How the Internet of Things Transforming the Connected Retail Industry

How different do you think that today’s world is from what it was a few years back? I am sure that you’ll say that a lot. But what changed the world? What was that one thing that created disruptions amongst the world? One word for all these questions is “technology”. It’s the technological advancements that have brought the world to the palm of our hands. Get a CD for some movie that released in the 1980s and observe the change in processes and the world. No more waiting for days to get a message, no more going to arcadias to play your favourite games. World today is what older sci-fi movies used to predict. There are self-driving cars, cooking robots and health monitoring wrist watches out in the world which are already fully functional and easing the tasks for humans.

But, the pace at which world is changing nothing amuses us anymore. Think about it; if someone tells me that there is a robot available in the market that can understand the language of your dog and convert it to human language, I won’t be surprised. For me, the next thing that is making a difference and no one would have imagined is connected retail.

Connected retail is nothing but the advanced version of traditional retail with better functionality and features. Internet of Things is the technology that has brought the changes in the retail industry. Nowadays, retailers have access to information and technology that is enough to increase their sales by sizeable numbers, if they have a quality product.

Yes, apart from the Internet of Things for smart homes and smart building solutions there are solutions for retailers too that can help businesses to take their game to a whole new level. Let’s understand some of the regions where internet of things applications has brought ease to retailers and optimised their business operations.

Optimised supply chain and logistic maintenance: This is one area which is the primary concern of every retailer, and connected solutions have hit the right chords by providing solutions to retailers. IoT applications have optimised the processes for retailers and serve as the cost saver for people in the retail business. With connected solutions retailers can now manage and monitor the stock available in the store, the timeline to reorder the products and the number of products to reorder. All this data is available at a single point and extracted by observing various factors like the number of units purchased in a month, time to receive the product after ordering it and number of units left in the store. These solutions help retailers to maintain the stock and constantly meet the demands of consumers.

Engagement opportunities: With the use of IoT applications, retailers now can engage their consumers with better solutions. There is technology that can monitor and track the in-store movement of the consumers. With such technology in hand, retailers can now get the insight about the section in which an individual spends most of their time, the items that they selected but didn’t buy and many other things. Such data can be used by retailers to provide customised solutions to consumers to keep their business. For example A multi-brand outlet in town at the end of the day got data about a consumer shopping details and found that there was one product that the customer had till the checkout counter but didn’t buy because of the shortage of money. So, the store can provide a discount on the particular product to the consumer so that they can buy it on the discounted product and keep their business. This will not only help the store to get more business but also the happy consumer will share about their experience with others, which means more traction for the store.

Above are the few examples of how IoT applications have brought advancement in the retail business. Apart from this, there are things like self-checkouts, virtual closets that are also present in the market that makes the retail business easy and effective.

There is surely a lot more to come in the IoT and retail industry, and we are excited to see what awaits us in the future. We hope that the article was enough to give an insight into the connected retail solutions. But, if you wish to know more about the topic then you can have a look at HARMAN’s website and understand things in detail. HARMAN is one of the leading company that provides end-to-end IoT solutions to industries.