How to implement customer-friendly omnichannel sales system services

In shoe retail, Econika, Paolo Conte, Ralf Ringer, Ecco can already boast of such a service for their customers. The Detsky Mir chain of stores also has such a service. It is very successfully used by the Russian jewelry manufacturer Sokolov, who managed to organize a similar service by interacting with affiliate retailers. In some cases, such as on the sites of Sokolov, the shoe manufacturer and retailer Ecco, the buyer can even reserve the goods at a specific retail outlet suitable for him in some ways (the store is located near the house or at work, in your favorite shopping center etc.) for two or three days and drive up to him at a convenient time.

Omnichannel sales are gaining momentum

Pickup service (a number of retailers use the English name - InstorePickUp) - one of the types of communication with the Omni-channel consumer. In order to implement this service, a retail company must have a certain technological base, namely: a full-fledged working website with a catalog will be required, where there will be cards with a full description of the goods, and a modern ERP system that allows you to take into account the movement of goods in retail in real time time.

At Detsky Mir, pick-up points in retail stores opened in June 2015. First of all, the service is used by retail customers who would like to receive an order in a short time, since the service provides the buyer with the opportunity to receive his order in one of the stores in the network, a few hours after its formation.

The omnichannel sales system allows you to qualitatively improve the service for customers, the introduction and development of this sales model naturally increases the loyalty of regular customers, attracts new ones, increases conversion and the average check, reduces the number of returns and refusals to purchase online. Seeing that you can select and reserve your favorite product in different colors and sizes, and even come for it at a convenient time and in a convenient place, a person immediately forgets about his fears of online shopping (“Oh, size may not fit”, “A how will I return the item later if it doesn’t fit? ”,“ What if I don’t like the color or fabric? ”etc.) and easily part with the money.

The technical side of the issue

“The implementation of the InstorePickUp service became possible as part of the company's global transition to the new SAP IT platform, which includes SAP Merchandising for Retail (management of major retail processes), SAP EWM (management of distribution centers), POS Data management (analysis of receipts). With the help of a unified IT platform capable of servicing up to 600 stores, we get complete analytics on the assortment and sales results of each store, which allows us to effectively manage both a single store and the business processes of the chain as a whole, ”comments the head of external and internal communications of Detsky Mir Group Nadezhda Kiseleva.

Also, about a year ago, the service of picking up goods ordered through an online store from an offline store was launched by Paolo Conte. According to the head of the Paolo Conte Internet project, Alexander Potokin, the implementation of the project, the integration between 1С, the site and other service providers, required certain changes to be made to the standard 1С-Bitrix system. “The junction between the systems has been completely rewritten. To expand the functionality, several groups of specialists continue to work on it together. But the result of the work was a system that was unique in its essence, which allows minimizing labor costs for order processing, reducing lead time, solving a number of logistic problems and, thereby, significantly improving the service for our online store customers, ”he says.

At Econika shoe company, pick-up service has been available to customers for about five years now. The head of the Econika online store, Stanislav Korobochka, believes that the process of implementing a pick-up service for network buyers was not difficult. “We carried out the usual integration of the site with the 1C base,” he comments. - Uploading to the site takes place daily / hourly / every minute. It is difficult to clearly evaluate how the introduction of such a system affected the sales efficiency, and we primarily appreciate this as an additional service for our customers, which helps in choosing a place to buy. First of all, we value and save client time. Due to the display of product residues on the site, the client does not have to ring up stores in search of the desired assortment, he receives the necessary information in two or three clicks and can go shopping! ”

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Recommendations of a specialist

The benefits of the InstorePickUp service are obvious to the seller. According to Yevgeny Schepelin, CEO of eSolutions LLC, an online trading consulting company, these are:

• the possibility of self-delivery of goods on the day of placing the order;

• more flexible inventory management;

• additional traffic to the store and increasing customer loyalty

For companies wishing to introduce a pick-up / pick-up service from the store, the expert gives the following recommendations:  

1. The retail operator must know exactly the inventory of each store in the chain. Therefore, the presence of an IT system plays an important role in the development of this technology by a retailer.

“Unfortunately, for many retailers, goods are not written off in real time, but at the time the shift is closed. This generates problems with the accuracy of displaying the availability of goods / size on the website in a particular store, ”says Evgeny Schepelin. - There are also temporary conditions of the goods when it is not entirely clear whether they will be bought (for example, if the goods are in the fitting room). In the case of a minimum depth of stock on SKU, we get a greater likelihood of an OOS (Out of stock) situation when the ordered product is already physically sold, or the last unit with the marriage is left. "Such situations happen at any warehouse complex, and in this case, each store is, in fact, a warehouse, so the probability of error increases in proportion to the size of the retail network."

2. It is worth considering the volume of orders.

“If we are talking about dozens of orders a day collected in a store, there should be no additional problems, but if the store is located in a key shopping center and the volume is significantly larger, this creates a need for the retailer to install additional packaging zones for order processing, in the presence of a special (dedicated) personnel, ”the expert says. In addition, Evgeny Shchepelin points to another possible way of organizing self-pickup of an order for retail customers - from a retailer's warehouse. This process is almost the same as a regular home order. Orders are processed and packed in the warehouse. Then they are consolidated and sorted (depending on the type of business) to the store for issuance to the buyer. Of the advantages of this option, the expert notes the following: the ability to scale with a sharp increase in the volume of orders (especially during the sales period); better order processing (unified packaging standard) and significantly fewer OOS errors (unified inventory - accuracy of the number of balances on the site).
However, this system has drawbacks: a limited range (depending on the type of storage - external / own warehouse); more expensive logistics (delivery warehouse store); a longer period of physical availability of the order to the buyer (delivery time from warehouse to store, store sorting schedule).
“Omni-channel technologies are highly dependent on the legal form of the network. Ideally, when a retail chain, including offline, online stores, has a single legal entity. Other options (for example, franchising) have their own risks - both accounting / tax and personal data security risks, ”warns Evgeny Schepelin.