Omnichannel Retailing
Omnichannel retailing is the highlight of every e-commerce retailer as the retailing landscape has changed in favour of multiple channels that are omnipresent. Vinculum understands this well and tries to incorporate the same while simplifying it for you and your customers.
What Do We Mean by Omnichannel Retailing?
Omnichannel retailing is a strategy that enables the customer to get what is desired in the easiest way possible. It provides flexibility and convenience to your customer and enables them to experience a seamless buying process regardless of the channel – online or offline. It is completely customer-centric in approach and structured according to customer perceptions and expectations.
Why Do You Need Omnichannel for eCommerce?
The dynamics of consumer behavior have shifted the entire focus towards brand loyalty and brand experience. Due to high customer acquisition costs, it is important to retain a customer by not only providing what the customer wants but also provide where the customer wants it.
Every customer is unique and going by the permutations and combinations, there are a countless number of possible ways that one needs in order to curate and meet every customer’s expectations. This herculean task is simplified most effectively by Vinculum’s Omnichannel retailing solution.
Our Approach to Omnichannel Retail Solution
Product Information Management (PIM)
Unique and Consistent Shopping Experience Across Channels
To provide a seamless shopping experience, Brands today need to have accurate & complete visibility of information across their business operations & sales channels.
Fragmented & inconsistent Master Data can lead to inaccurate product data in Online/Offline Catalogs, items erroneously being recorded as out of stock, sluggish new product introductions, and the inability to alter merchandising.
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Vin PIM creates an enterprise-wide repository of product information helping you:
- Create a Single view of Truth across catalogs, channels, distribution channels, merchandising & other systems
- Managing the life cycle of the product, such as onboarding, editing/deleting an existing product
- Identify & leverage Cross sell/ Upsell opportunities
Single View Of Inventory
Sell from Any Channel, Fulfill from Any Location
Oftentimes, Brands experience challenges in managing the inventory well, with a particular channel failing to provide the experience the customer wants in the buying process thus resulting in no conversion.
Our OmniChannel solution helps you manage orders and organize fulfilments centrally, to provide a compelling shopping experience to your customers. Intelligent order processing algorithms route online orders to the nearest store.
Advantages you can look for :
- Reduced logistics costs
- Faster delivery
Click & Collect - BOPAK : Buy-online-pick Up-kerbside
BOPIS : Buy-online-pick Up-store
The most preferred way to collect the orders by customers, which is also a win-win for a seller and a buyer, is to order the product online and collect it at either a store or a Kerbside which acts as a common point between both ends. This helps them to touch, feel, and try their purchase before the collection, making it a real OmniChannel experience.
Coordination and order management are the keys here. We seamlessly integrate your web store/marketplace with offline channels to let customers collect their online purchases directly from a store or kerbside. Having said that, we bring to you the seamless solution by simplifying logistics and warehouse management that makes selling effortless.
Advantages you can look for :
- Best of both worlds ( online and offline)
- Additional selling potential in store
- Eliminates delivery cost
- Cost-efficient
- Efficient logistics
- Seamless user experience
Ship-from-Store
It takes a long while to fulfil an online order from a distribution center which is distant from the customer. In this case retailers leverage the inventory in their offline stores to fulfil the online orders. The orders are ship from the offline store making it an active order fulfilment center.
This fulfilment model also brings the challenge of finding the nearest store location with required inventory. Vinculum Solutions helps you to locate such store and fulfil the order in no time.
Advantages you can look for :
- Fast delivery
- Low transportation cost
- Less logistic complexities
- Higher consumer satisfaction
BORIS- Buy Online, Return in-store
A class of customers makes an online purchase, gets the order delivered online, and then decides to return it to a brick-and-mortar store after trying. This reduces the hassle of the return item process at both ends. It is very crucial at this stage of order return to integrate every channel to avoid dead stock..
Vinculum omnichannel software solutions inform about the accurate inventory after each purchase or return stage. This is one of the most sought-after customer satisfaction attributes.
Advantages you can look for :
- Supply chain cost reduction
- Return mismanagement avoidance
BIMBO – Browse In-store, on mobile, Buy online
To experience the brand first and then buy it, customers visit the in-store brands first and then place their order online. This gives them a sense of surety about the quality and features of the product.
