The Case to Cross It Up

For any retailer with more than one channel, becoming cross-channel is a critically important way to fully leverage its assets to provide a greater experience to its customers, which ultimately leads to more customer retention, brand loyalty and, of course, sales and profits.

In an effort to highlight and tackle the issues associated with implementing cross channel strategies, Kasey Lobaugh of Deloitte Consulting and Jim Bengier of Sterling Commerce pulled together a Cross Channel Retail Consortium of retail thought leaders that included executives from a cross section of retailers as well as some industry analysts, vendors and yours truly for a day of discussion this past Sunday on the strategy, tactics and challenges of implementing effective retail cross channel experiences for our customers.

Before I delve deeper into my thoughts on the day, it’s probably worth defining “cross channel.” Many times, “multi-channel” and “cross-channel” are used interchangeably, but I don’t think they’re the same thing at all. “Multi-channel” is simply operating in more than one channel while “cross-channel” is leveraging the strengths of each channel to create an overall customer experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s 1+1=3.

Sounds great, right? So, why aren’t more retailers doing it?

Three basic themes emerged from the group:

1. Lack of executive and board level understanding of the value of customers transacting in multiple channels (and, conversely, the negative affects that occur when customers are prevented from interacting with a brand across channels)
2. Lack of incentives for various employees, from executive to front line staff, to encourage shopping across channels
3. IT systems limitations

So, let’s tackle these issues one-by-one.

1. Lack of executive and board level understanding of the value of creating cross channel experiences

The group agreed that getting the buy-in of the CEO is critical. No one believed, and I certainly agree, that a strategy as all-encompassing as creating a cross channel experience has any chance at success without the CEO actively driving it. So, just get the CEO to support it. Easy, right? Not so much.

In my experience, the best way to convince a CEO of the value of any strategy is to show him or her how it will maximize profits. One retailer in the room was able to show the value of customers shopping in multiple channels pretty easily by tracking customer transactions in all channels through a loyalty program. Others were able to do the same in various degrees, but the general concern was the potentially high cost of discounts provided in exchange for such information. (I have lots to say about loyalty programs, but I’ll save that for another post). Janet Sherlock of AMR Research extolled the virtues of emailed receipts as an environmentally attractive and altogether less costly alternative option to harness ID’d transactions. I find that proposal extremely intriguing.

While transactions tell us about customers who completed transactions in each channel, they don’t tell us about customers who researched online to buy in store or customers who took a look at products in store before buying online, and the group longed for an industry standard metric that could be used to assess the amount of sales influenced by the another channel.

Another driver of CEO support is attention to the issue from the Board. One retailer said all it took was a bad experience by one 17-year-old granddaughter of a Board member to get the issue front and center. Funny how life is, isn’t it? Who could imagine that one young girl’s frustration can drive a strategic shift in a major national retailer? But maybe the lesson here is about the importance of getting decision makers’ heads out of the financial spreadsheets and into real-life experiences to help them understand how their companies are (or are not) serving their customers.

2. Lack of incentives for various employees to encourage shopping across channels

One retailer described the challenges of focusing on customer experience at a retailer that is driven by “an imperialist merchant organization.” (There was no way I could write this piece without including that quote.) Merchants, by their nature, tend to care a lot more about product than customers. But in the end, they’re generally heavily driven by sales, margin and turn metrics. There are many cross channel strategies can be implemented to help merchants drive these key metrics.

For example, the web has many selling capabilities that are nearly impossible to achieve in store because of physical constraints. Customer reviews are extremely popular online and customers regularly report using them to make purchase decisions (both online and in store); however, they are very difficult to make available in a physical environment. Some retailers are making them available via in-store kiosks, but the kiosks are a large capital investment to make if they’re not already available. But just about everyone’s got a computer in his or her pocket or purse these days. Let’s make more use of mobile phone technology to give people access to customer reviews, recommendations, wish lists, gift registries, etc. in store while they’re standing in front of the products.

There are also advantages in stores than can be leveraged online. Many retailers have incredible experts in their stores. How can those experts build content that can be used by customers and other employees alike to improve the shopping experience? How about security? Should retailers start to look for ways to accept payment in their stores for web orders when customers aren’t comfortable paying online? Believe it or not, there are still a lot of customers out there who aren’t comfortable using a credit card online, and in this economy there are more and more customers who aren’t comfortable or aren’t able to use credit cards period. But they’re still interested in buying from us, and we should find every way we can to help them do so.

