HFS Data Viewpoint: The Seven Must-Haves for a Successful Modern Retail Organization

Company performance and success have always been measured by revenue and profit, but since COVID-19 hit, ”fit-for-future” measures are growing in importance to retailers. Companies taking a broader view of what “success” means has inspired a more holistic approach to assessing business performance which includes the employee and customer experience focus that we promote in our OneOffice mindset.  These are the seven success factors that are most important to retail organizations and our take on what each means for future success of retailers.

1. Customer trust. Customer trust has always been a key pillar for retailers, and it’s recently been faced with a whole new pandemic-driven dynamic.  As essential brick and mortar stores remained open during the pandemic and non-essential retailers re-examine their value proposition for physical locations, customers want to be assured that they are shopping in a safe and healthy environment.  Autonomous and touchless retail environments will soon become the norm.
2. Sense and respond to tech market shifts. Retailers must evaluate how emerging technology such as AI/ML, Blockchain, IoT, and automation can help shift how they do business more efficiently and intelligently.  These change agents are becoming required capabilities for omnichannel supply chain and intelligent merchandizing.
3. Supply chain modernization and resilience. Supply chain has emerged as the hottest services area for retail and CPG, and for good reason. Retailers must make their supply chains a lot more intuitive and proactive in order to remain competitive in the future.
4. Personalization. Retail and ecommerce has long been the poster child for the promise of personalization, but retailers are still wrapping their heads around the vast amounts of data that has the potential to create even more personalized experiences. The next step for retailers will be to move personalization out of the campaign or offer specific view, to create more holistic personalized customer journeys.
5. Sense and respond to customer behavior. Retail consumer behavior is arguably going through the greatest shift we’ll see in our lifetime.  Understanding the customer behavior as well as their cost to serve, and incentivizing customers in a way that they relate to is critical in this environment.
6. Employee experience.  The theme of NRF in 2020 was improving the store agent experience, and like so many other enterprise efforts, the pandemic has just accelerated it.  Creating safe, healthy environments for employees and empowering them to help shoppers will be required for future success.
7. Diversity and inclusion. Retail and CPG brands have been in the spotlight for D&I particularly for their advertising campaigns, some which have been positively received and others which caused brands to suffer bad PR for not tactfully handling very sensitive issues. The key for success in D&I is to really invest in making serious changes rather than merely paying lip service to the initiative.

The HFS Bottomline: The future success for Retail & CPG will be determined by CX+ EX, Supply Chain Resilience, and several other critical fit for future metrics.