Lisa Powell: So, What are the key challenges that retail businesses need to overcome to take advantage of their digital channel?
Gaurav Patni: The key challenges for moving from bricks and mortar? I think it’s about extending. Retail has always been about creating a good buying proposition for the customer. Whether it’s traditional or pureplay, the fundamentals continue to apply. The key challenge I believe, is really about the back-end and the supply chain. This is tough, and what you do need to also figure out is how to get a good e-commence platform going. But this is not the biggest challenge, in my view. The key challenge for me, is more about working out a way that you can keep your costs low, make the delivery fast and be able to deliver the personalised service that the customers will expect.
Sarah Hayden: With Jeanswest, in particular,one would have to be integration. Our system was quite old, about 20 years old [before our recent re-platform], so that was definitely a challenge and a big one. Also, if you are multi-channel, if you do something online, how does it affect in-store? How are your stores impacted? I think that’s a challenge, to understand that too.
Kees de Vos: In my opinion, it should be an extension. It should really be felt and lived and breathed through your organisation with multi-channel. Everyone needs to understand it and I think that's key. I think the other thing from a systems point of view is the integration. I believe that there is a real customer experience and customer expectation. The customer wants to be with you at every touchpoint, at every turn. And that requires a new view on your systems and a multi-channel view – and that requires a single view of customers, a single view of product, or orders, etc.
Lisa Powell: I think a key part is also that the customer doesn't understand really that there are multi-channels. The customer just understands the brand and wants their experience with that brand to recognise it and treat it the same whenever it chooses to interact with you. So then, thinking backwards and figuring out how to make that happen for the customer, really for me is one of the biggest challenges that businesses seem to miss. So my next question then, is: In your opinion, what do you think are the key features of a true multi-channel business?
Daniel Roberts: I completely agree with what you said Lisa – a true multi-channel business is one where the customer has that true all round experience and it’s seamless. Having a consistent experience is key to producing a successful multi-channel experience and business.
Lisa Powell: So, Kees, from your point of view, what are some of the strategies and tactics you've seen that work best in making the move from bricks-and-mortar to multi-channel?
Kees de Vos: A number of things, depending on which level you’re at. Firstly, day-to-day operations. I think its worth it to go through a ‘day in the life’ and compare and contrast what you would do for stores, compared to what you would do for online and work through that. So basically come to the conclusion that actually the training mechanics that you apply to the store are actually fairly similar to the training mechanics of what you would do for your online store. And I think if the concept realisation is there that online retail and offline retail are still both essentially retail, it will help quite dramatically with the change within the organisation. And that’s at an operational level. On a C-level there is no better tactic than to point at people’s iPads in front of them. And for me, that is one of the best inventions in change management, to kind of just point at the iPads. Because so many C-level managers have them and they wan to shop on their iPad first. But I think [when you point that out] that’s when a lot of these guys for the first time start thinking about multi-channel. They will then see that the expectation is that people want to be able to see email arrive on their iPad and a calendar on their iPad, but also be able to shop on their iPad. I think for a lot of these guys that's one of the first times that they will experience and see multi-channel working.
Lisa Powell: Daniel – from your point of view – and I think this a big one for anyone out there who is working with bricks-and-mortar retailers. How to you get buy-in? I think one of the most important things is definitely buy-in from the top down, but how do you get that and how do you get people to understand what multi-channel and omni-channel really looks like?
Daniel Roberts: I think Kees made a really good point there in saying that many senior executives actually use online, but then don’t always necessarily invest in it. But actually, the voice of the customer is really the most powerful thing you can present to a retailer. So demonstrating this to them, by either getting some video vox-pops or actually getting to some of these panels and getting C-level managers to actually sit in on them to see what people in the industry are saying is really how you go about it. To show them and help them understand how different generations are shopping and how businesses are using different channels. So you need to just keep repeating the same message and then people actually start waking up to the fact that online actually has some proper profit potential.
Lisa Powell: I think one of the things that we did [at Apparel Group] as well is that, when there was a problem in the business, we tried to come up with an online way of saving it or making it work. So, for example, if something was coming in late, we would offer ourselves up to preview and pre-sell online – to put in orders online before it arrived to get momentum on the product. And I think the more we stepped in and started using that, kind of like a saviour, the more they started to think about it. I think the hardest thing for me, personally, is to get it across that the whole business had to think about ALL channels ALL the time. I think being a good motivator and a bit of a terrier is a good way to go!
Sarah Hayden: I think at Jeanswest we’ve been lucky in that we had buy-in and we pretty much have buy-in across the business – everyone sees the value of what online has delivered to our own stores. But above all we listen to our customer. A lot of the time that customer feedback comes from the store managers, and gets fed back up to the top, or from our Facebook page, etc – as to what the customer wants. So buy-in is not a problem, or it hasn't been for us. However, how to respond to it, and what that means for staff roles and how that changes, that’s probably been one of the challenges for us. Everyone’s on it and wants it, but when it’s not a KPI for our staff, that can be a problem.
