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How the Convergence of Digital and Physical Commerce is Driving the Future of Commerce
Contents
Creating One Experience for Customers Brand Consistency Real-Time System Of Reference Continuous Customer Engagement with Mobile Open Foundation OmniCommerce Maturity Model Services Lifecycle Global Localized About hybris 2 2 2 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7
Physical and digital commerce are converging at an incredible pace driven by highly connected customers who demand experiences that adapt to their mode of purchasing and shopping. This opens the door for a new imperative known as OmniCommerce, which favors a customer-centric approach over channel-specic processes. Success in commerce now depends on real-time views of customers, inventory, and data to build an intimate understanding of their commerce behavior. Implemented correctly, an OmniCommerce business model and platform boosts order amounts, optimizes lifetime customer value, and fosters gains in loyalty and customer intimacy. Emerging commerce technologies that are robust, exible, scalable and channel agnostic are enabling companies to capitalize on the physical and digital convergence, and deliver a differentiated commerce experience. This paper explores how OmniCommerce enables businesses of all types and sizes to keep up with today's highly demanding customers and describes growth opportunities that are available through embracing a new way of conducting commerce.
Differentiated Commerce: The OmniCommerce Imperative 1
must distinguish itself consistently wherever a customers engage the brand and companies are investing heavily and changing business models to respond to that change. In the retail industry, this change in customer relationship is being acknowledged (see left side of the figure below). Silos are out, brand consistency is in. Brands need to be consistent across all physical branding elements: in-store signage, shelf labels, catalogs, and product displays; their digital counterparts: product content, visual assets, price and promotions on own sites and marketplaces; and across all accessible via smartphones, tablets, PCs, and kiosks.
Brand Consistency
Establishing consistent brand messaging and differentiation is becoming more difficult as consumers develop impressions about brands from inputs and influencers outside a marketers control, such as social communities, forums, and product ratings and reviews. Further, companies traditionally have been able to offer distinct channel (whether physical or digital) assortments, prices, and promotion policies while remaining in-step with individual channel competitors. But customers are forcing a change: they dont see channels; therefore, a brand
85 % 74 %
74 % 82 % 70 % 79 % 58 % 74 %
Leverage customers knowledge and information assets across channels Use the digital channels to provide rich content about our products and services Use the digital channels to build a sense of "community" around our Brand
79 % 69 % 74 % 57 % 56 % 50 %
Omni-Channel 2012:Cross-Channel Comes of Age2012 Benchmark Report RSR Retail Systems ResearchNikki Baird and Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partners June 2012
This means rich support for both, internally and externally sourced product content, access to large data stores of structured and unstructured data, and unified order processes that synchronize with underlying fulfillment and supply chain systems. It also means that fulfillment moves beyond channel silos. As shown in the right side diagram page 2, retailers see the need for seamless channels, either to save the sale in the case of a stock-out in a store, or fulfill a sale made online.
As Facebook seeks to translate its social media users into a social commerce users, some relative newcomers, like Pinterest, have received more favorable ratings. Forrester Research noted, user receptiveness to product marketing on Pinterest is about double (42 %) that of Facebook (22 %) in usefulness for product discovery. Regardless of which is more effective in social commerce, integration to social media and social commerce sites are often required for todays brands. The chart bellow illustrates how mainstream integration such as sharing via social media has become. It also highlights how relatively new platforms such as Pinterest and Facebooks Custom Open Graph gain adoption quickly in todays market.
77 %
Ratings & Reviews
64 %
Like Button on Product Page
61 %
Twitter Share Button
51 %
Pin It Button
36 %
Google+ Button
12 %
Facebook Login either Website or Social App
4%
4%
Implication? Future commerce platforms must connect easily to evolving applications and networks as there will always be a rising star in any given year, just as many of the hot brands engaged their customers on Pinterest for the first time in 2012.
Open Foundation
OmniCommerce strategy requires a strong and open foundation that consists of two key elements: operation with periodic updates. Endpoints, such as point-ofsales devices or a sales reps order book, are now migrating to new, end-to-end processes and platforms. Ease of connecting is also key to the next generation of commerce platforms, whether it is integrating with older enterprise systems or linking with fast evolving technologies. When customers discover a compelling experience through a new technology, their pace of adoption and that of sellers can be extraordinary, as happened in Social Media with Pinterest. Supporting both legacy and emerging technologies requires commerce platforms to have open, flexible architecture built on modern technology.
