Brief: The Agile O2O Architecture Framework For Retail Business Agility

The retail industry in China has been one of the most customer-centric verticals in the past, mostly due to the fact that the Chinese consumer market is so massive. However, changing consumer behavior, new eCommerce competitors, and a slowing economy will compel Chinese retailers to become truly customer-obsessed. While these firms have been talking about integrating their offline and online businesses for quite some time, not many have taken an architectural perspective. This report, the first in a series on agile enterprise architecture (EA) for retail transformation in China, analyzes the challenges that traditional Chinese retailers face, identifies the key elements of architectural transformation, and describes an agile online-to-offline (O2O) architecture framework that EA pros can use to guide their company's transformation.