How are European retailers modernising their application landscapes to unlock the full potential of omnichannel? PAC Multi-Client Study 2015
Omni-Channel Presents a Huge Applications Challenge for Retailers Major changes in lifestyles, demographics and technology are forcing retail businesses to provide a more convenient and flexible service, through an increasingly diverse range of outlets and interfaces. As a result, one of the main focuses over the next five years for step up from a multichannel to a truly omni-channel strategy. Omni-channel retail is about ensuring that organizations provide a seamless experience for customers across all these channels. Offerings, pricing and promotions need to be consistent across the board, essentially providing customers with a single account. However, the move towards omni-channel poses some huge challenges for retail organizations, not least the investment required in technology, marketing and staff. A lot of these challenges are being laid at the door of the IT organization, which in many cases has only recently got to grips with integrating their primary e-commerce site with their store systems. Omni-channel is not just about having a consistent look-and-feel in terms of content and branding across the various consumer touch points, but about ensuring a seamless flow of data across what is typically a diverse and fragmented application landscape to gain a 360 degree view on the client. The move towards omnichannel retailing has become the biggest driver for investment in applications services in the retail sector. 2
Hypothesis 1 Omni-channel integration is at the top of the agenda for retailers as they look to provide a better, more seamless experience to their customers at time of unprecedented competition in the sector. 2 The IT organization within retailers is in a difficult place. On the one hand, it is charged with enabling the business to evolve towards omni-channel integration. On the other, the ongoing squeeze on consumer spending combined with escalating competition and store operations costs (energy bills, rent) means that there is huge pressure to reduce costs in order to protect margin. 3 PAC expects the fastest-growing area of retail IT spending to be standard third party applications, as organizations look to move from legacy and often homegrown systems, which can be difficult to integrate and adapt, and are dependent on skills which may no longer sit within the organization. 3
Key questions in the study Assessing the current situation Which channels do retailers currently use (physical store, webshop, catalogue, mobile, call center, social media etc)? What is the strategic importance of these different channels to their business? Investment Plans How do retailers see the strategic importance of these channels evolving over the next five years? What are the primary uses of physical retail stores and how will this change in the coming years? Omni-Channel Strategy Analysis How important will it be for retailers to have an interconnected IT environment in order to support omni-channel commerce? Where will the main challenges lie in implementing an omni-channel strategy? (realtime access to customer information at PoS, data management, consistent customer loyalty system etc) Who within the retail organization is the main force in leading the company s omnichannel strategy? 4
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