Blog: Transforming Your Retail Business with the DN Vynamic™ Retail Suite

“Global markets have undergone an unprecedented transformation over the past several decades. Political reforms have expanded consumer choices, fueled the growth of the middle class around the globe, and created massive wealth. The digital revolution has empowered these same consumers, through access to information and to one another―anywhere, anytime. New technology has fueled disruptive innovation, even as an explosion of media has provided new opportunities for companies to reach global consumers. These changes have left many companies struggling to adapt to increasingly powerful consumers in global, unpredictable markets.”

That text from 2013 was written by Gregory Carpenter, Professor of Marketing Strategy and Faculty Director at the Kellogg School of Management. His exploration of evolving retail business models presents three key challenges for retailers:

• As the playing field for consumers and retailers has been leveled, due to lower barriers between people, countries and businesses, how can retailers redefine their retail business in such a way that it reflects today’s need for consumer empowerment?
• With the Internet paving the way for a host of new (mobile) technologies, digital media and communication tools that allows us to share information in real time about anything that we want, what is a retailer’s competitive differentiator when it comes to digital innovation?
• Following political and economic reforms which unleashed economic growth in developing countries, how can retailers reap the benefits of globalization?

The power balance has shifted, and consumers have started to behave like ‘kings’ … they demand more: more service, more choice, more convenience. But, they don’t want to pay more, be more loyal or spend more time getting the products. So how can retailers solve these challenges?

Retailers Must Rethink the Way They Connect

Our world is becoming more and more connected every day, with advancements like the cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) enabling new ways to engage with consumers. We work with our clients to enable connected-commerce solutions that transcend internal business silos (of channels, products and target markets) and transform retailers’ store networks into partner-driven ecosystems that put the consumer at the heart of the business.

Any solution retailers employ today should help them monetize data, converge channels and deepen customer reach and loyalty.

Our transformation program, Storevolution™, supports retailers in a strategic evolution towards a new business model where new digital technology is used to deliver truly consumer-centric retail experiences.

Retailers Must See Their Stores through Their Consumers’ Eyes

We developed the Storevolution approach in response to the disruptive marketplace. As retailers navigate an unpredictable future, our tailored, modular, flexible approach ensures they implement the right solutions at the right time to enhance the experience for their specific customers.

The engine that drives Storevolution is our state-of-the-art DN Vynamic™ retail software portfolio, which can be integrated into the retail network through a strategic roadmap that acknowledges both emerging market changes as well as legacy infrastructure and internal constraints. DN Vynamic was created with specific customer journeys in mind, so retailers can seamlessly support the end-to-end process from awareness to research, purchase and even after-sales service.

In a new retail environment that prioritizes consumer empowerment, digitalization and globalization, our software supports retailers holistically and comprehensively:

Consumer Empowerment

To truly empower consumers, each retail journey must be seamless, personal and intuitive. Vynamic Engage changes the way retailers drive consumer engagement, enabling a 360-degree view of consumer behavior and the ability to centrally capture relevant consumer data, then complement that data with transactional, behavioral and sociographic information. Using Vynamic Insights, this lake of data can be smartly analyzed and processed to provide holistic consumer profiles that allow retailers to tailor their marketing and engagement with precision.

Consumer empowerment should be a key driver for innovations in the check-out process. The POS is a critical platform that does so much more than just close a transaction – it can be the center of consumer experiences in-store. Innovations in self-scanning and self-checkout help remove friction as they accelerate the checkout process and improve consumer experience without increasing labor cost. Vynamic Connection Points solutions come with built-in flexibility, so retailers can easily adjust and extend consumer journeys to include BOPIS, BORIS, save-the-sale and home delivery:

• Vynamic Self-Checkout integrates existing POS applications into self-service terminals, making established POS functions available in both stationary and mobile environments, and supporting automated checkout solutions including kiosks and payment terminals.
• Vynamic™ Personal Shopper is another solution that helps streamline the checkout process by giving consumers the ability to scan and bag items while shopping. This type of personal self-scanning is particularly well-suited for grocery stores, supermarkets, department stores and large specialty stores. It can be operated using dedicated scanning devices or using the consumer’s own mobile device with a “scan & go” app. The beauty of personal self-scanning is that it cleverly combines three key elements — convenience, service and efficiency — all into one.

Digital Innovation

In an extremely fast-moving, connected and digitalized world, retailers must be able to keep up with their mobile consumers. One of the biggest questions we hear around mobile pertains to execution. Once retailers have defined their mobile strategy, they need technology that lets them incrementally extend consumer journeys with digital elements. We specifically designed Vynamic™ Mobile Retail to meet these evolving needs, with a cloud-based approach based on a set of standardized, reusable ‘micro apps’ that can be flexibly composed together like Lego bricks, saving on time-to-market and development costs for new consumer apps.

The latest solution in the Vynamic Retail Suite is Vynamic Demand, an innovative marketing solution that closes the marketing loop and tracks the consumer’s shopping behavior from initial awareness up to actual purchase. Truly unique, it transfers offers in real time, as the customer is seeing them on TV, to the consumer’s smartphone, enabling them to purchase products seen on TV immediately online and pick them up in store later. In addition, based on geo-fencing, Vynamic Demand can send real-time offers to the smartphone of consumers when they are in the vicinity of a store.

The technical foundation for our retail solutions is Vynamic Retail Services. Vynamic Retail Services allows you to easily connect all consumer-facing touchpoints and streamline data to and from these touchpoints. The underlying solution architecture gives retailers the agility and flexibility to support innovative consumer journeys while adding new digital touchpoints along the way.

Globalization

With the introduction of our country packages it is now much easier for retailers to support a swift entry in virtually every retail market on planet Earth. Our standardized country packages guarantee that retailers remain compliant with upcoming changes in local fiscal legislation: potential changes in the software due to updated legislation are covered and delivered prior to go-live. Currently, we have delivered or are engaged in the delivery of country packages to over 45 countries.

In tandem with our solutions in the areas of backend operations and merchandize management, our goal is to support retailers in creating a frictionless shopping experience, with seamlessly connected touchpoints, seamlessly connected journeys from pre-purchase phase up to fulfillment and after-sales services, seamlessly connected ecosystems, and seamlessly connected business operations around the globe. We’re here for you as a strategic partner—so if you’ve got questions about how to transform your retail environment for the future of connected commerce, let’s talk.