Prashant Lohia, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ginesys, discusses the importance of cloud-based, complete retail management software suite for all retail businesses and why it will be a game-changer for the Indian retail sector.
Kindly give us an overview of the company and its specialization.
Ginesys is a fast-growing comprehensive retail tech company working with around 1200+ customers and 30,000+ users with a wide reach across India. We are a technology solutions provider for retail businesses and have been powering retail businesses from start-up to IPO for more than a decade now. We have made our mark as a premier, ‘Made in India’ solution for ERP and POS, serving the needs of small and medium businesses. Now, we have a complete CX suite for Omni retail – Ginesys One. It covers the gamut from marketing to retention and from supply chain to POS and Ecommerce integrations including GST compliance.
How is Ginesys bridging the gap between retail and technology and what do you understand about retail management software?
Retail Management Software is a very loose term but is widely used in the industry. It covers everything from basic billing POS to accounting Tally to retail specific and dedicated products.
Ginesys bridges the gap between requirements and tech that a typical retailer faces by matching all requirements with a complete solution for online and offline retail. Additionally we are offering all our products (the entire suite) as ready to use products and easy subscriptions. This is also a very unique play as most retailers have a very short time to go live but typically competing solutions take many months to implement.
What are your views on brands saving the sale with endless aisles in-store?
The pandemic has entirely modified the way most sectors work, including retail. Having a robust omnichannel network can effectively link the gap between an online store and the physical experience that offline marts provide. Retailers must seek technologies that can incorporate in-store and online merchandise to become a more connected business and deliver smooth customer service. This is where ‘Endless aisle’ appears in the picture. Endless aisles deliver numerous alternatives for in-store buyers to order products that have been out of reach either because they are out of stock or commonly not available in offline stores. In-store buyers can get personal access to them either through direct delivery to their homes or through a nearby store. Concisely, an endless aisle works as an in-store kiosk that allows buyers to explore for and order items that are not rapidly available in the shop. The sale can be assisted – generally called “Save the Sale” or unassisted- “Endless Aisle”.
How are AI, ML, and Cloud evolving today in the retail industry as a whole?
Technology has played a pivotal role in retail for decades, from early inventions like barcode scanning and digital point of sale devices to the global horizon of modern planning. In the age of digitalization, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) based technologies in the retail industry are providing automation to brands at scale with the power of cloud computing. The basic requirements being that the data is available in a scalable computing environment on cloud.
Key areas of application of AI and ML are optimization that could be performed better with AI at play: Inventory management – what to store at which location so that ‘rate of sales’ is the highest. This is quite a complex problem, especially for fashion labels as they do not follow standard patterns of consumption in all their stores. Other optimizations could be bin suggestions for picking and putting away, order sequencing, order routing to optimal store/ warehouse locations and COD optimizations.
The other big application is of course in marketing where AI is being used to float the right offers to the right buyers. The messages are being delivered through AI driven automation to 1000s of shoppers via various platforms like Email, WhatsApp, SMS etc.
Finally the data analysis of large volumes of data is itself requiring AI to look for insights and “pop them out” for the retail users. This makes the task of analyzing daily reports much easier for retail staff.
Ginesys One has all these capabilities and many more in the field of AI as we are working to incorporate the best of the technologies in our system.
What are some of the challenges faced by the retail industry today?
Digitalization of shopping journeys is one of the fundamental areas of concern for retailers. As of now almost all shopper journeys are multi-channel as they engage with the brands on multiple channels like social media, WhatsApp, Email, offline, app, webstore, SMS etc. But for the brand to be able to track the journeys requires integrating all views across all platforms of customer interaction. While this may sound obvious, the true integration would take years and still be prone to stop working due to constant innovations on all these channels. Ginesys One suite solves for this by bringing all the channels together and providing a single customer view of interactions across all platforms.
This single view further enables a personalized shopping journey and customizations in messaging to be delivered at scale. This boosts up the ROI of marketing spend. Marketing spend is now a burning question for both online and offline retailers and hence any technology that improves the bottomline of marketing is welcome.
Retailers are also struggling endlessly with constantly changing GST rules and regulations. This is also complicating matters but GST providers like EaseMyGST are helping by sorting out the regulations and making their return filing software as easy to use as possible.
What are the key trends driving the growth in the retail tech industry and do you see any major shift in the retail sector post-pandemic?
We see a big surge in video selling being adopted especially in luxury goods markets, online and in-store to attract new customers, and upsell to existing buyers. Video can give shoppers a real idea about the actual product as it is in real life and this is really showing up in the number of product review videos on Youtube.
Apart from that, coupons that can be generated in real-time to prospective customers is a big trend that is promising to solve the challenge of attracting impulse buyers.
Finally, outsourced warehousing is another trend that is starting to show up but it remains to be seen whether it will be a sustainable success.
What is the Ginesys solution for retail tech in 2022?
Ginesys encourages the retail business to create a more thoughtful omnichannel experience for the offline business. Providing shoppers with a seamless, linked experience across all channels has become crucial. This is where ERP, Ecommerce Order Management, and E-catalogues all appear in the image. When they work together, the POS and Order management system has a precise picture of the global catalogues and are available to promise inventory. They also enable alternatives for back-orders. This scenario is completely digitally enabled by the Ginesys One digital retail suite.
Do you think Metaverse and NFT will be efficient or effectively used in the retail tech industry considering their authenticity?
Yes, the use of NFTs can enhance brand awareness, boost brand recognition, and enrich the brand identity. From a marketing perspective, NFTs work inside metaverses, where companies can position signs, offer customer service or experiential games, and furnish avatars with designer clothes and accessories. The global metaverse market is expected to reach $1.5 trillion in 2030, from $45.4 billion in 2019 according to PwC. With companies analyzing interactive and immersive brand familiarities and engagement within this new ecosystem the opportunity from the metaverse could be in the trillions.
