Even before the pandemic and economic crisis, brick-and-mortar retailers had been fighting a fierce battle against e-commerce players. Those challenges have now accelerated at a staggering speed.
With bricks-and-mortar being closed on and off and digital commerce increasing, fashion brands should capitalize on establishing a wider online presence, and this means going beyond maintaining an e-com site.
Technology on the customer experience side has grown a lot faster than operations. Even with limited budgets, companies have made investments in their customer experience journey, but in most cases, they leave the back-office operations still running manually.
Digitization Isn’t New, But The Pandemic Accelerated It
The latest reports show that consumers are likely to keep the behaviors they’ve adopted amid stay-at-home orders, such as more online shopping and fewer store visits.
This means that retailers can no longer afford to take the back seat when it comes to omnichannel fulfillment. As organizations begin to shift from the recovery phase to revitalization, they need to re-imagine their technology requirements and turn their attention to making better-informed and faster decisions, instilling automation as part of their day-to-day process.
And they need to be doing it now. In our interview with Dr. Christoph Schröder (Global Vice President, Industry Business Unit Retail – SAP SE), he touches on how the pandemic has affected the fashion industry and what fashion brands should focus on now:
This video was originally produced by attune, now part of Rizing.
Success Story: Carhartt Accelerates Digitization to Meet Customer Demand
Technology is leading the charge to help retailers and manufacturers adapt to a new normal during this COVID-19 climate.
Carhartt is is moving ahead by capitalizing on the power of SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise – SAP S/4HANA for Fashion and Vertical Business.
After more than 130 years in business and continued growth in popularity, it became imperative for US-based Carhartt to transform its apparel offerings and business foundation.
By identifying hundreds of pain points in that value chain and tracing them back to the solutions, Carhartt found that SAP technology can eliminate those pain points. The company is now building a frictionless shopping experience for customers.
The company believes further investment in digital technologies is a winning strategy to support their business. The company has successfully digitizing its retail operations by migrating to the S/4HANA platforms and is now focusing on moving its wholesale and direct-to-consumer e-commerce business to the platform.
Read the complete Carhartt case study.