How to Position Digital Innovation For Success In Any E-Commerce/ Retail Environment!

How Is Digital Transformation Transforming The E-Commerce & Retail Industry?

Introduction: Entering a world of interconnected devices and online social communities, it's become ever more critical for retailers to extend their sales channels beyond traditional boundaries.

Beacons are the latest incarnation of a trend in retail that tracks consumers’ shopping behavior by monitoring their smartphones. In addition to its benefits in improving sales and providing offers and coupons to customers, digital transformation can also affect other aspects of the business, like product development, IT infrastructure, branding strategies, cost structure, and operations methods.

The e-commerce industry is experiencing rapid growth, resulting in several innovations and new challenges. Digital transformation is one of the main influencing factors of this growth due to its ability to deliver significant improvements in customer engagement and business agility. As a result of these developments, today's consumers want more choice and convenience when buying goods online, which has resulted in the entrance of new market

players and the development of new business models that change how the physical store works.

Key Business Initiatives in Retail: For today's leading retailers, digital technology is the solution to every business need. The challenge for many companies is to find the right technology solutions to improve business capabilities and outcomes now and in the long term. With consumer’s demand for lower prices, enhanced digital engagement, and seamless omnichannel access, new digital technologies will help sales grow, increase shopper satisfaction, and optimize supply chain efficiency while reducing labor costs. But can these cutting-edge solutions be a practical fit with existing corporate capabilities and evolving needs?

Let's find out which technologies will achieve sales, profit, and cost-reduction objectives:

1. Enabling unified retail commerce: Companies must provide a consistent and personalized experience across all touchpoints in today's omnichannel world. To do this, they must look at customer interactions as part of a seamless journey rather than as isolated events. The study indicates that consumers expect brands to provide the same level of service in stores as online, so companies must understand what consumers truly want when they shop. Companies must embark on an omnichannel transformation to address rising complexity and provide an excellent experience for consumers.

2. Leveraging deep insight into consumer needs: As consumers increasingly expect companies to know their preferences and cater to them accordingly, they also demand more personalization. Companies must collect data from online and offline interactions and third-party sources to meet these demands. The availability of this data enables companies to offer streamlined consumer support and shopping experiences.

3. More AR-powered shopping experiences: Augmented reality (AR), machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) are technologies that help to enhance a consumer’s shopping experience by making it easier for consumers to assess products. According to a survey, consumers listed Augmented and Virtual Reality as the leading technologies they’re seeking to assist them in their daily lives, with many saying they would be willing to use AR technology to assess products. AR-powered technology helps retailers bridge the gap between digital and physical channels.

4. Increase in smart speaker shopping: Voice will be a critical factor in the future of the retail industry. The growing popularity of smart home devices such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Home makes consumers more comfortable using their voices to buy things online. Voice-activated purchases have grown faster than other digital payment methods. Retailers must make their websites and apps

compatible with voice commerce to take advantage of this opportunity. Google, Amazon, and Apple are already providing voice payments, so retailers need to integrate this innovation into their growth strategies.

How Retailers Can Address Security Challenges by Boosting Identity Management and Improving Customer Care?

Identity management, also known as identity and access management (IAM or IdAM) solutions, can help securely manage digital identities and their access to various applications and systems. This solution can help businesses with user enrollment through solutions that include two-factor or multifactor authentication, decrease fraud, increase security, create a password vault for users, enable user lifecycle management, and much more.

An ideal identity management solution should include these features to mitigate the challenges of security:

1. Choose a PCI-compliant hosting provider: Credit card fraud is a common and significant security risk for e-commerce stores. The e-commerce site's responsibility is to ensure secure processing, storage, and transmission of cardholder data. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set criteria for retail e-commerce sites to protect cardholder data. All retail e-commerce sites must ensure that their web hosting provider is PCI compliant. Non-compliance with PCI standards would result in fines or suspension of credit card processing privileges for e-commerce businesses.

2. Use an Address Verification System (AVS): The Address Verification System is one of the most common tools used by the e-commerce industry to prevent credit card fraud. The Address Verification System compares the billing address submitted by the card user with the cardholder's billing address on file at the issuing bank. By verifying the billing address, you can link a customer's transaction to a physical address and significantly reduce your risk of fraud.

3. Use SSL certificates: If an e-commerce website cannot encrypt sensitive information, such as passwords, login details, and credit card data, it is highly vulnerable to hackers. An SSL certificate helps create an encrypted channel between a client and the server through which information is transmitted encrypted to prevent hacking. For e-commerce websites, an SSL certificate acts like a trust seal that increases consumer confidence, safeguards credit card information, and improves search engine positioning.

4. Use Single Sign-On: Single Sign-On (SSO) is an authentication method which allows users to log into an application with a single set of credentials and then automatically sign into other

applications. SSO can help users use a single username and password set while not compromising the personal security of their accounts. Higher-end SSO solutions can also provide biometric authentication methods such as facial recognition, voice detection, and fingerprint identification.

5. Go passwordless: A passwordless login system is a tool that websites can implement so that their consumers can log in without creating a difficult password they will have to remember. Consumers can log into applications with just their username and by adding security factors, like entering a temporary code or email or simply scanning their fingerprint. Giving users a simple way to access websites is a great way to encourage consumers to engage with and initiate a return visit to the website.

E-commerce businesses employ different applications to fulfill their business needs. As information is gathered from various applications, there is a lack of uniformity in data concerning real-time synchronization. Unified commerce provides a single platform to connect e-commerce, m-commerce, order fulfillment, inventory management, consumer relationship management, and Point of Sale (POS) capabilities in a single window. It also offers insight into consumers’ behavior, such as buying history and personal data, irrespective of their mode of shopping with the retailer.

Consumers prefer to have a hassle-free shopping experience. Unified commerce can help combine consumer and product data so that retailers have accurate and relevant information about their consumers.

Conclusion: One thing is clear: the consumer experience regarding e-commerce shopping is evolving digitally; thus, the way people buy and sell will also be radically different. Digitization seems to be the key to the future of e-commerce retailing. The game is set to change, and merchants must be equipped with the right tools to help them thrive in this competitive world.

The industry must understand that digitalization is not just about incorporating the latest technological advancements but also a means by which an industry can become more consumer-focused.