About cross-channel sales (and a little about their implementation based on IBM WebSphere Commerce)
Although nimble guys from Amazon are already preparing Prima Air drones for delivering our purchases from electronic stores, it is obvious that traditional (physical) stores are not going to retire yet. On the contrary, the integration and interweaving of digital and physical components of shopping creates new opportunities for sales and marketing.
Today, we will reflect on the topic of cross-channel trading, and, in particular, about solving this issue based on IBM WebSphere Commerce.
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To begin with we will be defined with terminology. Usually cross-channel is confused with multi-channel. Multi - channeling is when you own a store, a call center, perhaps time in a TV store, social networking sites and other tools and sales channels with which you sell your products or services. Multi-channel is important and necessary, as it provides the seller with more opportunities to meet with the buyer in different places and situations.
Imagine a situation: a potential buyer called one of your call centers, but for some reason did not make a purchase. From the conversation it is clear that a person, in principle, has an interest in your product, and it would be good to turn a potential client into an accomplished one by offering him the opportunity to purchase the same product, say, in an e-mail, supplemented by a personal discount in the online store. This is a cross-channel approach to sales. Cross-channeling introduces interaction between channels into multi-channel, integrates them to increase sales, while improving and improving customer experience.
All this can be done manually if there are not so many customers as Carleon’s, but what if there are hundreds of thousands of them, and all of them need to make offers, matching their purchasing desires with their capabilities? In addition, you need to act quickly, until a potential buyer has lost interest in the product by switching to something else.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) middleware is a specific type of CRM solution that integrates all information received from customers or potential buyers with a computer or smartphone into a single system for subsequent analysis and preparation of a proposal for each specific user. A good system should efficiently process and convert the incoming information into a single format, transfer them to the back-end, taking into account logistics, supply, etc. in each case. In fact, such a system is the brain of a cross-channel approach to sales:
The main difficulty in the implementation of cross-channel sales is the automation of receiving and managing orders and stocks, that is, the connection of supply and demand, as bequeathed by the great Alfred Marshall, only taking into account the situation and consumer behavior in each case. This complexity stems primarily from the amount of information: the system needs to process a lot of data and draw the right conclusions. Ideally, individual customer characteristics are taken into account, all the pros and cons of each sales channel, the potential and availability of goods, the ability to fulfill an order on time, as well as ensuring a holistic user experience.
Cross-channel solution from IBM WebSphere Commerce
Today there is a lot of CRM middleware solutions - both from monsters of CRM solutions (Oracle, SAP, Sales Force and others), and from relatively small vendors. We will focus on IBM WebSphere Commerce as one of the largest and most functional solutions on the market today. IBM WebSphere Commerce is a powerful CRM middleware solution, the foundation for creating a robust automated cross-channel process, also equipped with options for cross-channel marketing with a business process manager (BPM), business intelligence (BI) and other advanced capabilities that can delighted any marketer.
Of course, we will not talk about all the features of the system now, but we will try to shed light on the most important in IBM WebSphere Commerce - DOM, distributed order management.
Distributed Order Management (DOM, Distributed Order Management)
The optimized management of order processing serves as a basic cross-platform technology in cross-channel sales, is its brain, allowing you to connect supply and demand, structuring all inventory and flexibly managing supply. In IBM WebSphere Commerce, this function is performed by the DOM, effectively managing the entire supply chain and developing the ability of the business to respond to requests from existing and potential customers, processing them and anticipating the behavior of potential customers, with the possibility of forming a personalized offer.
As a rule, the company-seller already has a formed order management system. When implementing a cross-channel solution, it is important to integrate with all points of sale and communication with the client, transforming all incoming messages into a single format for processing by the system. During the life cycle, the seller can connect new channels, but not always the implementation of the new functionality is the same contractor. As a result, several unrelated systems give out data in different formats, which, naturally, generates the attendant difficulties and confusion. Integration of data into a single stream is a key task at the stage of technical implementation of a cross-channel sales system on any platform.
Here is a schematic example of a DOM and IBM WebSphere Commerce integration option for a typical e-commerce store:
* In-store CSR (Customer Service Representative)
Wal-Mart recently revealed $ 430 million in investments in its global technical platform. Most of this money was spent on the implementation of the DOM.
Flexibility and resistance to stress
Over time, sales channels can vary significantly in weight. Thus, the traditional trips to the ordinary store, and, consequently, sales in them, can fall. This, however, does not threaten mobile sales in general. This year, they expectedly reached a new maximum, acquiring 17.2% of the total online sales, which is 42.9% more than in 2013. This means that the number and variety of access devices increases (old + new versions of all types mobile devices + different software), which naturally increases the load on the system, and this trend will grow in the future.
As the number of facilities and accessibility grows, land and mobile traffic grows, and here another important advantage of the IBM WSC is its load resistance. On this platform, we made a website for the Sears network (average turnover of $ 1 billion per year). Even if the retailer is far from Sears volumes, there may also be a holiday on his street, for example, in the form of New Year's Eve shopping madness. At such a crucial moment, it turns out how well the CRM-middleware platform was chosen.
Not only does the number and variety of communication channels with the consumer expand, but the cycle of the order itself also changes. For example, the introduction of the option “delivery from the nearest store” could potentially increase sales by 20%. According to eBay Enterprise, a 50 million turnover seller who does not offer this type of delivery loses up to $ 27,000 per day! Macy's said in their report that in the three years of delivery from the nearest store, they earned an extra billion dollars.
Instead of an epilogue
The right choice of a CRM-middleware solution can significantly increase conversion, providing the seller with valuable information on how to better use existing resources, giving the buyer new opportunities and benefits. The data flow is constantly increasing, and an online shopper plays an important role in this process, choosing and buying from different devices. We believe that functional data processing systems in retail will be increasingly in demand in one form or another - both by large companies and local sellers who are aware of the advantages of multi-channel sales.
