Trends Report

Retail Multichannel IT Road Map

How Can Retail IT Support Multichannel Trading Without Ripping And Replacing Everything?

July 7th, 2008
George Lawrie, Vice President, Principal Analyst
George Lawrie Vice President, Principal Analyst
With contributors:
Sharyn Leaver , Varun Sedov

Summary

While many retailers still trade via isolated channels, sometimes even referring to the online channel as "store 999," consumers demand a complete shopping experience across channels that includes interactions such as researching or reserving merchandise online and picking it up in the store. To create a superior cross-channel experience for consumers, retail business process and applications professionals must overcome the roadblock legacy of conflicting use cases and channel-specific metrics, inconsistent inventory and merchandise master data, and channel-specific customer and order data. To avoid the cost and risk of wholesale applications replacement, savvy retailers must develop a road map of incremental IT investments that links each investment to the firm's strategic objectives and the quantitative business case for individual cross-channel interactions.

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