Vinculum software solutions manage to integrate each visit with orders placed and track the accuracy of inventory
Advantages you can look for :
- The high potential of sales
- Reduced return orders
Endless Aisle
Sales opportunity losses are most often caused by missing sizes and insufficient assortment choices.
This is caused by retail store space constraints as well as the usual challenges of holding inventory in multiple locations.
Our Endless Aisle solution gives your walk-in customers countless shopping options by extending your store assortment to cover inventory across stores and channels.
Advantages you can look for :
- Reduced risk of lost sales
- Customer needs meeting, and purchases delivered to a location of their choice
Fulfil by Store (FBS)
VinFBS, the innovative 'Fulfil by Store' mobile application that revolutionizes order management for retail operations. Designed for seamless functionality on both Android and iOS systems, VinFBS empowers retailers to manage their orders with unparalleled ease and efficiency.
VinFBS transforms your stores into dynamic fulfillment centers, ensuring that online orders are processed and managed efficiently, thereby optimizing operations and enhancing customer satisfaction. With VinFBS, retailers can ensure prompt action on orders from anywhere, at any time, offering endless possibilities to improve their retail operations.
Advantages you can look for:
- Interactive Dashboard: Overview orders and operations easily.
- Order Filtering: Customize views by logistics, dates, and more.
- Quick Actions: Swiftly accept or reject orders.
- Order Countdowns: Track pending orders in real-time.
- 'Pick-Pack & Ship': Manage fulfillment efficiently.
- OTP Verification: Secure order handover.
Loyalty
Multichannel Loyalty Programs
The most vital aspect of a business is to retain its loyal customers.
Our Omnichannel Solution enables the consistent implementation of loyalty programs across all channels, ensuring your customers stay with you.
This is done by connecting customers to your brand across all touchpoints and providing them the opportunity to be rewarded for spending and engagement across channels.
Advantages you can look for :
- Earn & Redeem Loyalty across Channels
- Create Discounts, Events, and Location-Specific Promotion
Omnichannel Payment Reconciliation
Channel Commission Overcharges
When the orders are huge, it’s difficult to spot any overcharged commission at any stage of the transaction. Vinculum’s software solutions process the given commission information and calculate the accurate commission fee.
Shipping Overcharges
Attenuated shipping charges in terms of the location of the order or weight of the order have often been found. Vinculum’s software solutions help you to find these hidden overcharges which can be claimed from market places.
Pick-Pack-Ship Overcharges
Certain overcharges are done at the time of pick and pack. Vinculum’s solution software uses an interesting logical formula to find the difference between the actual pick and pack fees and the overcharged pick and pack fees. Later it can be claimed from marketplaces.
Inventory Missing without Reimbursement
The customer tends to return/cancel an order frequently which results in the order returning to the inventory, but many times it either gets misplaced or doesn’t reach the inventory. Vinculum’s software solutions find these leakages and send a complete report to the seller.
Carrier Damaged without Reimbursement
It has been observed that many times the product transported by the marketplace’s transit partner gets damaged before being delivered to the recipient. Vinculum’s software solutions track such types of reimbursements that a seller can claim from the marketplace.
What Our Clients Say about Us
Vinculum has helped enhance our overall efficiency and helped tremendously to curb the loss of sales by implementing their world class omnichannel stack across our India stores. Online orders have increased manifolds with smooth fulfillment from stores and warehouses.
Frequently Asked Questions
Omnichannel in retail refers to a strategy that is customer-centric in approach and enables the customers to get what is desired in the most effortless way possible. It provides convenience and flexibility, enables a seamless buying process by integrating online and offline channels.
Being Omnichannel is immersive, involves selling on all channels, and revolves around the customer putting them over the product, at the core. It’s about communicating in ways that are aligned with why a given channel is used and how it enables a seamless user experience in the customer lifecycle. Customers can purchase from any location—rather than treating channels as independent silos, omnichannel accounts for an overlap between channels and offers customer experiences within and between channels by integrating online and offline experiences.
