Avanade at NRF 2020 – let’s speak data
- Posted on December 16, 2019
- Estimated reading time 3 minutes
It's hard for retailers to think beyond the rush of the holiday shopping season right now. But this is also the time of the year when retail movers, shakers and makers are finalizing their plans for NRF 2020: Retail’s Big Show It’s arguably the world’s largest expo: three days of learning and networking happening at the Javits Convention Center in New York City from January 12th to the 14th 2020.
Avanade will have a presence at NRF again this year. To get the latest information about what we’re doing there, please check out our NRF webpage. In our Lab, we will be featuring the latest retail technology and even taking a peak at what might be available soon.
We all know that today all businesses are about data (“data is money,” “data is the new petrol,” …. sound familiar?). Equally in the retail industry, “New Retail” (term and business model coined and implemented by Alibaba) is nothing without data, as we highlighted in our “Future Ready, Now in Retail” report: The industry needs to speak data if it intends to respond to the most relevant questions retailers are asking themselves.
Avanade’s vision of the future of the retail industry is formulated on delivering intelligent retail, which means responsiveness and responsibility to our retailers’ customers, their employees and stakeholders and ultimately to our planet. Our narrative at NFR 2020 will pivot on how to help retail organizations find their own intelligent and responsible vision using data.
To become a data-driven enterprise, retailers traditionally focused on processing the troves of data generated by legacy systems, IoT devices and other digital platforms. This is based on the belief that new technologies (cloud and even edge-computing if cloud is no longer enough) is the best way to build flexible, scalable and reliable architectures around the data.
But we look above and beyond this technological perspective and see data as a way of working that not only predicts the future, but creates it, one day at a time. It is founded on the following principles:
- First, recognize the data explosion (3Vs: volume, variety and velocity) and the value in every data source (either internal and external), with focus on the ones related to people (consumers and employees)
- Place equal focus on strategy and execution. In retail, vision isn't something you have, it's something you do. It’s a course of action, a plan of attack.
- Address retail culture change so that data is at the center of everything. This involves both an internal focus (identify new roles and processes for the new data paradigm) and external perspective (set up new collaboration and interaction models with partners and customers)
- In more advanced scenarios, when the foundational technology is in place, use data to drive AI and deliver the promise of machine learning, deep learning, etc. based on tailored data-driven solutions. The focus should be on streamlined operations and cost optimization (optimize offer, marketing, range, inventory, fulfilment and shrink) and/or profitable growth (maximize sourcing, marketing mix, voice of the customer, returns predictions, etc.).
Believe me, we know this kind of vision is not easy to find or keep track of, but this year of all years it's worth looking for. Come visit the Avanade Lab at NRF to get some ideas and we’ll talk about the challenges retailers face within their own organizations when it comes to making the most of their data. Feel free to contact me for more information and remember that if you can make it here (in NYC), you can make it anywhere! 😊
Click on over to learn what Avanade has in store at NRF 2020.
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