Despite depressed consumer confidence levels, rising inflation and the increasing cost of living that could have had a severely negative effect on the sector, the latest BER Retail Survey found .

The recently concluded Black Friday promotion period is another ray of optimism for the sector. , Black Friday sales are expected to again surpass Christmas sales in South Africa this year.

The consumer research company found that the 2021 Black Friday week surpassed the biggest festive season sales week, with sales of fast-moving consumer goods baskets 23% higher than the average of all other month-end weeks in 2021.

Smart adoption of tech driving retail innovation

While bargain-hunting by cash-strapped consumers certainly contributed to the retail success of Black Friday and other promotional periods, there are larger forces at play. The retail sector’s resilience in the face of severe disruption can also be ascribed to its accelerated adoption of digital technologies that has unlocked new innovations.

For example, the Shoprite Group’s omni-channel retail offerings saw a rapid release of its on-demand delivery service Sixty60 across South Africa. Despite only launching in 2020, Sixty60 Its appeal to the always-on Gen Z consumers entering the customer pool has helped establish Sixty60 as the dominant force in on-demand grocery services, beating out more established competitors.

The fulfilment of online grocery purchases could see retailers introduce their own delivery services, as Sixty60 has done. But other retailers have pursued partnerships to avoid having to invest in new processes and infrastructure. Retailers can provide an excellent customer experience by establishing smart partnerships with expert fulfilment partners.

Africa’s largest e-commerce retailer Jumia with instant delivery service Zipline to employ the use of drones to enable quick on-demand deliveries.

German drone delivery service Wingcopter also in Africa to aid delivery.

The blending of physical and online retail is also giving rise to new customer experiences. South African retailer Woolworths recently piloted a new service where customers can virtually try on clothes or makeup to see how they’d look before they make a purchase.

As adoption of online commerce accelerates over the coming years, customers can expect to see more innovation in how retailers leverage technology to deliver great customer experiences.

Beating retail adversity

It’s not all good news for retailers though. Most retailers face severe disruptions to their supply chains. A recent survey among US business leaders found that ongoing supply chain issues are causing widespread challenges, including a decrease in revenue (58%), inability to pay employees (50%), and the need for new financing measures such as business loans (54%).

Supply chain gridlocks stemming from lockdown pressures in China means retailers can’t always ensure products are on the shelf. This is giving rise to retailers increasing their stock thresholds just in case supply chain issues cause聽 product shortages .

Many retailers are also pushing into new product and service categories. For example, Shoprite’s money market account, designed for cost-sensitive consumers and launched in 2020, .

The appeal of the service is two-fold: there are almost no account fees aside from a R5 withdrawal fee, and customers can do their banking while in-store聽 grocery shopping.

3 priorities for retail success in 2023

Retailers can continue their golden run in the year ahead by focusing on a small handful of key priorities.

Firstly, retailers can enhance their use of big data and analytics to guide the development of new services and innovation. Many retailers have a wealth of customer purchase data that can be mined for insight into personalised products, offers and experiences.

Whether purchasing online or in-store, customers seek personalised shopping experiences tailored to their needs and preferences. This can take the form of personalised marketing offers, discounts or rewards, and ensuring product suggestions and sales items are relevant to each customer.

Clothing retailers can take it a step further by tracking customer purchases to understand what styles and types of clothing a customer prefers, and offer similar products or even offer to tailor-make clothing items based on the customer’s preferences, body type, and more.

Secondly, retailers could develop tailored subscription services for certain types of customers.

For example, a pharmacy retailer could use loyalty data to better understand which customers are purchasing baby products. Because of the repeatable nature of purchases such as nappies and baby formula, a smart retailer could introduce a subscription service to qualifying customers that ensures a regular delivery of key baby items.

This would ensure repeat business for the retailer while giving new parents a positive customer experience by removing the need to constantly go to the shop to stock up on essentials.

Finally, retailers should enhance their human capital management capabilities. With customer expectations for great personalised service at an all-time high, retailers that want to win the hearts and minds of customers need to ensure in-store staff can deliver a consistently great customer experience.

It’s no longer enough that in-store staff simply stock shelves and process purchases. Smart retailers will invest in attracting and retaining top talent to ensure in-store staff can provide helpful information, guidance and support to customers during their purchases.

Retailers may choose to partner with technology providers that have the experience and global insight to guide how technology is deployed to assist with the above three priorities. For retailers that get it right, there is practically no limit to their success over the coming years.

