In today’s digital landscape, data breaches and privacy concerns often dominate headlines. Retail brands and consumers alike are left feeling vulnerable. From a customer perspective, consumers are more conscious than ever before about how their data is being used. In turn, retailers must work hard to not only ensure the security of consumer data, but to prove to their customers that they can be trusted with sensitive information. Retailers need to take appropriate steps to protect their critical data as well as sensitive information of their customers.

Consumer data is a valuable asset for retailers, enabling them to personalize shopping experiences, optimize marketing strategies, and improve overall customer satisfaction. However, with handling large amounts of personal data comes great responsibility. Any mishandling or breach of this data can lead to severe consequences, including financial losses, legal repercussions, and damage to the brand’s reputation. Retailers must deploy technology that can effectively safeguard customer data, integrating data privacy solutions into their core operations and technological infrastructure. This commitment not only improves retailers’ reputation, but can also foster consumer trust, which is essential for long-term success.

Adopting Secure CRM

Often stored in customer relationship management (CRM) tools, consumer data holds significant importance for retailers and customers alike. In order to ensure data privacy, retailers must store consumers’ sensitive information in secure CRM tools. By deploying a secure customer relationship management (CRM) tool, retailers can build a single source of information around each individual customer. This allows them to gain significant insight into customer behaviors and purchasing habits across all channels while ensuring their personal information is kept safe at all times. As a result, retailers can personalize their strategy, trailer interactions and drive consumer loyalty.

Teamwork Commerce Secure CRM uses the highest level of security to protect customer data, and is compliant with the constant evolution of European and USA data regulations. The software adheres to these regulations through tokenization, where sensitive data is replaced with unique identification tokens to help mitigate the risk of data theft during a transaction.

Teamwork Commerce has achieved SOC 2 Type 2, a highly regarded and trusted accreditation which serves as a benchmark for a company’s ability to safeguard clients’ data. Customers can benefit from comprehensive security measures that are proven by the attainment of the accreditation, highlighting that the company adheres to the best practices concerning data security, availability and confidentiality.

Implementing Secure Payment Systems

In addition to deploying secure CRM tools, retailers must also ensure their payment systems and gateways are secure. This allows them to securely complete payment transactions, ultimately boosting consumer confidence and earning their trust. Brands must adhere to industry regulatory requirements and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards to ensure high security for their payment systems.  Retailers should also consider integrating biometric authentication and multi-factor authentication to add additional layers of security for online transactions to protect customers’ sensitive data.

In an omnichannel world where customers use a number of online payment methods, retailers must ensure they have the right solutions in place to complete transactions in a safe and secure way. Teamwork Commerce’s Pay by Link solution, in partnership with Adyen, enables retail customers to pay for items through a secure URL link.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can significantly enhance data privacy measures by identifying and mitigating potential threats in real time. AI-powered security systems can detect unusual patterns and behaviors that may indicate a data breach, enabling swift action to prevent unauthorized access. Additionally, AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to identify vulnerabilities and predict future threats, allowing retailers to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals.

Ensure Customers Security

In a time where consumer data privacy is paramount, retailers must empower themselves with the right technology to protect their customers’ information. By deploying robust technology that empowers retailers to safeguard consumer privacy, retailers can both comply with regulation and reinforce consumer trust.

Want to know more about how technology can elevate operations? Find out more here.

William Heckadon

Global Sales Director

Next up on our blog series – Five Minutes With… – we get to know William Heckadon, Global Sales Director at Teamwork Commerce. William is a music and movie connoisseur who has even gone as far as featuring in a few films himself. Here we find out all about his experience working at Teamwork Commerce.

 What is your role at Teamwork Commerce?

I am the Global Sales Director for Teamwork Commerce. My responsibilities involve driving the company’s sales strategy on a global scale, while managing and coordinating teams internationally.

Explain your career path. What inspired you to join the retail tech industry?

Retail is such a vibrant and fascinating industry which, like tech itself, covers multiple areas with businesses of all sizes, from start-ups to global enterprises. It’s an exciting time to be in retail tech, particularly in terms of artificial intelligence, tailored consumer shopping experiences and growth in several strategic areas. I’ve been in the tech industry for many years, and it felt like a natural progression.

What is your favourite thing about working in the retail industry?

It is constantly evolving both from a business and consumer perspective. Retail covers extremes making it a dynamic and compelling industry with its multifaceted technologies and evolving consumer demand. It’s a rewarding and exciting industry to be a part of.

