Omni-what? Navigating and Mastering the Omnichannel Revolution

The future of retail is already here – and it's omni. Your customers expect a holistic, seamless shopping experience across all channels, online and offline, wherever they are in the journey. It’s a game of surprise and delight, where the last best experience wins. Here’s the problem: Many companies aren’t truly omnichannel, nor are they sure how to get there. Taking your company omni isn’t simply a matter of installing new software or assigning an “omni czar.” Your entire company must shift, from culture to people to technology. Embrace this new world and thrive – neglect it at your peril.?

What a difference a decade makes. Over the last ten years, the surge of digital and ecommerce spending has been one of the most tremendous consumer shifts we have ever witnessed.

Over the last five years especially, digital has been the place to be. Technological advancements and expansive networks have paved the way for global pure players—the Amazons, Googles, and Alibabas of our time. Consumers now enjoy breathtaking options of where and how to buy goods and services, delivered right to their door.

COVID accelerated this trend well beyond what any of us watching consumer behavior had foreseen. Storefronts shuttered, and companies had to respond by beefing up e-commerce capabilities. So much so that a new narrative drowned out all others: “Digital will be the new normal.”

That narrative was only half right. The future isn’t just digital. The future is omni. And it’s already here.

And by that I mean omnichannel – a presence across ALL channels your customer frequents: physical stores, mobile apps, social media, and e-commerce websites.?

Post pandemic, the world has shifted once again. And customer’s needs, desires, and expectations have shifted along with it.?

Just as people are flocking back to restaurants, movie theaters and transcontinental flights, they are returning to in-person shopping. As customer-experience solutions leader Avtex put it: “In-person shopping isn’t disappearing – it’s evolving.” Given the choice between in-person and online shopping, 46% of consumers say they would still select brick & mortar stores. That’s almost half your target audience.

Not only that – they want and expect to be surprised and delighted at every turn, no matter where they are in the journey.?

All these channels are interdependent, and move in either direction: Buy online, pick up in stores. Research online, buy in the store. Discover in the store, buy online. The customer journey is now omnichannel, omnidirectional, and omnisequential.?

As McKinsey notes: “Most Gen Z consumers don’t even think in terms of traditional channel boundaries, and they increasingly evaluate brands and retailers on the seamlessness of their experience.”?

For you as a company leader, the customer landscape may seem like that Oscar-winning movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.? At any given moment, your customers are seeking all services, on all channels, in all customer-journey sequences. You need to be there for them: Providing excellent, tailored service, no matter where they are. It’s another ballgame compared to developing a single channel.?

If this sounds challenging, it is.

But get it right, and the rewards are enormous.

I’ve been fortunate to work in both consumer goods like Nespresso and luxury brands like LVMH and L’Oreal. This cross-industry and cross-functional experience has given me a unique lens on our current era.

I believe every retail and consumer goods company must now take an Omnichannel approach to their operations, whether you’re a mom-and-pop retail store, or a multinational ecommerce player.?

The Last Best Experience Wins?

Who is your biggest competitor? You may have responded with a short list of names.?

John Seeds, VP of marketing at Avtex, writes: “Your customer’s last best experience is your biggest competitor. Not the company that sells a similar product or service within your industry, but the organization that raised your customer’s expectations of the standard customer experience.”? In fact, research indicates that almost 80% of buyers would change suppliers or retailers if they had a poor experience.

It only takes a single above-the-bar customer experience to raise the bar for EVERY other brand that customer interacts with after that. As Avtex puts it: “The Last Best Experience acknowledges that a customer’s most recent standout interaction has the power to become the subconscious standard by which all future experiences will be compared.” The holy grail: “Engaging customers in the moments that matter—wherever that moment is taking place.”

Although the rewards of Omnichannel are substantial, the challenges to get there are numerous. The primary obstacles that I have observed in are the following:

1. Unclear vision for your omnichannel strategy and processes?
2. Failure to establish an omnichannel culture?
3. Inadequate or wrong-fit Technology solutions

VISION

Setting the Stage for an Omnichannel Transformation

Too many businesses suffer from weakness of vision and processes necessary to transform a company into a true Omnichannel player.? This is not to say that leaders lack vision. It often comes from the fact that the company is not truly Omnichannel yet.

As a leader you must first set the tone. This starts with mindset. As a company, you can no longer think single channel. By default: Everyone – from marketing to product, logistics to production – needs to think in terms of ALL channels, wherever they stand in the organization.?

