Leveraging new age technologies in the retail and BFSI sectors and their benefits - Anjna Bhati , Director - Data Analytics & AI, BluePi Consulting
The technology landscape in India, as in the rest of the world, has witnessed a paradigm shift since early 2000. Today, both mature and new-age technologies are game-changers, driving digital business transformation across all industrial sectors. The Covid-19 pandemic has convinced businesses that were earlier reluctant to embrace the new-age digital path to extensively adopt it. Like other industrial sectors, both Retail and Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sectors are adopting the digital business model for enhancing business operations and customer experience in general.
According to RBI, the total retail payments via different digital channels was Rs. 3,58,85,325 crore in FY 2021 as compared to Rs. 2,80,25,238 crore in FY 2018-19.
Furthermore, in today’s high-speed connectivity environment, engaging with end-customers has got complex across multiple touch-points involving several layers. In order to stay ahead of the curve considering all these factors, organisations have to make informed business decisions and manage risks by leveraging new-age technologies.
New-age, tech-powered Retail of the future
For the new-age customer, buying a product is more of an experience and modern technology has enhanced it further. Retailers are adopting disruptive technology and tools for supply-chain management, business operations and customer experience to gain an edge in the highly dynamic environment. Going omnichannel to suit customer requirements is one of the aspects for providing an improvised shopping experience, by the retail organisations.
Cloud computing brings in the efficiency and effectiveness in managing retail operations with cloud data platforms. Predicting market and customer trends are key to make informed decisions for retailers. This is where big data analytics comes into play, to develop an effective business strategy by leveraging customer insights. Dramatic improvement in revenues with increase in sales are seen too with the deployment of this technology.
Data science and AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) technologies help in demand forecasting and inventory management by processing time-sensitive market data at different locations.
Modernisation of applications, where legacy software is aligned to current business requirements by re-architecting them for better agility, scalability and compliance among others, has several advantages too. This will help retail customers for faster time-to-market and better quality of the applications and other benefits.
Micro-services is a boon for organisations as it provides the opportunity for innovation in isolation, without impacting the rest of the business operations.
New-age technologies certainly have the potential to drive future retail innovations for customers’ delight.
Highly competitive BFSI sector is not left behind in the new-age
Traditional banking’s face-to-face customer interactions on a daily basis is a thing of the past. The number of customers, across age groups, using digital transactions has significantly increased since the initial phase of the lockdown after the outbreak of the pandemic. Customers, having enjoyed the convenience of digital interactions in other walks of life, are demanding seamless experience from banks too and want to access an omnichannel digital banking platform from any device, anywhere, anytime!
Banking apps can be modernised leading to longer customer engagement and valuable customer experience and the much-needed competitive edge.
A microservices architecture will transform banking services where monolithic applications and converted to self-contained services that can be scaled independently without impacting the entire systems. Microservice-based digital banking solutions are gaining traction.
Financial institutions have very high volume of unstructured data which requires to be analysed for developing new, unique offerings and delivering personalised customer experiences to stay ahead of the curve with unique differentiators in the industry. Data Science plays a key role here.
The sector is now able to strengthen its operations for better customer experience by automating processes and addressing frauds and cyber-security risks.
Predictive analytics is leveraged to build relevant go-to-market strategies by forecasting the market and customer requirements.
To harness the several advantages of the new-age technologies, the banking services sector has to focus on delivering personalised customer experience. These sophisticated technologies are also improving employee productivity and delivering better customer engagement.
As we step into the future of the digital age, it is for certain we will witness more technological innovations that will further re-shape the retail and BFSI industries, among others, to deliver better customer delight.
Hence, businesses have to go beyond just choosing the right tool and technology, by establishing a digitally-driven culture across the entire organisation. Employees have to be inspired and trained to develop new-age skillsets that will make it easier for them to embrace the new-age change!