Advantage2Retail, Inc.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is quickly reshaping the world’s financial growth and stability: The Stock Market is plummeting, Social Distancing is forcing many Retailers and Restaurants to temporarily close their doors, forcing employees to work from home, or take unpaid leave.... Small Businesses will be affected the most and we can only hope that this will be resolved quickly. In the meanwhile, stay safe, keep your distance, wash your hands, and try to remain positive. This will pass, if we all work together for the common good.

#Technology has completely transformed the #Retail Industry, but in turn, our reliance on that technology has grown. When that technology fails, it can irrevocably harm the #CustomerExperience in many ways; from preventing #online #orders from being #fulfilled in a timely fashion, causing delays in #supplychain and even preventing a #customer from being able to #pay for items in-#store. Sure, your IT department knows well the technology you have implemented across your busi...ness, and are well suited to resolving issues from time to time, but when issues arise chain-wide can your team quickly turn-around with a solution to prevent damage being done to the customer experience and #loyalty? Consider the Advantages of #Outsourcing your Internal #Helpdesk #Support to the team at @Advantage2Retail. For well over a decade, our support #technicians have worked tirelessly, resolving #hardware and #software issues for our Retail and #Distribution clients, helping to preserve both their investments in technology and their customer experience. To learn more about how A2R can help support your business, please visit our website: https://a2r.ca/helpdesk/

#Technology has completely transformed the #Retail Industry, but in turn, our reliance on that technology has grown. When that technology fails, it can irrevocably harm the #CustomerExperience in many ways; from preventing #online #orders from being #fulfilled in a timely fashion, causing delays in #supplychain and even preventing a #customer from being able to #pay for items in- #store. Sure, your IT department knows well the technology you have implemented across your busi...ness, and are well suited to resolving issues from time to time, but when issues arise chain-wide can your team quickly turn-around with a solution to prevent damage being done to the customer experience and #loyalty? Consider the Advantages of #Outsourcing your Internal #Helpdesk #Support to the team at @Advantage2Retail. For well over a decade, our support #technicians have worked tirelessly, resolving #hardware and #software issues for our Retail and #Distribution clients, helping to preserve both their investments in technology and their customer experience. To learn more about how A2R can help support your business, please visit our website: https://a2r.ca/helpdesk/

Retailers have seen a decline in Brick-and-Mortar visits as E-Commerce has risen to prominence. This unfortunately will be exacerbated should the Outbreak of the Corona Virus increase in the U.S. While we hope that the outbreak can be contained, and that the strain can be cured, it is nonetheless causing concern among Americans, especially when it comes to visiting public spaces, such as Retail Stores.... In a recent survey from CoreSight Research reported by RetailDive, we learn that the Retail Industry may be hit hard by the Corona Virus if the outbreak worsens. The Corona Virus is already affecting the Supply Chains of Retailers, as a large amount of products are sourced from China and other countries, but now the Brick and Mortar locations may be hit by a further drop in foot traffic as anxious consumers stay away from public spaces. The report showed the responses of every day Americans and their fears about the COVID19 Virus, and showed that currently about 28% of respondents said they are currently avoiding, or severely limiting their visits to public spaces, with a further 58% stating that if the outbreak worsens, they too will avoid public spaces altogether. Of those who stated they would avoid public spaces, 40% said they are limiting or avoiding visits to Malls and Shopping Centers, while 30% are avoiding retail stores in General. This of course does not take into account those shoppers (as seen recently at CostCo) who are stockpiling goods, and causing a bump in sales. Beyond malls, which have already been fighting falling foot traffic, the survey found consumers will likely begin to avoid restaurants, movie theaters, sporting events and other entertainment venues. That could have a detrimental impact to sales, especially for those businesses that can’t make up losses with online sales. Travel is already being impacted, and there is a general sense of the unknown when it comes to making long term plans. Hopefully the outbreak may be contained, and this will all be resolved. We can only hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. Please stay safe, and we will keep you updated with any impacts to the Retail Industry.

