Home & Gift, Harrogate - Gift Focus magazine

multichannel retailing today
The fifth in a series of articles by expert David Mackley, looking at the pros and
cons of multichannel retail, the potential pitfalls and risks and how it can boost
profits for those who get it right
In the first four instalments of this series
we discussed how the internet has
evolved. In its early days the internet was
all about low prices. Now consumers
are willing to pay more in return for a
good service. Retailers like John Lewis
and Amazon are concentrating on quality
of service, not just on price. They are
looking to deliver the right balance
of service, convenience and value for
money to keep their customers coming
back time and again. We also looked
at the benefits and some of the risks
involved in moving to multichannel in
your business. In this article we look at
the challenges faced by the chain stores
compared to independent retailers in
making the change to multichannel. Some
independent retailers might look at the
chain stores and feel pangs of envy; the
money they have, the people, the skills.
Changing to multichannel must be easy
for them, right? Wrong - we look at
why and in the next issue will show why
independents can in fact do it better and
shouldn’t fear or envy the big stores.
I have spoken with IT directors from large
chain stores about their plans to move from
focusing purely on shops, to multichannel
retail. The challenges they face are time
consuming and costly. The intention is quite
straightforward. The retailers wish to give
customers a seamless experience whether
they shop in store or online. So what’s
stopping them? The answer - lots of things!
“The retailers wish to give
customers a seamless experience
whether they shop in store
or online.”
Large retailers use a range of systems that
tend to include the following modules:
• EPoS (Electronic Point of Sale)
• PDQ (credit and debit card terminals)
• Merchandising (managing stock across
the organisation)
• Warehousing
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
• Website management
• Payroll
• Financial system
• Reporting systems
Each of these modules will have been
designed to fit their style of business. Often
the different software modules will come from
different suppliers and will fit together like a
jigsaw (although the reality is that it probably
won’t fit together quite this well). Information
will be passed from one module to another,
so when stock moves or customers buy
from different parts of the business all the
information should be captured centrally.
giftfocus 25
retail technology