Fully integrated with Retail Pro Prism and all legacy versions of Retail Pro, OptCulture Marketing for Retail Pro can help you improve customer loyalty and engagement with your brand via customizable, omnichannel marketing.
Join Retail Pro International and OptCulture on February 15th or February 16th for a demo webinar to see how you can build meaningful, omnichannel shopper relationships with OptCulture Marketing for Retail Pro.
Building omnichannel operations for multinational companies requires integrated technology designed for business agility. With the right set of tools, retailers can build their brands across geographic borders and still provide a consistent customer experience.
A successful project must nurture continuous experimentation and collaboration among all partners in the supply chain.
Managing the marketing, planning, and omnichannel operations for dozens, hundreds or even thousands of brands across many countries with numerous points of sale in Asia, South America or Europe is a huge challenge.
Collaboration and experimentation are needed to meet consumers’ rapidly evolving expectations and provide feedback to brand partners on local market preferences and upcoming trends.
Having functioning contacts and support systems in the region that a retailer is expanding to from the beginning makes such expansion much easier. Retail Pro has an expansive network of business partners who provide support in the initial implementation, and in any changes or hiccups throughout their operations.
Omnichannel POS and the customer experience
Omnichannel POS can support insights-driven experimentation.
To deliver connected customer experiences across digital touchpoints and stores, retailers integrate in-store point of sale (POS) systems, mobile POS, and omnichannel systems to their online stores, as well as their CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
That provides real-time visibility into sales down to the SKU level. Sales managers can strategize with customer-facing associates to develop and monitor the success of customized promotions and bundles for each store.
Customers also need to be a part of the feedback loop. They must trust the retailer, and feel that they have support throughout their journey – the item is in stock, ships quickly, can be returned easily if needed.
That trust often involves the customer providing some personal information to the store, in exchange for a more personalized shopping experience.
With an omnichannel POS system, a retailer can integrate their loyalty and rewards programs with data from their POS, making for a smooth transaction experience and more personalized and engaging customer experience, based on their actual purchase history.
A retailer can present a highly targeted experience if the data gathered is extremely focused.
Retail Pro Prism provides this omnichannel capability and customer experience and offers two loyalty programs – AppCard and OptCulture – for retailers to gain deep insight and create custom, individualized loyalty strategies.
E-commerce capabilities help retailers adapt to local markets as well.
The benefits gained by e-commerce apply to branded ecommerce sites as well as having a presence on online marketplaces such as Lazada, Little red Book, TMall, and Tokopedia.
Multinational omnichannel retailers choose robust software solutions to support its branded ecommerce platforms as well as middleware solutions to integrate systems with ecommerce marketplaces. That provides a solid foundation that lets e-commerce teams work seamlessly and efficiently across brands and marketplaces.
Retail Pro’s accessible API and extensive list of plugins and integrations in the Retail Pro App Market make it easy to integrate data from the POS, inventory and ecommerce.
Automating analytics and marketing in omnichannel
Standardized and automated back-end systems further boost efficiency.
Omnichannel warehouse and logistics managers automate their processes, from picking and packing, to shipping and final delivery.
A warehouse management system can further help by integrating enterprise resource planning, merchandising, and supply chain solutions.
Finally, business intelligence tools are deployed to deliver relevant insights across the entire enterprise.
BI can quickly generate insights by tracking clearly identified business and customer outcomes and analysts turn them into actions. For example, cross-analyzed data feeds coming from ecommerce marketplaces and social media can help identify small signals in certain product categories.
Retailers using Retail Pro can have access to several tools to help them in analyzing shopper and transaction data, such as Retail Pro Decisions – visual analytics software – and pre-designed reports in Retail Pro Reports. Retailers can use filters to focus on different aspects of their operations, and segments to investigate further on one period
Overall, the retailer is the “face” of the brands they represent, in every country. No matter how disparate the customers are from one location to the next, the retailer ultimately must use all the tools at its disposal to appeal to all, while maintaining a cohesive branding strategy.
