Survey: Retailers struggle with omnichannel commerce

Paris - Most retailers (65%) struggle with getting omnichannel commerce right and cite underperforming technology, changing IT trends and the complex organizational infrastructure as the primary reasons. According to a recent survey from Ipanema Technologies, retailers see the customer-centric experience as including excellent customer service (58%), fast transactions (55%) and interchangeable purchase channels (49%), but only 35% of respondents describe their customer experience as excellent.



Technology issues most retailers cite as impediments to omnichannel commerce include a sprawling IT infrastructure (74%), business pressure to provide technology innovation (71%) and cost pressures. In addition, companies are wrestling with a host of IT priorities such as cloud deployment (57%) and mobile application development (55%), supply chain optimization (54%), increasing bandwidth (52%) and server virtualization (52%), all requiring network design changes.



The majority (76%) of retailers recognize the importance of excellent application performance but lack confidence in the ability of their IT infrastructure to deliver it (78%), roll out new applications (78%) or manage application service level agreements (77%).



In addition, retailers believe that guaranteeing consistent and high levels of application performance can have a major impact on customer/shopper satisfaction (54%), employee productivity (50%), brand reputation (49%) and company financial targets (41%) In fact, if retailers made significant improvements to their omnichannel approach by the end of the year, more than half would expect to see an increase in sales (55%), increased market share (47%), positive word of mouth (47%) and cost savings (46%).