What is the best career advice you have ever received?

Never assume you have all the answers and always continue to learn. Also, ‘work hard and be nice to people’.

What is your favourite thing about working at Teamwork Commerce?

Aside from Teamwork Commerce being a leader in its field, it would have to be the culture. It’s great to work for a company with such a supportive, diverse, and driven team.

 Who are your key role models/inspirations?

My parents are my biggest role models. My father taught me by example how to lead with kindness and respect and still be very successful. My mother continues to teach me to always persevere with good humour and to never stop learning.

 Rapid Fire Round…

What is your favourite?

Book: As an avid reader I find this is constantly changing. However, books I often return to over the years would be To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tale of Two Cities and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Movie: As with books, there are so many favourites, but if I had to choose, the Bond movies would always be up there and more recently I’ve enjoyed films such as Parasite and Dune.

Album: I’m going to cheat this answer as it’s impossible! My musical tastes span many genres and decades so I’m going to say my favourite album is a varied and interesting Spotify playlist!

Most people don’t know that…

Along with speaking a number of languages, I have also been in a few films, most notably as a reporter in Cinderella Man with Russell Crowe!

In my spare time…

I enjoy nothing more than getting together over a good meal with friends and family, as well as going to the gym, seeing new places, reading, writing, and compiling new Spotify playlists!

With retailers recognizing the value and potential of artificial intelligence (AI), the future of the technology in the industry seems promising. As per Statista, retailers using AI and machine learning technologies typically perform better than their competitors.

According to Gartner, 91% of retail IT leaders are prioritizing AI as the top technology to implement by 2026. As more retailers embrace AI, a number of areas within retail are likely to become more sophisticated. We anticipate that the tech will significantly revolutionize customer experiences, analytical capabilities, and marketing strategies for retailers. In this blog, we take a look at these key areas retailers can expect AI to transform…

AI-Powered Personalized Experiences

Being able to provide meaningful tailored customer experiences is a priority for retailers, and AI can be of great help. A Statista survey showed that retailers plan to use generative AI (GenAI) to generate personalized responses for customer-service agents, create digital shopping assistants, and for personalized promotions to drive loyalty. Experienced retail technology providers gauged this interest and have already started to explore ways to leverage GenAI. Last year, Teamwork Commerce partnered with Google Cloud to develop new generative AI features in its industry-leading mobile Point-of-Sale (Mobile POS) and Order Management System (OMS).

Ultimately, the key lies in delivering value to customers. PwC found out that 70% of CEOs believe GenAI will significantly change the way their companies create, deliver and capture value in the next three years.

While retailers embrace AI, they must be mindful of striking a balance between AI-powered personalization and human-led interactions. Customers still crave the human touch as part of their shopping experiences, and retailers must not solely replace it with tech. Instead, retailers should use AI tools to empower their staff to automate repetitive tasks, stay more informed, and focus on providing high-quality shopping experiences to customers.

Improved Analysis & Forecasting

In 2023, a Statista survey found that predicting customer behavior and needs and improving their shopping experiences were the most popular reasons for 60% of professionals to use AI. AI-powered solutions can quickly analyze large amounts of data and produce actionable insights for retailers. However, retailers must be able to feed accurate and up-to-date data in real-time to enable AI to produce reliable results. In order to achieve this, retailers can leverage the latest Inventory Management Systems that provide real-time visibility with accurate data.

Retailers can utilize data from the past few years and identify key trends and common types of items that are best-selling during a specific time period. This allows retailers to prepare ahead of time and fill their inventory with the items that are expected to be in demand. Additionally, retailers can go above and beyond for loyal customers, analyzing individual customer profiles and creating personalized discounts using AI. As a result, not only can they retain their loyal customers but also increase the positive word of mouth for their brand, ultimately attracting more customers.

Targeted Marketing & Advertising

From AB testing to content creation, AI tools help marketers automate tasks, and create effective marketing campaigns efficiently. However, with growing advancements, AI can do a lot more. By leveraging data analytics, AI can significantly segment customers based on information such as purchase history and browsing behavior. AI algorithms can further analyze these segments to predict future behaviors based on their past interactions. As a result, retailers can gain better insights and target their marketing campaigns towards specific groups that are more likely to convert. AI tools can also analyze which campaigns are more effective, enabling marketers to allocate their budgets more efficiently focusing on high-performing campaigns.

