Efficiency sits at the heart of any successful retail operation. Fast, cost-effective, accurate processes free up time for associates to focus on higher-value tasks, free up finances to reinvest back into the business, and deliver reliable data that can be analyzed and acted on more effectively. In a fast-paced retail environment, automation has quickly become a key driver of that efficiency.
What retail automation actually means
As a concept, automation is simple: the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as "the use of machines and computers that can operate without human control." In retail, that can be as straightforward as a CRM system logging customer interactions and managing communications to customers who fit specific profiles. Automation's use cases run from inventory and order management to post-transaction email receipts and everything in between. These deployments are already common across the sector, but the real differentiator today is how retailers use automation, not whether they use it.
The challenge of automation
Automation can be deployed across a wide range of touchpoints, often with real results. If a retailer can automate 80% of otherwise slow, mundane, admin-based tasks, the labor saved can go toward the remaining 20% that's genuinely value-driven. In theory, that works well. In practice, it runs into a snag, at some point, automated processes have to communicate with other automated processes, and if the underlying technologies don't integrate with each other, retailers end up inserting a human-led step between two automated tasks just to move data between them. That defeats the purpose of automating in the first place, and the same problem tends to repeat across other parts of the operation. Before long, a retailer that intended to automate 80% of its operation may only be automating 60%, having created new manual tasks just to bridge the gaps. The business is still benefiting from its technology investment, but not as much as it could.
Building toward unified commerce
Managing multiple disconnected technology deployments can get complex fast, but it doesn't have to stay that way. With the right partner, retailers can take an all-encompassing approach to retail technology instead. Teamwork Commerce provides a full-service product suite spanning Inventory Management, Order Management, Secure CRM, Mobile Point of Sale, and Clienteling, all communicating with each other in real time so retailers can operate at maximum efficiency with minimal manual intervention. That same data feeds high-quality reporting and analytics, giving retailers immediate access to the information they need to make faster, better business decisions.
With the right technology in place, retailers can build automation that's genuinely efficient rather than efficient in theory. It strengthens business performance while freeing associates' time to focus on the customer experiences that actually move the needle.