Considering how often merchants must have heard about the importance of omnichannel retail by this point, some industry professionals might believe that the message has been received and implemented across most businesses, or that decision-makers have at least started the process. But according to eMarketer, many retailers have fallen short of this goal. 

While most merchants strive to create a robust omnichannel shopping experience, the source highlighted findings from Retail Systems Research that discovered less than 20 percent of retail organizations have achieved full synchronization, while many were not even working to that point. Without these connections in place, customers may have difficulty returning items to brick-and-mortar stores that they purchased online, or experiencing options such as in-store pickup for their ecommerce shopping. Even companies that want to provide these benefits will be unable to without greater transparency, information sharing and versatile sales platforms. Furthermore, chains could be missing out on potentially critical data that might enhance sales and improve productivity. 

Some businesses lack even basic omnichannel services
According to an IBM Tealeaf and Econsultancy study, even simple offerings such as online information about brick-and-mortar locations and hours do not exist for many survey respondents (37 percent). In every other category, merchants fell short of the diverse options necessary for omnichannel shopping, such as not having a social media presence, no near field communication (NFC) devices for mobile payments and a variety of other services that fulfill full integration of offline and online business operations. Emarketer noted that in-store purchases still dominate across all retail categories, but in light of the ecommerce breaking numerous records during Black Friday weekend, this may gradually change. 

Because many retailers do not quite achieve the omnichannel shopping experience that their customers crave, they should emphasize reaching this goal in the new year. One critical step in this process includes deploying best in class retail software that can easily manage sales, inventory and business intelligence across multiple channels, both online and off. Merchants' systems should integrate so that no matter how customers engage with a business, organizations will be able to readily track shoppers and their purchases. A coupon received online and then loaded onto a smartphone should be usable in brick-and-mortar locations, but this requires a robust point of sale system to accomplish.