How a brick-and-mortar group leads digital revolution

Spar India is turning fully digital to offer seamless customer experience and efficient operations with traditional brick-and-mortar retail format

SUNIL NAIR

SPAR INDIA

We have implemented the Queue Buster innovation designed to reduce waiting time at queues using a handheld device and NFC which again puts the customer at the forefront and by easier and faster checkout process, we are ensuring that the shopping experience is helpful and smooth.

E-Commerce has created quite a few ripples in the Indian retail market. This trend is putting all the retailers on the job to overcome operational and technological challenges to provide customers an omni-channel experience. Retailers will continue to realise they need to connect with users on multiple channels and touch points simultaneously.

Customers are looking for online access to in-store products, features and inventory information with various flexible options such as in-store pick up, home delivery and cash on delivery to respond these changing market dynamics, Spar India group initiated an omni-channel function which is the online channel as direct response to the changing nature of retail business. “With a strong IT backbone, the online channel integrates the virtual store experience with operational efficiency to drive free home delivery and same day delivery with multiple payment options and has been on the constant growth path,” explains Sunil Nair, Senior VP (Technology and Omni-Channel), Spar India (Landmark Group & Spar Netherlands Venture) .

This strategy was augmented with the help of digital kiosks. These have simple and easy-to-use interface and can be installed anywhere like IT parks and apartment complexes wherein a customer can simply order all his needs through few simple steps. The digital kiosk is the first-of-its-kind innovative retail solution and has a simple, easy and convenient interface. More importantly, it saves a lot of time and all one should do is to place an order on the easy-to-use digital kiosks with simple navigation and get their order delivered to the doorstep.

With SPAR digital kiosk customers will get an assortment of 20,000 product range, fresh products, great deals and home delivery. Most of all, they will get SPAR assurance of great service. There are a number of ways through which digital transformation is helping the company improve its revenue streams. One example is shop-floor assistant application which enables store staff to have access to sales and inventory data based on scanning of barcode of items. This helps the sales associate on the floor to evaluate and help the customers with the items they are looking for in real time.

Businesses around the world are investing in digital transformation strategies to reach new markets, improve interactions with customers and create operational efficiencies. Enterprises usually are cluttered with older, transaction-based systems that are infeasible or impractical to rip out because they still serve mission-critical business processes and reflect substantial investment in money and skills over the course of years.

Success in addressing this legacy landscape is crucial for Spar to be more agile in today's fast-paced market. “We are evaluating our technology maturity across various service layers. Where does every application stand in terms of Cloud adoption and virtualisation? Which are far along on the path to digital transformation, which are partially along and which are nowhere?” Nair opines.

Older companies will always be challenged to move as quickly as the digital natives, but the goals of digital transformation – speed of innovation, always-available services, and web scale – are well within their reach. “Some of the future frameworks we are working on are Cloud, IOT, AI and chat bots. We should see some of these projects getting actioned in a span of next eight to 12 months,” Nair says.