Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

Create a cohesive, omnichannel framework that supports the right transactions through the right channels for the right customers.

Analyst Perspective

A clearly outlined commerce strategy is a necessary component of a broader customer experience strategy.

Ben Dickie
Research Lead, Research – Applications
Info-Tech Research Group

“Your commerce strategy is where the rubber hits the road, converting your prospects into paying customers. To maximize revenue (and provide a great customer experience), it’s essential to have a clearly defined commerce strategy in place.

A strong commerce strategy seeks to understand your target customer personas and commerce journey maps and pair these with the right channels and enabling technologies. There is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach to selecting the right commerce channels: while many organizations are making a heavy push into e-commerce and mobile commerce, others are seeking to differentiate themselves by innovating in traditional brick-and-mortar sales. Hybrid channel design now dominates many commerce strategies – using a blend of e-commerce and other channels to deliver the best-possible customer experience.

IT leaders must work with the business to create a succinct commerce strategy that defines personas and scenarios, outlines the right channel matrix, and puts in place the right enabling technologies (for example, point-of-sale and e-commerce platforms).”

Stop! Are you ready for this project?

This Research Is Designed For:

• IT leaders and business analysts supporting their commercial and marketing organizations in developing and executing a technology enablement strategy for e-commerce or brick-and-mortar commerce.
• Any organization looking to develop a persona-based approach to identifying the right channels for their commerce strategy.

This Research Will Help You:

• Identify key personas and customer journeys for a brick-and-mortar and/or e-commerce strategy.
• Select the right channels for your commerce strategy and build a commerce channel matrix to codify the results.
• Review the “art of the possible” and new developments in brick-and-mortar and e-commerce execution.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• Sales managers, brand managers, and any marketing professional looking to build a cohesive commerce strategy.
• E-commerce or POS project teams or working groups tasked with managing an RFP process for vendor selection.

This Research Will Help Them:

• Build a persona-centric commerce strategy.
• Understand key technology trends in the brick-and-mortar and e-commerce space.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Today’s customers expect to be able to transact with you in the channels of their choice.

The proliferation of e-commerce, innovations in brick-and-mortar retail, and developments in mobile commerce and social media selling mean that IT organizations are managing added complexity in drafting a strategy for commerce enablement.

The right technology stack is critical to support world-class e-commerce and brick-and-mortar interactions with customers.

Common Obstacles

Many organizations do not define strong, customer-centric drivers for dictating which channels they should be investing in for transactional capabilities.

As many retailers look to move shopping experiences online during the pandemic, the impetus for having a strong e-commerce suite has markedly increased. The proliferation of commerce vendors has made it difficult to identify and shortlist the right solution, while the pandemic has also highlighted the importance of adopting new vendors quickly and efficiently: companies need to understand the top players in different commerce market landscapes.

IT is receiving a growing number of commerce platform requests and must be prepared to speak intelligently about requirements and the “art of the possible.”

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Leverage Info-Tech’s proven, road-tested approach to using personas and scenarios to build strong business drivers for your commerce strategy.
• Before selecting and deploying technology solutions, create a cohesive channel matrix outlining which channels your organization will support with transactional capabilities.
• Understand evolving trends in the commerce solution space, such as AI-driven product recommendations and integration with other essential enterprise applications (i.e. customer relationship management [CRM] and marketing automation platforms).
• Understand and apply operational best practices such as content optimization and dynamic personalization to improve the conversion rate via your e-commerce channels.

Info-Tech Insight

• Support the right transactional channels for the right customers: there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to commerce enablement – understand your customers to drive selection of the right transactional channels.
• Don’t assume that “traditional” commerce channels have stagnated: IoT, customer analytics, and blended retail are reinvigorating brick-and-mortar selling.
• Don’t buy best-of-breed; buy best-for-you: base commerce vendor selection on your requirements and use cases, not on the vendor’s overall performance.

A strong commerce strategy is an essential component of a savvy approach to customer experience management

A commerce strategy outlines an organization’s approach to selling its products and services. A strong commerce strategy identifies target customers’ personas, commerce journeys that the organization wants to support, and the channels that the organization will use to transact with customers.

