| | MAY 202219closer to the customer's heart. It is helping organi-zations to become more customer-centric, agile and relevant. Fintech revolution and Digital Payment push is also helping the shopping experience much more seamless.Bringing back the Days of RetailIt is just not around the front-end, but even in the back-end the digital impact in Retail is mind bog-gling. The smarter supply chains rely on digital mak-ing to assure that you have the right product at the right place at the right time. The costs of the supply chain, including inventory, get a major leg-up oppor-tunity with digital interventions. Even beyond the supply chain, the sourcing strategies today are get-ting increasingly driven by digital tools. Retail indus-try understands the importance of being nimble, ag-ile and cost effective and they are looking big time at digital for achieving all these. Digital interventions around connecting the entire workforce in various stores and getting personalized nuggets to sell, up-sell and cross sell are increasing the productivity lev-els, and the store executives are becoming real trust-ed advisors, thanks to the power of the digital tools that they have. One of the biggest sore points of the Retail experience is the time for payment and check-out. Here again, digital is making its entry through auto checkout capabilities like in Amazon Go. The good part is that such technologies are now available in the cloud on a SaaS based model, which makes it a potential opportunity for many smaller stores and enterprises. With digital, sky is the limit for Retail or the end-less aisles make it even boundary-less! China and the US are leading most of these digital capabilities, and I am pretty confident that India will also get the most of it and will be of mass scale very soon. Some of our startups in India are also doing a lot of advanced developments in this area and hope they will make it more affordable for the Indian Retail industry. To con-clude, it would not be incorrect if we say `Future Re-tail ­ Powered by Digital'. I am hopeful that all these digital interventions will bring back glory to Retail in its fight with e-Tail. Let there be more change and competition, the customer is all set to benefit, and the digital experience is going to be a rewarding one for them. ONE OF THE BIGGEST SORE POINTS OF THE RETAIL EXPERIENCE IS THE TIME FOR PAYMENT AND CHECK-OUT
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