Home

Let’s do a mental exercise, I’d like you to think about an image or a concept when you see the word “Upskilling”. Got it? What picture or idea came out? Chances are like most of us, we picture an image of a classroom or see ourselves sitting at our work desk afterwork looking at our screen for hours to listen to a lecture in order to up-skill.

That mental image we have is the very opposite of what learning and upskilling is supposed to be! The very foundation for our learning is for us to want it and are motivated to do it in the first place. If the image we had is one that gives us dread or makes us feel demotivated, then it is not beneficial at all. This is the very reason why On-Demand Learning has been introduced in the first place, it is because we can learn anytime and anywhere! Instead of taking up our time, it allows us to integrate with our lives to make learning both a fun and exciting journey!

On Demand Learning: A Growing Lifestyle Trend!

1. Learning LITERALLY at the tip of our fingers!
2. Duration is no longer fixed but rather a suggestion!
3. Learning done in a car, in the gym, on a bus, in your home ……

Learning LITERALLY At The Tip Of Our Fingers!

On-demand learning does not require us to head over to the office of a training provider or engage in a call with them to provide them details and schedule a meet or time for the upskilling session. All of this can be done just by taking out our devices, keying our details in at once and selecting whichever course we are interested in straight away, hassle-free. Take myself for example, all I did was take my phone out, grab the Senheng App and press SHRA E-Learning and I am immediately guided to tons of courses immediately!

Hassle-free, easy and most importantly literally at the tip of my fingers! It took me only a short 1 minute to straight away jump into a course I’d like to learn (including scrolling and waiting times!) Instead of spending a 20 minute drive, a 5 minute introduction, a 15 minute explanation of courses and 10 minutes of choosing the right course (which takes up an hour by the way!) why not use 1 minute to filter out all the hassle and immediately feed that hunger to learn just by pressing a few buttons! 

Duration Is No Longer Fixed But Rather A Suggestion!

Ever looked at training and upskilling courses? Then you’d probably be familiar with the time required and needed to complete an upskilling course. The duration there, fixed. We can discuss and adjust but the upskilling and training duration is still fixed to a minimum of 4 hours at one go. On-Demand Learning on the other hand, is broken down into small bite sized chunks that can be consumed in one go (few hours straight) or taken in small intervals (5 – 15 minutes) Even if you are watching a 10 minute video about the principles of marketing, you can always pause it and come back to it if you have something urgent to attend to!

I have gone for both 4 hours straight training and On-Demand Learning courses up to 4 hours. The 4 hours straight training is certainly completed in one day, but I realized I could only remember the first 30 minutes and the last 15 minutes of the session, anything in between is gone! On the other hand, I was able to remember and apply up to 80% of knowledge I gained through on-demand learning! The reason? I was not required to watch through the full 10 minutes of a video when I only had the capacity to watch a 2 minute video! At times when I could watch more, I could watch more courses and stop anytime I felt I was getting close to being overwhelmed! That is the true beauty of a suggested but not fixed duration!

Learning Done In A Car, In The Gym, On A Bus, In Your Home ……

Remember how I mentioned on-demand learning gave us the freedom to start, pause and stop at any given time? Well, this can be applied to anywhere we are as well! I would catch myself watching a short 2 – 3 minute snippet of courses in between my workout sets! By the time I was done with my workout I was also done with about 1 session of the course too! Besides, I believe we are all very familiar with our traffic-prone Malaysian roads. I would whip out my phone and listen through courses while I am stuck in a jam so I don’t get bored out of my mind! 

Much like my personal experiences, I believe many of us occasionally have an awkward amount of time in our hands that we are not sure how to use effectively! Sometimes, we may not even be at places that are conducive for us to do other things but wait. Thanks to on-demand learning, we can actually fill up these times with something productive literally anywhere! So the next time you ever get caught in a jam or have to wait for your friends’ “OTW” sessions, you can use the time to upskill and grow yourself and your career! 

As most of us have seen above, on-demand learning does not require us to take out more time, rather, it helps us fill up our empty spaces, becoming a part of our lifestyle naturally. What’s that? All this talk about On-Demand Learning has got you excited and gearing to try it out? I’ve got the perfect news for you as we have our very own SHRA E-learning Platform. It comes with a career and skill gap analysis to guide you through which courses to take to get that dream job you want! Check out our page or sign up for our e-learning platform here! If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.

Written by Bryan Law Chu Zheng,

SHRA Corporate Trainer

Bryan is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He is a major in Psychology with a retail background. He has a deep passion for human interaction and personal development.

You can catch him dancing or playing the uke on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

 4,591 total views,  8 views today

SHRA E-Learning Platform? Is this another platform like LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, AirAsia Academy?

It is an e-learning platform, but offers much more than that!

SHRA E-Learning Platform Is….

• Offering 13,000 high quality courses with instructors such as Elon Musk, Simon Sinek etc.
• Using Artificial Intelligence to identify skills gap based on industry benchmark
• Giving freedom and convenience for every learner to personalize their learning path
• A platform that allows you to learn and earn

Want to understand more about SHRA E-Learning Platform? Want to try out 13,000 programs for FREE?

Sure, no problem. Read our article to find out more! 

We will talk about these topics in this article.

• Challenges In Human Capital Development

• What is SHRA E-Learning Platform
• Redeem 3 month free access of SHRA-E-Leaning platform

Challenges In Human Capital Development

When we want to do something, offer a new product or make a business decisions, there is always a reason, there is always a pain point to solve. 

Before sharing with you on our platform, I will share with you on the WHY, and pain points of current challenges in human capital development for retailers. 

