“This is where the battle’s going to be won,” Mike Micucci, CEO at fabric, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.
“This” is retail’s ability to meet consumers where they are — whether online, in-store or on social media — and deliver a seamless, efficient and reliable shopping experience across all channels.
They might find a product on social, browse a marketplace, or even discover a product through search. Retailers need to be able to adapt to this multifaceted consumer journey and orchestrate their inventory accordingly. This requires a level of flexibility and agility that many legacy systems simply cannot offer.
“A term we’ve been bantering around a lot inside our company is the concept of ‘peak website,’” he added, explaining that it’s an idea that reflects how the traditional eCommerce model — where retailers drive traffic to their websites and convert sales directly — may no longer suffice. That’s because consumers are flexible in their shopping journeys, often starting online and ending in-store or purchasing directly through social media.
“Your consumer customer is going to show up where they want to show up,” Micucci said.
It’s not a new story, nor a new item on retail’s agenda. But it’s an outcome that’s complex to execute, Micucci said, despite the host of digital innovations, including advances like artificial intelligence (AI), that retailers have at their fingertips to help them.
Without systems that provide visibility and flexibility, retailers struggle to manage the complexity of omnichannel fulfillment. Historically, retailers would rely on outdated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and spreadsheets, creating an inefficient back-end process prone to errors, delays and poor customer experiences. For example, Micucci laid out a scenario where an order might be placed online but fulfilled by several different stores, leading to partial shipments or cancellations, which can damage customer trust and loyalty.
“I literally just finished a customer meeting between a spreadsheet and a 25-year-old ERP system that doesn’t have APIs,” Micucci said. “The ERP system was designed for financial controls, not for flexibility of delivering these experiences.”
From 2010 to the onset of the pandemic, eCommerce and retail experienced steady, predictable growth, Micucci explained, with brick-and-mortar retail maintaining a growth rate of around 4% and eCommerce outpacing it at about 12%.
Then came COVID-19 that accelerated the adoption of eCommerce by a factor of 10, with consumers flocking to online shopping platforms. However, as the pandemic waned, retail found itself at an inflection point — and eCommerce in particular started to moderate as core retail rebounded.
“It’s not that consumers are not buying online anymore, but more and more transactions and spend is being swooped up under the guises of marketplaces, whether its Amazon, Walmart, or the direct-from-China model with Temu and TikTok,” Micucci said. “About 55% of the spend is captured right there.”
The reason? These digital platforms have back-end systems that enable them to meet shoppers’ expectations.
This shift places pressure on traditional retailers to rethink their digital strategies. The challenge, according to Micucci, lies in what happens after a consumer hits the “checkout” button. This is where the orchestration of inventory, order fulfillment and delivery becomes critical. He stressed that the real battleground for retailers is not necessarily in creating a beautiful, user-friendly website, but in ensuring that their back-end systems can meet consumer expectations for fast, reliable delivery.
The challenge, as Micucci outlined, is for retailers to meet consumers where they are and to deliver the right product at the right time with the right inventory — something referred to in the business as “clientelling.”
The solution, Micucci noted, lies in adopting cloud-native back-end systems that provide retailers with the visibility and control they need to manage complex order fulfillment processes seamlessly. These systems, he stressed, must not only handle the complexities of inventory management and order orchestration but also provide the agility required to respond to the next major disruption — whatever that may be.
Micucci highlighted that even now, buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) remains a challenge for many retailers. While this model holds tremendous potential to drive foot traffic and sales, the execution often falls short due to inflexible systems that struggle to manage inventory across channels.
Legacy systems are not equipped to handle such requirements, and retailers that fail to modernize risk falling behind, he said.
Still, hope springs eternal — and it usually does so on the back of technological innovation, particularly for retailers crafting seamless customer experiences.
As an example, Webster shared an anecdote around her experience shopping at the Celine store in Paris, where she purchased an item in-store. Then, later and back in America, she put her name on the waitlist for a separate product from the luxury brand. Later that day, she received a text message from the same store associate who had waited on her in Paris letter her know that the item was in stock and in her size.
“A great omnichannel experience comes from using the same systems behind the scenes that are operating the digital site, as well as the retailer’s other pieces, to create a seamless customer journey,” Micucci said about the Celine experience. “Unifying that journey and orchestration behind the scenes, that’s the win.”
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