The post Three Ways Retailers Can Continue Their Golden Run in 2023 appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

As the only region in Africa to avoid a recession in 2020, East Africa is poised for strong growth despite ongoing disruption from the pandemic.

While the exact level of threat posed by the newly-discovered Omicron variant of COVID-19 remains to be seen, the reaction from the global community – travel restrictions, potential lockdowns – could have a severe impact on the region’s economic fortunes.

For organisations and business leaders in the region, the emergence of new unknowns and potential disruptions should not distract from the urgent task of recovery following an immensely difficult near-two year period.

In particular, four key priorities could enable businesses to accelerate their recovery and achieve greater resilience against future disruptions:

Priority One: Digitise with haste

The past two years have marked a radical shift in consumer behaviour. In Kenya, for example, mobile money transfers grew by nearly 63% in 2020 . Service such as banking has seen accelerated digitisation, ecommerce adoption is growing, and hybrid work models mean most organisations have had to implement new tools to support employees working from home.

For smaller businesses, the impact of the pandemic has been disastrous. A survey undertaken between June and August 2020 found that . Ninety percent had experienced a fall in sales, and one in five workers in the sector had lost their jobs.

In Kenya, however, SMEs increased their use of digital technology to work around pandemic restrictions. Nearly half of SMEs in the country increased their use of digital platforms, while 13% are investing in digital technologies.

In its most recent East Africa Economic Outlook, the African Development Bank advises that the region should, among other measures, ‘‘.

Effective utilisation of cloud technologies, for example, could enable small and larger enterprises to test new digital channels and business processes that can then be quickly scaled to serve existing customers or reach new ones.

Priority Two: Build back better (and more sustainably)

In the early days of 2020, when countries implemented strict lockdowns and economic activity tapered off, global emissions dropped and, for a moment at least, it seemed as if the pandemic would be a catalyst for sustainability.

However, data indicates that . The recently concluded COP26 failed to inspire hope that major greenhouse gas emitters would suddenly change course and adopt more sustainable practices.

The changing climate will have a dire impact on East Africa. Recent data indicates that . More heatwaves and cyclones are expected to impact agricultural activities, while potentially driving vast locust swarms to the region, where they cause untold devastation to farmers.

Considering the importance of agriculture to the region鈥檚 economic prospects, it is essential that all efforts at economic recovery take into account the potential impact on the climate.

As another of the region鈥檚 most important industries, the manufacturing sector 鈥� 鈥� presents a golden opportunity for the region鈥檚 innovators to design more sustainable processes.

By ensuring sustainability is embedded in every manufacturing process, East Africa could achieve economic growth while limiting the severity of the climate impact on future generations.

Priority Three: Eliminate uncertainty

Even before the emergence of COVID-19, the world faced unprecedented uncertainty. The continued disruption caused by new digital technologies, the accelerating pace of modern life and a rapidly shifting global political landscape combined to create an environment where change was truly the only constant.

This situation is likely to continue and even become exacerbated by the pandemic, but organisations and decision-makers are not powerless. Organisations that can use data and analytics to gain a real-time, granular view over every aspect of the business can eliminate some uncertainty and improve the accuracy and quality of their decisions.

As the nerve centre of the modern intelligent enterprise, ERP solutions bring a level of clarity and control to decision-makers that is essential to effective leadership.

Integrating emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning unlocks further benefits, especially in terms of optimising business processes. Worryingly, , with Kenya ranked highest in a recent global study at 105 out of 158 countries.

As organisations design their post-pandemic business strategies, all efforts must be made to leverage technology as a tool to reduce uncertainty while unlocking opportunities for new gains in efficiency, accuracy and identifying entirely new business models.

Priority Four: Collaborate & innovate

Africa is no stranger to innovation. found that 13% of all new or modified technology that has been developed in response to the pandemic originated in Africa.

Driving innovation through the effective use of new technologies holds the promise of improving service delivery and boosting productivity. As countries and industries across the region rebuild, understanding the role technology plays in driving innovation is essential.

The region’s outstanding track record in the mobile payments space should serve as inspiration.

Millions of East Africans that were previously excluded from formal banking or credit services today use mobile money services to secure lending opportunities, repay loans and build transaction histories that can unlock access to other formal financial services. Entire ecosystems of products and services have emerged to deliver additional value to mobile money users.

Today, the region is in mobile peer-to-peer finance.

Other areas of innovation include the region’s use of technology to improve agricultural outcomes, for example through the use of SAP’s Rural Sourcing Manager, which gives smallholder farmers weather and market data, improved selling opportunities, and access to new markets.

