Omni-Channel Retail Guide – Unified Customer Experiences Across All Channels
Omni-channel retail has seen widespread adoption over the last decade. Brands have invested heavily in unifying commerce across physical and digital channels to meet rising customer expectations. The results have been lucrative – Omni Channel Retail customers spend 4% more on average than single-channel shoppers, according to Forrester. But omnichannel is set to reach new heights by 2024 as emerging innovations dismantle remaining barriers between channels. Let us explore the future and the evolution of omni-channel retail.
Omni Channel Retail Today
Omni-channel’s core premise is simple yet revolutionary: create a seamless brand experience across channels. This means going beyond multichannel strategies where channels operate independently. True omni-channel retail synchronizes operations and data across channels to deliver a unified brand experience.
Key capabilities that define Omni Channel Retail today include:
- Centralized inventory visibility and fulfillment across online and offline channels
- In-store pick-up and ship-from-store services
- Consistent product availability, pricing, and promotions across channels
- Universal shopping cart and account system across web, mobile and in-store
- Fully integrated CRM data and marketing campaigns across channels
- Seamless transactions like scan-and-go checkout and cross-channel returns
Top omni-channel retailers like Target, Nordstrom, and Best Buy exhibit these capabilities to erase boundaries between physical and digital channels. But there remains progress to be made. A 2018 study found less than 15% of retailers describe their operations as fully omni-channel. Let us see what innovations will drive the next wave of omni-channel excellence.
Emerging Omni-Channel Innovations
A variety of emerging technologies will enable retailers to remove the remaining separation between physical and digital operations over the next 2-3 years:
- Unified Commerce Platforms: Retailers like REI are implementing unified commerce suites from vendors like Salesforce and Oracle that consolidate all systems into a single stack spanning POS, order management, inventory, fulfillment, CRM, and finance functions across all channels and locations. This breaks down data siloes to enable centralized orchestration.
- AI and Predictive Analytics: Leading retailers are leveraging AI engines to crunch billions of data points from across channels – transaction history, customer demographics, online behavior, inventory, weather, etc. – to predict demand, optimize marketing, tailor recommendations, and streamline supply chains. This amplifies personalization and efficiency.
- Advanced Fulfillment Automation: Automated fulfillment centers that utilize goods-to-person robotics, smart conveyors, and wearables enable retailers like Walmart to fulfill a huge variety of online orders directly from stores with minimal labor. This blurs the lines between online and offline fulfillment.
- Smart Checkout: Cashierless stores powered by sensor fusion, computer vision, and AI, like Amazon Go, are removing traditional checkout completely. Coupled with scan-and-go apps, this provides customers with seamless in-store shopping and payment without waiting in line.
- Virtual and Augmented Reality: Immersive technologies enable customers to visualize products in new dimensions online and in-store. Clothing brands allow shoppers to digitally “try on” items, while brands like IKEA have AR mobile apps that virtually place furniture in your home. This improves digital to physical experiences.
- Connected IoT Devices: Emerging smart appliances, mirrors, and AR glasses will allow customers to order products by talking to their household devices. Voice shopping blends mobile, online, and in-store commerce seamlessly.
Together, these innovations will expand the dimensions of unified commerce and blur the boundaries between online and offline retail.
Benefits of Next-Gen Omni-Channel Retail
This new wave of advanced Omni Channel Retail capabilities will unlock a multitude of benefits for leading retailers:
- 10-15% increase in revenue growth by providing seamless purchasing anywhere, anyhow
- 20-30% reduction in fulfillment costs due to optimized, integrated supply chains
- 60-80% reduction in checkout and payment friction, resulting in higher conversion
- 30-50% decrease in out-of-stock via centralized inventory visibility
- 10-20% operating cost savings from unified platforms and automation
- 2-3X increase in customer lifetime value by deepening engagement
- Vastly improved insights from AI-powered unified analytics
In essence, next-generation omni-channel innovation will culminate in the complete convergence of physical and digital retail – not just integrated but indistinguishable. Customers will flow effortlessly between stores, the web, mobile, and devices to discover, try, and purchase products anytime, anywhere.
Previously disjointed fulfillment operations will merge into unified supply chains optimized through AI and automation. Data will seamlessly synchronize across all touchpoints to enable predictive marketing and sales. Retailers will unlock unprecedented agility, efficiency, and customer-centricity.
Tips for the Future
- Implement unified commerce systems to consolidate all retail operations on a single platform across channels. This breaks down data and process siloes.
- Leverage AI and machine learning for predictive analytics, personalized marketing, demand forecasting, and inventory optimization across channels.
- Establish super-automated fulfillment facilities, such as micro–fulfillment centers and goods-to-person robotics; integrate online and offline order delivery.
- Allow for frictionless checkout through scan-and-go mobile apps, visual recognition, and cashierless stores to merge the physical store with digital purchases.
- Employ upcoming technologies involving virtual reality, augmented reality, and smart appliances to provide a memorable, unfaceted purchase observation.
- Implement strong ship-from-store and BOPIS setups that would allow easier order fulfillment and turn from the channels.
- The statement should read, ‘Give associates mobile tools and cross-channel visibility required in creating flawless personalized services across the channels.
- Integrate order management and CRM systems to allow uniform pricing, promotions, and cheap essays with professional writers’ custom experience among consumers across channels.
- Wide his-resolution data across channels should be provided through master data management and IoT sensors.
- Nurture an organization mindset tailored towards delivering a unified omni-channel customer experience.
No Room for Silos
Retailers lacking mature omnichannel capabilities today risk a painful demise. The need for Omni Channel Retail integration and flexibility will only grow with younger generations. Already, 60% of Gen Z consumers expect the ability to start and finish a transaction regardless of channel or device.
Legacy players clinging to channel silos and fragmented systems face dire consequences – market share losses, declining loyalty, shrinking margins, and irrelevance. On the other hand, Omni Channel Retail consumers pursuing truly unified commerce will enjoy market dominance and runaway success.
The future belongs to brands without borders. As emerging technologies dismantle the last vestiges of channel separation, retailers must erase any lingering divides between physical and digital operations. The next era of omni-channel excellence is dawning. The time for retailers to unify is now.
