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How Retailers Can Provide the Best Service While Maintaining Profitability
Retailers have been adopting smart devices and technologies for their store operations to meet ever-changing customer behavior which has been significantly impacted by the pandemic. The need for rapid change put apparent pressure on retailers as the environment forced them to rethink their online and offline presence and there has been no slowdown of competition ever since with the acceleration of digitalization. These changes are here to stay and researches show that 85% of consumers report that they plan to continue with the shopping behaviors they adopted during the crisis.*
It is also already known that the existing systems are no longer hitting the mark and are not answering neither retailers’ nor customers’ needs in running the operations efficiently. Plus these systems are not sufficient to compete when it comes to “omnichannel” transformation as they aren’t designed to answer retailers’ complex problems. In order to have control over their operations, they need to be able to have full control over their stocks and have accurate inventory visibility. Retailers need to know if a product is damaged, not found, or has another status until it’s sold, and while doing that, they also need to provide an exceptional shopping experience both online and offline. It sounds like too much work, right? Implementing the right technology eases each process and accelerates the transformation right away. Here are three main key points to adopt in order for retailers to have the most efficient and up-to-date operation out there.
Enhance In-Store Experience
There has been a constant change in customers’ shopping habits affecting the channels they prefer to do the shopping at and we have been witnessing this more for the past two years. With the pandemic, online sales increased dramatically, but even so, the latest research conducted by IBM in 2022 shows that 72% of consumers still rely on stores as their primary buying method. So, it may be the right time to consider in-store digital transformation to be able to provide the best service. But how?
Omnichannel mobile POS solutions that enable store employees to access the digital catalog as well as real-time stock availability and let them complete checkout without needing a cashier, will prevent lost sales stemming from out-of-stock problems. Even if an item is not available in that particular store but can be seen as in-stock in other stores or in any distribution center, customers can still purchase that item at that moment and have it shipped to any address they prefer.
Clienteling is also high in demand and could be considered for improving customer satisfaction. It’s no secret that brand loyalty is a key driver of business profitability and with such an app, customers can feel free to enjoy a personalized shopping experience while getting a fast and seamless service as store associates never have to leave customers’ side anymore.
Remove the Barrier of Stocktake Discrepancies
Sales channels become more and more varied leading to increased stocktake discrepancies. This is indeed one of the most critical issues for an organization since you can’t sell the inventory that you don’t see accurately.
To add to this problem, ERP systems are, unfortunately, not designed to answer real-time visibility requests. Yet, retailers mistakenly try using ERPs for such requests, almost like an order management system, and naturally can’t get the results they are looking for. On the other hand, an omnichannel order management system will provide retailers a reliable mechanism to sell without the hesitation of inaccurate inventory as these systems provide an almost 100% accurate inventory and real-time access to that information.
With a proper and holistic OMS in place, retailers can sell their inventory in the most ideal scenario possible and access real-time data of their orders, returns, cancels, and more detailed information including the most used delivery and fulfillment methods that help them immensely while making strategic business decisions.
Provide Exceptional Delivery
For most retailers, the order process ends when the package is delivered to the courier, however, there is a big opportunity for optimization right after “ pick and pack” processes so that in the end there is more profit, increased efficiency, and improved customer satisfaction.
Large retailers have vast resources to speed up and enhance their shipping processes while many mid-to-large retailers face a much different reality. They have little control and effort over their customer’s shipping experiences. Forward-thinking retailers are aware of the gap there and consider optimizing the shipping process with fully-automated shipment modules. By adopting the right module, retailers can fine-tune their business rulesets on the configuration panel and the algorithm finds the most optimal shipping provider from existing ones. The workforce and the effort can easily be minimized and as the processes run friction-free and automated, customer satisfaction improves accordingly.
Shopi’s Omnichannel Order Hub gives retailers full control of their operations by connecting all online and offline channels, offering real-time visibility and full automated work orders that prevent lost sales. Thanks to its smart algorithm, retailers can easily fine-tune the configurations enabling them to prioritize stores and warehouses for order fulfillment. Shopi also helps retailers manage pre-sales with the mobile pos and clienteling solution, Store Hub. This is how retailers can both provide the best service to their customers and make a profit as they can easily make the best decision by accessing the real-time data. If you want to find out how Shopi solves even the most complex scenarios with its highly inclusive solutions, contact us!
Resources
https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/2022-consumer-study
