Detego, a specialist in real-time business intelligence for the fashion retail industry, is launching Detego InStore 4.2, making it the first vendor to offer in-store software with comprehensive functionalities for omni-channel retailing. Many international fashion retailers, including G-Star and Marc O’Polo, already use Detego InStore for providing real-time transparency on individual items across multiple channels. Following the introduction of Detego software and RFID tags on every item of clothing, a recent pilot with one global fashion brand revealed that it was able to boost sales and improve inventory management across its mobile, store and online business. Other live projects have shown Detego’s software to increase merchandise inventory accuracy from an industry average of around 75 percent to up to 99 percent. The latest release features a number of standard applications for omni-channel retailing, including ‘click & reserve’, ‘ship-from-store’ and ‘return-to-store’, enabling fashion retailers to more effectively manage popular services like same-day deliveries.
“Detego InStore bridges the gap between online and offline retailing and allows fashion retailers to support their customers at every touchpoint, along the entire customer journey,” says Uwe Hennig, CEO at Detego. “It means that stocks will be used more intelligently and omni-channel retailing strategies can be implemented in a more cost-efficient way.”
The cloud-based Detego retail software differs from many rivals by providing item-level visibility of merchandise, whatever the channel, as well as offering a complete in-store solution with comprehensive omni-channel applications (including hardware, service components and updates), all for a monthly subscription fee, rather than large upfront investment. The software is particularly geared towards fashion retailers because of the need to closely monitor so many ranges, styles, colours and sizes, as well as the inherent costs of over-supply and discounting. Detego says that franchisees and consession stores are also built into the software’s omni-channel set-up to ensure a positive brand experience across all channels for customers.
“Consumers no longer distinguish between online and offline, or brand-owned and franchise stores, but rather expect a seamless shopping experience across all channels,” says Hennig. “And this can be achieved without the constraint of increasing stocks in stores.”
Today’s consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across all channels and omni-channel-services that really work. These expectations are too often not met by retailers, leading to customer disappointment and revealing the big gap between marketing promises and the omni-channel reality. In the high competitive fashion industry, the question is no longer whether retailers need to get ready for omni-channel, but when, in order not to lose customers but being able to offer them a positive customer experience across all channels.
This webinar reveals what steps are essential to implement and deliver cost-efficient and successful omni-channel services.
On Thursday, September 15th 2016, the official opening event of the Intel IoT Ignition Lab London took place.
The joint showcase of Intel and Detego gave retailers the possibility to experience the latest in-store technology and resulting business benefits. Real-time insights into merchandise flow and customer behaviour as well as newly gained store KPIs, enable fashion retailers to optimise their store business and to offer customers a positive customer experience.
Detego’s software suite for real-time analysis and article transparency for the fashion retail industry is part of the Intel® Retail Sensor Platform ecosystem.
For more information, please get in touch: events@detego.com
Detego, a provider of business intelligence for the highly-competitive fashion industry, announced today that the company is partnering with Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW), to provide retailers with the ability to seamlessly incorporate real-time analytics and merchandise visibility at the item-level, enable retailers to interact with their customers and bring them on innovative ‘digital’ journeys, and transform their businesses without the need to replace their existing technology infrastructure.
The Detego suite provides granular insights into a retailers inventory, including real-time, item-level location (in the store, backroom and warehouse), a hands-free RFID system, comprehensive analytics and reporting. Software AG’s Digital Business Platform provides the “Integration glue’ to easily incorporate the Detego suite with their ERP and CRM systems, as well as their overall IT infrastructure.
Oliver Guy, retail industry director, Software AG said: “Digital transformation is a disruptive force that helps retailers become significantly more competitive and remain healthier for the long term as rapid change obliterates traditional business methods. By connecting to, and orchestrating across, a retailers’ IT ecosystem, the combined solution of Software AG’s Digital Business Platform and the Detego suite introduces an entirely fresh way to interact with customers, to promote unique value propositions, and to go to market in diverse and exciting ways.”
Detego enables fashion retailers to leverage one of their greatest investments – their brick and mortar stores – by transforming them into omni-channel hubs. Partnering with Software AG enables Detego to set a new benchmark in rapid and cost-efficient deployment of in-store software.
