Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Authored By: Scott Hunter, Vice President, Strategic Engagements and Transformation Lead for APJ –UiPath

The global retail industry has faced several changes and advancements in the past decade, especially in the post-pandemic era. Many consumers have now moved the bulk of their shopping online and seldom visit physical stores. On the other hand, many retail businesses have also invested heavily in creating an omnichannel experience for their customers and a more convenient checkout experience overall, with the least amount of human interaction. Many legacy processes are now being replicated via automation, and retail businesses are consistently moving from manual to digital ones.

A new IDC APJ Automation Survey 2022, commissioned by UiPath, revealed that 62% of the organisations in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) will scale up their robotic process automation (RPA) initiatives or achieve an enterprise-wide RPA deployment. Between 2020 and 2021, automation spending has continued to accelerate as 67% of the APJ organisations have increased spending.

The top three benefits of automation deployment in retail organisations are increase in productivity, efficiency, and collaboration (81%), improved cost savings (61%) and enhanced CX and engagement (65%). Going forward, automation will play a larger role for retail APJ enterprises by driving new revenue streams, deepening existing relationships with customers and achieving operational efficiencies.

The Case for Automation in the Retail Industry

The benefits of automation in the retail sector include freeing up human labour to perform other tasks and do more effective work that adds value and cannot be automated, such as customer engagement. The same employees can now be reskilled to work in tandem with the new technology and perform more value-based tasks.

Automation also significantly reduces the chances of manual errors, thereby increasing efficiency. The same functions can now be performed in a shorter time, with fewer errors and even round the clock. All this increases output and the overall productivity of the business. The staff in the company can focus on strategic decisions to create hassle-free, seamless checkout experiences and manage an engaged communication flow with customers, improving the overall customer shopping experience.

On the other hand, Lotte Corporation, a South Korean multinational conglomerate, leveraged automation to filter out products that do not comply with local eCommerce laws or provide false and exaggerated ads. This process typically required two or more employees to manually review 200 products daily. When the process was automated, a single robot could automatically process over 350 products per day. As a result, significant man hours were saved, allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks.

Aside from increasing employee and customer satisfaction, automation can be easily integrated into existing IT infrastructure. The need for it can also be used to rework and replace current processes and legacy systems instead of removing them entirely. Moreover, the existing staff can be trained and reskilled to use these systems, learn from the data generated and consistently improve them.

Challenges in the Retail Industry

The retail industry in APJ suffered significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, owing to the shift for consumers to make their purchases online. Many businesses had to let go of their staff while creating digital stores to manage orders. However, the remaining employees often could not keep up with the changing business models. This problem also persisted for many businesses that faced resistance from their staff to deploying automation and new technologies. On top of this, the retail sector will continue to experience challenges such as ‌rising inflation, with changing costs of raw materials and transportation affected by demand, supply, environmental causes and increasing wages.

“The benefits of automation in the retail sector include freeing up human labor to perform other tasks and do more effective work that adds value and cannot be automated, such as customer engagement. The same employees can now be reskilled to work in tandem with the new technology and perform more value-based tasks.”

In addition to implementing automation solutions, organisations must also ensure that employees have the skills and technical know-how to work with these solutions. Wide-scale training will be needed to move current employees into these higher-value roles. On top of teaching technical skill sets, training opportunities must also include soft skills like leadership, critical thinking, and adaptability. In a future where robots and virtual assistants are able to take over mundane, repetitive tasks, the traits that make us human will be our workforce’s competitive advantage.

Empowering Retailers with Automation

To this end, automation can have a huge impact on businesses if deployed effectively, improving productivity, output and efficiency of the business and its workers. It can also contribute to a more successful business and a smoother customer experience. Since automation is process-agnostic, it can be deployed across departments to manage various business functions like marketing, customer service, supply chain and logistics, finance, accounting and human resources.

Automation can also process a lot of information in the blink of an eye, generating detailed reports on consumer behaviour, performance analytics and more, all of which can be studied to improve customer experience and present targeted marketing opportunities. The time is ripe for digital disruption across the retail industry, and businesses can scale quickly in today’s competitive and fast-paced markets using RPA and Artificial Intelligence at the core of their business.

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