tamigo’s luxury customers are growing their tech eco-systems, with a focus on improving the employee experience and digitalising processes.
The 2023 luxury landscape
It’s been a turbulent few years for retail.
First the pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent inflation spiralling and disrupted supply chains across Europe. Consumer confidence continues to stall.
In the face of this, some smaller chains have gone under, while market leaders have been forced to cut hundreds of staff.
But one retail sector has bucked the trend. Luxury retail proved its resilience once again, buoyed by its affluent consumer base.
According to Bain and Company, the luxury market’s sales in 2022 were 8–10% higher than in pre-pandemic 2019. This success held true across most product categories. Luxury personal goods — “the heart of the entire luxury industry” — set an all-time sales record!
The future of luxury remains in-store
Luxury’s upward trajectory is set to continue. And there’s no doubt that the digital arena has a big role to play. Especially as the ‘raised-online’ Gen Z and Gen Alpha will account for a third of the market by 2030.
But the thing to keep in mind is that — in contrast to other retail segments — physical purchases still account for the lion’s share of total sales. And that’s not changing any time soon.
It’s predicted that a huge 75% of luxury goods sales will be made in-store vs. online by 2025.
Curious to learn why? Check out our blog post 4 effective ways to provide a premium customer experience.
Innovating physical operations
This importance of the in-store experience raises a big question. How can brands capture the same spirit of innovation we’re seeing in the online space, and use it across their physical stores and counters?
At tamigo, we work closely with major luxury retailers across Europe. And we’ve seen our customers investing heavily in in-store retail tech; to improve operational processes and make daily work smarter for employees.
We caught up with tamigo’s Customer Success Manager Lucinda Duncan and Implementation Specialist Monica Annese to learn more. Watch below or scroll down to read their thoughts.
Lucinda: I deal with our Enterprise clients across Europe in various business sectors, one of them being luxury retail.
Today, many of our customers are at different stages of digital transformation and all working towards retail excellence. By that I mean, providing premium client experiences, while also balancing online and brick and mortar structures.
In my role as a CSM, I help them get the most value out of our workforce management solution — through optimising employee workflows and informing data-driven, operational decisions.
Building a software eco-system for retail
Lucinda: From what we’ve observed, luxury retail has remained resilient to the turbulence of the last few years and continues to reinvent itself.
Luxury brands are upping their digital game, creating tech enabled in-store experiences that connect across channels.
At tamigo, our solution fits into this tech eco-system, bringing together all the processes involved in managing and scheduling staff, tracking time and attendance and enabling them to register sales on the go via our app.
This data is then captured in tamigo, where it’s easily synchronised with the rest of the company’s tech stack. This increases data transparency while generating even greater efficiencies.
Monica: Core data in tamigo for our luxury customers connects to scheduling. To guide your planning, you have the option to use your most relevant data type, such as footfall data or sales targets.
These can be imported into our solution with a bulk upload or via our open API.
Using these numbers as a foundation, you can generate staffing profiles for the weeks ahead. These show the optimal number of employees to meet expected demand on any given hour, which is a huge help for planners.
It’s also possible to generate reports in tamigo on all kinds of information, using data around absences, KPIs and labour costs. I've seen a lot of luxury brands use the Productivity report to see revenue generated per hour.
If you want, you can also export insights from tamigo to your BI system, to combine it with your company wide data and present it in easy-to-read dashboards.
Improving the employee experience
Lucinda: When we talk about employee experience, engagement is key.
To help staff provide superior service, they need modern tools to make their day-to-day smarter.
Let’s take mobile POS systems as an example. They often have digital black boxes — basically a real-time inventory of client preferences and past purchases. So, with this device in hand, in-store staff can go the extra mile with truly personalised service.
Monica: Making workflows easier is a really big mission here at tamigo.
That’s why our solution features a lot of self-service tools, especially in the app. These include shift swapping and tamigo Chat - our instant messaging tool.
Before they started using tamigo, many of our luxury customers lived with a disconnect between their HR system, where master employee data was held, and their payroll system, which kept track of absence balances.
For employees, this made it hard to keep track of their vacation time. And for business stakeholders, it meant always having to cross-reference between two different software.
With tamigo, employee data and absences are brought together in one place.
Staff can request holidays with a few taps on their phone. And all the balances and schedules are right there, so it’s easier for managers to approve.
What happens next?
Lucinda: The increased use of retail tech in the luxury space is all about ensuring that the in-store experience is optimal — serving and fulfilling customer needs, anytime and anywhere.
It’s going to be so interesting to see where we stand in a few months and years from now.
For luxury retailers across Europe, tamigo’s WFM solution is the cornerstone in their digital transformation. To learn more, head to our dedicated luxury brands page.