Best Buy has long been helping its customers transform their digital lives.
百思买一直在帮助它的客户改变他们的数字生活。
In recent months, however, Best Buy has been the one undergoing digital transformation — particularly in the area of store merchandising. Working with One Door, a provider of cloud-based visual merchandising software, the Minnesota-based consumer electronics retailer has expanded its traditionally headquarters-centric, paper-laden process to an efficient, system-wide practice that enables real-time access to data.
然而，最近几个月来，百思买一直在进行数字化改造——特别是在商店销售领域。这家总部位于明尼苏达州的消费电子零售商与云端视觉营销软件供应商One Door合作，将其传统的以总部为中心的纸质流程扩展到一个高效的、全系统范围的实践，能够实时访问数据。
“Digital ends up giving everybody in the process a much higher level of visibility and confidence that things are being done properly, and ultimately, that stores are being set the way they want,” says Tom Erskine, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of product with One Door.
“数码化最终让流程中的每个人都有了更高的知名度和信心，相信事情都做得很好，而且最终，商店都按照自己的意愿来安排，”One Door产品的首席营销官和高级副总裁汤姆·厄斯金(Tom Erskine)说。
“That drives a number of different things. The first is that it drives better sales results, because when people can find what they’re looking for in stores, the stores sell more. Second, it drives less cost in stores because associates know exactly what to do, in less time. And third, it drives less cost at headquarters, because the application enables the visual merchandisers to be five to eight times more effective than they would otherwise normally be.”
“这驱动着许多不同的东西。第一，它推动了更好的销售结果，因为当人们能够在商店里找到他们想要的东西时，商店就会卖得更多。其次，它降低了商店的成本，因为员工知道该做什么，用更少的时间。第三，它降低了总部的成本，因为应用程序使视觉采购人员的效率比正常情况下提高了五到八倍。”
OLDER TECHNOLOGIES, NEWER RESPONSIBILITIES旧技术，新责任
True transformation takes time, and the collaboration between Best Buy and One Door has been no exception. Erskine joined One Door in the middle of 2015, but conversations were already in the works by then.
真正的转变需要时间，百思买和ONE DOOR的合作也不例外。厄斯金在2015年中加入了OnePortal，但当时对话已经在进行中。
“The initial entrée was a shared vision around finding a way to improve the communication and collaboration with stores around digital merchandising plans,” Erskine says. “The way they were doing things was pretty traditional — and very non-digital.”
厄斯金说：“最初的主要目的是找到一种方法，围绕着数字营销计划改进与商店的沟通与合作。”“他们做事的方式非常传统，而且非常不数字化。”
Aaron Pyles, senior director of retail operations for Best Buy, says a need to “simplify the process of merchandising and make it more efficient for our retail teams” was at the core of the collaboration.
百思买零售业务高级主管阿龙·勒斯表示，必须“简化商品销售流程，提高零售团队的效率”，这是合作的核心所在。
“We can tell a better story for the customer by having our product assortment set in a logical and efficient manner,” he says. “By making the process easier to follow, we have seen better execution and reduced the number of merchandising errors.”
我们可以告诉客户一个更好的故事，让我们的产品分类设置在一个逻辑和有效的方式，”他说。“通过使流程更易于遵循，我们看到了更好的执行情况，并减少了商品销售错误的数量。”
Lifecycles of products change rapidly, and new products — especially smart home products — enter the store’s assortment on a regular basis. Effective merchandising, then, is key, especially when it comes to showcasing how these smart home products can make customers’ lives easier.
产品的生命周期瞬息万变，新产品——特别是智能家居产品——定期进入商店的分类。因此，有效的销售是关键，特别是在展示这些智能家居产品如何使顾客的生活更轻松的时候。
“We’ve had to make changes in product adjacencies, upgrade internet connections in the stores and create visuals that help customers navigate the complexities of the smart home,” Pyles says. “It’s no longer about just selling a TV. We literally have the incredible opportunity to show how you can control an ever-increasing list of devices in the home with only your voice. You can start a movie on your TV, set the lights to movie mode and double-check to make sure the front door is locked, all without moving from your subwoofer-containing recliner.”
派尔斯说：“我们不得不对产品附属品进行改变，升级商店的网络连接，并创造视觉效果，帮助顾客驾驭智能家居的复杂性。”“这不再是一个电视销售的问题。我们实际上有一个难以置信的机会来展示你如何用你的声音来控制家里不断增加的设备列表。你可以在电视上开拍一部电影，把灯调成电影模式，然后再检查一遍，确保前门是锁着的，而不需要从装有低音炮的躺椅上移动。”
As technology has continued to advance, so has the need to localize and optimize assortments. The challenge for many retailers is decades-old visual merchandising processes that can no longer keep up.
随着技术的不断进步，有必要对品种进行本地化和优化。对许多零售商来说，挑战在于数十年来的视觉营销流程已无法跟上。
“There’s a widely held misconception within large retailers that when a visual merchandiser or space planner at HQ finishes creating a planogram, and saves it, that they’re done, and the process is over,” Erskine says.
“在大型零售商中，有一种普遍的误解是，当总部的视觉跟单员或空间规划员完成创建平面图并保存它时，他们就完成了，整个过程就结束了，”厄斯金说。
“Realistically, anyone who digs into this realizes very quickly that making good visual merchandising or space planning decisions is one thing, but actually executing those decisions across a large distributed organization with thousands of stores is a whole different matter. In order to effectively transform this process, you have to do both. You have to find ways to improve the decision making, to accelerate it, to make it more local. But you also have to transform the way you effectively communicate those plans and empower the field to do the job.”
“实际上，任何深入了解这一点的人都会很快地意识到，做出良好的视觉宣传或空间规划决策是一回事，但实际上在一个拥有数千家商店的大型分布式组织中执行这些决策则完全是另一回事。为了有效地转换这个过程，您必须同时做这两个。你必须找到方法来改进决策，加速决策，使之更加本土化。但是你也必须改变你有效沟通这些计划的方式，并授权给这个领域去完成这个工作。”