The Future Of Retail Report: A Resilient Retail Playbook

Featured Examples

Through its partnership with cloud-based software provider Salesforce, luxury department store Saks Fifth Avenue is offering a more personalized shopping experience to its e-commerce shoppers. After re-platforming saks.com with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the retailer now has greater access to a range of customer data points, including returns they've made or items that have been added to their carts or wishlists. This level of intel is providing Saks a more complete view of its shoppers' behaviors, both in-store and online, which in turn is facilitating more tailored recommendations and messages they share with each of their shoppers.

To create a complete ecosystem that connects shelves to stockrooms, checkout and distribution in real-time, retail technology solutions provider Powershelf partnered with Microsoft, in turn creating a platform that provides second-by-second sales, stock, and logistics that can all be seen, analyzed, and controlled from anywhere in the organization. Each in-store Powershelf product continually communicates critical data through the Microsoft Azure cloud. Microsoft Power Platform then helps Powershelf compile the data, analyze it, and communicate it back to consumer products companies in real time. By providing decision makers with real-time visibility of when and where stock is low, enterprises are able to efficiently anticipate restocking needs at scale, communicate with stockrooms and distributors in a timely manner, and ensure customer happiness.

To improve its overall customer experience, footwear manufacturer New Balance partnered with retail industry tech provider Aptos to deploy a new cloud data management system across its North American and European retail brick-and-mortar stores and offices.