Retailers personalize customer journeys by brand to connect with consumers. And brand promises must be aligned with in-market customer experiences, whether that’s online or in-store.
A loyalty program such as OptCulture for Retail Pro that centralizes sales data from customers in-store and ecommerce and gives you multiple avenues to reinforce their experience of your brand and offer automated, personalized marketing.
The customer journey may always start with shopping, but it doesn’t necessarily end on a happily-ever-after note. Sometimes, the item just doesn’t meet expectations and the customer makes a return.
The return rate for the retail industry in the U.S. and Canada averages 8% of total sales, according to retail analytics firm The Retail Equation.
Returns are a “reverse logistics problem,” but also a fact of life for retailers, which cost time and money.
Because of that, it seems counter-intuitive to invest in improving the returns process — but it’s absolutely imperative. Having a good returns experience can help retain customers, and gaining a reputation for it can actually attract new shoppers.
It’s estimated that between 25 and 50% of online purchases are currently returned, so making the process simple and convenient is vital.
Retail flexibility for returns is a must in the omnichannel: after all, the customer can buy in any number of channels, so returns should have similar options as well.
In having omnichannel capabilities for customers to make returns, retailers can use the return as an opportunity to immediately offset any costs of returns. The retailer can use clienteling through whatever channel the return process is started; suggesting products in line with the general trends of their purchase history.
With a wealth of plugins available, Retailers can customize their omnichannel operations to offer return processes that are convenient for customers and work seamlessly with their retail and inventory management.
Order Management and the channels for returns
Once a return happens, being able to make that addition to inventory available soon after receipt increases the opportunity of achieving a full-price sale.
An order management system can provide instant visibility of returning goods, regardless of how they are being returned — to a store, through a courier service or directly to a warehouse.
In addition, having visibility of these items available allows the order management system to develop fulfillment decisions on how and where items should be sold to maximize profits.
A survey from Inmar found that most shoppers want to return in-store, largely due to the hassle of packing up a return.
Brick and mortars can benefit by enabling in-store returns of online purchases, as that drives store traffic and provides an opportunity to immediately recapture shoppers’ initial expenditures. Approximately 30% of Inmar survey participants said they “usually” or “always” stay in the store and shop with their refund money.
AppCard for Retail Pro provides a retailer with great tools for building personas for retailers various clients and personalize recommendations for them.
The future of returns and making them easy
Some e-commerce retailers such as Amazon make the return experience easy by requiring little to no packaging by the customer, allowing returns in different store locations, including return shipping labels in deliveries, as well as a QR code that can be used at a predetermined courier, which also increases efficiency for the retailer
Returns are an important element of a new online sales cycle: Increasingly, shoppers are employing a “buy and try” approach and they expect sellers to cooperate.
Research has found that much of the returns growth is due to shoppers purchasing more than one of the same or similar products with the intention of keeping one and returning the others.
Retailers must recognize the changing role of returns, understand that they will likely increase rather than decrease due to this new customer mindset, and optimize their processes to adapt and maximize customer satisfaction.
Customers love retailers with omnichannel strategies. Shopping is on their terms: They can choose the time, the location and – if they change their minds – the way to make the return.
No longer are the channels online stores and brick and mortars; today, a brand can also sell products through pop up storefronts as well as Instagram and Snap Chat.
It’s all about connecting with customers at their convenience.
When retailers give customers the flexibility to choose the way they shop, they are also able to connect and provide personalized promotions and timely recommendations. OptCulture for Retail Pro opens up the ability to create personalized promotions and loyalty programs by unifying customer data across channels.
With so many points of engagement between customers and brands, scaling operations is challenging.
Today’s shoppers don’t consider brick and mortar and online stores separate shopping destinations. Instead, they expect unified experiences across every touch point. Retail Pro Prism makes it possible to offer this convenient, omnichannel buying experience.
