Roman Alekseev, CUSTIS: Retailers pass from tough post-crisis economy to point development

Roman Alekseev: If in 2016 the downward trend of retail turnover remained, then the 2017th showed signs of improvement of a situation. In the first quarter the rate of reduction of turnover slowed down, and in the second — was replaced by small positive dynamics. It is confirmed by data of Rosstat: in January – November turnover grew by 2.7% in comparison with the same period of 2016. Also indicators of consumer behavior improved: according to a research of Nielsen company, in the second half of the year the index of consumer confidence rose more than by 10%, this maximum value for the last five quarters.

Thus, the crisis phenomena become less sharp: in the conditions of still unstable Russian economy consumers begin to make more safely purchases look forward more optimistically. Retailers are ready to pass from tough post-crisis economy to the development strategy and point target implementation of innovations. With respect thereto owners of retail chain stores increase IT budgets to invest in perspective projects. I believe, such positive trend will remain also in 2018 if there are no serious economic shocks.

Roman Alekseev: Retail chain stores began to approach the choice of IT contractors more deliberately. In modern digital realities to remain competitive, the retailer should develop and keep up constantly with trends — to optimize internal processes, to master new sales channels, to improve interaction formats with the buyer.

Besides, being in a permanent competitive race, retail chain stores are forced to raise requirements to speed and volumes of changes. If they are carried out slowly, the retailer risks to be left in the basket of the industry which requires flexibility and dynamic scalability now.

In these conditions more and more heads of retail chain stores come to understanding that for carrying out the global conversions affecting key business processes it is necessary to look for not just IT contractors, and the technology partners and organizational consultants ready to give support at all stages of carrying out changes — from conceptual design before implementation. Success of similar projects is impossible without deep immersion in specifics of the industry and the business strategy of the customer, abilities it is not simple to introduce the best market practices, but to select and customize them under requirements of specific corporation. First of all — design of new business processes and organizational changes, and conversion of an IT landscape and technological solutions are minor also instrumentalna.

Roman Alekseev: In 2017 the problem of collecting and information analysis about behavior of buyers and employees became important. On the basis of data it is possible to calculate the optimal number of consultants in the hall, it is better to plan trade zones, to do the personalized offers, to flexibly regulate the prices and to reveal unfair actions of employees (attempt "wind" indicators, illegal manipulations with goods). Thus, retail chain stores more and more fixedly look narrowly at the technologies connected with processing of Big Data and unstructured information, machine learning.

Separately it is worth stopping on a solutions antifraud which, klasterizuya and analyzing data, on the basis of methods of machine learning reveal anomalies of behavior of employees. They allow to find uncommon fraudulent schemes which are difficult for detecting to the person in the shortest possible time and to take pro-active measures. At the same time results of work an antifraud systems are statistically proved, i.e. there is no subjective factor. Now we with partners carry out pilot projects in this perspective area.

One more topical issue — automation of the solution of process tasks which volume constantly increases. Assortment planning in shop belongs to them, for example. The need for technologies which proceeding from statistics will automatically calculate the need for goods and to create the plan of replenishment in scales of shop, a warehouse, network increases. It is important that a system was able to adjust the plan in real time under the influence of extraordinary factors (sharp change of weather, relevant trends, etc.). Within this subject our company develops the solution for category managers which creates the operating plan of replenishment of the range of shop. It is supposed that 80–95% of works will be automatically performed, and the specialist will be connected to process in exceptional cases.

Besides, last year showed that existence of proprietary mobile applications finally became a norm for retailers. First of all it is connected with need to adapt to the changed habits of buyers. According to App Annie company, the share of mobile shopping continues to grow steadily worldwide: in the first half of 2017 the number of loadings of applications for purchases increased by 20%, and the average user of phone monthly spent not less than 35 minutes in such applications. Being guided by these preferences, more and more retailers developed own mobile solutions.

Many retail chain stores estimated advantages of the mobile applications developed especially for personnel. They help consultants to be guided with a trading floor and the range, to offer goods, proceeding from preferences of the specific buyer and to make out the order (including goods from a warehouse or from other shop). One more undoubted plus — control of work of personnel: using mobile devices it is possible to keep track of location of the employee, to appoint to it tasks and to collect indicators for calculation of KPI.

Roman Alekseev: Implementation of online cash desks — a forced large-scale innovation for retail. It was not without problems: first, transition to the new equipment demanded big investments, secondly, on the first wave of implementation strong deficit of fiscal drives was felt, thirdly, there were misunderstanding with interpretation of wording of the law (many market participants did not understand whether they are obliged to have the cash register equipment of a new sample). Besides, at the end of December of the company endured the first large-scale failure in work of online cash desks which arose because of malfunctions in software. However, despite these factors, it is possible to tell with confidence that finally retailers successfully coped with difficulties and now systems function in the normal mode.

In my opinion, similar innovations — the natural stage of development of the industry answering to global trends of digitalization and centralization. Application of online cash desks does possible storage and accumulation of huge base on all purchases. In the future this information will bring great value: on its basis it is possible to form exact analytics of consumer activity in scales of the whole country.

Roman Alekseev: The cardinal changes caused by influence of world trends in 2018, most likely, will not happen. Domestic retailers crucially (in good sense) look at the western new products and implement only those which will bring undoubted value to business already now.

Omnichannel will still remain the most perspective subject. In 2017 the companies continued to cover different sales channels and were engaged in their integration. For example, wide circulation was purchased the loyalty program with uniform conditions for all channels. The fact that Internet giant, such as AliExpress, began to master offline - formats of sales also demonstrates to relevance of a trend of omnichannel, opening own showrooms. In 2018 interest in a question will be retained more and more players of the market will pass from words to implementation.

One more popular western trend — blockchain technology (blockchain). In 2017 retailers realized its value for workflow automation and logistics. In February M.Video and Sberbank stated a joint pilot project — testing of the platform for verification of factoring transactions with the help of a blockchain —. In 2018 probably the Russian companies will continue to investigate this subject.

Experiments with implementation of means of individual identification of goods, such as RFID, barcodes will continue Besides. In 2016 and 2017 the state carried out pilot projects on marking of fur coats and drugs and now is going to extend them to footwear, clothes, children's goods, alcohol, tobacco products.

Among perspective it is worth mentioning also virtual fitting rooms, 3D - mirrors, the systems of face recognition. So far retailers do not hurry to use these technologies everywhere, but continue to watch closely the first progress of colleagues on the market.