These are the common concerns we hear from the retailers, and it goes like this. 

“We would like to train our staff BUT…….”

BUT…not enough manpower in the shop

BUT…the training hours are too long

BUT…I don’t have enough staff to organize an in-house program

BUT…it is expensive

BUT…need a lot of effort to persuade them to join training

BUT…I don’t know where to start

These struggles are real. And, we hear you. In this article, I won’t address each pain point, perhaps in the future article I will consider to do so. 

To simplify, these challenges are categorized into 3 things: time, money, motivation.

• How can we allow our employees to upskill themselves without taking away too much of their time and minimizing impact to manpower management in the shop?
• How can we register for a more cost effective training, utilizing technology and at the same time enjoying human touch?
• How can we motivate our staff to learn, without forcing them?

A life without growth is just like a dead plant just waiting to be cut off. On the other hand, learning can give the ‘dead’ plant to re-live so its life is full of knowledge and growth, to lift up the value of the plant.

Let’s find out how SHRA E-Learning platform can overcome these challenges and lift up each of our human capital’s value.

What is SHRA E-Learning Platform?

To answer these 3 questions, this is where SHRA E-Learning Platform is born.

i) TIME

Learners have the freedom to choose what to learn, when to learn and how to learn, as you can access to the courses ANYTIME, ANYWHERE. You just need a phone and internet. Easy right?

If you would like to learn during off peak hours in the shop, you CAN! If you would like to learn during your off day, you CAN! If you would like to learn while your kids are sleeping, you CAN!

So, bosses, you don’t have to worry, that training WILL NOT take away a lot of your employees’ time to do sales or complete their work, as they can learn with their own pace.

ii) MONEY

We offer more than 13,000 courses for you to choose from, and these are good quality courses from instructors all over the world such as Simon Sinek, Elon Musk, and of course with SHRA instructors for retail-based courses. 

Compared to other live classes out there, which may cost you hundreds or thousands to attend 1 session, now you get 13,000 courses, it is like you buy 1 and free 12,999. 

We also understand you want some human touch and learn through experiential learning, we do offer live classes within the subscription plan. Interested to know more? Drop us an enquiry!

The deal sounds attractive? Want to test it? NOW YOU CAN, for FREE! 

Now we are offering 3 MONTHS FREE ACCESS to all these 13,000 courses and other tools, which I will explain later on. Continue reading this article, and we will share with you how to redeem 3 months free access.

iii) MOTIVATION

If we want to protect ourselves against COVID virus, we take Vitamin C and boost our immune system. 

What do we do if we want to protect our staff from burning out, protect them against  joining the Great Resignation force?

TRAIN THEM!

Training is like Vitamin C, help to boost immunity for the company to retain and engage staff. When we train, we feel refreshed, recharged and re-energized. 

• Refreshed with the knowledge that we may have forgotten.
• Recharged with the new knowledge and skills.
• Re-energized to connect with people and exchange ideas. 

What motivates people the most is when we learn what interests us, what is relevant to us and what helps us to advance in our career. With our AI-driven skills gap analysis, we can instantly know what we need to upskill ourselves to meet market demands, and kickstart our personalized learning pathway.

The best part is as we learn, we earn. 10% S-Coin cashback will be given as rewards, so we can shop products we love and need in Senheng/senQ outlets.

Redeem 3 Month FREE access of SHRA-E-Learning platform

To try out this amazing platform? To redeem your 3 months free access, click here: https://shappp.onelink.me/uUns/8zus40jp and follow these steps.

Want to share out with your family and friends on this good deal of 3 Months Free Access? You are very welcomed to do so, the more the merrier! Please share this article, so more people can enjoy the 3 Months Free Access!

If you are interested to find out more about SHRA E-Learning platform, you could drop us a message or schedule a demo session with us here.

______________________________________________________________________

Written by Choon Ee May,

SHRA Training Manger

Ee May leads the training team to create high quality retail-based courses and provide impactful trainings. She is passionate in retail operations, where she loves to visit different retail shops even during her off day. Also, she loves data analysis, visualization and storytelling.

In her free time, she loves to explore vegetarian food and do volunteering work.

 3,719 total views,  7 views today

If you are an active social media user, you have most probably viewed a live selling session, be it on Facebook, Youtube or Tiktok. Here’s my experiences on buying from a livestream. I believe a lot of us might initially think that we would never buy from a livestream. However, after a few accidental exposures on the livestream content. I admitted that I was attracted by the way they conducted their livestream. Then one day, without having the plan to buy anything, I came across a live selling that attracted my interest and I felt the sudden urge to buy from the livestream. This was my first experience buying from my livestream. You might wonder what has happened and what has made me change my mind to start buying from livestreams. As such, let’s take a look on how livestream commerce could help retailers to bring customers to their business.

Why Retailers Start To Do Livestreaming?

1. What – An Additional Customer Touchpoint 
2. Why – Emerging Mobile Data 
3. How – Build Connection And Increase Customer Stickiness 

What – An Additional Customer Touchpoint 

To capture better market share in this new retail era, one thing that retailers do is to gain more traffic to their e-commerce stores or offline stores.  Through livestream, retailers could leverage on the popular social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Tiktok. As these platforms have a lot of pre-existing users, retailers could expose their products or services to these users and eventually direct these traffic to their stores. Thus, retailers just have to start to develop livestream contents that would attract the consumers. Even though not all livestream viewers will immediately buy from the livestream, it still serves as a customer touchpoint that would bring your brand to the awareness of the customers. For example, especially for retailers who are developing a new brand, they could leverage the share mechanism on social media to expand their exposure towards consumers who are unaware of the brand’s existence. Hence, it means that retailers could reach more consumers with the aid of livestream commerce. 

