TechCentral and Â鶹ԭ´´Â recently hosted a customer roundtable with leading executives to talk about the evolving needs of the South African consumer, including the strategies and initiatives that brands are developing to satisfy and exceed them. This is what transpired.

We live in interesting times. Our post-pandemic economic landscape is strewn with lingering challenges: inflation, constrained supply chains and a long simmering cost-of-living crisis, made worse by inflation, resulting in lowered consumer purchasing power. Amid this unpredictability and turmoil, there is one undeniable fact: the retail experience is rapidly evolving from a transactional process to a model built on deep, enriching relationships at every step of the customer journey.

To unpack how South African retailers and brands are keeping pace with the technological curve while continuing to find ways to improve and enhance the customer experience, TechCentral hosted a roundtable conversation sponsored by Â鶹ԭ´´ with some of the country’s retail leading executives. Attendees discussed the ever-evolving needs of the South African consumer, key trends and challenges affecting the retail sector, including retailers’ strategies to drive profitable growth.

The discussion also covered the way retailers are using technology to enhance and support customer engagement, both in-store and online, and how this elevates the retail experience to another level. Attendees agreed that several megatrends have converged to significantly impact consumer behaviour.

These included:

• The increasing digitisation of our surroundings (driven by the combined effects of the pandemic), and the changing preferences and behaviours of consumers. Delegates were of the view that retailers and brands must establish themselves as an essential part of consumers’ everyday lives.
• Customer behaviour: Retailers must develop a comprehensive understanding of the way consumers lead their lives – how they eat, shop, work, and play – and use this knowledge to provide value in the right place, and at the right time.
• Consumer-centric view of the entire value chain: Retailers and brands are now required to have a consumer-centred view of their entire business, from supply chain and operating model to content and marketing, and a technology ecosystem powered by real-time consumer data.

The South African consumer

The South African consumer continues to evolve, exhibiting tastes, preferences and behaviour that has been accelerated by impacts of the pandemic, as well as the post pandemic economic situation. Consumers are moving online to research and purchase products as never before and are becoming increasingly comfortable traversing channels amid an expanding retail shopping journey.

The overwhelming consensus amongst delegates was that South African consumers have become increasingly price-conscious and seek value from their purchases. While price is an important aspect of purchasing decisions, attendees also agreed that consumers tend to be prepared to pay a premium for quality products if the value of these products is clear. Price-conscious and value-seeking South African consumer tends to be less brand loyal as they shop for specials.

Strategies for driving profitable growth

To address this ever-evolving expectations of consumers, as well as the increasingly challenging operating environment, several critical strategies were cited for driving profitable growth:

• Create value: Retailers and brands need to create a very clear understanding of the value they offer to their customers and be able to effectively communicate the value of their products and services. Generic messaging that focuses on promising value is not sufficient and retailers must demonstrate actual proven delivery of value. Some ways to do this include providing an aspirational shopping experience, focusing on convenience, offering in-store experiences that extend beyond retail, and using mechanisms like gamification to enhance brand and value perception.
• Contain costs: It is essential to strike a careful balance between containing costs and maintaining high product and customer experience standards. Strategies to achieve this balance include relooking sourcing strategies to drive value chain efficiencies, developing strong and future-orientated supplier relationships to enhance supply chain reliability and resiliency. It is also important to focus on pricing and margin management, removing peripheral costs, and leveraging data and customer insights to improve personalisation and develop alternative revenue streams.
• Understand customer segmentation: Gain an understanding of the lifestyle journey of the shopper, including habits and patterns, by utilising analytics to track segment-specific customer sentiments, and by leveraging data and insights to inform segment-appropriate pricing and discount strategies, range, format and stock levels
• Restore loyalty: Customer loyalty programmes are key. The successful execution of these activations relies on the ability to provide personalised rewards to consumers and to identify meaningful segment-specific touchpoints to engage with consumers.

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Blood transfusions are commonly used to provide blood or blood components to a patient who has either lost blood due to an accident or suffer from a medical condition that affects their blood.

Typically, blood is donated anonymously and then stored by hospitals or blood banks until needed. Due to the critical nature of the procedure, donated blood must be collected, stored, categorised, and transported using extremely high levels of safety and care.

Donors must be carefully screened for a variety of medical conditions and lifestyle aspects to ensure the blood is free of potential risks to the patient. Blood is tested according to national guidelines and stored according to blood type.

It is estimated that one in ten people entering hospital need some kind of blood transfusion as part of their treatment.

Data, traceability vital to safe transfusions

The key to successful, lifesaving blood transfusions is accurate documentation to ensure consistency and avoid any unnecessary risk. Due to the sensitive nature of blood, the way it is transported and stored is equally important, especially when the blood supply chain network covers a large geographic area where donated blood must travel thousands of kilometers.

Ultimately, hospitals and clinics seek the ability to track the journey from vein to vein in real time with accurate data and while maintaining the integrity of the value chain.

Here, blockchain technology holds huge potential. Blockchain encodes data in a secure and transparent way that can add visibility and security to the blood transfusion value chain. Blockchain could be a more effective way of storing the precise records that allow medical professionals to use donated blood with confidence during life-saving and other medical procedures.

Using blockchain, medical facilities can register vital data about every step in the blood transfusion value chain, from donation to testing to transport, storage and ultimately its use in a medical procedure.

Due to strict requirements for how blood is stored, technologies such as IoT can also play an important supporting role by tracking the temperature at which the blood is stored and recording that to the blockchain. As blood travels through the value chain, the data stored to the blockchain creates an audit trail that links the entire value chain from donor to recipient.

Advances expected from emerging tech

Other emerging technologies hold promise for greater efficiency and transparency in the blood transfusion value chain. Augmented reality could solve one of the key issues with blood donations by helping medical professionals find the vein more consistently and without the trial-and-error that most donors experience.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence also holds huge promise for driving improvements in the blood transfusion value chain, especially since so much data is already created and stored to ensure transfusions are safe and effective.

used machine learning to optimise the time between blood donation intervals to ensure donors don’t experience adverse outcomes. Using the model, the researchers could estimate the risk of adverse outcomes and how such risks may change with longer or shorter intervals. This data could then inform how often the donors could donate blood without suffering iron deficiency or other complications.

So-called digital footprinting using AI and machine learning could also help reduce errors when doctors order blood samples. Using RFID integrated to an AI platform, doctors could improve specimen identification and reduce specimen labelling errors while also ensuring accurate transport tracking.

Technology platforms unlock new capabilities

New advances in Laboratory Information Management Systems have also unlocked access to unprecedented levels of visibility and control over lab data and other associated processes. A Laboratory Information Management System is used to manage samples, lab users, instruments and other lab functions, as well as back-office operations such as invoicing.

For example, the Â鶹ԭ´´ Quality Management helps businesses implement and run quality control processes, and is designed to prevent defects, enable continuous process improvement, and establish sustained quality control programs. Global pharmaceutical companies use Â鶹ԭ´´ Quality Management as a primary Laboratory Information Management System to drive supply chain processes, maintain high levels of quality control during production processes, and support research and development.

When matched to a business transformation platform that enables the seamless integration of new technologies, there is virtually no limit to the powerful capabilities that laboratories can unlock. With an intelligent core in place and a quality management system to maintain the highest information standards, laboratories and other stakeholders can protect the integrity of the life-saving blood transfusion supply chain while enabling greater innovation.

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