Category: Microsoft news

The retail industry has been going through tremendous change and transformation over the past decade. Many have speculated that traditional brick and mortar retail is dying, and that customers are moving completely to online platforms for their shopping needs. This is, however, not the case. According to a report by the National Federation of Retail, retail storefronts in the USA have continued to grow at almost 4 percent annually since 2010 along with the steady double-digit growth of online retail. Along with this, nearly all of the top 50 online retailers also have physical stores.

Even though e-commerce growth continues to outpace physical stores, the value of growth is still much higher in physical retail outlets. E-commerce in a majority of cases is also not a standalone channel but used in conjunction with traditional and emerging channels to service customer needs like buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) or Click and Collect. Location is still a major part of customer shopping habits, but with this we have also seen that customer expectations around shopping have changed. Gone are the days of store agents being the exclusive experts in product knowledge. Customers now have more access to product information, price visibility, and availability than ever before. With this comes the need for retail to look at customer engagement across all channels and ensure their business is enabled to deliver on these new heightened expectations. In the next few years, e-commerce will no longer be a major differentiator for retailers, but rather enabling unified retail commerce is required to succeed in the world of ever more demanding customer expectations.

But this is easier said than done. Many retail businesses are struggling with disparate commerce systems that create more of a disconnect with customers than opportunities to engage. Even though unified commerce is not a new concept, many retailers have found it difficult to understand where to start.

It is with this in mind that Microsoft announced Dynamics 365 Commerce, an evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail, that will become broadly available on February 3, 2020. This release adds e-commerce to our solution and is built from a proven content management system used by Microsoft online storefronts for years. Dynamics 365 Commerce is, however, not limited to e-commerce, but sets out to simplify the process of unifying customer shopping experiences through an end-to-end commerce platform that brings together e-commerce, in-store, back office, and call center along with enabling easier integration to emerging channels through an API driven headless commerce engine.

Microsoft and Forbes also recently undertook a joint executive and consumer research program that highlighted the changing expectation of consumers and how retail business can better cater to these evolving needs. Let’s explore how Dynamics 365 Commerce is helping retailers address these prevailing needs in their businesses.

Delivering exceptional and personalized customer experiences

Customer experience is not only one of the top growth drivers in retail but according to the recent Microsoft and Forbes study, is also considered to be the top strategic priority amongst retail executives, for 33 percent of retail executives. The challenge is defining what comprises exceptional customer experience for each individual business, as customer expectations vary by retail micro-vertical, product category, and the customers themselves. It’s up to retailers to best identify how the experience aligns to their brand promise. Once customer experience is defined, retailers need to be able to deliver on this promise by having technology that enables next generation customer engagement and doesn’t limit their ability to innovate and create differentiating experiences for customers.

According to the Microsoft and Forbes study, offering personalized shopping is becoming more and more prominent with over 49 percent of consumers aged between 18 to 24 saying they are more likely to purchase from retailers that offer personalized shopping experiences. The goal of personalization is to create a bond between the retailer and the customer by providing products and/or services based on previous engagements across all retail channels. This elevates the engagement beyond a simple transaction to an experience more akin to an interaction with a trusted partner or friend.

There is a major dependency on technology to achieve this next level of personalization. Retailers require connected and real time insights into customers and operations. Dynamics 365 Commerce natively brings together all aspects of customer interaction across e-commerce, call center, and in store as well as easy integration to emerging channels to help retailers gain a comprehensive view of customers. Couple this with out-of-the-box integration into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and retailers can not only offer AI driven recommendations based on customer purchase history, favorites, and trends, but also provide in store agents with tools to see a 360 degree view of the customer and enable rich engagement throughout the sales journey.

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates is the largest premium wine distributor in the United States. They’re renowned for making some of the best wines in the world and pride themselves in delivering amazing wine tasting experiences at wineries for their 14 distinct brands. Ste. Michelle recently went live with Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver an end-to-end retail solution for their business. Being able to track customer engagement across modernized e-commerce sites to their wine clubs and call centers mean that Ste. Michelle can offer more personalized customer recommendations and experiences in their tasting rooms.

“We found our answer in Dynamics 365 Commerce. We now have a centralized repository where our data works together to provide a seamless experience for our guests along with better insight into our operations.” – Francis Perrin, Chief Marketing Officer, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates

The importance of enabling omnichannel and streamlining operations

The days of customer engagement on a single channel are long in the past. Customers expect to be able to shop wherever, whenever and through whichever channel they choose. Retailers also recognize the importance of omnichannel with 47 percent of executives from the Microsoft and Forbes survey ranking this as one of their top three priorities.

Many retailers still struggle with enabling an omnichannel experience due to complexities of internal technology and disconnected or disparate systems. Dynamics 365 Commerce makes this much simpler as it was built in the cloud to deliver a native omnichannel solution for retailers.

Columbia Sportswear Company has a portfolio of brands for active lives and is a leader in the global active lifestyle apparel, footwear, accessories, and equipment industry. They chose Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver enhanced experiences for their retail customers.

A connected commerce solution is not just important in how customers engage and shop in retail, but also how a unified solution can enable better engagement from firstline workers and ensure optimal operational efficiencies across your supply chain. Dynamics 365 Commerce allows retailers to streamline their operations with infused intelligence that permeates throughout their business. Store staff can gain better insights into stock availability, cross application support for task management between Commerce and Microsoft Teams, along with commerce analytics that allows managers to track performance and insights to help them make better decisions.

An established and well-loved brand, Dr. Martens has grown over many years to become a global lifestyle footwear brand with sales to 63 countries across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia. Like many established businesses, they had a plethora of old IT systems and processes that have served them well, but could not support their ambitious growth plans. Dr Martens looked to Dynamics 365 Commerce to bring a range of isolated solutions together and deliver a single source of truth for their business to operate from.

Dynamics 365 Commerce at NRF 2020

This week saw another great showing of Microsoft retail solutions at NRF 2020. Along with a great range of 1^st party and partner innovations, we showcased the advancements and innovations present in Dynamics 365 Commerce. This included the announcement of our official release date on February 3, 2020 and the native integration of intelligent solutions from Microsoft including Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, and Microsoft Power Platform.

If you would like to learn more about our offering for Dynamics 365 Commerce, please visit our official web page or contact us for a demonstration or more information.

For many retailers around the world, the busiest quarter of the year just finished with holiday shopping through Black Friday and Cyber Monday to Boxing Day. From supply chain optimization, to digital distribution, and in-store analytics, the retail industry has wholeheartedly embraced IoT technology to support those spikes in demand; particularly in scenarios where brands need to build flexibility, hire strong talent, and optimize the customer experience in order to build brand loyalty. In our latest IoT Signals for Retail research, commissioned by Microsoft and released January 2020, we explore the top insights from leaders who are using IoT today. We discuss growth areas such as improving the customer experience, the use of artificial intelligence to achieve break-through success, and nuances between global markets around security concerns and compliance.

Building retail IoT solutions with Azure IoT Central

As Microsoft and its global partners continue to turn retail insights into solutions that empower retailers around the world, a key question continues to face decision makers about IoT investments; whether to build a solution from scratch, or buy a solution that fits their needs. For many solution builders, Azure IoT Central is the perfect fit, a fully managed IoT platform with predictable pricing and unique features like retail specific application templates that can accelerate solution development thanks to the inclusion of over 30 underlying Azure services. Let us manage the services so you can focus on what’s more important, applying your deep industry knowledge to help your customers.

New tools to accelerate building a retail IoT Solution

Today we are excited to announce the addition of our sixth IoT Central retail application template for solution builders. The Micro-fulfilment center template showcases how connectivity and automation can reduce cost by eliminating downtime, increasing security, and improving efficiency. App templates can help solution builders get started quickly and includes sample operator dashboards, sample device templates, simulated devices producing real-time data, access to Plug and Play devices, and security features that give you peace of mind. Fulfillment optimization is a cornerstone of operations for many retailers and optimizing early may offer significant returns in the future. Application templates are helping solution builders overcome challenges like getting past the proof-of-concept phase, or building rapid business cases for new IoT scenarios.

