Creating Personalized Shopping Experiences that Drive Customer Loyalty Softlines retailers often have but one chance to get it right to satisfy their customers. But the often-impulsive nature of the softlines shopper, which creates tremendous demand variability, and the complexities brought about by customers shopping across all channels all the time, make it difficult to satisfy each shopper s unique needs. JDA for Softlines Retail provides the path-to-purchase and fulfillment tools to personalize the shopping experience for each shopper, driving greater revenue and customer loyalty.
Understanding the Customer With the exception of the art world, there is likely no industry more subject to individual tastes than softlines retail. And there is possibly no industry more affected by the rise of mobile and social networks than softlines retail, as well. In order to succeed, retailers in this segment must be at the forefront of delivering personalized shopping experiences through localized assortments, consistent all-channel customer service, flexible path-to-purchase options and tailored fulfillment choices. This requires a deep understanding of each customer s shopping patterns and preferences. But many retailers are not purpose-built to understand their customers tastes and path-to-purchase because they operate in channel-specific silos. And while they may have mobile or social sales initiatives, they often are not equipped to mine these channels for individual shopping preferences and cannot translate these preferences into specific e-commerce and in-store merchandising plans. JDA for Softlines Retail, an integrated suite of supply chain planning and execution solutions, helps companies better understand each customer s unique shopping pattern across all channels and helps leverage this information to deliver personalized shopping experiences that increase revenue and customer loyalty. Challenge: Prism Glasses For many retailers, viewing their customers preferences across channels is like looking through prism glasses many separate visions that never come together to present a whole picture. These retailers often have one system for handling e-commerce transactions and another for in-store transactions. They cannot track customer shopping habits or purchase history across channels, so every interaction with the customer is like it is the first time. As a result of this prism view, the retailer cannot understand the customer or their shopping patterns across channels, and thus, they cannot leverage this important information to create a superior shopping experience that will drive sales and customer loyalty. Solution: A Single View of the Customer More than any other retail segment, softlines purchases are subject to the individual whims and tastes of each customer. Therefore, softlines retailers need a single, 360 degree view of customer interactions across channels so they can fully understand the customer s shopping behavior, path-to-purchase habits and product preferences. The JDA Commerce Suite provides the necessary tools to track and understand customers behavior across all channels, and to equip associates to provide personalized customer care. Commerce Suite capabilities include: Website Creation Easily create compelling e-commerce and mobile websites and microsites to provide a consistent brand story across all channels and devices. The Commerce Suite helps retailers create multi-national, multi-branded websites that are SEO friendly, provide real-time, cross-channel inventory visibility, support social network interactions, and leverage loyalty programs. The JDA Commerce Suite allows retailers to provide one-face-to-the-customer consistency that enhances the shopping experience across all channels. Order Management Commerce Suite s order management functionality provides real-time visibility to all orders placed through any channel. This is a basic building-block for all-channel fulfillment and a key enabler of cross-channel order visibility. It enables store associates, customer service reps and customers to track and change orders in-process regardless of where the order was placed or where it will be fulfilled.
