Clicky Skip to main content
  • SHARE

Automation has gained noticeable momentum in the last decade, and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) can be easily one of the top digital automation technology practices adapted across different industries.

In brief, RPA is a software bot that emulates human interactions with digital systems to accomplish a specific action. Having said that, RPA is revolutionizing a wide range of process mechanisms that adhere to efficient and error-free business operations.

Especially for the retail industry, RPA can be the key to the door of enormous benefits such as

Benefits of RPA in Retail

  • Boosted productivity
  • Improved operational efficiency
  • Refined customer experience
  • Higher Customer Satisfaction and Return
  • Human Error Reduction
  • Improved Compliances

The RPA’s game in retail is befitting when we hear the Fashion Retail Icon – Levi Strauss & Co. say that they have saved thousands of work hours by putting RPA into action in invoice processing and merchandise management.

The RPA COE of LS&CO has been empowering their employees with RPA skills and has a pipeline of about 50 bots targeted to save around 20,000 works hours in a year by effectively minimizing manual interference.

Now, let’s explore major retail functional areas where RPA can significantly impact

Top 10 RPA Use Cases in Retail

Order Management

Scripting RPA bots that facilitate automated communication between e-retail platforms and warehouse inventory could result in a faster and more efficient order-fulfillment process. RPA-powered customer-facing chatbots can improve customer experience by providing order-related information swiftly.

Inventory Management

RPA-powered inventory control systems oversee stock levels and provide a heads-up, which helps the inventory teams keep inventory at an optimal level by avoiding understocking and overstocking. RPA also helps in demand forecasting, dead-stock tracking, preventing data duplication, and reducing lead times by encompassing multiple sources like inventory, sales, and CRM.

Supply Chain Management

The supply chain is at the heart of the retail business, and by implementing RPA, the overall supply chain flow can be streamlined. Retailers can improve efficiency in areas like vendor selection and onboarding, purchase order management, returns processing, invoice management, and returns processing by integrating RPA with Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems.

New Product Introduction

With the help of RPA, retailers can have successful product launches. RPA can automate data collection and compilation to gain the better market, competitive, and consumer insights to base new product introduction decisions. It just works well in streamlining activities across multiple departments, which is critical in the introduction of new products and also automating in areas like promotional campaigns, pricing adjustments, and inventory management.

Marketing & Promotions

RPA can empower targeted marketing campaigns by automation data flow and interactions between CRMs and marketing platforms. RPA can also automate retail promotional activities such as rebate programs, in which purchasers are rewarded with quick refunds based on their preferences, purchase values, and trade policies.

Customer-Loyalty Programs

RPA has the potential to edifice customer satisfaction and retention through highly personalized loyalty programs. Based on event triggers such as billing value, purchase frequency, categorical sales, and Omnichannel interactions, loyalty programs reward customers with appropriate benefits faster and more accurately.

Sales Analytics

For retailers, sales analytics is critical, and it necessitates a large amount of data to generate valuable insights. RPA can automate sales data extraction from multiple resources like POS, Sales CRM & others and eliminates intensive human efforts. RPA enables retailers to quickly achieve rich insights about store performance, sales trends, buyer preferences, and customer churn rate, which are essential in making decisions that accelerate sales and profitability.

In-Store Planning

Using RPA in layout planning and product placement can improve customer experience and increase profitability. Retailers can accomplish this by deploying RPA bots that analyze consumer expectations using sales data, visit duration, sections visited, demographics, and store heat maps.

Product Categorization

Product categorization is a minor yet essential task for retailers. Customers frequently struggle to identify the right products in shops and online due to poor taxonomy and manual categorization errors, an absolute red flag for retailers. Retailers can create an exceptional customer experience by using RPA-powered category mapping, in which products are categorized appropriately based on product attributes and multiple user-related aspects.

Employee Management

RPA can make employee onboarding more productive and efficient by automating tasks like resume screening, information updating, access provisioning, and training enrolment. Integrating HRMS platforms with RPA bots can help automate operational tasks such as shift assignment, leave management, payroll processing, and performance management.

What you’ve just read is just a sliver of RPA’s potential, which is expanding tremendously into new levels and realms. SRMTech is focused on retail value creation, and we can help retailers improve their business operations by implementing RPA. Our RPA task force can examine and comprehend your business processes and enforce intelligent process mechanisms that bring many plethoras of benefits. So, let’s get together and see how we can use RPA to improve your retail operations. We are just minutes away.

Want to learn more about other digital drivers that can help you succeed in retail? We’ve got you covered. Check out our other retail success blogs, such as

Leave a Reply

/* modal contact us form */