Retail & Consumer Goods

Microsoft's Viewpoint

Never have there been such dramatic and tectonic shifts in consumer shopping behaviors, preferences, and expectations as we are seeing right now. It’s imperative for retailers and consumer goods companies to adapt and to respond, and the best-in-class put the customer at the heart of their businesses instead of playing lip service to customer centricity. They up their game, getting closer to the shopper, optimizing all their channels to market as part of a single, integrated strategy for driving compelling customer experiences while controlling cost. Realizing this requires strategic investments across multiple areas of the business, and it requires IT solutions that are agile, dynamic, and integrated.

Microsoft recognizes these challenges, many of which we share. We are unique in the industry in that we are a retailer, a consumer goods company and a solutions and technology provider. Leveraging all our own technology and experience as well as that of our broad eco-system of solution partners, we strive to work with our retail and consumer goods customers to Deliver the Future of Technology Today, creating seamless and personal shopping experiences that are differentiated from the competition. There is no longer the need to wait for the next big technological innovation. We see the future unfolding today. We help our customers leverage the best of the current “state of the art,” enabling the future on the tried-and true technologies of today as well as solving the challenges facing them today.

  • Connect With Consumers
  • Empower Your People
  • Changing Business Models
  • As the landscape of consumer technology shifts rapidly, today’s CMOs and marketers must ask the critical question of how to connect directly with the digital consumer in new ways, through multiple channels to offer a tailored, relevant and engaging experience to drive conversion and loyalty.

  • The democratization of information on the internet has changed customer behavior and it is rapidly starting to have the greatest impact at the store level. Customers know more about products, prices, stock availability and the overall marketplace than ever before. As a result retailers are challenged to empower store associates with tools to become more intimate with their customers, seamlessly bridging the gap between online and offline shopping.

  • Microsoft provides a comprehensive ‘operations management’ platform (on premise and/or in the cloud) that helps retail and consumer goods customers further optimize their resources and processes (such as supply chain management, workforce management and collaborative analytics) to drive further margin improvement and free up funding for future innovation and growth.

Solutions

Resources

Customer Stories

Unilever (UK)
8.31.2012

Unilever (UK)

Unilever Transitions to Private Cloud, Expects to Double in Size without Increasing IT CostsRead More
Icebreaker
7.25.2012

Icebreaker

Being able to hand off management of global document sharing and calendaring to Office 365 allows us to focus on those areas that are a key to our business moving forward. Read MoreWatch Video
Hy-Vee
5.30.2012

Hy-Vee

Hy-Vee Boosts Performance, Speeds Data Delivery, and Increases Competitiveness Read More
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