Retail Asia - The future of retail is seamless

NAGAHISA OYAMA
TERESITA SY COSON
GEORGE QUEK
KISHORE BIYANI
HIROSHI OHNISHI
TANG WEE SUNG
BERNIE BROOKES
GOVIND SHRIKHANDE
PARK SEHUN
STEVE ANDERSON
MASATADA KOBAYASHI
TRUE
GRIT
RETAILERS IN ASIA-PACIFIC MEETING CHALLENGES
WITH PASSION AND PERSISTENCE TO SURVIVE AND
THRIVE IN THE EVER-CHANGING RETAIL LANDSCAPE
TRUE GRIT
The OMNI-CHANNEL
Revolution
The production of
Seamless shopping. Fast, secure transactions. 24/7 access to every possible sales channel with any device. Your customers have high demands.
Wincor Nixdorf Pte Ltd
151 Lorong Chuan
New Tech Park #05-01 A/B
Singapore 556741
Phone: +65 6747 3828
www.wincor-nixdorf.com
Create a great retail experience – built on the expertise of TP.net 5.5 for
store optimization and centralization of business intelligence. Feel the
difference with Wincor Nixdorf.
is sponsored by
Discover the new TP.net 5.5 at www.wincor-nixdorf.com/tpnet
Retail Asia 2014/2015
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The future of retail is seamless
To survive and thrive in the retail industry today calls for a broad overview of how
consumers are shopping, understanding their needs and demands. The reality is that the
‘Age of Digital Disruption’ is upon us and retailers all over the world are scrambling to find
an enticing consumer interface to engage, entertain and empower their customers in their
buying journey. While many retailers in Asia have risen to meet the new realities of retailing,
a key thing to note is seamless omni-channel retailing is the next big thing — thus,
Retail Asia brings you this Q&A with Thomas Fell, Wincor Nixdorf’s senior vice-president
of Retail, who declares that ‘The Future of Retail is Seamless’.
W
hat drives the omni-channel retailing trend?
Thomas Fell: The connected consumer is forcing the retailer to be
omni-channel. The consumer wants to shop in different ways and
simply expects that he can ‘hop’ across channels in a seamless way.
This is the reality for today’s consumers: I can do a search online and go to a store
to buy. I can shop the other way around — use the store as a showroom, then buy
online.
The interesting question is, in the future, what is online and what is offline
revenue for the retailer? Today, online and offline are viewed as separate. I
personally think that in a few years, we will not differentiate between
online and offline revenue because we simply cannot separate the
two.
It’s no longer online or offline, but mobile as well.
How do you treat a mobile purchase (transaction done
through a smartphone) in a physical store — is it online or
offline?
What is Wincor Nixdorf ’s ‘seamless omni-channel retailing’ initiative?
Fell: ‘Seamless’ for Wincor Nixdorf means that we can
work across all the different sales channels and we enable
the retailer to identify and execute customer transactions
over all these channels.
“Today, online and
offline are viewed as
separate. I personally
think that in a few years,
we will not differentiate
between online and offline
revenue because we simply
cannot separate the two.”
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“The retailer has two big systems in place — one for the
brick-and-mortar operation and one for the online shop.
How to bring them together now? You cannot throw
away one or the other, but have to intelligently integrate
them at the transaction level.”
This is my qualification for omnichannel retailers. I buy four articles
online and I want to return one of these
articles in your store. I come with the
article and I only have my name. Can
you identify the online transaction in
the store and are you able to execute the
return transaction in the store, and then
perhaps do a new transaction, all in a
seamless way?
At present most of the retailers I
speak with are not able to do so. Even if
they do, most of the time their processes
are manual because their systems are not
seamlessly integrated. So they take back
the article and put it aside, then move it
back to the logistical warehouse and sort
out what to do with it.
For now, they can still manage the
manual processes involved. In future,
they will not be able to because there
will be much more traffic [with the
rise of online and mobile transactions].
The omni-channel retailer has to have a
seamlessly integrated system to cope.
To me, it is seamless retail or out of
retail. To be seamlessly omni-channel,
you need all devices and systems to be
omni-channel-ready.
Our ambition at Wincor Nixdorf is
to help retailers offer customers a seamless experience in this evolving omnichannel sales environment.
What is the retailer’s challenge in
becoming omni-channel?
Fell: If we look at what retailers have
done in the e-commerce arena 10-15
years ago, they have mainly built up an
independent online sales channel. Their
e-commerce platform was run independently of the brick-and-mortar operation,
simply because their people running the
online channel said that to be fast and
agile in the online world they have to
keep the channels separate.
