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OMNI-CHANNEL RETAIL SOFTWARE White Paper Maxim izing retail sales by im plementing an omni-channel strategy OMNI-CHANNEL RETAIL SOFTWARE White Paper | Retail technology for the festive shopping season Getting It Right In Omni-channel Retail Executive Summary The retail industry has seen a great deal of disruption in the last decade with consumers having so many choices of merchandise, price, location and delivery option. The new consumer wants to see a unified interface with a brand and wants to have a consistent experience across channels. This is the omni-channel approach from a retailer’s perspective. ‘Omni-channel’ is not a mere buzzword but a concept and a strategic alignment of processes and technology aimed solely at serving customers. In retail terms, omni-channel can be said to be a customer-centric approach of doing business with the ability of a retail brand to unify the shopping experience across multiple channels in a manner that is seamless to the customer. So a customer can use any channel to engage with the retail brand during her shopping journey and even switch between channels at will, however the experience will be a holistic one and not limited to the channel. This kind of a business process strategy implementation on the one hand, has proven to be a challenge but on the other hand ensures retailers the benefits of maximizing sales and profits – the ultimate goal of the retail business. This whitepaper aims to explore ways in which retailers create a new level of value through the seamless application of technology across multiple customer touch points. www OMNI-CHANNEL RETAIL SOFTWARE White Paper | Retail technology for the festive shopping season Getting It Right In Omni-channel Retail The Omni-channel Opportunity The retailers who have been able to thrive are the ones that are strategically responding and adapting to digital transformation by creating a superior retail experience for their customers, building modern retail supply chains, and, most importantly, designing and implementing effective omni-channel retail strategies. Omni-channel allows retailers to boost their availability, drive sales and traffic, and integrate digital and physical retail touchpoints. An omni-channel retail strategy improves the overall customer experience and provides more avenues for customer purchase – whether it is on mobile, web, or in brick and mortar stores. The availability of multiple purchasing channels also leads to an increase in sales and traffic. Researchers found that while multi-channel shoppers spend, on average, 15% to
than multi-channel consumers and exhibit stronger brand loyalty, often influencing others to patronize the brand. The research also found that consumers provided with a seamless experience across multiple channels shop more frequently and make more purchases across a relatively broad number of product categories. Further another study also found that
Another potential benefit of a well-defined and effective omni-channel strategy is getting shoppers back into the brick- and-mortar stores. Despite the predictions for the demise of brick-and-mortar retail business, research continues to show that consumers still desire the social interaction, the touch- and-feel factor, surprise discovery of new merchandise and instant gratification that are delivered with the in-store shopping experience. With an intelligent omni-channel retailing strategy, one channel can drive another to promote channel-agnostic revenue goals. Thus leveraging multiple channels, omni-channel enables retailers to increase revenue of individual channels thereby boosting the overall revenue of the business. Additionally, omni-channel retail allows consumers to initiate and complete purchases on different channels. A customer can now see that an item is available in the physical store, and reserve it online to pick it up from the nearest store location. This constant information flow creates a better retail journey for customers, allowing retailers to build a relationship with their customer-base and are able to engage with them immediately and on a personal level through a variety of purchasing channels. Becoming a successful omni-channel retailer is challenging. It requires retailers to build multiple touchpoints, standardize and unify their customer experience, integrate their online business presence with their physical one, and create a better retail experience for each customer – all in one place. OMNI-CHANNEL RETAIL SOFTWARE White Paper | Retail technology for the festive shopping season Getting It Right In Omni-channel Retail The framework to designing an effective and holistic Omni-channel Strategy Here’s a framework incorporating various aspects of the business for retailers to use for basing the designing a holistic and true omni-channel retail strategy that can be implemented to maximize retail sales. Business Strategy For a real business transformation, retailers would need to have a holistic view of their business. This means they would have to get rid of siloed operations competing for revenue. They should further work to advance from being product-centric to customer-centric organizations. This requires a radical change from the typical inside-out thinking that is entirely centered on the retailers’ objectives, to an outside-in thinking, which is understanding the consumers’ objectives and using that as the focal point for the business. For this retailers must gather, categorize, prioritize and really understand their consumers’ rational and emotional preferences and buying habits. Further retailers need to use this information to correlate their channel and use case scenarios with their consumer personas or profiles because consumers are not homogenous and the need or appropriateness of a particular channel may not hold true for every consumer use case. Executive Sponsorship Adopting a customer experience strategy that is becoming a truly customer-centric retailer which in turn will lead to modifying cross-departmental processes to achieve a seamless omni-channel strategy starts with boardroom buy-in and executive sponsorship. As studies consistently show that omni-channel shoppers spend more on an average than their single channel counterparts, implementing an omni-channel retail strategy is important but requires a significant investment. While many retail leaders believe that deploying omni-channel is a prerequisite to compete, directors and CEOs require a business case which can bring them the ROI for their investments. If retailers are not able succeed with the business case or gain executive sponsorship, they need to stop, retrench and try again. Business Processes Omni-channel success necessitates that along with the business strategies, business processes also become more consumer- centric, cross-functional and integrated. This often demands a shift in the organizational culture where all departments must be reoriented to support the end goal of the company and not just goals that benefit individual departments. Omni- channel adopters must look for cross functional champions and teams to design and deploy business processes that are unified and holistic. This change is definitely profound, and as a matter of fact retailers wisely understand that they need to reorganize their company hierarchies to enable a seamless omni-channel implementation. Clear Objectives While enabling the retail organization to be truly transformed into an omni-channel retail business is the ultimate business objective, there are some intermediate objectives that need to be achieved in order to lead to final wholesome goal. Some of these could be: • Integrate important channels such as physical, online and mobile followed by other channels that could be used to better deliver frictionless buying experiences. • Deliver consistent customer experiences from channel to channel, with continuity in branding and content along with optimizing the strengths of each channel. • Facilitate consumers’ need to engage with their favorite brands using the channel that is most convenient for them at any given moment. • Create seamless customer journeys which allow cross-channel engagement continuity to contribute to the overall consumer experience. • Enable consumers to access and switch channels simultaneously and interchangeably while maintaining the seamless availability of information across channel.