Creating a consistent customer experience remains the most valued capability for retailers, but 54% of our respondents indicate that their biggest inhibitor is that they do not have a single view of the customer across channels. Omni-Channel 2013: The Long Road to Adoption, RSR Research, June 2013
Store Center Delivers the power of e-commerce into the hands of store associates, with real-time access to inventory data, product information, customer information, order history and loyalty programs all the things that today s consumers have come to expect on websites and now are looking for in the store. This is critical in combating showrooming and leveraging brick and mortar stores as a key element of the all-channel shopping experience. Contact Center Sometimes forgotten in the e-commerce/mobile mix is that shoppers still want to talk with humans at times to ask questions, change orders and resolve problems. Contact Center provides customer service reps with all-channel access to customer orders and order history, product preferences, purchase history, product and pricing information, gift registries, and loyalty program data so they can be part of a seamless all-channel shopping experience and can provide a service level that drives customer loyalty. Customer Engagement Management CEM is a customer loyalty solution that seamlessly integrates customer loyalty programs across all channels to enhance the customer shopping experience. It tracks customer transactions and loyalty points from any channel and can award points for gestures such as liking a product, writing an online product review, checking in at a location or scanning a QR code or using an NFC enabled device. CEM award points are rules-based so they can be easily tailored to your customer loyalty programs. All of these Commerce Suite capabilities stem from a single view of the customer and their shopping patterns and preferences. This enhances the customer shopping experience to drive revenue and increase customer loyalty while providing tools for retailers to better understand and manage their business. With JDA solutions in place, we are positioned over the next four to five years to support and drive Mark s growth targets. While we consider ourselves to be early in our change curve, together with other strategic initiatives, the new JDA tools and ways of working are already supporting strong results in both top-line sales and profits. As we continue to integrate the new tools and processes within our supply chain, planning and merchandising functions, we are very confident that even greater opportunity is yet ahead. Ian Gilbart, Vice President, Supply Chain, Mark s
Challenge: Multi-Channel Disconnects One of the biggest stumbling blocks in executing an all-channel shopping experience for many softlines retailers is the disconnect between what shoppers are led to expect through online channels and what they actually experience in brick and mortar stores. Is the hot new item they saw online available in the store for them to examine and try on? Is their style, color and size on the shelf? Do promoted on-line prices match in-store pricing? Since softlines purchases are more likely to be impulsebased than in other retail segments, it is critical that softlines retailers get in-store merchandising execution right. Solution: Giving Customers What They Want Leveraging the single view of the customer, JDA for Softlines Retail connects e-commerce and mobile shopping steps to the instore experience by ensuring what shoppers want is actually available, visible and priced right in the store. Whether a customer has researched your merchandize extensively online or just happened to walk into the store because something in your window caught their eye, JDA s planning and pricing solutions help ensure what the customer wants is available. This is accomplished through the following capabilities: JDA Demand The first step in giving customers what they want is understanding their buying patterns. JDA Demand leverages point-of-sale (POS) data to generate a baseline statistical forecast for each channel which is then coupled with vendor input and external causal factors that will influence the demand, including promotional and pricing effects, local market intelligence, competitor information and weather. The output is one centralized, holistic view of demand that serves as a foundation to drive regional and local inventory plans for stores and online channels. JDA Assortment Uses the localized demand plan to create tailored, space-aware product assortments for each store and store cluster, as well as online consumer-centric offers. JDA Assortment combines in-depth analytics, consumer purchase preferences, complete assortment lifecycle planning, and sizing and pre-pack optimization into one simple, easy-to-use workflow for demand-driven assortments. This ensures the right products are available across all channels to drive higher units per transaction and larger basket sizes. JDA Strategic Pricing Defines item-level, localized pricing that adheres to the corporate brand image and category strategies, supports promotion plans and markdown policies, and honors sizing and product relationship rules. Together with JDA Promotion Management, the system enables companies to synchronize promotion planning, forecasting and retail price optimization with advertising and price execution. JDA Space Planning Works jointly with JDA Assortment and JDA Strategic Pricing to ensure there is adequate space on shelves, end-caps and displays for local assortments based on store size and fixtures, demand plans and promotions. A three-dimensional graphics tool shows how each store presentation will look. Proper space planning helps ensure the right products are available and visible when shoppers enter their local store. The trifecta of assortment planning, price management and space planning, when informed with the all-channel demand plans of local consumers, maximize the customer shopping experience to drive greater revenue and profits per square foot of selling space.