IoT Central Retail Application Templates for solution builders.

Innovative Retailers share their IoT stories

In addition to rich industry insights like those found in IoT Signals for Retail, we are proudly releasing three case stories detailing decisions, trade-offs, processes, and results from top global brands investing in IoT solutions, and the retail solution builders supporting them. Read more about how these companies are implementing and winning with their IoT investments and uncover details that might offer you an edge as you navigate your own investments and opportunities.

South Africa Breweries and CIRT team up to solve a cooler tracking conundrum

South Africa Breweries, a subsidiary of AB InBev, is the worlds’ largest brewing company and is committed to keeping its product fresh and cold for customers, a challenge that most consumers take for granted. From tracking missing coolers to reducing costs, and achieving sustainability goals, Sameer Jooma, Director of Innovation and Analytics for AB InBev turned to IoT innovation led by Consumption Information Real Time (CIRT), a South African solution builder. CIRT was tasked to pilot Fridgeloc Connected Cooler, a cooler monitoring system, providing real time insight into temperature (both internal cooler and condenser), connected state and location of hundreds of coolers through urban and rural South Africa. Revamping an existing cooler audit process that involved auditors visiting dealer locations to verify that a cooler was in the right place, and tracking the time between delivery and installation to an outlet are just two of the process optimization benefits found by Jooma.

“The management team wanted to have a view of the coolers, and to be able to manage them centerally at a national level. IoT Central enabled us to gain that live view.” – Sameer Jooma, Director: Innovation and Analytics, AB InBev.

Learn more about the universal cooler challenges that face merchants and consumer packaged goods companies worldwide in the case story.

On the “road” to a connected cooler in rural South Africa, a field technician gets stuck in the sand on his way to the tavern.

Fridgeloc Connected Cooler at a tavern in Soweto, South Africa.

Mars Incorporated Halloween display campaign unveils new insights thanks to Footmarks Inc.

For most consumer packaged goods companies, sales spike during holiday times thanks to investments across the marketing and sales mix, from online display advertising to in-store physical displays. This past Halloween, Jason Wood, Global Display Development Head, Mars Inc., a global manufacturer of confectionery and other food products, decided it was time to gain deeper insights into an age-old problem of tracking where their product displays went after they left the warehouse. Previously, Mars was only able to track the number of displays it produced, and how many left its warehouses for retailer destinations. They found the right partner with Footmarks Inc. who has designed their beacon and gateway-based display tracking solution with Azure IoT Central to deliver secure, simple and scalable insights into what happens once displays begin transit. Several interesting insights emerged throughout the campaign and afterward.

“Information on when displays came off the floor were surprising—major insights that we wouldn’t have been able to get to without the solution.” – Jason Wood, Global Display Development Head, Mars Inc.

Learn more about challenges Mars and Footmarks faced scaling, pricing, and managing devices for display tracking in the case story.

Foormarks Inc., Smart Connect Cloud dashboard for Mars Wrigley showing display tracking solution using IoT sensors for the 2019 Halloween campaign.

Microsoft turns to C.H. Robinson and Intel for Xbox and Surface supply chain visibility

In advance of the busy 2019 holiday season and the introduction of many new Surface SKU’s, the Microsoft supply chain team was interested in testing the benefits of a single platform connecting IoT devices on shipments globally, streamlining analytics and device management. This Microsoft team was also thinking ahead, preparing for the launch of the latest Xbox console, Xbox Series X, and for a series of new Surface product launches. With Surface and Xbox demand projected to grow around the world, the need for insights and appropriate actions along the supply chain was only going to increase. The Microsoft team partnered with TMC (a division of C.H. Robinson), a global technology and logistics management provider who partnered with Intel, to design a transformative solution based on their existing Navisphere Vision software that could be deployed globally using Azure IoT Central. The goal was to track and monitor shipments’ ambient condition for shock, light, and temperature to identify any damage in real time, anywhere in the world—at a scale covering millions of products.

