What’s in Store for Retail in 2015

As rapidly as the retail industry has undergone change in recent years, there's no indication that it's likely to slow down anytime soon. In fact, I'd suggest that the coming year will see even bigger and faster changes for retailers across the globe. Mobile payment technologies, evolving customer behaviors, new and unexpected competition, and more will require retailers to continually evolve.

They need to be both flexible and resilient, as well as optimistic about the future. For every retailer downsizing their operations or going out of business, there are new startups emerging and existing retailers opening additional distribution channels and entering new markets. I'd like to share some thoughts on what retailers can expect as we enter 2015. Below are four emerging trends that I expect to blossom in 2015:

1. Cloud unifies the retail chain. To tightly integrate e-commerce, order management, fulfillment and inventory management — and operate those areas of their business as a single entity — more retailers will embrace complete cloud-based omnichannel commerce solutions in 2015. The move to the cloud is all about gaining control over and insight into all retail-related operations to the mutual benefit of both the retailer and its customers.

Think of it as a marriage between a customer-centric view of a perfect order — right customer, right time, right product — and a retailer-centric view — optimal location, optimal cost, optimal time. At the same time, other retailers will move more gradually into the cloud by migrating one or more on-premise pieces of their retail operations skywards, including available-to-promise, order orchestration, order fulfillment, etc.

2. Brick-and-mortar stores add the personal touch. More retailers will apply the lessons they've learned online to their brick-and-mortar stores by providing shoppers with a personalized experience in-store. Retail operations with tightly integrated e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM), and inventory and order management systems in the cloud will be able to target individual shoppers with offers based on their personal profile data and previous purchasing history.

Store associates will have real-time access to all that rich customer data via tablets and can actively engage with shoppers both before a sale (e.g., by swiping their store loyalty card to identify an individual) and during a purchase. The associate will be empowered to recommend items likely to appeal to a particular individual and to save sales by offering the shopper a range of purchase and delivery alternatives. As same-day fulfillment becomes more common, brick-and-mortar stores will also have more opportunities to compete with much larger pure-play online rivals.

3. Multiple retail channels will blend. Purchases initiated via one channel may be completed in another or channels may intermingle. For instance, a local store may look to use its online presence as a staging post to encourage shoppers to visit it. A shopper can go online and choose the items that they'd like to see, feel or try on and then make an appointment to visit the store. When the shopper arrives, all their items will be ready to be viewed or tried on. A store associate will also be on hand to make additional product recommendations. The store could also package up this kind of online/in-store activity to be part of specific occasions such as birthday or wedding celebrations.

4. Paying by phone becomes commonplace. Mobile payment technologies have been around for some time, but I believe the launch of Apple Pay in September 2014 acted as a catalyst for real market change. Once Apple entered the mobile wallet market, retailers sat up and paid attention, with some signing up for Apple Pay and others hard at work on creating their own alternative — for example, the Merchant Customer Exchange's CurrentC — or adopting other vendors' technologies such as Google Wallet.

This year, I think we'll see the mobile wallet providers resolve initial teething problems in their technologies and consensus grow among retailers on whose mobile wallets they'll accept, which will be largely determined by which technologies consumers adopt. For my money, I believe Apple Pay will be one of the standard mobile wallets which will end up being accepted at stores around the world.

What's clear from these developments is that they're occurring rapidly and that you need to ensure that your business can move quickly to take advantage of what's happening. Think of emerging technologies as the best tools to enable you to innovate. Approach all these new developments as if your business was a startup and roll out the new technologies as fast as you can without disrupting what you already have.

Matt Rhodus is the retail vertical marketing expert for NetSuite, an integrated cloud business software suite.