Retailers need omni-channel ways and cloud to win: SAP

“We believe that the most successful retailers are the ones that have a 360 degree view of their customers’ needs and buying behaviours,” Peter Akbar, chief customer officer for fashion at SAP told fibre2fashion.com.

“Historically, retailers have managed their fashion retail and fashion wholesale or manufacturing channels as different business operations. They often run separate solutions on different technology platforms with different data models that tie processes,” he explains.

But beyond that, retailers will need to give their customers a consistent shopping experience across all channels, he asserts. Commerce and transactions will need to be consistent across all channels.

Akbar also stresses on the importance of cloud-based applications in retail operations. Moving to cloud helps companies boost their productivity, cut down expenses, and improve their visibility in operations and data by modifying the way businesses access and use software applications and data – moving from on-premise hardware and software to resources that exist on a secure cloud.

He informs that by adopting the cloud model, retailers will not change the way they do business, but only the way they access and share information.

“Retailers will eventually move towards cloud solutions in order to access real-time data, to scale faster and to reduce the workload of their IT departments in the future,” he predicts.

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Fibre2Fashion News Desk