Your business has invested vast sums to #implement #technologies in your #BrickandMortar #Stores to help augment the #CustomerExperience and as well to improve #Associate #Productivity. #Outsourcing your internal #Helpdesk #Support to the team at @Advantage2Retail will help your organization to protect that investment, saving you time and money. Please visit our website to learn how A2R can help support your organization:... https://a2r.ca/helpdesk/

#Retail is now a #consumer-centric industry. Consumers shop how they want, when and where they want, on any device, and have heightened #expectations on both #service and #experience.... Legacy #Retailers are feeling the pinch, and many have not seen the turn of the decade. This last five years have been tumultuous, and the next several years seem poised to be even more demanding. It's challenging to be a retailer in the modern industry, but with the right assistance, your business can reinvent itself without changing the core values that make it unique. We invite you to learn all the ways that @Advantage2Retail can help give your business the #Advantages it needs to be successful in a highly competitive market. Please visit our website to learn more: https://a2r.ca/

In the #Retail Industry, the #Customer is King, and the #Experience is Paramount. For over a decade, the dedicated team at @Advantage2Retail has been working in partnership with our clients, helping them to navigate between the #digital and physical to offer their clients a world-class, and unforgettable experience; whether in #store, #online or somewhere in between.... With one of the most challenging decades for the Retail Industry behind us, we now enter uncharted waters, and it becomes more important to move forward with a #strategy that will help your business to stand out in a crowded and competitive marketplace. To learn all the ways Advantage2Retail can help your organization to gain an #Advantage in 2020 and beyond, please visit our website: https://a2r.ca/

For well over a decade now, the Helpdesk Team at Advantage2Retail has worked tirelessly, supporting our Retail Clients and the hardware and software solutions your organization has implemented in your Brick-and-Mortar Stores, Warehouses and Distribution Centers, and providing End-User Support to employees at your Corporate Head-Offices. Technology has been a game-changer for Retailers, but it is a double-edged sword: the more we rely on the technology to help augment the cu...stomer experience, the more chances that technology can fail, and irrevocably harm that experience, their loyalty and your bottom line. When you outsource your helpdesk support to Advantage2Retail, we become an extension of your organization, looking out for your best interests, and protecting the investments your company has made in technology. With superior responsiveness and deep understanding of the business impacts, we support Retailers and Distributors from coast-to-coast, aiding them with their needs, and providing solutions regardless of Hardware or Software. Discover all the ways A2R can help Support your Organization, and Gain your Advantage. https://a2r.ca/helpdesk/

#Retail is now a #consumer-centric industry. Consumers shop how they want, when and where they want, on any device, and have heightened #expectations on both #service and #experience.... Legacy #Retailers are feeling the pinch, and many have not seen the turn of the decade. This last five years have been tumultuous, and the next several years seem poised to be even more demanding. It's challenging to be a retailer in the modern industry, but with the right assistance, your business can reinvent itself without changing the core values that make it unique. We invite you to learn all the ways that @Advantage2Retail can help give your business the #Advantages it needs to be successful in a highly competitive market. Please visit our website to learn more: https://a2r.ca/

With the release of yesterday's E-Commerce Q4-2019 numbers, we get a broader, and complete view of the full peak season beyond Adobe Analytics' focus on November/December. Here are the main takeaways: Total retail revenues for Q4-2019 were up to $1.47 Trillion, up 4.21% over Q4-2018.... Including October, E-Commerce revenues for the 4th quarter of 2019 exceeded our initial estimates, and surged to a total of $187.3 Billion, which represents continued double-digit growth of 16.4% over Q4-2018, and worth 12.8% of total Retail. Brick-and-Mortar Retail did not fare as well as E-Commerce, growing just 2.64% over Q4-2018 at $1.28 Trillion, representing 87.2% of total Retail Sales. For the 2019 year, we see Total Retail growing 3.49% over 2018 at $5.47 Trillion and E-Commerce growing 14.92% over 2018 to finish the year with $601.7 Billion, worth 11.01% of total Retail Sales. Brick-and-Mortar retail sales crested $4.87 Trillion, up 2.23% over 2018. When looking at the total growth in dollars, we see total Retail grew $184.3 Billion over 2018, Brick-and-Mortar was responsible for $106.2 BIllion (57.62%), Desktop E-Commerce represented $23.87 Billion (12.95%) and Mobile Commerce represented $54.24 Billion (29.43%). Based on the historical data and our forecasts, we see the 2020 year growing a modest 3.53% over 2019 to $5.66 Trillion, Brick and Mortar Retail will grow 2.02% to $4.96 Trillion, E-Commerce will grow to represent 12.3% of Retail Sales at approximately $806 Billion, up 15.73% over 2019, and of that figure, Mobile Commerce will grow to $266 Billion, up 32.06% over 2019, worth 38.14% of E-Commerce Revenues and 4.69% of Retail. January's initial Retail figures show $418.5 Billion in revenues, up 4.07% over January 2019. Stay tuned...

