APRIL 20189While Omni retail offers a great opportunity to acquire and impress the customer, the same opportunity may exert enormous pressure on the entire value chain demanding highest levels of efficienciesretailers to offer their `entire in-ventories' in a 'single view', meaning irrespective of which channel that inventory may reside (brick & mor-tar stores, warehouse, hub, online bucket), or the physical location, consumer would be able to see the available inventory, across multi-ple channels (at the stores, kiosks, online, app, market place, own web sites)! This increases the chances of positioning the available inven-tories for each customer trying to shop! Retailers must wire all their backend systems seamlessly and in `real-time' to be able to offer this Single view inventory. Larger enablement is demand-ed in servicing the Omni-retail or-ders as the service ability of these `Single view inventory' may reside across the region or even far away locations. Order management sys-tem should be able to intelligently identify the item, location, time & cost to service the specific order. For example, A customer from Ooty, may order a winter jacket from an apparel retailer, who may have in-ventories residing at various loca-tions across the country. The Order management system should smartly decide the best servicing location based on business rules and ensure the earliest delivery to the custom-er. Any delay in servicing the orders may lead to cancellation of the order or non-receipt/refusal to receive the order by the customer, which can cost the retailer on processing, logistics including reverse logistics without any sale!Omni retail orders demand priority processing at the back-end operations too. Locating the right product at the most suitable (cost-effective) location, picking, checking on quality aspects, pack-aging, manifest, invoicing, routing the delivery through predetermined Logistics partner, to the last-mile delivery requires agile systems/applications support to manage the entire operations. There are retailers now who are using pre-dictive analytics or big data ana-lytics to improve efficiencies and service quality.While the Omni-Retail perhaps offers the highest levels of opportu-nity with customer experience and satisfaction, managing Omni envi-ronment for a traditional brick and mortar or a pure-play online retailer becomes a huge challenge. Retailers would need highly reliable and re-al-time systems/tools support the value chain; right from presentation of the single view inventory, mer-chandise range, assortment plans, demand sensing, storage locations and distribution. Hi-end business intelligence tools with quick to use dashboards enabling faster deci-sion-making for managers and ac-curate inventory visibility along with the reliable timelines for operations teams would become mandatory. Sourcing & Planners would require intelligent insights into the trends, fashion and `saleable' styles includ-ing geo-based demand sensing signals. Supply chain teams would need smart inventory management systems and highly efficient fulfil-ment systems for both forward and reverse logistics. Though there are various tools, applications, apps and Business intelligence tools avail-able in the market, retailers must closely choose between what works for them best at the shortest time span rather than a `perfect' tradi-tional solution, which can consume months or years of implementation. While Omni retail offers a great opportunity to acquire and impress the customer, the same opportu-nity may exert enormous pressure on the entire value chain demand-ing highest levels of efficiencies. A smart retailer can ensure to `touch' their target audience using digi-tal media effectively across malls, homes, work and even at the social networks and most importantly `convert' that touch into sale and deliver a superior customer experi-ence with the help of suite of intelli-gent IT systems! Dr. Anil Chinnabhandar (D.Litt)
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