Why – Emerging Mobile Data Technology

One of the reasons why live selling is gaining more and more popularity is due to the emerging mobile data technology. As we know that people nowadays are constantly attached to their smartphone and they are always actively browsing online. When they are bored and have some time to be filled in, they will turn on their social media account to look for content that would potentially interest them. In addition, some people have even developed a habit to browse through online shops and add products that interest them in their online shopping cart. As customers now have the freedom to browse online at any time and anywhere, this means that retailers who are doing live selling would gain a competitive edge in attracting new traffic that is beyond the traffic coverage of online and offline stores. 

How – Build Connection And Increase Customer Stickiness 

Usually, when you purchase expensive items like electronic appliances, gadgets and vehicles, do you buy from the same sales persons or retailers? I believe that it is natural that we would like to buy from a trusted retailer or salesperson that we are familiar with. According to statistics from Fit Small Business, it showed that the top reason why retailers have started livestream commerce is to interact more with their customers. 55% of retailers have conducted live selling with the purpose to better engage with their customers on social media and 59% of the retailers have conducted livestream with the purpose to humanize their brand. As compared to retailers who do not have livestream commerce, they could only engage with customers personally when their customers walk into their offline shops; while retailers who conduct livestream will have more opportunity to engage with their potential customers and build a special connection with them. For instance, in live selling, there will always be a period of time when the livestreamer has small talks with his or her frequent livestream viewers or customers. Through constant engagement with the customers on livestream, it would help retailers to  create a stronger bond between their brands and the customers, thus increasing the recency and frequency of the customers to buy from the retailers.

Ultimately, starting a livestream commerce would definitely help the retailers to boost their business in this New Retail era. Especially for retailers that reach the bottleneck on getting in new traffic, developing a livestream commerce might help you reach out to a new group of potential customers. Once the unique connections are being built during a livestream session, their customer would then naturally stick to the retailers.  

To start a livestream commerce, there are a lot of key strategies that could be implemented and key metrics that have to be monitored to ensure that livestream commerce could bring in the expected return of investment to your business. Interested to know more about live stream commerce? Want a more in-depth breakdown of the strategies personalized according to your business? Wait no further! You can check out our Professional Certification in New Retail Marketing. If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.

Written by Lim Ee Hau,

SHRA Corporate Trainer

Ee Hau is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He has a  psychology background and he is passionate in assisting individuals to achieve their life goal. He loves to connect with people by initiating insightful conversation. He enjoys swimming and you can catch him bouldering in the gym during his free time. 

 3,784 total views,  8 views today

Let’s begin by taking a short 10 second challenge to list out all the websites, apps, courses and providers that provide opportunities to upskill! Ready, Let’s go! 10 … 9 … 8 …… Done? Well, let’s look back at our list and take a look at how many of them offer on-demand learning. Chances are, some or most of them do not offer on-demand learning.

On-demand learning is rare as it is, so when we manage to find one that offers this option, it’s as if we found a ton of gold among piles of rocks! But hold your horses there cowboy, because some of these on-demand learning providers may have certain downsides and pitfalls that we would definitely not want to fall into! So before you fall into any, let’s take a moment to see what are some of the things we should be aware of and avoid before it’s too late!

On Demand Learning: Top 3 Pitfalls You Should Avoid!

1. Anywhere & Anytime is great, but anyone? Not so much 
2. Should I use a lemon seed, or an orange seed to plant an apple tree?
3. Great… just need to do 5000 things before I can use this!

Anytime, anywhere is great, but anyone? Not so much

On-demand learning has the benefit of learning anytime and anywhere with just a touch of a finger. However, it is important to identify the institute or person that created the course or uploaded the course in the first place, lest you end up like a close friend of mine. He went to take up a few courses in programming and coding as he felt that was a good direction to head into. He decided to go for a few courses to enhance his knowledge on one particular programming language first.However, as time went on, he went from being confident and proud to being confused and unsure. He would often get confused as the courses he took seemed to be contradicting despite teaching the same topic and exact same programming language.

That was when he felt something was not right so he stopped. Turns out there was something wrong, as the platform he had chosen did not need any approval for anyone to upload their courses! He wasted both his money and hours upon hours of information that has to be relearnt! After doing a background search on providers, he managed to find one that has an approval process and goes through an extensive quality check before course uploads. With his permission, the sharing of his traumatic experience can hopefully prevent you from making the same mistakes as he did! Excited as you might be, don’t forget to check your instructors and platforms credentials!

Should I use lemon seeds or orange seeds to grow an apple tree?

You might be wondering? Bryan, how on earth can we grow an apple tree out of either of those seeds? You’re right, we definitely can’t, because it’s not relevant towards what we want in the first place! That my friends, would be the second potential pitfall in on-demand learning. The idea that you can learn anything online is interesting, but the result or relevancy of what you have learnt may not necessarily guide you or help you take one step closer to getting that dream job or living your dream life! Take myself for example, I would fall into the fallacy where I would believe as long as I am learning and it is helpful, there are only benefits and no drawbacks!

Well, now I am here looking at one of my certificates and thinking, how is this certificate going to help me now? I realized that I never included that certificate nor that knowledge in any of my CVs or resumes, nor do I mention them at work. Sure I managed to gain knowledge on a certain area, but what use would it be if it couldn’t be used anywhere! On-demand learning can definitely provide tons of useful courses to upskill and learn, but it is also important for us to consider whether the on-demand learning provider offers some form of analysis to curate or suggest courses that would be both beneficial to learn and useful for your future!

