How Intelligent Automation is Driving Retail of Tomorrow

The evolution of Intelligent Automation has paved the way for industries to accelerate their business processes much faster than ever. And in the retail sector, retailers are rapidly becoming involved in this tech as it has the ability to alter the customers' shopping experience more impactfully. In a global study by IBM and NRF, around 40 percent of retail and consumer product companies currently are leveraging intelligent automation, while the number is expected to reach 80 percent by 2021.

Today, retail customers expect an instinctive, seamless and error-free experience while interacting with a brand. Thus, intelligent automation brings efficiency to the complete retail product life-cycle. It transforms it into a faster, cost-efficient, error-free, regulatory compliant and secure process with high accessibility and traceability.

In the coming years, intelligent automation will become the norm as it is already assisting retailers to advance in-store shopping by utilizing data. With intelligent automation, retailers are personalizing the customers' shopping experience, moving through troves of data to create offerings to each customer. However, there is no certainty that this technology will alter the way retailers run and offer business experience to their customers.

Let's look at the world's top retailers leveraging intelligent automation to drive their sales growth and are providing a tremendous shopping experience.

In recent times, the retail giant Walmart has made substantial investments in intelligent technologies, making the company the third-largest IT investor in the world after Amazon and Google's parent company Alphabet. The retail giant is spending much capital on technologies to develop both effective and integrated systems. In this way, Walmart's mobile app chatbot Jetblack offers a personal shopping service where customers can order their requirements through a message style interface with voice capabilities.

Walgreens, the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States, is also transforming its business through a collaboration with Alphabet's medical tech unit Verily that leverages data science and artificial intelligence tools for better health outcomes to chronic health issues.

Also, e-commerce giant Amazon has radically changed the way people shop since its inception. The company has its own AI-driven and integrated CRM system that provides shoppers with tailored offers and promotions, recommendations and customer support.

These top retailers, among others, are investing huge debt and capital in integrated technologies driven by intelligent automation to gain in-depth insights into their customers to better target them at the right time with the right offers and recommendations. With these integrated technologies from brands, shoppers now want the same experience, whether they are in front of their workstations or inside a shopping mall.

Intelligent automation in retail can further serve a significant technological breakthrough that has the potential not only to develop, but to redefine the way companies perform. According to a report, almost 62 percent of retailers are investing in big data automation. This is largely because, artificial intelligence is infused into robotic process automation (RPA) within intelligent automation, powering machines to learn and create suggestions and attempt to make decisions over time.

Moreover, retailers need to refocus on innovating the customer experience to drive sales growth. And doing so, retailers have to able to develop new practices by delivering personalized shopping support. So, as we move to the future, retailers need to deliver a high-quality customer experience and intelligent automation here will help them in this process by altering how they perform earlier.