PRIME . PRESENCE . PREFERRED

From Multi to Omni : A Leap of Presence

TL;DR

Opening up new retail shop branches makes them multi-present. But today, we enable our client to be omni-present for their customers.

As fancy as the words are, it basically means less investment for business, reach out more to customer, and make all your inventory available to all customers. Hence, your business can sell more.

Your presence matter

How many times has your customer visit your store and asked to just order it online because the item is out of stock?

When you have 50 physical stores, 3 online marketplaces, and 1 ecommerce website, how do you distribute your inventory?

How often do you redistribute your inventory across branches because overstock in one branch and out-of-stock in another branch? Do you know how much each redistribution cost?

As seller, we want to be present as close to our customers as possible. Long time ago, they went door to door. Previously, they opened up branches in each city or housing complex. On the second decade of the second millenium today, we put images of our products on the world wide web. We see where our customers are and we establish our presence there. However, it comes with consequences. 

Having 2 branches in different cities would require decision on how many lipsticks should I distribute to city A and to city B. What if my lipstick on city A is sold out way faster than city B but I gave only 250 out of 1,000 lipsticks from total inventory? Certainly, our data analyst could compile historical data and predict distribution proportion. But, wouldn’t it be nice if we could sell from any branch directly to consumers?

Another example is for us who are doing hybrid business: online and offline. When we have 1,000 lipsticks in total, how many do we distribute it on 5 different channels: marketplace A, marketplace B, our own website, and our physical branches in 2 different locations? It requires time and effort to only gain prediction of the distribution. It all translates to cost. Sadly, the cost would become higher when the prediction is inaccurate and redistribution across branches are needed following customer’s dynamic demands.

Would it be nice to have all your sales channels integrated? Customers could get what they want when they shop online or when they visit your store because our sales channels are integrated. If there is no stock on their store visit, we deliver it to their home. Before customer is leaving our store, we lead them to purchase. They walk out of the store knowing that their items are also on its way. And, the best part is that we secure their transaction immediately before they change their mind, even before they walk out the store. All of it is possible because of integrated sales channels which make our business omnipresent for our customers.

The system

How does it work?

Our client is implementing sales channel integration for all branches, including ecommerce website. Integration simply mean that once customers walk in, not only they see display products or limited number of stocks on that store, but customers are given so many more choices because they actually are shopping out of product varities and number of stocks across all branches. When it comes to products which require specific measurement, such as shoes, bolts, lenses, etc, stock availability is a big deal. You wouldn’t want to wear shoe 2 size bigger than your measurement, right? Or you wouldn’t let your eyes see through glasses that has wrong measurement, would you?

Most important for the integration is updating stocks in real time. Once an item is sold through branch A, all the other branches need to be updated, including online branches. Vice versa, once customer buy it online, all the offline stores need to be updated. Such system is implemented to support our client’s omnipresent business.

Integration also means externally connected to business support environment. For example, our system needs to connect to delivery service and payment service. It gives seamless experience for online customers. Upon making transaction, they know delivery fee to their home, they get the AirWay Bill number to track, and they can pay using their preferred payment methods. 

The result

What makes such system beneficial for business?

Being omnipresent no longer needs a big shop lot to display your product. Your business could reach people in bus station waiting for their buses. Or it could reach to public places where people hang out. And definitely it could reach to personal device that your customers bring everyday, their phones. 

With the system successfully implemented, our client could put up a big posters with product images and QR codes where customers on bus station could scan with their phone and shop right away. Also, when joining exhibition, we no longer need to bring that much stocks because our customers could try the display product, order it from their cellphone, and receive the product at home. Moreover, repeat customers can bring up the orders again from their phone anywhere, locate stock availability, and choose the cheapest delivery cost from our distributed warehouses.

In business point of view, it requires less investment. Instead of renting huge space for warehouse and store, rent only for warehouse. Maybe a small one in each kilometre radius to make your customer happy, less delivery fee. The business can display its product literally anywhere.

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