Recent developments in mobile technologies such as availability of products like Smart Phone, Tablets etc. marks a paradigm shift in ways consumers shop and get information. Foreseeing this trend of growing usage of mobile apps and mobile sites companies are focusing on ways to enhance shoppers experience and enable internal operations.
In this post I would like to share some of the initiatives that CPG companies are taking to enhance shoppers’ experience and enable operations.
Enhancing Shopper Experience
- Bar Code scanners to get product information: Application such as Red Laser, TheFind help consumers to scan bar codes of the product and check prices across different channels and retailers. Also they can read product reviews to do an informed purchase. Many F&B companies are using this technology to display useful product information such as recipes, coupons, nutritional facts etc.
- Enabling Path to Purchase: Many companies are also working on initiatives to enable shoppers’ path to purchase such as creation of shopping lists, using GPS to travel to nearby stores, doing a mobile checkout and planning ways to stock products at home.
- Interactive In-Store experience: Rewarding loyal customers when they are inside the store is another area of focus. For example initiatives such as giving a personalized shopping experience, targeted promotions, wish lists, assist alerts etc. are enabling differentiated shopping experience.
Enabling Operations
- Automating approval process - Approvals is one of the processes that can be enabled using mobile technologies. This is applicable across all departments and shows considerable improvements in productivity. For example in one of the projects we were able to reduce the approval cycle time from 8 hours to 15 minutes.
- Social Media for Enterprise - Using Facebook kind of applications for enterprise is also a trend in many companies. One such application is Newsgator, which assists users in creating communities, managing innovation, micro blogging etc. Usage of such applications can have multifold benefits in terms of employee motivation, productivity, collaboration etc. Some early adopters are also trying to extend these functionalities to suppliers and customers.
These are some of innovation areas that I have seen being implemented but I welcome ideas/suggestions in this area that can be re-used to enhance shoppers’ experience and enable internal operations for various companies.
