We are witnessing big changes. Following the events of the last decade on the eCommerce market and putting it together with the current situation in traditional commerce, it is difficult not to resist of impression that big changes are coming.
The market of shopping centres in Poland will soon reach the boundaries of dynamic growth. In 2015 the first noticeable decline in the so-called footfall appeared, which means that particular stores are visited by a smaller number of potential customers. Such situation enforced, in some cases, changing the strategy and renegotiating some of the lease contracts. And this is only the beginning.

An online store that supports traditional sales is a standard for each sales chain

In the chains that thought about it well in advance we can see that as standard about 5% of the whole turnover of the store is generated by an online store. There are also companies that from the very beginning treat the Internet as the main source of their activities and now have the results of 10% to even 20% of turnover online.

It often happens that a single online store may generate the turnover of a few good brick and mortar stores, with less expense. This results in resignations from some of less profitable points, which can in turn result in vacant places in shopping centres that have to be managed somehow. The so-called pop-up stores may turn out to be the hope for such places; these are the stores that appear in a given area for promotional purposes, for a specified time, and then disappear. This strategy is particular favourable to online stores. A well-established image, among customers, may hold their attention and arise their interest in the offer of an online store. We could observe such strategy in Złote Tarasy in Warsaw where Zalando presented its pop-up store. The opening of a temporary store was preceded by a series of events like giving Blogger Award awards and a series of DIY workshops.

The best results may be expected by the companies which backs sustainable development consistent with the OmniChannel strategy

A well-managed online store additionally drives traffic in brick and mortar stores, among other things by free collection points, the possibility of checking the stock levels, reservations, returns, claims etc. The example may be the Polish project Answear.com which intensified the opening of an online store in 2011 by opening two brick and mortar stores in Kielce and Poznań, offering a part of the functionalities mentioned.

And here another challenge appears: how to settle with the ingoing customers that come to sales chains only to collect the product bought earlier at the online store. This is the situation in which the store is forced to pay double for the customer. The first time at the online store. The second time, when it has to pay the owner of the shopping centre for the fact that the customer has come to collect the parcel bought, thus increasing the footfall and turnover of the store on which the rent is calculated. There are several ways to solve this problem and in each of them the software may play the key role.

2015 Commerce Convergence RSR

More and more actively the companies of the so-called pure internet join the game for the offline customer

These are the companies that grew based on the technology, they have been keeping online stores for a long time and more and more often they think about not the single point of sale but about the whole chain, thus fulfilling the OmniChannel strategy.

Only now in Poland we can observe the single examples of opening brick and mortar stores by companies which are typically online in their nature, and such trend will be more and more stronger over time. Their unquestionable advantage is that they usually already have a well-developed system in which they are constantly investing and know its possibilities. For them, adding subsequent functionalities and increasing the number of free collection points, having selected a well-organised team of specialists, may take little time. These are, despite everything, the companies that we heard relatively not much of in Poland but their capital and trend towards OmniChannel customer, that are constantly growing, rouse appetite for investment in physical points of sale.

The example of such kind of actions may be the Chinese giant Alibaba who in 2014 bought, after years of dynamic expansion in a global chain, the block of 220.5 mln shares of Intime Retail Group (IRG; the owner of department stores and superstores) for approx. USD 219 mln. In 2015 it bought 19.99% of shares of Suning – one of the biggest chain of stores with electronic equipment in the country (for approx. EUR 4.15 mln). This is a simple way for natural competitors to establish cooperation, which will after all be advantageous for both companies. Suning will get the opportunity of starting online sales fast, among other things by creating an online store, on Alibaba website, designed for commercial partners – Tmall. Alibaba, however, will be able to use Suning infrastructure to store and deliver the goods sold at the platform in OmniChannel model.

CCC brand applied a similar strategy. One of the biggest chain of stores with shoes bought 75% of shares of Eobuwie.pl – a company from Zielona Góra. Although the average shopping basket in both cases differ significantly, both entities gained a natural complement to their offers. Eobuwie may offer brick and mortar free collection points, which in turn, as a natural consequence, will increase traffic in CCC stores and may translate into increased sales.