The vision must also emphasize the importance of interconnectivity between channels. The consumer doesn’t see, or care, which teams are in charge of what. They expect the right service in the right place at the right time.?

You, as a leader, need to demonstrate your commitment to the omni transformation and be deeply involved – especially in establishing new ways of working.? Don’t leave this to the technology leads! The business teams need to lead strategy in tandem with tech. This is collective engagement as much as planning.?

In service of that desire, your company vision needs to be centered on a single view of the customer, powered by data. This means that ALL channels and functions have a single source of truth about consumers. All actions, plans, and services are designed based on this. Insights are consolidated and acted upon.

At minimum, your vision should answer these three questions:?

WHY should a consumer buy in your channels? What are the reasons to buy in your physical and online channels and how do they interact?

What is the role of each channel? Why do you want to entice your customer to go to one or the other? Where is the balance between customer experience and profitability?

What is the customer experience in each channel? Once identified, how will you bring this experience to life?

Mobile technology is ubiquitous. It’s the primary gateway to everything for most consumers, especially younger, up and coming generations. But that isn’t always the case.?

Brick & mortar is not going anywhere. In fact, for some brands, it’s more important than ever.

When you get to a certain point, the online experience is limited. In a store, you can move about freely. You can ask questions, try on clothes, touch products. Humans are interactive, and retail stores are tactile: Consumers like the richness of stimuli you can get from an in-person experience – if it’s well done. It feels good to see and interact with other humans. We are rediscovering our omni-ness.?

The more expensive your product is, the more your customers will want to have a physical experience. Think Hermes scarves, or luxury watches. People want to see how the accessory or garment looks on them, and get the live interactive experience with a brand ambassador. The in-person experience doesn’t matter as much on the lower end where goods are more commodified and returns are easy.

Nespresso: Serving Up the Ideal Customer Experience, from Browsing to Boutique

I? was fortunate to spend 12 years at Nespresso, helping it gain an omnichannel foothold in Japan.

Nespresso is a disruptive company. It has helped? reinvent the way people drink coffee. It’s also got one of the widest spectrum of sales channels I’ve seen. The business runs about 50/50 between online and boutique for capsules.They also wholesale machines to electronics stores, as well as B2B for restaurants, offices, and cafes.?

For every channel ask: What is the role of this channel in your strategy? The strategy of Nespresso is both to acquire new consumers, as well as retain consumers.?

With Nespresso, the function of the boutique channel is experiential. It’s also a recruitment tool, as new customers can walk in off the street and discover your product in person.?

The first Nespresso boutique opened in 2000 as a test in Paris. It was such a success that soon there were boutiques everywhere. They’ve gone all out to create a high-end coffee lounge experience. A super-chic atmosphere, comfortable seating and great customer service. It's like wine tasting for coffee.

The Nespresso store is really about telling stories, and there are stories everywhere. The tabletops are all made in recycled coffee beans and all the wood is sourced sustainably. The staff is knowledgeable and gregarious; it’s not salesy.

You can go to the lounge area and talk to the barista – or, as we aptly called them, Coffee Bards. Their whole job is to tell you stories about each coffee and its origins, helping you to discover new flavors.?

Nespresso reinvented a brick & mortar experience that delivers something that an online experience can’t. It’s not so much about SELLING the product as EXPERIENCING the product. And experiencing the product is what sells.

For Nespresso, the purchase frequency and stickiness of the brick & mortar channel is very high. Customers may buy a smaller amount, but they also return more often – typically several times a month. The more you retain your customer’s interest with new and imaginative offerings, the more they trust you – and the more loyal they become.

E-commerce, on the other hand, is mostly a retention channel with Nespresso. It’s all about convenience. Customers often go online when they know the brands already. They have the machine, they know what kind of coffee they like, and can buy in bulk quickly without waiting in line.?

In a different company, it might be the reverse. Maybe your in-store channel is more profitable and you want to drive online to in-store. Everyone’s business is a bit different in terms of how much you need to balance the omnichannel experience. Taking a holistic view allows you to meet each customer where they are.

The main thing to understand is this: Customers choose the experience they want, and it’s often difficult to change that. You can influence them in a certain direction. But it’s hard to change long-term shopping preferences. At Nespresso, we found customers were going back to the channels we acquired them in. In an omnichannel world, this is no problem.

