An Oracle White Paper
February 2012
Considerations to Make Before Embarking
on a Multichannel Integration Project
Considerations to Make Before Embarking on a Multichannel Integration Project
Introduction
Consumers expect a consistent brand experience regardless of the channels they choose to
use. Unfortunately, the plethora of channels—including mobile devices, social networks, store
kiosks, Websites, and search engines—makes it challenging to integrate technologies,
people, and processes to provide a unified experience to the customer. This paper advocates
that decision-makers put themselves in their customers’ shoes. It describes three customer
experience features to guide decisions about technology, organizational structure, and
internal processes.
1
Considerations to Make Before Embarking on a Multichannel Integration Project
The Importance of Multichannel Integration
Consumers don’t think in terms of channels; they just expect a consistent brand experience regardless
of what they’re looking for or where. Unfortunately, they’re not getting that experience these days as
they glide between mobile devices, social networks, store kiosks, Websites, and search engines. Instead,
they’re getting a mishmash of experiences from an industry that has long been channel oriented.
Lacking much-needed integration between technology and teams, retailers are delivering frustrating
experiences and missing key opportunities to influence consumer behavior and capture revenue.
True multichannel integration is rare because it’s hard to accomplish with legacy technology and
processes. Data exists in various formats and on myriad systems scattered throughout the enterprise.
Internal teams are siloed and held to channel-oriented goals. Technology is expensive and inflexible.
And organizations have no universal view of their customer base or cross-channel performance.
So is aligning technology, people, and processes worth the hassle of overcoming all of these obstacles?
Absolutely. Prepping your business for the new era of agile commerce is not only necessary, it confers
first-mover advantage on those that are able to unify technology, unlock data, and use multiple
touchpoints to deliver great customer experiences. Indeed, a recent Forrester study found that retailers
that had focused on integration saw increases in online sales (48 percent), customer satisfaction (36
percent), and profitability (25 percent) while watching their operating costs fall by 28 percent.
Successful integration requires that technology, teams, and processes be aligned to drive multichannel
experiences from the inside out. Integration must be an enterprise-sponsored initiative that combines
long-term vision with tactical short-term goals. To achieve the organization’s goals, decision-makers
must put themselves in their customers’ shoes.
Adapt to Me
Consumers want the freedom to engage how they please, take the path that matters most to them, and
view relevant content along the way to aid in their decision-making. To understand the nuances of your
customer base, you should assemble a cross-functional team to map customer lifecycle and purchase
behavior. This team should attempt to answer the following questions:
•
How does the organization respond to customers at different stages?
•
What touchpoints do customers tend to use most?
•
Do customers engage with different channels for different purposes?
•
How does customer behavior fit within the overall business model?
•
How do we measure touchpoint performance?
•
How is content used in different interactions?
2
Considerations to Make Before Embarking on a Multichannel Integration Project
Consider technologies that deliver dynamic experiences that adapt to customers, and give internal
teams the flexibility to scale content and merchandising strategies across touchpoints and unpredictable
customer paths.
Make My Experience Relevant . . .
Shoppers want dynamic, tailored experiences. To provide them, retailers need to know more about
their customers. But the majority of today’s retailers have barely scratched the surface of their most
valuable asset—customer data. The reason for this is that data is housed in different systems and in
different formats—locked within reports that provide little actionable insight.
To remedy this problem, retailers need to identify what data exists, what format it’s in, and where it’s
housed across the enterprise. They then need to determine what’s involved to aggregate data and
ensure that it’s fresh (providing real-time insight into customer behavior). Only then will they be able
to put it into action with targeted experiences and campaigns.
Smart retailers will
•
Combine customer intelligence with merchandising analytics to provide a universal view of
multichannel behavior
•
Aggregate in-store and digital analytics, customer profile data, campaign performance metrics,
segmentation data, sentiment from social networks, and inventory data to gain insight and analyze
performance across the enterprise
•
Invest in tools that enable them to leverage this data to automate product presentation, content
spotlighting, and merchandising across touchpoints
. . . Wherever I Am
Shoppers want fluid interactions regardless of what combination of touchpoints they engage with.
Enabling data sharing across touchpoints is a great way to streamline the customer experience and
accelerate sales. Allow research or purchases completed in one touchpoint to be reflected in the
experience of another—like adding an item to a shopping cart on the Website and having it
simultaneously populate the customer’s mobile cart. A unified infrastructure not only delivers
consistent customer experiences, it also reduces costs and demands on IT staff, and simplifies the
expansion of new business models and channels. As a result, your organization can scale and grow
without being inhibited by technology. When investigating new technologies, be sure you can plug in
to existing systems and leverage your legacy data in an efficient, low-cost way.
How to Get Started
A large-scale integration project will undoubtedly take time and have an impact on your organizational
structure. However, the rewards and growth opportunities presented by such projects are simply too
3
Considerations to Make Before Embarking on a Multichannel Integration Project
large to ignore. Put vision into practice and organize small groups to test organizational structures and
tactical changes—for example, assigning a cross-functional team around an emerging touchpoint (like
social or mobile). Select pilot group participants who may have conflicting channel objectives, different
skill sets, and different roles within the customer lifecycle. Or test how a centralized team (like
marketing) could interact with each channel touchpoint team to push change.
Conclusion
Competing in the new multichannel world of commerce requires a strategic investment to differentiate
your brand. Your organization must begin to think in terms of the overall customer experience rather
than creating solutions for each individual channel. To succeed, you will need to invest in flexible
technology to get to market quickly, test different strategies, and scale data across the enterprise to
create a unified, high-quality customer experience.
Contact Us
For more information about Oracle Endeca Web commerce solutions, visit oracle.com/webcommerce
or call +1.800.ORACLE1 to speak to an Oracle representative.
4
Considerations to Make Before Embarking
Copyright © 2011, 2012 Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and
on a Multichannel Integration Project
the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other
February 2012
warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or
Author: Brenna Johnson
fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are
formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
Oracle Corporation
means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission.
World Headquarters
500 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
U.S.A.
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and
Worldwide Inquiries:
are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are
Phone: +1.650.506.7000
trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. UNIX is a registered trademark licensed through X/Open
Fax: +1.650.506.7200
Company, Ltd. 0212
oracle.com