Creating the Foundation for Empowering Associates

Incorporating new technology into retail operations is growing in popularity, but success requires employee buy-in

Not only are more retailers opening stores than closing them, they’re also investing in new technologies that help them better serve their customers in an evolving industry, Forrester Retail Analyst Sucharita Kodali said during her presentation at NRF 2019: Retail’s Big Show.

And as the roll out new customer-facing initiatives — such as stronger personalization, BOPIS, inventory look-up, new merchandising strategies, mobile wallets, mobile POS, RFID, digital offers, product visualization, stock optimization and more (it’s head-spinning) – retailers must stay focused on creating and empowering connected associates who understand and value the importance of leveraging these new tech investments.

But to create the connected associate — one who can leverage new customer-facing technologies to cross-sell, upsell, create loyalty and win — it is essential to proactively initiate a foundational platform of instant chainwide associate communications, brand training and engaging video-based technology with which management can measure associate knowledge, engagement and impact, and ultimately track the ROI of new store IT investments.

Buy-in From Top Down Will INCITE® Innovation

In fact, although excitement continues about new technologies, the store of the future and a digital-first customer experience, retail corporations are struggling when it comes to innovation.

In an opinion piece featured on Business of Fashion, Scott Emmons, who recently departed as head of Neiman Marcus’ innovation lab after 16 years, said one of the main roadblocks to innovation is a lack of buy-in.

“When deploying new technologies into a store, it is critical that sales teams understand the use case and are fully trained in its operation,” Emmons declared. “Sales associates are the frontline ambassadors to instore technology; if they are not engaged, the tech will end up in the corner gathering dust. Ignoring the training that must accompany technology deployments can easily doom them to failure.”

Retailers can help create those engaged, empowered associates with INCITE®, the industry’s first Mobile Associate Communications Platform (mACP) and foundational platform for new technologies.

Developed by retail technology firm Multimedia Plus, INCITE® is a sophisticated, highly branded, mobile-first private broadcast network with instant-on, non-streaming video; self-publishing interface; granular targeting; real-time metrics; field accessibility; instant, internal global broadcasting from an app; and a simple dashboard interface. Already it has delivered more than 1 million programs and 5 million modules to associates in 22 countries.

INCITE®’s HD video content is downloaded in the background; it resides in and is retrieved from the device’s memory, with no streaming, so users experience no aggravating loads or hiccups – just instant-on and persuasive education and communications.

If you are among the retailers investing in and building new frontline technologies, help associates figure it all out: Motivate, guide and incite associates with a foundational platform that helps explain the technology use case, demonstrate its benefits, incite engagement and advocacy, and measure impact and ROI.

To find out more, contact Multimedia Plus at (212) 982-3229 or info@multimediaplus.com

And for a deeper look at “Creating the Foundation for Empowering Associates,” click here to download the free Multimedia Plus white paper.