Are you prepared to go retail omni-channel?

Omni-channel retail is a modern approach to commerce that focuses on designing a cohesive user experience for customers at every touchpoint (store, mobile, ecommerce, etc.). This differs from traditional marketing, where individual channels were optimized without necessarily taking the whole experience into mind.

No single formula, algorithm or crystal ball can tell you for sure when and why each individual customer will make a purchase. A senior citizen looking to buy a smartwatch might be texted a recommendation by a grandchild, then walk into a physical store to purchase. That same grandchild, on the other hand, might spend weeks parsing smartwatch reviews, adding, then abandoning items in their cart on both mobile and desktop, before finally purchasing because of an enticing email offer.

The most important challenge that retailers will face over the next three years is achieving omnichannel profitability objectives. In parallel, everything will change in retail, and the long-term impact will be significant. The foundational elements of the new customer experience architecture are data lake/analytics/artificial intelligence (AI) and the commerce platform. The platform includes all of the core capabilities that enable customer experience differentiation and seamless omni-channel commerce, along with the required operational efficiencies for profitability and business model agility. The core capabilities of the platform are:

• Omni-channel customer experience management: delivering a seamless customer experience across touch points through user experience (UX), digital marketing, and customer service, integrated with customer relationship management (CRM), campaign management, and promotion planning applications.
• Omni-channel commerce engine: providing a single transactional engine regardless of channel and unified commerce capabilities across order capture, configuration, payment, and delivery.
• Omni-channel order fulfillment: enabling real-time omni-channel fulfillment decisions and optimized execution via integration with supply chain applications.  Omni-channel content optimization: providing optimized content adaptation, personalization, and distribution across channels and devices, under a unified approach across disparate content management and digital asset management systems.

Source: IDC