Online and offline commercial companies are looking more and more intensely for the possibility to get through to the end customer, from different places, thus diversifying the sales and fulfilling the OmniChannel strategy

This may take place in the form of acquisition, merger, like in the case of Alibaba and CCC, or the attempt to create one’s own dedicated solutions, like Answear.com did. We should, however, bear in mind that such programming-related solutions does not come into existence immediately. The era of fast and easy entry into online sales has come to an end. A good system of sale that implements the strategy of sales chain and meets the requirements of OmniChannel customers needs a few months and time for tests and stabilisation. Before the actual works can start, one has to draw up an analysis, deal with all legal matters and create system specification.

The changes in commerce are quicker and quicker. Postponing the key decisions on investment in OmniChannel even longer is disadvantageous and increases the costs of implementation and acquiring a potential customer via Internet.

Multi-channel sales, omnichannel, online and offline synergy, omnichannel retailing, sales channel integration… I have heard multiple synonyms for the new phenomenon in the eCommerce sector. What is more, the new ones will still be created to describe the omnichannel assumptions in a more or less precise way. All of them can be reduced to the following assumption: improved sales by using various channels to reach the target customer. What should, however, be considered when preparing eCommerce to make use of the entire omnichannel potential?

Creating coherent pricing policy

Adoption of one, coherent and implemented pricing policy can ensure success to brands in the field of combining brick-and-mortar and electronic sales. Most frequently, the coherent pricing policy means identical prices in all sales channels although there are exceptions to this rule in the form of e.g. local promotions in the brick-and-mortar outlets or discounts awarded for online shopping. Such solutions should, however, stem from strategic decisions concerning the co-existence of both channels. From the customer’s perspective, what counts is the coherent marketing information. Deciding to open the omnichannel issue, we must develop both forms of sales at the same time.

Creation of advanced Brick2Click processes

Brick2Click processes are aimed at completely two-directional sales and customer service in every channel. This is to enable the customer to: buy online and return the goods offline, buy and return online (by filling in a website form) or buy offline and return the goods online. Brick2Click processes can be further expanded with the online reservation system of goods with the option to check them (e.g. try on when it comes to clothes) in a brick-and-mortar store and pay. The above-mentioned pro-consumer solutions are a challenge for the logistics, software and marketing. We must also not forget about the shop assistants in the brick-and-mortar stores. It is them who will handle part of the transactions every day.

Offering the Device2Web sales opportunity

The number of mobile devices connected to the Internet which can be used to do shopping online is growing. And it will keep growing. The most important and popular include smartphones, tablets, TVs and web kiosks. An interesting fact is that the latter devices are more and more frequent in the shopping centres which are still afraid to sell online. Omnichannel assumptions force to adjust the contents for each device both with respect to the offer presentation quality and to the optimization of technical aspects and the website loading speed. At present, all the standards in this respect focus on e-shop creation in the responsive web design. RWD offers most benefits and enables to improve mobile shopping conversion by as much as 20%. Here it should be added that Google is more and more friendly towards the responsive web design websites.

Expanding the reach of product presentation via eAve2Web solutions

The omnichannel notion entails use of other sales channels besides the own ones. To increase the number of contact points with the target customers, it is also worth using external channels, such as price comparison engines, auctioning portals, vortals etc. Integrating sales with external channels we must pay special attention to automating all processes. Otherwise, their operation will be very labour intensive.

Creating a single sales management centre from many channels

For the manufacturers and brands selling solely their own products, the site where the customer buys products is frequently of minor importance. Regardless of whether the transaction takes place in the e-shop or in the brick-and-mortar one, it will always be handled by the same system. This is why it is worth creating one place to manage the entire sales which will be adapted to the corporate strategy. In that place all processes with additional integrations must be specified.

Omnichannel is not the future – it is the present time

“Online Shopping in the Fourth Quarter and in 2014” is the report published by the Statistical Office in South Korea which should be a favourite bedtime reading of anyone connected with eCommerce. The reason is very meaningful and important. Namely, for the first time in the market research history (not only for the South Korea) we can see a higher sales value for the online than for the offline channel. It was 46.9 billion wons spent for online shopping when compared to 46.64 billion wons spent offline. eCommerce has reached another breakthrough point in its history. Ominichannel solutions which are of key importance for generating improved sales results have contributed significantly thereto.