What is Omnichannel?

In the omnichannel world, consumers don’t distinguish between online and offline. Customers want a seamless shopping experience, whether shopping online from a laptop or mobile device, by telephone or in a bricks & mortar store.

In the past, when you wanted to buy a television, you went to a local store to view the various options and buy the TV. With the growth of ecommerce, consumers browsed, researched and then purchased products online. Today consumers use tablets and mobile phones to purchase online, often comparing prices while standing in the shop itself. A recent survey by Facebook IQ found that 51% of respondents had researched a product on mobile while in-store.

In today’s omnichannel world, customers are using multiple channels to shop from a retailer for any given transaction. They buy online and pick up in-store, or use mobile in-store to research or make a purchase, or they buy in-store and initiate a return online.

The new challenge for retailers is to ensure a consistent experience across all channels – same pricing, same inventory, same purchasing options, same delivery choices. Consumers demand information about inventory levels, delivery times and shipping options, regardless of whether they are in a physical store or online.

To be a successful omnichannel retailer, companies need to create a strategy that focuses on delivering a channel-agnostic customer experience in a real-time, personalized manner across any channel. This strategy requires:

• Elimination of siloed operations
• A centralized inventory repository visible to all channels
• Aligning business processes to become more customer-centric and cross-functional
• Creating consistent customer experiences across all platforms for frictionless buying experiences
• Implementing real-time planning technology to provide customer choices at the point of order
• Capturing omnichannel data to measure success and respond quickly to customer preferences
• Deploying a centralized order management system that gives a seamless ordering experience to customers, with efficient back-end processes for fulfilling orders, reordering inventory, etc.

Omnichannel retail leaders have an “omni-view” of their business. They don’t look at in-store, online and offline shopping as different experiences – because their customers don’t look at them separately. Omnichannel leaders offer a seamless – not stitched together – experience for their customers.

Get in touch with Paragon today to find out how Paragon HDX can provide you with increased visibility across your omnichannel operation.