The state of the retail industry in APAC: VISEO experts comment - Part 3

Short or long term goal, the right data at the right time for the right employee is key to make the right decision

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Guillaume, versatile PM for ERP & connected planning

In the short term, it is necessary to have a clear assessment of your organization’s digital journey, and make sure that the final objective is clear, communicated and achievable. The long-term goal will aim at reconciling the traditional brick and mortar presence with the online emergence, by staying close to the consumers and quickly adapt to their constantly evolving needs. On this journey, it is important to start with quick wins and allocate enough resources to manage changes as entire organizations will need to transform themselves.  

It is also important to keep in mind that employees are also part of the shift. The tools they use and the data they need must be available online and not only from a specific computer in the office. The right data at the right time for the right employee is key to make the right decision.  

Knowing your buyers, knowing their triggers and what puts them off

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Kenny, Customer centric & CRM evangelist

Knowing your buyers, knowing their triggers and what puts them off will go a long way in this competition to win a ‘buy’. The buyer does not need to want your product, the buyer just needs to want your product more than another product. The buyer does not need to need the product, the buyer just needs to be convinced that he/she needs the product. If a buyer can feel value or the possible loss of value, that may trigger a purchase even if the need is not there.

In essence, if the merchant is able to learn the buying patterns of different types of consumers- how decisions are made and be able to roll these back into their online commerce- they would not only have built an eCommerce site, but they would have built a selling machine which would be their ‘customer loyalty’ engine. 

Keeping the customer at the center of the strategy and being able to measure the impacts of every initiative

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Céline, Digital and e-commerce expert

In Asia, countries and cultures are different and this statement won’t lead to the same solution based on the country. Social commerce is rising in China, mobile commerce is exploding in Indonesia and Vietnam, omnichannel and innovative experiences are the future of retail in APAC. 

Be agile, think customer, build a simple but awesome e-commerce platform with the most seamless and adapted user experience, and with an efficient back-office to support internal teams and processes, then measure insights, and iterate.  

E-commerce platforms are now easy to build and flexible. It would be the first step towards a more integrated omnichannel experience.  

Digital commerce will be useful even for local commerce (the small local bookstore, bakery, coffee shop, shoe store...). For these smaller retailers, building an e-store is the best way to compete with e-commerce giants (Amazon, Lazada...). The objective is to remain open despite the lockdown: for instance, retailers could collaborate with their neighbours, build a common online marketplace and mutualise the costs: platform, payment gateway, delivery... Let’s turn the situation to an opportunity to think about new collaborative ways of doing business. 

Building a common strategy

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Nicolas, Supply chain expert, focused on retail

After a few rounds of discussions to decide which direction to take, it becomes a matter of being aligned quickly to win this battle TOGETHER. Hence, a common strategy needs to be put in place (besides usual purchase orders cancellation, negotiating payment terms with you suppliers, …): 

- Deciding to collaborate actively to sell the products whatever the channel, department without any silos 

- Selling, selling, selling to ensure revenues and decrease the stocks through online discounts, loyalty points, gifts even more true for customer usually off-line 

- Overall incentive on the sales whatever the channel to push people in the store to redirect to the sales on e-commerce and Vice-versa (click and reserve, …) 

- Adapting the KPIs (inventory, revenue, …) to be global and to trigger initiatives to not protect only each channel KPIs but whole company’s KPIs 

- Using agility to quickly provide new ways of selling (individuals and their communities, …) and delivering the goods as the usual delivery channels (Grab, Gojek, Lalamove, temporary employment, …) are overloaded as customers are rushing on e-commerce, sometimes in not reasonable way  

Agility, quick decisions, out of the box and open-minded solutions towards securing the business through e-commerce sounds like the first step to be done. Then it is also important to plan for the future to ensure to be ready when the business is getting better although it is even more difficult with long lead times! 

How can VISEO help ?