Commerce Automation Turns Retailers Into Omnichannel Marketplaces

There’s a difference between setting up a digital storefront and making it truly … work.  There’s a difference between simply being “findable” online and existing as part of a fully-fledged ecosystem that brings retailers, marketplaces and brands together — and lures the consumers in droves.

Managing the end-to-end complexities of scaling a business, of meeting customers where they want to be met — in short, juggling the front-facing interactions with end users all the way through to inventory management to get them what they’ve ordered in timely fashion — is no simple task.

“Going live” with a site opens the door to a wealth of complexities. As marketplaces onboard retailers and brands take root across marketplaces, the management of everything from product images to actual inventory becomes a Herculean endeavor.

To make it all even more challenging, add in the continuous rise of omnichannel commerce, which is becoming more and more prevalent as the pandemic recedes. Consumers are rapidly moving beyond the confines of simply clicking “buy” buttons and waiting for packages to show up at their doorsteps.

Blurring the Lines

Roy Avidor, Cymbio CEO, told Karen Webster that the lines are blurring between physical and online commerce, which means that brick-and-mortar settings have to mirror the digital channels that dominated our lives for the past two years.

True, digital has its place and always will. Cymbio, which helps automate all manner of back-end functions and drop-ship operations and connects brands and their retailing counterparts, noted that client companies estimate they will garner between 30% to 50% of sales from digital channels.

“Some of them are already over the 30% threshold,” he said. But digital sales can take place, well, anywhere. Brands that increase their digital presence while embracing automation have the ways and means to meet consumers where they want to be met. The fluid, omnichannel continuum is one where nowadays a customer buys online, picks up in store — or browses an item in store, buys it on their mobile devices and orders it to be sent home.

PYMNTS’ own data show that a growing number of consumers are using digital channels, engaging with brands across several points of contact — including social media and in the aisles — where those brands want to have a direct-to-consumer presence.

“All of these things are becoming part of consumers’ expectations,” he said.

No matter where the point of engagement between consumer and enterprise lies, none of it works if either the inventory’s out of stock or internal systems are out of sync between merchants and their retail partners, or if product data, billing or any number of back-end elements are not managed effectively with tracking, billing and returns management. Cymbio has scalable retail connections to more than 800 marketplaces, retailers and eCommerce solutions worldwide.

A single point of integration, geared toward enabling commerce in an automated fashion, allows brands to connect with retailers.  The brands benefit from being able to centralize and automate compliance with their retailers’ product information, warehousing and documentation without having to forge direct integrations with each merchant (which can take months).  The retailers, of course, gain scale, and in a way, become marketplaces.

Thus: stevemadden.com can sell across Shopify, across Nordstrom’s, Kohl’s and Macy’s, in uniform fashion. A small outdoor camping retailer finds a happy berth on REI’s sites and shelves.

“All of our brands can be connected to retailers, and all the retailers can be connected to the brands,” he said, as Cymbio straddles the line between operating as an infrastructure provider and two-sided network.

The positive ripple effects accrue, he said, when inventory is optimized to match demand, whether that demand manifests in store or online (again, with that digital interaction).  Companies manufacture less, have a smaller carbon footprint and can sell their goods from only a few locations across hundreds or even thousands of retailers across several regions.

And, as Avidor noted, automating the brand-to-retail experience, with online marketplaces synced with drop-ship, can help smooth the frictions of physical shopping.  PYMNTS’ own data show that when shopping in a store, inventory availability is a key point of friction.

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Cymbio, maintained Avidor, can help with that physical in-store inventory management.  The retailers and marketplaces selling Cymbio’s client brands are able to check on inventory and source it seamlessly.

“This means that if you walk into a store and you see a dress that you want and it’s in your size,” said Avidor, “but you want it in black and they only have red … the sales personnel can basically check if the brand has it in stock.  With two clicks the dress can be ordered, and sent to the store or directly to your home.”

This week, Cymbio announced that PayPal Ventures, the venture capital arm of the global payments company, has invested an undisclosed amount in Cymbio, four months after Cymbio closed a $20M Series B fundraising round. Avidor said the investments set the stage for the firm to expand its current operations and move toward a new financial services product. “They’re looking into commerce enablement in general,” said Avidor, “and this is very much in their space,” he said of the PayPal announcement.

As Avidor told PYMNTS of the need to automate commerce, “the bottom line, for any brand, is to be there for your consumer online, offline, across channels and marketplaces.”

Read Also: Commerce Automation Platform Cymbio Gets PayPal Ventures Investment