Imagine you are an #Associate in a #BrickandMortar #store. Your company has implemented some new #technologies in-store that make your job easier, and allow you to #engage and assist #customers with great effect. For seemingly no reason, the new piece of technology fails while you are servicing the customer. Of course, if you are a professional, you can go "analog" and try your best to assist your customer, but without instant access to information, inventory figures or pro...duct details at your finger-tips, let alone advanced capabilities like clienteling and mobile point of sale, you may find it hard to meet, and/or exceed their expectations. The customer may be understanding, they may not be. They may leave the store without completing their purchase. They may be upset and never shop with your company again. In this scenario, the #customerexperience has been soured, their #loyalty damaged, and company #revenues are affected. The store associate in this tale, may have tried to contact their internal #helpdesk team for #support, but the wait time may also be affected by a chain-wide issue, or it is after hours at #headoffice. Whatever the reason, your Store Associate and the expensive technology implemented in-store are left up a creek without a paddle. There is a potential resolution that could avoid all of the above. For well over a decade, the dedicated team at the A2R #Retail Helpdesk have assisted our retail clients with their technical and end-user support needs, preventing damaging outages, helping to preserve and improve the customer experience, and ensuring that when their store associates need help with a piece of #hardware or a #software solution, that our agents are ready, willing and able. When Retailers #outsource their Helpdesk Support to the professionals at @Advantage2Retail, they are freeing up their valuable IT team to be able to strengthen company infrastructure, protect the company against harmful cyber attacks, and otherwise implementing or integrating new technologies to help give them a leg up against the competition. When Retailers outsource their Helpdesk Support to the professionals at A2R, they are guaranteeing their store associates get the responsive assistance they need when they need it most. Overall, through outsourcing your helpdesk support to A2R, you are saving your company time and money, which is an ROI you can take straight to the bank. To learn all the ways A2R can help support your business, please visit our website: https://a2r.ca/helpdesk/

Let's face it; The Modern #Retail Industry is a #Consumer Controlled Industry. Customer #Expectations, #Experience and #Loyalty are paramount, and Retailers are left to try and navigate the pitfalls of ensuring their customer's needs are met, and exceeded.... Primary among Consumers is a need for #Personalization and #Relevance, a feeling of understanding from the Retailer, recognition on the consumer's unique needs and wants. The Catch-22 is that Consumers have these expectations, and that Retailers have a hard time identifying individuals in order to provide that level of Personalization. Consumers are still wary of sharing their personal #data, given the history of #databreaches and the current state #cybersecurity, and so getting over that hump will prove to be a challenge. Online (up until Google's recent announcement about a change in #cookie policies) you are tracked and identified, when you view items on a retailer's website, cookies track that action, and most likely are used in online ads to display to you, to entice you to make a purchase. Those same cookies identify you, your personal preferences, likes and wants on return visits to their sites. In the physical space, without #technologies in place that give some consumers the creeps, Retailers have few options for identification without overtly asking you to "Opt in", and thus are unable to offer the level of personalization that consumers state they want. From a few recent studies, we see the current state of Personalization in the Retail Industry; a Salesforce study shows that 70% of consumers say a company's understanding of their individual needs influences their loyalty, and 69% say the same of personalized customer care. An Accenture report shows that a full 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember and provide relevant offers and recommendations. A BRP study shows that 51% of consumers feel it is important to get a personalized experience across all digital channels within a brand. What these separate studies show is a real need by Retailers to fully invest in the ways that they communicate, identify, and provide for their customers. If Retailers are better able to safeguard consumer data, and use it wisely to offer these personalized experiences, they are able to obtain their loyalty, and ultimately their continued business. Food for thought

