Microsoft Is Preparing To Enter Into The Growing Grocery Tech Market, Signs New Deal In China  

A new deal recently emerged between the branch of Microsoft in Beijing and Chinese retail tech company Hanshow. This was announced on Thursday, 20th of May 2021 by Joe Bao, China strategy officer for Microsoft. 

The reason for the strategic partnership is for both to collaborate on cloud-based software for store operators worldwide. This marks Microsoft’s latest incursion into a retail industry that is being forced to accelerate a shift online.

The integration of offline with internet-based sales strategies is known as omni-channel retail, and includes grocery delivery, demand for which surged in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

At the signing ceremony at the software company’s office in Beijing, Boa articulated that the Retail industry is one of those that has seen some of the biggest disruptions in recent years. 

Speaking in his language Mandarin, Boa explained that the partnership is not just for the China market, but also for bringing China’s technology overseas. “The agreement comes after five years of Microsoft working with Hanshow,” the Strategy Officer added. 

In speaking about the history of the U.S. and China partnership, a reporter on CNBC said that the American software company entered China in 1992, where it has its biggest overseas research and development center. 

The report further added that the strategic partnership comes as U.S. and Chinese companies operate in an increasingly tense political environment that has focused on trade and technology, partly in response to longstanding foreign criticism about unfair Chinese business practices.

Right now, Hanshow’s primary customers are supermarkets in China and Europe.

The company says its products include electronic store shelf labels that can reflect price changes in real-time and a system that helps workers shorten the time it takes to pack produce for delivery. Hanshow says it also sells a cloud-based platform that allows a retailer to simultaneously see the temperatures of fresh produce in stores around the world.

The partnership will include collaboration on internet-connected, or internet of things, technology.

As part of the deal, Hanshow will use Microsoft’s Office 365 software such as Word, and Dynamics 365, a cloud-based customer relationship management system, said Gao Bo, chief architect at Hanshow, told CNBC in an interview following the signing ceremony. He said the two companies can share their global client network and will jointly launch a research and development team.

Founded in Beijing about a decade ago, Hanshow lists offices in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia on its website. Hanshow has just established a branch in the U.S., according to the company.

Globalization is one of Hanshow’s important business strategies, Gao said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation. He claimed that the company’s first step when entering a foreign market is to understand local laws and culture and that his own work hasn’t been significantly affected by international trade tensions.

“Offline stores aren’t going to die out,” Gao said, adding that “the uncertainty in the future is what the ratio will be.”