There is no doubt that 2018 has been a difficult year for high street retailers. The sector is battling store closures, costly business rates, declining profits, and the ever-growing rise of online shopping. In this piece for RetailTechNews, Carl Holloway, co-founder, Rotaready, outlines that in order to survive, brick-and-mortar retailers must keep up with the pace at which their online counterparts are innovating. And as we head towards Christmas, the most critical trading period of the year, this is more pertinent than ever.

Back to basics

The Christmas rush is upon us. And when faced with increased customer demand, longer opening hours, and managing a large seasonal workforce, it’s vital to get the fundamentals right.

Put simply, retailers need the optimum number of staff on shift at any given time. Not only does it give the best possible return on labour spend, but it’s key to delivering the high-quality service that keeps customers coming back. It also prevents overworked staff – or indeed underworked staff – from looking for the nearest exit.  

But managing a workforce across multiple sites – forecasting labour spend and sales, budgeting, communicating with staff, and maintaining schedules – can be a logistical nightmare.

This is especially true as most retailers still rely on rotas written with pen and paper or simple spreadsheets, which means a lack of data-driven decisions and, inevitably, frequent over/understaffing. In such an unforgiving and competitive environment, this could prove the difference between a business surviving or becoming recent history.

AI to the rescue?

AI is changing the way we work and live. In retail, AI-powered tools are evolving to be able to predict demand automatically by analysing footfall, sales, events, and even the weather to auto-generate rotas. This takes the guesswork out of allocating shifts and lets cold hard data be the deciding factor in who works and when.  

Putting this technology in the hands of managers enables them to deploy the optimum number of staff for every hour of the day, without having to analyse trends or rely on their intuition.

And, as much as that’s a game-changer for the business, it’s also welcome news for managers. They no longer have to spend hours, or often days, sitting behind a spreadsheet attempting to predict the future and align it with complex staff availability. Managers can get back to doing what they do best: delivering an exceptional in-store experience and looking after their team.

It’s rare that a single piece of technology can reduce labour overspend, increase staff retainment, and improve morale and customer service, all in one fell swoop and with a quantifiable return on investment. So, it’s not surprising to learn that this is met with a degree of skepticism and apprehension. Thankfully though, there are already retailers using this technology to great effect.

And it’s arguably those retailers who will thrive. Embracing technology is one of the few ways to level the playing field with the online competition. They see it as an enabler rather than a nice-to-have, they use it to drive almost every business decision they make, and they leverage it to tackle every problem they face; it’s in their DNA. Tools powered by AI sit at the very heart of the internet’s most successful retailers – and, at long last, those on the high street have the opportunity to do the same.