Omnichannel is no longer a buzzword, it is reality: half of all retailers combine physical and online sales channels, and more and more organizations are focusing on innovation and customer focus. This step towards an integrated experience is a strong foundation for the future. The willingness to embrace technology and focus on customer expectations proves that the retail sector is agile and ambitious.
However, these new omnichannel ambitions also bring internal pain points to the surface. Below, we highlight three perspectives—IT, shop floor, and customer—and how retailers with vision can turn these challenges into opportunities.
IT perspective:
From island to ecosystem
Many retail IT teams struggle to keep countless separate systems running. Outdated cash registers, a separate e-commerce platform, standalone inventory programs—they function as islands. This leads to fragmented data, cumbersome processes, and a lack of real-time synchronization between channels. The result: limited insight and slow decision-making. Retailers report that, on average, they only have an accurate overview of their inventory ~70% of the time. Crucial information about sales and stock is therefore not always up to date, which poses risks for both online and offline sales.
No wonder that more than a quarter of the retail executives surveyed consider “upgrading technology and a modern POS system” to be among their top priorities for the coming year. A modern, integrated architecture is urgently needed. Omnichannel has now found its way into many retailers' stores, but the underlying IT architecture has yet to catch up with this ambition.
Scalability is essential here: outdated systems creak at the seams when additional stores, web shops, or sales channels are added. IT teams are therefore looking for solutions that bring all these streams together into a single, clear whole, with less duplication of work and more real-time insights.
Store floor perspective:
When employees become brand ambassadors
Even in a digital world, physical stores remain a powerful channel for interaction and experience. A well-supported team can add value on the shop floor that is difficult to replicate online: personal advice, empathy, and service. However, in practice, technology on the shop floor often lags behind retailers' ambitions.
Instead of being able to give their full attention to the customer, employees are busy putting out fires in the operation, at the expense of customer focus and productivity. After all, today's shoppers expect all points of contact to be connected and seamless. In non-food retail in particular, store employees must continue to surprise and pamper customers with a service experience that cannot be replicated online. This requires front-line employees to have the right digital skills and tools at their disposal.
When employees have direct access to customer data and inventory, and have user-friendly mobile devices at their disposal, they can go the extra mile in service. Some retailers are already investing in this: the use of mobile POS devices that allow staff to check customers out on the spot has been shown to increase customer satisfaction and even sales. Such modern tools make work on the shop floor more efficient and give employees the freedom to provide optimal assistance to customers browsing the store, without queues at the checkouts growing.
Customer perspective:
The demand for a seamless omnichannel experience
Today's consumers are not limited to a single channel. Customers expect a consistent experience and service, regardless of whether they are interacting with the retailer via the webshop, in a branch, or via social media. Research shows that more than three-quarters of consumers expect the same experience and information across all channels.
For example, more than half of online shoppers first check whether a product is in stock in the store before they bother to go and buy it physically. Inconsistencies are not forgiven: an item that is listed as available online but is sold out in the store, or a price difference between the online store and the physical store, immediately undermines trust. The same applies to a customer who has to repeat their story several times because each channel works with a different system.
Tolerance for such hiccups is low in the on-demand era. In fact, 62% of shoppers say they will not return after one failed or frustrating transaction experience. Consumers expect retailers to recognize and understand them, on every channel. That means silos between online and offline must disappear: prices, stock levels, and service information must be the same everywhere. Retailers who fail to do so risk not only a one-time lost sale, but also permanent customer loss.
The way forward:
Integration, scalability, and modern architecture
The key to the solution lies in integration. Only by enabling systems to communicate seamlessly with each other can a single version of the truth about customers, products, and inventory be created. An integrated omnichannel strategy, coupled with a compelling customer experience, will drive higher sales in the store of the future. In practice, this means that retailers need to modernize their IT landscape.
The monolithic all-in-one system of the past is making way for composable commerce: a modular architecture in which best-of-breed components (POS, e-commerce, CRM, inventory management, etc.) are connected to each other via APIs. This approach offers flexibility and scalability and retailers can relatively easily add new features or channels without replacing the entire backbone. Composable platforms also enable faster innovation, which is essential in an era of rapidly changing retail trends. Real-time data synchronization is the holy grail in this regard. When every transaction, whether online or offline, is processed immediately in a single central system, the frustration of “sold out” due to outdated inventory levels disappears.
The importance of this is underlined by predictions for the future: according to PwC, a quarter of retailers are expected to have no physical stock in their stores by 2030, making strong integration with e-commerce and centralised stock indispensable. Retailers who invest in such an integrated architecture now are arming themselves for that future. The good news is that the business case is positive. Dutch research shows that 28% of retailers are already seeing a positive impact on their results from digital technology, and one in three is seeing an increase in sales after embracing e-commerce. The majority therefore plan to increase their investments in digital channels, driven by the conviction that omnichannel is no longer a luxury but a necessity (“omnichannel is do or die”).
Uniting people and technology for omnichannel success
A future-proof retail strategy embraces both high-tech and high-touch. Integration alone is not enough, it must be accompanied by cultural change and training so that employees can make the most of the technology. Scalable cloud solutions and a modern, user-friendly POS (preferably cloud-native and device-independent) give retail organizations the agility to grow. Think of mobile POS and tablets on the shop floor, but also up-to-date order management that allows online orders to be shipped from the nearest store (ship-from-store).
By connecting all channels, retailers create a seamless omnichannel customer journey: consumers can browse online, try on items in the store, pay via an app, and later receive service via social media, without any information being lost. This requires a central omnichannel interface that acts as the backbone between the different systems. This interface must synchronize inventory and customer data in real time and provide store employees with tools to gain insight into order history or inventory availability with a single click. The result is a win-win-win: the customer gets a consistent, top-notch experience, staff can work more efficiently and with greater satisfaction, and the organization sees an increase in both operational efficiency and revenue.
Recent figures support this: omnichannel retailers are performing better than purely physical players, and technology is increasingly becoming the distinguishing factor in retaining customers. With the right strategic choices, retailers can bridge the gap between high customer expectations and the reality on the shop floor.
Tilroy supports retailers in this as an omnichannel interface that connects backend and customer-facing channels. Thanks to real-time data processing, flexible integrations, and a scalable cloud architecture, Tilroy helps retailers deliver on their promise of a consistent, frictionless customer experience.
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