Ease in connecting to new and legacy external applications, networks, and data stores A common core that seamlessly executes across a variety of rapidly evolving devices, form factors, and selling tools is essential to serving customers in the manner they demand. Many location-specific technologies were built for standalone
OmniCommerce
- Services - Lifecycle - Localized - Global
Multi/Cross-Channel
- BOPIS - Endless aisle - Customer linkage
Traditional
- Store/branch - Catalog/Flyer - Sales Reps
Evolving
- Website - Mobile - Kiosk
Channel Centric
Services
Lifecycle
Global
Localized
and information previously only used in call centers centers which in turn are becoming robust solution centers that can operate in both assisted and self-service modes. Either way, services can be the deciding factor for the increasingly time-starved customer. The commerce platform must enable service offers as it:
Services
Commerce based on high-touch personal services (such as call center, concierge shopping, etc) offers companies a path to combat the commoditization of products resulting from e-commerce transparency and site proliferation. Brands can bundle services to differentiate products warranties, installation, subscriptions, automated replenishment orders, design services, remote video chat, among others. For some industries, such as mobile telecomm providers, Maintenance Repair and Operations (MRO), and Do-It-For-Me in home improvement, the service offer can be key to a sale. Often, the services offered may not have a discrete price; rather they are part of a total customer service experience as customers are supported with sales associates armed with technologies
products/service bundles
Lifecycle
Companies today have many models for managing product lifecycles, from full vertical integration to a dedicated focus only on manufacturing, wholesaling, or retailing. But as consumers use social media and other emerging communication vehicles to engage with brands, and as brands begin to collaborate and connect more directly with end-consumers commerce activity is increasingly moving from B2B or B2C toward B2B2C.
It is easy to see this transition with established brands like Amazon soliciting feedback and crowdsourcing digital content production for their Original Instant Video content or with services like Kickstarter or Quirky who function to establish these engagements with emerging products and startups. Major brands, who previously sold their products exclusively through dealer networks and whose websites were focused on product information, now offer highly interactive brand-focused experiences that allow consumers to purchase from them directly. The same sites also now offer consumer-like experiences to their dealer networks. Key to moving toward a higher level of active lifecycle engagement:
Consistent, global commerce assets suited for rapid expansion in any country or region
Customers provide input into product design or assortment Product visual and content assets are shared across web
sites and users generate content
Upstream brand owners increasingly have direct connections to end customers This same consumerization is changing the B2B landscape rapidly: B2B customers expect to be served with the same ease of access and the same kind of control that consumers are demanding. So whether you are a business in a B2B setting who wants upstream control or are vertically integrated and want to share assets across your operations, the commerce platform you choose must support a lifecycle view.
Localized
Localized commerce revolves around capturing a customer across every stage of the purchase lifecycle and using data-driven intelligence to serve up highly personalized offers based on GPS-defined customer location or expressed preferences. It is the ideal practice for brands interested in achieving a highly integrated level of OmniCommerce maturity, and can help businesses launch targeted marketing initiative based on a sharp understanding of buyer behavior.
Global Growth
Global business-to-consumer e-commerce sales will reach $ 1.25 trillion by 2013, base on a report by the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), a U.K. online retail trade organization. B2C e-commerce sales in 2011 were $961 billion, an increase of close to 20 % from a year earlier Chinas e-commerce sales grew more than 130 % in 2011. The United States remains the worlds single biggest e-commerce market, IMRG says, followed by the United Kingdom and Japan. IMRG estimates that growth rates in those countries will be approximately 10 15 % a year.
Global
Revenue growth opportunities available from moving beyond the home market are so compelling that manufacturers, brands and retailers cant afford to wait to make globalization a top priority. The ability to develop a global in a box template for worldwide expansion is key to initial and ongoing replication of global growth. Gone are the days when the assumption was that an international brand would be a winner by default in a new country. Given the intensity of market pressures and growth imperatives, companies need a platform that has:
Set a context in time, such as a point in a purchase cycle Provide the context of a product solution for a local market Aggregate local demand to enable scale efficiency for
physical commerce locations
Differentiated Commerce: The OmniCommerce Imperative 6
About hybris
hybris helps businesses on every continent sell more goods, services and digital content through every touchpoint, channel and device. hybris delivers "OmniCommerce": state-of-the-art master data management and unified commerce processes that give a business a single view of its customers, products and orders, and its customers a single view of the business. hybris' omni-channel software is built on a single platform, based on open standards, that is agile to support limitless innovation, efficient to drive the best TCO, and scalable and extensible to be the last commerce platform companies will ever need. Both principal industry analyst firms rank hybris as a leader and list its commerce platform among the top two or three in the market. The same software is available on-premise, on-demand and managed hosted, giving merchants of all sizes maximum flexibility. Over 400 companies have chosen hybris, including global B2B sites Starbucks, W.W.Grainger, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Thomson Reuters as well as consumer brands Bridgestone, P&G, Toys R Us, Levi's, and Galeries Lafayette. hybris has operations in 15 countries around the globe. hybris is the future of commerce. For more information, visit www.hybris.com
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Differentiated Commerce: The OmniCommerce Imperative Version: May 2013 Subject to change without prior notice hybris GmbH hybris is a trademark of the hybris Group. Other brand names are trademarks and registered trademarks of the respective companies.