Metro Shoes Fortifies its Digital Transformation Journey

IBM has announced that Metro Shoes Ltd, India’s leading multi-brand footwear chain, will be launching a new Digital Commerce platform powered by Watson Customer Engagement hosted on IBM Cloud. This would include IBM Watson Order Management and Commerce for seamless digital engagement. Working with IBM Business Partner CEBS Worldwide, IBM solutions will not only help drive superior customer experiences and new levels of convenience but bring efficiencies to the supply chain.

With a countrywide footprint of 350 physical showrooms, an expanding brand portfolio and changing customer preferences, Metro Shoes Ltd was facing challenges in managing orders coming from multiple online platforms. Earlier handled by unreliable software, leading to lack of visibility of real-time data of sales, inventory location and returns. In addition to its inventory management challenges, Metro Shoes Ltd needed to improve online presence for some of their popular internal brands which were getting low visibility impacting overall sales.

"Technology is redefining customer engagement and will be the key differentiator for retail brands of the future. We’re excited to collaborate with IBM and CEBS to embark on our digital transformation journey,” said Alisha Malik, Vice President, Digital, Metro Shoes. “With IBM’s knowledge in the omni-channel commerce and retail space, we are confident that these changes will not only help accelerate the execution of our strategy, but also give us an edge over competition. At Metro Shoes, we strongly believe that the new solution will enhance the overall user experience, thereby increasing revisits, traffic and loyalty.”

With IBM, Metro Shoes Ltd can gain new levels of customer insight, which can be used to personalize the online experience for each visitor as they navigate through the site. Delivered through a single platform, Metro Shoes will be able to showcase all of its brands and recommend specific items based on insights shared by customers. This personalized experience will include new and convenient fulfillmentoptions such as buy online, pick up in store, reserve in store and easy returns. As a result of these new capabilities, Metro Shoes will be able to elevate each visitor’s journey on the site by enabling commerce practitioners with cognitive tools which help them deliver omni-channel experiences that engage customers and drive sales. With IBM’s technology capabilities and CEBS expertise with marketplace integration, Metro Shoes as a brand/seller will also be able to integrate with more than 14 e-marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart and other leading portals with a centralized process and inventory engine to enable Metro to scale up to the needs of a growing marketplace business. Further, IBM Cloud will help carry the ability to configure heavy workloads and thereby deliver performance required for peak usage during the shopping season.

Speaking about the collaboration, Nishant Kalra, Business unit leader – IBM Watson Customer Engagement - India/South Asia added, “IBM is at the forefront of helping clients embrace newer ways to work and digitally transforming the way they engage with their end customers. We are happy to be part of Metro Shoes’ digital transformation journey by delivering superior digital commerce experience, leveraging the stores by merging them with online, and finally driving brand advocacy. IBM in association with CEBS will enable deep innovation, faster-go-to-market and streamline processes for scalability.”

The IBM platform will create a bridge between its online and offline business which the retailer previously lacked. With the new integrated single view, Metro Shoes in the future will be able to use insights gained from the digital realm to design special offering for customers as they walk into any of their stores. As a result, they can understand what customers want, ensure availability when and where they need it and even look at cross selling and upselling across their various brands.

For Metro shoes, IBM Watson Order Management and Commerce solutions can pave way for IBM’s cognitive technologies to deliver insights that help them provide customers with personalized recommendations and an enhanced user experience –from click to delivery.

“With over 15 years of experience in developing e-business tools, CEBS has been a trusted Solutions Provider and partner for organizations across the globe,”said Satish Swaroop, President, CEBS Worldwide. Our effective and flexible software solutions paired with IBM’s deep technology expertise will provide Metro Shoes a real-time, centralized system for customer management.”