Lead story – Automation and personalization in practice – putting retail to the test
Automation and personalization may seem like strange bedfellows. But implemented properly, they should bring us more efficient operations – and better service to customers… right?
Walmart certainly thinks so, as Stuart reports in More automation to come as Walmart expands its footprint to redefine retail. What’s the play here? It’s the store-as-fulfillment-center concept, for starters. And automation? That’s about making better use of store associates’ time. Stuart quotes Walmart’s CEO:
Having digital relationships with customers is so important. More and more, we fulfill from stores. Our stores also act as fulfillment centers, so this ability to interact with customers digitally is important. Our workforce is becoming more digital. You’ve got over a million associates who have a device in their hands from the minute they walk in until they leave, so that’s saving them time.
[We use] automation and supply chain, using automation to augment the things that our associates don’t want to spend as much time doing so they can spend the time on the things that are value-added, like in-stock and availability.
The numbers are adding up:
Last year, we increased the number of orders coming from our stores by 170% versus the previous year. And that’s on top of more than 500% from the year before.
Walmart isn’t the only retailer pressing the issue – not by any means. Check Madeline’slatest use case, Finding the personalized retail experience – Rituals and Bridgestone tap into Adobe. Madeline shares the Rituals approach:
Personalization of products and journeys is also becoming core to the firm’s digital strategy, especially the ability to combine that with data insights. Merging information from Rituals’ loyalty program with its customer profiling will see the digital product experience become a very personal one for customers. To ensure its personalization ambitions become reality, Rituals is aware it needs to use the entire value chain of its business.
The scope of matching perfume products to the right consumers even involves a digital twin:
Rituals is now in the process of creating digital twins – the digital version of all its product offerings. On the back of that one Talisman digital project, the retailer is now ready to implement personalized products and personalization in the journey at scale.
Readers know I’m skeptical about both these terms. I’ve explained why I find the big box retailers’ approach to automation on the dystopian side. As for personalization, I’m a believer (to a point), but I worry when companies overreach beyond what the tech is capable of, and alienate the consumer with tone deaf “offers” or creepy “we know too much about you” data reveals. This week’s use cases do indicate progress, but, in my view, the burning questions remain open.
Diginomica picks – my top stories on diginomica this week
Frictionless Enterprise – how the XaaS Effect transforms customer engagement – Phil builds on his body of work on Frictionless Enterprise with this notable update:
In my view this all goes back to the virtuous cycle at the core of XaaS, rephrased to focus on the customer’s goals:
- Engage — what does success mean for your customers?
- Monitor — are they experiencing success?
- Improve — how can your business, product or service help them be even more successful?
Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here’s my three top choices from our vendor coverage:
A few more vendor picks, without the quotables:
Jon’s grab bag – I might be a conversational AI luddite sourpuss skeptic, but I enjoy being challenged by use cases like Gary’s: Decathlon UK improves its customer experience by combining human expertize with conversational AI. The customer satisfaction numbers are convincing, but here’s the quote that jumped out for me:
A ‘handover’ solution to allow customers to switch seamlessly to interacting with a live customer service agent for more complicated or sensitive issues was built-in from the start.
Get the handover right, make it easy – not an epic struggle of persistence and cleverness – to get over the chatbot automation moat, and I’m a lot more bullish on conversational AI in the workplace.
Yes, I’m down on the enterprise metaverse; we’ve barely cracked the code on augmented reality. But I’m not down on Disney making a meta-bet. Their entertainment kingdom depends on not getting left behind. Derek has the story: Disney pushes ahead with metaverse ambitions – appoints exec to oversee strategy. Finally, Derek turns his attention to “Meta” itself: Meta’s Facebook set for another legal showdown over past facial recognition practices.
Best of the enterprise web
My top seven
- Despite recent progress, AI-powered chatbots still have a long way to go – If you’re willing to brave the auto-play video purgatory of Venturebeat, this is a pretty balanced piece on what’s working with AI-powered chatbots, and why they still fall short.
- Top 3 Overrated vs. Underrated Digital Transformation Technologies – Give Eric Kimberling credit for stirring the pot, putting “cloud,” “ERP,” and “AI and machine learning” on the overrated list. It makes for a good debate; Eric and I kicked around digital transformation obstacles in a recent video show.
- How Human Flaws Lead to Digital Transformation Failure – How does Kimberling make it onto my picks list twice in one week? By having the gumption to single out “over-optimism” as a contributor to digital transformation woes. His other picks, “internal and external bias” and “trusting the experts,” are also unconventional – and deadly accurate.
- 4 Cloud Vendor Habits that Drive Customers Crazy – Speaking of not going easy on cloud vendors, UpperEdge’s Adam Mansfield gives them the business.
- Stronger forecasting in operations management–even with weak data – McKinsey makes the case for AI-powered forecasting, even when data sets are less than ideal.
- How digital can grow revenue from aftermarket services – Another meaty piece from McKinsey, this one focused on digital and analytics payoffs for B2B.
- The latest on tech buying teams – Gartner’s Hank Barnes with another research reveal: “Consensus, conflict and confidence continue to be big issues. To the point where our high quality deal % went down from 27% to 20%. Ouch!
Whiffs
More Microsoft humor:
Microsoft: “Your device is not compatible with Windows 11.”
Me: You act like that’s bad news…
— Jon Reed (@jonerp) February 20, 2022
Toss Skype into the mix also – this one was too easy.
This one from my colleague Phil Wainewright came through a couple weeks ago, but it was a doozy:
I could probably have a separate whiffs section for NFTs each week, but for now, another cautionary tale: Scam artists swindle NFTs worth ‘millions’ in OpenSea phishing attack. Just another day on the “immutable” blockchain… See you next time.
If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses – in a good or bad way – let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does. Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed.
