One of the biggest shopping events of the year is nearly upon us, with Black Friday falling this year on 29th November. The day itself has an indeterminate past, but is often said to stem from America around the 1950’s. It was used to describe people taking a sick day from work, the day after Thanksgiving.

The aim of the first three steps to digitalisation is to alter the mind-set of your retail business to encourage the move away from a product-focused business model, to one that keeps the customer at the heart.

Using IoT in retail doesn’t only improve the customer experience, it drives the customer experience by giving businesses the opportunity to gain a better insight into their customer preferences and the opportunity to create a more personalised and interactive ‘shopping’ experience.

There is no single technology (“the web”) that will drive the change of the future. There is a mixture of technologies: AI driven Smart analytics, big data, mobility, social media, Internet of Things and smart embedded devices.

B2B and B2C organizations are in a race – to digitally transform business operations in line with other industries. But it’s an obstacle course for those with a legacy retail presence to deal with, purchase patterns to monitor, and suppliers and distribution channels to manage – and no two contracts are ever the same.