Using the levers of regional and intra-African cooperation 鈥� through the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, or East Africa Community 鈥� could further accelerate the pace at which new innovations spread from one country or region to the rest of the continent.

Through ongoing collaboration among African nations, the region and continent could improve the speed at which it rebuilds its economy while unlocking a wealth of new opportunity.

The post Four Make-or-Break Priorities for East Africa’s Economic Recovery appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

鈥淲e鈥檙e genetically sequencing the life cycle of trends as they鈥檙e created and evolving. You can select any topic in the world and immediately have a full report documenting how saturated a trend is in the minds of consumers, globally and by region,鈥� said Sourav Goswami, co-founder of NWO. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like talking to a human expert who can tell you when, where, and why a trend is growing, declining, or about to reach an inflection point with impact on your business.鈥�

Among the recent early signals Goswami held up as proof of NWO鈥檚 prescience were reports predicting the resurgence of , the financial impact of on sugar and cotton futures, and notably, in the fall of 2020, a firestorm of online and offline behaviors around guns and tactical weaponry that constituted an “” months before an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The startup is working with beta customers in product innovation, marketing, and supply chain management at companies in the U.S. and Europe 鈥� and has plans to move into Asia and the Middle East. While initially targeting consumer brands, Goswami said NWO鈥檚 offering cuts across any industry, such as logistics and supply chain companies.

Predictive Insights from Unexpected Inflection Points

Operating like a search engine that filters data from keywords, NWO is deceptively simple. However, a proprietary algorithm translates time-shift lagging indicators into predictive insights. The system generates detailed trend reports in about 60 seconds, analyzing patterns from tremendous amounts of social media chatter, news, and search activity, as well as information from various databases, such as patents and filings from the Federal Drug Administration in the U.S. and its European counterpart, along with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A Career Steeped in Science

Goswami鈥檚 career is equal parts business and finance, backed by a longtime interest in science. After stints in the financial sector, he started a couple of technology companies. He currently manages a private equity real estate investment firm. He launched NWO with co-founders Pulkit Jaiswal and Imogen Low after seeing the potential in using data to predict geopolitical trends.

鈥淲hether the industry is consumer, real estate, finance, or any sector, everything related to managing downside risk is related to anticipating what could happen three or four steps ahead,鈥� said Goswami. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 exciting is creating a level playing field for any organization to apply the same data-driven strategies as financial investors, identifying early signals to head off problems and uncover new opportunities.鈥�

One NWO beta customer gained early insights to evaluate new opportunities for its milk substitute products. Data revealed that oat milk growth rates were quickly eclipsing almond milk in concert with rising local interest in oat milk ice cream.

鈥淲e not only identified an emerging oat milk ice cream trend, but also exactly where it was happening and why,鈥� said Goswami. 鈥淐onsumer interest was spiking in Boise, Idaho, and other unexpected cities because of high-tech workforce relocations to new hubs. The company could quickly reallocate supply chain resources for distribution to these new markets.鈥�

Important Connections from SAP.iO

After participating in the data and analytics cohort, Goswami saw a natural alignment with the . The NWO co-founders also valued the go-to-market expertise 51风流provided, along with introductions to customers.

鈥淲e鈥檙e a good fit with 51风流because our data provides early intelligent demand signals, helping companies optimize end-to-end business processes,鈥� said Jaiswal. 鈥淚n addition, hearing directly from 51风流customers helped us better understand their challenges. As a result, we tweaked our interface and user experience, including how we presented reports.鈥�

Real-Time Research Decodes Demand Signals

Goswami saw NWO replacing teams of data scientists with immense processing power minus human error and, equally important, time lags. Humans step in at the last mile to prioritize the most effective decisions.

鈥淐ompanies can鈥檛 wait weeks or even days for research. If nothing else, the pandemic uncovered systemic shortcomings, as retailers couldn鈥檛 react quickly and efficiently to a dynamic narrative that was causing huge product demand spikes and drops,鈥� said Goswami. 鈥淕lobal information diffusion means organizations have to look at all the data, all the time, from all countries simultaneously.鈥�

Business leaders operate amidst an interconnected swirl of lightning-fast micro trends; they can鈥檛 afford to base decisions on the backward glance. It鈥檚 time to replace hindsight with predictive data that translates the world鈥檚 swirling currents into decisions for a stronger future.

This story first appeared on the 51风流Global News Center.

The post How to Genetically Sequence the Life Cycle of a Trend appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.