RetailT
echnology
shorten the sales process and facilitate an omnichannel experience. Jeff Paynter, vice president of omnichannel retail systems for Ashley Furniture, commented: “We can create a shopping cart in one channel and then migrate it to whatever channel the customer happens to be using at that moment.” Future plans are to create a mobile app, which will draw on the customer’s account information and create wishlists to direct customers to specific items within the retail stores, or use proximity awareness to push out coupons for nearby items. Getting IT integration right also applies as much
to the back end as it does to the front: inventory, supply chain management, marketing, getting the right product to the right place at the right time. Without all of these components working to support the omnichannel experience, it all falls down. Sarah Taylor, Oracle Retail senior industry
director, said: “Investing in planning applications and inventory management is essential. For example although click & collect is great for the customer, it requires sophisticated inventory management.” Sackman cited the same capabilities at Argos:
“We are able to see exactly what stock is where at any one point in time. We also have a view of the stock position further up the supply chain, as we can see what’s on order with suppliers and potentially make product available to customers before it arrives in our distribution centres. Having such a complete view, which goes beyond the Argos systems and leverages our trust in suppliers, means we have true stock visibility and can use this for the customer’s benefit.” Amouage, a luxury fragrance house, is another
example of a successful transformation to a single platform. The company was using multiple IT systems that could not easily extract data such as inventory and financial consolidation figures from its retail outlets. “If I had to generate a report it was done
manually which was very time consuming,” said Sethu Gopalakrishna Pillai, Amouage IT manager.
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“We also had challenges in developing appropriate sales strategies because we could not capture customer data in our legacy system.” Indeed, marketing is another area to benefit from
greater IT integration. Better and informed decision making as regards pricing, campaigns and customer segments can be made if the retailer can see what the customer does instore, online or in other channels and when. Again this comes back to holding data centrally
so that there is a single version of operational data for use by all business functions. Integration can also enable better product hierarchies, which makes life easier at both front and back end. Sackman continued: “Better organisation of
product at a central point holds many advantages, such as the ability to expand our ranges and introduce new ones more quickly, dynamically trade business online and change pricing and not be tied to six monthly catalogue cycles. “For the customer, better organisation means they
can search or browse our ranges based on hierarchies or categories and events they understand. For example, back to school or birthdays. For a business that was traditionally catalogue-led, digital channels offer much greater flexibility in organising products.” But with such demands on any single platform,
is outsourcing the solution? Certainly managing systems so inherently complex and in a constant state of evolution is not traditionally a core activity for most retailers. In addition, the consequences of system failure or data inaccuracies could be serious. Amouage is one company to have taken the
decision to outsource. And John Lewis is one of the few UK high profile retailers to have gone public in this particular conundrum. It grew its IT capability with an in-house bespoke system before realising that some outsourcing was the best option for the company. But for others, retaining control is key – although outsourcing is an option it is far from the only solution.
Spring/Summer 2014 23
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