OMNICHANNEL RETAILING: FROM VISION TO REALITY Exploring how to meet the critical need for bringing superior anytime, anywhere shopping journeys to life For more information visit ncr.com or contact us at retail@ncr.com
Shoppers are changing: Are you changing with them? Are you ready to meet the ever-changing demands of business? Is your enterprise positioned to succeed in the new retail landscape? Learn how the rise of new shopper has driven the need for omnichannel capabilities and rapid evolution of the retail paradigm. Discover how NCR is helping retailers address market changes, to thrive today and to prepare for tomorrow.
Technology is changing the retail landscape at a faster pace than ever before. The widespread adoption of online, mobile, and social tools as well as the introduction of emerging innovations such as wearables means that retailers need to adopt quickly and efficiently to serve demanding shoppers. These shoppers are already living in an anytime, anywhere world and retailers know they need to ensure their enterprise provides the omnichannel experience. But how many of them have truly achieved omnichannel retailing that smoothly transition between myriad consumer touchpoints? The Omnichannel Challenge: Customers engage in omnichannel shopping practices without thinking twice about the difficulty it causes retailers to make it work retailers are charged with executing difficult tasks by a demanding boss who can t be argued with shoppers. RIS News: Revealing Causes of Omnichannel Failure (2015) The answer is, not many. A recent Forrester study uncovered that a staggering 94% of retailers have significant barriers to becoming an integrated omnichannel company.* To support effective omnichannel retailing, traditional barriers must be torn down between in-store, online and mobile channels, replaced by complementary and integrated systems that deliver a converged experience. This gives shoppers consistent, frictionless interaction with the retailer, regardless of channel. Whether they are shopping online, in the store, or on the go, shoppers should have their relevant data (purchase history, preferences, personalized offers, and more) synchronized to offer the convenience and consistency they expect. Here, we explore the circumstances that have made omnichannel retailing so critical, and what retailers can do to make it a reality. *Source: Forrester/Accenture: Customer Desires vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding the Omnichannel Commerce Gap (2014)
The Growth in Demand for Omnichannel Retailing New, consumer-centric technologies and increasing competition have been transforming the retail landscape for many years. The balance of power has decidedly shifted from suppliers and retailers to well-connected, well-informed shoppers who expect the same interaction with retail brands across multiple channels. For example, while the majority of shoppers want to access digital content in store and report performing digital-shopping related activities before/during shopping trips, 68% expect sales associates to provide product expertise while in the physical store.* New channels are constantly emerging online became a prevalent alternative to shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, followed by the rise of mobile shopping with the explosion of smartphones and tablets. Retailers have typically addressed these channels separately, and are therefore challenged in representing a cohesive brand and delivering consistent service to shoppers across channels and touchpoints. This is due to the fact that many existing retail Infrastructures have not originally been designed to natively handle multi-directional data communication and synchronization. Unfortunately, this has made the adoption of new technologies and preparations for changes in the way consumers shop difficult and cumbersome. Omnichannel: The New Must-Have for Retailers 63% of retailers see distributed order management (DOM) with POS front-end as their future POS architecture Source: IHL (2015) 86% of retailers plan to implement a unified commerce system consolidating key data, business rules and functionality Source: NRF (2015) The resources needed to support a range of siloed IT systems with disparate information and digital and physical channels has proven to be complicated, time-consuming and costly. Maintaining these fragmented silos not only contradicts retailers vision of seamless, omnichannel retailing it can also result in poor alignment, inconsistent service, low cost-efficiency and slower time-to-market. It also conflicts with customers expectations for a smooth and consistent retail experience. Having disparate interactions with the retailer at the in-store POS, self-checkout or customer information kiosk, online, and on mobile shopping applications, can all diminish the perception of the brand. Today s shoppers expect to find consistent items, prices, availability, payment methods and promotions across all channels, and require the ability to switch between channels with ease. Putting Omnichannel Retailing into Practice For retailers, omnichannel retailing is all about the ability to fully and appropriately meet these consumer demands today, while strategically planning ahead to quickly adopt to the changes tomorrow will bring. With legacy systems, this is a virtually impossible to do. In many cases, existing systems make omnichannel retailing cost- and time-prohibitive, demanding extensive financial and staff investments in IT. This can make deploying additional touch points such as introduction of mobile apps cumbersome and expensive. *Sources: Forrester/Accenture: Customer Desires vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding the Omnichannel Commerce Gap (2014) & Deloitte Development LLC (2014)
As such, retailers need first and foremost to consolidate all shopper data within a single, unified repository. They must also abstract the data and business logic from the front-end interfaces serving store touch points, online and mobile applications, utilizing a common code base to effectively eliminate traditional barriers between different sales channels. This enables frictionless interaction with shoppers across all touchpoints by creating continuous, integrated engagements. Below, we recommend an approach that supports retailers in establishing and maintaining enhanced, next-level relationships with shoppers. This approach helps empower retailers to differentiate themselves from competitors, as well as boost brand recognition and loyalty with consistent shopper experiences based on unified catalogs, pricing and promotions delivered reliably across all sales channels. NCR Retail ONE: Delivering Omnichannel Retailing Today, Tomorrow & Beyond To empower retailers live up to the demand of today s consumers to have frictionless shopping experiences, NCR introduces NCR Retail ONE, an innovative commerce hub that will enable retailers to do everything necessary to pioneer and progress to a fully connected digital ecosystem. This new solution helps answer the omnichannel needs of today, while strategically preparing for a successful future. NCR Retail ONE embodies the approach to omnichannel retailing recommended above. While legacy systems commonly maintain separate user interfaces, data and business logic for each individual software component, NCR Retail ONE s services-oriented architecture enables retailers to break away from integrating disparate information and functionality silos. Instead, they can migrate these systems into a unified commerce hub, powered by an innovative platform that is omnichannel by design. The solution is singular in its ability to implement forwardthinking technology without requiring that retailers discard past technology investments or drastically alter their IT environments. On the contrary NCR Retail ONE brings past and future together, providing retailers with a flexible migration path that complements their existing resources and systems.
The Fundamentals Behind NCR Retail ONE NCR Retail ONE is powered by a modern SOA (service oriented architecture) platform comprising a wide set of retail services. It enables easy connection to existing retailer applications such as point-of-sale (POS), self-checkout, ecommerce, and others. Further, it supports rapid deployment of innovative digital capabilities, including digital receipts, digital coupons, remote mobile applications, and more. NCR Retail ONE features a modern connectivity API layer, helping retailers to: Connect all mission critical retail applications to produce a unified system utilizing technical and retail services, as well as a centralized management within the platform Gain access to a rich selection of retail services, allowing rapid introduction of future applications to consumers, all of which can be integrated into existing technology environments In terms of delivery models, we offer three options: On-premise implementation as part of the retailer s existing IT systems Cloud-based service delivery, and A hybrid model combining the two
We work closely with individual retailers to determine the right model for each project to best suit their unique technological outlooks and financial capabilities. Support of these multiple models is made possible through location transparency, a fundamental feature of NCR Retail ONE, which allows users to perceive a distributed system as a single, integrated IT environment, and provides access to services and data regardless of physical location. This capability effectively bridges any physical gap between the locations where a service is provided, where the platform is deployed, and where the user happens to be. For example, when a POS application searches an item database, it may perform lookups on the in-store system only, or search through millions of items on a remote cloud-based database completely transparently to the application. NCR Retail ONE s modularity also enables individual retailers to set their own pace of deployment, while extending utilization of past investments and adapting them to both current and future consumer needs. NCR Retail ONE: The NCR Difference NCR Retail ONE paves the way for retailers to evolve to an omnichannel environment, by leveraging their existing systems, rather than committing to burdensome transformation projects and complete system replacement. Its flexible, open connectivity layer makes it easy to link existing applications to any other current and emerging digital applications (and this way, capture new ROI from existing investments), provides retailers with a flexible migration path at their own pace, based on business and budgetary considerations. Another substantial difference is in our approach to open architecture in addition to NCR applications, 3rd party vendors can connect to the platform, ultimately paving the way to the future of the Internet of Things, where any device can potentially become a retail touchpoint. The inherent flexibility allows any future application to connect to NCR Retail ONE platform.
Becoming Channel-Neutral: Customers think in terms of need satisfaction, not channels, platforms or devices. How items or services are sourced will always be subordinate to getting the product or service they want. NCR Retail ONE demonstrates our commitment to help retailers evolve their enterprise systems into a unified, holistic solution. By enhancing not replacing the investments they have made in their technologies, we help them strategically prepare for success in the new omnichannel world. Retail TouchPoints: 2015 Outlook Guide (2015) NCR: A trusted partner with a heritage of retail innovation There s no question that retail is changing rapidly, and will continue to do so with increasing speed. Meet and exceed your shoppers expectations, engaging in meaningful interactions with them anytime, anywhere with Retail ONE. Learn more at ncr.com or call us at 1-800-CALL-NCR
Why NCR? NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) is the global leader in consumer transaction technologies, turning everyday interactions with businesses into exceptional experiences. With its software, hardware, and portfolio of services, NCR enables more than 550 million transactions daily across retail, financial, travel, hospitality, telecom and technology, and small business. NCR solutions run the everyday transactions that make your life easier. NCR is headquartered in Duluth, Georgia with over 30,000 employees and does business in 180 countries. NCR is a trademark of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries. The company encourages investors to visit its web site which is updated regularly with financial and other important information about NCR. NCR Corporation 3097 Satellite Boulevard Duluth, Georgia 30096 2015 NCR Corporation Patents Pending 15RET3240-0615 ncr.com