Uwe Hennig, chief executive officer, Detego, said: “Retailers around the globe are striving to create an omni-channel shopping experience. We are delighted to be working with Software AG by providing powerful new capabilities that evolve existing business models and design innovative omni-channel experiences, optimize legacy retail systems, and will generate new revenue streams. Time, cost and investment protection are key factors for fashion retailers when implementing digital store and omni-channel strategies.”
Software AG helps many retailers with their omni-channel strategies. Understanding inventory across the business is a first step towards being able to fulfill customer promises in an omni-channel environment. Without it, excess inventory and missed orders can result.
Oliver Guy also noted: “Importantly, digital transformation is more than an IT upgrade or add-on; it’s a completely different way to think and achieve things. Software AG understands this and introduced the Digital Business Platform to enable this digital transformation from retail store to digital showroom. And, since retailers must be able to connect to different, disparate merchandize and ecommerce systems from multiple technology vendors, Software AG offers a vendor agnostic approach to system integration. This means there is no vendor lock-in or lock-out to worry about.”
The combined Detego/Software AG solution is available on Software AG’s Digital Marketplace – a one-stop shop for digitalization solutions and development essentials from Software AG, its partners and customers.
For more information on omni-channel transformation using the Digital Business Platform, please visit: http://connected-retail.softwareag.com/.
Omni-channel is currently the biggest challenge that the fashion retail industry faces. According to a recent study, more than two thirds of customers long for a consistent shopping experience without any limits, but only 10 percent of fashion retailers can deliver on these expectations. Too often, online retail is seen as a rival to the physical stores. Customers, however, request a genuine link between online channels and brick-and-mortar stores, for click-and-collect services that work, for fast ship-from-store processes and for a consistent brand and shopping experience.
How can omni-channel work? For retailers and customers?
The requested omnichannel services only work smoothly and efficiently when the right basis exists:
- Article Availability: reliable article availability information
- Click-and-Collect: reservations in favoured store in real-time
- Instore-Ordering: enable in-store orders connecting all channels
- Return-to-Store: return online-ordered articles in the store
- Ship-from-store: avoid single picking in the DC and make use of store stock
Basis for successful omni-channel services
Detego, focusing on fashion retail processes, supports you in laying the basis for successful omni-channel services. Only with a transparent, real-time view on store and online inventories, retailers can deliver on the omni-channel promise and don’t disappoint their customers.
- Securing inventory visibility at any store at any time
- Make online inventories available in all stores
- Notify store personnel about click-and-reserve orders via alerts
- Flag reserved articles and remove them from available store stock or add them to store stock if not picked up
- Ship articles directly from the store
- Add online-ordered articles to available store stock after returned in stores
- Connect online and offline channels through in-store ordering
Webinar | Omnichannel
From Myth to Master Plan
Gain valuable insights into how successful fashion retailers offer the perfect customer service across all channels and how you can lay the foundation for efficient omni-channel retailing.
Did we spark your interest?
When talking “Analytics”, retailers address online shops but forget their top sellers: the stores
With an increasing number of collections of ever shorter time intervals, fashion retailers drive an enormous marketing effort to promote the new collections in their stores. As a result, it is only logical to implement the 5 common factors of performance measurement:
- What is the conversion rate per campaign?
- What kind of cross-selling offers are well received by customers and which are not?
- What is the bounce rate – abandonment in the fitting room?
- Which articels of a specific campaign are actively moved?
- What is the level of service quality by the sales personnel?
Detego provides valuable store KPIs – on a weekly, daily or hourly basis – just whenever information on the relation between customer behaviour and the product range is needed: in the long term, in the medium term or in time before the current campaign period ends.
Detego InStore combined with Fixed Reader Infrastructure
Fixed RFID readers enable Detego InStore as well as Detego InReports to provide real-time data on the following key insights:
- What article combinations are being taken into the fitting room
- What articles never make it to the fitting room
- To what extent is the new collection well recieved (tried-on) by customers
- Where exactly are articles located in the store, in order to eliminate a time-consuming search for an article
and functionalities:
- LIVE-article availability is displayed on a touchscreen in the fitting room
- Click & Reserve function is offered directly in the fitting room for pickup in another store
- „Call-for-Assistance“ button for an interactive customer service
- Digital recommendations (Cross-selling)
- Store-to-Store comparison
- Stock accuracy of nearly 100% – without manual stocktaking
In-Store Analytics light up the dark
In an omni-channel environment, marketing and sales activities in the online shop are analysed with relatively high expenses. Conversion rate, cost-per-order, bounce rate and many other key figures are measured and evaluated regularly. All relates to one overall objective: permanent web-shop optimisation for more targeted offers and better Service.