Great … just need to do 5000 things before I can use this!

The 5000 things may be an exaggeration but the implications are definitely real. Most courses that are certified and have instructors with amazing credentials would usually be very specialized in their fields or specialized market and industry. If you are ever in those industries, that means you’ve hit the jackpot, but for those that are in a similar yet different industry, what you may have learned may not be completely applicable!

A friend of mine who finished his course in the UK came back only to adopt 20% of what he learnt there back here in our country. He spent tons of money to find a way to enhance his family business and to digitalize the business to multiply his sales. Unfortunately, when he started to apply this knowledge, he realized that most of what he has learnt and what he has studied was very much tailored to the UK and western market rather than an Asian market. Of course it was in the same industry, however the specific strategies and modes to approach them had to be adjusted into an asian context before it can be applied in this market!

It is then an important element to check the relevancy of the course as well. A course taught by an amazing instructor would be helpful but if the content was not localized to your setting in the first place, then you’d have to spend extra time on top of the resources you invested in the courses to readjust and tweak to your specific scenario. To prevent your on-demand learning experience to be one that wastes part of your time, always be wary of the credentials, the relevance as well as the localization aspect of the course! It could potentially help save your resources and speed up your upskilling process too!

Beyond being aware of the top pitfalls in on-demand learning, we need to then research and study on the different providers to choose from. That my friends is a whole other can of worms for us to explore. Fortunately, if you are busy and just don’t have the resources to filter through, we got amazing news for you as we are launching our very own SHRA E-learning Platform. It comes with a career and skill gap analysis to guide you through which courses to take to get that dream job you want! So stay tuned to our launching! If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.

Written by Bryan Law Chu Zheng,

SHRA Corporate Trainer

Bryan is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He is a major in Psychology with a retail background. He has a deep passion for human interaction and personal development.

You can catch him dancing or playing the uke on a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

 5,512 total views,  2 views today

If you are reading this right now, chances are you are interested in On-Demand Learning and probably have heard of some mixed opinions regarding On-Demand Learning and other forms of upskilling courses. If you are looking for a decisive voice (or just another set of opinions that you may not have heard) then you’ve come to the right place!

On-Demand Learning has definitely gotten more popular in recent years. This is not solely due to technological advancements but it also has to do with the benefits it brings as compared to its drawbacks. As the title suggests, On-Demand Learning not only provides you with a pathway to upskill yourself faster than other channels, it also has tons of other benefits as compared to its drawbacks. As such, let’s jump in to why On-Demand Learning is the secret express to upskilling in 2022!

On Demand Learning: The Secret Express To Upskilling in 2022

1. I will follow you … follow you wherever you may go (Convenience)
2. Can’t pick between a racecar or a tortoise? How about both? (Pace)
3. Another one… And another one … And another one! (Sustainability)

I Will Follow You … Follow You Wherever You May Go

Remind you of Digi? Well that is essentially On-Demand Learning! The word On-Demand means that you can learn anywhere and anytime you choose! Bored when your partner is having boys/girls night? Kids went to bed early and have too much time on their hands? Have an awkward amount of time on your hands and don’t know what to do with it? All of these can be put to good use with On-Demand Learning Take myself for example, I decided to start off in an ASL course to learn how to communicate in sign language (because it’s interesting to learn another language and why not?) 

I started learning and practicing signs whenever I have an awkward 2 – 10 minutes gap. This ranged from waiting for the decision on where to eat for lunch to heading up to bed a little too early. I started off learning how to sign the basic alphabet and eventually by the end of week one, I could sign “Hi my name is Bryan, and I enjoy buffets”. After one month, I was able to actually do what I call “Sign singing”. I could sign to the song “Way Back Into Love” (My personal all time favorite song). This was achieved with all the tiny 2-10 minute awkward gaps regardless of where I am. Instead of needing to stay at one particular location or attending a particular course at a particular time, On-Demand Learning provides the power for you to learn anytime and anywhere!

Can’t Pick Between A Racecar Or A Tortoise? How About Both?

Obviously the decision is clear, most if not all would pick a racecar over a tortoise (p.s. Not applicable to animal lovers). Essentially On-Demand Learning does not force you to choose whether you want to go through the course fast or slow, you are allowed to be fast and slow whenever you wish and whenever you want! So you would not be bombarded by messages regarding how a very particular owl misses you or how your streak is about to be ended.

As young adults, adults and working adults, we would definitely want to learn new things, skills and knowledge. But we wish to learn at our own pace and not be rushed. Understandably we might be facing a tough day at work, maybe a not so happy gathering, we might not be in the exact mood to learn or may be limited by our own ability to absorb the learning material. 

On-Demand Learning can be done anywhere and anytime, this also means it can be done anyhow and anyway we want. Comparing this to physical based settings or online class settings, we need to prepare ourselves or we would miss whatever is being taught and that certainly would be wasting our resources. For On-Demand Learning however, we can set our own pace to learn faster when we are mentally and physically ready or slow down our pace on days where we might not be ready to absorb as much information. This alone makes all the time we spent with On-Demand Learning worth every moment.

Another one … And Another One … And Another One!

Have you ever faced the scenario where you want someone to repeat what they said but hesitate and just nod awkwardly because they repeated for more than 3 times? Well, me too and I believe everyone too! It becomes awkward as we feel guilty for missing out on what the other person says. On-Demand Learning on the other hand, can be repeated again and again and again and again. The neat part is, you can even pick up from where you left off!

