retailers has already adopted or is planning to adopt this. With respectively 84%, 86% and 87%, Big data analytics, Internet of Things and Cloud computing are globally most adopted in the Retail sector.

Integrated data tools can deliver the necessary client insights to create sustainable and competitive technology roadmaps  

As technology and consumer behaviors constantly evolve, understanding how people shop and staying ahead of the competition can be a challenge. Digital, connected customers have become more educated and expect no less than a human centered approach. This is the main driver to expand presence in digital channels.

To create a sustainable and competitive technology roadmap, retailers must first have a clear understanding of their customers' expectations. This will help them prioritize investments and strategies.

To help retailers stay ahead of the curve and make informed decisions, there are digital tools available. However, the challenge is that data and information related to these systems are scattered and difficult to collect in one place. Additionally, users often have difficulty understanding the product and its features, leading to sub-optimal utilization.

Cognizant’s approach with a global leader in the retail industry: uncovering the potential of digital tools using trends and signals related to changes in shopping behavior

In the Netherlands, a global leader in the retail industry has recognized that the opportunities for digital tools are vast, especially why 66% of customers now prefer online shopping, whilst 27% still prefer the traditional offline experience. Even when customers visit a physical store, 26% continue their shopping journey online afterwards, and 56% of in-store shoppers now use their smartphones to shop.

By leveraging insights from consumer psychology, omnichannel signals, and trends influencing retail, digital tools provide its workforce with the necessary data to make informed decisions. Moreover, by providing users with a better understanding of the product, digital tools create a more seamless user experience. Furthermore, digital tools provide retailers with real-time feedback loops, improved user experience for non-users, and faster decision-making capabilities.

In this case, Cognizant has employed a human-centered approach to explore the future of digital tools, with the ambition to create a product people will love to use and achieve scalable business outcomes. Through interviews, interactive workshops, and mixed groups of people, Cognizant has uncovered the key stakeholder needs and challenges they face when engaging with digital tools. This led to the identification of themes, decision-making processes, personas, user journeys, pain points, and opportunities.

To present a holistic view of their solutions, which address user pain points and opportunities, Cognizant developed five Idea Cards covering the areas of Proactive Content, Support & Service, Community, Inspirations, and Personal Space. By presenting these Idea Cards to stakeholders, Cognizant assessed their value and desirability.

To further improve the user experience and customer satisfaction of digital tools, Cognizant developed personas and user journeys to better understand how people shop and how digital tools can improve their experience. Additionally, Cognizant proposed a product strategy to turn identified insights into content for digital tools, which would include triggers for insights needs, selection of processes and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and external signals.

Overall, the human-centered approach employed by Cognizant was successful in exploring the potential of digital tools and uncovering opportunities to improve the user experience and customer satisfaction. Through interviews, workshops, and validation sessions, Cognizant identified key insights to guide the development of the product, service, and operations. These insights are helping digital tools become more strategic by observing trends and signals related to changes in how people shop, creating content to be consumed by the digital tool’s audience, and prioritizing content that is related to focus areas of the business.

Conclusion

The retail industry in the Benelux area is projected to grow substantially in the next 10 years. This will be driven by the increasing digital penetration, reaching an average of 95% of the population by 2025, and a compound annual growth rate of 8.8% in the e-commerce market.

To remain competitive, businesses must adopt a human-centered approach to retailing in order to better understand customer needs and provide a more personalized and engaging customer experience. This requires leveraging data and insights, as well as embracing technology innovations such as artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, and robotics.

By 2023, total spending on cloud technology in the Benelux region is expected to reach $4.1 billion and total investments in digital transformation is projected to reach $26 billion. Furthermore, by 2029, the Benelux region is projected to have 16.9 million digital workers and 7.1 million online shoppers.

To take advantage of the growth opportunities in the Benelux retail industry, companies must act now to invest in digital transformation to stay relevant.

Reach out to us directly, or take our future-readiness survey to see how you compare to the average global modern business. We can help you interpret the results and take fitting action.

Additional Contributors:

Charlotte De Kort, Management Consultant

Svitlana Tanasiychuk, Senior Consulting Manager

Mike Gründler, Consultant RCGTH