It is Costing You to Fake the Omni-channel Experience

It is now second nature for consumers to research, shop for items, and return items across multiple channels.  And they expect that it will be a seamless experience across these different channels when they are shopping with the same brand.  But, what does that mean for a retailer that operates stores under a few different brands.  This retailer operates through specialty department stores, catalogs, web sites, and a wholesale distribution unit that distributes to other specialty retail stores.  Their processes had outgrown their current system and they needed a change.

By adding an enterprise order management system, IBM Sterling Order Management, to their back-end systems, the retailer can now provide a seamless experience to their customers no matter where they are interacting with the business.  Sterling Order Management acts as an enterprise-wide platform that provides a single view of supply and demand across all channels and sources of inventory.  In addition, it provides a smart order promising and fulfillment engine that optimizes how orders are promised, allocated, and fulfilled.

At this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) conference, the buzz focused on the fact that omni-channel retailing was now a reality.  However, many companies struggle to provide this seamless experience because of siloed existing systems that require constant and costly integration attention.  It is costing these companies more money in IT costs and lost customers than it would cost to implement a foundational solution that will help enable a seamless omni-channel experience.

Do you want to provide your customers with the choice of buying from anywhere, receiving from anywhere, and returning to anywhere?  It’s not about completely overhauling your entire commerce operation – no one can afford to do that – but look at it strategically.  The right order management system can take you where you need to go.