“The real power comes in the combination of C.H. Robinson’s Navisphere Vision, technology that is built by and for supply chain experts, and the speed, security, and connectivity of Azure IOT Central.” – Chris Cutshaw, Director of Commercial and Product Strategy at TMC

Learn more about the results from the recent holiday season and what Navisphere Vision can do for global supply chain visibility in the case story.

Navisphere Vision dashboard showing IoT Sensors activity, managed through Azure IoT Central.

Getting started

NRF 2020: Retail’s Big Show is happening in Manhattan from January 12 to 14. Azure IoT and other experts including retail solution builders Attabotics, C.H. Robinson, and CIRT will be in attendance.

Read more about IoT Signals for Retail report.

Get started with Azure IoT Central today.

Learn more about the solutions being used by these customers today.

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As Walgreens embarked on plans to create a new type of retail experience for customers more than a year ago, it realized that an innovative approach to training employees was in order.

Walgreens employees were used to consulting with customers on the best beauty products, filling photo orders, dispensing medications and providing personalized health and wellness information. But selling fresh produce, delivering groceries to vehicles and helping customers find ingredients for dinner — that was all new, and potentially challenging.

So to prepare employees to handle around 2,500 new food items at its revamped “Kroger Express” stores, Walgreens is piloting an immersive, mixed-reality training program using Microsoft HoloLens 2 and tablet devices.

The program, part of a broader partnership with Microsoft, will use a three-dimensional model of the reconfigured stores and various scenarios to teach employees how to restock products, determine if an onion or banana is past its prime, help customers redeem grocery coupons and deal with unfamiliar customer service situations — for example, offering a substitute grocery item if something the customer wants is out of stock.

“We feel that this very immersive, interactive technology helps team members grasp new ways of learning beyond what I’ll call the paper exercise,” says Steven Lamontagne, vice president of physical design and formats for Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance, Walgreens’ parent company.

The HoloLens training, developed by Microsoft partner Altoura, is first being tested at a Walgreens store in Knoxville, Tennessee. From there, it could be expanded to another 34 stores in Knoxville and 17 in Northern Kentucky and the greater Cincinnati area that are part of a pilot with supermarket retailer Kroger. About 20 Kroger Express stores have opened since the pilot launched in late 2018.

The Kroger Express stores are being remodeled to accommodate the new products, and Lamontagne says HoloLens 2 training offers the benefit of familiarizing employees with the new store layouts even before renovations are finished.

“By using a 3D model for the store, a team member gets to see what the future is going to be like after their store’s remodeled, and they’re immediately within that new physical environment,” he says.

The effort is part of a multipronged partnership between Walgreen Boots Alliance and Microsoft, announced a year ago, that Walgreens envisions as transforming the modern retail and pharmacy experience. As part of the partnership, Walgreens and Boots stores — located in the U.K. and other regions — are migrating their on-premises data warehouses to Azure to improve operations and lower costs.

Walgreens Boots Alliance is migrating on-premises data warehouses into Azure Synapse Analytics — a service that merges enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics — to improve operations and modernize business processes.

The company is also using Azure Synapse to bring together data from disparate sources to understand customer needs and optimize supply chains. Azure Synapse will enable Walgreens to analyze vast amounts of data in real time while applying machine learning to get insights that help employees provide customers with the products they want while preventing unsold inventory from cluttering the back office.

The revamped Walgreens stores are also implementing an anonymous shopping path system, developed by Microsoft partner Acuity, that uses Bluetooth beacons on carts and baskets to understand how customers are moving through the reconfigured stores. That data is then aggregated in Azure, and Microsoft’s Power BI visualization tool is used to identify patterns — for example, how customers are shopping during the holiday season — and help determine whether the new store formats are meeting customers’ needs.