Direct-to-consumer and omnichannel companies have the opportunity to create magic for consumers because they interact with them directly. One of the most important ingredients to that magic is consumer data, built on a single holistic view of that consumer. Know your consumers well enough to give them a personalized experience they will remember – that “Last Best Experience” that sets a new standard for everyone else.?

Let’s take a long-term Nespresso customer. We’ll call her Catherine. When Catherine goes to a store, we want to know: where does she live? What was her last purchase? Where did she purchase within which channels, and how often? Which channel is her primary? What strength coffee does she like?

If we know this data – and ALL channels have a single view – when she walks in we can greet her like an old friend. “Good to see you in the store, Catherine! We see you like Nespresso ristretto, which is a strong 10 out of 13.? Do you know that our newest strong coffee is on prerelease and will be launched next month? You can sample a cap right now, and if you like it I’ll send you 10 complimentary capsules!”?

Do this, over and over, consistently, and you may have a customer for life. Everyone wants to be known, remembered, and appreciated.

As a brand you have to be mindful of the fine line between making your customers feel known, and supported in their journey or being spied on. But increasingly, when consumers go to a brick & mortar store, they have an expectation that the brands will know them. If they’re a member, or if they’ve interacted with your brand already in another channel, that expectation grows.

It’s personalized interaction that will surprise and delight. But

Identifying and Addressing Friction in Your Customer Journey

Mapping out the journey doesn’t have to be hugely complicated. It’s really about identifying the most common ones for your customers.?

Even though each profile will have its differences, your job is to find out where the frictions are.

Where are you missing connections? If someone finds a product online, then goes to your physical store and it’s out of stock, that’s a friction point. If you buy a machine in a retail store, then call the company’s call center and they don’t know your machine or how to answer you, that’s friction.?

It all comes back around to the data and how you analyze it. Monitor the drop-out rates and strive for perfection.

Having a clear data strategy (acquisition, storage, segmentation) allows teams to design smooth customer journeys across channels. In addition, serious efforts need to be dedicated to process systems design and the training to foster a cross-team working style that gets results.?

Be relentlessly customer centric. Track the reviews and understand where they came from. Are they product, service, or experience related? Tackle each finding along the way to improve reviews – and track that improvement. Have you closed the loops??

Insights alone are not enough. In order to have a frictionless experience across all channels, those insights need to be translated into governance and processes.?

The Price is Right: Why Omnichannel Governance is Key to Retail Success

Failure to design the right processes can lead to confusion and siphoning away of brand value very quickly.?

Marketing and commercial planning processes often do not cover all channels properly. This leads to a lack of understanding -- and articulation – of activities between channels.

The result? Customer confusion and even price wars between channels in the same company.?

A poor articulation of the different channels’ consumer propositions can also lead to conflicts with your B2B customers. Establishing a clear consumer proposition per channel is key to ensure consumer satisfaction and reduce potential conflicts with key customer accounts.??

In this area, you as a leader need to be hands-on. Especially in the beginning, so you can make the numerous decisions and tradeoffs that are needed.?

Say you’re a consumer goods company, who has happily been selling to brick & mortar B2B customers. Now you’re going omni, selling your products on your own site. This means YOU are now a retailer – and therefore competing with your customers. If you don’t have a clear omnichannel pricing strategy, this dilemma can lead to margin dilution and price wars. It's a race to the bottom, where no one wins.?

Pricing pressure in such situations is huge, as your B2B customers will not take well to being undercut. You then enter the very risky space of potential anti-competitive practices. If you agree with your customer to match their prices on your site, you expose your company – and yourself personally – to potentially severe legal liabilities.

This risk is often under-estimated and must be addressed early in the process. You must set up a vision of governance proactively to allay this risk. Neglect this at your peril.?

It’s not rocket science. But it does take commitment and a scientific attention to detail.

Be a micromanager at this stage! Teams may not want to talk to one another and may even be at odds. It takes courage and involvement.??

The most important thing for you as a leader is not necessarily to make the “perfect” decision. It’s to make the BEST possible decision, given the data at hand. Then, measure again and adjust.

Once you see positive sales results and smoother operations, those decisions will become easier moving forward.?

CULTURE

Building an Ecosystem That Brings Your Vision to Life

Once you have your vision in place: The second stumbling block is the failure to establish an omnichannel culture. Too often, company leaders do not walk the talk. Theythink that their job is finished after making their omnichannel ambition explicit. You need to go deeper.?

