Retail & CPG

Reimagining and modernizing the retail sector

Posted by

Bhairab Ghosh

This year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) event was an eye-opener to how digital technologies power the retail industry. Additionally, retail companies are renewing their focus on business agility and customer experience. According to Forbes, 81% of shoppers prefer companies that can offer a personalized experience.

Without integrating data and AI technology, retailers are unable to meet their changing customer expectations. Modern retailers are leveraging technology to understand their customer’s shopping behavior and deliver a personalized experience.

As a retail solution provider, Onix has worked with retailers to facilitate digital transformation that can elevate the customer experience (CX). Here’s a look at how digital technologies can “reimagine and modernize” the retail sector.

Personalized CX
70% of customers value a personalized experience where companies know about them and their previous interactions (like purchases and customer support calls). With the convenience of online shopping, brands must learn “when and where” to meet with customers. This can happen when they walk into a brick-and-mortar store or call customer service.

At the same time, Joshua Schulman of Burberry reiterates why retail brands must stick to their core identity and adapt to meet their customers’ expectations.

With AI-powered CX, retailers can personalize the shopping experience by analyzing real-time data including their online browsing history, shopping behavior, and evolving needs. For instance, an AI-enabled shopping advisor can work closely with shoppers and help them make the right purchase choices.

Similarly, immersive technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality are enabling customers to “virtually try on” retail products like apparel, cosmetics, and eyewear – from the comfort of their homes. Here are some real-world examples of retail brands enabling a virtual try-on:
- Warby Parker (eyewear)
- Sephora’s virtual artist (makeup)
- Zalando (apparel)
In-store customer behavior
Digital technologies are also changing customer behavior in physical retail stores. 81% of shoppers perform online product research before purchasing them. 73% of consumers use multiple channels when shopping for any product. Retailers must deliver a seamless omnichannel experience to engage with potential shoppers.

As consumers get more tech-savvy, retail brands must understand the changing behavior of the younger generation of shoppers like Gen Z and Gen Alpha. In this year’s NRF event, Winnie Burke from Roblox, Meghan Hurley from Claire’s, and Brent Mitchell from Sephora stressed the unique shopping behavior of these technology-savvy consumers. For example, with its “Dress to Impress” model, Roblox is capitalizing on consumers customizing avatars to offer physical outfits (based on their virtual version).

For retailers, understanding their customer behavior is critical for customer retention and repeat sales. Among the leading names in home security products, Arlo implemented a Convergence Zone at their best stores. This zone provides a hands-on experience for customers to explore Arlo’s products and services.
Social commerce and live shopping
At NRF 2025, retail brands like H&M and Havaianas highlighted the importance of social commerce. The market size for social commerce is expected to rise to $8.5 trillion by 2030. 85% of Chinese retail customers shop using social media platforms – while 11% of American consumers purchase using TikTok Shop.

Fashion retailer H&M is tapping into influencer marketing as the main strategy to build brand awareness and conversions. Live streaming and shopping can usher in the next growth wave in the retail sector. Live streaming for sales in the U.S. is expected to reach $68 billion by 2026 – a 36% rise from 2023.

Among the successful case studies, furniture brand, Riviera Maison improved user engagement on their website by publishing over 50,000 user-generated images.
Experiential shopping
Susan Reda of NRF believes that in the age of eCommerce, physical “brick-and-mortar” stores will continue to thrive. Among the exciting 2025 trends, experiential shopping will transform physical stores into an immersive shopping center, which can bring back shoppers to the stores.

According to Reda, pop-up retail stores can bring “fun and excitement” back into shopping. She advocates that retailers must really understand their customer’s needs and tailor their in-store experience to make them keep coming back to the stores.

One successful example of experiential shopping is the London-based House of Vans which integrates fashion with art, music, and street culture. The 30,000 sq-feet space features a cinema, live music venue, café, and art gallery.

How Onix’s cloud modernization can transform the future of retail

According to this report, the retail industry is at a critical inflection point – where macroeconomic shifts transform customer behaviour. Digital technology is at the heart of this transformation.

