What is Omnichannel Fulfilment?

What is Omnichannel Fulfilment for Retailers?

Today’s shoppers get to know their favourite brands on multiple platforms, across a range of devices. A trip to the High Street may involve picking up an item bought on line, as well as shopping in-person. Our lives online are so thoroughly integrated with offline experiences, that eCommerce retailers are now building omnichannel fulfilment strategies so that customers enjoy a seamless shopping experience across all their devices and platforms.

Prolog Fulfilment creates tailored fulfilment solutions for eCommerce retailers. We’re acutely aware of evolving customer expectations; they’re looking for the same great service and personal experience from their favourite brands whether they’re on email, Facebook or in a High Street store. How do you give them that? By developing an omnichannel fulfilment strategy.

What is Omnichannel Fulfilment?

You’re an online retailer wanting to grow your customer base; what’s your priority? Finding out how your customers want to buy from you, and making it as easy as possible for them to do so. Your shoppers need to be able to get the same brand promotions, products, and customer service offline, online across devices, channels, and platforms? That’s what an omnichannel fulfilment strategy is all about.

4 Benefits of Omnichannel Fulfilment

There’s plenty of ways eCommerce retailers and their customers benefit from streamlined shopping:

Brands Are Easier to Find

Visibility is all important to eCommerce, and omnichannel fulfilment helps brands to expand their reach across multiple different channels and platforms. Shoppers can track their orders, access customer services, or organise a pick-up option on the go, and the happier they are with the experience, the more likely they’ll be loyal to your brand.

Customers Get Great Service

Customer service is the name of the game with online shopping, and omnichannel retail delivers a great experience. The simple linear process (goods in – warehouse storage – end customer) has given way to a proliferation of workflows. These allow for a more diverse range of delivery options:

• Store-to-customer
• Warehouse to pick-up location
• Warehouse to store
• Warehouse to customer
• Store to store

Customers Can Shop Anywhere

Buying a product or renewing a subscription can happen at work, whilst out with friends or on the train, at work. The goal is to turn interactions with online brands into an ongoing experience that’s integrated into your life, rather than a one-off shopping event.

Personalised Shopping

Once a purchase has been made, the shopping experience continues with regular updates on shipping and delivery, and conversations about the quality of service received. The aim of this ongoing interaction is, first and foremost, to meet customer expectations, but beyond that, it initiates a relationship which can continue beyond the completion of the order.

What are the Challenges of Omnichannel Fulfilment?

The major challenge experienced by eCommerce brands is maintaining clear visibility of their inventory across multiple channels. Trying to service each of the channels separately quickly becomes untenable and can lead to a break down in the supply chain; this manifests in slow delivery speeds or poorly managed returns processes.

The key to successful omnichannel fulfilment is a centralised approach to inventory management. With an integrated inventory tracking system, brands can allocate and redistribute inventory across all the different channels in play. This enables their customers to find what they’re looking for, order and receive goods in the way that suits them best. Brands are freed up from having to manage a range of channels discretely.

Omnichannel Fulfilment Strategies

There’s no single solution for successful eCommerce omnichannel fulfilment. The strategy that’s right for you will depend on the size of your business and the sector you work in:

If You’re a Startup eCommerce Businesses – Keep It In-House.

A new business is likely to find it more profitable to manage your online channels, storing and shipping products in-house. As the business grows, there will be benefits from outsourcing your fulfilment to an order fulfilment partner with the technology you need to manage inventory across a growing number of channels.

If You’re an SME or Fast-Growing Brand – Partner With a 3pl.

Third-party logistics (3pls) providers have the infrastructure and fulfilment experience to manage every aspect your omnichannel fulfilment. They will have the integrated inventory tracking system required to manage multiple sales channels with maximum efficiency and minimal risk of stock unavailability or unreliable deliveries.

The Future of eCommerce

Whilst integrated inventory management is critical to omnichannel fulfilment, it is just one component of a successful fulfilment strategy. Inventory management needs to work alongside automated fulfilment operations, eCommerce marketing campaigns and the management of sales channels, to deliver a fully optimised omnichannel strategy.

Amanda Price - Digital Content Executive and Researcher for Imagefix | After joining the Imagefix team, she brought to the business an expertise in social media, copywriting and blogging.