Retailers Beware: Fake Omnichannel Is Real - Sthash.9Atuwqbu.Mjjo

By Andy Lloyd, NetSuite

“Omnichannel” is a hot buzzword in many industries, so it’s no surprise that so many commerce-related software vendors have draped their offerings with an omnichannel cloak. At the same time, many businesses think they can easily provide an omnichannel brand experience with their existing systems, when in fact they’re stuck in the fomni world.

Fomni is short for fake omnichannel — typically a collection of point solutions stitched together that can’t deliver on rising consumer expectations for a relevant and consistent experience across every touchpoint. In fact, much of the technology that is being used was built to help employees do their jobs better, not serve the needs of empowered customers.

Watch this video to learn more about Fomni. /watch?v=XKTMfRcheRI&feature=youtu.be

Some vendors argue that manually connecting best-of-breed applications — ecommerce, POS, marketing, order management, CRM, ERP — will turn siloed lemons into omnichannel lemonade. But because each system is standalone and channel-specific, they can never truly communicate with each other in real time or with 100% accuracy.

Moreover, these fomni islands can’t produce a single system of record for customer and inventory information, breaking the customer experience. Plus, keeping them connected is costly and complex. Organizations pay a high price in IT time and resources, have to manage multiple licenses and wrestle with ripple effect problems when changes to one system require additional changes across other applications.

Ultimately, a fomni solution impacts the customer experience. Common fomni symptoms are easy to spot:

• If your IT team needs to work closely with marketing to implement new ways to engage with shoppers, then you’ve probably got fomni.
• If shoppers are frustrated with the lack of visibility into inventory on your ecommerce site or when they are in-store, then you’ve probably got fomni.
• If your prices are inconsistent across channels, then you’ve probably got fomni.
• If you don’t have visibility into every customer interaction, then you’ve probably got fomni.
• If you’re sending out marketing emails advertising products that aren’t in stock at the nearest store, then you’ve probably got fomni.

Fomni problems cannot be solved by updating front-end systems. A new ecommerce platform may provide an improved online experience, but a company can never fulfill the omnichannel vision unless it takes care of its foundational systems for inventory and order management, financials and customer management first.

Like eating your vegetables to give the body a strong core for long-term, sustainable health, the right foundational platform is needed to deliver a compelling omnichannel customer experience. By replacing a fomni solution with a natively integrated commerce platform, businesses can realize long-term success with their customer engagement strategies.

Andy Lloyd is general manager of commerce products at Netsuite, the leading provider of cloud-based financials/ERP and omnichannel software suites. In his role at NetSuite, Lloyd leads the company’s commerce product and new business development. To learn more about how NetSuite is helping retailers fight fomni, visit www.suitecommerce.com.