Modern retailers are collecting customer data practically every day from various sources, including:

Purchases and other online transactions
Customer sentiments and brand feedback
Inventory data
Industry-related trends

The real challenge is how to unlock valuable insights from this disparate data. Through cloud modernization, retailers can now eliminate data silos and “unify” data sources to create a 360-degree customer view from multiple channels, including in-store, online, and social media channels.

Here’s how Onix’s Birds suite delivers a path – from unlocking data silos to delivering AI value – in the retail sector:

Here are some case studies with Onix and our retail customers:

How a leading retail brand achieved omnichannel excellence with a modernized data platform.
How the U.S.-based retail chain company, Kohl’s improved their customer experience by modernizing their on-premise warehouses on Google Cloud.

As illustrated, Onix’s AI-powered technology solutions are reimagining & modernizing the retail experience across crucial areas, including the following:

Omnichannel experience

As retail consumers engage with a retailer across channels, Onix captures those signals. In addition, Onix helps to modernize legacy systems to the modern cloud and provides a seamless omnichannel experience. We enable memorable & delightful experiences through these capabilities

Product discovery through multimodal search and enriching product catalogs.
A personalized and conversational customer experience.
Smart personalized recommendations to consumers.

Case study: Here’s how Onix enabled a leading fashion retailer to modernize its data platform for a seamless omnichannel experience.

Personalized marketing

With personalized marketing, retailers can improve their:

New customer acquisition by 5-15%.
Brand reach and impressions by 10-30%.
Effectiveness of their marketing campaigns by 3-15%.

Onix can help redefine your brand as a customer-centric data-driven brand through:

Customized personal marketing.
Accurate AI-powered demand forecasting.
Actionable insights and actions powered by AI.

In-store experience

AI technology can elevate the in-store experience by improving:

Store foot traffic by 2-10%.
Dwell time within stores by 5-15%.
Conversion rate by 3-12%.
Operational efficiency by 10-25%.

Here’s how retailers can improve their in-store experience:

AI-enabled shopping assistant or personalized shopping advisor.
Vision AI for automatic shelf-checking.
Agentic AI for optimizing store workflows and daily operations.

Contact center modernization

Retailers can benefit from call center modernization as follows:

First call resolution rate by 5-20%.
Self-service resolution by 10-30%.
Cost per contact reduced by 10-20%.
Average call handling time reduced by 10-25%.

Onix’s Contact Center AI (CCAI) solutions can help modernize contact centers through AI-enabled virtual agents. These solutions can reduce the workload on human agents, thus allowing them space to focus on improving customer service.

Supply chain modernization

By modernizing their supply chain, retailers can benefit as follows:

Inventory turnover improved by 5-15%.
On-time delivery improved by 2-10%%.
Out-of-stock situations reduced by 10-30%.
Order fulfillment time reduced by 10-25%.

AI technology is a game changer for supply chain operations, which has gone through massive disruptions and delays recently. With Onix’s AI-powered supply chain solutions, retailers can modernize their legacy systems with data-enabled capabilities like accurate demand forecasting and optimized fleet routing.

Onix’s supply chain solution can help you build a reliable and sustainable operational model through:

Connected and intelligent supply chains.
Real-time data-driven inventory optimization.

Conclusion

As a trusted Google Cloud partner, Onix has successfully enabled retailers to address their business problems and sustain growth in an ever-changing market. We offer customized cloud retail solutions that can help in:

Improving the customer experience.
Unlocking data-powered insights.
Providing omnichannel strategies for business growth.

With over 20 years of domain experience and over 70 successful case studies, Onix has a proven track record as a cloud solution provider. Our suite of Onix Birds presents a unique approach to retail modernization that can deliver benefits like:

2x speed of cloud migration and modernization
50% lower costs
100% data validation and code conversion
Lower business risks

An Onix customer among the leading retailers in the home improvement space was facing serious challenges such as a lack of scalability and high operational costs on their Teradata warehousing platform. Onix proposed a comprehensive solution where:

Our Eagle cloud migration tool performed an automated analysis of their existing systems.
Our Raven ETL conversion tool helped in migrating their data and workloads to Google Cloud.

Here’s how it impacted their business: