In a difficult economic climate, digital media provide an opportunity for retailers to differentiate themselves, increase customer loyalty, and optimize their costs. Today's value-driven customers are engaging in a digital lifestyle focused on interactivity and valuable online experiences. Things like user-generated content, social networking, and information-rich Web applications, originally included under the heading of "Web 2.0", are creating an overall shift in the customer shopping experience and in the expectations shoppers have for interacting with businesses, brands, and products.
Microsoft solutions for Connecting Commerce help retailers deliver powerful customer experiences fast while also driving down operational complexities and costs.
To succeed in reaching today's value-driven customers, retailers must create personal, interactive, and social experiences that engage and excite shoppers. And they must provide consistent experiences across a range of media, whether on the Web, on a mobile device, or in a store. This is an approach we call "Customer Centricity 2.0" - one that is focused on reaching customers with compelling experiences wherever they are."
Connecting with the new "e-savvy" customer
For most retailers, e-commerce is a fast-growing revenue channel and a key asset for building and maintaining customer loyalty. As technology and devices are integrated into customers' daily activities, customers are exploring and experiencing products in new ways. Members of Netgen and Gen X use technology in ways that previous generations did not, juggling messages from multiple media all at once. It's getting harder for advertisers to break through and have their messages heard. The growth of online social networking and the proliferation of blogging and product review sites offer more challenges and opportunities for retailers to reach a new and e-savvy generation of customers.
As retailers invent new avenues to interact with customers, e-commerce is becoming a key strategic differentiator. However, although e-commerce is central to most of their growth strategies, retailers' e-commerce solutions may have been developed separately from the rest of their business. This challenge makes it difficult to transact traditional and online business in an integrated way.
Microsoft enables retailers to deliver valuable, rich experiences to their customers through e-commerce solutions that are fully integrated with the retailer's business and e-commerce platforms that quickly and easily accommodate the creation of multichannel customer experiences. Microsoft solutions for Connecting Commerce help retailers deliver powerful customer experiences fast while also driving down operational complexities and costs.
The Microsoft advantage: An unmatched breadth of solutions for connecting retailers with the technology-savvy customer
Microsoft can offer the breadth of solutions, technologies, and experiences that retailers' customers crave. Microsoft represents a powerful partner with cost-effective solutions that better connect information, systems, and people to give retailers a competitive advantage through enhanced online customer experiences, easy-to-manage Web sites, and simplified integration across channels.
| Solutions | Business Challenges | Benefits |
|---|
Enterprise cloud servicesLeverage Microsoft-hosted services to easily and cost-effectively deliver an enhanced customer experience. | Addressing e-commerce business challenges Often, underlying systems are not integrated between online and offline operations. Business users need access to tools that provide an easy, consistent way to view, analyze, and act on customer activity across all channels. Addressing e-commerce technology challengesAn effective e-commerce platform must address a wide range of technology challenges. To maintain IT efficiency, technology choices made within an online business unit must integrate with the corporate IT infrastructure. In addition, the platform must be easily scaled to cope with continued growth in e-commerce. Retailers need the agility to quickly create compelling shopping experiences on newly emerging channels, such as gaming and mobile consumer devices. | Cross-channel integration With Microsoft solutions for Connecting Commerce, retailers can offer integrated management and reporting across all channels of customer interaction. Customer buying behavior can be tracked on each channel independently and across all of the channels as a whole. Promotions can be personalized and targeted to specific channels. And integrated management and reporting provide a single view of inventory and customer orders. |
E-commerce platform, infrastructure, and toolsImplement all of the technology assets that enable retailers to build, host, deploy, and maintain a commerce-enabled Web presence. | Meeting the demands of digital consumersDigital consumers expect consistent service and easy access to information regardless of the retail channel. For example, if they purchase online, customers want the option of picking up the product in a store on the same day. Enhanced Web experiences Microsoft offers powerful tools that enable developers and creative experts to work collaboratively to create wish lists, guided selling, product reviews, product comparisons, and personalized shopping. Leading-edge applications like Microsoft Silverlight power rich application experiences for truly compelling customer interactions. | Web and user experience development toolsCreate the look and feel necessary for a rich user experience using the same leading development and modeling tools that Web site designers and creative teams use. |
Consumer digital assetsEngage with the digital consumer, including digital advertising, online communities, consumer devices, search, and Web-based consumer content. | Capitalizing on revenue growth opportunitiesE-commerce is growing dramatically as more people go online to purchase products and services. To capitalize on this growth, retailers are looking to add new product categories and services to their online channels. | Growing the brandRetailers want to leverage brand equity across their available channels. They also want to interact with customers in new ways that leverage the growing social nature of the Internet while retaining a consistent brand. Easy-to-manage Web sites Microsoft solutions for Connecting Commerce provide a comprehensive range of solutions that make it easy to manage powerful online customer experiences. Microsoft offers a number of role-specific capabilities that are built into the solution, including business tools for managing content and product catalogs, extensive inventory functions for merchandisers, and comprehensive personalization options for marketers. |
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