And this is causing some of the
problems today — they have different
merchandise management systems,
different sales channels, most of the time
different logistical systems, sometimes
even different assortments. So, if the
retailer does not have the article you
bought online in the store, you cannot
return it. Questions like that are coming
out more and more.
The retailer has two big systems in
place — one for the brick-and-mortar
operation and one for the online shop.
How to bring them together now? You
cannot throw away one or the other, but
have to intelligently integrate them at the
transaction level.
This is where Wincor Nixdorf ’s
vision for omni-channel retailing
software starts. Our core customers are
retailers who have hundreds of stores.
They are the No.1 or No.2 retailer in
their markets, like IKEA, Metro and
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Packages which facilitate easy
international expansion with the
inclusion of localisation techniques
taking into account in-country fiscal laws
and regulations.
We already have retailers starting
to implement TP.net 5.5 with roll-out
projects explicitly based on this software
advantage.
“We are working on how to generate
good consumer experiences in the
self-checkout process. The user
interface has to be much simpler
and easy-to-use as the customer is
doing the checkout himself.”
Carrefour. Many of them face this
online-offline integration challenge.
How does Wincor Nixdorf help?
Fell: Software is the key to enabling
omni-channel retailing. From a hardware
perspective, all the technology pieces are
there. The new part is mobile … how to
build a mobile POS system. So there is
some new mobile hardware innovation
to adopt. But beyond that, it’s a lot to do
with software integration.
Essentially the retailers have implemented in their brick-and-mortar
business an EPOS system, a store
merchandise management system that are
connected to the central IT system, plus
a separate online platform.
Our idea is we can take the checkout logic that is used for physical store
checkout and put it onto the e-commerce
platform as a checkout engine. If you put
articles on a belt for physical checkout or
if you put articles in an online basket on
the e-commerce platform for checkout,
the process and transaction logic from
that point on should be the same. So we
put in the same checkout logic to enable
seamless transactions.
The crux is the POS system. Five
years back, the discussion was about the
functionality of the retail POS system;
today it’s about capability — how
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seamlessly can you integrate the POS
systems.
Linking all the systems and processes between the physical and online
channels poses huge IT challenges for
many brick-and-mortar retailers whose
IT infrastructures have been designed
for physical store operations and have
grown over the years to include highly
heterogeneous systems. Omni-channel
software is essential for integrated control
of the various processes that are running
in “silos” today.
What is Wincor Nixdorf ’s omnichannel solution?
Fell: Our latest software, TP.net 5.5,
is a truly omni-channel platform. The
new release features a cross-channel,
merchandise management functionality
that ensures a consistent link between
sales, merchandise and customer data
flows and allows cross-channel order
processing, item availability checks and
mobile functionalities.
A new software component, called
TPCustomer360, not only offers greater
efficiency but also allows a 360-degree
view of consumers’ behaviour across all
channels and has a customer relationship management solution in place that
enables targeted promotions.
TP.net 5.5 also features Country
In what ways is Wincor Nixdorf ahead
of the game?
Fell: We have invested a lot of R&D
effort in the EPOS technology to enable
seamless checkout.
The user interface is becoming very
important. We are workinzg on how
to generate good consumer experiences
in the self-checkout process. The user
interface has to be much simpler and
easy to use as the customer is doing the
checkout himself.
The next level of our POS
development is to focus on the user
experience and the personalisation
element, that is, making the checkout
system more intelligent and intuitive.
For example, the checkout machine
may learn from the transaction history
data that the customer does self-checkout
regularly and therefore would not need to
be shown a demonstration video.
A big area of our development is
mobile enablement. Our declared goal
is to expand business with mobile and
cashless payment systems.
For us, mobility in the retail
environment encompasses three areas:
Mobility of store staff in managing
inventory, ordering, customer service;
mobility of consumers in using their own
devices in stores or devices provided to
them to order, scan and pay for products;
and mobile payment solutions.
The openness to integration will stay
a big topic for the future. If retailers are
to be able to manage sales, orders and
deliveries across all channels in a seamless
manner, they have to be able to get data
from all sources and bring data to all
sources.
The retailer’s IT systems must be able
to integrate merchandising and customer
data, as well as the status of personalised
marketing campaigns across all channels.
Cash and non-cash payment processing
needs to be processed as well as clearing
of downpayments, final payments
and refunds. A consistent database
of products, prices, promotions and
customer data is essential throughout all
shopping channels. ra
TRUE GRIT
IT solution partner of choice for IKEA
At present, IKEA is a user of the CINEO technology from Wincor Nixdorf which ensures that cash collected in the cash offices of all IKEA
stores is processed securely, transparently and cost-efficiently.
