Retail Multichannel IT Road Map

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.