How Inter IKEA is Embracing Technology To Transform the Customer and Employee Experience

Retail organisations have been on quite the roller coaster ride in recent years, reacting to pandemic-fueled customer behaviour shifts, supply chain struggles, soaring costs, and the need to adopt new technology at unprecedented speed. As a result, digital transformation has become a cornerstone in retailers’ efforts to adapt and thrive.

That transformation imperative impacts organisations of all sizes, including one of the world’s largest, Inter IKEA Group, the franchiser of 460 IKEA stores in 62 global markets. At Workday Rising EMEA, Amela Delic, digital transformation manager for Inter IKEA, shared how the company is adopting modern enterprise technology to transform its customer and employee experience. The end goal being to “embrace new technologies, and to continue to develop our capabilities to secure the growth of our business and our people,” Delic explained.

Successful retail organisations are constantly reassessing their customer experience. For Inter IKEA, the aim is to become “an even more affordable and sustainable home furnishings retailer, with a focus on providing accessibility through an omnichannel experience,” Delic said. To achieve that, Inter IKEA has been developing and testing new product designs, new store formats, and more agile distribution methods, among other concepts—all of them enabled by digital technology. “The ultimate goal is to make the customer’s shopping experience easier and better,” Delic said.

Improving the customer experience is at the heart of that transformation. To do that, Inter IKEA relies on hiring and retaining the right people with the right skills which is a very difficult task in today’s climate. Seven of 10 industries, including retail, report levels of employee burnout either worsening or at least not improving, according to Workday research looking at the attitudes of 1.5 million employees worldwide.

That’s why Inter IKEA is leveraging technology to help its people to do their jobs more efficiently and purposefully. “Many people nowadays look for meaningful work that contributes to some bigger purpose and that supports their overall wellbeing,” Delic said. Unfulfilling work is the top commonality among people who are extremely or very likely to look for a new job, a global PwC survey found.

Clear career pathways and personal growth are key to the employee experience. Inter IKEA is using  Workday to provide employees with learning experiences for in-demand skills—and, in the process, foster a lifelong learning mindset. “We want to upskill our workers so they have the capabilities and competencies that will be needed in the future,” she said. “This is how we can support employees and tell them that their company is invested in their future.”

To get there, though, Delic’s transformation team must employ robust change management, she explained. “The most challenging part isn’t the implementation of the technology—it’s the stakeholder management,” she said. “If we don’t have the change management in place, it doesn’t matter how good the technology is.”

But change management can be tricky when the transformation team and the end users speak different business languages. “Most members of my team have tech backgrounds, but when we meet with our business stakeholders, we need to speak their language,” Delic said. They must also speak the language of customers, something that can be achieved by listening and empathizing with them, she added. 

“They may not know what they want, they may not know what they need, or they may have very specific things that they need. We have to walk in their shoes and see through their eyes before we begin to implement new ways of working,” Delic said.