Taking The Fear Out Of The Path To Omni

Let’s face it … the old-school way of doing retail operations just isn’t cutting it anymore.

Running the same systems for years, using pen and paper to keep track of inventory, and having a clunky, slow checkout experience are not things that mix well with enabling omnicommerce.

Though omnichannel is the direction customers are moving – demanding a seamless way to shop and transact via in-store, online and mobile – retailers continue to face hurdles in meeting them there.

And it may have to do with their inability to let go of the way things once worked.

Look no further than the latest quarterly measure of the PYMNTS.com OmniReadi Index, powered by Vantiv, to see that the overall omnireadiness of some of the top merchants in the U.S. remains relatively unchanged – not necessarily getting worse but definitely not showing drastic improvement. The results show there’s an ever-growing gap between the merchants that are the most and least omnireadi, and the widening of that chasm shows no signs of letting up.

The least omnireadi companies fell further behind in Q2 2016. Scores for most merchants increased from Q2 2015 to Q4 2015 before stagnating in Q1 2016. Meanwhile, scores for the bottom 10 percent of companies rose briefly during Q2 2015 before plummeting by nearly 20 percent between Q3 2015 and Q1 2016.

Vaughan Rowsell, founder and chief product officer for Vend, explained that many retailers struggle with embracing new technologies and fear that the undertaking of providing omnicommerce opportunities to their customers will be too much to bear.

“Keeping operations siloed just doesn’t cut it anymore, but it can take some people time to come around to new technologies,” Rowsell said, adding that some merchants just can’t see the bigger picture of bringing various channels together or they believe it will be too hard to accomplish.

The change to cloud-based technologies, which Rowsell said fuels the creation of a true omnichannel experience, can be a tough move, especially for small- to midsized businesses.

“It’s that first step that can be the biggest hurdle,” he added.

But it also isn’t something that has to happen overnight.

It’s easy for merchants to get bogged down with the misconceptions that opening the door to omnichannel will actually take away from their business in some way — either by lost sales or downtime for the business — but Rowsell explained that this doesn’t have to be the case.

“It can take time to build up your comfort levels and competency with online, mobile and in-store selling and how it all works together,” he said.

The best thing merchants can do is just get started, Rowsell said, adding that this can be as simple as taking a step to set up a new POS system and using a mobile payments provider. Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of linking to an online store and creating a strategy for communicating to customers in the same way across all those channels.

“It doesn’t have to be a big, scary change right away,” he pointed out.

What SMBs really need if they want to play like the big businesses, especially when it comes to omnicommerce, is integrated solutions. Rowsell noted that Vend’s entirely cloud-based POS solution aims to level the playing field by giving small businesses access to the type of features they need in order to provide the types of shopping experiences customers are seeking.

Being able to use tools and resources related to inventory management, detailed reporting, customer loyalty and eCommerce capabilities is what Rowsell explained matters most for merchants aiming to excel at omnichannel. An integrated approach to omni and the ability to link important retail operations in real-time is what he said can help to eliminate issues like double-sells, long checkout lines and impersonal customer service.

As the POS and payments space continues to evolve, the ultimate goal, specifically for Vend, is to eliminate the need for the traditional cash register altogether.

“We’re already seeing many stores go straight to using [an] iPad to serve their customers – it takes up less space on the counter and means they can take a sale on the shop floor,” Rowsell said. “And because sales can be made from anywhere across any channel, location and size of the retail store will become less of a barrier.”

With the ability to link online and offline stores, merchants will also be able to advance their capabilities to “remember” customers as they move from in-store to online shopping. This will enable more personalized recommendations based on browsing and purchasing history, as well as being able to push and deliver customized offers in new ways.

“As the pace of change picks up, we’ll also see POS and payments systems becoming integrated with even newer technologies like augmented reality and 3-D printing to bring digital elements into the physical world,” Rowsell explained.

“It’s a really exciting time to be in retail.”

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