You may think going omni is all about technology. But it’s actually about people. Most leaders focus on the digital/technical part but tend to forget the human challenge.?

That said, the right technology is a key to that end. Your strategy must always be based on customer-centric data and insights. Understanding who you serve is vital to the way you organize your teams to serve your customers.

Your leadership not only needs to understand omnichannel. It needs to create the conditions for a new culture to emerge.

Every company has a corporate DNA. In the case of traditional retailers and consumer-goods companies, that DNA is strongly skewed toward brick & mortar.?

Omnichannel culture needs to be cross-functional, so people can work across ALL channels (brick & mortar, e-commerce, etc.) and all support functions (supply chain, marketing, etc.)?

Leaders MUST break silos in the organization, and in doing so create an environment where the different silos can work together. In the beginning this is not intuitive for anyone. Leadership is where the tone is set for cross-channel processes. It needs to come from the top and your message needs to be: “Work beyond your usual team.”

A good omnichannel leader is an inclusive leader. Inclusivity means everyone feels part of the larger team, regardless of which team they work on.?

If you’re not inclusive you can’t break silos – in fact, you will create them. Your people need to trust those on the “other side” of the journey sequence. They need to feel safe to experiment, think boldly – and make mistakes.

You can copy a product more or less – but you can’t copy a culture. You can’t copy customer service – because it comes from inside. It comes from your values, from staff engagement, from how you lead your teams.?

When your customers walk into your store, or load up your site, they don’t care who is in charge of what. But you should if you want your customers to have a seamless journey inside your channels. The quality of service in your store comes directly from internal engagement, training, and intentions of your staff.

Turning Pure-Player Energy Into-Team Player Power

Like all transformations, digital transformation needs to be owned by the whole team to be effective and long-lasting. Trans-functional teams are a requirement as you design outcomes.

The most common pitfall I’ve seen is the creation of a “digital island” within a brick & mortar company. Tech whizzes are often hired from the world of pure players because of their digital skills. That’s logical.

They are typically digital-native young people. Very smart. They have been raised thinking that digital is the only future. g. They are great at Google Analytics and UX design.?

The digital native’s world is structured around digital/ecommerce KPIs, which are very different from the brick & mortar channels. Their language is Impressions, Click-Through-Rates (CTR), and Conversion rates (CVR).

But when you talk to them about warehousing and in-store promotion, they may not have the experience to fully understand why it’s even relevant – because, to them, the future is digital. Dissuade them early and often of this idea. If not addressed, this culture gap creates inconsistencies in CX/UX across channels.

Even management with digital-only backgrounds struggle to bridge the digital and “real” world. They especially have the duty to link their teams with other parts of the organization.

They also need to be able to over-simplify when they talk about the digital world to non-technical colleagues. They need to be strong on soft skills, such as listening and collaboration.?

I had lunch in Tokyo the other day with the CEO of one of the world’s top fashion companies. We were talking about this issue and he immediately could relate.

“I just had a conversation with my ecommerce guy,” he said. “I did not understand a thing from his presentation. He had 58 slides on algorithms, and I got nothing!”?

Cross-pollination is key. Hire digital natives who are interested in learning the brick & mortar side of the business as well.

Realize that sometimes your digital natives will be worried about losing touch with the constant flux of the digital world. They fear losing their technical edge. Ensure them that this will not be the case. But moreover, stress to them how understanding how to make their knowledge work in an omni environment will pay them rich professional dividends in the future.?

It’s a state of mind, and it can be a huge roadblock to your company’s omnichannel success.

Empathy is key. These digital natives need to take into account your customers who may come to the digital channel from a store experience. They may not be online savvy. Or they may have had a great store experience and feel a bit repelled by the online experience.?

Explicitly source for these soft skills in your interviews. Integrate this mindset and way of working into your training. When you recruit tech talent from pure players, be clear on the type of culture you’re building. Ask them if they’re interested in learning about anything besides digital. If they’re not, integrating them is going to be harder.

The answer is to have the right blend of skills between consumer skills and pure-player technical skills. You can hire from the outside. But people from other divisions within the company who are interested in e-com can be transitioned as well. They will arrive to their new role with the company DNA ingrained, along with knowledge of other divisions. This will create productive links with other teams.???