Challenge: Showrooming With all of the hype about e-commerce, mobile and social networks and omni-channel, brick and mortar stores are still the most important channel, by far, for most retailers. But with the challenges of always-connected consumers and with pure-play e-commerce sites encouraging shoppers to visit other retailers brick and mortar stores to touch and feel the merchandise before buying it for less online-- known as showrooming brick and mortar stores are seeing sales and margins threatened. Plus, the major e-commerce sites offer virtually unlimited assortments and incentives such as same-day delivery and free shipping. Therefore, brick and mortar retailers must find ways to compete with these e-commerce behemoths without destroying already thin margins. Solution: Maximizing Customer Engagement The best way to compete with e-commerce retailers is to offer customers personalized shopping experiences they cannot get online. This requires the personal touch only associates can offer in the store and in contact centers. But it is more than just a friendly face or voice, it requires arming associates with the information to enable them to better understand and serve customers. JDA for Softlines Retail has several leading components that help associates to better engage customers and provide levels of service that foster customer loyalty. These include: Clienteling Part of the JDA Store Center application, Clienteling provides a wealth of product and customer information at the fingertips of store associates and customer service reps. Clienteling empowers associates with a full 360-degree view of the customer, including data on demographics, lifestyle and preferences, loyalty program participation, and a virtual closet with purchase history, product images, transaction dates, and purchase location, as well as recommended complementary items. It can improve sales performance, increase in-store conversion, and drive brand loyalty. Save-the-Sale Since store space is finite, you cannot always have every style, size and color in the store. To avoid disappointing customers and losing sales, Store Center s save-the-sale capabilities allow associates to locate the desired merchandise for customers anywhere within the network, including at other stores, in distribution centers or at suppliers, and arrange for shipment or customer pick-up. This also allows retailers to offer much wider inventory selection than can be stocked in stores through endless-aisle functionality. Mobile Empower associates and managers to remain on the selling floor serving customers by providing mobile enablement of clienteling, save-the-sale and other store applications through JDA mobility applications. The mobile apps untether associates and managers from their desks, back office, point-of-sale and other static touchpoints so they can serve customers face-to-face. Workforce Management The best tools won t help convert shoppers to buyers unless you have the right staff on the selling floor to assist customers. JDA Workforce Management ensures the right employees with the right skills are scheduled at the right times to meet customers information and assistance needs, increase conversion rates and comply with corporate mandated promotions and other tasks. The application includes sophisticated labor forecasting, scheduling within 15 minute intervals, time and attendance, and associate self-service capabilities. JDA Workforce Management is the ultimate tool for providing superior shopping experiences.
While Forrester s forecast aggregates 30 retail categories, we expect just four categories to generate $1.1 trillion of the $1.8 trillion in cross-channel sales by 2017: grocery, apparel and accessories, home improvement, and consumer electronics. Forrester US Cross-Channel Retail Forecast, 2012 To 2017 by Sucharita Mulpuru, October 29, 2013
Challenge: Disconnected Fulfillment Retailers go to extraordinary lengths to make sure stores and e-commerce sites present their merchandise in the most appealing light possible. But less thought is typically given to how the merchandise will be delivered to stores and customers, setting up a major disconnect between the front and back ends of the all-channel shopping experience. Today s shoppers want choice in how they receive their purchases, whether that means buying it in the store, buying online with home delivery, or buying online with pick-up from the store of their choice. Traditional retail supply chains are not designed to handle these cross-channel sales and fulfillment options. Retail DCs are set up to replenish stores, not ship individual orders to customers. E-commerce orders are often shipped from separate facilities, which may be run by third parties, and are not equipped to support in-store pick-up. There may be separate order management systems for stores versus online, further complicating cross-channel fulfillment options. And distributed order management systems typically are designed to search for the lowest cost delivery option, without considering the customer s fulfillment choice. All of these order-fulfillment disconnects make it virtually impossible to provide today s consumer with the buy-anywhere, fulfill-anywhere