For Omni, Should Brands Shoot For The Stars Or Play It Safe?

Best Buy Tweaks Omni

The retail world is still embroiled in a love-hate relationship with omnicommerce. Few deny that it’s a necessity of running a modern brand, but plenty have experienced firsthand how the fine-tuning of detail on both the in-store and online side can elude even the best-meaning and resource-rich merchants.

For example, when it comes to real-time inventory displays, who is going to make better use of that obviously critical information? The in-store employees forced to pick and prepare orders? Or the consumers who’re looking to buy themselves?

Rather than dealing in theory, the experimental nature of certain retailers makes for useful test cases in the wilds of commerce. Best Buy, in particular, has taken a step to give more power to its consumers with a tweak to who gets to see the right data at the right time.

Mobile Commerce Daily reported that Best Buy has updated its app to include a filter that allows users to see which products are available for pickup at their preferred stores in real time. Essentially, this turns Best Buy’s mobile app into a pipeline direct to click-and-collect sales. If consumers aren’t looking to wait, regardless of the free shipping options offered, they no longer need to dig through menus upon menus to see whether the Best Buy down the street has what they’re looking for.

Considering so many retailers struggle connecting the critical dots of the omnicommerce experience, why wouldn’t others borrow (i.e., steal) Best Buy’s idea and make it their own? As PointSource Lab Technology Officer Aaron Shook explained, while real-time, in-store inventory filters “are the natural evolution of the omnichannel retail experience,” the resources required to achieve this level of technological efficiency still eludes many merchants.

“The functionality needed to enable this feature has been widely available for years through various order management software solutions, but these solutions are often fairly expensive and come with lengthy and disruptive implementation timelines,” Shook told Mobile Commerce Daily. “Forward-thinking retailers who have invested in order management will continue to reduce the friction of the omnichannel purchasing experience by delivering features like this one.”

No matter how forward-thinking a given retailer might want to be, the realities of revenue and capital make investing in a disruptive omnichannel intervention like Best Buy’s over the course of several months or even years an unfeasible financial plan. That still doesn’t absolve merchants of the need to achieve omnichannel competence, though shooting for the top of the mountain when they only have enough oxygen for a halfway climb could leave them and their consumers short of breath.

It’s far from a perfect solution, but pharmacy chain Boots UK is doing its best to plug the gaps in its omnichannel plans and its resources tasked with realizing them. Via Internet Retailer, Boots recently outfitted all of its 2,500 stores in the U.K. with at least one iPad, though larger locations received more tablets to accommodate their greater need. All of the iPads come with an employee-facing app known as Sales Assist, which not only serves as a point of sale but can also be used to check inventory on the floor.

The end effect? While consumers might not be able to sit in their homes and check whether the pharmacy at the corner has their favorite brand of shampoo, shoppers can at least get their answers faster than normal by walking into said store and asking an iPad-enabled associate.

“Putting updated, relevant information in the hands of store colleagues is key to delivering an easier, simpler shopping experience for customers,” Robin Phillips, director of omnichannel and development at Boots UK, told Internet Retailer.

It is key. Sooner or later, though, more merchants are going to have to do what Best Buy did and go after the key.