Lisa Powell: At the moment , in my new position, I talk to lots of retailers, and they are constantly shocked that when they finally go live, they can do their first years’ budget in their first month. Because they actually don't understand the pent-up want of Australian customers to transact online and to work with the brand online. And I think there’s a lot of thinking about it and a lot of “What if, what if”. But it's not about that it’s about just getting on.
Kees de Vos: I think another thing that is hard is to convince your board in a market where e-commence or multi-channel doesn't yet have enough momentum. But what worked for us was to go through – what could you do in a multi-channel environment? What data would you have? Customer data, stock data, etc – and what could you do with the data that you may collate in a multi-channel environment? And what could you also do with that data in-store? So if I have richer data from online – how helpful would that data be in-store for example? And, if I collate a ‘user reviews’ online, how would I use that in in-store merchandising for example? Or could that data be used by a merchandiser to adjust their range or talk to the supplier, etc. That is tactic that is relatively easy to do and relatively convincing for the other functions in your organisation.
Lisa Powell: I would completely agree, and I'm actually working with a retailer at the moment and what I constantly try to do there is, for everything they see as an 'oomph', say: Who else in the organisation will benefit? So say, even things like photography for products – I say, “why don’t we speak to the wholesalers, why don't we speak to in-store, why don't we think of printing out a simple catalogue and using it for training?” What I see is that if you start to think ‘bigger’ then it helps to break down the barriers as to why they think they should it. And everybody then starts to see – well, yeah, this is actually helping me.
Kees de Vos: I think another thing is also, that in traditional retail, there is a lot of resistance in going online. And people will say: “Well only three per cent of turnover is coming from online so why would I invest in it?” But I think that if you look closer at e-commerce figures that actually the biggest impact of online will actually happen in your store. It's about the amount of traffic that you can drive to your store.
So when you talk to your staff, store managers and the executives, it’s about zoning in on that point and focusing on the fact that its not just cannibalising what you’re doing in-store, it’s really driving traffic into your store.
And in the more mature markets in the UK and US, you’ll see that for a regular retailer that has got a good online presence, the impact of having online and in-store is that up to 20 percent or 30 per cent of visits in-store are directly influenced by online. And that's a big influence.
Lisa Powell: So, what are some of the best models you’ve seen working in a multi-channel company?
Gaurav Patni: I think when you look at retail broadly, depending on the category it depends. But I think good examples are Nordstroms in the luxury sector and Walmart, which are recognised worldwide today as benchmarks. They have been able to deliver a seamless experience. In the initial stages, of course there may have been issues, but through a good process and using the key principles and realising that you have to service the customer and make sure that they have a good experience and that they will come back – they got through it. And it's also their constant innovation, and the best companies do that and are constantly adapting and investing and moving forward – on things like quick delivery, customer service, etc.
Lisa Powell: So any last key advice?
Kees de Vos: Consider your customer experience. The customer thinks and adapts so much faster than retail does, so try to link in and adapt to the way and the speed at which they are thinking. Also, technically as you are going into multi-channel, be prepared to start small and learn and adapt, but be ready to accelerate quickly. It’s a fundamental change to how you operate, but it'll start small and keep changing.
MEET THE PANEL:
MODERATOR:
Lisa Powell
Lisa Powell is an e-commerce strategist currently working at Sydney-based digital agency Amblique . Powell has over 13 years’ experience in e-commerce and has also previously worked as the e-business group manager at Apparel Group, developing multichannel strategy for the overall business as well as the digital strategy for both its fashion brands, Sportscraft and Saba.
SPEAKERS:
Daniel Roberts
Daniel is a multi-channel retail consultant, with over 10 years developing multi-channel businesses within established retailers.
His previous experience includes roles at Woolworths, Dick Smith, Dan Murphys, Big W, Masters and Tesco.com.
Sarah Hayden
Sarah Hayden is the CRM & digital manager for chain fashion retailer Jeanswest. As part of her role Hayden has been responsible for the brand's 1.4million strong Jeanswest Reward program and cross-channel communications strategies, as well as launching and building the ecommerce website into Jeanswest’s #1 store.
Gaurav Patni
Gaurav Patni is the technology integration leader at David Jones Ltd, responsible for helping build a strategic view of the firm’s business systems portfolio and integrating new technologies. Patni has over 14 years executive level experience working with retailers including Walmart, Nordstrom,
Best Buy, JCPenney, Ross Stores, Procter & Gamble, Cargill, Loblaws, and GPA (Grupo Pão de Açúcar, Brazil).
Kees de Vos
Kees de Vos is vice president of global multi-channel consulting company Hybris. Hybris customers include Target, Benefit Cosmetics, Toys R Us, Nokia and Nikon. Before Hybris, Kees spent four years at retail consultancy, Javelin Group as director of technology, providing strategic multichannel and ecommerce advice to a range leading international retailers.They are constantly shocked that when they finally go live, they can do their first years’ budgets in their first month.