We have come back from Mapic Italy 2019 a few days ago: tired but satisfied.
From this experience, now in its fourth edition, we took home a lot of things: meetings and discussions, that are always precious; opportunities and ideas, which we will try to make the most of.

We sincerely thank Michela, who represented us in the Digital Talk on Wednesday afternoon, 8th of May. The proposed theme was very topical:

«ONLINE-OFFLINE CONVERGENCE: WHAT STRATEGIES FOR THE PHYSICAL SALES POINT IN THE DIGITAL AGE?».

During the preparation of the speech, we asked ourselves about the current relationship between e-commerce and in-store shopping.
Our core business is people counting systems, so we work mainly with physical commercial realities. We are already aware that the brick and mortar store still has a fundamental role in the retail world. Sometimes, however, it is good to stop and think about the topics that are really important for us.

Mapic Italy 2019 in figures

2,200+ participants
(+10% compared to 2018)

40+ countries

840 retailers

In the days before the Mapic we consulted a great amount of articles and we discussed a lot of themes. The critical moment was to select the topics for the speech and to condense them in just four minutes.
In the end we decided to keep the articles we read (who knows, they maybe will become ideas for subsequent posts ?) and we opted for something simple and immediate; we preferred to talk about a little amount of topics, rather than saying a lot without transmitting anything. So, the main idea we have chosen for our talk is that in the world of unified commerce, in which the Customer eXperience is what counts the most and that is free to flow between the different purchasing channels, the physical store is still having a highly important role.

With the novelties brought by the digital, the physical store passed a very difficult moment: it seemed it was on the way of extinction.
On the other hand, digital has made consumers increasingly demanding, and this trend has not stopped yet. In 2019 customers are no longer satisfied with just digital: they still go to the physical store, in order to find an experience they cannot have online. The physical store, hand in hand with e-commerce, gives a fundamental contribution in creating a shopping experience, that has to be as close as possible to the customer.
In this regard, during our intervention Michela mentioned the Click and Collect purchasing method, with which you can buy online and pick up the goods in the store. We have used it ourselves several times, to prevent the postman finding the recipient absent or to save on shipping costs.

Microlog continues to work every day on solutions that allow to acquire, consult and analyze data from physical stores, shopping malls and other realities related to the public area.
We are constantly investing in the improvement of our products, not only because it’s our company’s mission, but also because we think that if we want to talk about unified commerce, the approach we should have with data should be the same we have with the Customer eXperience. If a reality that involves online and in-store sales wants to have an overall picture of its situation, it certainly cannot be limited to e-commerce analytics: it must integrate data from both worlds, in order to avoid an incomplete and maybe misleading picture. Microlog solutions are designed to offer complete and hight-quality data about on-site purchase, ready to be integrated with data about online sales, if the situation requires it.

We ended our speech by reviewing some of our solutions, very briefly, because four minutes would not be enough to well describe even only one of them. However, for anyone who wished to learn more about our products and solutions, we have been ALWAYS PRESENT at the Digital Lounge and we continue to be so by telephone, by e-mail, through the site you are navigating… in short,
we are and will be ALWAYS PRESENT! ?

Thanks to everyone who came to visit us, and to those who shared time with us during this precious annual appointment.
Thanks also to those who will come to visit us in November at Mapic in Cannes or during Mapic Italy 2020.

Thank you all! ?