MULTICHANNEL
09
PALMER AND HARVEY
LAUNCHES E-COMMERCE SITE
P
almer and Harvey, the UK’s largest Deliveries will be made the same time
wholesaler, has launched a new as telesales orders, within 48 hours of
transactional website to offer 24-hour ordering, while mobile access and additional
ordering and provide greater fl exibility to user benefi ts are also in development for
customers. future service enhancement.
Palmer and Harvey already provides Richard Hayhoe, Palmer and Harvey
customers with a telesales service and has marketing director said: “Our site is
now launched its new website to provide an unique in that it is fully integrated with our
expanded service where retailers can place existing telesales system. Our face-to-face
or top up their orders online at any time. contact with our customers is something
The site, which was trialled extensively with we pride ourselves on and it remains a
a small number of retailers, has been designed central to our service offering. However,
to be convenient and easy to navigate the in order to meet increasing demand for
wholesaler’s 7,000 chilled, ambient and frozen greater fl exibility, we have supplemented
lines by category or type. Customers’ past this service with our new transactional
orders and ‘favourite’ items will be uploaded website, which is designed to add real
and logged on the system, with Palmer and value to the busy lives of those retailers
Harvey recommended products clearly listed. who use it.”
MULTICHANNEL IT MUST
DELIVER CONSISTENCY
The diversity of customer touch points costs, so retailers are able to do more with functionality improves, offerings like ours can
available nowadays means retailers must less, as well as scaling for peaks in demand,” help future-proof investments.”
ensure they offer a consistent and integrated he said. Fletcher added: “Retailers need to
shopping experience across each channel, be Ravi Shankar Pandey, senior vice consider both the customer requirements
it in-store, online, via a catalogue, over the president and UK head of NIIT Technologies and the commercial returns for the services
phone or while mobile. also stressed the importance of a “seamless delivered. LCP’s experience shows that one
Martin Fletcher, LCP Consulting principal customer experience” as one that would size does not fi t all, with the requirement
told Retail Technology: “Consumer shopping differentiate the best multichannel retailers. for segmentation of products and services
trends and the economic crisis have forced But NIIT’s nearshoring approach to business across sales channels and the different
retailers to re-evaluate their multichannel process outsourcing (BPO) could provide, fulfi lment routes. Deploying integrated cost,
strategies. Those that haven’t reacted quickly “a commodity retail technology platform on activity and capacity planning capabilities will
and developed a multichannel proposition which to build new functionality, like click-to- provide clear understanding of what can be
have declined or disappeared”. For example, call online, which can maximise existing web done profi tably.”
Borders’ rise and fall is symbolic of this, he assets and provide as much as a 17% sales Andrew Walker, chief executive of UK
added. uplift, for example,” he said. e-commerce specialist, Portaltech focused
As these new strategies develop, Michael Ross, director of eCommera, on emerging mobile opportunities: “For
Capgemini retail consultant, Steve Sutton which has just won the contract to provide multichannel retailers, the mobile phone is
added that demands on the multichannel the London Olympics 2012 online store poised to become a truly inspirational fourth
operating model to support them will infrastructure, said his company was an retail channel that extends their online
require increasing fl exible retail IT systems example of how wrapping best-of-breed, brand proposition and presence literally
to cope with high growth, different third-party technologies with a service onto the shopfl oor. Delivering mobile
demand profi les to the traditional store layer could provide cost-effective agility. versions of their websites to shoppers on
environment, ever increasing service levels “As multichannel technology becomes the move, retailers will be able to add an
and uncertain channel mix. “Outsourcing commoditised, it becomes more important extra dimension of brand value right at the
to the likes of Capgemini can offer reduced to get the basics right,” he said. “But, as point of sale,” he said.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
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