IA & RPA for Retail

Accelerating the Next Generation of Retail Customer Experience

White paper: Six post-pandemic predictions

As market dynamics continue to evolve and retailers enter the new era of "never normal," they need to be prepared for a future of continued change and disruption.

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Retail campaign image showing a woman on her sofa with a credit card and her laptop

Connected shoppers, disconnected retailers

As a retailer, we know you need to manage several major challenges simultaneously. We’re talking about tackling the impact of global uncertainty, ever-changing demand, constrained resources and — if that’s not enough — winning and retaining customers, too. While you can’t manage the unknown, you can secure your future with the capabilities of intelligent automation and RPA.

We invite you to join the world’s most successful, forward-thinking retailers, including John Lewis, Pets at Home and The Very Group, that rely on SS&C Blue Prism’s intelligent digital workforce to safely automate work, from the front office, right across the supply chain and on to the shop floor.

What is Driving Change for Retail?

Where Does SS&C Blue Prism Fit In?

Select A Solution Area
Customer Experience
Customer Experience Customer Insight Fraud Prevention Order Fulfilment Workforce Staffing

Stand out with exceptional customer service

Today, customers expect a personalized experience. In fact, most shoppers are now willing to share their personal data with companies, particularly if they are assured a top-quality experience in return. Here’s how we can help you improve the consumer experience, increase repeat business and minimize abandoned orders with intelligent automation.

Personalized offers

Utilize personally identifiable information (PII) to create personalized offers for your customers, improving the customer experience and results.

Price matching

If your customer finds an item cheaper elsewhere and contacts you, a digital worker can confirm the product, price, and conditions through online searches, and then email a response to the customer.

Customer returns

Returns are processed in multiple downstream applications by digital workers using data entered by your contact center agents via a single web form. This minimizes the risk of transcription errors, reduces the call duration, and ensures customers receive the best experience.

Contact center

Customer data is pre-populated with customer details by digital workers via interactive voice response integration for faster resolution of customer inquiries.

Omni-channel virtual agent

Extend the reach of customer conversations for speedier outcomes, reduced cost and award-winning moments. Quickly understand what your customers want and connect them with the expertise they need to get things done.

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Gain actionable, data-driven customer insights

The ability to analyze shoppers’ habits and use customer insights to predict future shopping habits and needs, is a powerful tool. This kind of forecasting can help you stay ahead of the competition, ensuring you always have the right product available, at the right time, and at the right price. Intelligent automation can help turn data into critical customer insight at speed.

Customer experience

Customers expect a proactive, personalized, consistent, and outstanding service experience across digital channels, as well as self-service.

Data collection

Automate the gathering and aggregation of data from multiple source systems (POS, loyalty programs, e-commerce) to create a fast and accurate dataset that can be used for analysis and targeted action.

Reporting and forecasting

Digital workers produce timely insight reports to enable fast action, from advising which day social media influence might be optimal to recommending which products are likely to sell best and where. Getting the right information to the right teams at the right time can ensure the best outcomes.

Marketing campaigns

Execute data-driven marketing campaigns using digital workers to connect relevant offers to the right customers. Manage campaign peaks without scaling up your human workforce.

Greater agility for improved fraud detection and prevention

Globally, the retail industry loses billions of dollars each year through fraudulent ordering. As a retailer, it’s imperative that you act quickly, investigating customer orders held on suspicion of fraud. While fraudulent orders are a drain on retailers, so is loss of inventory from warehouses to goods in transit Intelligent automation helps you reduce the risk of fraud, freeing up resources to monitor behavioral trends and subsequently enabling you to quickly adapt to changes in fraud tactics.

Order cross-checks

If there’s a recommendation to challenge an order, a case is created in the CRM system. Digital workers can perform a series of cross-checks on the order via internal and external systems. Suspect orders may then be referred for human action.

Order cancellation

Automate the cancellation of orders quickly where fraud is suspected, minimizing the risk of orders being shipped through any delay in action.

Inventory cross-checking

Digital workers check inventory against expectations and flag exceptional shrinkage, enabling further proactive investigation by their human colleagues.

Anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer

Digital workers can monitor customer transactions across all systems to identify money laundering activity. A digital worker receives suspicious transaction alerts from an analytics tool, creates and populates a case file, extracts data from multiple bank records, contacts the customer for information, identifies the suspected fraud and presents the case to your human workers to render a decision.

The right product in the right place at the right time

Retailers face many challenges throughout the order fulfilment process, from demand planning to inventory management to logistics. Ultimately the key to effective order fulfilment is having accurate data to enable optimal decision-making. From knowing what products you have to sell, to what customers want and how you will deliver to meet those needs, information is critical. Connect systems like your sales order, ERP and inventory management systems using SS&C Blue Prism for greater visibility across the order fulfilment process.

Order management

Automate customer order management processes to minimize time from order to acknowledgment and completion.

Stock-level checks

Digital workers check legacy inventory systems to determine current stock levels and notify retail workers on duty to reserve the product for online customer orders.

Stock tracking

Digital workers pull together data from telematic technology like radio-frequency identification to track items and accurately update their status for improved visibility along the supply chain.

Product status updates

Automatically confirm that a product has been picked and packed, then email the customer that their order is ready to be collected and/or is out for delivery.

Returned items

Automate and accelerate the interbranch transfer process for returned products. Triage returned goods entering the distribution center or store them using previous returns information or store preferences. Then allocate the stock to an appropriate selling location, raising the relevant documentation for the transfer. Processes are handled quickly, minimizing markdowns.

Hit the ground running with intelligent automation

The retail industry experiences high levels of staff attrition across the board. With multiple employee contract types, multiple franchise locations and increasing numbers of back-office staff, ensuring employee details and access are correct can be a challenge. Intelligent automation can help manage peaks in demand and handle seasonal staffing effectively.

Recruiting, onboarding and reference checks

Automate all manual tasks related to recruiting, onboarding and reference requests, update personnel systems, and action reference outcomes.

Payroll creation

Generate payroll for new staff without error and in good time, ensuring new employees never miss a pay packet.

Time and attendance validation

Review employee time records daily for accuracy and completion for that day. Notify employee or manager of any missing information to fix defects and maximize payroll accuracy.

Systems and facilities access

Digital workers create new user accounts in sales and personnel applications, as well as setting up the right building access for staff so they can get going from day one.

Onboarding and reskilling

Automate onboarding through self-learning curriculums and identify reskilling opportunities to better support the future of work.

Learning and development administration

Review employee certification status against requirements. Notify employees, managers, and compliance teams of certification requirements.

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