Software AG has launched the new Customer Experience Management (CEM) Solution Accelerator for Retail. The Solution Accelerator enables retailers to deliver right-time, context-relevant promotions to precisely targeted individuals.
The solution provides retailers with the capability to implement a digital marketing strategy by coupling customer-defined preferences and past transactions (e.g., historical data) with current information such as location, weather, traffic and social media (e.g., real-time Big Data) to push relevant offers, create instant promotions and build marketing campaigns.
The new Software AG CEM Solution Accelerator enables retail-marketing professionals to quickly and easily visualize and analyse the performance of their marketing campaigns and then optimize them ‘on the fly’. It also provides these marketers with a single view of their customers by consolidating multiple channels and ‘touch points’ to serve up highly granular contextual information about these customers via dashboards.
Seven essential capabilities to build a measureable campaign:
* Campaign management (in the cloud) – rapid campaign design and development, campaign templates and frameworks, calendaring/scheduling, and other back-office administrative tasks;
* Location-based targeting – broad-based connectivity and libraries supporting geo-fencing and i-Beacons;
* Content curation and management – message templates, product/bundle offerings, expiry management, notifications and dialogues;
* Dynamic user tracking – responsive feedback on user interaction and user engagement design, facial recognition links for point-of-sale systems;
* Segmentation and targeting analysis – easy-to-use segmentation language based on historical and real-time data;
* Marketing policies and rules – spam avoidance, privacy assurance, user preferences, security, secure sharing outside corporate firewalls; and
* Campaign metrics – out-of-the-box real-time, advanced streaming analytics and, HTML5 dashboards that run anywhere in portals, websites, Microsoft SharePoint and all mobile devices.
There is also a Project Development Kit (PDK), a solution guide, and source-code based intellectual property provided to aid retailers quickly kick-start campaign development and create their own promotions. The PDK contains developer tools comprising frameworks, templates, customizable user interfaces, etc. All the pieces needed to quickly install and run the application and build a marketing campaign.
Neil Ward Dutton, co-founder and research director, MWD Advisors said: “Customer experience management is no simple task. It takes a step beyond knowing when someone is in the proximity of a store or restaurant. It’s about building a marketing strategy and technology framework that takes historical analysis and real-time location into account across channels, devices and situations. It’s about taking a pragmatic approach that combines process, intelligence, integration and connectivity.”
Behind the CEM Solution Accelerator, Software AG can provide the webMethods Integration Suite that enables retailers to connect all their different, disparate on-premise or Cloud software seamlessly. This allows them to unify and optimize their A2A, B2B, B2C, Mobile, Big Data, Cloud and social applications across a single platform
Dr John Bates, chief marketing officer and member of the Software AG Executive Board notes: “Traditionally, ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers have been challenged by online vendors for several years and have only been able to tackle this with their own online stores. This situation has evolved. We now have the technology that enables retailers to leverage both their physical stores and the location of customers.
“With this capability, retailers can send contextually-relevant alerts, conduct dynamic in-store promotions (using digital signage), and push offers to their customers’ mobile devices. With the CEM Solution Accelerator, we are enabling retailers to re-imagine mass promotion tactics and enter into a world where it appears as though they’re delivering a personalized advertisement for each individual.
“This is the true power of customer experience management.”