All change as retailers look to integrate stores and online business

News that Wal*Mart is to reorganise its ecommerce business as part of a strategy to better integrate online retailing with local bricks and mortar operations, comes as other retailers make changes in their senior management teams to better reflect the integrated businesses they either have or hope to become.

Whether this move is more to do with a challenging retail market or simply part of a plan that has been in place for some time, varies from retailer to retailer, but there does seem to be surge in new initiatives and new teams. For some retailers, the moves seem defensive, as they finally recognise that running multiple channels separately is not only costly but does not meet the needs of customers who simply do not think in terms of channels.

The truth is, more and more consumers want to shop seamlessly across channels, what we have begun to call cross channel retailing, but consumer behaviour has possibly moved past even that definition. The challenge for retailers is how to be everywhere at once and to do it profitably, for certainly this won’t be easy. To re-engineer a business around its customers, or channel hoppers, when it has for always been engineered largely around itself, is not just about systems.

Systems are critical to success, more critical than ever before, but the people and processes required to fire these systems are perhaps the next major challenge. The challenge is already throwing up some interesting dilemmas: how can staff in a store be rewarded for a sale that was stimulated on line, and vice versa? How can staff in store be given the history of the customer so they know how to act face to face?; and how can the on line channels recognise a loyal store customer where there is no loyalty card? All these and more questions now confront retailers.

Tony Bryant, Head of Business Development for K3 Retail, will discuss these issues in a workshop at The Retail Conference, America Square Conference Centre, 17 Crosswall, London, EC3 on 21st September 2011. Tony will challenge the role the store has in a cross channel environment from managing inventory across a store estate to moving from a transactional model to an engagement one. He will cover :

What is the optimum size of the store in future?
Do retailers really need to have 70/80/90% of their catalogue in store?
What will the next generation of EPOS offer?
How do we save the sale?
What is true clienteling?
Using the 'best' cross channel experience to drive sales in store