I remember there was once where I took an Advanced Excel Training Course. The instructor was very patient and was very clear with his instructions and explanations. However, as time went on, I started to realize I was a little lost and I had asked him to repeat a few times before, so I dare not ask him to repeat again (in fear of annoying him and wasting my other course mates time). In the end, I only managed to pick up bits and pieces from the training and had to spend an extra 3 hours in total to pick up all the things I missed out on my own!

For my negotiation course I took from the On-Demand Learning course on the other hand, which allowed me to repeat and repeat the same content multiple times until I finally managed to be able to practice the method. Furthermore, whenever I forgot about some basic fundamentals, I could always go back to previous sessions and repeat them. These are the reasons behind why on demand learning is the secret express to upskilling, not only because it is fast, but because it gives us the freedom to learn as much as we want, revise as much as we want and pace ourselves accordingly as well. 

Beyond realizing the benefits and power of On-Demand Learning, next comes which On-Demand Learning Platform to choose, and that is a whole other headache for us to explore. Fortunately, if that is your worries, we got amazing news for you as you can check out our SHRA E-learning platform. It comes with a career and skill analysis to guide you through which courses to take to get that dream job you want!  If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.

Written by Bryan Law Chu Zheng,

SHRA Corporate Trainer

Bryan is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He is a major in Psychology with a retail background. He has a deep passion for human interaction and personal development.

You can catch him dancing or playing the uke on a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

 3,474 total views,  2 views today

As mobile internet and information technology advances,  consumers’ shopping journey has also been changed from pure in-store visits to the mixture of both in-store visits and online store visits. With this emerging consumer trend, it has made more and more retail companies adopt a business strategy that integrates both online and offline business stores. Nevertheless, when huge amounts of time and money are invested, do they help to enhance the business?  

Tracking Data In Omnichannel :  Why Do You Need To Start Tracking Retail Data? 

1. Identifying consumer trends
2. Increasing marketing ROI
3. Improving store productivity

Identifying Consumer Insights

To win customers’ hearts, it is important for retailers to understand their potential customers’ behavioral data. From the average value of sales per customer per visit to average number of likes or shares of a post on social media and average time spent on viewing an online page. If all these data are being taken into account , it would offer a bigger and more accurate picture to retailers and help them to make better informed business decisions. 

Increasing Marketing ROI

Without looking at the retail data, chances are high that retailers make business decisions purely based on their intuition that might be opposed to the retail data. On the other hand, through understating retail data such as click-through rate or lead generation rate from each marketing post, in-store promotion or marketing email, it could help retailers to measure the effectiveness of their marketing strategies. With this information, retailers can stop marketing strategies that do not provide the expected results and they could fully utilize all their marketing budget on marketing strategies that really boost their business. 

Improving Store Productivity

When retailers track retail data like customer dwell time at different sections of their offline store and online store, retailers would better understand the spots that draw the most attention of customers. This could potentially help retailers to determine the best spots to place the suggested product and best store layout . On the online platform, dwell time information of their potential customers could also help retailers to formulate their customer engagement strategy. As the customers receive more relevant engagement, retailers would naturally get more buy-in from the customers, hence increasing the sales of the store. 

All in all, tracking retail data would bring you one step closer to your omnichannel strategy’s success. To ensure that all the business channels initiatives contribute to the overall growth of your business, you will need to start tracking the retail data that is already at your hand and make sure that your business decisions are in accordance with what retail data suggest. Wondering what are the important data and key performance indicators of your business channels  that would contribute to your business growth? Want to learn more in-depth on the breakdown of online and offline store KPI that would affect your business? Fret not! You can check out our Professional Certificate in New Retail Marketing. If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.

Written by Lim Ee Hau,

SHRA Corporate Trainer

Ee hau is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He has a  psychology background and he is passionate in assisting individuals to achieve their life goal. He loves to connect with people by initiating insightful conversation. He enjoys swimming and you can catch him bouldering in the gym during his free time.

 3,246 total views,  2 views today

Let’s try out a small exercise! On your phone, tablet or computer, type in the name of your product, merchandise or services. Chances are you will find tons of other products or services similar to yours that appear on your search result. To make matters worse, the content that we write for our products, services and business is like a drop of water in a vast ocean, floating on the web with tons of other similarly written content.

The decision to invest time and resources into content marketing is evidently important, but merely investing resources in content marketing is no longer enough to stand out, we need to go beyond and begin exploring elements that truly spice up our content marketing. Especially in this world of “New Retail” creating engaging content can truly separate yourself from the competition. So what are some of the essentials we can use to spice up our content you ask? Well let’s take a look at the 3 essentials needed to spice up our content marketing in this new era of retail!

Content Marketing: 3 Essentials To Spice Up Your Content

1. Think and search like your customers
2. Don’t judge a book by its cover … But Cover Sells Books
3. Everything is about content

Think and Search Like Your Customers

This may sound simple enough yet tons of retailers miss out on this! Take my previous retail experience as an example, we would often put promotion, sale and discount as our main keywords whenever we post our products, thinking it would attract customers since customers get excited by promotions. To our dismay, it did not yield much results. Fortunately, we finally decided to try searching the keywords we used, that was when we realized where we went wrong! We were bombarded by tons of other products instead. To make matters worse, some of our competitor products appeared before our products appeared!

We decided to optimize the keywords for our products in line with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it turns out just from a change of keywords and word usages, the amount of engagement as well as click rate tripled compared to the previous method! Not only that, but we managed to increase our sales for mid range and premium products too! In New Retail, it becomes important to not just include words that attract customers in our content marketing strategy, but crucial for us to think from the perspectives of customers searching for our products and services. Only then will our content be seen and appear at the top of our customers’ searches.

Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover … But Cover Sells Books

I believe most of us have heard this phrase, but the latter stands true as well! With so much content out there and so little time to filter through, an enticing title or an intriguing visual that sparks interest could be the difference between our content being looked through or completely ignored. As a consumer myself, I noticed I would oftentimes mindlessly scroll through social media to look for something interesting or even type in titles of content I’d like to read and pick one that has an eye-catching title!

I remembered the most interesting content that caught my eye, was one about low calorie ice-cream! They included a picture of typical ice creams (900-1200 calories) and their brand of ice cream (250-340 calories). The picture alone caught my attention instantly. As a foodie and someone who is trying to diet, it was extremely attractive and I instantly ordered 2 pints. After I ordered from them, I scrolled through my social media and realized that I have actually followed them for quite some time but never had that strong attraction to buy or engage in their posts until then!

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Low Calories Ice Cream🍦 (@jollyicecreams)

To truly excel in content marketing and creating hot topics, we need to dive into New Retail and truly integrate data collected both offline and online into our content marketing to better suit and attract both existing and potential consumers out there! After optimizing keyword search, the next step we should take would be to create attractive visuals as well as titles to attract consumers.

Everything Is About Content

Ever heard the term content is king? Well it is the absolute truth! It matters not how attractive our title, visuals or the usage or correct keywords if our content does not keep our consumers hooked! The type of content we pick as well as the content of our marketing strategy is a key component and requires us to truly understand our target audience and consumer! When we first started to do content marketing for my previous store, we focused mainly on the products and services we offered as well as some important and relevant content such as ways to prolong product usage and quick hacks to solve product issues. 

However, we did not garner much engagement. So we decided to switch a different strategy! Utilizing tiktoks, memes and gifs about hot topics or current topics to attract a larger audience. The result? It worked, we had tons of engagement from our audiences. Although we managed to garner high engagement, it was merely a sudden influx and increase but it was not consistent enough. That was when we sat down and thought of how we can combine both or utilize both methods to achieve the best effect. Once we figured out the balance, we had a consistent increase in engagement with audiences while also being able to convert some of them to our customers!

Ultimately, it is important to find the perfect balance between sensational topics or contents and lasting topics or contents. To curate a hot topic and hot content, we need to start by making sure we appear on the top of our customers’ searches, attract their attention with enticing visuals and titles to finally lead them to read through or consume our interesting, helpful and relevant content. That is the essence of how we can begin to spice up our content in the ultimate journey of achieving true new retail marketing.

Beyond these essentials, there are tons of other strategies including creative content management, Essential P’s in the retail landscape and many others all found within new retail marketing. Interested to find out what this new retail marketing is? Want a more in-depth breakdown of the strategies personalized according to your business? Wait no further! You can check out our Professional Certification in New Retail Marketing. If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.

Written by Bryan Law Chu Zheng,

SHRA Corporate Trainer

Bryan is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He is a major in Psychology with a retail background. He has a deep passion for human interaction and personal development.

You can catch him dancing or playing the uke on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

 3,225 total views,  3 views today

Our lives as citizens, parents, workers and even educators are all impacted by the latest innovations in the commercial world and technological advancements in the social media landscape. It is our responsibility and privilege to investigate, understand, and steer the inevitable arrival of the educational metaverse. The issue is, where shall we begin? Reading, researching, and, most importantly, acquiring new skills help us get ready. If you are thinking about advancing your career, getting a professional certification is a great step in the right direction. So what is it all about? 

Definition 

For those who want to enter a professional career or advance in their current one, formal training isn’t the only choice; a professional certification program is also an excellent option. In fact, the market for continuing education is seeing an increase in the number of professional certificate programs. Specialized knowledge used in the performance of duties or tasks is generally recognized by these programs. In most cases, a professional certificate program consists of focused training for a specific career, such as retail management, healthcare technology or even auto mechanic. It’s also possible to get an additional certification that will enhance your current career path. Furthermore, prospective employers can see from this certification that the applicant has a solid grasp of the subject matter relevant to their position. In the event that your career path does not necessitate a college degree, these certificates are essential. You can show prospective employers that you’re a well-trained professional in your field and that you have certain hard skills. As for the duration of the course, it will only take between 3 to 4 months to complete it. 

Benefits 

To begin, you’ll have an advantage over the competition if you have access to training they don’t. Professional certifications set you apart from the competition by proving that you have put in the time and effort to learn about and excel in your chosen subject. This can provide you an edge, which is crucial in the modern business environment. Know how to utilize that up-and-coming app or social network before it becomes ubiquitous. Earning professional credentials is another great way to set yourself up for success as an entrepreneur. 

This is because specialized coursework may provide you with the advanced training, information, and expertise that will guide and direct you in the execution of your projects or tasks using up-to-date tools and technological methodologies, allowing you to manage all parts of your work more efficiently and effectively as well. Moreover, by learning about developments in your field, you may improve any inefficient or sloppy practices that are now holding you back, all the while expanding your skill set. This can equip you with the knowledge and bravery to try something new, like laying the groundwork for a more high-tech office setting for your consulting firm. The benefits that professional certifications can bring to your job make them a valuable investment. In order to maintain these advantages as you grow and change, it is important to maintain current certifications with the skills that you learned. 

So now, you want to upskill your education but don’t know where to begin? Fret not because we have just the right program for you. Introducing the Professional Certificate In New Retail Marketing in collaboration with London Examination Board (LEB) and Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TARUC). This certificate focuses on workplace applications grounded by real industry case studies where it can help you to gain valuable insights in the world of New Retail, improve competence of sales and marketing team as well as helping your businesses grow in 3 exceptional ways. However, if you are concerned about the price, don’t worry because our professional certificate program is claimable by the HRD Corp. You can start by visiting our website for more information on the professional certification that can boost your career today. 

