In-store innovation or rather a "catch up"?

I’ve just recently got back from Shoptalk, and after several days of intense meetings with clients and partners, speaking on the panel and listening to some very interesting talks, I can’t help but share some thoughts.

Retailers, please please stop calling what you do in-store “retail innovation”. Because the truth is, YES, you are going through a massive?retail TRANSFORMATION, maybe the biggest change our industry has ever faced, but it is actually retail “catching up digitally" with other parts of your business. And really, this is GOOD news if you look at it from Top Line, ROI, Management and Staff Adoption perspectives.

Innovation is great, but it is expensive, risky, and often siloed, and innovation is frequently spoken about without years of proven ROI. But this should not be your concern now.

As much as we all want to be cool and try the latest technologies hitting the headlines, we also need to be pragmatic - the solutions you are looking for to deploy today in-store are those that?exist already in the market, flexible enough to adapt to your needs, have prebuilt integrations and are PROVEN to drive SALES and LTV. They also leverage the existing backend systems that you already have today and therefore don’t ask you to replace/ re-platform with huge price tags associated and laborious timelines. And by doing so, they allow you to quickly step into the new era of retail. But it must be done in a robust, effective and quite smart way.?

Let’s take a closer look at your in-store needs:

• access to company-wide inventory,
• smart product recommendations,
• customer 360° view and preferences,
• in-store customer interest capture and abandoned store basket,
• endless aisle and mixed baskets,
• outbound and inbound remote selling,
• omnichannel fulfilment,
• multiple payment options,
• self-service discovery, or self-checkout,
• rewarding staff for customer experience, not just a sale,
• connecting in-store to online user journeys …

Is it really so innovative? really? No, in my honest opinion - it’s about finally?synchronising your stores with your e-commerce and backend systems. It’s not about giving store associates (and customers) the latest shiny new technology to play with. It’s about giving them effective solutions to find the right products, upsell, personalise the experience and either capture customers’ interests for a future sale or make a sale right there in a quick, efficient, and fun way.?

But, again, it must be done right! To provide your store associates and customers with a -?I know it’s a buzz word, but it works here?-?“seamless” in-store journey,?it’s not mostly about what, it’s about how!

Let me give you three examples of where and why things can go wrong so easily:

1) Multiple “Point” Apps vs One or Two Consolidated “End-to-End” Apps

There is a trend to tackle one pain point in-store at a time, which is fine, but before you know it your store associates are juggling 6/ 8 /10 different systems or apps that they need to access to be successful in the multiple roles they are now expected to perform in-store.

It’s not only the customers that need to feel they have been through a?seamless experience?in-store, but also crucial that your?store associates experience the same too.

With siloed apps, adoption will suffer, and the positive impact they subsequently have on supporting a better customer experience in-store, or indeed a more enjoyable working environment for your staff, will not materialise. With little in the way of value being derived, the team will get back together to find another point solution to fix the issue, and the whole experience starts from the beginning. Little is achieved in generating the uptick required in business-critical KPIs.

Furthermore, with fragmented solutions, comes fragmented management of these solutions, support, and, most importantly, a fragmented view of the customer’s in-store journey. The retail team will not see a true reflection of the customer’s in-store journey or the associated staff performance. Your e-com and marketing teams will not obtain the data they need to connect all the dots together, and you’ll have the burden of supporting all these solutions individually, each fighting for the internal dev resources, budget, time and attention.

Ideally, you’ll have 2-3 solutions:

• One?dedicated to operations, scheduling, KPIs, etc. - it gives Store Associates visibility when they need to do the job, what is the job, and how they are doing.
• One to support?end-to-end sales process with a customer in-store or remotely, from product discovery, stock check and clienteling to remote selling, services, and checkout (think of e-commerce journey but in-store). And if you are not yet ready to move away from a traditional to next gen POS, then your CX app does everything pre-checkout and then passes it to POS, for now that would be fine too.

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2)?Scalable and "Durable" architecture, Content and Data management for HQ, Analytics, Flexibility and Configurability - kind of obvious for E-commerce… Why is it different for In-Store?

If you decide to launch an in-store solution, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Can I adapt it to different regional or store needs?
• Is it agile enough if I decide to change / pivot the initial use-case?
• Can I change my backend systems without destroying the in-store solution?

Your organisation might have different backend systems across different regions, so you need to factor for that, so you don’t have to buy two different solutions that do the same and only differ in integrations - but then also fail to give you a consolidated view of the user-journeys globally. It can also be that in some regions (or even stores) you have a more premium experience than in others - hence potentially the use-cases are different. Or maybe you will need to adapt the app slightly once you get Store Associates using it, or when you introduce a new workflow. All of these nuances mean that the solution needs to have strong integration & configuration layers (rather than a one-off integration and one initial set up).

Also, if you buy a pre-built point solution on Salesforce, for example, or any other backend system (rather than a flexible platform with integration layers and its own data orchestration), you pretty much limit yourself to that specific integration and may run into issues if you want to add additional data source or decide to change the system all together down the line. So, you are putting the whole STORE EXPERIENCE at risk, just because your store frontend is integrated too tightly into the backend system. Same reason why your POS and OMS should be two different systems.?

• How can I manage the look & feel of it?
• Can I oversee the content of the app?

Store apps are a reflection of your brand identity, but it is also a powerful marketing tool. So, if you launch a new collection, or a marketing campaign, or want to push certain products or highlight special promotions, the content of your app, or the look & feel, need to be easily adapted. Again, the content may vary by region, so please keep that in mind.?

• Does it actually work?
• Is it being used? How?

These are the hardest questions to answer if you don’t capture every app “user event”, you don’t see the whole customer and Store Associates journey through the app (hence an issue with multiple “point solutions” or simple “Clienteling frontends”), and you can’t analyse it across stores, regions, and individual Store Associates.

On the opposite, with usage analytics and dashboards, you should be able not only see how the app is being used in-store, but also be able to identify the best users who drive sales or improve customer experience - or the ones who need more training. Extend it to the product funnel that includes true lost sales (requested but not available), and customer journey analytics and you have a magnifying glass into each of your stores, rather than a black box with just two data points (footfall and sales).

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3) In-House - really?

For in-house teams, building new solutions that exist already can overtake the entire roadmap for months or even years at a time. Lots of things won’t be developed as they won’t be perceived as critical (see the points above plus the offline modes, store content pre-filtering, app management portal, issue reporting, etc), even though they ARE critical for management, scale and, most importantly, Sales Associates’ adoption. Plus, with the desire to deliver fast, the architectural flexibility won’t be there to consider future product or use-case needs, or future changes in integrations.

And if you are on a build in-house journey already and can't abandon it, try to work with a vendor who can complement you and fill in as many gaps as possible to give your in-store product(s) extra value, speed and flexibility.?

I don’t want to say that building in-house is always wrong, but you need to have sooooo many unique elements in your business to justify that, because ROI won’t. And well, let’s face it, the in-store solutions won’t make you really unique - your products, your marketing, your customers, and your Store Associates will. In-store solutions simply need to work, be easily adopted by staff or customers, be easy to manage, and be flexible enough to adapt to your future needs. Because who really knows what is around the corner.

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Best wishes,

Olga Kotsur

Mercaux Co-Founder & CEO