We live in a world where things are bought with just a click of a button— easy, fast, and so very tempting. The pandemic bolstered this, with consumers moving dramatically to online channels for shopping and retailers responding in return with advanced digital strategies to better interact with their customers.
The shift has been significant, with McKinsey identifying that COVID-19 has prompted the rapid digitisation of customer interactions.
APAC is leading the pack with an adoption acceleration rate of four years when it comes to digital transformation.
Interestingly, despite the region accounting for three-fourth of all global retail growth, Southeast Asia has the lowest regional e-commerce market share globally. Such statistics may come as a surprise, especially with Shopee, Lazada, and Zalora dominating the restricted e-commerce space. Still, it does indicate that there are significantly ample opportunities to scale.
SYNC expects the value of Southeast Asia’s e-commerce to nearly double in five years, up from a US$132 billion sales forecast in 2021.
Such momentum has a two-fold effect: setting the bar high for many retailers competing in the highly saturated retail space while placing pressure on those trying to pivot from traditional to digital but may not necessarily have the capabilities to support the move.
Resultantly, it comes as no surprise that many are scrambling to find intelligent solutions to stay ahead in the digital race.
E-commerce: The data battlefield
For small businesses and retail startups to make a name for themselves, they need to compete with leading e-commerce marketplaces— or at least have access to tools that can better level the playing field.
For one, e-commerce marketplace Shopee handles an average of 2.8 million transactions per day across nine countries, with a deluge of sale events on a near-monthly basis.
The advantage? A huge base of data points to be utilised to enhance their business and customer engagement strategies. Online brands should have the same data at their fingertips, but the fact is, not all can benefit from the same access and value from their data.
Also Read: How the tech-enabled second-hand fashion resale market is growing in Asia
Hence, the battle ensues— the ongoing race to transform data into actionable insights.
Without data, brands and retailers lack the validation and visibility of their current market position. The repercussions for this can be considered, including a higher risk of misinformed business decisions— be it inventory stock-outs, over discounting, or ineffective marketing campaigns, to name a few.
This, in turn, has a knock-on effect on a brand’s competitive position with significant financial implications in the form of wasted retail dollars and loss of critical market share. But the challenge doesn’t end there.
For those who have looked to tech infrastructures such as retail SaaS solutions, the lack of interoperability across these systems has made it more difficult for brands to understand what their data is saying.
The average retail company of 50 employees will deploy anywhere from 70 to 83 retail SaaS solutions in 2025— an alarming number that points to the risks of a siloed set-up.
With so many SaaS solutions, consolidating insights is too tedious, time-consuming, and resource-intensive— especially for small businesses— to serve as the foundation for real-time implementation.
In today’s market, this effectively equates to missed opportunities.
Survival of the fittest
To better make sense of their data, artificial intelligence can go a long way, transforming the entirety of the data collection process: from creating self-enhancing models that can accurately filter through the data to the consolidation of the data to provide visualised insights.
That being said, maximising cost efficiencies should be the top priority when evaluating retail tech investments, and sometimes, less is more.
A single synergistic AI solution can be sufficient and effective in serving decision-makers through all aspects of the retail value chain. Here’s how:
Foresight in designing and merchandising
Retailers worldwide lose over US$1.1 trillion every year due to out-of-stocks and overstocks alone. Individually, this could account for up to 11.7 per cent of lost revenue. AI can address such inefficiencies by offering insights into assortment planning and stock allocation.
Through scraping, analysing and synthesising the data made available online, an AI-based tech stack can provide an end-to-end view of consumer preferences across multiple platforms and, as a result, allow them to reflect actual market demand and optimise inventory flow.
Agility in sales
Pricing is always a tricky game to play, especially with your biggest rivals breathing down your neck. Accenture indicated that companies risk losing up to 20 per cent of revenue growth without digital operating models that support agility at speed.
Sophisticated AI algorithms such as Omnilytics’ Product Match can mitigate this. Taxonomies (structured naming conventions) are applied to the product data once the data is scraped from all retailers and marketplaces in the market; taxonomies (structured naming conventions) are used to the product data.
Text, image, and feature models are then used to filter out a sample of matching competitor products. With this, brands can see how their products are performing against competitors and on different retail platforms and subsequently plan effective pricing strategies to maximise revenue from all their product offerings.
Curation in management
Synthesising and visualising all data points, AI systems can provide hyper-accurate trend forecast reports that can help brands fine tune their business strategies and react before the market to increase profitability and hit their growth milestones for the year.
Also Read: Looking past the pandemic: The future of fashion retail in Southeast Asia
Ultimately, an all-encompassing AI solution can grant a 360 view of market demand, enabling management to make effective data-driven decisions based on actionable data intelligence. With such technology, a single key is all you need.
Conquering the high street
Indeed, transforming data into intelligence is the only way for retailers to mark their territory in the e-commerce arena. Brands, no matter how established or new, have to evolve their digital on-ramp strategies to include more robust tech capabilities that can withstand the harshest of seasons and enable them to establish dominance in the retail space.
Building the future blueprint of retail intelligence involves its adoption in the immediate present, and brands are stepping up their game.
With a plethora of solutions now on the market, a holistic retail tech stack will soon become an essential arm of the retail system.
Retail data has already disrupted the way retailers do business. Now, retail intelligence is here to propel them further — the opportunities are endless, and it’s only just the beginning.
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