Acquire or Recruit Your Way into Omnichannel Culture?

Here’s a great example of cross functional team building: Luxury retail is recruiting big time from hospitality these days. Luxury hotels and staff are trained in a customer-service mindset. In this new omnichannel, competitive landscape, many realized that other brands were delivering better experiences than them – and they needed to up their game.

Traditionally, luxury retail training was more about the product. The product is still at the heart of it. But now it’s also about the holistic experience. You go to a hotel, you get great service – so of course you spend more money.

There is a famous hotel school In Switzerland called Ecole H?telière de Lausanne (EHL). Ten to 15 years ago, most of the graduates went directly into the hotel industry. Today, only around half do so. The other graduates go into regular business, including luxury.?

Some pure players are now investing in brick & mortar. Google buying Fitbit is one example. Amazon buying Whole Foods is another. For pure players, strategic acquisition is a great way to expand your brand into omnichannel.?

Amazon is phenomenal at online, and managing warehouses. But their company DNA is not about providing in-person consumer experiences.

Amazon tried to extend its DNA into Amazon Go: Physical stores where you could walk in, buy, and didn’t have to interact with a single human. It isn’t working. When people go to a brick & mortar store, they want to have human interaction. Otherwise, why go out? You might as well stay at home and shop online. Amazon is now shuttering them, including eight Amazon Go stores in Seattle.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods was a much more successful move: Whole Foods has the high-touch DNA that’s needed. Amazon can now learn from that culture and integrate its DNA into the mix.

Frontline Intelligence: Develop a Culture of Listening

Cross-pollination, job rotation between online and offline is key to developing omnichannel talents that know the company well. More and more retail companies now create channel agnostic teams that handle both online and offline.

At Louis Vuitton, all employees start in retail. You may have an MBA from Harvard, but you’re still going to start in retail. Most companies do not have this mindset.

At Nespresso, we practiced a “Day in the life.” Every manager spent one day per quarter doing another colleague’s job. It could be in a store, at a call center, or on the road with a salesperson.

They then bring back the learnings to say, “Here’s what I observed we could do to make my colleague’s life easier.” When a supply-chain person worked in the boutique, he realized sometimes the product flow wasn’t frequent enough. He brought this homework back to his colleagues and said, “How can we fix this?”

If you talk to a lot of company CEO’s they'll tell you, “Yes, yes, we know the insights.” But: Are they used to improve the customer journey?? Or do they fizzle out after a beautiful presentation to the board??

A lot of consumer-facing brands have a huge amount of insight. But that insight is stuck with the front lines. They don’t have the processes in place to tap into this treasure.??

Or they think they know better. Sometimes they DO know better – at first. But then things change and they might miss a critical pivot.

The closer to the consumer you are, the more insights you have. So how do you harvest these insights?

Of course there are focus-group surveys. Some companies do this well. Others don’t. Knowing your company’s DNA will lead to your strengths, as well as your blind spots.

Vacuuming Up Insights: How Customer Feedback Can Help You Build a Better Machine

If your DNA is about product innovation and disruption, your stance might be: "Don’t ask the consumers what they don’t know." Steve Jobs famously said, “Some say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.”

Other companies say, “Let’s start from the consumer and then see how we can answer their needs.” I fall in this latter camp. Talk to your frontline salespeople. They are a goldmine of information about your consumers.?

Innovation-driven companies like Apple invest in something new and when people love it, they build on that. But here’s the risk: You’re king until your competitors copy you. Nokia was the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world until the iPhone was launched. When this kind of thing happens, the market you created and used to dominate becomes mature.

The more mature your market becomes, the more you need to understand your consumers. Why are they switching? Why did they buy your product vs. your competitor?

Here’s a great example: In recent years, a global consumer-goods company pioneered a? cordless stick vacuum cleaner. It made a big splash everywhere, especially in some Asian markets.

For many years, this company continued to launch new high-performance stick vacuum cleaners that were more and more powerful. But as performance increased, so did the weight of the product.

Local competing? manufacturers saw this trend. They? swung into action, launching a lightweight, sufficient-performance stick, which instantly started to eat into the company’s market share.?

Faced with this competition, the local team knew they had to close the loop with their R&D department.? They did focus groups, going into consumer’s homes, listening to them and understanding the pain points, gathering the data, and passing it on to the head office.