Written By Syuhada Rozihas,
SHRA Corporate Trainer

Syuhada Rozihas is a Corporate Trainer at SH Retail Academy who is passionate about making a difference for herself and those around her. She has trained more than 1,000 sales professionals, executives and managers in the areas of retail sales. Meanwhile, in her free time, she enjoys hiking and running to keep her in shape, as well as baking for her loved ones. You can find her on LinkedIn. 

 3,932 total views,  9 views today

In 2022, social media platforms are undoubtedly the gold mine for everyone to market our products! Let’s have a small exercise, let’s do a mental tick on whichever platforms we are currently using to market our products:

Facebook ……………（         ）

Instagram…………… （         ）

TikTok…………………（         ）

Online Store…………（         ）

Shopee………………（         ）

Lazada………………（         ）

Done? Well, I believe all of us would at least have 1 of the above checked. Furthermore, most if not all of us have put in tons of effort solely to make sure our products are marketed well on these platforms. The choice to invest in these platforms is a must, but beyond investing in these platforms, we need to take a step further to analyze and even introduce different strategies to fill in the gaps left by purely focusing on digital marketing. This integration comes from the idea of “New Retail”. So what are some of the gaps missing you ask? Well, let’s take a look at some of the gaps we can start patching in order for us to thrive in this era of new retail.

Digital Marketing? Haiz… So Many Gaps, How To Fill?

1. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket!
2. Always check your eggs as they are cooking
3. Centering your eggs around your customers

1. DON’T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS INTO ONE BASKET

Back when I was working in a brick-and-mortar retail store, my manager was inspired and would often spend most of his time focusing on social media marketing. Besides time, he would invest tons of money in terms of advertising our products. However, throughout that period, our sales did not increase significantly. Furthermore, the walk-in rate during that time was immensely low as we were still going through CMCO. Our manager was obviously stressed and looking for ideas to keep his store afloat. That was when we came up with a few amazing ideas!

We decided to start what we call a “Mobile Demo Booth”, we walked around the vicinity of the store with our demo product engaging passing customers with some mini challenges as well as mini games. One of our colleagues then decided to record the process down and post it on our social media accounts. That was when we started seeing an increase in sales! We then proceeded to attempt different ways to connect with more customers.

As such, one thing we learnt from our manager that still applies now, is that social media marketing is a powerful tool, but on its own, the effects it can achieve are very limited. However, when we adopt the concept of new retail, combining social media with other different channels such as physical touchpoints, we can actually reach a wider audience and create a much stronger marketing strategy.

2. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR EGGS WHEN THEY ARE COOKING

After noticing this, all of us were obviously excited! My manager is able to keep the store alive and gain revenue, while we managed to get higher commissions (yay!). So instead, my manager decided to take a portion of the funds he used to invest in social media marketing into other channels such as telemarketing as well as our “Mobile Demo Booth”. For the next 2 months, we were surprised by the amount of sales we were getting and our manager looked less stressed and had more time to relax as well. So he gave us full control of how we want to utilize the funds.

2 weeks down the line, our manager was shocked to find out the monthly fund was used up in just 2 weeks but there was only a slight increase in sales comparatively! We spent the funds on games and challenges we can play with customers as well as some treats to keep each other motivated! We obviously had a meeting and decided to start looking into what was truly bringing in sales. Turns out, most of our sales came from returning customers due to telemarketing and there were no changes in walk-in customers from the walking booth!

From then onwards, before we invest, we would look into which of the marketing strategies we are applying are actually giving us the most returns while also keeping cost at a minimum for other strategies. So an important aspect for us to reflect would be whether we know the way to measure our online marketing success. In the current era of new retail, to succeed is to assess our performance, to identify the areas we need to improve in.

3. CENTERING YOUR EGGS AROUND YOUR CUSTOMERS

After optimizing our strategy, our manager believed we are practicing proper new retail marketing strategies. Thus, he wanted us to challenge ourselves to get more sales within our areas and offered an additional team bonus to whichever team did the best in terms of sales. We were very motivated and we strive to attract more customers and to close them! This continued on for 2 weeks before all of us lost our motivation. Why? Well, the social media team had a 3 minute average response time and had tons of enquiries, but none of the customers wanted to buy the product without testing it, even if they did, it took 5-days worth of convincing before they even considered buying.

The demo booth team on the other hand could close customers easily, but the foot traffic around the store was very limited, the whole team had an average of 3 sales a day. The telemarketing team was even worse, they would sometimes spend much time introducing the product only to be met with a “I’ll think about it” or “Not interested” after nearly spending 5-10 minutes on a call. We were completely devastated. That was when our managers realized we became so focused on the commission and sales that we forgot the most crucial thing, our customer!

In line with the concept of New Retail, our manager actually got us to focus on working with each other instead of against each other to provide the best service to our customers. Rather than closing customers online, we now set up appointments for them to visit us or even real time live sessions for them to ask us and demo the products for them. The telemarketing team focused on calling to follow up on appointments and spending short and sweet calls to contact previous customers and introduce promotions instead of selling. 