OVER the next two years, IKEA will
install 12,000 EPOS (electronic point
of sale) systems from Wincor Nixdorf in
around 300 IKEA stores in 25 countries.
The installation underscores the
confidence that the global home furnishing retailer has in its IT solution partner
of choice. For the first time, IKEA is
entrusting its EPOS infrastructure and
the operation of its software and system
to just one provider: Wincor Nixdorf.
At present, IKEA is a user of the
CINEO technology from Wincor
Nixdorf which ensures that cash
collected in the cash offices of all IKEA
stores is processed securely, transparently
and cost-efficiently. Furthermore, express
checkout systems from Wincor Nixdorf
are in use in many IKEA stores to enable
self-service at the POS when customers
pay by card.
The core of the new contract is the
installation and operation of the POS
infrastructure and its peripherals, but
the project also includes the installation, operation and further development
of Wincor Nixdorf ’s TP.net software,
which will replace the software used at
IKEA to date.
TP.net will control all the checkout processes in every IKEA store
and consolidate all the data across the
group. Wincor Nixdorf will also provide
“For IKEA, having
a complete solution
provided by a single
source, Wincor Nixdorf,
means not only less
coordination in equipping
our stores worldwide but also
significantly lower roll-out and
operational costs.”
— Paolo Cinelli, CIO of IKEA Group
services to support the operation of the
EPOS solutions.
“For IKEA, having a complete solution provided by a single source, Wincor
Nixdorf, means not only less coordination in equipping our stores worldwide
but also significantly lower roll-out and
operational costs,” says Paolo Cinelli,
CIO of IKEA Group.
Wincor Nixdorf ’s TP Application
Suite ensures that IKEA benefits from a
uniform, end-to-end and internationally
available software platform that Wincor
Nixdorf continues to develop further.
As part of its services, Wincor
Nixdorf will provide updates of
software and system applications, and
also provide a user help desk to handle
special requests from IKEA’s employees
and problems that can be solved by
users.
In addition, Wincor Nixdorf ’s
remote monitoring of all system states
— via the Wincor Nixdorf eServices
Platform — will ensure high system
availability and system efficiency. ra
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Be connected, go omni-channel
Omni-channel retailing is an imperative for retailers in Asia-Pacific, states Andrew Phay,
Wincor Nixdorf’s Asia-Pacific regional vice-president - Retail Division. Why must this be so?
“Your customers are connected and it’s imperative you are connected as well,” says Phay,
adding that retailers need to quickly create new touchpoints in order to stay ahead of the
competition and provide customers a truly seamless shopping experience.
T
he omni-channel retailing opportunity is developing faster in Asia-Pacific than,
perhaps, anywhere else in the world. And Wincor Nixdorf ’s regional head of
Retail is ready to take on the challenge of getting retailers to be equipped for
seamless omni-channel retailing.
Andrew Phay, Asia-Pacific regional vice-president - Retail Division, points to the
popularity of e-commerce channels such as China’s Tmall.com and TaoBao.com, a
dedicated B2C online retail platform which reportedly racked up US$9.3-billion
worth of online transactions on Singles’ Day on November 11 last year.
Alibaba, owner of both the Tmall and TaoBao platform, helped to coordinate
deals from more than 25,000 merchants on that day. Perhaps more noteworthy
than the eye-popping sales figure is the humongous number of consumers who
make purchases or browse products on their smartphones.
“Omni-channel retailing is an imperative for retailers in Asia-Pacific. We say
to them: Your customers are connected and it’s imperative you are connected as
well,” says Phay.
Phay notes that retailers selling on Tmall or other large-scale online sales
platforms have a problem to overcome. Once they put their goods on Tmall,
they have little control of the pricing, the inventory and the promotions.
Often, the arrangement is a consignment of a batch of goods and the basket
calculation, the checkout logic and pricing points are inconsistent with the
inventory sold through their own sales channels.
Going forward, retailers will have to build quickly their omni-channel
capabilities to keep up with consumer demands. The smartphone-wielding
consumer who is an omni-channel shopper is not bothered with how his
retail supplier, bank or telco handles the complex processes involved in delivering a seamless transaction across multiple channels.
“With the support of a wellintegrated omni-channel
system, the retailer even
has choice and flexibility to
set different pricing policies
according to store location
or whether it is an online or
physical store, and according to
marketing priorities.”
