Digital technologies like IoT can break the wall between brand, product, and customer. Many brands have already started turning to IoT in retail and might grow to $94.44 billion through 2025.
What opportunities does technology have to offer? Are there any successful IoT use cases in retail? This post will answer these and other questions and gives a complete rundown of IoT implementation in retail.
Personalized Communication
The IoT makes a good case for advancing communication between a customer and a retail brand. IoT sensors can trail down a customer’s behaviors and share insights with the marketing team.
Content teams will be able to generate segment-specific personalized content. It would help a shopper to find the product they are looking for, get tips and advice, or introduce a friend to the store.
Image Recognition
Retail is a complex business with moving parts, and not all of those moving pieces involve customers directly. Many improvements that IoT offers can affect the customer experience, and they won’t know the full extent of the role that technology played in getting their package delivered on time. With image recognition, businesses can increase employee output without interfering in their workflows. For example, IoT-enabled image recognition devices use AI to identify incorrect product placements, labeling, price tagging, and stock issues.
Image recognition helps to visualize the complete picture of work, allowing errors to be found in real-time and fixed before it impacts the business or customer.
Automation in Operations
Retailers can use IoT to track orders, manage delivery, keep an eye on their warehouse, and inventory items in real-time. Tracking assets helps reduce the cost and effort of manually tagging and moving them.
Automation can step in to take care of the hard work, but it won’t come without significant investment in emerging technologies like AI, augmented reality, beacons, digital signs, and more. IoT sensors and devices already exist to track assets for automation, but they should be in an ecosystem that will allow them to perform at their highest potential.
Order Fulfilment
Order fulfillment is a crucial part of the retail experience. It’s integral for to e-commerce invest massive amounts of budget into optimizing their inventory tracking and order fulfillment operations. With IoT, the complexity of pulling the correct item, packaging it up for shipping, generating the correct shipping label, and sending it off to the carrier no longer is prone to errors.
Employees often experience less physical injury, feel safer, and report more productivity when working alongside IoT technology.
Supply chain optimization
GPS and RFID technology will allow retail brands to trace each item through the entire delivery process. Retailers can have a tight grip on their vendors and monitor end-to-end delivery.
The range of uses of IoT in supply chain management is vital. For example, you can test different vendors, vehicles, and delivery routes, collect the data on the process and find the cheapest framework that also transports the product with no damage.
Location tracking
Internet of Things solves one of the issues in retail — lack of delivery reliability. The technology is capable of increasing operational efficiencies and improving logistic transparency.
Several companies use IoT technology to track their goods and employees’ movements, both within the warehouse and in transit.
The IoT approach to retail operations is a game-changer and will generate a period of disruption throughout the industry at a time of considerable uncertainty. Some applications – mainly those that will completely revamp the customer experience – will likely require market-level feedback before full integration. Other applications are focusing on backstage operations to reduce costs, such as the solutions offered by HyperBeans. These are likely to be more readily embraced by retail managers in the short term.