Let IoT Platform Handle It All
With most major events and celebrations cancelled this year due to the ongoing Pandemic, and social-distancing protocols, online shopping will remain a constant. With upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday super deals, e-commerce is expected to spike as consumers will rush to take advantage of the very early deals offered by some major retailers: Walmart, BestBuy, Amazon, Target and others. And it’s expected that shopping deals will be extended.
In 2019 Black Friday online retail sales in the U.S. spiked by 334% when compared to the first four weeks of October. And Cyber Monday saw a 330% increase in sales, according to a report by Criteo which predicts while “this year is completely different, there will still be an expectation that Black Friday will have the biggest deals of the season.”
With online deals and discounts extending beyond the two traditional days of super savings, enterprises need to focus on accurate supply chain planning to meet the demands of their buyers.
Boosting E-Commerce and Online Preparedness Planning With IoT Platform
A Google Consumer Insights survey found 53% of consumers plan to shop in stores with “contactless shopping.” Some 47% said they’ll use the online shopping option with store/curbside pickup, while 66% of shoppers said they will shop more at local, smaller businesses.
ShopperTrak forecasts a 22 to 25% decrease in retail store traffic year over year during the six key weeks of the holiday season. Many retailers have decided to close on Thanksgiving Day.
Forecasts show a decline of in-store traffic this year but an overall growth of holiday sales.
According to Deloitte, e-commerce holiday sales are expected to surge by 25% to 35% with holiday retail sales this year rising between 1% and 1.5%, amounting to between $1.147 trillion and $1.152 trillion during the November-to-January time frame. That’s compared with growth of 4.1% in 2019, when sales were nearly $1.14 trillion.
To plan and keep those shelves and warehouses stocked, enterprises can automate most tasks with IoT technology solutions. They can deploy IoT Platforms to collect, organize and use real-time data from all their connected IoT devices for more accurate supply chain planning. With such valuable data in hand, enterprises can, for instance, tap into camera sensors to be notified of empty shelves in need of stocking, so e-commerce customers are immediately notified of in-stock products without waiting or jumping off to another retailer site to search and purchase super deals.
IoT data also allows enterprises to streamline real-time data from the warehouses to the distributors to the retail shelves or stockrooms.
Automating It All With IoT Platforms
While there have been countless technology solutions introduced to improve industrial automation–IoT remains at the heart of all automation. Using IoT technology, enterprises have gained enhanced and highly reliable sources of data to better automate remote monitoring and control of their facilities. The ability for remote control and management of facilities has become most valuable amidst the pandemic which enforces social-distancing adherence.
But the real challenge of making sense of all the avalanche of IoT data is to ensure that the myriad forms of data–across all your connected, geographically distributed sources–can be integrated and talk and work together. Without this, there is no ability for improved and expedited business decisions, for better critical business outcomes.
IoT Platforms unify all the data across one or thousands of distributed sites, for multi-site enterprises. Also the ability to aggregate, organize and offer palatable and actionable data for expedited business decisions becomes most crucial.
Selecting an IoT Platform that offers ease-of-use, without a major overhaul of your existing systems, means your existing system can easily integrate into and be compatible with the platform. This will expedite the gathering and analyzing of data from different sources so you can perform data-driven predictive maintenance, control your operational expenditures, and improve the efficiency and safety of your facility. In advance of irreversible risks and malfunction, the IoT Platforms will flag out-of-tolerance equipment and readings of crucial real-time information, ensuring that the right staff members and executives receive the information in a timely manner. The IoT Platform will also allow enterprises to scale seamlessly without glitches, and allow for self-service deployment, OEM applications, or full turnkey solution.
In the fast-paced shopping days of the year, the cabin fever shoppers are not ready to wait if a site goes down, or for your store employees to spend hours searching stock availability. Nor can your maintenance staff afford to have malfunctioning equipment that will halt the seamless operations of your facility. This Black Friday and Cyber Monday keep the lights on and fully operational by letting your IoT Platform technology do all the heavy lifting so you can reap the profits.
