Cross-Channel Commerce

Achieving the promise of cross-channel commerce is a critical goal for many retailers.  Sales information and processing must be centralized. All customer and order data must be universally accessible across the enterprise. By enabling a more complete, central view of customer, order, inventory, promotion and marketing information, retailers can turn the possibility of a cross-channel environment into a reality.

While progress is certainly being made, it has been small incremental enhancements to each individual channel.  The demands that consumers are putting on the retailers to have a consistent brand experience are very challenging for these enterprises; the management of duplicated data and integration for each of their channels are becoming costly and inconsistent.

Cross Channel Retail Solutions

Retailers that are focusing on multi channel execution are facing problems which are not trivial. The first is finding cross-channel commerce solutions that are built on best of breed technology which provide both a lower total cost of ownership and top line revenue growth capabilities. The second problem facing retailers, which may be even harder than the first, is breaking down the barriers of operational silos that exist in their organizations. This internal strife is causing channel conflict and brand erosion from a consumer’s perspective . Last but not least is the business process reengineering required to transform organizations to customer centric operations.

To address these challenges, a suite of cross-channel software products were created by CrossView to provide a solution that runs all of the key retail channels including the Web site, call center, store (point of sale [POS]), kiosks, mobile,  and printed catalogs and fundamentally changes the way in which retailers can view their channels.

CrossView is built on a foundation of proven IBM technology. It uses IBM WebSphere® Commerce software to control and optimize the Web channel and IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce software to link the Web channel back to call center operations. In developing CrossView, architects leveraged powerful middleware from IBM Retail Integration Framework, including business logic and database technology. The software development team worked closely with IBM's experienced retail industry team to create a solution that can address retailers' unique business requirements.

The CrossView cross-channel commerce solution can help retailers achieve the following:

  • Improve customer satisfaction and service. Customers can choose the channel that is most convenient for them, regardless of the type of transaction performed.
  • Reduce development, integration and maintenance costs. There is no need for redundant services, such as those for payments,  gift cards, taxes, shipping and coupons, in each sales channel.
  • Lower order and fulfillment costs by improving merchandising and inventory management, streamlining fulfillment processes through distributed fulfillment capabilities.
  • Encourage customer loyalty and sales with cross-channel features.
  • Customers can easily return Web orders to a store (cross-channel orders), and retailers can fulfill store orders even when there is no inventory available (cross-channel inventory).
  • Boost sales with service channels. The call center can up-sell, cross-sell and place customer orders. Store personnel are also better equipped to resolve issues, turn returns into sales and influence customers to purchase in-store.