Business Operations Future of Work Essay Assignment Help

INTRODUCTION
In the last few years alone, technology has evolved to an extent where the way people do business has changed significantly and now that we stand on the eve of industrial revolution 4.0, it is impressive to see how far technology has come and where it is planning to go. According to Chen et al. (2012), companies have more data and information at their fingertips than ever before about the customers, competition, the industry and market trends etc. and they also have access to this data instantly which helps them make decisions on the fly. Artificial intelligence is also making great strides in the retail industry allowing for mass personalization and customer centric retail trade activities. In fact, 85% of all transactions will be AI based by 2020 and 2018 will be the year to witness scalability in AI (Rogers et al. 2015). Drone technologies, Robotics, automation, augmented reality etc. are impacting retail concepts of supply chain, inventory, selling, marketing etc. While these technologies may be 5 to 10 years out before they are rolled out in public for commercial use and a significant adoption rate it achieved, the prototype and applications for these technologies in retail is already being discussed and organizations that plan to stay competitive in the future are already thinking of ways to implement these technologies as soon as they become available as well as their application to specific systems and processes to streamline operations, improve performance and achieve business objectives.

AIM OF THE ESSAY
The aim of this essay is to evaluate the impact of Industry 4.0 on retail sector and to recommend retailers so that they can embrace future challenges in the retail industry. Since, retail sector is a large sector of the economy so in order to limit the scope of the essay, we define retail trade as inclusive of the following practices and functions of a retailer-buying and selling of goods directly to the customer, warehousing and storage, focus on customer satisfaction, promotion and advertisement of the product etc.

CURRENT ISSUES IN RETAIL SECTOR
Majority of the present day retailers are primarily engaged in the traditional business model in which customers have to come to the retail store, spend time on exploring the options that are available at the store, make comparison and based on this, make a purchase decision. The selected items are billed by the retailer, and customer can take those items with him to their home. In order to support customers in the purchasing process, retailers have to keep a stock of item on the shelf. The items are kept in stock in the warehouse and as soon as customers take these items from the shelf, retailer replenishes these from the shelf. This requires an analysis of sale of items and then human effort for replenishing item (Wang et al. 2015). Because of cost optimization, retailer try to hire as little people as possible so that cost can be saved and profits can be increased. This leads to a situation in which one cannot identify why or why not customers have purchased some items (Rezaei et al. 2014). Moreover, this process is also time-consuming as retailers have to travel to the store and spend time on shopping and travel back to their homes. Moreover, this process is also time-consuming for the retailers as they have to purchase stuff, put in their warehouse and then transfer to the shelf. Retailers also have to keep track of the shelf so that if needed, more items can be replenished (Fafatas and Fischer 2016). Lots of money is invested in the stock and in storing it. No or minimal information is obtained about the current purchase preferences of the customers. Moreover, it is also very difficult for the retailer to make an accurate estimate of future purchase preferences of the customers (Rogers et al. 2015).

These problems need to be addressed. Courtesy of Industry 4.0 and industrial revolution 3, new technologies have emerged that has and will transform future of the retail sector by making it more technology intensive, buyer-oriented, intuitive and futuristic.