Many commerce strategies encompass two distinct but complementary branches: a commerce strategy for transacting through traditional channels and an e-commerce strategy. While the latter often receives more attention from IT, it still falls on IT leaders to provide the appropriate enabling technologies to support traditional brick-and-mortar channels as well. Traditional channels have also undergone a digital renaissance in recent years, with forward-looking companies capitalizing on new technology to enhance customer experiences in their stores.

Traditional Channels

• Physical Stores (Brick and Mortar)
• Kiosks or Pop-Up Stores
• Telesales
• Mail Orders
• EDI Transactions

E-Commerce Channels

• E-Commerce Websites
• Mobile Commerce Apps
• Embedded Social Shopping
• Customer Portals
• Configure Price Quote Tool Sets (CPQ)
• Hybrid Retail

Info-Tech Insight

To better serve their customers, many companies position themselves as “click-and-mortar” shops – allowing customers to transact at a store or online.

Customers’ expectations are on the rise: meet them!

Today’s consumers expect speed, convenience, and tailored experiences at every stage of the customer lifecycle. Successful organizations strive to support these expectations.

58%
of retail customers admitted that their expectations now are higher than they were a year ago (FinancesOnline).

70%
of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 have increasing customer expectations year after year (FinancesOnline).

69%
of consumers now expect store associates to be armed with a mobile device to deliver value-added services, such as looking up product information and checking inventory (V12).

73%
of support leaders agree that customer expectations are increasing, but only…

42%
of support leaders are confident that they’re actually meeting those expectations.

How can you be sure that you are meeting your customers’ expectations?

1. Offer more personalization throughout the entire customer journey
2. Practice quality customer service – ensure staff have up-to-date knowledge and offer quick resolution time for complaints
3. Focus on offering low-effort experiences and easy-to-use platforms (i.e. “one-click buying”)
4. Ensure your products and services perform well and do what they’re meant to do
5. Ensure omnichannel availability – 9 in 10 consumers want a seamless omnichannel experience

Info-Tech Insight

Customers expect to interact with organizations through the channels of their choice. Now more than ever, you must enable your organization to provide tailored commerce and transactional experiences.

Omnichannel commerce is the way of the future

Create a strategy that embraces this reality with the right tools!

Get ahead of the competition by doing omnichannel right! Devise a strategy that allows you to create and maintain a consistent, seamless commerce experience by optimizing operations with an omnichannel framework. Customers want to interact with you on their own terms, and it falls to IT to ensure that applications are in place to support and manage both traditional and e-commerce channels. There must also be consistency of copy, collateral, offers, and pricing between commerce channels.

71%
of consumers want a consistent experience across all channels, but only…

29%
say that they actually get it.

(Source: Business 2 Community, 2020)

Omnichannel is a “multichannel approach that aims to provide customers with a personalized, integrated, and seamless shopping experience across diverse touchpoints and devices.”
Source: RingCentral, 2021

IT is responsible for providing technology enablement of the commerce strategy: e-commerce platforms are a cornerstone

An e-commerce platform is an enterprise application that provides end-to-end capabilities for allowing customers to purchase products or services from your company via an online channel (e.g. a traditional website, a mobile application, or an embedded link in a social media post). Modern e-commerce platforms are essential for delivering a frictionless customer journey when it comes to purchasing online.

$6.388
trillion dollars worth of sales will be conducted online by 2024 (eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021).

44%
of all e-commerce transactions are expected to be completed via a mobile device by 2024 (Insider).

21.8%
of all sales will be made from online purchases by 2024 (eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021).

Strong E-Commerce Platforms Enable a Wide Range of Functional Areas:

• Product Catalog Management
• Web Content Delivery
• Product Search Engine
• Inventory Management
• Shopping Cart Management
• Discount and Coupon Management
• Return Management and Reverse Logistics
• Dynamic Personalization
• Dynamic Promotions
• Predictive Re-Targeting
• Predictive Product Recommendations
• Transaction Processing
• Compliance Management
• Commerce Workflow Management
• Loyalty Program Management
• Reporting and Analytics