Agile Omni Channel

The retailer must focus now on adaptation and agility to be able to meet the changing demands of consumers in order to retain their customers and succeed in the future.  The agile omni channel basically refers to the use of responsiveness, competency, flexibility, and quickness to manage how well the omni channel retailer interacts with consumers operates on a daily basis.  Mobile technology and improved wireless performance and access through smartphones has made a dramatic impact in the way that consumers interact with retailers in both shopping and purchasing practices.  Retailers must implement an agile framework and process to respond to the quickly changing demands of the consumer in order to meet these changing demands quickly and competently.

This agile framework must consist of a technical infrastructure that supports quick and efficient integration of new social networking and purchasing capabilities in a manner that does not impact the retailer legacy infrastructure and applications.  The next requirement for the retailer is implementing a strategy of continuous monitoring of the interaction with consumers along with the marketplace in general.  This requires the retailer bring to the table the people with the technical skills in social networking along with the data analysis skills to analyze and understand the data that will help the retailer to understand the changing consumer demands as they occur.  The technical infrastructure brings the flexibility to react quickly to consumer demands while the people bring the skills to competently and responsively  to the consumer demands.  

The demands for flexibility and responsiveness are met by not only understanding the market and demands through data analysis but they are also met by the focus on providing new news to support the demand while also dropping tools that are no longer necessary to support the consumer demand.  Responsiveness and flexibility demands require the retailer to always be listening to the market and then analyzing how the consumer reacts to the market.  The speed of change no longer allows the retailer to react in months or quarters, the retailer must now react in weeks or even days.  This absolutely demands clean and robust database of information to analyze market and reaction along with the people skills and ability to understand and react to the demands.

It is more important than ever now in this quickly changing market to both collect data in every consumer interaction while also implementing the people and tools to analyze the data to recognize trends and demands in which to respond.  Robust data and analytics are key to meeting the changing consumer demands competently and quickly.  Retailers and the retail market no longer have the luxury of long time frames to perform and react to the analytics.  Retailers must now implement a continuous analytic responses cycle that really stretches the agile framework in order to react to the changes demanded by consumers.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?