The past year has been filled with uncertainty and new trends that businesses and consumers alike have had to quickly adapt to. One of the most pressing changes has occurred in the retail landscape.
In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic became widespread in the U.S., Fortune Media reported that 75% of businesses were experiencing disruptions to their supply chain due to coronavirus-related transportation restrictions. Whether organizations wanted to or not, many had to adapt to an omnichannel strategy and embrace eCommerce to remain competitive.
What is omnichannel retail?
Omnichannel has been a buzzword in marketing for years, but only recently has it been applied to business operations as a whole. Many businesses are adopting an omnichannel retail strategy to set themselves apart from the competition.
An Omnichannel strategy doesn’t require businesses to be present on every channel, but to be everywhere its customers are. In other words, omnichannel retail is a “fully-integrated” approach to commerce that provides shoppers with a unique experience across all touchpoints. Instead of bolstering brick-and-mortar stores and mobile-browsing only, businesses must explore how their customers may interact with them on online and social media marketplaces as well.
Adopting an omnichannel retail strategy doesn’t only improve the customer experience, it can also improve your bottom line. Even with the many benefits of an omnichannel approach to retail, businesses are still hesitant to change their ways. Let’s explore a little more about what’s holding them back.
Barriers to omnichannel adoption
If creating an omnichannel retail strategy is a differentiator, why are so many businesses not doing so? The answer is relatively simple; change is difficult, and creating a seamless shopping experience across channels requires expertly integrating systems which can be time consuming and costly.
For B2B organizations, the customer experience is also inherently different. They know exactly what they want, so it’s not about the upsell during 1:1 engagement, but creating a smooth experience to keep them coming back. For eCommerce, they need custom pricing and a personalized shopping portal with their saved details that allows them to check out quickly. These customers also heavily rely on the inventory displayed being correct when they purchase SKUs in bulk.
When B2C and B2B businesses want to create an omnichannel retail strategy, integration-Platform-as-a-service is ideal for merging their back-of-house and customer-facing systems.
How can erpCommerce™ help?
The start of an omnichannel strategy is ensuring your ERP and eCommerce systems are integrated. Especially during these times when businesses have been forced to reevaluate their sales channels, they need an extendable and flexible integration solution.
erpCommerce™ was created for ERP users by ERP specialists to help businesses seamlessly integrate Magento with ERP like Netsuite and Sage X3. Unlike other integrations built by web developers, ERP is the single source of truth that runs the business.
Pixafy’s proprietary solution focuses on integrating seven main touchpoints: Customers, orders, fulfillment/shipments, inventory, pricing, invoices and new products/product updates. Merchants are never locked into a standard integration, though they exist to get the solution deployed quickly and accurately. You can always develop custom integrations for your unique workflows.
erpCommerce™ is an ideal solution for all retailers, but offers rich B2B functionality for businesses wanting to integrate their systems. Contact the team at Pixafy today to learn more about how merging Magento and your ERP can benefit your organization.