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Going forward, retailers will have to build quickly their omni-channel capabilities to keep up
with consumer demands. The smartphone-wielding consumer who is an omni-channel shopper is not bothered with how his retail supplier, bank or telco handles the complex processes
involved in delivering a seamless transaction across multiple channels.
“Omni-channel shopping is the current trend, and consumers are shopping
using whatever channel they prefer and
demanding a seamless experience across
all channels. E-commerce and
m-commerce trends are strong in a
number of Asia-Pacific countries besides
China and this is posing some challenges
to the brick-and-mortar stores, hence
driving the requirements of omni-channel retailing,” says Phay.
“Retailers now have to consider
providing new and cost-efficient channels, and the need to provide customer
satisfaction in new touchpoints on the
other in order to stay in competition.
Integration of disparate systems — frontend POS solutions, webstores, mer-
chandising systems and customer loyalty
applications, are required to provide a
truly seamless customer experience.
“If the retailer has the same consistent view of his merchandising, inventory,
pricing and so forth across all the sales
channels, then he can do this whole
seamless retailing with much less pain,”
says Phay.
With the support of a well-integrated
omni-channel system, the retailer even
has choice and flexibility to set different
pricing policies according to store location or whether it is an online or physical
store, and according to marketing priorities. “The important thing is that the
pricing policy and information and price
setting are done from a central location
“Omni-channel
shopping is the
current trend,
and consumers
are shopping
using whatever
channel they
prefer and
demanding
a seamless
experience
across all
channels.”
and controlled from there,” says Phay.
“We believe what retailers want most
is to get their systems integrated and not
every retailer is at the same point of the
omni-channel journey.
“In Wincor Nixdorf ’s view, omnichannel is more a platform than a
solution. We want to help retailers integrate and interface new omni-channel
functionality with their ERP systems and
other Web store and loyalty systems they
already have in place.” ra
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NSO solution underpinning
UNIQLO’s rapid expansion
UNIQLO is experiencing the most
dynamic growth among all the brands
of its parent company Fast Retailing
Company Ltd. The fashion brand is
now represented in 15 countries around
the world — over 850 stores in Japan
and another 500 internationally.
More than 150 new UNIQLO
stores were opened between November 2012 and November 2013. With
a business concept oriented towards
growth and rapid expansion of its
international store network, UNIQLO
needs IT structures and services that
can keep up with its high pace of
growth.
The ability to open stores effectively
and efficiently undergirds the dynamic
growth of UNIQLO. It usually takes
no more than three months from the
planning to the opening of a UNIQLO
store. This means all the technical
systems, multi-vendor coordination, site
preparation and project management
must be perfectly coordinated to ensure
that the store is open on time and on
budget.
In China and Singapore, UNIQLO
relies on Wincor Nixdorf ’s New Store
Opening (NSO) Managed Services
to ensure new stores are opened as
planned. With NSO, Wincor Nixdorf is able to reduce complexity and
increase time-to-market significantly
for UNIQLO by offering standardised
End-to-End Store Lifecycle services and
excellent retail knowhow in the country.
For UNIQLO, the NSO solution
reduces the effort and expenses associated with managing the varied suppliers. It also ensures the consistency and
quality of the new stores.
According to the retailer, adopting
standardised and proven services from
its IT service providers is one strategy it
has pursued in order for the company
to focus on its core business instead
of having to deal with the complexity
of the infrastructure that supports the
business itself.
The IT service providers need to
have the same global presence that
UNIQLO does, and need to be able
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Due to UNIQLO’s rapid growth in a highly competitive market, Wincor Nixdorf has taken on
an even more important role as an IT service provider.
to provide the required solutions
and services anywhere in the world,
consistently and dependently.
Not coincidentally, this is Wincor
Nixdorf ’s positioning as a globally active service partner. The company has a
footprint in more than 140 countries,
employs some 3,500 IT service experts
worldwide and supports more than two
million systems with the help of certified partners.
This wealth of expertise was also
the reason UNIQLO entrusted Wincor
Nixdorf with Store Lifecycle services for
its stores and looks forward to expanding the cooperation from Asia-Pacific to
the rest of the world.
Well prepared for the
future of retailing
Due to UNIQLO’s rapid growth in
a highly competitive market, Wincor
Nixdorf has taken on an even more
important role as an IT service provider.
With NSO, Wincor Nixdorf offers
inter­nationally expanding retailers a
simple yet proven solution that includes
project management services, the global
provision and configuration of POS
systems, as well as the management of
all third-party providers and partners
involved in the store opening.