For now, the most visible aspect of the partnership with Kroger will be the rows of grocery items alongside the cosmetics and pharmacy goods. The Kroger Express stores will carry produce staples, dairy, meat items, meal kits and organic products. Customers can also order groceries online and have them delivered curbside at the pilot stores.

With more than 9,200 Walgreens stores around the United States, close to 78 percent of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a Walgreens or other Walgreens-owned store, Lamontagne says, so giving customers the opportunity to purchase food items made sense.

“If you think about the high-frequency purchases you make in your life, food tends to be one of them,” he says. “Having a range of Kroger products and leveraging their expertise within the Walgreens box really gives customers a new retail experience. This allows them to be able to fill their pantries and their fridges, and get a credible range of products to make a meal for their family.”

Read more about the progress Walgreens and Microsoft have made in the first year of their strategic partnership at the Walgreens Newsroom.

Of all industries, retail is undergoing one of the most significant digital transformations. Various forms of computing are rapidly becoming embedded in every aspect of retail, from corner stores to the world’s largest retailers. Revenue from digital commerce is growing five times faster than from in-store sources, and global digital commerce sales now comprise 16.4 percent of total retail sales.

At the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference next week in New York, Microsoft will unveil our latest solutions to empower retailers all over the world to take advantage of this transformation. Central to these announcements will be our new vision for digital commerce and the toolkit that enables it. Our goal is to be a technology ally to the retail industry, to help retailers thrive — with more relevant and optimized e-commerce experiences, enhanced shopper-level personalization and expanded monetization opportunities. Today, we are announcing two new Microsoft solutions for retailers that do precisely that: Microsoft PromoteIQ and Microsoft Bing for Commerce.

Introducing Microsoft PromoteIQ

One of our key offerings for retailers is the Microsoft PromoteIQ commerce marketing platform. This is the next step in our journey of evolving our digital commerce offerings since announcing the acquisition of PromoteIQ in August 2019. Using Microsoft PromoteIQ, retailers can now dramatically increase revenue from their digital vendor marketing programs, while remaining fully in control of monetization and engaging brand partners.
 
Commerce marketing is a highly effective way for retailers to create powerful new high-margin revenue streams that can fund innovation elsewhere in their businesses, as well as provide brands with a powerful toolkit to market their products to shoppers. But competing for brand dollars with other marketing solutions can be daunting. Microsoft PromoteIQ helps make it easy by delivering an end-to-end commerce marketing platform with enterprise-grade capabilities to manage and scale vendor-funded digital marketing — whether on-site or off-site. The platform includes an extensive analytics suite to deliver audience insights and help brands understand incremental sales lift. It also includes integration with Microsoft Advertising, which opens up a powerful new source of incremental demand for retailers. With Microsoft PromoteIQ, a retailer remains fully in control and is finally able to turn commerce marketing into an essential growth engine for their business, funding new capabilities and innovations while strengthening their partnership with vendors and brands.

The Home Depot did just that. The world’s largest home improvement retailer needed to maximize the 170M monthly visits to homedepot.com, the fifth-largest ecommerce site in the U.S. They partnered with PromoteIQ to integrate a commerce marketing platform to manage and scale vendor-funded digital marketing efforts. Since the program launched in early 2019, customer engagement has increased by 35 percent and promoted products have seen double-digit growth compared to 2018. Numbers tell an important piece of the story, but it’s also great to see that the customer and vendor relationships are now stronger than ever. Customers are presented with relevant advertising for products they may need for their home improvement projects, and even may see content for complementary projects like décor to complete their room. Vendor partners now have enhanced marketing controls to drive better conversion, increase visibility, and learn from real-time performance insights.
 
Microsoft PromoteIQ offers great solutions to help retailers — and brands as well. For brands, the Microsoft PromoteIQ platform provides a robust offering for comprehensively managing advertising campaigns with key retailer partners, across campaign management, targeting, optimization and analytics. 
 
At NRF we’ll showcase customer examples and show the Microsoft PromoteIQ platform. If you are interested in learning more about the Microsoft PromoteIQ commerce marketing platform, please visit www.promoteiq.com.

Introducing Microsoft Bing for Commerce

Another important introduction for retailers is our new solution for an essential enabler of digital commerce: product search. Today’s shoppers expect convenience, to the point that 80 percent of them will abandon a site that produces poor search results. Microsoft Bing for Commerce is an intelligent search, personalization and product recommendation solution that helps gives retailers the power to meet today’s shopper expectations and grow revenue, thanks to more relevant and customized results that drive conversions.
 
Retailers can now leverage the power of Bing intelligence and Microsoft AI to searches on their websites, applying insights from millions of shoppers around the world. This puts advanced query understanding into the hands of retailers — helping to decipher the natural human language of shoppers on their sites and create a shorter path between shoppers and the product they’re seeking. 
 
Microsoft Bing for Commerce includes product recommendations that are relevant and personalized, as well as visual search innovation that helps satisfy emerging shopping behavior. Microsoft Bing for Commerce offers all of these intuitive capabilities on PC and mobile and does this with Microsoft’s dedicated approach to privacy and data compliance.
 
Microsoft Bing for Commerce is now available in public preview for large retailers as a stand-alone offering and will soon be available as a part of Dynamics 365 Commerce. More information is available at www.microsoft.com/bing/commerce.
 
It’s a time of unprecedented growth and transformation for the retail industry. We’re excited to see our partners and customers grow their businesses by taking advantage of the opportunities in digital commerce.
 
If you are at NRF next week, please visit us at the Microsoft booth on Level 3, #4051.
 

The last several years have brought massive change – and opportunity – for the retail industry. Gone are the days when retailers chose when, where and what to sell; now consumers are in the driver’s seat, and retailers are being challenged to figure how to best engage with them. Additionally, they’re juggling pressures driven by industry trends such as the drive for more sustainability in retail, the proliferation of data, increased energy around “anywhere commerce,” the need to better equip store associates with technology and much more. But change often accelerates innovation, and because of this I believe that there’s never been a more exciting time to be a retailer at the intersection of retail and technology.

Microsoft continues to innovate side by side with retailers to help them embrace their biggest opportunities and enable intelligent retail by empowering businesses to take control of their own digital evolution. Our solutions enable retailers to transform across all parts of their business – from how they better understand their customers and empower employees, to putting the right technology in place to deliver an intelligent supply chain and ultimately reimagine their businesses. In the last year and a half, we’ve established ourselves as a trusted partner to some of the world’s largest retailers such as Walmart, Kroger and Walgreens Boots Alliance, among others. And we’ve empowered their transformation by providing the platforms on which to build innovation for all parts of their businesses.

We’ve learned a lot along the way both through our retail customers as well as our own physical retail presence about how technology can help this industry both embrace its biggest opportunities as well as tackle its biggest challenges. And today we’re sharing how our first-party innovations are helping to drive the future of intelligent retail across all parts of a retailer’s business.

Gaining a better understanding of your customers

If customers are the heart of the retail industry, data is the oxygen. Data has the potential to profoundly impact every single aspect of retailers’ businesses, including – and perhaps most importantly – how they respond to customer demands with differentiated and unique experiences.

We’re helping retailers surface actionable customer insights with data solutions like Azure Synapse Analytics, which helps retailers not only analyze vast amounts of data, but also apply machine learning to quickly surface insights that can drive immediate impact for their businesses, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, which helps maximize customer lifetime value by surfacing a 360-degree view of the customer to drive personalized engagements at scale. This means that even the most complex retailers, with thousands of suppliers in their end-to-end supply chain and millions of item-store combinations, can quickly make the decisions needed to not only run their businesses most efficiently but also delight customers in the process.

And with Dynamics 365 Connected Store, retailers like Marks & Spencer – which is piloting the solution in a store in London – can generate data within its physical stores that produces the same kind of actionable business insights as it gets from its digital storefronts. M&S is achieving this by analyzing data from smart devices such as video cameras and IoT sensors to provide real-time and predictive insights on everything from the current length of the checkout line to the traffic around endcap product displays to help associates make better decisions. We’re welcoming new retail customers into our Connected Store preview every day, so sign up here to request access.

One of the customer demands becoming more and more evident as retailers reason over their data is the desire for a seamless shopping experience regardless of where, when and how they choose to buy. We’ve invested in helping retailers bridge embrace this concept of commerce anywhere (aCommerce) with Dynamics 365 Commerce, the evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail and a true multi-channel solution that transforms the customer experience by unifying retailers’ back-office, in-store, call center and e-commerce experiences. One experience across all channels – that’s what customers are demanding today. The result? More personalized engagement with customers, employees who are better equipped to provide the best customer experience possible and deep insights to empower advanced decision making across every piece of a retailer’s business. I’m excited to announce that Dynamics 365 Commerce, currently in preview, with become generally available to our retail customers on Feb. 3.

 Empowering employees with the tools they need to better serve customers

Despite the rise of e-commerce over the past couple of decades, we know that most shopping – across generations even – still happens in person. Research from Forbes Insights shows us that 60 percent of consumers still prefer to shop in physical retail environments, and this number stays fairly consistent across generations. This means that first-line workers are still one of a retailer’s most valuable assets – many times, they are the first impression a shopper gets of your brand and they play a significant role in customer acquisition and retention.

Retail associates need modern tools and experiences in order to remain productive and deliver the best customer service possible while on the store floor. With Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud, and new first-line capabilities coming to Microsoft Teams later this year, we are in a unique position to help this often-overlooked part of the workforce get their jobs done. Today I’m thrilled to announce that we’re adding even more productivity and collaboration value into Teams, including task targeting, publishing and reporting, new workforce management integrations to streamline shift management and a new Walkie Talkie feature. By building push-to-talk functionality into Teams, we’re helping our retail customers turn company-owned smartphones and tablets into a secure walkie talkie, extending the range of traditional walkie-talkie communication and streamlining licensing and provisioning for retailers’ IT staff.

Finally, as we extend modern tools and experiences across the first-line workforce, we know that we need to make it easy for IT to manage and help enable a secure and compliant experience for all employees. I’m excited to disclose enhanced identity and access management capabilities – such as shared device sign-out for Android and inbound provisioning from leading workforce management providers such as SAP SuccessFactors and Workday – that will make onboarding retail associates and operating shared devices more secure and scalable, something our retail customers have been asking us to add for some time now. And, later this quarter, retailers will be able to enable SMS sign-in to Microsoft 365 and custom applications for retail workers and empower their store managers with delegated user management capabilities, making it easier to reset passwords and manage workers’ identities without additional demand on IT staff.

Infusing more intelligence into the supply chain

A retailer’s supply chain can play a major role in customer satisfaction – outdated supply chain processes can mean delays, unfulfilled orders and more. By connecting devices and collecting data, retailers can analyze that information to create new insights and ultimately a truly intelligent supply chain that enables them to provide the best service possible to customers. This is the Internet of Things (IoT), and as IoT becomes more mainstream it continues to be a huge driver of data for retailers today. In fact, our IoT Signals for Retail study found that 92 percent of retailers have adopted IoT and are using it in various stages of trials and deployments, with the most common IoT scenarios being driving store analytics (57 percent), supply chain optimization (48 percent) and security and loss prevention (46 percent and 45 percent, respectively).

We’re making building and deploying IoT applications in retail environments easier than ever with new Azure IoT Central solution templates that help retailers simplify IoT deployments to start driving immediate impact. Today, the Azure IoT Central Micro Fulfilment Center template joins five existing retail-focused templates – including for scenarios across connected logistics, digital distribution centers, in-store analytics and smart inventory management – to help retailers more easily optimize their fulfilment processes through a managed service that includes everything a retailer needs to get started today.

