Aditya Utama looks into the future of retail at SAP Industries Forum

He will share his insights on customer centricity in a 60-minute webinar on 23 April.

Aditya Utama, Industry Business Architect (IBA) for Retail in Southeast Asia at SAP, has been working with strategic customers and prospects in upping the ante for digital transformation and business architecture.

He has been leading customer engagement to assess strategic objectives, innovation scenarios and key improvement opportunities. Prior to his current role with SAP, Aditya focused on leading end-to-end deal execution along with the sales team in orchestrating the right solutions for the customers.

Aditya has more than 10 years of experience working in multiple retail projects. During his free time, he enjoys going to the gym. He also recently picked up a new hobby—reading more serious books.

In a brief interview with Retail Asia, Aditya talks about the new business models that retailers are adopting, the new strategies to leverage technology to improve customer experience, as well as his upcoming session in the virtual event SAP Industries Forum 2020: Reimagining the Future of Retail.

How can retailers leverage technology to maximise their strengths and address customer pain points?
There are certain ways how retailers can leverage technology. The first one is to focus on the customer centricity across the value chain, this is where the retailer can utilise their data to understand the customer needs while providing better assortment at the stores. The other way is to look in serving to the segment of one, where retailers can start to create a personalised offer to all customers, by starting to listen to the customer feedback of their product, brand and even the shopping experience. Last but not least is to run smart stores, where using the stores as a showroom that can help the customer to get a new experience, it can be in the form of virtual stores using augmented reality and targeted marketing AI to create different experiences for the customers.

What are the new business models that enterprises are adopting in response to current retail trends?
Changes have started already where it involves retailers to serve the customer in different ways in offering their products or services. New business models will include subscription, pay-per-use, or outcome-based models. These services will move from being product add-ons to offerings in their own right, with separate revenue streams, and they will not be restricted to the companies’ own products but will rather evolve into multibrand services beyond current product categories. The intelligent retailers need to start to plan to adjust by listening to their customers and creating a deep understanding of their consumption habits, and with that the intelligent retailers need to start combining the experience data and the operational data to create better offering in new business models.

Can you give us a glimpse of what you will share at SAP Industries Forum 2020?
I’m going to share about the change of customer behaviour, which reflects the immediate changes required for retailers to transform their customer engagement. This results from a technology-driven scenario where retailers need to be more customer centric by understanding customer feedback and requests to deliver a more personalised experience in products and services.

SAP Industries Forum 2020: Reimagining the Future of Retail is on 23 April at 11:00 am (SGT). For details about this webinar, click here. To register, click here.