How Cloud & AI are changing retail

Customer behavior, which is difficult to predict, is probably the biggest challenge facing retailers at the moment. We show how cloud & AI can help to master this challenge.

In the wake of the Corona pandemic, the retail sector has had to transform itself and go digital virtually overnight. This circumstance has significantly accelerated the use of cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics technology in the sector. Today, let’s take a look at how these technologies have changed the retail landscape.

Arguably the biggest challenge facing retailers today is hard-to-predict customer behavior, which places enormous burdens on logistics. Increasingly high-quality customer data is needed for both demand determination and campaign management.

The Cloud can help retailers meet most of this challenge. More specifically, migrating core applications, communications and data to the cloud can help them scale their business and collect or store more customer information. More customer information, in turn, enables a higher level of personalization and thus the ability to enter new markets and drive customer acquisition.

A further benefit of the cloud in changing retail is the ability to rapidly deploy AI tools. The cloud provides on-demand computing power and easily accessible analytics. AI can ultimately enable retailers to improve business performance through enhanced intelligence-driven data processes and personalized end-user experiences.

Take the topic of supply chain as an example. The use of AI capabilities that actively monitor market, consumer and competitive data can enable improved industry forecasting by predicting changes in customer behavior. This, in turn, can lead to proactive marketing and merchandising, as well as improved pricing and advertising planning. How long do you think it will be before such and similar methods become industry standard?

Source: Balaji Sampath via LinkedIn