This is critical, according to Andrew
Phay who is the regional vice-president,
Retail Division for Asia Pacific of
Wincor Nixdorf, for internationally
expanding companies that want to open
their stores quickly and manage them
in a standardised way. This requires a
service provider that has consistent and
standardised service delivery framework
IT structures across countries, even
globally.
Another important criterion for
UNIQLO is the POS systems’ future
viability. The retail business is changing radically owing to mobile media,
and a POS application has to be able to
integrate new processes — from mobile
marketing to mobile payment.
“Wincor Nixdorf has been
UNIQLO’s IT partner for point-of-sale
since 1997. We have been providing
essential solutions and services expertise to support UNIQLO in effectively
managing its stores, and to deliver
and offer the highest possible level of
customer service, ensuring a seamless
shopping experience for its customers,”
says Phay.
“The Wincor Nixdorf POS platform
is a key advantage for customers. It
provides the highest possible availability
and facilitates sales.”
Next up on UNIQLO’s agenda
is the provision of various customer
services that link in-store businesses
with the UNIQLO Web-shop, which
has been available since 2000. Customers will then be able to order clothes
online that they can pick up in a store
nearest to them, try on and pay for the
merchandise.
According to parent company Fast
Retailing, UNIQLO is well prepared for
the future as it has the Wincor Nixdorf ’s
TP.net in place and this will allow it to
map new multi-channel applications to
meet any challenges coming over the
horizon. ra
TRUE GRIT
TP.net 5.5: The innovative
software platform for
omni-channel retailing
RETAIL software needs to integrate the
online and offline worlds and meet the
requirements of functionality, architecture and international orientation of
retail companies.
This is because today’s consumers
interact with a retail company via various
touchpoints. But no matter what channel they use, consumers expect a satisfying brand and shopping experience. In
the process, they expect information to
be consistent, goods to be available, and
service to be of the same high quality
everywhere.
Against this backdrop, Wincor
Nixdorf has introduced the next release
of its global software platform TP.net.
Retail companies will benefit from
the new version — TP.net 5.5 — to connect their sales channels seamlessly and
control them more efficiently.
A cross-channel merchandise
management solution (TPOMM) and a
customer relationship management solution (TPCustomer360) have been newly
integrated. TP.net 5.5 ensures a consistent link between sales, merchandise and
customer data flows so that order processing and item availability, for instance,
can be coordinated across channels.
TPOMM, the Omni-channel Merchandise Manager module, enables consistent and enterprise-based execution
of merchandise management. Customer
basket handling across all channels is
With TP.net 5.5, Wincor Nixdorf has
met the challenge of introducing lots
of innovative features, especially in the
area of omni-channel and mobility, while
keeping what made TP.net strong and
successful, namely, a robust, feature-rich
and truly international software product
that satisfies the most demanding major
retail organisations around the globe.
now a reality.
TPCustomer360 is a sophisticated
omni-channel CRM and loyalty solution. Designed to put the customer at
the heart of the retailer’s strategies, it
meets the advanced requirements of
top-tier retailers in managing customer
relationship and loyalty needs.
In order to improve customer service
in the store, TP.net 5.5 provides numerous functions on mobile devices running
iOS and Android operating systems.
Full-featured POS functionality on
tablet PCs or user-friendly merchandise
management on smartphone are just
two examples of how staff flexibility and
customer service can be improved.
With TP.net 5.5, Wincor Nixdorf
has met the challenge of introducing lots
of innovative features, especially in the
area of omni-channel and mobility, while
keeping what made TP.net strong and
successful, namely, a robust, feature-rich
and truly international software product
that satisfies the most demanding major
retail organisations around the globe.
TP.net 5.5 is part of Wincor
Nixdorf ’s comprehensive, modular TP
Application Suite, which addresses the
entire range of sales-related processes
required by large, international retailers.
The TP Application Suite is already installed in over 70 countries and on more
than 200,000 POS systems. ra
Retail companies will benefit from the new version of its global software platform — TP.net 5.5 — to connect their sales channels seamlessly
and control them more efficiently.
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The OMNI-CHANNEL
Revolution
Seamless shopping. Fast, secure transactions. 24/7 access to every possible sales channel with any device. Your customers have high demands.
Wincor Nixdorf Pte Ltd
151 Lorong Chuan
New Tech Park #05-01 A/B
Singapore 556741
Phone: +65 6747 3828
www.wincor-nixdorf.com
Create a great retail experience – built on the expertise of TP.net 5.5 for
store optimization and centralization of business intelligence. Feel the
difference with Wincor Nixdorf.
Discover the new TP.net 5.5 at www.wincor-nixdorf.com/tpnet
Retail Asia 2014/2015
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