Industry Acumen in Retail for IoT Opportunities (IOTIARET)

Lesson 1: Introduction

• Course Objectives

Lesson 2: Monetization Opportunities within the Retail Industry

• Objective: Recognize the true market opportunity and monetization possibilities that IoT brings to Organizations with Retail environments.
• Topics:
  • Understand the central role played by IoT in achieving Digital Transformation initiatives for organizations with retail environments.
  • Learn what is Smart and Connected Retail: The Digital state of the Union for the Retail environments.
    • Includes activities within the various Industry Consortia, Conferences and Alliances
  • Landscape analysis of the Organizations with Retail environments.
  • What are the common business challenges and goals that are top-of-mind for Retail environments
    • Market Demographics (e.g. millennials)
    • People
    • Process
    • Data
    • Things
  • What are the focused business areas, use cases and applications which IoT can help remediate, solve or augment within Retail environments.
    • Smart CRM and Automated Checkout
      • Point-of-Sales (POS) Management
    • Omnichannel Conversion and Fulfillment
      • Buy online, ship to home
      • Buy in store, ship from store to home
      • Buy online, pickup in store
      • Buy online, return to store
      • Others
    • Demand-aware warehouse fulfillment
      • Robotics
      • Beyond RFID: BLE Beacons, 6LoWPAN & Zigbee
    • Layout Optimization
      • Mall traffic analysis
      • Smarter Space Design, Construction & Optimization
      • Human Productivity
    • Customer Engagement and Customer Personalization
      • Brand engagement and Brand impressions
      • Item tracking
      • Smart Shelves
      • In-store personalized promotions
      • Customer Experience apps
      • Digital Signage
    • Remote Asset Management & Operations
      • Location & Usage Tracking
    • Predictive Equipment Maintenance (e.g. Refrigeration units)
      • Predictive Analytics
    • Packaging Optimization
    • Physical Safety and Security
    • Inventory Control, Shrinkage and Management
    • Smart Supply Chain Management
    • Smart and Connected Transportation and Logistics
  • Learn about the Opportunities which provide assured payback for IoT initiatives for Retail environments.
  • Articulate the value proposition that Technology Vendors could bring could bring to the above focused business areas, use cases and applications, leveraging their IoT portfolio of solutions, ecosystems and partners.

Lesson 3: Develop a 360 view of a Retail Organization

• Objective: Describe the Industry, Market, Line-of-Business, Financial, Operational and Governance insights surrounding Retail environments.
• Topics:
  • Industry and Market acumen: Generate an awareness of current Industry and market insights into the IoT projects within Retail environments.
    • Understand best practices of bring IoT into Retail environments.
    • Obstacles to change and adoption of IoT projects for Retail Organizations.
  • Organizational acumen Organization Structure, Line-of-Businesses, Departments, External Partners and Ecosystem players.
    • Gain an awareness of the different Buyer Personas involved in an IoT or Digital Transformation initiative
      • Line of Business
      • Store Operations & Sales
      • Marketing
      • Merchandising
      • Supply Chain, Fulfillment & Logistics
    • Understand within the Buyer Personas, who are the relevant Decision-makers, Economic Buyers, Technical Buyers, Influencers, Recommenders, End Users, Detractors and Saboteurs (in a retail organization context);
    • Understand the key business needs, care-abouts, aspirations, tech attitudes, evaluation criteria and outcomes from each buyer persona;
    • Learn strategies on how to break through to the relevant Buyer Persona;
    • Understand the customer problem awareness framework and how to determine your customer’s maturity of understanding of their business outcomes and problems;
    • Engagement and Influencing strategies for connecting with relevant Buyer Personas using IT as a key strategic partner to IoT initiatives;
    • Understand the External Partners and Ecosystem dynamics for a Retail organization.
  • Financial acumen: Learn how recognize key details within financial statements, reports and analyst briefings for identifying potential opportunities for Digital Transformation and IoT initiatives.
    • Understand the different KPIs, and metrics for a typical retail environment (e.g. customer traffic, conversion rate, average sales, gross margin per store, basket size, YoY percentage change in sales, average sales per transaction, shopper value, average number of shoppers per transaction) specific to focused business areas of a retail organization.
  • Operational acumen: Describe the high-level elements in a retail environment and their processes and workflow using an example:
    • Planning
    • Marketing & Brand Management
    • Production
    • Merchandising & Store design
    • Human Resources
    • Store Operations & Sales
    • Real estate lifecycle management
    • Technology
    • Inventory Management
    • Supply Chain, Fulfillment & Logistics
    • Others
  • Governance acumen: Explore the common industry governance, risk management, customer data privacy, cybersecurity, regulatory and compliance administrations for Retail organizations and their impact on Digital Transformation and IoT initiatives and projects.