Posted on Author Peter Mukulu Categories Digital Lending, Marketing

Digital transformation in retail: Transform or Perish

Digital technologies have disrupted many traditional business models, by transforming or creating a whole new business model. Uber, Airbnb, Skype, Alibaba, etc. are some of the best examples for the early disrupters who paved the way for new digital business models, thanks to digital disruption/ transformation. However, if we take the retail industry, it is not yet fully digitized, except for some early adopters. In the coming years, many key players would be embracing digitization and the trend will reshape the industry.

With advancements in technologies, availability of real-time data and analytics, retail industry will be transformed to meet consumer preferences as they evolve. Unlike the old days, the consumer has access to the product or service information and different purchase options. Online purchases have elevated the customer experience with more personalization. According to IDC Research, by 2020, at least 55% of all organizations will become digital with new business models and digitally enabled products and services.

To remain competitive in this rapidly changing industry, retailers must leverage the latest digital technologies and transform themselves to meet the changing consumer behaviour. They must leverage digital transformation technologies and create a new business model by placing the customer in the anchor position.

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation is using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation.  In retail, it is nothing but moving from a product-centric approach to a customer-centric approach by extending hyper-personalized customer experience.

What are the challenges retailers face in their digital transformation journey?

Multi-channel buying experiences:

With the staggering growth in e-commerce, in-store purchases have come down. A good majority of consumers still prefer retail shops as they want to see, touch, feel, and try the product before they make a purchase. They may gather product information online and make an offline purchase or try the product and order online. This shows that consumers prefer a combination of both. Retailers who try to bridge the gap between online and offline and go ‘phygital’, stands a better chance to win the customer. Retailers must leverage the latest technologies to create an omnichannel customer experience, which enables them to extend personalized offers across channels.

Demand for seamless, superior customer experience:

A seamless customer experience allows both online and offline stores to complement each other rather than compete to keep customers coming back for more. Customers expect in-store retailers to keep track of their online purchases and treat them as loyal customers when they visit the store. Retailers must use advanced analytics for capturing customer data and produce meaningful insights to create an integrated customer experience.

Customer loyalty is driven by experience:

Customer experience fuels customer loyalty than just product features. Even if the retailers offer superior products, the customer is delighted only if they provide him with a superior experience. Though pricing offers and promotions are building blocks of customer experience, hyper-personalization is the critical factor. Retailers who can predict customer behaviour, anticipate their needs, and extend personalized offers exclusively for them via their preferred channel creates a profoundly loyal customer.

Key elements of digital transformation strategies in the retail industry

In-store experience

Ensuring better customer engagement and rich in-store experiences enable retailers to connect with customers through all touch points and influence buying behaviour. They can leverage beacons, IoT devices, and smart shelves to delight customers with in-store navigation, real-time product pricing, and offers.

Optimize consumer journey

Optimizing end-to-end customer experience across the customer lifecycle journey plays a crucial role in mitigating customer churn and ensuring customer loyalty. Retailers must leverage data analytics technologies to understand customer behaviour and preferences to provide tailor-made personalized offers or product recommendations in each stage of the customer lifecycle journey.

Advanced payment solutions

Frictionless payments or digital payment terminals enable consumers to move from cashless to cardless, significantly reducing transaction times.

Customer service

Advancement in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies has changed customer care interaction by automating routine services which don’t require human intervention. Using a digital bot powered by AI & ML technologies enable retailers to answer standard questions, handle returns, help customers with product specification queries, etc. efficiently and thus improving the customer experience.

Digital transformation is key to success for retailers, perform or perish

Hyper-personalized customer experience stands tall in this digital economy. To win the modern customer, retailers must create a superior shopping experience that sets them apart from the competition. They must establish an exceptional omnichannel experience irrespective of the channels to win retail customers.

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Posted on Author Peter Mukulu Categories Digital Commerce, Digital Lending

Banking as a Service (BaaS) and Top Financial Services Trends to Watch Out for in 2022.

The rapid wave of digital transformation set forth the transition of banks from rigorous to responsive, conventional to digitally savvy, and more receptive to change than ever before. Besides just being digitally established, they are moving fast-forward towards innovation and bringing a change in the industry practices.

Over the last few years, the banking sector has gone through an inevitable transformation as more and more fintech businesses come into the market. Financial services are evolving to the point where new products, channels, partnerships, and opportunities are being created. At the heart of this digital storm, lies the concept of Banking as a Service (BaaS).

So, what is Banking as a Service (BaaS)?

In simple words, Banking as a Service (BaaS) is the provision of banking products and services through third-party distributors. It is an end-to-end approach that uses APIs to connect fintech companies and other third-party organizations to a bank’s system. This helps such third-party Fintech organizations build innovative financial services upon the provider bank’s regulated infrastructure while enabling open banking services.

Banking as a Service (BaaS), disaggregating the traditional banking value chain.

