eBook: Improve your Customer Engagement

A Market Snapshot of How Category Excellence Creates Sustainable Competitive Advantage In today’s rapidly evolving retail landscape, traditional specialty retail models are facing unprecedented challenges. Our latest report, created in partnership with SAP and EverBlue, reveals how successful specialty retailers are transforming their expertise into sustainable competitive advantage. THE NEW SPECIALTY RETAIL IMPERATIVE The retail landscape has fundamentally shifted:• Direct Brands Reshape Competition – Digital-first brands are building billion-dollar businesses without stores and cutting traditional margins through vertical integration• Supply Chain Drives Differentiation – Smart sourcing has evolved from risk management into a competitive weapon that determines market share• Labor Becomes Strategic Advantage – Expert talent acquisition has moved from an HR challenge to a board-level priority• Cost Structures Must Transform – Store economics need a complete reset for the digital age with new revenue streams• Scale Changes Everything – Regional players must find ways to compete against national digital brands• Expertise Must Industrialize – Product knowledge can’t stay locked in individual experts’ heads and must scale digitally FIVE KEY TRANSFORMATION IMPERATIVES 1. Transform Product Authority into Customer ValueMove beyond product information to become engines of customer success. Build unified customer profiles, drive lifestyle-based merchandising, and turn knowledge into tangible value. 2. Make Every Interaction Immersive and InspirationalTurn every customer touchpoint into an experience that builds confidence through intelligent guidance, interactive confidence-building tools, and project-based personalization. 3. Turn Complex Categories into Simple ExperiencesTransform overwhelming product choices into guided journeys with real-time visibility, flexible fulfillment options, and predictive intelligence that anticipates customer needs. 4. Make Expertise Accessible EverywhereCreate seamless connections between self-service tools and expert guidance through unified product knowledge, expert handoffs between channels, and consistent service quality. 5. Build Operations that Enable Innovation at ScaleDevelop flexible foundations that turn market changes into opportunities with cloud innovation, automated category excellence, and rapid testing capabilities. THE PATH FORWARDLeading specialty retailers are rebuilding their businesses around five essential capabilities:• Expert Excellence at Scale• Community-Powered Growth• Unified Service Excellence• Value Through Intelligence• Precision Operations

3 out of 4 office-based employees want to continue working remotely, even after the pandemic. Small- and medium-sized businesses will need to adapt – and that means connecting and supporting their workforces with cloud-based unified communication software that makes flexible work easy. Download our eBook, Flexible Worker Guidebook | The Age of Anytime, Anywhere: Flexible Working is a Must-Have, to see: • 6 ongoing trends that make cloud-based communication tools so important for the modern workforce • What it means for SMBs to make the most of Unified Communications • How SMBs can leverage Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) to boost customer engagement and sales • How you can grow your audience and unlock new opportunities with webinars and virtual events • And more! Download Now

No stranger to disruption, IT teams have faced unprecedented demands — from a global pandemic and the shift to hybrid work to ever-present cybersecurity concerns and the threat of a worldwide economic recession on the horizon. Even as we shift our focus to the next great disruption, it’s worth reflecting on the lessons learned from one we’re still experiencing — navigating the shift to a more flexible worklife. Read the ebook to discover learnings that can help us weather whatever’s ahead, so you’re prepared to not only survive but thrive. Download Now