Multi-Channel Commerce & Retailing

Retailers are increasingly considering the use of social commerce technologies to enhance and personalize the customer shopping experience online.

In a recent discussion I had with the CIO of a 100 year old retailer, he brought up a point of exploring social networking ideas to attract the 20-30 year old customers. Likewise, retailers like Nordstrom have experimented with a designer collections site to attract the younger fashion concious customer earlier on in their lifestage cycle. 

This seems quite an interesting trend cutting across retail segments and the usage of customer reviews and feedback forums are influencing shopping cart conversion and buying decisions. Retailers have experiened benefits with social commerce technology providers such as Bazaarvoice.

Consumer generated content can be effectively leveraged by companies in testimonials, product feedback and reviews, new product ideas, target marketing new concepts and understanding the positive and negative dispositions of customers to products, brands and the shopping experience.

I like Patty Seybold's perspective on this subject http://outsideinnovation.blogs.com/pseybold/2006/12/are_you_leverag.html . Our advice to clients is that they must ensure that the "voice of the customer" is central to the way we design the shopping experience.

Posted by Ashish Jandial at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ecommerce implementations programs are complex and challenging. Not all retailers have the internal capabilities or scale to execute on them successfully. Interestingly, a leading research analyst confronted me with the question - "So what are the challenges that we need to be aware of before embarking on ecommerce implementation programs?"

In our perspective there are several challenges that retailers need to consider when they embark on their ecommerce programs:

Most clients attach inadequate focus to the organization change impact and what it means to people roles and responsibilities. For example, how does the IT organization for the online business coordinate and engage with the Corporate IT organization? What is the change readiness and training impact to people as they implement the new technology?

In several cases, the effort impact to legacy and backend systems has been underestimated. This is usually a case because of insufficient knowledge and documentation of the incumbent systems. Likewise the effort associated with the customization and integration of the ecommerce platform with existing systems (which in a specific client example included integration with over 30 existing systems) 

The other issue is the elaborate definition of the content management and workflow processes and the retraining of merchant teams so that they can effectively use the new content management systems.

Performance tuning is another area that gets pushed to the backburner and sufficient importance needs to be attached to the architectural implications of scalability, availability and performance.

Other aspects that retailers need to consider include social networking and the usage of Web2.0 http://www.infosys.com/industries/retail-distribution/multi-channel-commerce.asp technologies to improve the overall quality of the user experience.

Posted by Ashish Jandial at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A leading research analyst who covers ecommerce and multi-channel retailing asked us about our point of view on the role of ecommerce in the overall multi-channel retailing strategy and which of the two is a driving/determining force.

According to Patrick Ogawa (AVP-Infosys Technologies), the ecommerce strategy decision is becoming a Board level decision especially given that the online business is reaching scale of revenues of several billion$.

In some cases, clients are approaching their ecommerce strategy as part of their overall Multi-Channel vision and hence are trying to integrate their item & customer management, merchandising, inventory and order management organizations, processes and technologies.

Other retailers are realizing that their aging commerce platform is not scalable to support future business growth, and hence feel the urgency to replace this technology. While they make those technology investments, they should ensure that they don't lose sight of the longer term vision of multi-channel retailing.

Posted by Ashish Jandial at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)