DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FOR THE RETAIL CIO: CONNECTING DIGITAL WITH PHYSICAL

Digital is certainly disrupting retail. Today’s shoppers are multichannel, and they expect amazing experiences as they move through the web and apps on their mobile devices for the shopping journey.

- BRUCE RICHARDS

Add to that a slew of options on where to buy and whom to buy from, and it’s easy to see that in order to build customer loyalty, retailers need to create experiences that stand out.

But if all you’re thinking about is digital, you aren’t thinking big enough. The successful retail CIOs are finding exciting new ways to connect digital and physical shopping experiences.

Retail CIOs are on the hook for enabling customer experience innovation, which means building a foundation for customer experience management (CXM) and investing in the right technologies and solutions to support it. And CXM isn’t just a digital strategy — it needs to be part of your brick-and-mortar strategy too.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for success, there are some emerging best practices that can help you design amazing shopping experiences that bridge the digital and physical worlds. Here are three of them.

HIRE A CDO

The role of chief digital officer/chief data officer (CDO) is still relatively new — most CDOs have been hired in the past three years — and the job is evolving. However, 82 percent of CIOs believe there’s a compelling case to hire a CDO. At organizations where commerce comes into play, such as in the retail space, CDOs are what’s next.