“Digital” in the 21st century is really a proxy for online, mobile, and robotics. It has been increasingly pervasive, with online/mobile delivering easy order capture and robotics delivering evolutionary warehouse and distribution processes – all requiring significantly less human intervention.
Even the biggest and best retailers continue to face challenges when trying to provide excellent customer service and increase profitability. Watch this short video to learn about omnichannel retail.
Omnichannel retail has been implemented to varying degrees over the last seven or eight years. The concept really became viable with the advent of robust, easy-to-use mobile phones and tablets, which for in-store associates, were convenient gateways to successful clienteling and inventory management applications.
Putting the right omnichannel retail strategy in place provides the direction many leading retailers need to successfully transition to a fulfillment approach that improves customer service and profitability. Implemented hastily, however, it can disrupt customer experience and do more harm than good.
Retailers, even those with mature omnichannel strategies, can have doubts. A successful omnichannel approach — the model of ordering, shipping, receiving, and returning products in absolutely any channel — requires an optimal balance of e-commerce, brick-and-mortar retail, and fulfillment and distribution capabilities.
Taking a strategic – not a reactionary – approach to omni-channel distribution is the key to identifying opportunities to consistently achieve same-day/next-day delivery and thereby improve customer service as well as profitability. But while the promise of omnichannel is a win-win for consumers and retailers alike, many build an omni-channel fulfillment distribution model via a series of year-over-year IT projects and revised business processes, when best practice is to fundamentally redesign the fulfillment model to optimize the customer experience and minimize the cost of increasingly complex supply chain processes.
Peak shipping season will be here before we know it. (Although there’s an argument to be made the current pandemic IS peak shipping season…) And as retailers move towards the end of 2020, returns will predictably increase. But just because retailers can predict this surge doesn’t mean managing it is easy. Returns management, when left without a strategy, can negatively impact profits. Here are seven strategies to simplify returns and control costs:
