Ancoris CEO Andre Azevedo pens his thoughts on why Google Cloud should be the top choice for retailers.
First things first, I’ll start with a bold statement: Google is the only cloud provider that can deliver an integrated experience across your entire business. Seriously, no one else can do it end-to-end. And what do I mean when I say “end-to-end”? I’m talking about marketing and advertising, digital customer experiences and ecommerce, dynamic pricing and intelligent inventory, fleet route optimisation and in-store heat mapping – Google can do it all. If you’re looking for a cloud platform that supports the full retail value chain, Google is the top choice. Don’t believe me? Read on – I’ll state my case.
- Its scalable infrastructure is unmatched. No breaking news here: Google Cloud is a leading cloud platform that can host all of your applications and e-commerce platforms. This is mainly due to its infrastructure which is infinitely scalable, resilient, secure, and all the rest. Retailers all over the world use it to scale on-demand and launch new products quickly. Take a look at Lush for example (they moved their eCommerce sites to Google Cloud and haven’t looked back).
- The Data and AI is superior. When it comes to Data and AI, Google is better at these than anyone else. And that’s just because they’re a data company, right? Wrong. Well, at least, not entirely right. Google’s approach to Data and AI and its ability to draw insights from that data is fundamentally different to its competitors. And if you want to know your customers better, give them more of what they want, and make them happier, what do you need to do? Answer – use your data! Whether you’re building a recommendation engine (like GCN); or dynamic pricing (check out Sigma Sports); or you’re just getting your data centralised and ready to go, no one does data better than Google!
- Complete collaboration from back office to front line. Depending on what type of retail operation you run, you may have a very distributed workforce and (as is the case in some stores) high staff turnover. Well, whether you’re sharing new ideas and business plans in the office or you want to give all your collaborators a digital identity, you can easily manage that with Google Workspace and Chrome. Lush, again, is leading the way on this front, connecting 9,000 employees globally. Only Google makes your life this easy!
- Geolocation reigns supreme. Again, this is not something you don’t know already – Google is the undisputed leader in consumer mapping technology. Ergo, no one else is better positioned to help you with store location, distribution challenges, route optimisation, etc., etc. No other cloud provider comes anywhere near Google’s prowess here. See how bizzby has used Google Maps to boost their on-demand tradesperson service; this could be you and your products.
- Its security is leading the way. This is of course important to everyone and other cloud providers have incredibly secure networks and infrastructure. But even on this front, Google is leading the way with what is likely the best track record in the industry. Why? Learn more here.
- Sustainability is not an afterthought. Sustainability is not just a “nice to have” anymore. If this is not already at the centre of your strategy when you’re looking at your next technology projects, it should be. Your customers, your employees and even your investors will be asking about it. And let’s face it, it’s the right thing to do! And guess who does it better than anyone else? Yes, you guessed it, the cleanest cloud.
- (Bonus) It can support your marketing. You should be convinced by now, but guess who is certainly a big part of your marketing strategy (and spend)? Yep, and if you understand your data, you’ll make even better decisions.
And why Ancoris? No one else can do it like us. Seriously!
We know what we’re doing. You may not know this, but we are the only Google dedicated partner with serious experience across all the above areas, so that should be a strong enough reason to convince you. On a more serious note, we can bring it all together for you, combining Google’s out-of-this-world technology with real life implementation experience. We have retail references (some already mentioned above) across geo, data, collaboration, and all the rest so you can rest assured that we know what we’re doing.
Managed Business Outcomes. And to top it off, where applicable, we work with our customers to achieve what we call “Managed Business Outcomes”. With these, we go beyond simply managing the technology; we focus on the actual objective of a specific initiative and manage the actual business outcome we’ve agreed to. For example, this could be the availability and reliability of a specific data report, rather than focusing on the performance of the data warehouse as a metric. This can, of course, be applied to an e-commerce platform or any other technology that supports your business.
So, where do I start?
Our Methodology. At Ancoris, we’ve developed a methodology which maps our customers' technology maturity, aligns with their business priorities, and quickly identifies the areas to address first. For our unique retail and e-commerce engagement model, we’ve made it specific to you and your industry, so it will cover the areas above too.
Think Big. Start Now.
Through our methodology we help our customers to think big and understand all that can be achieved so that you can design a solid roadmap. But we know that everyone has lots of different challenges and they cannot be all solved at the same time. By aligning the overall roadmap with the more immediate priorities we will find a way to start the journey quickly and deliver value from day one.
And to make it even easier, for the most common topics, we have small engagement packages ready to get you started.
Start today with Ancoris CMOLab. Be it a recommendation engine you need, optimisation of your marketing spend or anything else marketing, it could be the solution for you – get all the info here.
Anyway, now that I’ve stated my case, I hope you can see why I think all retailers should partner with Google and Ancoris! So, there’s just one more thing to say…
Shall we Start Now?