The typical structural functions of a bank as we all know are accepting deposits, lending deposits to businesses, remittance, and payment processing. To facilitate these, banks require huge investments and other physical assets like property, infrastructure, etc. All these processes create gridlocks.

BaaS is bringing revolutionary changes in the finance industry by reconfiguring the value chain and promoting new sources of growth. FinTech companies & Non-banking Financial Services providers are working with traditional banks to create BaaS that enables innovative, specialized offers to get to market faster by combining the strengths of both institutions. With increasing problems of customers with existing banking barriers of regulation, security, and technology, Baas is delivering fast, agile and seamless offerings. The winning factor of BaaS is the ability to capitalize on technology investments and create value.

According to Finextra, the top companies that are actively pioneering BaaS strategies and have already experienced all the advantages first-hand are solaris Bank, Bankable, Starling Bank, Pi1, Green Dot, and BBVA.

The future of banking is driven by next-generation technologies, enabling customers to make seamless, safe, and rapid payments in order to meet their changing needs. Let’s look into some of the key trends that are disrupting the banking industry in 2022 and opening new doors of growth for banking.

Small business owner showing employee new plan on tablet computer

Embedded Finance or embedded banking: According to Juniper Research, the value of the embedded finance market will exceed $138 billion in 2026, from just $43 billion in 2021. Embedded finance is the seamless integration of financial services into a typically non-financial platform, enabling customers to use apps to avail banking services. Apart from the easy-to-use user experience, embedded finance is having a great deal of success because of its already existing broad customer base.  In addition to embedded payments, there are also emerging trends for embedded credit which allows customers to take credit within the non-financial platforms. For example, Amazon offers EMI options which purchasing any product. Moreover, embedded investments and insurance are integrated within the non-financial apps for a smooth customer experience. In fact, embedded insurance has the potential to increase the purchase of insurance for high-value products among eCommerce customers. Research reveals embedded insurance premiums to grow to over $10 billion in 2026, from just $3.8 billion in 2021.  

Emerging technologies in financial services: Advanced technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence), Machine Learning, Blockchain, Internet of things (IoT) are rapidly transforming customer experiences by increased responsiveness, security, transparency, and time efficiency. Today, customers are exploring the benefits of open banking where they are thoroughly aware of their financial condition, they can plan investments, compare the alternatives and make better financial decisions.

Increase in Mobile Banking: According to 2020 mobile banking survey, approximately 58% of respondents indicated that they were visiting branches less frequently due to the pandemic; among them, over 61% indicated they were also using mobile apps more frequently. This trend is likely to continue as users are more comfortable than ever in availing mobile banking. Mobile banking enables users to have account information access, transaction access, investments, support services, and news and offers alerts. One of the biggest reasons for the rapid growth of this trend is because users can conduct almost all sorts of banking activities anywhere, anytime. This has further helped the bank to cut down on its operational costs by maintaining customer satisfaction.

To conclude, both banks and fintech’s are imbibed in a symbiotic relationship. The difference between the structure and functions of the two is even making the relationship more valuable. Along with the provisions of banking infrastructure, regulatory legitimacy, and the existing customers who still rely on banks; fintech brings the freedom to create, design, and experiment, offering user-friendly and tailor-made solutions for the customers. Finally, it would not be wrong to say that banks, fintech’s, and BaaS firms are most effective when they collaborate to reduce risk, maintain compliance, and provide the modern financial solutions that customers demand.

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Posted on Author Peter Mukulu Categories Digital Lending, Marketing

Sarabi Tech and StreetGooser announces strategic partnership

Nairobi & Bangalore – Jul. 20, 2022 – Sarabi Tech and StreetGooser are pleased to announce they have entered into a strategic partnership, combining Sarabi Tech’s cloud computing technology services with StreetGooser’s world class Accommodation Management Software and next-gen technology services.

With technology playing an increasingly critical role in every aspect of business, companies recognize that they need to accelerate the development of digital solutions to ensure they remain on the competitive vanguard.

The Sarabi–StreetGooser partnership brings together deep skills in business and technology strategy, cloud computing, technology development and deployment, and organizational change management to help support clients through successful transformations. 

“The Sarabi-StreetGooser partnership is a powerful combination. StreetGooser’s understanding of complex digital product interactions, its deep engineering expertise, and Agile, collaborative approach is uniquely complimentary to how the Sarabi team works. We believe this helps to generate industry leading technology products and platforms,” said Peter Mukulu, Sarabi Tech Company’s founder and Chief Executive Officer. “With 14 sales offices across Africa, along with close-to-client locations in East Africa, West Africa and South Africa and the added capabilities of over 50 StreetGooser employees, this partnership will allow us to drive far more business impact for our clients.”

“Partnering with Sarabi Tech to deliver transformation for our clients will allow us to provide the very best business, travel technology solutions on which we’ll conceive, design, and build the next generation of transformative enterprise and digital products and platforms,” said John Varghese, StreetGooser CEO. “Together, working as one team, we will unlock the full potential of digital transformations and place our clients on the best path for success in the new digital business landscape.”

Additionally, StreetGooser will become part of the Sarabi Alliance Ecosystem, a network of partnerships that provides proprietary access to tools, technologies, and delivery capabilities that help Sarabi teams deliver breakthrough client results.

By virtually connecting Sarabi Tech’s more than 20 consultants with StreetGooser’s deep next-gen technology and engineering expertise, the collaboration represents a step-change in the way both businesses address the needs of the market.

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Posted on Author Peter Mukulu Categories Digital Lending, Learning Management

Technology trends remodeling the Retail Industry

2020 put businesses across industries in quite a challenging position. Many that struggled to keep up with the disruption reimagined their business models to function in the new normal. Retail is one of the industries that the pandemic affected the most. Although eCommerce and online shopping weren’t new concepts, they took centre stage, and many new technologies were adopted to redefine the retail process. The modern customer does everything virtually and has started to see the world differently. Therefore, retailers must develop unparalleled innovations to provide unmatchable online shopping experiences that meet customer expectations and changing demands.  Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics & Augmented and Virtual Reality have paved the way for digital transformation in the retail industry for years to come. This article will take you through the top technologies and trends that are transforming the retail industry and helping businesses to stay afloat in the current circumstance. 

  1. Omnichannel customer engagement 

Omnichannel customer engagement goes beyond making physical stores’ products available online. It is about engaging customers on new online channels such as social media, marketplaces, brick-and-mortar stores, and offering a frictionless shopping experience across various touchpoints. According to a study by eMarketer, cashier-less checkouts, curb side pickups, and streamlined digital experiences contributed to increased shopping frequency and improved sales in 2020. Therefore, omnichannel customer engagement is vital to interacting with customers and providing a consistent shopping experience across channels. Retailers must synchronize various channels such as social media, phone calls, online searches, chats, and physical stores, ensuring customers interact with the business at various points and are provided a personalized experience on each of them.  

  1. Data Analytics to track customer behaviour 

It is essential to track the customers’ behaviour and activities across all channels to create a more intuitive shopping experience for them. Data Analytics allows retailers to monitor the customers’ in-store and online store activities. It gives insights into various metrics such as the number of visits to their store per day, new and returning customers, and the success of their marketing initiatives. These insights allow retailers to make more informed decisions and better engage their customers.  

  1. Contactless payments and seamless checkouts 

The need of the hour for retailers is to provide a frictionless customer experience while keeping human touch as limited as possible. Cashier-less checkout technologies and contactless payments are in high demand due to the security, speed, and convenience they offer. Touch-free technology provides a convenient retail experience by scanning each item that a customer picks up using an app and sensors and automatically charging them for the things they have picked. Contactless checkouts will flourish in the retail sector, and retailers are working closely with FinTech companies to build quick and efficient contactless payment models.  

  1. Demand forecasting with Machine Learning 

There has been a vast difference in customer demand due to the pandemic. As a result, it has become a significant challenge for retailers to understand and predict customer demand and take necessary actions to meet the shifts in the market and stay on top of the industry. Data and Machine Learning can make forecasting customer demand more accurate while improving inventory management and supply chain management. Machine Learning-based demand forecasting lowers logistics and warehouse expenses, prevents overstocking, and supports sustainable production and consumption.  

  1. Hyper-automation with Artificial Intelligence 

Speed, agility, and efficiency are the critical factors that determine the success of a business. Artificial Intelligence-led automation makes the retail processes more cost-effective and the shopping experience more convenient for customers. AI systems can assist the customers by directing them to the store’s exact location and suggesting related items that might interest them. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enhances inventory management and distribution and warehouse management processes. It eliminates repetitive daily tasks that do not provide any additional value and improves service quality and compliance across the retail value chain. Soon, driverless vehicles and drones will also play a vital role in retail transformation.  

  1. Immersive shopping experience with AR and VR 

AR and VR enable retailers to make shopping more powerful and experience-driven. According to a recent study, by 2025, the AR and VR market will reach 1.1 billion globally. Since customers now shop more online than in brick-and-mortar stores, it is vital to give them a seamless ‘try-on’ experience to help them make quicker and better decisions. With Augmented Reality, customers can use their smartphone to bring products to life and see how they will look on themselves or in their homes. Companies like Sephora, IKEA, and Lego use AR and VR to make digital shopping a lot exciting and personalized. In addition, retailers can use experiential marketing and virtual fitting rooms to reduce their operating costs while providing safe and engaging experiences to their customers.  

The future of retail  

The adoption of emerging technologies has saved the retail industry from drowning and help in tackling the disruptions caused by the pandemic. As customers continue to shop and work online, these technologies show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.  Sarabi Tech is helping retail businesses in adopting new technologies to redefine their processes and offer their customers a safe and immersive shopping experience. We are digital architects, domain practitioners, and technology experts working towards fostering a digital retail world. To know more about our services and offerings and discuss potential growth opportunities, get in touch with us. 

 

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