Innovation & creativity can be fooled or deserve a real opportunity?
If you want to meet your customer's expectations and provide them omnichannel customer experiences, you need to go first for a competent open omnichannel innovation platform.
In the old days, global ERP vendors dominated the IT landscape with monolithic inflexible solutions aimed to dictate fixed rules in an ever-changing world: “WITH OUR ERP WE WILL SUPPORT YOUR ENTIRE BUSINESS FOREVER!”.
This approach for fashion/luxury/retail brands clearly failed and ERP projects never on time and on budget prevented a lot of companies the possibility to have flexible digital platforms and the necessary resources and money to support new ideas and effective innovation.
Today big consulting firms are pushing for "generalized" digital transformation approaches using "generalized" digital transformation frameworks aimed to substitute the old "copy and paste consulting projects" and neverending ERP implementations projects with a brand new cash cow: "digital transformation".
On the other side CRM/E-Commerce/POS/PLM/DAM/PIM vendors are still trying (or sometimes constrained) to declare their solutions as holy grail platforms able to support whatever omnichannel service for any business model and able to integrate whatever company backend environment available.
One step back please: what means OMNICHANNEL for a global fashion brand?
Omnichannel for fashion and luxury brands is a much more complex than the ”omnichannel for retail” concept we are used talking about.
Brands are WHOLESALERS (B2B/B2B2C) AND RETAILERS (POS/B2C) at the same time.
So BRAND'S CORE BUSINESS includes RETAIL+B2C+B2B+B2B2C+B2E.
Additionally, fashion and luxury brand's businesses are “natively” multicompany, multibrand, multisite, multichannel, multicurrency, multilanguage and "multi-everything" at any level of their value chain.
What are the real limitations and risks of the common approach proposed by consulting firms or vendors not addressing BRAND'S CORE BUSINESS model at the right level?
The approaches/solutions typically provide very limited results and are very difficult to integrate and maintain simply because they cannot exploit their value if they are not served by a proper omnichannel backend able to provide:
Omnichannel master data distribution & orchestration (Single Product View)
Omnichannel stock management & control (Single Stock View)
Omnichannel comprehensive order management system (Single Orders View)
Omnichannel customer master data management (Single Customer View)
Enterprise class real-time API services and integration stack
”Multi-Everything” at foundation level in every pillar of the value chain
All above based on B2C/B2B/B2B2C/B2E integrated business model
So if you need a CRM/E-Commerce/Consumer or Business App, look for the best vendor fulfilling your specific needs but do not be fooled or make it simple: they NEED A TRUE OMNICHANNEL BACKEND to support their solutions.
If you want to meet your customer's expectations and provide the EXTRAORDINARY OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES they are looking for, you need to go first for a COMPETENT OPEN OMNICHANNEL INNOVATION PLATFORM.
An OPEN OMNICHANNEL INNOVATION PLATFORM will nicely extend existing company ERP and will ORCHESTRATE all of the touch points and departmental solutions (i.e. CRM, E-Commerce (B2C/B2E/B2B), Point of Sales, WMS, SFA, PIM, DAM, Marketing Automation Tools, Business Apps, Consumers Apps ...) that represent today the digital arsenal of any fashion brand.
An OPEN INNOVATION PLATFORM that will provide a complete set of API services aims to integrate all of the departmental solutions and able to support TRUE INNOVATION: creation, test, implementation, and maintenance of new OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES dedicated to CUSTOMERS (B2C), PARTNERS (B2B) and EMPLOYEES (B2E).
YOUR CORE BUSINESS, YOUR CREATIVITY AND YOUR INNOVATIVE IDEAS DESERVE AN OPEN OMNICHANNEL INNOVATION PLATFORM TODAY!
Antonio Canovese
CX Sales Manager Venistar
Some useful links:
OPEN INNOVATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS for fashion brands needs the right foundations for implementing outstanding CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcjE7YmSz0U
Qual è il ruolo del negozio fisico all’interno dell’omnicanalità? "Il punto di partenza dovrebbe essere prima la gestione della multi-canalità di back-end e dell’integrazione dei sistemi che va ad alimentare l’omnicanalità e di cui costituisce le fondamenta"
Marcello Colombo, DS Group > https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/qual-%C3%A8-il-ruolo-del-negozio-fisico-allinterno-marcello-colombo?trk=hp-feed-article-title-like