Our effort drove most of the online customers to visit our stores where we can easily demo the products and get their interests while optimizing the amount of energy spent on each customer. By centralizing our efforts on customers, utilizing multiple channels to market products to customers and always checking the returns of our strategies, we were able to find a mix that not only is effective use of resources, but one that actually generated lots of revenue for our store! However utilizing all of these strategies is only the beginning, the true challenge, is to integrate all of these channels, becoming what we call “New Retail Marketing”

The trends as well as the gaps for an effective digital marketing strategy does require time as well as the know-how’s before it can be successfully implemented. Interested to find out what this new retail marketing is? Want a more in-depth breakdown of the strategies personalized according to your business? Wait no further! You can check out our Professional Certification in New Retail Marketing. If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.

Written by Bryan Law Chu Zheng,

SHRA Corporate Trainer

Bryan is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He is a major in Psychology with a retail background. He has a deep passion for human interaction and personal development.

You can catch him dancing or playing the uke on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

 2,564 total views,  3 views today

It’s no secret that retail is a hard slog. Why? Everyone says retail has high fixed expenses, high working capital intensity, unreliable clients, and low entry barriers, therefore it’s not surprising that it’s so expensive and difficult. But it’s okay because I’m not here to aggravate your pain. Instead I will share some secrets that other successful businesses won’t tell you especially about transformation.

Have you ever wondered why some businesses out there are so successful? So famous? So strong? Imagine, if we can have a teeny tiny bit of their glory to be implemented in our business, sounds exciting right? Let me tell you, your business can flourish just like them. But how? The secret and key here is, RENEW.

That’s right! You heard it loud and clear. RENEW YOUR BUSINESS. This is where businesses need to transform from time to time to be on top of the world and succeed no matter what happens. Fasten your seatbelt and join me in this rollercoaster ride of information!

Business Transformation Secrets People Won’t Tell You One

1. The Pain Of Your Business
2. What Is Renewing Your Business?
3. Why Need To Renew?

1. THE PAIN OF YOUR BUSINESS

As retail undergoes rapid transformation as a result of technological advancement, new challenges arise constantly. This trend is expected to continue through the end of this year and I hope it will be a wake-up call for retailers to think about transformation, so you’ll be aware of the major challenges you may face in the near future. The question here is, what will happen if you don’t transform your business? Now, let’s see whether these problems sound familiar to you or not.

• Low walk in rate to your store
• Your sales are dropping, whereas your competitors are doing well
• Your customers have shifted to online platforms
• Not sure what’s wrong with your business operations
• Your staff are not motivated to change
• Your business is not fast enough to fulfill customers’ order
• Don’t know how to digitalize your business
• Slow in getting relevant sales or operational data
• Too much paperwork
• Poor ROI on digital marketing efforts

By listing down these common problems faced by businesses out there, I hope you can now identify what are some of the problems that are causing you agony and figure out what we can do about it, okay?

2. WHAT IS RENEWING YOUR BUSINESS?

Quick question. When your business comes across a hurdle, what do you do? Do you stay there and do nothing or do you take action to solve it? I hope your answer is the latter since staying quiet and complacent is going to kill your business, for sure. Talking about actions, what kind of action should we take then? This is where renewing is the ultimate action to save your business. What we mean by “business renewal” nowadays is not just any improvement, but rather a shift in mindsets and putting people first to bring about real change in the workplace.  If your business isn’t using its full potential, it’s time to take a fresh look at what you’re currently doing and how you could improve it.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’ve spent a lot of money on technology but your employees aren’t interested in using it? As an alternative, they insisted on doing all of the work themselves. This is where digital transformation necessitates the acquisition of new technical skills. The need for a digital mindset explains why employees must be motivated to use their skills to create new opportunities. There will be difficult decisions and growing pains along the way because it won’t be an easy process for most. This means your team needs a healthy dose of curiosity and openness, which in turn fosters adaptability and creative thinking in your members. In addition, you and your team must first alter your perspective on failure. How your company’s culture views failure will have a significant impact on your ability to successfully transition to a product mindset. Failure isn’t always a bad thing, of course. Some failures have negative consequences, while others are catastrophic. However, there is a type of failure that you should seek, which is the opportunity to learn. Make a conscious effort to ask yourself if the idea or task you’re working on has failed or if it’s just part of the process of learning.

3. WHY NEED TO RENEW?

The most important of this renewal is why? As you can see, even the cutting-edge “gig economy” brands emerging from Silicon Valley can benefit from business renewal. As a result, the business needs to undergo a radical shift and the organization’s way of working must be restructured accordingly. As our markets expand on a daily basis, it is imperative that we place a high value on the effectiveness and efficiency of our systems and the employees who use them. Even though it may be daunting to start over from scratch when reviewing systems implemented decades ago, we risk falling behind in the pack with a diminishing market share if we do not.

A successful business renewal plan can help your organization’s people and their work experience long-term positive change through improved leadership, strategy, and culture. Do not implement a strategy and then put it on hold for another decade when thinking about business renewal. Be on the lookout for when your employees approach you with budget requests for software updates or with proposals for a complete overhaul of your company’s processing technology. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new ideas that could change the way your company does business and set a precedent for others to follow.

However, simply renewing your company’s contract is insufficient. Renew, Reignite, and Replicate (3R) are the three components of any successful formula for transformation. To discover even more, check out our upcoming piece soon.  In the meantime, visit our website for more information on available programs that can boost your business today!

Written By Syuhada Rozihas,
SHRA Corporate Trainer

Syuhada Rozihas is a Corporate Trainer at SH Retail Academy who is passionate about making a difference for herself and those around her. She has trained more than 1,000 sales professionals, executives and managers in the areas of retail sales. Meanwhile, in her free time, she enjoys hiking and running to keep her in shape, as well as baking for her loved ones. You can find her on LinkedIn.

 2,486 total views,  3 views today