Meeting Digital Expectations – Tales from the Back Office

It’s not particularly innovative or revelatory to state that digital transformation is the future of the retail business.

Even those brands still fully committed to brick-and-mortar retail are realising that omnichannel experiences – where the digital and physical experience is blended together into a cohesive whole – are the key to bringing young and tech-savvy audience through their doors.

However, when it comes to meeting those digital expectations, a lot of work must go on behind the scenes and it’s in this area we are focussing today. The back office of digital transformation is facing a period of great challenge which is making it ever more difficult to meet the digital expectations of both the brands and customers demanding them.

Technology

When it comes to selecting and implementing the right technology to facilitate retail digital transformation, the responsibility ultimately falls onto IT managers and CIOs. These technology leaders need to make sure they have the right people and platforms in place to provide retail customers with these modern experiences.

Selecting, managing, and delivering the right technologies to achieve these goals in the retail space means both securing those innovations intended for customer facing channels – such as ecommerce platforms, mobile applications, and in-store devices such as digital mirrors – and those which must operate behind the scenes to support them.

These back-office technologies cover every aspect of the retail business outside of the core customer facing sector, including HR, supply chain management, finance, management, purchasing, administration, and more.

A Leadership Pressure Cooker

Because so much of the responsibility for these innovations is on IT managers and CIOs, these people must make sure they can be the bulwark against any digital transformation disasters and make sure the organisation they represent is able to keep pace in what is becoming an increasingly fast-past, aggressive, and competitive landscape.

A huge part of this challenge comes from the supposedly simple task of finding the tech talent necessary to implement digital transformation. Despite drive to encourage more people – especially women and those from minority backgrounds – to take up coding and programming as career choices, the talent pool for these roles remains incredibly shallow.

Compounding this issue is the fact that tech firms and the inexorable rise of FinTech and other financial industry innovators are snapping up the best of the talent, which is out there, able as they are to offer far more competitive salaries and bonuses than the retail space can.

All this is conspiring to create a perfect storm where the demand to meet digital expectations is rapidly outpacing the ability for CIOs and IT managers to actually meet them and, as this pressure mounts, is it going to lead to a similar brain drain at the higher levels of digital transformation as these people seek better paid and less pressured industries themselves?

Final Thoughts

The race to meet digital expectations is certainly a challenging one and the pressure on CIOs and IT managers is intense. The retail space needs to make sure it is setting achievable goals and supporting these teams if they want their digital transformations to be successful.

Meeting digital expectations is sure to be part of the conversation at Retail CIO Connect 2022, being held in June at Sopwell House, St Albans, UK.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.