3. IT systems limitations

There’s no question that IT legacy systems cause us a lot of trouble when we try to integrate our customer experiences. But I also wonder how many times we fall back too easily on such an excuse. I’ve written about my Tree Stump Theory previously, and it’s certainly prevalent in this case. We have a lot of compelling reasons why systems prevent us from implementing such key capabilities as the ability to accept returns of online purchases in store. But guess what? Our customers don’t know those reasons, and even if they did, they don’t care. While many retailers have found ways around the returns issues, just as many still have not. Either way, the case to prioritize such efforts should rely on some of the same techniques described above to make compelling cases to the CEO and the incent imperialist merchants.

Pure play retailers, and especially Amazon, continue to grow at rapid rates by pulling more and more market share. Multi-channel retailers have assets in their stores that pure plays don’t, but it’s going to take implementing true cross channel strategies to leverage those assets in a competitively advantageous way. Let’s cross it up!

What cross-channel strategies have you implemented or are considering implementing? What are the barriers to cross-channel in your organization?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Case for an E-Commerce IT Org Change

As multi-channel retailers move more and more towards implementing cross-channel strategies, organizational structures need to change to support those new strategies. I am a huge proponent of breaking up most e-commerce silo  organizations and integrating online and in-store marketing and merchandising teams to ensure a common vision and voice across channels. For IT, though, I actually recommend the opposite approach. I believe technology  professionals who work full time (or near full-time) on the e-commerce site should report directly to the head of e-commerce.

While at a high level is seems like technology should have the same kind of continuity as marketing and merchandising, I believe a close look tells a different story.

Here’s why e-commerce IT is significantly different from traditional IT:

In e-commerce, the business is technology

Traditionally, IT creates tools that help employees be more productive and efficient. However, in e-commerce, IT is actually creating software designed to generate revenue. E-commerce “stores” are really self-service software  applications designed to help customers perform a service — in this case it’s to buy the products and services we sell.  Intuit has Quicken; Microsoft has Word and Excel; retailers have our e-commerce sites. We really need to think about  our sites more as software products and organize our teams in a product management type of structure.

Also, a particular pet peeve of mine is when IT folks refer to those in other functions of the company as “the business.”  Just that reference alone insinuates that IT is not a crucial part of the overall business and creates a separation that  frequently leaves IT coming across as second class citizens, which they are not. While I’ve never liked “the business”  reference in any circumstance, it’s doubly bad in e-commerce where success absolutely depends on technology team  members actively working as part of the business.

Self-service applications require a different mindset

Working on an e-commerce application that is designed to be used directly by customers requires a very different  mindset than what is typically required when working on applications that support employees. Even when the  underlying technology is similar, the mindset required is substantially different. New employee applications usually  come with training programs and manuals. Moreover, employees are ultimately forced to use the app; they get used to it and get incrementally better at using it over time through daily usage. Customers, however, don’t get the benefit of manuals and training programs. They’re on their own. And if the experience doesn’t satisfy them, they give up and the sale is lost.

Site functionality and customer experience are major components of the e-commerce business strategy

The website application is a key differentiator for the business, and customer experience is hugely driven by site functionality. While functions other than technology certainly contribute to an e-commerce site’s success or failure, there can be little doubt that the quality of the technology is a massive contributing factor.

E-commerce is 100% dependent on technology to be open for business.

While technology is critical in all areas of the business, most retailers have offline contingencies for stores so they can  continue to make sales even if the system is down. Websites obviously don’t have an offline mode.

Web businesses are still immature and need considerable agility and flexibility to mature as quickly as possible

For many absolutely legitimate reasons, most IT organizations at multi-channel retailers have significant (and some might say onerous) processes in place to manage technology requests and roadmap prioritization. Because requests for technology improvements come from all corners of the company, it’s important for CIOs to ensure they are spending their resources on work that is thoroughly vetted and likely to generate the highest return on investment for the company. But given the absolute dependence of the e-commerce business on technology, typical IT prioritization and allocation processes are too slow for e-commerce businesses that need to be able to adjust quickly to issues that arise with customer experience.