Today, we will reflect on the topic of cross-channel trading, and, in particular, about solving this issue based on IBM WebSphere Commerce.
')
To begin with we will be defined with terminology. Usually cross-channel is confused with multi-channel. Multi - channeling is when you own a store, a call center, perhaps time in a TV store, social networking sites and other tools and sales channels with which you sell your products or services. Multi-channel is important and necessary, as it provides the seller with more opportunities to meet with the buyer in different places and situations.
Imagine a situation: a potential buyer called one of your call centers, but for some reason did not make a purchase. From the conversation it is clear that a person, in principle, has an interest in your product, and it would be good to turn a potential client into an accomplished one by offering him the opportunity to purchase the same product, say, in an e-mail, supplemented by a personal discount in the online store. This is a cross-channel approach to sales. Cross-channeling introduces interaction between channels into multi-channel, integrates them to increase sales, while improving and improving customer experience.
All this can be done manually if there are not so many customers as Carleon’s, but what if there are hundreds of thousands of them, and all of them need to make offers, matching their purchasing desires with their capabilities? In addition, you need to act quickly, until a potential buyer has lost interest in the product by switching to something else.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) middleware is a specific type of CRM solution that integrates all information received from customers or potential buyers with a computer or smartphone into a single system for subsequent analysis and preparation of a proposal for each specific user. A good system should efficiently process and convert the incoming information into a single format, transfer them to the back-end, taking into account logistics, supply, etc. in each case. In fact, such a system is the brain of a cross-channel approach to sales:
The main difficulty in the implementation of cross-channel sales is the automation of receiving and managing orders and stocks, that is, the connection of supply and demand, as bequeathed by the great Alfred Marshall, only taking into account the situation and consumer behavior in each case. This complexity stems primarily from the amount of information: the system needs to process a lot of data and draw the right conclusions. Ideally, individual customer characteristics are taken into account, all the pros and cons of each sales channel, the potential and availability of goods, the ability to fulfill an order on time, as well as ensuring a holistic user experience.
Cross-channel solution from IBM WebSphere Commerce
Today there is a lot of CRM middleware solutions - both from monsters of CRM solutions (Oracle, SAP, Sales Force and others), and from relatively small vendors. We will focus on IBM WebSphere Commerce as one of the largest and most functional solutions on the market today. IBM WebSphere Commerce is a powerful CRM middleware solution, the foundation for creating a robust automated cross-channel process, also equipped with options for cross-channel marketing with a business process manager (BPM), business intelligence (BI) and other advanced capabilities that can delighted any marketer.
Of course, we will not talk about all the features of the system now, but we will try to shed light on the most important in IBM WebSphere Commerce - DOM, distributed order management.
Distributed Order Management (DOM, Distributed Order Management)
The optimized management of order processing serves as a basic cross-platform technology in cross-channel sales, is its brain, allowing you to connect supply and demand, structuring all inventory and flexibly managing supply. In IBM WebSphere Commerce, this function is performed by the DOM, effectively managing the entire supply chain and developing the ability of the business to respond to requests from existing and potential customers, processing them and anticipating the behavior of potential customers, with the possibility of forming a personalized offer.
As a rule, the company-seller already has a formed order management system. When implementing a cross-channel solution, it is important to integrate with all points of sale and communication with the client, transforming all incoming messages into a single format for processing by the system. During the life cycle, the seller can connect new channels, but not always the implementation of the new functionality is the same contractor. As a result, several unrelated systems give out data in different formats, which, naturally, generates the attendant difficulties and confusion. Integration of data into a single stream is a key task at the stage of technical implementation of a cross-channel sales system on any platform.
Here is a schematic example of a DOM and IBM WebSphere Commerce integration option for a typical e-commerce store:
* In-store CSR (Customer Service Representative)
Wal-Mart recently revealed $ 430 million in investments in its global technical platform. Most of this money was spent on the implementation of the DOM.
Flexibility and resistance to stress
Over time, sales channels can vary significantly in weight. Thus, the traditional trips to the ordinary store, and, consequently, sales in them, can fall. This, however, does not threaten mobile sales in general. This year, they expectedly reached a new maximum, acquiring 17.2% of the total online sales, which is 42.9% more than in 2013. This means that the number and variety of access devices increases (old + new versions of all types mobile devices + different software), which naturally increases the load on the system, and this trend will grow in the future.
As the number of facilities and accessibility grows, land and mobile traffic grows, and here another important advantage of the IBM WSC is its load resistance. On this platform, we made a website for the Sears network (average turnover of $ 1 billion per year). Even if the retailer is far from Sears volumes, there may also be a holiday on his street, for example, in the form of New Year's Eve shopping madness. At such a crucial moment, it turns out how well the CRM-middleware platform was chosen.
Not only does the number and variety of communication channels with the consumer expand, but the cycle of the order itself also changes. For example, the introduction of the option “delivery from the nearest store” could potentially increase sales by 20%. According to eBay Enterprise, a 50 million turnover seller who does not offer this type of delivery loses up to $ 27,000 per day! Macy's said in their report that in the three years of delivery from the nearest store, they earned an extra billion dollars.
Instead of an epilogue
The right choice of a CRM-middleware solution can significantly increase conversion, providing the seller with valuable information on how to better use existing resources, giving the buyer new opportunities and benefits. The data flow is constantly increasing, and an online shopper plays an important role in this process, choosing and buying from different devices. We believe that functional data processing systems in retail will be increasingly in demand in one form or another - both by large companies and local sellers who are aware of the advantages of multi-channel sales.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/237035/
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