The good thing about this brand is that they are very dynamic. If you have solid consumer intelligence they’ll fix the problem – and fast. This case was no exception. As soon as they came out with a lighter vacuum they gained back all that lost market share.?

Educate, Surprise and Delight: Swaying Consumer Attitudes in a Trend-Centered Market

I joined Nespresso with the mandate to help turn around the business in Japan.

Nespresso had been in Japan for a while – but the business was still small, with stagnant growth. And no one was sure exactly why.

The first issue to address was brand communication. One of the challenges we faced was that Japan is primarily a tea market. Coffee was number two.

Nespresso is one of the best coffees you can find in a capsule. But this had not been sufficiently explained. Japanese consumers are very savvy. They do their research - and there wasn’t enough of the right kind of content. We had George Clooney on TV, but that didn’t explain why to buy.

We conducted focus groups and found: People didn’t know what was in the capsule. They didn't know if it was instant coffee, liquid coffee, roast and ground coffee or something else.?

So they didn't trust it. We ran TV ads that talked about the quality of the coffee and our commitment to sustainability.?

The second issue was retail visibility. At the time, Nespresso boutiques were all in the upper corners of high-rise department stores. Nobody went there – and those who did, didn’t notice.

We relocated these boutiques to the basement of the department stores – which is the luxury and gourmet floor in Japan. This put us directly in the high-traffic path of people who had money, and were looking for a luxury experience.

Finally, we opened a flagship boutique in Omotesandō, the Beverly Hills of Tokyo. On the second floor, we created an experiential coffee center: A very luxurious kind of classroom, where we invited members to spend 90 minutes learning about how Nespresso does coffee, from the beans to the machines.

We took 20,000 people through this experience over a few years, and monitored the CRM and KPIs. As expected, the consumers in the control group who attended these sessions were more loyal. They bought more coffee each time they went to boutiques or online, and they bought from more channels. They were more strongly omnichannel than any other group.?

The third challenge to overcome was product relevance. Nespresso had a vision that the capsules were only about drinking “short” black coffee (ie: espresso). But in Japan, only one-third of the market drinks black coffee. We promoted recipes and different ways to drink the coffee, branching out from just the short black. We did so in the boutiques, on TV, and different events.

Here’s a great example: During the three months of summer in Japan, 80% of the coffee people like to drink? is iced. We knew that Japanese consumers like originality and the latest imaginative trends. So we created one. We organized a promotion with shakers and Champagne glasses. That summer many of our loyal customers were drinking Nespresso frappés from champagne flutes.

Our “culture of listening” strategy bore fruit: KPIs following our omnichannel campaign showed increased average consumption, frequency, and customer loyalty.

TECHNOLOGY

Future-Proof Your Business: The Role of a Purpose-Built Tech Stack in an Omnichannel World

So you have established a clear vision and governance for your omnichannel strategy. You understand your company’s DNA. You have hired, trained, and set ways of working that fuel your company culture.

Now, you have the ecosystem in place for the right technology.?

A full 92% of company decision makers experience challenges with their e-commerce tech stack, according to Bloomreach in 2021. Outdated tech, siloed data, spiraling costs, and a lack of customization are four of the primary challenges.?

The transition is almost always? difficult. Know this and prepare upfront.?

One of the key elements of Omnichannel is the unified view of the customer. Technology and data are key to understanding this view.?

Remember our Nespresso customer Catherine walking into a store? The minute store associates pull up her name, they know her location, purchasing history, preferred channel, and strength of coffee.?

If you have siloed systems, you can’t access this info. And you can’t give Catherine the kind of experience that will keep her coming back.

Sourcing the right tech implies that you have already a clear understanding of your organization’s capabilities and its gaps. The number of tech-solution providers is astounding, and can be confusing. It’s crucial to establish your organization’s self-awareness BEFORE you start sourcing, so you can calibrate the solution.?

As McKinsey notes: “Many retailers have leaped to embrace tech-enabled, flashy innovations like smart mirrors, Bluetooth beacons, and in-store kiosks to create differentiation. But without a proper grounding in customer needs or determining how these investments will create and sustain value at scale, retailers sometimes end up with what amounts to shiny objects that drain capital expenditures.”

Shiny-object syndrome is real. And seductive.

Technology’s purpose is to better serve the customer’s needs. This may sound obvious, but it may not always be the case. It is key to any omnichannel transformation to ensure that the technology roadmap supports the customer proposition roadmap and not the opposite.

