Omnichannel Challenges Are The Result Of Poor Data, Retailers Say

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Study shows that 78 percent of retailers lack a single brand experience across channels.

While retailers are more confident about their omnichannel experiences than they were a year ago, 45 percent say that the progress is not happening fast enough. This is according to a new study by Periscope™, a McKinsey Solution focusing on price, promotion, and assortment optimization. The report found that precisely as shoppers are demanding a seamless customer experience across all channels, retailers are not able to provide these experiences at the speed their customers desire.

 In fact, the survey found that 78 percent of retailers lack a single brand experience across all channels, and 64 percent acknowledged that “a well-defined cross or multi-channel strategy” was the top innovation that would drive digital growth.

As tech-savvy consumers are clamoring for seamless shopping experiences across all channels, a survey of more than 250 store managers published earlier this month by JDA Software Group found that 62% of retailers have responded by introducing omnichannel services. But just because a majority of retailers support omnichannel efforts doesn’t mean they’re confident about their ability to meet consumer expectations.

“Consumers are desperate for omnichannel experiences, they work across channels, why can’t their favorite retailers? In their minds it is a simple as that, and it leads to frustration, and diminishes brand loyalty. What is clear from the survey and conversation we had at World Retail Congress is that whilst there are technical challenges to delivering omnichannel experiences, the biggest challenge for retailers is the organizational change that needs to take place: the removal of organizational siloes, creation of new processes, and the forming teams that work across, rather than within channels. These take careful planning and execution, but cannot be ignored, because without them any retailer is doomed to fail,” explained Channie Mize, General Manager for Retail at Periscope.

So what is behind this omnichannel struggle? According to the study, 38 percent of respondents said that a lack of internal coordination in their digital channels, while their broader omnichannel strategies faced challenges including a lack of customer analytics across channels (67 percent); siloed organization (48 percent); poor data quality (45 percent); and an inability to identify customers across shopping trips (45 percent).

These challenges plague retailers across the board, with just 6 percent of respondents rating their omnichannel readiness as “excellent – fully implemented,” while 36 percent said they were “testing a proof of concept.”

With the With the rise of Retail-on-demand, the era of Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC), as well as the Internet of Things (IoT), the amount of data retailers must deal with has exploded and disparate systems must work together seamlessly for competitive advantage. Big data is also becoming “better data” as businesses connect to consumers in real-time, according to Innovative Retail Technologies.

But as retailers strive to understand customers’ preferences and shopping patterns while simultaneously planning pricing and inventory to improve fulfilment and sales while keeping costs down, they also need to find ways of handling the avalanche of new data.