But what happens in the store?
Better understand your customers’ preferences.
Optimise your product presentation according to these peferences.
Identify slow movers and take appropriate actions.
Webinar | Analytics
Real-time analytics in the store – Measureable KPIs for more transparency
Learn how to transform your bricks and mortar stores into digital hubs of real-time actionable data that will drive your revenues and efficiencies up. Allowing you to optimise your processes, campaigns and store activities through predefined KPIs.
Did we spark your interest?
Fashion Retail and RFID are a perfect fit which is proved by many major fashion retail chains that have already moved to in-store RFID with excellent results. RFID makes it possible to easily identify articles and have full merchandise visibility. Successful fashion retailers go one step further and use more of the hidden potential behind real-time article transparency, laying the foundation for overcoming their greatest strategic challenges, among them omni-channel and digitalisation.
This webinar provides insights how international fashion retailers are laying the right foundation for their successful strategies, and how they use RFID as a base to differentiate in the extremely competitive segment of fashion retail.
The one-size-fits-all sales approach is outdated. In the store, intelligent systems are needed to provide the customer with a personalised experience. Key elements for this are individual and personalised recommendations from the current product range and simplified processes that give stores associates more time for the customers.
In this webinar you find out how “Data Driven Empowerment” activates cross-selling potential, increases the number of articles per receipt and finally leads to satisfied customers and happy retailers.
Follow Your Future – Your Customer Will Get There Faster than You Think
In retail, it’s no longer just about the product, but rather about satisfying customers’ expectations. Of course, the design and quality of garments still play an important role when it comes to making profits in fashion retail, however, the way sales takes place today, and more importantly in the future, is much more crucial.
Is your store ready for the “digital future”?
Fashion retailers in the UK, the US and Asia are paving the way for the digital evolution, which is impacting all industries and has already arrived in their stores:
- Digital Showrooms
- Virtual Fitting Rooms equipped with magic mirrors that allow live projections
- Live streaming of fashion shows
- Push promotions via smartphones
- Personal shopper that digitally supports cross-selling
Apart from a stylish store set-up, what else will inspire customers to be more loyal to the brand?
- Digital brand presentation through temporary “pop-up stores”
- Multi-function mirrors: virtual fitting, recommendations, location finder, videos, alterations, etc.
- Mobile customer loyalty card (providing greetings, rebate coupons, product information)
- Shopping advice that is entirely focused on the customer
- Imperceptible theft prevention
- Real-time tracking for availability enquiries
Which technologies are needed to provide such a shopping experience?
The purist showroom of the future and the associated promotional pop-up store require real-time knowledge about the availability of articles in all possible variations. Whereas, just one size of every item of the collection is displayed on the sales floor. But how does a retailer keep track of the availability of all sizes and more importantly how to prevent breaking brand promises to the customer due to out-of-stock situations? The customer demands reliable and immediate information about the availability of the desired article, otherwise customers move on to the next store of the competition.
Analysis means leaving nothing to chance
It all starts with digitalisation in the store. Article transparency is the key to success: useful dashboards allow the store manager to monitor which articles are on the sales floor, when the new collection will arrive at the store, which articles are sold more often than others and which store zones offer better merchandise presentation opportunities – and all that at any time. Current real-time data is needed to efficiently offer click & reserve, in order to be able to provide customer with information in order to turn sales people into competent advisors equipped with expert cross-selling tactics. This is how to get the customer not only to spend more time in the store, but also to buy more items per store visit.
