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JEDDAH - Saudi Arabia is poised to become a global omni-channel powerhouse, industry experts say, as Internet usage penetration in the Kingdom shows a sharp upward trajectory.
Sunil Suresh, CMO & Global Vice President, Strategy at Capillary Technologies – a leading cloud-based software solutions provider that enables retailers to intelligently engage with their customers – forecasts that the online retail landscape in Saudi Arabia looks very promising.
Speaking at an event titled “Consumer-in-Focus - Let’s Get Consumer Ready!” held in Jeddah Hilton last Sept. 24, Sunil Suresh underscores the “urgent need for retailers and consumer businesses (in the Kingdom) to invest in the artificial intelligence (AI) technologies across functions, including consumer engagements and marketing.”
He said as the digital consumer market volume stands to balloon to $10 billion by 2022, “now is time for the retail sector to invest in creating a golden record, where multiple data points come together for effective use.”
Latest available data from statista revealed that 70.49 percent of the Saudi population used the Internet in 2017, and is projected to grow to 73.45 percent in 2022. And as of January 2018, the Kingdom was ranked first with a 95 percent online video penetration among the online population. Saudi Arabia also ranks highest for daily online video access.
The conference discussed challenges in the market as brands are finding it increasingly tougher to create easy customer experiences due to disconnected technologies and lack of in-house expertise.
Capillary Technologies enhances its presence in Saudi Arabia by launching SaaS (Software as a Service) solution which offers a robust customer engagement services to support consumer facing businesses in major global markets.
Sunil noted that “AI is transforming everything, especially businesses in the consumer sector, leading to unlock tremendous values.
Interestingly, the line between online and offline retail are blurring and soon the brands will adapt to a culture of enabling and empowering their consumers to conveniently shop from wherever, whatever and whenever they want.”
He explained that adoption of AI is investing in intelligent analytics, which facilitates the use of relevant and timely insights on consumers and businesses. “This technology gets the systems to talk to each other with appropriate integration and use consumer data effectively for personalized engagement and for designing products and marketing programs,” he pointed out.
In a brief interview on the sidelines of the conference, Sunil summed up the requisites of an effective digital marketing to be always on the go with individual consumers “whenever and wherever”.
In a nutshell, he said retailers should have the “insights” to gather all the data about the consumers, “bring them all together” to be able to clearly understand them.
The next step is for the retailers to drive personal engagement with respective customers to determine their various needs and wants. In this way, retailers can smooth out their way to more sales as they can instantly act to deliver what the customers need anywhere and everywhere and at the convenience of the latter.
Last but not least, Sunil said retailers should be able to build relations with a particular brand and foster loyalty of consumers by looking for real ways to serve as loyalty platform.
Nitin Kaushal, President & General Manager – EMEA at Capillary Technologies, added that big data forms a foundation for an effective deployment of AI with a greater impact in the market. “Retaiers can leverage big data by adopting several ways and applications including unlocking insights on businesses. For retail chain operators, this technology helps track the stores based on performance and the reasons for good or bad performance.”
According to him, most retail companies are sitting on massive amounts of data that unfortunately lie in silos. “It is like they are sitting on a box of gold that is locked and they don’t have the key! There are several things they need to do to unlock the value of data.”
“The technology also helps understand products with higher demand or products with lesser demand as well as the consumers’ profile. Big data can also be used to design and drive personalized loyalty and CRM programs.
Predictive analytics can help make better business decisions, including buying, merchandising and inventory planning,” Kaushal concluded.
Capillary Technologies, with a strong presence in the MENA region, covers over 300 million consumers, 25,000 stores and over 300 marquee brands including Pizza Hut, VF Brands, Walmart, Al-Futtaim, KFC, Starbucks, Madura Garments, Courts and Samsung on its SaaS platform across 30 countries. The company, with over 800 Capillary associates across 14 global offices, provides innovative ways for brands to make their consumers’ lives easier and experiences memorable. — SG
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