Order Management and flexible fulfilment
Order Management is critical for a holistic commerce strategy. It connects omnichannel demand to omnichannel supply.
Retail store associates, dropshippers, warehouses, distribution centers and third-party fulfillment providers use commerce technology to fill and deliver orders efficiently.
A system that has communication between each channel and allows seamless management of inventory and stock replenishment to take place is important for providing omnichannel and minimizing strain on your supply chain and operations.
Determining the best fulfillment options means finding solutions that shorten the distance to the customer, increase delivery speed, and reduce costs.
The omnichannel model emphasizes shipping from decentralized inventory sources, such as ship-from-store, buy online pick-up in-store, ship from a partner, or drop-ship from a manufacturer.
Making the right decision improves customer service, because delivery is quick, accurate and cost-effective. Ensuring the ‘last mile’ is optimized by collecting the data in a centralized visual analytics tool saves you money, time, and frustrated customers.
In a warehouse fulfillment model, orders are picked using a variety of methods, including discrete, zone, or wave picking or any combination.
Filling orders from a store limits the type of picking that can be done and retailers often use discrete picking and fill one order at a time. The benefit to in-store picking, however, is the proximity to the customer, who may opt for curbside pickup, eliminating shipping charges.
Curbside pickup has its advantages for shoppers in a rush but for retailers, enticing customers inside to make additional purchases has bottom-line benefits.
However, Pick-up-in-store customer personas are different from an online-only or in-store-only customer personas: They want immediate gratification — they can’t or won’t wait for shipping.
This is a demanding group that generally has little tolerance for friction during pickup. Therefore, clear, precise messaging about when the order will be ready and instructions for pickup are imperative. The pickup process can be made even more streamlined and convenient with Retail Pro Prism mobile POS.
And the pickup purchase process should be quick and easy for customers and employees. Customers’ perceived value of in-store pickup will evaporate if they can find the item on the floor faster.
Inventory management strategies and shipping
Shipping from the store can get customers their orders delivered more quickly. But other times, the warehouse is closer to the customer.
Having the option to ship from one location or the other is critical for flexibility and to keep customers satisfied.
In-store cycle counting can help by keeping inventory counts up to date and confirmed, so at fulfillment time products are where they are expected to be.
When they aren’t, sometimes items have simply been misplaced: an RFID system can help locate them very quickly. With RIOT RFID for Retail Pro, retailers can locate items out of the line of sight and complete inventory counts in a matter of minutes at an affordable price.
Customers have high expectations of how their shopping experiences should unfold, and retailers have a full plate managing and fulfilling orders while recognizing the unique characteristics of every consumer.
What delights one customer may not work for another. Retailers must be flexible and willing to implement customer feedback to create an efficient, intuitive customer experience that, ultimately, is profitable.
Retail Pro Prism POS gives you the flexibility and customization needed to connect your physical and digital store experience: offer customers fulfillment options, empower associates to order specific products from another store, discover shopper insights, and more.
Your team really stepped up to meet the sudden flux of online shopping during COVID.
Shoppers got the benefit of omnichannel purchasing, but retailers bore the brunt of making it happen – fast, and without actually integrating ecommerce and inventory management system data.
Two years into it though, many retailers are seeing their data disparities grow with an online presence that isn’t integrated to their in-store systems. And the disparities won’t end with COVID.
Streamline omnichannel store experiences with Retail Pro Prism
In the shopper’s mind, your website reflects your store, so they look online for stock availability.
Some may complete the purchase online, but others may want to see the products in store first or pick it up as one to-do item on a longer list.
Save your customers from the poor experience of showing up at your store with the website’s promise of having the product they need – only to find that you’re out of stock.
Omnichannel is about making it easy for customers to buy from you, get their products from you, and make returns.
A shopper’s purchase journey goes through multiple stages and retailers must think through the omnichannel experience at each phase.