Omni-Channel – Putting a strategy into practice
Looking back, it becomes clear that the much sought after omni-channel customer has been painfully neglected and plainly ignored by in store sales personnel for a long time. The retailers have come to realise that they need to rethink their views in order to stay profitable. This starts with building the right foundation: Only real-time information leads to the right decisions, prevents out-of-stock situations and unburdens the sales staff from excessive administrative activities. Ultimately, there’s more time for customers, which is more motivating for the sales personnel who act as fashion advisors and use their interpersonal skills to contribute to the profitability of the store.
The Omni-Channel Challenge
The omni-channel challenge is to distribute the merchandise more precisely – in a way that it can be sold. Based on real-time-analytics, those in charge have the information they need in order to run their business successfully. Analysis show, for example, that online stores sell more of the traditional bestsellers, while seasonal impulse purchases make up more of the everyday sales in the brick-and-mortar stores. Furthermore, reports reveal, e.g. that in terms of omni-channel operations, stores in a specific geographic region require more shirts in i.e. XXL than others. In addition to increased sales, the targeted flow of goods also enhances customer loyalty and allows for an enormous reduction in costs. Any surplus merchandise does not necessarily have to end up in an outlet store where profit margins seem to fall endlessly. Instead, such items can be moved to the stores where they yield the intended earnings, in a timely manner.
The fashion retailer who distributes via multiple channels is able to integrate them more closely as to know exactly which articles are in stock in which location, thus ready to be sold. The customer can order online directly in the store, try-on the article and buy it the next day. Therefore, transparency in terms of article inventory is essential along the entire supply chain.
The customer is able to see all articles and their exact location on a display in real-time. Inventory will be kept synchronised over all channels in real-time. The winter jacket available in stores is also available online and can be ordered and delivered to the customer’s home address. In case of any mispurchases, the customer simply returns the item to the nearest store where it is immediately charged-back into stock.
Today there may still be some challenges in omni-channel operations to overcome, but in the future everything will run smoothly…assuming that real-time article transparency is a reality.
Detego, the market leader in real time business intelligence for fashion retail, is the first vendor to offer in-store software that provides out-of-the-box support for fixed RFID readers.
Removing the need for store assistants to manually scan using handheld RFID readers, the hands-free reader system with Detego InStore creates complete inventory transparency and near 100% inventory accuracy and provides completely new insights into the in-store business. The implementation of Detego InStore and state-of-the art, hands-free RFID technologies enables fashion retailers to both automatise processes and reduce administrative duties, freeing staff to focus on customer service. In combination with increased inventory transparency, this leads to an enhanced shopping experience and a higher sales conversion rate. For retailers looking to implement an omnichannel strategy, Detego InStore and fixed reader infrastructure lays the right foundation through constant real-time transparency on item level.
Retail digitalisation and omnichannel strategies put a burden of transparency on merchandise flow and efficient channel coordination. Detego InStore with fixed reader infrastructure enables fashion retailers to automatically collect data from their entire range of articles in real-time with no scanning needed. This provides them with a reliable inventory and transparency without human intervention, meaning high quality data at a low operational expense.
The implementation of fixed reader infrastructure and real-time analytics opens up completely new opportunities for fashion retailers to gain deeper insights into their in-store operations and how to actively manage them. Through constant transparency of the flow of goods, a retailer can analyse the movement of products in-store, revealing insights such as which items are most frequently tried-on and subsequently bought; or those which never make it to the fitting room or Point of Sale. This analysis helps to avoid out-of-stock situations and enables fashion retailers to optimise their offerings and product presentation for higher revenue generation.
The RFID-based Detego Suite for real-time analytics and article transparency is already successfully in use by many leading fashion retailers. For Detego InStore with fixed reader infrastructure, Detego provides a competitive fixed monthly rate, including the hardware and software as a complete package, allowing customers to benefit from measurement and analysis of customer behaviour at a low cost.
Uwe Hennig, CEO of Detego, commented: “In today´s world of omnichannel retailing, article accuracy across all systems is no longer optional. RFID applications in fashion retail have already proven their business benefits. Fixed ceiling readers have now reached a level of technical sophistication and price point that allows for constant and fully automated stocktaking on the sales floor. We are glad to be the first software provider to offer in-store software for fixed readers for the fashion retail market. Successful customer implementations of this software have proven that hands-free reader infrastructure and real-time analytics open up completely new possibilities for managing and optimising in-store operations.”