choices they have come to expect. These disconnects also limit retailers ability to maximize the use of store inventory for initiatives such as ship-from-store a key means for softlines retailers to rid stores of underperforming merchandise without resorting to profit-sapping markdowns. Solution: Cross-Channel Fulfillment To give customers the fulfillment choices they desire and support retailers fulfillment options requires an integrated approach to the entire order through fulfillment cycle. This includes the ability to react appropriately when inevitable changes occur in the middle of execution. All systems supporting this cycle must therefore be fully aware of what is happening in each part of the process so orders, changes and exceptions can be handled accurately and profitably. JDA for Softlines Retail is a fully integrated suite of planning and execution systems that manage the all-channel order through fulfillment process, with the ability to collaborate with suppliers and re-optimize when changes and disruptions occur. The suite enables retailers to profitably offer true buy-anywhere, fulfill-anywhere, return-anywhere options for customers with complete visibility and control over the process. This greatly enhances the customer shopping experience, enabling softlines retailers to effectively and profitably compete with other retailers and e-commerce rivals. In-store pickup capabilities, however, are rare and still aren t a widely accepted practice at most brick and-mortar retailers. Retailers that have explicit programs to handle this journey and connect with shoppers about their purchase will be best positioned to capture a bigger part of the cross-channel pie. Furthermore, an increasing number of retailers are investing in store fulfillment of web orders. This approach leverages the increasing amount of research that happens online while taking advantage of store inventory that may be trapped in slower-turning stores. Forrester, US Cross-Channel Retail Forecast, 2012 To 2017 by Sucharita Mulpuru, October 29, 2013
The JDA solutions help us make more strategic decisions. For example, we might only pre-pack 70 percent of our merchandise for the stores. If the forecast is wrong, JDA Fulfillment enables us to send the other 30 percent to the places it s been selling best. Iain Little, Demand and Fulfillment Strategy Manager, Mark s Work Wearhouse
Important capabilities of this integrated suite include: Integrated Allocation and Replenishment Uses inventory and assortment plans to dynamically allocate for assortments, replenishment needs and new product introduction requirements across product lifecycles to create the optimal mix of products for each store. JDA Allocation enhances and translates customer knowledge into pinpointed allocations, enabling retailers to optimize store-specific product assortments across the entire retail organization. JDA Replenishment and Fulfillment help ensure merchandise availability in each store while lowering overall inventory across the supply network. Order Visibility and Profitable-to-Promise Not disappointing customers requires that online sites do not promise merchandise that fulfillment operations cannot deliver. JDA s Profitable-to-Promise capability has visibility to inventory information from JDA s Supply Chain Execution suite so this disconnect never disappoints your customers. In turn, the execution suite utilizes order visibility information from JDA Order Management to intelligently manage fulfillment of all orders through whichever fulfillment source matches customer requests and makes best economic sense. This integrated approach to order promising and fulfillment is a critical step in delivering a loyalty-inspiring all-channel shopping experience. Shelf Planning and Analytics Supporting available-to-promise and order-online, pick-up in-store initiatives requires a much better understanding of inventory levels and space allocations in the stores. JDA Collaborative Shelf Planning and Analytics provides shelf-level inventory visibility and analytics, tying in replenishment and time-phased order collaboration with key trading partners. It detects out-of-stock conditions, reports on lost sales, and displays sellthrough analysis at the category and item level. Warehouse Management The final step in a successful all-channel shopping experience is delivering the merchandise to the customer accurately and on-time. Whether that means having the merchandise available in the store or shipping it to the customer s home, JDA Warehouse Management ensures all orders are fulfilled accurately, efficiently and on-time. The solution includes put-to-store and item personalization functionality as well as parcel manifesting and shipping capabilities for efficient direct-to-consumer shipments. In-Store Picking Processing large volumes of online orders for in-store fulfillment can eat up floor space and labor resources. JDA In-Store Picking allocates inventory and clusters orders to make efficient use of both store space and labor when picking and processing orders. Picked orders can be staged for shipment or positioned for customer in-store pick-up via click-and-collect or drive-through options. JDA s integrated suite of planning and execution solutions provides the technology support to enable loyalty-building all-channel customer shopping experiences. By removing the disconnects between front-end and back-end operations and providing visibility to orders, inventory and shipments across the process, JDA enables softlines retailers to drive revenue and repeat business that competitors cannot match. JDA supports a very granular level of both planning and execution, which allows us to meet our higher-level financial goals and targets. Harris Mustafa, Executive Vice President, Supply Chain, DSW