Brand loyalty and brand experience are the main focus of the decade. It is important for a customer-centric strategy such as going Omnichannel to cater to the high customer acquisition costs. Omnichannel retailing retains a customer by providing both what the customer wants but also, where the customer wants it. Every customer has unique expectations and one needs to curate a countless number of ways possible to meet them. This is simplified through an Omnichannel retailing solution.
In essence, A good Omnichannel customer experience removes the boundaries between different sales and marketing channels to create a unified, integrated whole. The distinctions between channels-onsite, social, mobile, email, physical, and instant messaging-disappear as a single view of the customer as well as a single experience of eCommerce emerges. It offers a smoother customer experience where in place of a multi-channel approach, omnichannel merges the worlds of websites, emails, retargeted ads, social media marketing, and physical locations to show personalized offers, products, and messages to create a seamless user experience.
Omnichannel and multichannel are similar but are not the same concept. Omnichannel involves selling on all channels and revolves around your customer, while multichannel involves selling on many channels and revolves around the product.
An omnichannel approach means there’s integration between distribution, promotion, and communication channels on the back end. It benefits the customer by providing a seamless shopping experience, whether they’re shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, by telephone, or in a brick-and-mortar store. It improves customer service by providing multiple communication options. The back-end integration of channels also allows for more flexibility, as the customer can switch between channels throughout an interaction.
Omnichannel KPIs measure the customers’ buying process, including awareness, engagement, cross-channel conversion rate, and loyalty. There are other KPIs that an omnichannel strategy can focus on, including supply chain management, channel performance, other alternative channels, and pricing. The standard KPIs vary according to the businesses’ products and mission.
Converting a retail business to omnichannel requires significant resources. A Non-functioning omnichannel technology will create the same experience like absolutely no technology at all, so it can be detrimental if not created functionally with all the right Resources like IT Investment & prowess, tech stack and the right infrastructure and the vision, strategy, and robust content management system necessary to integrate and execute. Another challenge is Flexibility, as a large part of making the transition to omnichannel is about people and incentives. Resisting changes and the impacts of incentives on adjacent channels and their effects on overall customer experience is a challenge. Hence, Flexibility is key for Omnichannel to succeed, otherwise, it remains a challenge to the strategy.
An Omnichannel brand experience pushes past the operational tactics of multichannel into a business model that weaves channels together and shares data between them, enabling customers to conduct transactions and experiences with companies however they want, whenever they want. It integrates all channels, online & offline too create a seamless user experience that is smooth & convenient to use. The benefits involve boosted sales due to improved conversions. When you create a seamless Omnichannel user experience, sales increase without a doubt. It also creates enhanced customer engagement which leads to increased customer retention rate due to brand loyalty. When customers get a brilliant omnichannel experience, they tend to engage more with the brand and due to this flexible buying journey, more time would be spent engaging with the brand’s products and services.
Omnichannel performance is measured through KPIs – Key Performance indicators which are a set of quantifiable measurements used to analyze a company’s overall long-term performance. Omnichannel performance is measured primarily through 4 KPIs – Brand awareness, Conversion rates, Retention which includes customer lifetime value ( CLV is the total net profit you can earn from every customer), and Brand advocacy.
An omnichannel solution adds value to the customer’s online experience as it creates a consistent experience for customers by filling the gaps between different touchpoints (websites, mobile apps, social media platforms, etc.) and different devices (laptops, smartphones, and tablets) and integrating all online (website, social media, email, WhatsApp) and offline (retail store, events, call-center) channels to create the brand’s presence across multiple platforms while ensuring a seamless experience throughout.
Both brands and customers need omnichannel solutions. Customers need it to enjoy a seamless user experience in continuity that is consistent across channels and breaks the barriers between online and offline. It offers flexibility and convenience to a customer. Brands need it to increase customer engagement and retention by creating an omnichannel brand solution that is consistent, functional, and seamless in order to improve sales and customer loyalty.
Omnichannel solutions are beneficial because it helps you create a positive experience for the customer at every stage of the buying process, reduce churn, and drive and build a positive reputation of your brand by increasing the convenience and flexibility of services offered to the customer.
