Competitive advantage in the retail industry goes through digital transformation

As a domestic cloud service provider, ICT Cloud continues to add new features to its solutions developed by focusing on the needs of the most important sectors of the economy. ICT Cloud, which shared its sector-oriented solutions, which Turkey has positioned as the Retail and e-Commerce Community Cloud, with the members of the press, discussed the digital transformation of its sector.

“Competitive advantage in the retail industry goes through digital transformation”

ICT Cloud added a new one to its sector-specific solutions. Playing an important role in technology exports with its services to the retail and e-commerce sector, ICT Cloud came together with technology, informatics and retail press after the launch of the Retail and e-Commerce Community Cloud.

"Protecting quality data in the retail industry is the priority of the industry"

Stating that the cloud market, which has reached 600 billion dollars globally, has reached 500 million dollars in our country and that they predict that the market will reach 1 billion dollars in a couple of years, ICT Cloud Turkey General Manager Gökhan Gençtürk said that 6 different data centers in 3 different regions will be reached. He stated that they offer cloud services to their customers with the motto.of “Turkey's data should stay in Turkey”. Gençtürk said "Especially when we evaluate the consumer in terms of data, this is one of the important elements for the retail industry. One of the most important elements in digitalization is quality data belonging to the consumer. It is very valuable for this data to remain in Turkey in terms of sovereignty. The industry is an independent customer benefactor, and for such a data-dependent retail industry, data itself has become a boon. Therefore, dominating data means everything” he said.

(IBM Data and Artificial Intelligence Technical Leader Murat Yeşil, ICT Cloud Turkey General Manager Gökhan Gençtürk, IBM CTO Serdar Gere and ICT Cloud Executive Board Advisor Orhan Dağlıoğlugil)

"Community clouds for industries deliver performance, increase efficiency with scalability"

In his speech, ICT Cloud Turkey General Manager Gökhan Gençtürk explained why cloud solutions should be evaluated separately for each sector. Gencturk said "Industries now want to receive services from infrastructures tailored to their needs. We see that one solution no longer fits all. For this reason, it is necessary to produce sector-specific solutions. The need for community cloud comes from here. With this in mind, we recently launched the finance community cloud, and now we have implemented the community cloud for the retail and e-commerce industries. As a need, these two sectors need cloud services more than many sectors. This is the main reason why we prioritize these community clouds, and we will continue our targeted efforts for different sectors, especially the public sector, in the coming period. We aim to continually evolve our vision of the community cloud”.

Gençtürk, who points out that retail and e-commerce cloud solutions provide industry-specific businesses with many advantages, from scalable infrastructure to cyber security services, disaster recovery and business continuity services for applications and processes that require high performance, emphasized that the solutions prepared and continuously developed with their expertise in hardware, software, security, network and managed service areas provide maximum performance and increase efficiency.

"The retail industry invested $27 billion in cloud services in 2022"

At the event, 'Digital Transformation of the Retail Industry and What Does the Retail Cloud Promise to the Industry?' ICT Cloud Executive Board Advisor Orhan Dağlıoğlugil gave his presentation on why cloud-focused investments are important from the perspective of the CTO, with examples. Dağlıoğlugil pointed out that the dynamo of difference and growth in the sector is digital transformation, "E-commerce activities in the world are expected to realize 22% of the total retail turnover by the end of 2023. The retail sector has invested 27 billion dollars in cloud services in 2022. This is compared to other sectors. "It's a high rate, which means the industry is investing in the cloud" he said.

"Digital transformation is inevitable for competitive advantage in the retail industry"

Orhan Dağlıoğlugil, who previously stated that the priority for profitability was to be customer-oriented and operational excellence, stressed that the driving force in recent years has been digital transformation. Dağlıoğlugil added that the retail industry is going through a difficult process due to price imbalances all over the world and that digital transformation is inevitable for competition in this process, said that "Profitability in sectors increases if turnover, customers, new products and productivity increase. Because cloud solutions work with a rental model by nature, they offer the advantage of allocating limited capital to leasing rather than investment. Apart from this, it also overlaps with the fast dynamics of the industry with its feature of accelerating project times in terms of time management; because speed means efficiency, especially in the retail industry. For this reason, it is very important to tell the industry about cloud services, which is a sharing ecosystem".

"It is important to invest in digital services to strengthen the operational capabilities of the industry"

IBM CTO Serdar Gere made the final presentation of the press conference with his presentation titled "IBM Artificial Intelligence Vision and Retail Industry". Gere, who pointed out that artificial intelligence is mostly used in the retail sector and that the most important issue is accurate data, quoted IBM's contributions to this study as follows: "As IBM, we do not see data and artificial intelligence as separate from each other, we think that organizations should integrate the right data with artificial intelligence. Forecasting, optimization, planning analytics and analysis, which are among the most important topics of digital transformation in the retail industry, are important possibilities we can offer through the retail and e-commerce community cloud. As IBM, we can offer these digital infrastructures, which offer a competitive advantage in the sector, in cooperation with ICT Cloud. It is very important to predict customer demand in the retail community cloud, to manage products with the right stock and to manage the right network accordingly. We accelerate the digital transformation of the industry with forecasting, optimization and analysis infrastructures".