Here’s an example: A friend of mine runs one of the better retail platforms in Japan. When they were building out their tech stack they decided to try chatbots in their customer service system.

Bots are great for cost and efficiency, but for some products they can be detrimental. My friend is in the luxury space, and when they first introduced a virtual customer service bot to their front-line, they got a lot of complaints. His customers clearly wanted the reassurance and interaction? that only a live agent can provide. He quickly discontinued the program.

I’ve been in many meetings with people from IT with a sparkle in their eyes, talking about the latest cool new tech. They want to introduce it as soon as possible. People in the room in charge of the business would ask: “OK. Well. What is it for? What does it DO?” And there was often not a sufficient answer.

In my view, IT's job is to source new technologies. But it’s leadership’s role to be customer focused, and to lead the tech stack. Not the other way around. IT delivers solutions that fit the objectives.

This needs to happen early in the process of technology planning. In addition, as you implement a new technology solution, it is also key to track its performance versus your business objectives and not only its technical performance. For example, does the technology actually bring material and perceivable improvements in terms of Customer and User Experience?

Once you have your tech stack, you also need to ensure it can evolve in alignment with your business’ pace of growth.

Customer needs and expectations are changing very quickly. They expect consistency. So you have to evolve along with them.?

Your competitor is the last-best experience your customer had. Whether it’s with you or not, you need to keep pace with the ecosystems. But a lot of technologies are static and can be inflexible. Sometimes you make choices that will deliver a specific result, but will not be able to evolve.

It’s important for a company to check in regularly and say: “OK. Does this platform deliver on my customer’s needs now?” If it’s not, plan the next phase of changes. Keep your finger on the pulse and set up regular formal check-ins.

Beware the Big Bang

Second, the transition between legacy and new systems is one of the most common issues you’ll face in your transformation journey.?

Organizations want to move as fast as possible when implementing potentially transformative tech solutions. But the risk associated with this “Big Bang” approach is often too high.?

Human adoption of new systems takes a while. Different layers of legacy systems may need to be staggered as you dismantle them. The time frame must be clearly explained.

The board, who is often driving digital transformation, will want it to happen quickly. When the board and management are not aligned about the pace of implementation, operational teams may feel too much pressure to cut corners and jeopardize outcomes. This can result in data loss, quality issues, and ultimately unhappy customers.?

A successful digital transformation is carefully planned and implemented with calm deliberation. Keep the pace, but don’t rush.?

If you’re B2B and ship to retailers, they have stock already. Build the stock, so you can manage a potential few days of being offline. But if you’re direct-to-consumer, every change is impactful. Especially if you’re consumer facing: Any change has an impact on your customer’s satisfaction – and therefore your brand.

The lesson: There is always an after-care and post go-live period. If you do decide to change everything in one go, you must prepare for months, setting up workarounds and contingency plans. There is always a certain amount of risk. But there is another way to go about it. Go bit by bit and don’t change everything all at once.

Omnichannel Mastery: Continuous Improvement, Transformative Results

Taking your company fully omnichannel is a process of continuous improvement. The Japanese call this Kaizen. Try something, plan it as well as you can. Implement, then fix the problems, and build on the successes as you go.?

One thing is guaranteed: You will feel excitement as well as fear going down this path. The fear that you might get stuck, or that a new strategic direction, culture initiative, or new technology doesn’t work – or worse, does more harm than good. You never know if it’s going to work as you envision. And when it involves the whole company, everything is at stake.

But I promise you, the rewards are tremendous when you challenge the status quo.

As a leader, it’s your job to make sure your business is still around in 20 or 50 years. And not just surviving – but evolving and thriving. Taking your company omni is key to this path.?

See you on the journey!

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Lo?c Réthoré is a seasoned international executive, specializing in omnichannel strategies that grow businesses while surprising and delighting customers. He has over 25 years experience across consumer electronics, luxury and travel retail, including senior roles at LVMH, Nespresso, Dyson, and L'Oréal. Based in the Asia Pacific since 1996, he has special expertise in the region’s key markets (Greater China, Japan, Korea and SEA). Loic is currently CEO of Jurlique, a natural skin-care company using Australian biodynamic-grown botanicals. He acts as advisor to several companies, including Insider, a unicorn backed by Sequoia. Fluent in English, French, and Japanese, Loic lives in Japan with his wife and two children.

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