The e-commerce competitive marketplace innovates far quicker than the brick & mortar marketplace

The CEO of a pure-play e-commerce company is in basically the same role as the head of e-commerce at a multi-channel retailer. If for no other reason than there is no alternative, the CIO of a pure-play reports to the CEO. This reporting structure gives the pure-play leader a leg up in agility and the ability to react to customer needs. In a multi-channel retailer, the CIO must split time between many functions of the business, and I find e-commerce often gets time allocated in a ratio roughly equal to its financial contribution to the business. While such an allocation is understandable given everything on a busy CIO’s plate, I believe this lessened focus can lead to stunted growth and lost ground to competitors such as Amazon who are more devoted to improving their software application and increasing their customers’ satisfaction with their site customer experience.

I believe if a head of e-commerce is to be truly held accountable for the success of the site, he or she should have  appropriate authority over such a major contributor to the success of the site.

So why should the head of e-commerce have authority over e-commerce IT and not e-commerce marketing and merchandising?

To me, it’s all about what faces the customer and what doesn’t. A brand should be clear to its customers about who it is and what it stands for, so continuity in marketing and merchandising trumps silo control over those aspects of the business. Site functionality has no parallels in other parts of the organization. Since it is both unique and customer facing, I believe the head of the online channel should maintain the authority to develop and execute the technical strategy for his or her business unit when it directly affects the customer relationship.

I’ll add this final point: I’ve lived through many different org structures surrounding e-commerce IT, and the only times I’ve found the pros to outweigh the cons of an org structure have been when e-commerce IT was part of the e-commerce operation and reporting to the head of e-commerce.

What do you think? Am I completely misguided? What structures have you seen work and not work? What structure do you think is ideal?

Predicting the Future of Retail

The world is changing incredibly fast — maybe faster than ever — primarily due to rapid technology innovations. If our business models don’t keep pace, we’ll quickly be left behind. Since I believe that defending the status quo is what kills companies, thriving and surviving requires somewhat accurately predicting the future. So I thought I’d take a few moments to predict the three advances I think will most affect retail in the next 15 years.

I’ll start with an easy one:

1. Just about everyone will be connected at high speeds at all times

Heck, we’re almost there now. Technologies like WiMax and its successors will be incredibly prevalent in 2024. Furthermore, screen size will no longer be an issue. Innovative technologies like OLED will allow for large foldable and rollable screens that can be neatly tucked into devices the size of ballpoint pens. But it won’t just be mobile devices that are connected. Our cars, our clothes, our sunglasses, our appliances and just about everything else will be connected. Everyone will have exactly the information they need at any given time immediately accessible at any point in time.

2. Video communications advances will make today’s office spaces almost extinct

This one is where I’ve met with the most dissent when I’ve discussed it with people. I think we’ll all have wall-sized screens in our homes that allow us to have life-sized video conversations with people, and that technology will allow us to telecommute in massive numbers. So many people will telecommute that offices as we know them today will no longer make sense. Our co-workers will be spread throughout the globe, yet our communications with them will come close to the same quality we have today with someone in the same office.

The normal argument I hear against this prediction is that nothing can take the place of the types of in-person conversations we have today. That may be true, but maybe we don’t need that level of quality for the vast majority of our office conversations. We’ve proven over and over throughout the years that we’ll trade quality for convenience. In communications alone, we’ve traded phone conversations for what used to be in-person conversations. We’ve also more recently traded the higher sound quality and reliability of land line phones for the lesser sound quality and lesser reliability of mobile phones. Texting has replaced email for many, and even instant messaging has frequently substituted for in-person conversations. I’ve seen people IM each other even though they’re sitting in directly adjacent cubicles where they could have easily just spoken in normal voice.

I’ve used current versions of video conferencing that are pretty impressive. I once attended a meeting at Google’s Ann Arbor office where we met with people in Google’s Mountain View office via video conference. After a couple of minutes adjustment, I felt like we were in the same room. We were even drawing on the white boards for each other.

This particular technological advance will also be driven by environmental concerns and continuously rising prices of fuel. The “world is flat” phenomenon may also be a significant contributing factor as companies will be able to leverage their use of these technologies to hire the best talent available regardless of physical location.

