Q&A: Matthew Furneaux, Global Commercial Director at Loqate
Loqate provide address verification powered by the most accurate global location data…helping you deliver exceptional experiences to every customer, wherever they are located.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail for 2020 / What challenges are retailers facing in 2020?
High street retailers are still facing significant headwinds and they will continue into 2020. Those that are managing the blend of offline and online well are seeing faster growth over all, and particularly when coupled with a strong digital and social media strategy. Consumer’s respond well to relevant personalisation and the research bears testament to that. Adopting a digitally native approach to cross border trade will also enable retailers to go-global quicker, and enjoy the rewards of faster growing markets such as India and China, while existing markets flatten out or experience negative growth.
How will you address these challenges and turn them into successes?
Our mission remains the same – help every business in the world reach every customer – wherever they might be. We will continue to blend location data from the most trusted and accurate sources to make that objective possible. By constantly improving our technology, we will help our customers grow faster, and know that Loqate will always be online and able to manage even the most extreme levels of demand. By making it as seamless as possible for retailers to capture and verify addresses from any place on earth, ensure that mobile numbers and email addresses are usable, and add vital location data such as geocodes, we will provide the tools for successful cross border expansion and customer delight.
What is on the horizon for you as a company?
It’s vital that Loqate supports its customers as they expand into mega-markets such as India and China. We have announced our intention to launch a “premise level” data set for China early in 2020, and we are working on a similarly detailed offering for India. In addition to physical addresses being used for delivery, new, potentially disruptive address systems are emerging. One of these is What3Words, a simple way of identifying and naming any 3m x 3m square – anywhere in the world, with a unique three word address – like ///table.chair.spoon . This has the potential to be a usable dataset in countries with very poor existing address systems, and to add even greater granularity in more mature postal markets. We are excited to be building in What3word capability into our address capture service early in 2020. Finally, although it seems to be building more slowly than earlier predictions, voice tech, and the promise of widely adopted conversational commerce on the “ambient web” will create a new wave of eCommerce opportunity. Loqate will be right there with voice enabled address capture and validation services for smart phones, wearable’s and home assistants.
Any final thoughts?
It’s a tough market for retailers, but as we see from the likes of ASOS, Boohoo and GymShark, it is possible to find growth in this market. Make it easy for customers to find you and buy from you. Make the check out as friction free as possible, and capture the data that ensures deliveries are made to time and expectation quickly and easily. Go global with “global ready” payment and addressing solutions like Stripe, and Loqate, and the challenges quickly start to look like opportunities.
Find out more about Loqate and how they can help you by visiting their site.
Bio: Matthew Furneaux, Global Commerical Director at Loqate
