Omni-channel – legacy infrastructure gets in the way

Omni-channel marketing is one of the current hot topics within many businesses. It is obviously of direct importance to the retail community, but any business where customers have options in how they arrive at purchase decisions, and then implement them, has the potential to exploit omni-channel routes to market, and arguably should be setting off down that trail.

There are problems to overcome, however, as a recent survey by Ipanema Technologies has shown. Its research reveals that some 65 percent of that prime user group, retailers, struggle with getting the omni-channel right and cite underperforming technology, changing IT trends and the complex organisational infrastructure as the primary reasons.

Retailers’ increasing focus on customers is driving the omni-channel challenge. They see the the key elements of a customer-centric experience as being excellent customer service (58 percent), fast transactions (55 percent) and interchangeable purchase channels (49 percent). But only 35 percent of the respondents described their customer experience as excellent, so it is clear retailers are grappling with this challenge.

Back-office technology underpins the delivery of the omni-channel experience but technology issues are hampering these efforts, with 74 percent citing a sprawling IT infrastructure ,71 percent  pointing at business pressure to provide technology innovation, and general cost pressures as stumbling blocks.

In addition, companies are wrestling with a host of IT priorities such as cloud deployment (57 percent), mobile application development (55 percent), and supply chain optimisation (54 percent), all requiring network design changes. Near enough half of the respondents pointed to increasing bandwidth, server virtualization, network architecture, content delivery and hybrid networking as issues to be resolved.

The vast majority (76 percent) recognise the importance of excellent application performance but 78 percent lack confidence in the ability of their IT infrastructure to deliver it, roll out new applications or manage application SLAs.

In addition, retailers believe that guaranteeing consistent and high levels of application performance can have a major impact on customer/shopper satisfaction (54 percent), employee productivity (50 percent), brand reputation (49 percent) and company financial targets (41 percent).

In fact, if retailers made significant improvements to their omni-channel approach by the end of the year, round about one half of them would expect to see an increase in sales, increased market share, positive word of mouth and cost savings.

“The ultimate shopping experience depends on a robust omni-channel that delivers speed, Quality of Service and a seamless channel service. Guaranteeing the performance of key retail applications is the surest way to close the gap and deliver that experience”, said Béatrice Piquer-Durand , VP Marketing, Ipanema Technologies .