Retail marketing professionals can also use AI to analyze social media conversations to understand public sentiment about their brand or product. This allows marketers to adjust their marketing strategies accordingly based on social media sentiment. This is significant because retailers can tailor their marketing campaigns based on ongoing sentiment in the market and make them more effective.

Are you looking for the latest technology to help you meet your evolving business needs? Get in touch.

Olympics fever is here! A rainy Friday night in Paris kicked off the XXXIII Olympiad at the end of last week, featuring a boat trip down the River Seine for the athletes, an Eiffel Tower light show, and a long-awaited return for Celine Dion to close the opening ceremony. 

As the world settles in to watch the world’s very best athletes compete for the next few weeks, Paris – the fashion capital of the world – is benefiting from the hype of the 33rd Olympic Games. With the games taking place in such a popular city for retail, the industry is expected to benefit from this summer’s event…

An Economic Boost

According to the official Olympic website, the Paris games are set to provide a significant boost to the local economy. Among a variety of social and skills developments, this year’s games are expected to have created an additional 181,000 jobs in the local Paris metropolitan area, with a growth of up to €11.1 billion in economic activity.

Paris is integral to the fashion industry. Already a significant tourist hotspot, the Olympics is expected to pull in an additional 1.5 million foreign visitors to France’s capital this summer. With an increase in tourist activity around the city, some retailers are already taking advantage of increased sales opportunities.

According to Modern Retail, In the past few months alone, brands Hoka and Birkenstock have opened their first Paris-based stores, with Levi’s and Salomon also opening flagship stores on Champs-Élysées avenue. Importantly, these are not simply pop-up stores designed to only maximize opportunities around the Olympics. Instead, they are long-term investments, looking to generate revenues from the summer of sport as a means to kick-off a strong physical performance that leads into a successful future.

Optimizing Opportunity

Few cities across the planet suit an influx of fashion brands staking their claim to physical retail success like Paris. France’s capital has the economic strength, tourism interest and fashion reputation that can drive huge success for retailers.

 However, any brand looking to make the most of increased footfall in bricks and mortar stores must be prepared to handle busy stores. An activity that starts out as an exercise to increase sales opportunities can quickly create negative outcomes – discouraging consumers due to bad experiences caused from long queues and out of stock products.

Limiting In-Store Wait Times

More tourism results in more boots on the ground – especially in hotspots. Retailers should be prepared for heavy foot traffic when big events come around. To minimize in-store queuing, retailers must consider their point of sale (POS) technology, and the role it can play in queue-busting…

• Mobile Point of Sale: Teamwork Commerce’s mobile POS allows in-store associates to complete transactions anywhere on the shop floor. Armed with a tablet that can seamlessly process payments and calculate discounts and promotions, retailers can reduce queues while delivering exceptional customer experiences

• RFID-Powered Self-checkout: Our RFID-Powered self-checkout facilitates transactions in 30 seconds or less. Visitors simply place their basket in a designated area; RFID readers immediately scan all items accurately, and consumers pay for their goods without breaking a sweat

Reducing Out of Stock Situations

Busy shop floors are great. It shows consumer interest in a brand, and likely results in increased sales. However, it also causes challenges. Keeping shelves stocked can be a difficult task; retailers must remain on top of replenishment in order to continue to maximize sales opportunities, and empty shelves lead to disappointed customers, who will happily find another retailer to purchase from.

The challenge lies in visibility of stock levels, but while RFID can help retailers improve self-checkout speeds, it can also play a vital role in inventory management. Tagging products at item-level, retailers can accurately track stock levels in real-time. Teamwork Commerce’s RFID Powered Stock Counter App allows retailers to quickly scan all products at any stage of the supply chain, and create complete visibility of stock. When shop floor products are running low, retailers can receive an alert and quickly replenish specific shelves. Ultimately, RFID can help retailers maintain inventory accuracy and maximize shop floor sales opportunities – regardless of how busy they are.

Vive La France

The Paris Olympics will have the world captivated for a short period, but the fashion capital of the world will always feel like a home for retail. Those brands that have made the effort to take advantage of the buzzt in Paris this summer will be eager to attract the right customers with the right products. Technology can play a pivotal role in delivering high-quality customer experiences. With the correct approach, not only can brands attract short-term interest, but they can drive long-term business growth as well.

Interested in seeing how our technology can help your brand make the most of increased in-store traffic? Get in touch today.

https://retailistmag.com/3-ways-retailers-can-create-a-seamless-checkout-experience-for-customers/

By Amber Hovious, VP Marketing and Partnerships at Teamwork Commerce