Reimagining digital retail to ramp up in-store activity

In September, technology-consulting giant Accenture announced a digital transformation project that is underway at Shoppers Stop to bridge the gap between the retail chain's stores and their digital touch-points.

Like most retail chains, Shoppers Stop had a terrible year in fiscal year (FY) 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its consolidated revenue dropped nearly 44 percent to Rs 1,973 crore. However, it reduced its loss from Rs 319 crore in FY 2020 to Rs 244 crore.

Customer entry in Shoppers Stop's 84 department stores fell by nearly 60 percent to 17.9 million in FY 2021, as did sales per square feet. Yet, the transaction size in its department stores improved marginally by 6 percent, in a tough year, to Rs 3,594 per square feet.

It was the year in which Shoppers Stop really pushed its White Glove and Endless Aisle services — both designed and integrated by Accenture.

“We want to further strengthen our digital commerce strategy for greater reach and access, and improve the overall shopping experience of our customers," said Venu Nair, Managing Director and CEO of Shoppers Stop, in a press statement.

Shoppers Stop's White Glove is a virtual shopping service that enables customers to book an appointment and consult a personal shopper on WhatsApp call. The customer chooses products from the store or through catalogues. Payments can be made through a secured SMS link, and the products get home delivered.

The Endless Aisle integrates a retailer's physical and virtual merchandise, allowing customers to select virtual merchandise. It requires the company to seamlessly track inventory from any part of the organisation.

At Shoppers Stop, the Endless Aisle entails a digital tab that customers use to browse options in stores.

"We empower them with access to the stock at any other store, while mitigating the need to stock every variant in every store," the company states in its annual report.

“As a technology, endless aisle helps retailers to increase footfalls and sales conversions, enhance customer experiences with wider choices and faster service, ensure optimum inventory management, and capture customer insights,” says Harsha Razdan, Partner and Head, Consumer Markets and Internet Business, KPMG India.

“Endless aisle is part of the overall digital commerce tech stack-up," says Sameer Amte, Managing Director at Accenture, and Head of its Retail practice in India.

"Once retailers have the core digital commerce tech architecture in place, extending it to endless aisle creates a seamless omni-channel experience for customers. This also provides a significant competitive edge to retailers looking to drive customer satisfaction, thereby leading to increase in revenues,” Amte explains.

Reimagining the retail front-end

There are operational steps that need to be taken for the enablement of an endless aisle. Firstly, retailers have to plan the store layout properly, and make space for installing interactive kiosks, as this would allow them to display their entire product catalogue across all the sources.

For the endless aisle to work, a store also needs to establish proper connection with other stores, vendors, warehouses and delivery partners to ensure that all products can be easily accessed by the customers.

It entails storing product information by location, monitoring logistics of inventory and delivery, and deciding on the endless aisle displays.

Further, stores have to train the staff to ensure that they can use the new technology properly and efficiently. Shoppers Stop's Personal Shoppers have collectively undergone more than 43,000 hours of digital training, and their contribution to revenue is now quantified: more than 15 percent of the FY 2021 revenue.

Retailers can offer additional services like same-day delivery or pickup and digital payment options for advance payment.

“As organisations seek to capture profitable growth in a digital world, the fulcrum around customer-centricity is critical to guide strategy and investment decisions,” Razdan says.

There are various touch points in the customer purchase-cycle that absolutely require a good network. For instance, retailers require a network to offer customers the facility to go through endless options from vendors, warehouses, and so on.

“Network and connection play the most important roles," Razdan says. "Without that, the endless aisle won’t be able to function.” Retailers also require connection with vendors, other stores, warehouse, delivery partners and customers to be able to deliver these services.

Shoppers Stop harnessed its digital assets to power activity across its stores.

ShoppersStop.com recorded 70 million visits on its website and 1.7 million mobile app downloads. Its net online sales grew 92 percent in FY 2021, despite its stores being shut for more than two months in 2020, followed by a steep recovery in the second half as the stores became operational with restrictions.