StyleSpeak Beauty Conference 2025 spotlights how the integration of tech can enhance business for salons  

Words: Relin Hedly

A salon owner has to juggle numerous aspects of managing the business – from inventory management and housekeeping to appointments and billing. Tracking the day-to-day business operations and performance is crucial. The StyleSpeak Beauty Conference at HBS 2025 Panel Discussion ‘Optimising your salon business performance with data and tech’ discussed a practical solution to all these needs. 

Chaired by Vikram Bhatt, Founder Enrich, the eminent panellists included Sachin Kamat, G.M. Zenoti for India, Middle East & Southeast Asia; Sahil Gupta, CEO Bodycraft Clinics & Salons and Dhruv Gupta, Founder – Try My Style. The session centred around how integrating data and tech helps a salon succeed in boosting its revenues.

Vikram Bhatt: Sahil, you have managed your business in an exemplary manner post-COVID. What was your strategy to run your business more efficiently after you took charge?

Sahil: When I entered the beauty business, I immediately put processes into place, as without data points, implementation on the floor was difficult. Tracking everything that happens in a salon –  store opening times, customer walk-in time, appointments for the day, staff productivity, cancelled appointments, etc., is crucial to run the business, whether you have one store or many.  Once this is established, everything – the customer, staff, management and backend- can be integrated with CRM and cloud telephony platforms, to view the business qualitatively with the help of data.

Vikram: Dhruv, your tech gadget helps personalise hairstyles for clients, making for a happy client and a happy hairstylist! What made you think of this? 

Dhruv: I am an engineer, and this industry is very new to me, but I understand tech and how it can solve the needs of the beauty industry. Over the last 2 years, we found huge consumer insights from the industry and decided to use technology to solve the same. These data points were collated to offer the customer personalised options for their hairstyle. 

We initiated a Smart Mirror concept, which gave the client a virtual try-on experience on how they will look in different hairstyles.. The Smart Mirror also analyses face shapes and skin tones so that haircuts based on face shape and hair colour based on the skin tone could be recommended. Further personalization was added by suggesting trending looks from Instagram and other social media channels. 

This helped create a connect between the stylist and salon and the service where the Smart Mirror helped the client make an informed decision that suited her!  

We found the gap and used tech to bridge it.

Vikram: Your perspective on how we can leverage tech, as you have earlier managed a large salon business (Enrich), and are now enabling it (Zenoti)?

Sachin: As Zenoti, our goal is to add value to 3 stakeholders in the salon –  the customer, the business owner and the therapist. 

We can use tech at the therapists’ end very effectively. – right from their knowing the appointments for the day, client history of each of these clients, products used in previous treatment and the client’s experience. This information enables them to upgrade their service and also facilitate the billing, all via an app on their mobile. Besides this, each therapist can track his/her own performance – from attendance, billing, training, salary and bonuses, promotions, etc. from the app too. 

 We are in a unique touch-based business, and the touch aspect will always remain regardless of the usage of technology. You retain the touch, and for everything else – use technology. That’s probably the way to go. 

Vikram: What kind of data do we rely on for smooth operations and floor efficiency?

Sahil: Operations control has become more efficient with tech. Most of the processes, like tracking missed calls to booking appointments, staff attendance, customer feedback, etc., can be automated. Data and tech can help on the floor itself. Create three-level store-specific dashboards to monitor things from the top level to the granular store level.  It helps you get feedback and fix things at the earliest. 

Vikram: While tracking earnings is important, the adoption of tech helped us with the qualitative analysis of the business, e.g. guest experiences and satisfaction,  therapist performance, customer loyalty, etc. We found that sharing this with the staff and therapists helped them follow SOPs better, and focus on learning and development to improve their performance.. 

Sahil: On the floor, the first dashboard has to be the customer: Know how many clients came once, twice or thrice and never returned. If 2 out of 3clients are coming back, it is the best benchmark for the salon. 25 percent of your customers will give you almost 90 percent of the business. This is how you know the key customers to focus on.   

Vikram: How can we run successful marketing campaigns?

Sachin:  Any software can use your customer, which is rich data, and work in relevant targeted segments of it. More than the campaign, it is crucial to decide how to give, what offer, how much to offer and when to give offers so that your end target can be achieved.

The session ended with a discussion on how AI and data science will shape the future of the industry. As the next wave of technology, it will cause disruption but also help take the load off routine operations and allow the stakeholders to focus on what is important for the business.