Powering Intelligent Data Processing For Retailers

By Michael Kure & Sydney Wilson, SAP Customer Marketing

The current pandemic has impacted nearly every aspect of our lives – the way we socialize, work, and shop. Nothing has been spared.

The retail sector has arguably been hit hardest by the COVID-19 shutdown. The dreaded “CLOSED DUE TO CORONAVIRUS” sign posted on our favorite stores has been an all-too-common sight.

As we accept that “going back to normal” is unlikely in this new world we live in, retailers must adapt to the change that comes with the unprecedented future. Companies like Starbucks are getting a head start by redesigning the layout of its stores to encourage mobile order pickup and accommodate for social distancing.

Consumer needs are changing

Along with these challenges, businesses are still faced with pre-existing demands around optimizing efficiency across operations, making the best out of customer insights. The task of transforming and deriving insights with distributed data is now more important than ever. Capturing this kind of information in real-time is vital in understanding new customer patterns that can enhance outcomes for retail businesses and their customers. The goal now is not just to survive but to move forward with an intelligent customer experience—a better shopping experience that is simple, efficient, personalized, and safe.

As consumer demands have shifted focus to essentials, this has left bare shelves of food, toiletries, and sterilizing alcohol. Using customer insights have enabled stores like Target to add fresh food items and alcohol to same-day order and curbside pickup. This way, retailers can stay ahead of the competitive tidal wave with better inventory planning and pricing while predicting consumer behavior. Ultimately, this helps businesses increase customer engagement and drives revenue.

But delivering the right customer experience based on big data married with analytics and actionable insight is not easy. With physical and digital operations spanning multiple time zones, distributed applications, workplaces and multiple heterogeneous systems, today’s highly complex data workflows make simplifying customer insights unattainable. This is where Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) come in.

Not such an odd-couple: Big data and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

To wit, securely processing data has to happen in a highly-scalable, open environment that needs to be easy to deploy and operate on-premises, but also be extensible outside of the company firewall. Insight generation via new technologies such as AI/ML is a must in order to derive actionable outcomes from complex, unstructured data across distributed locations.

In other words, turn-key big data processing coupled with an insight generation (AI/ML) solution stack is necessary for retailers to achieve new levels of efficiency and optimize customer experience. Collaboration that integrates artificial intelligence, relationship intelligence and people insights, and business processes can result in better teamwork and proactive customer journeys.

Joining forces for more insightful data

To meet those requirements, Cisco and SAP have joined forces to develop an architecture that combines SAP Data Intelligence on Cisco Container Platform running on Cisco HyperFlex.

Together, they set out to implement a solution stack that is robust, durable, and scalable to meet distributed data needs – ultimately simplifying complex data landscapes to help businesses focus on the insights and actions that will optimize the customer experience via a unique and personal shopping experience that customers now expect.

A smarter shopping experience for all

Collecting data on customer insights enable modern retail companies to improve shopping experiences with real-time analysis of inventory and customer behavior. Together, Cisco and SAP offer tangible business results:

• 20% faster restocking time
• 30% increase of human traffic at the shelf
• 30% additional sales revenue
• ~0% IT downtime
• 2x reduction of resources in terms of administrators and operators

“Cisco and SAP are highly aligned, securely connecting, collecting, analyzing, and ultimately converting this data into actionable insights – enhancing business outcomes and customer experiences,” said Suhail Syed, Senior Product Manager, Cloud Solutions, Cisco.