Shopping behaviors shifted dramatically last year as consumers adopted more digital tactics across the entire shopping journey. Many consumers engaged in digital activities throughout the shopping process such as researching and purchasing products online or selecting different delivery options. These retail trends are here to stay, according to a McKinsey survey, which found that 71% of apparel shoppers and 66% of grocery shoppers who used digital shopping services for the first time during the Covid-19 crisis will continue to do so after it ends.
As consumers turned to online shopping, their decision-making methods changed dramatically, often reevaluating their retailers of choice, as well as their go-to brands. Retailers also pivoted and expanded their online and brick-and-mortar channels to include BOPIS, curbside and third-party delivery services. Despite all this change, consumers’ expectations for convenience, consistency and personalized experiences continue to grow – regardless of channel.
Retailers that succeeded this past year have invested in digitalizing their businesses and met the pandemic-related business, economic and health challenges with the foundation of good data and strong business processes that master data management provides. With transparency into their data, greater data integrity, and agility in their operations, these retailers were able to adjust their operating models to achieve the elevated levels of service that customers now expect.
For a deep dive into the importance of data integrity in delivering an optimal retail customer experience, download the executive brief on Nine Ways Master Data Management Can Help Retailers Enhance the Customer Experience or read a summary of it below.
Following are nine ways retailers are leveraging the data integrity capabilities in master data management to improve the customer experience:
Enhance the depth and transparency of product information and cater to consumers’ needs by customizing category-specific attributions to create appealing product listings.
Increase customer engagement and trust with lifestyle pictures and other rich content, leveraging embedded digital asset management capabilities to ensure each product has multiple images.
Onboard products effectively and consistently using a systematic, reliable and efficient method of content collection to capture and maximize product data from suppliers while minimizing errors and closing data gaps.
Improve accuracy of customer data and communicate key messages with confidence by integrating, deduplicating, cleansing and enriching all customer data to create a high-quality, 360° view of the customer.
Improve personalization through relevant customer communications – such as integrating communication frequency or favorite store location – by synchronizing customer data into one single source of truth that can be used to build customer confidence in the retailer.
Govern and safeguard customer data to ensure it’s used properly by leveraging customer data governance to guarantee compliance to policies and regulations and thereby increase trust in the long term.
Support dynamic and timely communications about your physical store locations and relevant services by creating a central hub of all location and site information that can be shared with consumers for more informed decision making.
Ensure consistency of information across stores, sales channels, markets and languages by controlling the access, governance, interaction and sharing of information within and outside the enterprise.
Retailers have performed technological and operational miracles to deliver on customers’ needs throughout the pandemic, forever changing the value retailers place on digital transformation initiatives. Digital transformation can no longer be considered a multiyear strategic plan; instead it needs to be prioritized as part of a long-term vision, in which a set of consumer-centric projects are consistently executed against in sprints based on evolving business and consumer needs.
Underpinning the success of any digital transformation initiative is a trustworthy data foundation that can be shared internally and externally with partners. A multidomain master data management solution serves as the backbone of a more integrated omnichannel customer experience by enabling retailers to synchronize product, customer and location data across their digital and physical channels.