By Alex Brown, CEO, 10th Magnitude
On Dec. 19, 2013, Ian Goldman of Celerant Technology wrote a great piece for Retail TouchPoints on omnichannel success. He suggested using a single integrated software platform for every channel to mine trends, analyze data and make in-store, online and mobile customers happy. I say, resoundingly, yes!
Ian outlines the benefits of using an integrated software platform — and there are many — but cautions against getting ahead of yourself. Here’s where I come in.
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I’m going to tell you that you can develop a fully integrated platform that creates that utopian omnichannel — and you can do it in time for the 2014 holiday season. Retailers who embrace this opportunity will find themselves with less headaches, happier customers and more robust sales channels by next fall.
The means to achieving this seemingly lofty goal is the cloud. Instead of looking for a whole new system that creates the omnichannel, a cloud-based custom overlay application creates that system quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. The best part is that the project can be done as an operating expense rather than a capital expense.
The key to this process is not only moving data and other applications you are already running to the cloud, but also developing software on a cloud platform that connects and integrates all the systems you have — or creates or replaces them.
So four things will happen:
- Your data will be aggregated in a single repository that is flexible, fast and infinite.
- Your legacy systems — email, CRM, inventory, POS, commerce — will be assessed and migrated to the cloud if that makes sense for the particular application.
- Your systems and data will be interconnected by a cloud-based application tailored to your needs, but developed using cloud-platform component pieces whenever possible to limit development time and expense.
- New elements — mobile applications, for example—can be envisioned and built quickly, and integrated seamlessly; all in response to real time customer need.
Voila! Omnichannel.
There are multiple benefits of this approach beyond the marketing integration and data analysis capabilities that Ian outlined. They include:
- Lowering costs for hardware provisioning and keeping costs in exact lock step with usage, rather than paying for peak usage all year.
- Improved customer responsiveness.
- Reallocating IT team time from hardware provisioning and configuration to developing value-add solutions for sales enhancement.
And that’s just the beginning of the technical iceberg. As your team works through the unique action items that will drive success for your company, you will be able to target multiple areas for improvement, cost-savings and revenue enhancement.
Since each retailer has a specific customer base with its own usage patterns and needs, building the omnichannel needs to be a customized endeavor, not a one-size-fits-all application. Now is the time to identify the needs apparent from Holiday 2013 to capitalize on those opportunities for Holiday 2014.
Alex Brown is the founder and CEO of 10th Magnitude, a cloud software and services firm specializing in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platforms. 10th Magnitude develops custom software applications, provides application management and enables Microsoft Azure migration to help businesses of all sizes innovate and compete more effectively.
