Lowe's and Google Cloud expanded their partnership to create a technology foundation to help the home-improvement retailer deliver exceptional customer experiences. The partnership will also provide store associates with tools to better serve customers, regardless of whether they shop online or in store.
The foundation of the partnership includes new investments towards modernizing the e-commerce, merchandising, supply chain management, and pricing systems at Lowe's. Lowe's said the improvements will provide a more fluid, "channel-less" customer experience spanning from product discovery to return visits. The company is in the early stages of a large-scale, multi-year technology transformation, investing more than $500 million annually through 2021 and hiring up to 2,000 engineers to continue to build out future retail experiences. Part of this investment included the launch of Lowe's global technology center in Charlotte, N.C., in July of 2019.
"We are making substantial investments in technology to modernize our platforms and advance our digital capabilities to better serve customer needs and deliver the best service and value across every channel," Seemantini Godbole, executive vice president and chief information officer of Lowe's, said in a public statement. "Partners like Google Cloud provide the innovative tools and support we need to execute our digital transformation."
Lowe's began transitioning off its legacy e-commerce system in late 2018, choosing Google Cloud with the goal of increasing the speed, reliability, and performance of Lowes.com. The new platform helped improve the stability of the retailer's e-commerce site during the year's peak holiday buying season, according to Lowe's.
Lowe's is now looking to leverage Google Cloud technology to improve several other customer experience areas. The retailer is working to optimize the online customer journey, from search to navigation to checkout, personalizing the experience for different types of customers. Lowe's is also giving store associates the ability to view and update pricing and inventory on the fly through mobile devices and Google Cloud technology. The retailer has rolled out 88,000 Smart Mobile devices to allow associates to access real-time data without having to leave the sales floor or sacrifice customer engagement. Finally, Lowe's is hoping to leverage Google Cloud's capabilities using machine learning and analytics.
"The winners in the retail space will be those who focus less on the individual transactions and more on building long-term customer relationships that evolve and stay relevant as consumer preferences and channels change," Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said. "Lowe's already has great relationships with its customers, and we're helping extend that in new and exciting ways."
Wayfair also recently announced news of an expanded partnership with Google Cloud. Wayfair is using Google Cloud to roll out a hybrid cloud strategy designed to scale its operations and handle burst capacity.
