Changing Retail Collaboration Practices

Success in the retail omni market demands increased level of collaboration across the board and this means changes in practices not only for retailers but also all partners and participants in the marketplace.  These heightened demands will only increase as the technology and the consumer practices and demands change. These changing collaborative practices require not only changes from each of the partners in the manner in which they interact with consumers and participants in the market, the collaborative practices also require changes in culture for the participants to support the changing demands.  The changing demands and especially the changing technology supporting and driving these demands require the participants in the market to increase their collaboration and openly share more than ever before.

Collaboration has been an increasingly important practice in business and the retail marketplace is no different in the respect of expanding importance and breadth and depth of the collaboration.  The focus on depth and breadth of the collaboration requirements has been increasing and has gotten to the point of almost a geometric progression because of the combination of consumer demands and technology capabilities.  The driving factor of these changes are driven by the consumer embrace of technology in combination with the connectivity and interactive shopping and purchasing capabilities across the market. Consumers have come to the point in their interaction with participants in the retail omni market where enhanced interaction capabilities is expected and a baseline requirement of the market.   This baseline interaction capability crosses over to touch and impact all participants in the marketplace and all participants have stepped up to meet these demands as well.

This progression of interaction with participants in the marketplace started with individual interactions based on the activities of the participant; for instance parcel carriers interact with the retailer to update shipment tracking information.  Keeping with this example though the interaction of the carriers has expanded dramatically and continues to expand almost exponentially through direct interaction with consumers to coordinate and change delivery information and additional services such as delivery lockers to support consumer schedules.  This is just one example of the changing demands and each partner has their own examples based on services and offerings.

Consumers have come to expect the enhanced interaction abilities and in fact consumers are driving the development and implementation of these enhanced capabilities in many ways through the consumer expanded use of technology and their imaginative combination of these technologies and services.  This is the natural progression of technology and consumer practices that can be seen in practically every interaction with consumers. Just look around and you see the level of importance and most importantly the level of comfort and acceptance of consumers in this technology. Its just the next step in the progression that consumers are building and enhancing their collaborative interaction with participants in the retail marketplace.

Participants in the retail marketplace need to change and expand their collaborative practices to include other participants in the marketplace.  This will quickly become a base requirement for the marketplace and requires the active participation across all of the participants. If the marketplace participants don’t step up to increase and expand their collaborative practices with other participants, consumers in the marketplace will create these relationships themselves and edge out the individual participants.  Retailers especially will need to stand up and accept and embrace the demands of consumers to participate and succeed in the market.