How the Touchless Economy is Poised to Shape Remote Retailing in the New Normal?

The global pandemic has resulted in the rise of remote retail and stay-at-home shopping among many other disruptive trends. Whilst touchless commerce continues to evolve, businesses need to urgently pivot their organizational ships to identify new white space opportunities, mitigate risks, business uncertainty and be prepared for the Next Normal.

Even in parts of the world where recovery signs are starting to blink, emerging business and consumer patterns are more likely to remain a  fact of life in the next normal, with retail executives constantly facing new pressure, new lock-downs, and seesaw zoning relaxation measures from local governments and health authorities are not to stabilize anytime soon; retail store executives are grappling with longer-term questions such as how will bricks and mortar retailers prepare for the New Normal of remote shopping, remote working, wireless management, changing behaviors, and the new benchmarks of the contactless economy?

Here are look at some of the game changing rules and critical success factors to consider:

1.Stay Home & Buy from Home Spurred Remote Selling – Though e-commerce penetration still varies from one market segment to another, COVID-19 forced many businesses to shift their focus on online presence. This latest trends in retail industry could lead to a permanent reliance on online sales. A shift which entails reskilling and upcycling the labor force.

This led to a significant increase interest in virtual outlets, along with a major push by established
brands to boost their online presence through a greater number of digital channels.

2.Live Streaming , One 2 One & Augmented UX – One of the latest trends in retail industry seen from the pandemic is the shift to more virtual ways of running a business. Proactive brands spent time during the extensive lockdowns ramping-up their Online presence via social media channels and
monitoring each Online visit, traffic report or interaction with their target audiences.

Many jewelry wholesalers leveraged technology to harness interactive meeting and marketplace experiences that make remote selling feel like a one-to-one person event 24/7/365; the same way B2B service providers make demos on Zoom and many other interactive platforms to showcase their new applications, solutions; and data driven analytics.

3.From Low Touch to Contactless – With more and more workplaces shifting to remote work structures to remain productive while respecting physical distancing, there could be an increased expectation for flexibility and support of working from home from all levels of the organization among many other organizational adjustments. To meet the needs of increased demand for faster and safer home deliveries, companies must increase or encourage part-time working, lateral management, and “uberization” of services.

A lingering effect in the post-COVID-19 world could be the hardening of social and physical distancing, leading to greater concerns about physical contact, health safety concerns, crowd management costs, and a proclivity towards ease of use, home deliveries, drop shipping, etc.

4.From Touchless to Zero Contact – Health safety, and strict distancing measures played a critical role in combating the transmission of COVID-19; measures that are likely to stay around for quite some time. This can lead to more reluctance to open physical stores. While radical shifts are always a challenge for non-mutant retailers, there are many full-proofed omnichannel solutions that were designed to help retailers, wholesalers, and online merchants scale up their multipurpose and multi-channel operations in very secured environment. Here are few tools you will need to step up your digital transformation and boost your remote retail operations.

Top 10 Ways to Step-Up Your Remote Retail Strategies

Unlike digital first retailers, brick and mortar stores used to experience several issues during seasonal spikes where inventory discrepancies often lead to manual compensations and time-consuming gymnastics. Thankfully, most of these functions are easily tamed and automated within ERP software systems.

With a smart inventory management software like ChainDrive, you can leverage the cutting-edge functionalities, dashboards, and components to harness your overall productivity, collective intelligence, accuracy, and hybrid operations from any touch point. Bare in mind that web traffic is becoming more intense and more competitive than physical instore retail; hence the importance of having a solid and seamless omnichannel platform to synchronize all operations under one unified database.

ChainDrive gives Top 10 ways you can step-up your remote retail strategies in your retail business. These steps will enable you to get more traction, drive more traffic , increase sales, and better position your brand to win.

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