Laiye Targets Retail Sector in Intelligent Automation Drive
Retail is an industry desperately in need of AI-led transformation. This sector was hit particularly hard by the Omicron variant, with the volume of retail sales falling by 3.7% in December 2021, according to ONS.
This is no surprise considering the havoc Covid-19 has caused to retail. In 2020 alone, the UK’s high streets lost more than 17,500 chain store outlets, and in 2021, an average of 50 shops a day were closing down.
Many of the retail brands and businesses that have survived have had to do so by hastily cobbling together an e-commerce alternative, and investing in digital services to keep up with sudden shifts in consumer demands.
Prior to Omicron, this shift in the retail industry was showing promise, with the volume of sales 2.6% higher than pre-coronavirus levels. However, now that social distancing restrictions have lifted, and with businesses looking to recover, grow, and turn their Digital offering from a short term patch job, to a full time replacement, it is time to embrace Artificial Intelligence.
By effectively deploying artificial intelligence-driven tools and technology, retail businesses can automate mundane and manual tasks, saving thousands of hours, and allowing the retailers to focus on what really matters – the customer – all the while actually improving customer service with Intelligent Automation technology which evolves by self-learning.
In fact, in Deloitte’s recently published 2022 Global Marketing Trends, the need to enhance customer service with artificial intelligence was highlighted, to help retailers thrive through customer centricity.
McKinsey Global Institute also conducted a broad analysis of the impact of automation across different sectors. It showed that about half of the activities in retail can be automated using current, at-scale technology.
This is by no means cause for alarm from a ‘job-loss’ perspective, it’s quite the opposite. Automation creates new jobs, and ensures employees can spend time doing more productive and value-driven activities. As a welcome by-product of Intelligent Automation, internal efficiency will ensure new ideas will run through the corporate machine a lot more smoothly, and decision makers will have more time to innovate.
This is why we, at Laiye, are now seeking to support the retail sector by connecting companies with our integrated Intelligent Data Processing (IDP), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and chatbots, optimising the human-technology collaborative alliance to upgrade and automate the short-term solutions relied upon during the pandemic.
Key areas for our automation technology include customer enquiries, operations and supply chains, transforming the way retailers manage functions, delivering improved margins through efficiency and cost reduction.
Our automation solutions can also assist retailers to re-imagine their operating models, from in-store facets like self-checkouts to the warehouse and stock checks.
Additionally, the reduction of repetitive admin tasks, especially in the retail industry, can allow employees to be freed up and upskilled to focus on mission-critical initiatives and provide a more customer-centric experience.
It’s also worth noting that we already have an existing footing in the market, providing customers such as Nike with bespoke solutions revolving around their chatbots, IDP and RPA, as they pledge to create over 200 highly skilled AI jobs across the EMEA region.
More information about Laiye’s Intelligent Automation solutions can be found here.
