{"id":3865,"date":"2019-10-08T21:05:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T21:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-402808-2566796.cloudwaysapps.com\/de\/development\/?p=3865"},"modified":"2022-05-15T09:04:25","modified_gmt":"2022-05-15T13:04:25","slug":"aligning-stores-achieve-omnichannel-retailing-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storeforcesolutions.com\/de\/aligning-stores-achieve-omnichannel-retailing-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"Aligning Your Stores to Achieve Omnichannel Goals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Challenges of Omnichannel Retailing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Brick and mortar stores are the single most important touchpoint a retailer has in growing overall sales. Digitally native brands are opening physical stores to compete more effectively for the hearts of the consumer, while traditional retailers are reinventing themselves to stay relevant in the new retail world. Today, specialty retailers are beginning to recognize that their physical and digital stores are co-dependent. However, challenges exist when balancing in-store activities to meet omnichannel demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The goal of omnichannel retailing is to create a consistent customer experience across channels. This through a frictionless and unified commerce. The first speed bump that most traditional retailers encounter in this journey is internal competition between the channels. Most retailers started their omnichannel journey by allowing digital returns at stores. Then they implemented some form of endless aisle. At their foundation, traditional retail labor planning models rely on a sales forecast based on in-store demand generation. Neither of these omnichannel activities add to that sales forecast. Therefore these digital activities were either not funded, or funded via a \u2018band-aid\u2019 approach. That\u2019s when the fight started\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Omnichannel Retailing: The Two Stages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Long before omnichannel retailing was a \u2018thing\u2019, few retailers paused to think that each transaction has two stages: demand generation and order fulfillment.<\/strong> A customer would walk into a store, interact with an associate to select items, and then walk to cash to pay. In today\u2019s omnichannel world, demand can be generated either in-store or online. Orders can be fulfilled from a DC (Distribution Center) or any store in the chain. The two stages are now clearly distinct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is this important to note? Simple. Demand generating activities influence current and future sales forecasts, which in turn serve as a basis for your labor planning model. But if demand is generated in one store, but the order is fulfilled from another store or a DC, does the fulfilling store receive credit? Or worse, if the customer makes their purchase decision while in-store but then goes home to order online, will the store ever receive credit for the sale? If not, they have spent the labor generating the demand but will not be rewarded with the labor budget next year. The same is true for digital order fulfillment activities. Be they \u2018click and collect\u2019 or endless aisle activities such as ship-from-store \u2013 how is the labor funded? And perhaps the most important question of all, how will the store team\u2019s incentives be impacted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Available Capacity and Store as Markets? What Does it Mean for Me?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Available Capacity: <\/strong>Specialty retailers often have Available Capacity (or \u201cAC\u201d) at their stores to perform some of these digital order fulfillment tasks without adding more labor. Minimum staffing levels and minimum shift lengths produce schedules that cannot exactly align the traffic demand forecast. For instance, if you have a store with a min staff level of 2 store associates, but will only have 5 customers cross your lease line on Monday morning between 10 and 11, those 2 staffs have AC within that hour to do digital tasks. Before adding more labor hours to your stores, consider your AC to perform digital tasks in-store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stores as Markets:<\/strong> 75% of digital returns are completed in-store<\/a>. However, many retailers lack the ability to separate these returns from brick and mortar sales, resulting in digital returns negatively impacting a store\u2019s net sales and the store staff\u2019s incentives. And what is worse, store staff may only have visibility to their own store\u2019s brick and mortar sales and traffic. They may only see both numbers declining year over year, even though their company\u2019s total top line is growing. Without being told any different, they may believe that they will be the next casualty of the supposed \u2018Retail Apocalypse\u2019. In 2018, a study by ICSC<\/a> showed a clear connection between opening or closing physical stores and the volume of e-commerce<\/a> traffic. Technology exists today<\/a> to geolocate digital sales to a physical store, allowing a retailer to look at a store as a market (both in-store and online). In this way, you can produce a pure \u2018brick & mortar\u2019 view of sales, a pure digital view of sales, and a combined market view of sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strategies to Improve Your Store-Level Digital Interactions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Retail is constantly evolving and solutions to existing problems are being tested every day. Important strategies should be implemented to improve the execution of your store-level digital interactions and the overall customer experience of your brand. These include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n