PERFORM Network of Beneficiaries and Industry Partners.
Pioneering a New Era in Digital Retail A €3.9 million EU-funded project focusing on Digital Retail, the PERFORM EU Project has led research into novel and innovative business strategies to help retailers thrive in the digital landscape. We spoke to members of the PERFORM Training Network about how this project trained the next generation of digital retail managers in line with the ethos of Digital Europe to help build an innovation-based foundation for the future of the sector. The retail landscape
is changing dramatically as new digital technologies continue to emerge, highlighting the inflexibility of the established business model. While the shift towards online shopping is proving highly disruptive, it also brings abundant opportunities to those companies ready to harness the power of technology believes Professor Markus Helfert, Director of the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) at Maynooth University. “Effective use of technology can help European retailers to compete with the major multi-nationals. Improving the customer experience, the connection between customers and companies, is where European retailers can really set themselves apart,” he says. Professor Helfert is the Coordinator of the PERFORM Training Network, an initiative
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which brings together fifteen partners from across Europe, including universities and retailers. “The aim of this project is to prepare the next generation of digital retail leaders,” says Professor Helfert.
Cultivating Future Leaders This means equipping prospective leaders with the technical skills, knowledge and experience they will need to work in the retail industry, an area in which demand is growing for highly skilled graduates. The retail market contributes a significant amount to the European economy, employing over 30 million people and accounting for around 11 percent of GDP, but traditional retail companies need to adapt to trends in digital innovation if they are to compete with the major multi-national retailers and provide an attractive alternative to
them. “We don’t want to end up in a situation where large multi-national retailers completely dominate the retail market,” says Professor Helfert. The adoption of digital strategies and technologies can ensure that retailers of all sizes can find their space in this dynamic market. The PERFORM project itself is a European Training Network, in which 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) are investigating a wide variety of different topics relating to the future of the digital retail sector, from audit tools, to compliance monitoring, to logistics. This wide scope reflects the highly dynamic nature of the retail sector. “Over recent years the retail sector has fundamentally changed, a process that has been accelerated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Professor Helfert. While the ESRs are based primarily at the different universities
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