Shopping Mall Success With Digitalised Management Solutions

Published by    Dr Daniele Gambero | Propenomist on   January 05, 2024

When we think about shopping malls or retail, the first thing popping up in our mind is a crowd of shoppers walking through a mall, doing some window shopping, having a nice cuppa of handcrafted coffee or a delicious homemade ice cream, isn’t it?

Understanding the Experience that mall goers have when visiting a shopping mall, or what they love to do, see, touch, and taste, and being able to maintain it at a high standard while refreshing it, is what builds a strong and long-lasting mall brand. Is it simple to achieve? It is not, and a precise yet multi-faceted strategy must be planned and put in place in a well-coordinated and integrated manner. It is not all about marketing or branding though, everything starts at mall design stage and, somehow, never ends.

#1 | Setting the Stage and Choreography of the Future Mall

Choreography of a mall circulation is indeed an art. A well-designed layout, with both visitors and “Wow effect” in mind, will guide visitors effortlessly through the future selection of shops via wide, well-lit corridors adorned with greenery and artwork, creating an atmosphere that sparks curiosity and delight. Both horizontal and vertical commutes must be seamless experiences making sure none of the future retailers will be missed!

Choice of colour scheme, materials, lights, and decorations will help building a high ratio of returning visitors while keep on attracting new ones!

#2 | The Star-Walk of a Shopping Mall

Next comes the retailers' positioning to make sure visitors will notice, stop by, and possibly visit as many shops as possible while keeping on moving forward to the next visible and attractive spot following the “Stars-walking-line” virtually created at the planning stage. The right choice of tenants-mix and their positioning within the mall are one of the key success factors most difficult to achieve, an art that needs practice and deep knowledge of the “targeted visitors” of the mall.

#3 | Exceeding Visitors Expectations

Malls’ visitors, as most mall owners and operators well know, need to visit the mall a few times before making a “buy decision”; the main driver for them to come in is the cool environment and nice food and drinks availability. The happier they are about the ACAFAB (Air Conditioning and Food and Beverage) paradigm, the more often they will return and the sooner they will start visiting the retailers to finally come to a buying decision. Exceeding their Experience Expectation is the key to their returning loyalty and ambassadorship within their circle of friends!

#4 | Becoming the Shining Star

Now that the stage, choreography, and spotlights are set, comes the time to make the masterpiece visible and known to the world. A strategic marketing, branding, and awareness creation approach becomes another key brushstroke in the work of art that a shopping mall is deemed to become!

Highlighting the unique experience becomes not just a tagline but a promise that resonates with customers entices retailers, and ultimately defines the long-standing success of the mall.

Is this all? Is it all about Spaces-Visitors-Visibility or something else needs to be carefully and strategically planned to make sure all the above will happen?

Here comes the time when technology can offer much more than a helping hand but become the glueing factor that transforms an instant firework into a longstanding symphony of lights!

#5 | Where Manage-Tech Becomes the Secret Ingredient to Success!

Have we ever thought about how many people are needed to keep up a standard of excellence in a shopping mall? From housekeeping to security, maintenance, concierge, tenant management, admin, and the list could go on, an army of hundreds is what makes, in a very discrete and invisible manner, the show keep on going!

Managing this invisible multitude goes far beyond paper and pen and could be the real success-determining factor for every shopping mall.

Properly chosen and implemented technology will help a big deal in the following key areas:

a) Managing Teams

For a shopping mall manager, knowing where everyone is, communicating with them, and being aware of what are they doing is of paramount importance. A digitalised communication platform allows the manager to save time, and headcount, manage efficiently all his personnel, and take care of possible emergencies in a matter of seconds.

b) Managing Equipments

Escalators, lifts, travelators, HVAC, lighting, water pumps, and all the equipment that, if efficiently maintained, make a normal shopping mall becoming an extraordinary one, need to be monitored, calibrated, verified, and maintained periodically. Let’s keep in mind that every piece of equipment continuously interacts with the mall visitors contributing to make their experience a unique one!

Imagine frequent breakdowns, incidents, HVAC suddenly stop functioning, and more; all this will contribute tarnishing the good reputation, built over years of good work, in a matter of minutes! Technology under the form of CMMS provides great tools to manage all the mall’s equipment efficiently reducing the risks of breakdown or incidents. Cost wise, the right solution will contribute to slash by a 25% to 35% the current maintenance costs, inventory value, and overall equipment management costs!

As with the first item of this list, also for the equipment management all will happen remotely, from the manager’s desk directly to the maintenance team.

c) Managing Tenants

An all-in-one and fully integrated digital solution for property and facility management gives great contribution in easily and cost effectively manage the hundreds of tenants, their requests, complains and general communications.

From leasing contracts and onboarding process to making sure all tenants comply with the “house-rules”, or apply for renovation or event spaces, and much more will be taken care of via digital solution and remotely!

d) Managing Vendors & Contracts

Hundreds of delivery lorries and service providers, if not properly managed, will permanently jam the loading bay area creating bad experience to the passing by mall visitors.

A good, digitalised solution covering the vendors’ onboarding process, scheduling deliveries, managing the continuous flow of goods needed by all retailers, is again contributing greatly to smooth the flows. It will also provide a very useful tool to the mall management for vendor onboarding, rating, and all the application submission when renovation works are needed.

This tool too, allows remote working saving huge amount of time and increasing the overall efficiency.

Best is, all the above can be easily done from the desk or a control room with no need of running around to physically checking or communicating instructions.

e) Assets & Inventory Management

Knowing what is available in the maintenance inventory storeroom at any given time, as well as knowing how long might take to get new supplies in, their value, and the item-by-item historical data represent another great contribution to effective mall management.

The positive impact on the costing, in this case, could achieve up to 30% with a totally new level of efficiency provided to all visitors and tenants of a mall!

All the items above, and several more, multiply their positive impact on a mall management when fully integrated in one solution!

Conclusion

The Shopping Mall and Retail Road to Success paradigm, when accomplishing only item #1 to #4 above might be, at the end, failing and the waste of money, time, and efforts will make the disappointment much bigger! It would be like applying the simplest math formula of adding elements to each other without applying a multiplicator factor!

How the Digital Transformation Factor in shopping mall and retail should be looked at in the “Success Formula” is the Real Success Multiplicator or:

ServeDeck, that has been designed and developed with shopping mall and retail operators in mind, provides a unique all-in-one fully integrated digital solution that is changing the way shopping malls are managed and act as real multiplicator of the final success and excellence result!

ServeDeck’s modules are available on a one-by-one or fully integrated basis and have already been adopted by most of the major mall operators in Malaysia.

Our award-winning solution, available with a yearly subscription (SAAS), has been reshaping the way commercial spaces are managed and can be easily seen through a free demo session. Reach out to our friendly team to request it by dropping an email here!

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The opinions expressed in this article are solely of the author, Dr Daniele Gambero.

Dr Gambero has been an expatriate to Malaysia from Italy, since 1998 and has more than 35 years of real estate experience. He is the co-founder and group CEO of REI Group of Companies, the Co-founder of Propenomy.com and the president of the Malaysia Proptech Association.

In the past 10 years Daniele, as international and TEDX speaker, has engaged several hundreds thousand people talking about Property, Economy, Propenomy, Digital Marketing and Motivation. He is also a bestselling author and columnist on several magazines and main stream media. You can reach him directly through his LinkedIn page here.

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