Bangkok - 5 October 2022 - Mr. David Llamas, Chief Digital Officer, Central Retail Corporation Public Company Limited, or CRC reported that “In the past five years, Central Retail has transformed into a full-scale retail tech company, as well as created Thailand’s best omnichannel platform, developed by Central Retail Digital, as proven by figures over 80% increased number of users in the past few years, and over 60% returning customers. This positive performance has grown our platform sales share to 20% of our total sales. The group will now launch the Next-Gen Omnichannel platform that links all user interactions, offline, online, AR or even Metaverse seamlessly, covering Central Retail network in Thailand, Vietnam, and Italy. At the heart of this new platform lays our deep data analytics which will, on a continued basis, enhance customer shopping experience through ultra-personalization where products, services, and content offering are tailored for individual customer in real time, such as 6 million downloads of Central App. This new platform will also create inclusive growth for our trade partners. Our Next-Gen Omnichannel platform will become the ‘Destination’ for everyone alike, including customers and trade partners, and a vital foundation that will make CRC Retailligence come to life. This transformation not only secures our technological and digital readiness but will also ensure Central Retail positioning to be world-class retail tech, and a true future leader in local and international omnichannel retail.
For the next five years, Central Retail will invest 10 billion baht in five digital strategies to drive CRC Retailligence:
- Intelligent Retail - Building customer and business insights with deep-data learning powered by CRC rich data ecosystem, to offer real-time micro-segmentation and ultra-personalization that suit the identity and behaviors of customers
- Consumer-Driven Design - A new way of thinking through data, processes, and systems where customer-experience is at the center of everything we do, and with this becoming a truly customer centric organization.
- Enabling Synergies - Central Retail recently rolled out its group partner services ecosystem, offering The1 loyalty, Dolfin e-wallet, and full scale Omnichannel services across all businesses. The group now also plans to maximize its product availability with One-Omni Pull of Stock across its business and leverage its nationwide network of stores and distribution centres.
- Experience-Driven Commerce - Developing the most advanced CRC Artificial Intelligence to offer content and inspiration to customers at every moment of the Customer Journey, integrating all customer interaction across channels ; online, in store, and social commerce and across businesses into a single customer data platform.
- Adaptive Commerce - Developing our commerce platform into a headless and microservices based framework to bring interoperability across channels and user interfaces in a seamless manner, that will allow us to become most agile and nimble to respond and adapt to the everchanging consumer behavior.
These five innovative digital strategies will redefine a new delightful and tailored shopping experience for our customers, that will emotionally connect with them, and where CRC becomes top-of-mind as their everyday-lifestyle-shopping destination. Central Retail and its subsidiaries will continuously adopt new technology to create new offerings for all customers.
“At Central Retail we are determined to be best in everything we do for our customers. Our digital transformation program will revolutionize every touchpoint of our customer journey to redefine a new shopping experience. Our program brings next-generation solutions, a state-of-the-art technology architecture, along with Green & Sustainable Retail concept to our stores, online, direct-to-consumer logistics and digital marketing, all of this powered by AI through CRC big data platform, to continuously enhance and delight our customers. We recently strengthened our relations with global technological partners including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Accenture, and Adobe to jointly develop our Next-Gen Omnichannel platform, alongside Central Retail Digital’s multi-cultural team with the most talented local and international professionals, Our people will be our greatest asset to strengthen Central Retail’s position as world-class retail tech along with establishing CRC Ecosystem as Asia’s best and most comprehensive ecosystem in powering CRC Retailligence forward. Our Next-Gen omnichannel platform aims to reach 25% - 30% of total sales by 2026, and will certainly place Central Retail among top retail tech companies worldwide,” Mr.David Llamas concluded.
