Article
Customers are the heartbeat of retail. They must be at the centre of every retailer’s business. In fact, Forrester’s 2018 retail predictions reveal that the key to successful retailing in 2018 is obsessing about the customer experience. Forrester identifies the greatest hindrance for retailers to execute on this vision is not a lack of will. Rather, it’s their siloed organisational structure that makes it almost impossible to get a holistic customer view or to create the right products and services.
Today, all customers want is for retailers to have their products available no matter when, where or how they chose to shop. But this upsurge of multiple shopper scenarios presents a significant challenge for retail operations. Brands depend upon a seamless integration between online and in-store point-of-sale (POS) systems. Brands also contend with a paradigm shift of selling merchandise from a database rather than a physical store.
Unified commerce retailing requires an integration between systems (both new and old), departments and operations. Loss prevention, operations and IT departments can no longer operate in a vacuum responsible for their own separate KPIs. Instead, they must take a unified approach to combat loss as a group. The same is true of siloed technology applications. Individual systems that don’t communicate with each other provide very limited, and even no visibility from other channels.
Unified commerce fulfilment is more complex than ever, as it happens from different stores and manufacturers, leaving data disorganised, duplicated and often inaccessible. To compound the issue, retailers struggle with fragmented policies and processes that have proven particularly detrimental to merchandise returns. This situation forces price adjustments, accommodations and overrides – assuming POS systems can validate order information and document entry in the first place.
Executing an effective loss prevention programme requires excellent planning, departmental cooperation and seamless IT integration to mitigate risk. The following are four key opportunities to break down the silos and help minimise loss opportunities in unified commerce retail environments:
As the unified commerce market continues to evolve, loss prevention strategies must advance in tandem. Retailers need to consider how to integrate both traditional systems, such as POS, order management and innovative technology solutions like RFID-enabled inventory, across all shopping channels to make the new retail paradigm successful. This strategy is the only way to ensure retailers are able to deliver accurate data across the enterprise and collectively analyse key operational areas, such as multi-channel merchandise returns, consistency in pricing and promotions and fraud control. Providing a unified customer experience will require retailers to break down their operational silos, ultimately minimising loss opportunities and improving overall operations to drive better business outcomes.