PRODUCT RESEARCH PHASE How do the online and in-store experiences complement each other to help shoppers get a tangible feel for the products they’re exploring?
PRODUCT PURCHASE PHASE How can we best simplify the path to purchase to win more sales and avoid losing customers due to out of stocks or poor experiences?
PRODUCT FULFILLMENT PHASE What are cost-effective ways to get customers what they’ve ordered?
PRODUCT RETURN PHASE How can we streamline the omnichannel returns experience for shoppers?
Selling online is relatively new for luxury retail but is growing quickly as technologies have allowed retailers to reflect online the personalized service lux shoppers experience in-store.
Omnichannel strategies for luxury are considering continuity of in-store and online elements in a customer’s journey to draw on strengths from either channel for a more holistic, seamless experience.
Give your sales associates quick access to a customer’s profile and shopping history in Retail Pro Prism so they can be better informed when making recommendations.
Look up inventory at other store locations to see whether they have the particular size or color the customer wants with full inventory availability visible in Retail Pro POS.
Always say YES
Digital lookbook
Use inventory images in your Retail Pro mobile POS as an endless aisle lookbook to help your customer pick out and order items you don’t carry in store.
Tie your purchasing journey and communications together across channels by integrating all your customer-facing tools on the Retail Pro POS software platform.
How much stock inaccuracy can you actually get away with in omnichannel operations?
Not much, in fact, very little. If a customer places an order online and doesn’t get it within the expected delivery window because it wasn’t in stock, odds are high that customer won’t be returning.
Likewise, if a website tells customers a product is available “in store” and it isn’t, that experience will erode customer loyalty. Understanding why those errors happen is key to preventing them.
Omnichannel operations that POS systems such as Retail Pro Prism give retailers lessens the likelihood that these scenarios that are detrimental to customer loyalty and business overall will occur by updating the inventory across channels automatically.
Challenges in the world of instantaneous omnichannel
With omnichannel fulfillment, online orders are filled from brick and mortar store locations. This type of fulfillment provides retailers tremendous flexibility: For example, customers can buy online and then pick up their orders directly from the store, or retailers can have inventory shipped from a fulfillment center to the customer.
Using stores to fill ecommerce orders offers advantages such as:
Faster delivery
Increased profit margins
Lower shipping costs
Fewer returns
Problems arise when retailers use the store to fulfill online orders but don’t account for a scenario in which a single item is sold twice: once online and then again in the store. Such sales generally happen simultaneously – or close to it.
Omnichannel encourages different order types, such as retail orders, e-commerce orders, or wholesale orders, but they all must be filled from the same inventory stock.
That’s why it’s critical to have a system that communicates with each channel, allowing seamless management of inventory and stock replenishment.
Safety Stock and Dropshipping
Safety stock is always held by traditional and ecommerce retailers to buffer against the supply of an item and its demand.
While a high safety stock level means a retailer is more likely to be able to respond to uncertainty, the carrying cost also increases. The amount of safety stock must therefore be carefully considered. Inventory management is crucial for companies to contain costs and remain profitable.
Dropshipping, where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock, can help alleviate out-of-stock scenarios. Orders are passed to their suppliers, which pack and ship orders directly to customers.
Dropshipping eliminates the middleman and reduces the timeline to delivery. If a retailer has limited stock in-store to fill online orders, it can use dropshipping from its suppliers to deliver orders seamlessly to customer.
Research indicates that dropshipping in omnichannel leads to increased revenue as well: Inventory is handled by suppliers or manufacturers, freeing up shelf and floor space at retail and eliminating costly holding expenses.
Omnichannel fulfillment helps retailers provide customers the best service at the best prices. That’s a potent combination that leads to loyalty at a brand’s digital as well as real-world outlets.
With Retail Pro Prism, you have access to omnichannel operations that become more and more necessary with every year, and to every integration your business might need for existing or new sectors of your operations along the way.
Optimizing the omnichannel experience in your stores? Let’s talk.
