The Retail industry has been constantly reshaped over recent years. Driven by a changing social and economic landscape, retailers have been forced to adapt and innovate to survive. Increasingly, digital technologies have fuelled this transformation as customer adoption of technology increases and with it their expectations. Customers are now leading the way, becoming more savvy and challenging retailers to keep up with the ways in which they want to shop and interact. To maintain relevance, retailers will need to be able to quickly adapt their operating models while striking a balance between driving revenue and building trust in their brands.
After a number of years building a successful retail business within Glue Reply, the retail practice was formed into a new company - Retail Reply. Our heritage saw us become recognised leaders in the practice of Architecture, Integration & Data. Retail Reply was formed to allow us to specialise further on the retail and consumer sector, continue to build long term retail client relationships and build new offers that deliver tangible retail value.
Retail is one of the largest UK industries and one of the largest employers, however retailers are facing significant challenges due to the cost of operations, cut-price competitors and in keeping up with the speed of innovation. Retail Reply provides expert consulting services to guide and accelerate retailer’s digital transformation, ensuring that its clients realise clear value every step of the way.
Retail Reply knows that it is always “All About the Customer” and in order for a retailer to maintain their customer's attention it is important to understand and deliver an exceptional experience at every step of their journey. Ultimately each retailer needs to earn the customer's trust and provide them with a seamless journey that is unique to them, and many current business practices can make this difficult. Retail Reply understands how to help its clients overcome the technology, business, operating and regulatory challenges to achieving this.
Omni-channel has been a recent focus for retailers and we are now looking at the next step, which at Reply we call 'Proximity Commerce'. Retail Reply wants to be able to give customers control and variety of choice about when, where and how they shop. They are helping retailers to have an on-going conversation with each individual customer and build relationships with them through a rich understanding of their needs.
Many industries are seeing a step change – the gains to be achieved from incremental internal improvement are diminishing, so organisations are now starting to look at their role in their wider ecosystem. We are, more than ever before, dependent on our suppliers and commercial partners to be successful, and importantly to have flexibility to quickly change relationships. The leaders of tomorrow are positioning themselves to be 'ecosystem enablers' by creating a market economy based around the services they provide, allowing them to opening up new revenue streams.
With years of experience in retail, Retail Reply understands how to drive innovation without disrupting its client's day-to-day business operations. New technologies can be a powerful force, bringing measureable improvements to customer experience and efficiency, and Retail Reply can guide retailers to make the most of those opportunities.
Many people can talk about ‘digital’, however few are able to blend the knowledge of what it is like to run a retail business with advanced technological skills quite like Retail Reply. Each one of its consultants has a strong foundation in technology, and with their deep understanding of the retail industry, they are able to talk with conviction about the challenges retailers face. We have "Retail in the Heart, Technology in the Head".
Glue Reply was originally founded in 1999 in Marlow, Buckinghamshire and became part of the Reply Group in 2008. Glue Reply expanded its offering across integration, IT architecture and data and provided services to a variety of industries including Retail, Finance, Government, Defence, Telecommunications and Automotive. In recent years at Glue Reply we have been pioneers of architecture practice with widespread adoption of our business, information & technical reference models, architecture framework and capability-led planning method. This constant evolution, combined with our core values, has allowed what is now Retail Reply, to build upon and use the expertise we’ve gained in the past to adapt to emerging challenges from technology and the marketplace.