Challenge: Finding the Customer In the past, finding customers was pretty straight-forward. They walked into your store or accessed your website. They got there because you advertised on TV, in newspapers and magazines, and on your website or complementary industry sites. But in the new world of social networks and mobile-enabled, always-connected consumers, there are many more paths to purchase for each consumer. Finding these customers among the maze of networks and consumer choices, and enticing them to shop with you, is much more complex and uncertain than ever before, especially for softlines retailers where a positive or negative comment on a social network can make or break your brand image. Solution: Personalized Marketing Retail success from now on will not be defined by mass-marketing, but by personalized marketing to the individual socially-connected consumer. Understanding and attracting today s shopper entails collecting and analyzing a much wider array of loosely connected data. New, more sophisticated tools are needed to gather and interpret this big data in order to turn it into useful information about customer preferences, path-to-purchase and buying intents. By embedding analytics within our retail platform and powering it with the scalability of in-memory processing, JDA is positioned to help retailers mine and understand this data in order to support personalized marketing. There is no silver bullet or right answer for the current embryonic state of this process, but having sophisticated analytic tools will set you on the right path. Empowering Softlines Retailers Everyone knows the world has irrevocably changed for all retailers, and softlines retailers in particular, in today s always-on, always-connected consumer-driven marketplace. To successfully compete, retailers must understand their customers and seamlessly deliver what they want and have grown to expect across all channels. JDA for Softlines Retail provides the processing platform and sophisticated tools to empower softlines retailers to accomplish the key tenets of today s retail, including: Achieving a single view of the customer Giving the customer what they want Maximizing customer engagement Delivering cross-channel fulfillment Supporting personalized marketing Softlines retailers who can achieve these goals will be the leaders in their markets, with higher revenue and loyal customers who will spread their brand message to the socially-aware masses.
Deploy JDA for Softlines Retail via JDA Cloud Services Protect your JDA software investment and increase business agility by having JDA experts manage, monitor and maintain your JDA solutions. JDA Cloud Services reduces your implementation time and risk while enabling you to quickly and easily deploy new functionality to keep pace with your changing business needs. With your software running in the cloud and upgrades included in your service, you will benefit from solutions that are optimized for your specific business requirements to help ensure that you achieve and sustain a long-term return on your investment. About JDA Software Group, Inc. JDA Software Group, Inc., The Supply Chain Company, offers the broadest portfolio of supply chain, retail merchandising, store operations and all-channel commerce solutions to help companies manage the flow of goods from raw materials to finished products and into the hands of consumers. JDA s deep industry expertise and innovative cloud platform help companies optimize inventory, labor and customer service levels. As a result, JDA solutions have become the standard for the world s leading retailers, manufacturers and distributors. WEB jda.com EMAIL info@jda.com AMERICAS US +1 800 479 7382 Canada & Latin America +1 480 308 3555 EUROPE UK & Northern Europe +44 (0) 1344 354500 France & Southern Europe +33 (0)1 56 79 27 00 Singapore +65 6305 4350 Australia +61 3 9860 1000 ASIA PACIFIC Japan South Korea 4-Color +81 3 4461 1000 +82 2 3016 0700 China India +86 21 2327 9400 +91 22 6700 0794 Copyright 2013, JDA Software Group, Inc. All rights reserved. JDA is a Registered Trademark of JDA Software Group, Inc. All other company and product names may be Trademarks, Registered Trademarks or Service Marks of the companies with which they are associated. JDA reserves the right at any time and without notice to change these materials or any of the functions, features or specifications of any of the software described herein. JDA shall have no warranty obligation with respect to these materials or the software described herein, except as approved in JDA s Software License Agreement with an authorized licensee. 12.03.13