Real-Time Customer Data in the Cloud

When looking at the characteristics of the
successful retailer of the future, you are
hard-pressed to find a more important
function than a consistently positive
customer relationship across all the
channels in which they want to shop. The
modern consumer engages with retailers
online via desktop, mobile and other
channels as well as coming into stores.
They assume that you have data on them
and their preferences across those channels,
and are often flustered when store
associates neither have access to, nor care
to use, information on how important they
are as a customer.


Most traditional bricks and mortar retailers
have a tremendous amount of legacy
information systems in place for customer
and merchandising systems. Often, the
customer loyalty plan used in the store to
accrue points is in one system while the
digital shopping is done on a completely
different system. A central data warehouse
might be updated on a daily or weekly basis
for loyalty points, but the inability to use
that information in real time provides a less
than optimal experience at the store.


When we shop online the retailer knows our
order history, our sizes, our preferences, and
makes recommendations based on previous
purchases. In other words, we are treated as
a king or queen. Yet when we come into
the stores none of this data is available to
streamline the shopping process due to the
data being in different siloes. The associate
has no idea what value we bring as a
customer.


Getting to a single view of the customer
across all channels is absolutely critical for
retailers to survive and thrive in the future.
Those retailers who are able to do so and
use this data in real-time will continue to
grow market share both online and offline.
Those that are either unwilling or
unprepared to do so likely will not be
around much longer.

 Data Center

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