Wanted: Chief Omnichannel Officers
Despite strides many retailers made this past holiday season integrating their physical and digital operations, omnichannel remains a highly underdeveloped opportunity for an industry looking to keep pace with shoppers.
New research from e-commerce enabler Shopatron highlights the opportunity for the retail industry to make further omnichannel inroads. A study the firm conducted in December found 59 percent of retailers said they did not have plans to deploy new order fulfillment solutions like ship-from-store or in-store pickup. The study also revealed that 71 percent of retailers reported that they do not have a position in their company with “omnichannel” in the title. What’s more, many retailers have put off implementing an enterprise-grade order management system because of the high investment costs, lack of integration with existing systems and the lack of time and resources dedicated to deployment.
The finds of the survey are a self-serving as Shopatron is a provider of distributed order management solutions, but it is hardly the first company to document the retailers’ challenges of offer shoppers the seamless brand experience they desire. Other research highlight by Shopatron and others indicates a lack of process integration, limited software capabilities and limited inventory visibility are the top three challenges retailers face in offering store fulfillment of online orders.
“Last year we heard from many retailers, of all sizes, on their reluctance to make the full omnichannel leap because of these barriers for implementation,” said Shopatron founder and CEO Ed Stevens. “That is why we announced the free two-year pilot program to give retailers the opportunity to use a world-class order fulfillment platform on a trial-basis. Cloud-based distributed order management removes those barriers of cost, allowing API integration with retailers’ existing systems, and deployment of a scalable solution within 90 days.”
Shopatron’s study also revealed that 41 percent of retail fulfillment partners would reduce their buying from a brand they stock in their retail channels if the brand offered “direct-to-consumer,” and 23 percent reported they would stop buying from the brand all together. However, 57 percent of the retail fulfillment partners in the study said they would like brands that they stock in their retail channels to sell on eBay and other marketplaces if the resulting orders were routed to their store for fulfillment.
“There is a very significant opportunity for retailers and brands to offer direct-to-consumer order fulfillment options. For brands, it is an easy way to drive online sales, and for retailers it is the perfect opportunity to strengthen their relationships with customers because you are getting their online orders to them quickly with the possibility to have a paying customer in the store,” Stevens said. “Retailers need to know that they are at a critical point where they need to commit to omnichannel, now. It’s no longer in-store or online, it’s in-store with online.”