Retail has entered an era where the distinction between digital and physical shopping is disappearing. Customers want to browse on their phones, step into a store and feel as though both experiences are part of the same journey. “Your shoppers don’t think online and offline anymore,” says Keagan Boshoff, senior business development manager at Huawei Cloud. “They just think brand and everyone expects to browse on their phone, walk into a shop and have that journey feel connected somehow.”
If you want to see what this future looks like, look at China. Retailers such as JD.com, Inc. and Pinduoduo (PDD Holdings) allow customers to order online, collect in-store and receive real-time personalised offers once they arrive. Stores are no longer just sales floors, they are becoming fulfilment hubs that complement e-commerce while driving more customer engagement.
Personalisation and privacy
In South Africa, what holds back omnichannel retail is not technical capability, but trust. Years of online scams have left consumers cautious, which is why household names enjoy loyalty while new entrants often struggle to gain traction. “The first biggest thing that [we] need to get over is trust. We need to acknowledge that the internet is (unfortunately) riddled with scams,” says Boshoff.
Retailers need customer data to personalise offers, but the line between personalisation and privacy is blurry. Loyalty depends on getting that balance right because customers want tailored experiences without worrying about how their data is used.
“The sweet spot is using anonymised insights to deliver relevance without exposing raw personal details,” explains Boshoff. A loyalty number tells a retailer what matters: how often a shopper buys an item, when they replenish that product or which brands they prefer. “For example, you don’t need to know my name to know that I buy nappies every month,” he says. And with reliable data, AI can recognise shopping patterns, predict what customers are likely to buy next and deliver timely promotions. If the underlying data is patchy or inaccurate, the results will miss the mark. Customers won’t see value in the offers and trust will ultimately become harder to build.
Elasticity and preparedness
Earning trust with data is one challenge; acting on it is another. Boshoff points out that personalisation depends on a lot more than information. Retailers simply cannot act on insights in real-time when their systems don’t talk to each other. Even the best built-in analytics will fail if infrastructure is fragmented. “The biggest issue that retailers have at the moment is… all of the silos that they have,” adds Boshoff. “Cloud can solve this by creating shared data layers where everything can talk together.”
The challenge is that legacy ERP, warehouse management and point-of-sale (POS) platforms were never designed to work together in real-time. This makes it difficult to give both staff and customers an accurate picture of what’s happening on the ground. Cloud, on the other hand, allows retailers to stitch together disparate systems into a single layer of live intelligence. This integration becomes especially critical during seasonal peaks. South Africans, in particular, have seen how vulnerable e-commerce players can be on Black Friday when sites slow down or collapse under pressure. “You need infrastructure that is flexible when demand spikes and then can scale back when it’s calm so that you don’t waste resources or money,” he says. There’s also the fact that the reputational damage of downtime lingers long after the event. Elasticity and preparedness are exactly where cloud proves its worth. Why should retailers have to sacrifice customer experience for system limitations? The solution, Boshoff says, is investing in a cloud that can be stress-tested (a process he runs regularly, regardless of customer size).
Innovation and adaptation
Looking ahead, Boshoff sees an e-commerce landscape where cloud is not just infrastructure but the backbone of entirely new and exciting retail experiences. The rise of live-stream shopping in Asia, for example, offers a glimpse of what happens when retail becomes entertainment, with influencers selling directly to massive online audiences. From IOT shelves tracking inventory automatically to digital humans expanding service in multiple languages, Boshoff says success will depend on fitting these innovations to the realities of the local market: “We need to adapt the e-commerce market to suit South Africans. Don’t try and change South Africans to suit e-commerce. The guys here locally who get on board first, it might take a while to get traction, but they’re going to win.”
Huawei Cloud has helped leading e-commerce players around the world scale with advanced cloud technologies. The same infrastructure, tools and on-the-ground support are available to South African retailers. Connect with us on LinkedIn, click here or visit our Johannesburg campus to learn more.
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