Reimagining retail business models and customer experiences

The success of today’s retailers’ physical store environments rests on their ability to disrupt themselves and their own status quo by pushing into new business models and providing new experiences and formats that engage customers and keep them coming back for more.

We understand this better than most technology vendors, because we’re continuing to move through this same transformation journey with our own Microsoft retail stores. Over the past several years, we’ve digitally transformed and extended our physical retail store strategy from an exclusively consumer storefront to a commerce engine that connects with all customers – from commercial enterprises to small businesses and consumers. Partnering with enterprise sales, we’re offering new experiences in and through our stores targeted toward our enterprise customers such as J. Crew, Office Depot and Marks & Spencer. Our stores are also at the forefront of adopting new Microsoft technology across cloud, predictive analytics, machine learning, cognitive services and more to solve our most complex challenges – and we’re learning from those experiences to ultimately pass those lessons along to our customers. And of course, that’s a two-way street – we’re also learning from our retail customers to inform how we manage and operate our stores too, which is indicative of the true partnerships we strive to establish with every retailer we work with.

While reimagining retail can lead to the kind of business transformation we’ve seen in our own store, it can take different forms as well, such as how retailers are tapping into new revenue streams and digitizing their own physical stores to drive new customer and employee experiences.

Microsoft PromoteIQ is an end-to-end commerce marketing platform enabling retailers to create a new critical growth engine for their businesses through at-scale vendor marketing programs. With Microsoft PromoteIQ, retailers can empower their brand partners with powerful marketing technology to natively promote products to in-market shoppers, reaching them at the right time to increase digital sales – all supported by a deep analytics suite to deliver impactful audience insights. And now, thanks to the integration with Microsoft Advertising, we can offer our retailer partners a powerful new source of incremental demand for their programs. Take Home Depot, for example. While you may expect the world’s largest home improvement retailer to do most of its business in person, HomeDepot.com is the fifth largest e-commerce site in the U.S. Consequently, the company needed a solution to help it maximize the nearly 170 million visitors per month its site was seeing by integrating an end-to-end commerce marketing platform with capabilities to manage and scale its vendor-funded digital marketing. Since deploying PromoteIQ, Home Depot has seen very positive results, including double-digit sales growth for promoted products through this program.

Of course, reaching customers at the right time is only half the equation; a retailer must also be able to deliver on what that customer is looking for. In fact, 80 percent of shoppers will abandon a site that produces poor search results. And that’s why we’re investing in this critical piece of digital commerce – product search. Microsoft Bing for Commerce is an intelligent artificial intelligence-driven solution for product search, personalization and product recommendations that gives retailers the power to meet today’s shopper expectations and grow revenue through more relevant and customized results that drive conversion. We’re also enabling our retailers to meet customers where and how they want to shop through visual search innovation included in Bing for Commerce, to help capture sales from new, emerging shopping behaviors.

Connect with us at NRF

Microsoft will have a significant presence at NRF once again this year, headlined by our own CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote session to open the show. You won’t want to miss hearing his perspective on business and cultural transformation, and how our retail customers are putting our technology into action to reimagine their businesses. And if you’re attending the show, make sure you stop by our Microsoft booth (#4501) to see how we’re bringing intelligent retail to life across all parts of a retailer’s business and how you can achieve the same – we’re offering complimentary envisioning workshops, where retailers will have an opportunity to work directly with us to create a shared vision and digital road map to unlock a future of endless possibilities.

You’re also invited to attend one of our sessions on the show floor – I’m leading a Big Ideas session where I’ll share my thoughts on the increasing importance of sustainability to the industry and how technology can help accelerate retailers’ sustainability visions. In addition, my colleagues Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president for Microsoft Business Applications and Global Industry, and Emma Williams, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office Vertical Solutions, and I will participate in the FQ Lounge at NRF along with many other “women rocking retail” for panel discussions about diversity and inclusion in the retail industry (we’re proud to be a sponsor of this space as well). And of course, visit Microsoft’s NRF page to keep up to date on the latest developments.

Tags: NRF 2020, Retail