By George Gallegos, Jitterbit
Retailers are faced with a multitude of options to sell their goods and services in today’s technology-fueled world. Beyond traditional brick-and-mortar stores, retailers now need to meet their customers at any time via e-Commerce, social and mobile platforms. This gives them a greater reach, expanded customer base and opens up new sales outlets for company growth. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and successfully utilizing the omnichannel, digital economy demands automated tools and procedures not previously available to retailers.
Traditionally, retailers were focused on one channel: The brick-and-mortar store. In this setting, retailers could curate a shopping experience based around objects a customer could physically evaluate and provide immediate feedback on, in person. This meant store attendants could create a shopping experience based on individual customer preferences. Now retailers are struggling to deliver the same personalized approach to customers while meeting them across various channels. Finding the means to link all of these applications, processes and databases associated with each of these channels — all chock full of real-time data — is essential to creating a unified buyer experience.
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To enable connected experiences, every application must be able to communicate in real time in order to deliver the most precise and up-to-date product information (i.e. pricing, discounts and availability) and to quickly and accurately fulfill orders (i.e. purchase details, delivery and returns). Here are some core considerations:
- Merge your in-store, online and mobile consumer experiences to attain a 360-degree view of your customer;
- Unite marketing, POS and ERP applications to generate omnichannel experiences;
- Optimize your supply chain and enhance brand awareness by reaching the maximum target market in real time; and
- Achieve a competitive advantage via an integration platform while lowering costs and rapidly increasing ROI.
Historically, tedious integrations between sales, fulfillment and ERP solutions were only accessible to large retailers who had the means to enlist an army of developers to custom-code connections between these applications, a lengthy and costly process. Luckily, retailers of all shapes and sizes are now able to leverage integration platforms that can quickly and effectively connect their applications without the need for developers.
Advanced platforms have enabled businesses large and small to transform, allowing them in quickly adopt vital infrastructure and data management platforms to streamline business processes. Retailers can more rapidly expand their business while also gaining greater insight into customer data, needs and preferences.
Retail organizations rely on customer satisfaction to remain competitive and succeed. In today’s real-time economy, consumers demand a buying process that provides them instant gratification via a user-friendly experience across every channel; from the click of a button on a web site or as they reach for a product on a store shelf, to the moment they complete a purchase. As retailers deal with an influx of data and multiple applications, they are faced with the challenge of manually managing all of these moving pieces. Using a simple, reliable and comprehensive integration solution for the digital economy empowers retailers to free up staff, execute transactions faster and ensure their customer are receiving the best experience possible.
George Gallegos is the CEO of Jitterbit. He has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the enterprise software space. Prior to Jitterbit, Gallegos was a founding member of C3, a Tom Siebel venture focused on energy and carbon management. Previously, Gallegos was Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Cast Iron Systems, leading global field operations for the integration appliance vendor prior to its acquisition by IBM. Gallegos has also served as Regional Vice President at Oracle and Siebel Systems, leading the most successful sales team in the history of the company.
