On November 23–24, Novosibirsk hosted the 4th Siberian Forum "Retail of the Future: How Technologies are changing the market". The organizers were the publishing house «Kommersant. Siberia», a group of companies «Shoes of Russia», ACORT and Redis Business Class.

The forum brought together more than 120 representatives of retail companies from all over the region. They discussed how retail will develop, how new technologies in marketing, finance, HR, IT are changing working conditions and how they create the basis for further growth.

The first session of the forum was devoted to the market and trends in it. Since February 2017, a positive consumer sentiment index has been observed in Russia, which gives retailers reason to expect an increase in demand. Television remains the main source of news for people (more than 52%), while digital channels (Internet, social networks) account for 36%, and their share will grow. The share of e-commerce is also increasing. Convenience remains the main trend in retail, the Internet, online and offline integration are in second place, mobile communications are in third place. In the future, the importance of personal marketing will increase, as it contributes to building long-term relationships with consumers. Shopping experiences will become the core of the development of any store. Retail itself is increasingly becoming a cultural phenomenon.

In the plans for 2018, the heads of retail companies talk not only about the strategy of increasing efficiency, but also about the development strategy: among the key tasks they note attracting traffic to stores, increasing loyalty, developing online and omnichannel, increasing the network, staff development, increasing investments in business automation and IT.

Yuri Borisov, Development Director of ACORT, spoke about innovations in legislation, such as the introduction of cash registers, weight and dimensional control, labeling, Mercury systems, and how what impact this may have on the consumer market and trade. At the end of the section Evgenia Baranova from KPMG elaborated on the new requirements of tax legislation and how they affect the activities of retailers.

In the second session, the leading retail companies of the region and Russia talked about different development strategies. The main conclusion of the participants: it is important for Russian retailers to be not so much the largest company as the leader in efficiency and profitability, these indicators should be put at the forefront. Western investors are more interested in investing in new, growing businesses in promising markets, rather than providing a pension to the owner of the company. Andndrej Shishkovsky, director of the Siberian branch of the company "Megafon", shared his innovative experience of using blockchain when placing bonds. The new technology is promising, and it can be used in many other business processes, logistics, building loyalty systems, and so on.

Alexander Shubin, Managing Partner of PBK Management, explained what Retail 4.0 is, which is replacing omnichannel, and how to build it today.The concept of Retail 4.0 is based on integrated customer experience, and it is this experience that is the basis for differentiation. Also components of Retail 4.0 are: integration online and offline, creation of communities based on the same values with the brand, personalization based on customer data, constant contact with the customer.

In the third session, experts outlined the main trends in marketing, in particular, the construction of a customer dialogue system in a retail store and innovative loyalty programs that allow you to maintain a single customer base, combine all channels of shopping and interaction with consumers, use chatbots, mobile applications and other modern tools. Ilya Martynov from DPD talked about how the delivery service affects the behavior of customers. For example, according to the research State of eCommerce Delivery 2016 of the company MetaPack, more than 80% of respondents prefer to buy from a seller who has loyalty programs related to delivery. Among the services that can be offered in this direction are free shipping, a simple return of the purchased goods, a predictable delivery date that can be managed.

The last session of the forum was devoted to new financial instruments for working capital management in retail, such as factoring, online cash collection, cash management and others.

Source: official website of the Forum