Furniture retailer Godrej Interio partners with IBM to realize e-commerce foray

MUMBAI: Godrej Interio, the furniture division of Godrej & Boyce, is collaborating with IBM to exploit its Design Thinking-led engagement to further augment customer engagement and experience across all of its 3 brands (Godrej Interio, U&Us and a new lifestyle home furniture brand). Through the partnership, Godrej expects to increase brand loyalty by delivering a seamless personalized shopping experience across store, mobile and social channels.

IBM’s design-based consulting and e-commerce capabilities will enable Godrej Interio to gain deeper customer insights by evaluating customers’ observations, ideas, and insights by their browsing behavior online and offline.

Godrej Interio will use these insights to recommend home decor ideas. For example, a customer who is moving into a new home, can browse the entire furniture and home décor catalogue on the interactive online platform. The platform will then be able to recommend innovative designs and share special offers.

The platform will also allow the customer to reserve the item, guide them to the nearest store location to buy or schedule a timeslot for home delivery. In addition, the platform will provide increased visibility of inventory, by helping the sales associate know which furniture items are in stock or alert suppliers early on when items are out of stock.

Commenting on the collaboration with IBM, Shanu Singh, Head – Ecommerce and Digital Transformation at Godrej Interio, said, “We needed the right combination of design and technology capabilities to provide us with the insights to turn our existing and potential customers into loyal brand advocates. We believe design thinking is an innovative strategy and the most effective way to create a customer centric business model. With IBM’s global expertise and local experience in the omni-channel commerce and retail space, we are confident this will give us the edge over competition.”