Geoff Welch, Midwest VP for The Shelby Report, visited with representatives of Avanade Inc. twice recently, in January and February.
In separate conversations—first, at the National Retail Federation “Big Show” in New York and later at the company’s office in Chicago—they discussed Avanade, its origins and how the company’s services could benefit grocery retailers.
The following are excerpts of those talks.
Company closely aligned with Microsoft, Accenture
Aaron Reich is Avanade’s lead for global emerging technology, which he described as the R&D function, or “a lot of the early work that we do with clients and the latest technologies.”
“We are a digital services company that is a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft with a focus on retail, manufacturing, banking and non-profits,” he said. “So, in the retail space, we do everything from the front end of the customer experience all the way to the employee or the workplace experience—from the front of the house to the back of the house.
“We are about 36,000 people worldwide in 25 countries. We are headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and that’s where I’m based, and Jeff [Vilimek] is in Chicago.”
As North America innovation lead, Vilimek works with “clients to show off the latest in digital innovation by industry and we do a lot in retail.”
“We are Microsoft’s No. 1 partner,” Vilimek said. “We were invented 20 years ago almost to the day…to be that global systems integrator on the Microsoft platform. We were one of the first of the majors.
“We’re still very closely aligned with both Microsoft and Accenture. In fact, we are 80 percent owned by Accenture and 20 percent owned by Microsoft. Everything that Accenture does in the marketplace is Microsoft. We are the delivery arm for that, and then we have a direct relationship with many clients across the globe as well.”
Vilimek said Avanade can help customers design system architecture and solutions and run their data centers; build out the solutions to suit both customers and employees; and enable the technology.
“Our secret sauce is how we can bring all three of those things together for our clients to help enable whatever they are trying to achieve from a business outcome perspective,” he said.
Vilimek noted that Avanade works with a number of supermarkets and grocery retailers globally.
Visit to Chicago office offers insight, information
Picking up where they left off in New York, company officials and Welch continued to discuss Avanade during a visit to the company’s office in Chicago.
Vilimek began by drilling down into Avanade’s role and approach.
“Avanade is a global systems integrator,” he said. “Instead of building products, we work with our clients. We will build custom things for that particular client, but we’re not selling them products we’ve already built.”
Vilimek went on to discuss the role of a systems integrator.
“All of the layers of digital technology that a client might want to implement, we can help them implement any of those layers,” he said.
Email and other business systems may be purchased from different sources, and Avanade helps make it all work in tandem.
“We are the partner that would help them implement all of that and connect all of that together,” he said.
The conversation then turned to the different ways Avanade can help supermarkets.
“We look at the tools they’re using to reach out and talk to their customers,” Vilimek said. “That might be a new digital marketing system, websites, apps for their clients.
“We can build those apps, we can build those websites, we can help customize that thing for reaching out and connecting directly to their customers through loyalty cards, and then all of the back-end system that supports the loyalty data and information.”
The data is put into the cloud, where CMOs and their marketing teams can use it for their campaigns.
Basic customer relationship management (CRM) software, as part of a loyalty program, provides the grocer with the customer’s name, “what have they bought from us lately, have they told me all the information that they want me to know so that I can serve them better?” he said.
If the grocer has an app and the customer is using it in the store, additional information can be gleaned, such as their traffic pattern in the store. And if the shopper has opted in for notifications, the grocer could communicate messages about coupons or promotions on certain products.
“This is sort of getting a little bit into the future…cameras and facial recognition to track who’s coming into our store, what their general demographics are,” he said.
Such information could prove useful for high-value clients who want to be recognized and are seeking a more personal experience.
“What we’re recommending for grocers to do is, as best as they can, personalize the experience in their individual stores to that local market—the campaigns that they have, the displays that they have, the product mixes that they’re showing off, what recipes they recommend,” Vilimek said. “If that’s specific to the people that are walking into their store, they’re going to have a better relationship with those customers.”
While not all shoppers appreciate grocers having a lot of personal information about them, “if you tell a customer, ‘Hey, if we collect information about you, you’ll get a coupon that’s personalized to you every time you come through the store and your loyalty program will get extra points and you’ll get discounts on the weekends.’ Then, they say yes. There’s a balance of trade there,” he added.
Vilimek added that there is a key distinction with Avanade vs. its competitors.
“We would help set it up,” Vilimek explained. “We would help build the technology for the supermarket, but then that’s theirs. They own it then, and it’s their system. We don’t touch their data…We don’t put our name then in there. We don’t get in the way of our clients and their customers.
“We’d love to work with our customers over time to maintain that and do new things, but we can just deploy that and walk away.”
According to Vilimek, other signals Avanade could add to the data picture include heat maps and tracking.
“We could have those infrared sensors watching the heat maps of where the activity is. That’s another set of data,” he said. “We also have the loyalty program, who’s coming into the store and what are they buying. That’s another set of data.
“But what Avanade’s really good at—and what systems integrators do—is we can get all of those data pieces, put them all together and create an overall picture so the CMO can ask new questions. That’s the integration.”
Added Dan DiPietro-James, a public relations/analyst relations lead with Avanade North America, “Overall it helps improves your business, it tells you where you need to refine, maybe tells you where you need to remodel. It’s all of this data that can come together.
“And Avanade provides the technology that gives you that data. And with that data, we help you read it and then you know what to do with that data to help refine and improve your business to make more money.”
In closing, Vilimek said these processes “transform and connect to what Accenture is doing today around responsible retail as an initiative.”
“And responsible retail says customers are going to be demanding—and this is even growing over the course of the past couple years and coming to a head—demanding information about is this a sustainable product, does it have a carbon footprint I can support.”