As part of our overall #Retail #Consulting #Services, A2R will conduct an in-depth #assessment of your current state of #operational #processes, and through analysis, provide a clearly-outlined action plan which is aligned with your strategic goals. Through this process, @Advantage2Retail is able to help your organization reduce business impact, mitigate #risk and outline critical success factors to serve as signs on the roadmap. Your operational processes are derived from ...your needs and interactions with your existing technologies. When new #technologies are #implemented or #integrated with legacy systems, it can change the flow of operations and cause unforeseen issues. By first examining the needs of the business versus the capabilities of the technology, A2R is able to help your organization re-align and refocus and in some cases, to present Business Process Improvements that were previously undiscovered. To learn all the ways Advantage2Retail can help your organization gain an Advantage, please visit our website: https://a2r.ca/retail-services/

In 2020, the #BrickandMortar #CustomerExperience is heavily augmented by the #Technology your organization has implemented in-store. So what happens when that technology fails for whatever reason? Is your internal #helpdesk team able to quickly turn-around with a resolution? What happens if the issue is chain-wide?... Leave nothing to chance by #Outsourcing your internal helpdesk #support to the professions at @advantage2Retail. Learn how we can help support your organization, visit us at https://a2r.ca/helpdesk/

Just last month, Radial released a study on the state of #BOPIS, otherwise known as #ClickandCollect. For the last several years, A2R has been tracking the adoption and success and failure of the In-Store Fulfillment services. The current survey found that 92% of #Retailers currently have a Click-and-Collect program in place, and that across the last 6 months, 67% of Americans have used BOPIS services.... While these are fantastic metrics of progress and success, there are still a number of challenges among retailers: 49% of Retailers state that the overall speed of having BOPIS orders ready for pickup is a top challenge 44% stated having a specified space in-store for order pickups While 36% stated their top challenge as syncing online and in-store inventory While store design, or storage space can be a challenge for any retailers, the major reason BOPIS tends to fail is the lack of unified and connected systems in real-time. For BOPIS to work successfully, Retailers need to adopt solutions that allow them to integrate their systems ( #PointofSale, #CRM, #Merchandising, #OrderManagement and #WarehouseManagement) with #realtime #data so as to ensure #inventory figures between stores and #ecommerce remain as close as possible. Arm-in-arm with that concept is accurate, and up-to-date in-store inventory figures, which can be a challenge in a dynamic environment like a #store, as opposed to a static environment like a #warehouse. The third, and one of the most important aspects for the customer, is prompt and solid customer service and communications; making sure that customer expectations and the store capabilities meet. Any online retailer is able to fulfill orders, what makes BOPIS/Click-and-Collect successful and popular with consumers, is the ability to eliminate shipping times and costs by offering in-store pickup. This service only works when all the disparate pieces of technology, process and people work together like a well-oiled machine, and not only meet, but exceed consumer expectations. This is one of the reasons A2R has partnered with @highjump to be able to offer their Retail Advantage Solution (we obviously love the name). The Retail Advantage solution allows retailers and grocers to have extensive, real-time visibility and control functionality for the entire store operation. The solution seamlessly integrates with store point of sale ( #POS), #planograms, order management and #ERP systems. When partnered with @Advantage2Retail's consulting services, we can ensure that while Highjump is able to tie together all of your systems, we can work together to optimize the business processes in-store to ensure that no process is overlooked, preserving the customer experience. To learn more about how A2R and Highjump can provide the Advantage of Click-and-Collect in your Stores, please visit our website https://a2r.ca/in-store-fulfillment/

While we wait for February's U.S. Census Bureau #Ecommerce Report for Q4-2019, we have compiled the monthly #retail data from the U.S. Census bureau, and the E-Commerce figures from Adobe to review the months of November and December, 2019. Key takeaways:... Total retail sales for the period of November 1st to December 31st hit a new record at $1 Trillion USD, up 4.5% over the same period in 2018. #BrickandMortar Retail alone generated $864.5 Billion, a healthy 3.2% growth over 2018. Total E-Commerce, as we previous reported was $142.5 Billion, up 13.1% over 2018, worth 14.2% of total Retail Sales. Breaking up E-Commerce, #Mobile ( #Smartphone & #Tablet) generated $58.4 Billion up 15.9% over 2018 and worth 41% of total E-Commerce and 5.8% of total retail sales. We will get the Q4 E-Commerce numbers in about 3 weeks to compare with the November/December numbers from Adobe, with our current estimates that including October's numbers, we should be seeing north of $182.5 Billion over the quarter. Stay tuned...