Omnichannel retail is the new norm in the world of Retail and online e-Commerce Businesses, and there are a variety of reasons behind its phenomenal growth. Right from the inception of Globalization of the physical stores, to the emergence of Internet-based cataloguing/ selling, to the mobile revolution and finally the COVID 19 pandemic have all contributed to the emergence and evolution of Omnichannel Retail and Digital Consumer. An integrated customer-centric approach that runs across various sales channels, from the traditional Brick and Mortar stores to the more modern online ones has proved how technology creates a smooth and consistent customer experience alongside unique branding.
What is Omnichannel Retail After All?
What exactly is Omnichannel Retail?
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
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.
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 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.
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.