Omni-channel is a reality whether retailers are ready for it or not. The “early adopters” on the retail side (such as Macy’s) are raising the bar so rapidly for functions like BOPIS and ship-from-store that their competitors are scrambling to catch up. (And not always smoothly.) Macy’s in particular continues to expand in this area, having just announced some restructuring of store functions and manpower planning to leverage its lead even faster.

It’s not so much about whether consumers are shopping and paying for goods using mobile devices instead of PCs (although that will continue to grow). It’s more important for retailers to break down the organizational silos that prevent the brick-and-mortar merchants and operations management from functioning smoothly alongside their e-commerce partners.

For retailers, omni-channel is about strategies, tactics and overcoming legacy systems built for product merchandising in stores.

For today’s consumers, omni-channel is a behavioral lifestyle of shopping anytime, everywhere, for everything.

It will be interesting to see how the retailer success long-term correlates with reaching more touch points in the omni-channel consumer journey.

Omni-channel is the new reality for all retailers whether they engage or not. If you’re available where and when consumers look for you, great. If not, you lose to someone who is.

Online-only retailers lack the high-engagement fidelity that only the in-store experience can deliver. Offline-only retailers don’t deliver the comfortable and informative browsing experience that consumers utilize to make their shopping itineraries. Either way, the retailer is missing an important piece of the shopper’s buying journey.

For apparel retailers the omni-channel focus should be to get the customer to engage online with the ultimate goal of getting them into the store and into the fitting room. For customer engagement, loyalty and profit opportunities nothing beats the fitting room.

Omni-channel is a reality at too few chain retailers. Many talk about implementing it, but few have succeeded to-date. Macy’s is the best example of launching a successful omni-channel strategy.

Omni-channel should be a strategy, not a tactic, a strategy that should pervade all aspects of a retailer’s thinking: inventory, pricing and promotion.

Successful omni-channel strategies put consumers first and ask how consumers want to shop, how they want to receive goods, how they perceive value and how they want to save time.

I see Omni-channel as three separate energies contiguously supporting a corporate message and plan in the market. These divisions will be constructed to offer the market a path to purchase any and all products and services without interference caused by separate issues in the company’s point of sale system, inventory control, product availability and pricing or general accounting system. Or for that matter any other aspect restricting or refusing the need to cross channels by consumers for order tracking, support or open order editing. This is in no way an attempt to define or minimize the problems in present day Omni-channel building. It is a demonstration of how this goal may be seen as insurmountable yet for the sake of the client and company is necessary, simply because the customer community feels highly confident that is is possible and what they are due as investment purchases are made. Many of the solution offerings to date are limited in scope and content due to the range of difficulties existing in companies with self-made or multiple-vendor IT… Read more »

There’s a difference between “doing” omni-channel and excelling at omni-channel. Those that excel are working back from the customer, not just working forward from the technology stack.

Working back from the customer includes documenting the customer journey. This includes the motivations that begin with researching and buying online, culminating with the instant gratification of picking up in-store—and getting human help from associates.

Working forward from the stack focuses on fulfilling specific plays like ROBI and BOPIS. The importance of supply chain capabilities and inventory transparency can’t be understated. But a retailer declaring itself a technology company and creating a Chief Omni-channel Officer is only a start.

I believe we are in the first inning of a nine-inning game. It’s early, but some retailers have made significant progress. That being said, trying to address the underlying system issues that took 20-plus years to develop isn’t going to disappear in a year or two. And the technology landscape is maturing.

The key is to be able to reflect the customer’s interactions and relationship with the retailer in (near) real-time across all channels. That’s not possible today, regardless of what any retailer or technology provider claims, but the journey to get there should have started.

The big wins show up when retailers are able to lower the hurdles for customers and to make brand interaction and the path to transactions as frictionless and flexible as possible.

BOPIS and inventory transparency are key in removing friction, but they require having new systems (web, social, mobile) to be integrated with legacy systems. That’s where the rubber meets the road.

It is a reality. One key to success is keeping it all in context. Online revenue is quite small (in general). So while it’s important within the total mix, it shouldn’t distract focus from doing other things right, and, as noted here, mobile’s role is unusual—influence but not transactions.

The key is to build business without getting distracted by the shiny baubles with vast sums of PR/hype/money behind them.

Some of us tend to make wisecracks about the “O” word, but we all know it means at least two things: A seamless experience for the shopper across all points of interaction with the retailer and a unified view of inventory for the retailer across all points of interaction with the shopper. I tend to focus on part two—the unified view of inventory—because I see it as a prerequisite for part one. The systems that enable this are fairly well recognized now, and market leaders like Macy’s and Lowe’s leverage these capabilities for competitive advantages. Here are two tests I like to apply for determine if a retailer is truly “O”: Search an item on the website or mobile site and check its availability at your closest store. Then go to the store and find it there as promised. Or call the local store and ask the department clerk if they can check if a certain item is presently available in a certain size or color. They should check the POS terminal for this information… Read more »

No. Mobile shopping is still not a reality for most retailers. The key for omnichannel success is confirmed, sustained growth over an extended period of time, which can be directly traced back to an omnichannel position and set of programs.

Omnichannel = Customer Service. It’s mandatory. As some retailers wrestle their legacy systems into shape, the expectation of the customer to receive this same service everywhere just grows. Reality, and inevitable.

Omnichannel is already a reality that chain retailers have to provide or risk getting left behind. Even if mobile is still mainly a browsing medium, this could change with time and retailers have to be ready for that. Here are the top 3 things I see as key to omnichannel retail:

1. Pricing: Prices should be consistent across channels.
2. Discounts: While pricing should be the same, mobile-only discounts could be the way to boost those mobile checkout rates.
3. Images: Several high quality images are a must for each product. Smartphones and tablets are much smaller than desktops, but shoppers must still feel like they’re getting the full shopping experience to complete a purchase.

The (cranky) Finance Guy in me responds “No, Mr. Cole, the ‘ultimate goal’ of omnichannel is—or at least should be—to increase a company’s profitability.” Amazon (and others…many of them on longer in business) has (have) shown us time and time again that it’s not hard to claim success when you don’t pay any attention to the cost side of things. Admittedly, you have to solve the many logistics and marketing issues involved, and I applaud those who are making progress on that front, but it’s only half the story.

I would like to add that omnichannel is also about understanding how to compete on data. When a retailer learns how to attract massive first-party audiences who interact using a persistent log-in, the data dividend will be enormous.

In the 2015 COLLOQUY Loyalty Census, to be published in February, we predict that leading retailers will continue to differentiate themselves by investing in innovative technologies. We see technology integration that enhances the customer experience, gives customers choice and keeps them engaged as the key to omnichannel success.

In the case of mobile technology, thinking of mobile as separate and distinct from your overall approach to your loyalty program is short-sighted and does not leverage the advantages of the technology itself, namely real-time interaction and relevant dialogue. Nor does it leverage the customer insights or motivation mechanism of your loyalty program.

There is no question that omnichannel is a reality. The bigger question is whether its success is measured using the right metrics When all the appropriate costs are considered, does OC strategy improve profitability? The retail bankruptcy pleadings are littered with stories of retailers who were very successful among a number of metrics, with the notable exception being profitability. The longer term OC strategy has to overcome two major obstacles. First, maintaining accurate in-store inventory location integrity. This will always be a challenge, as long as consumers (including myself) pick up an item, change their mind about the item, and subsequently leave the item on the first open shelf they see. When a customer drives to the store to pick up their BOPIS order for this item, and this item is not in the location it’s supposed to be in, there will definitely be a “customer experience” but not the desired one. (RFID technology will hopefully advance enough in the future to identify mis-shelved items in an efficient manner). The second challenge is making the… Read more »

The most critical part of ecommerce today is BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store). The combination of online research and offline real-time delivery makes a compelling case.

To achieve this, retailers must be able to track inventory online by store and then sync pricing and product offerings between channels—which are difficult tasks.