How a Culture of Digitalization Can Transform and Modernize Retail Operations

The most successful retail brands in the world — Amazon.com, Target, Walmart, among others — have fully embraced digital transformation to deliver better shopping experiences and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The fast moving, highly competitive and lucrative retail industry only continues to grow. Adobe recently reported that consumers spent $331.6 billion online from Jan. 1 to April 30, 2024, up 7 percent year-over-year (YoY). Earlier this year, the National Retail Federation forecasted an increase in retail sales of between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent, reaching $5.23 trillion to $5.28 trillion in 2024.

As retailers prepare for the 2024 holiday season, the question is not only whether they’re prepared to handle the extra website and foot traffic, but also the increased paperwork that comes with the territory. To compete successfully in today’s technology-driven retail market, brands must not only deliver a great shopping experience that encourages customers to return again and again, they must also focus on modernizing the “back office” through digitalization — i.e., transforming workflows to make use of digital tools.

Bottom line: If retail businesses don’t have their “house in order,” it could mean chaos for an extra busy sales season. That could then impact their ability to tackle the inevitable crises that occur during periods of extra high retail foot traffic.

Applying 360-Degree Digitalization Best Practices in Retail

Brands must apply the same “culture of innovation” mindset they already employ on the front-end shopping journey to how they manage back-office processes. Doing so can help them successfully streamline operations, reduce clutter and inefficiencies, and save time and money. By employing a combination of high-quality document imaging scanners and advanced artificial intelligence software, retailers can adopt digitalization — a combination of scanning, classifying and routing documents in electronic formats. This approach allows them to accurately capture data on any type of document, improving scanned images so they're “AI ready.” The data on each document becomes easily searchable and metadata is automatically tagged, allowing for key information to be extracted into adjacent systems of record.

Document scanners can help streamline the flow of this paperwork and make back-office tasks more efficient, enabling retailers to focus on the in-store and online shopping experience, seasonal marketing campaigns, product purchasing, and more.

While there are many ways digitalization can assist retailers in streamlining processes in the back office, four ways it can make an impact on operations include:

• Streamlining Paper Processes: Digitalization facilitates the integration of data from various sources into centralized systems. By converting paper forms and records into digital data, brands can leverage analytics tools to gain insights, track performance, and make data-driven decisions. Scanners can digitize customer information (e.g., membership forms and contact details), allowing for more accurate and accessible customer records. Not only does this help retailers maintain up-to-date customer profiles, but this first-party data can also be used to personalize interactions and offers.
• Reduced Costs: By digitizing physical documents, retailers can significantly cut down on the need for physical storage space, including keeping large filing cabinets or storage rooms. This reduction in physical storage requirements frees up space for new offices, employee breakrooms, etc. Digitizing by capturing and organizing documents also reduces the time and labor required for manual data entry and document handling, leading to fewer administrative staff hours needed and less manual error correction.
• Higher Efficiency: Document imaging scanners can digitize and automatically extract data from physical documents such as invoices, purchase orders and receipts. By integrating this data directly into retail management systems or databases, manual data entry is no longer required, reducing the risk of errors and speeding up processing times. This automation streamlines workflows, allowing staff to focus on more value-added tasks (e.g., providing top-tier customer service) rather than repetitive data entry. Digitalization also powers better collaboration because documents can be easily shared across different departments and locations, including to and from remote workers.
• Surpassing Customer Expectations: Consumers have come to expect quality customer support and seamless shopping experiences, both in-store and online. By spending less time on traditional paper processes, staff can spend more time focusing on the customer to make every encounter even better. Brands that deliver a consistent customer-centric experience every time increase the potential for repeat visits and build loyalty as a result.

Retailers have embraced advanced technologies such as AI to provide their customers with relevant, personalized shopping experiences. However, without adopting comprehensive, end-to-end digitalization, retailers will miss out on significant business benefits, including pervasive efficiency, cost savings, and enhanced customer experiences. Adopting digital solutions not only helps retailers stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market, but also enables them to keep customers happy and loyal with greater agility and precision.

Scott Francis is a technology evangelist at PFU America, Inc., the U.S.-based subsidiary of PFU Limited and the leader in document scanning solutions.