What is Omnichannel Retail After All?
It is well established that Omnichannel retail opens a wide variety of options for the consumers through seamless integration between the online and offline world, ensuring there is a smooth user experience. We also keep hearing that it allows retail merchants to reach the consumers at every point of their purchasing experience which results in a drastic boost in sales. But in sheer practical terms for a Retail Business owner
What exactly is Omnichannel Retail?
Omni-channel retail (or omnichannel commerce) is a multichannel approach to sales that focus on providing seamless customer experience whether the client is shopping online from a mobile device, a laptop or physically in a brick-and-mortar store. The customer can do a mix and match shopping in a variety of ways for example Buy Online and Pickup from Store (BOPIS).
Features of Omnichannel Retail
- Attract customers from anywhere
- Consistent Information on Products, Pricing, Availability and Delivery through a single source of truth
- Integrated Approach Across Channels with flexible processes
- Leverages information from one channel to invite the customer to another
- 24-hour access and Support availability to customers
- Extensive Use of Analytics to Aid and Predict Customer Buying
Transformation Process and Roadmap
The following is a simple process to transform your business
Study your customer profiles, behaviours and patterns
The first and foremost activity has to be to define your typical customer, age group, demographics, cultural sensitivities, spend pattern, product delivery preferences, and seasonal attractions. No strategy will work unless one is clear on who and how your customer looks like, what does s(he) prefers and what really matters to them.
Define your Omnichannel Strategy
Based on the insights gained on customer understanding define your strategic goals on what really you want to achieve. These could range from market share, format dominance, brand positioning and process excellence measures.Once the goals are laid down, gauge your current assets/ investments, resources, specialities and USPs, skills and product mix in relation to the Goals and the customer preferences defined earlier to essentially arrive at the Gap.
Based on the insights gained on customer understanding define your strategic goals on what really you want to achieve. These could range from market share, format dominance, brand positioning and process excellence measures.Once the goals are laid down, gauge your current assets/ investments, resources, specialities and USPs, skills and product mix in relation to the Goals and the customer preferences defined earlier to essentially arrive at the Gap.
Restructure your processes and systems
Based on the strategy defined and Gap arrived in the previous step, you got to create a master plan on how to restructure your entire operational processes. How to realign and re-allocate your resources. This will arguably be the most painful part of the journey as you have to unlearn and do away with legacy processes that might have become very dear and sacrosanct to you over the years. Management Commitment coupled with participative management is the only way you can succeed in this step. It is always a best practice to create a centre of excellence in one of few stores as a pilot project before embarking upon the whole lot.
Based on the strategy defined and Gap arrived in the previous step, you got to create a master plan on how to restructure your entire operational processes. How to realign and re-allocate your resources. This will arguably be the most painful part of the journey as you have to unlearn and do away with legacy processes that might have become very dear and sacrosanct to you over the years. Management Commitment coupled with participative management is the only way you can succeed in this step. It is always a best practice to create a centre of excellence in one of few stores as a pilot project before embarking upon the whole lot.
Continual Improvement
Remember the time-tested proverb, “The only constant in life is change”, the process created today may be obsolete tomorrow, hence the organization should be willing and ready for change by way of getting continuous feedback and acting on the same to improving the processFinally, to wrap it up, you need robust process and information management systems and platforms to achieve the desired objectives of transformation.
Remember the time-tested proverb, “The only constant in life is change”, the process created today may be obsolete tomorrow, hence the organization should be willing and ready for change by way of getting continuous feedback and acting on the same to improving the processFinally, to wrap it up, you need robust process and information management systems and platforms to achieve the desired objectives of transformation.
Consider Posibolt, a tried and tested omnichannel retail solution trusted globally by a huge variety of multi-channel retailers. Email us at info@posibolt.com, WhatsApp at 91 87141 13166 or visit www.posibolt.com for more information