As IT experts, you may not know which brands are in or out or which are this year's best sellers or out-and-out failures. But you certainly are adept at finding, integrating, and supporting the systems your company's inventory experts can use to make sure they have plenty of this year's hot items and none of the failures -- whether shoppers prefer your company's online or physical store.
Despite the growing evidence of the importance of integrating the two worlds, many retailers continue to operate their e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores separately, straining company resources, IT infrastructure, and shoppers' patience. In fact, half of today's retailers have incomplete or no integration between their physical and online stores, according to a report released this month by Edgell Communications (registration required).
Why is that important? As the branding consulting firm Interbrand wrote in the introduction to its annual Best Retail Brands report:
Perhaps the biggest challenge for a more agile brand is keeping all the brand touchpoints connected and aligned with the home store, where the entire brand offering is available. Additionally, maintaining the expected level of customer service, which in today's competitive landscape becomes exponentially more critical in helping every shopper interaction lead to brand adoption.
IT is the cable that connects the virtual and physical worlds. Though some shoppers may interact solely with one side or the other, many more will glide between them, perhaps searching online and picking up at the local store, buying online and returning to a brick-and-mortar site, or showrooming -- coming to the store to compare prices but opening themselves to the opportunity to buy from one of your sites.
There's no doubt retailers would love to leverage the relationship between a store in, say, one part of Manhattan and one six blocks away, but most are not taking the same approach with their online operations. A measly 25 percent of respondents to an Edgell Communications survey offer a fully integrated store and online presence, including product mix and pricing. As a result, shoppers could find one price online and another in the store, or they could locate a product on the Internet but not at their local shop. Edgell also found that one-fourth of retailer Websites are not e-commerce-enabled. Envision the frustration of shoppers who, upon finding an item they want, cannot actually buy it.
Enter IT. With their knowledge of e-commerce, collaboration, inventory, and accounting solutions, technologists are the logical intersection between online and physical stores. If midsized companies don't have in-house expertise, plenty of solution providers that specialize in retail are available for consultation on these projects.
These experts already have c-level mindshare. After all, 80 percent of respondents to the Edgell survey said sharing inventory online is important. Nevertheless, only 15 percent do it. Eighty-three percent are concerned about the new and growing trend of showrooming. But many are lethargic about acting on their concerns; only 12 percent have built a strategy to address this, and 4 percent consider themselves well equipped today.
These strategies include in-store matching of online prices, in-store pickup for online orders, providing consistent cross-channel experiences, giving the sales force real-time information, exclusive in-store products, reducing the number of showrooming-prone products, offering more in-store promotions, and preventing barcode scanning. Yet many of these tactics require a level of integration that doesn't exist at many retailers today.
IT can become retail heroes. They have the tools and the knowledge. They just need a green light to integrate the virtual and physical worlds.
@nimantha.de, it may be that they--whover 'they' are, presumably individual retail stores or chanis--do have a strategy. But it's not obvious to me what it is, as their initiatives seem fragmented and otherwise flawed.
As far as it being impossible to run without strategy, that's just not true. Manhy people and businesses spend their entire existence doing just that. I myself am not so good at planning, and tend to react rather than taking proactive measures. I could pretend that is my strategy, being flexible and prepared to jump in whatever direction was necessary, but it's really more that I'm lazy and confused and put off the jumping until the very last minute. I don't think I'm the only one going through life that way, and it actually does work for me most of the time ;)
Oopps.. Sorry Chuck itwas for you. Anyway how do you say that they do not have a stratergy to change ? Any studies which have proved it ? I think its impossible to run without stratergy isnt it ?
@nimantha.de, I'm not sure if your question was addressed to me (Chuck not chick) but I'm going to answer anyway. I think they need to establish a strategy. I am not convinced they actually have one to change; I think they need to identify their goal and develop a plan to reach it.
@Alison I do wonder what exactly makes such retailers decide to promote their sites or their stores more. I often receive coupons that are valid in-store only for places like OfficeMax, Staples, Kohl's, and Target. Banana Republic, Gap, etc. will often run a special in store that offers a larger discount than what is available online at the same time. But once in a while, some of the same retailers will offer online coupons that only work for online orders.
These inconveniences have now frustrated the customers so much that shopping is no more an overwhelming experience.
Different brands and retailers should learn this thing now that customers want easiness along with the good quality products, loyalty points and discounts on future purchases and since customers have now numerous choices of brands for a single product, thus in the upcoming days companies will be competing for the level of comfort they provide to their customers more than the products they offer.
One reason for the disconnect bw the two is that a while ago, web branding and online stores were thought of as more of and advertising tool than a marketing tool, but latel because of the increase in the confidence level of the customers in online shopping, the burden has dramatically shifted on the e-stores. So compnies who never started off on the right foot of thier e-stores now face problems of maintaining the quality standards when compared to e-store giants like amazon and ebay.
I am shocked by how many have not integrated both worlds of brick and mortar to their onlinepresence. I wonder why they are slow to do it? It seems like most companies would want to thrive and succeed, which this would help them to do just that. Is it the cost or is it more of them worrying about not knowing what they are doing (ie: losing control)?
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Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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