3. Supply chain advances will make same-day delivery commonplace

One of the most often cited advantages of physical retail over e-commerce is the immediate gratification available at a local store. This advantage will not hold for long. I can just about guarantee someone at Amazon is currently trying to find a way to deliver most of their goods to almost anyone in the same day. They’re actually already doing it for some items in some cities today. And they’re not alone. The auto parts retailers have long been able to deliver parts to commercial garages within an hour. In fact, I can imagine the types of distribution networks built by auto parts stores becoming a model for many retailers. Supply chain professionals are some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met.
They are constantly finding new efficiencies in their processes, and I have no doubt they will be able to solve the issues associated with same day delivery.

Do these predictions sound crazy?

If so, think back 15 years to 1994. Hardly anyone had mobile phones or emails. Amazon didn’t exist, nor for all practical purposes did e-commerce. Those of us who connected to the internet did so on dial-up modems at 56k speeds. We’ve come a long way in the last 15 years, and I don’t see any sign of us slowing down for the future.

So, what does this mean for retail?

Many of today’s current physical store advantages are going to be neutralized, so multi-channel retailers are going to have to significantly change their business models. Furthermore, the commonplace usage of video conferencing will likely cause population shifts and cause the need to shift real estate strategies. I can see some people migrating towards urban environments to satisfy their needs for more personal interaction in their social lives, and I can see others going the opposite direction and moving to rural environments to satisfy their needs for more solitude and outdoor living. Suburbs as we know them today will have less appeal and may see significant population decreases.

As I think is already the case today, the retailers who create the best customer experiences across all channels are best positioned to thrive in the future. As retail becomes increasingly self-service via customers’ constant connections to retailers and to each other and to general information everywhere, it’s going to be the retailers who get customers the right information in the right way at the right time and with the best overall customer experience who will garner the most loyalty among customers.

Retailers with physical stores may consider leveraging those physical stores as distribution warehouses while maintaining selling spaces that are in many ways showrooms. Retailers will need to consider whether or not distribution and delivery should be outsourced or become core capabilities. Will sales associates and delivery drivers become one in the same? Will sales assistance occur both via video conferencing and via direct discussion on a customer’s doorstep? Is that crazy from a customer’s perspective or incredibly convenient?

I believe the retailers who best leverage their cross-channel capabilities today will be best positioned for this brave new world. And those who attempt to protect the status quo will face pressures from all fronts.

There are lots of other things that could happen in the next 15 years that are potentially even more radical than anything I’ve predicted here. But one thing’s for sure: there can be no doubt the retail landscape 15 years from now will be very different from what we see today.

What do you think of my predictions? Even more importantly, what are your predictions? How do you think retailers should react?

Defending the status quo kills companies

“Defending the status quo is what kills companies.” That line comes from the excellent book More Than a Motorcycle: The Leadership Journey at Harley-Davidson written by former Harley CEO  Rich Teerlink and his organizational consultant partner Lee Ozley. The book chronicles Teerlink’s and Ozley’s process to change the culture at Harley-Davidson to ensure the company was ready for the challenges to come. What I found most remarkable, though, was that they didn’t initiate this massive change when the company was troubled — they initiated massive change when the company had just completed a successful financial turnaround and the press was actively singing their praises.

They changed when conventional wisdom would have said to keep doing what they were doing.

Bankruptcy courts are littered with companies who kept doing what they were doing and failed to adapt to changing marketplaces and changing customer needs and expectations.

I spent 20 years in the music industry with Tower Records, so I’ve see one of the best examples in recent years of an entire industry that desperately clung to the past rather than embrace the future. The music industry didn’t suffer because of Napster and illegal downloads; it suffered because it turned its back on its customers in favor of short term profits.

The music industry failed to recognize the opportunity that came with the advent of the Internet and digital music formats. Rather than see their industry from their customers’ perspective, the industry fell pray to the elitism I’ve discussed previously. So a computer company took their business from them. Apple’s iPod and iTunes took the music retailers’ business and substantially wrestled control away from the music labels.

The retailers could have created digital music stores if they weren’t so worried about protecting their current businesses. And there were other opportunities available. Seth Godin spoke to the industry last year and gave some excellent examples of opportunities to change the business model.

Now other traditional industries like newspapers, video stores and bookstores, among others, are also losing substantial market share to new, technology based upstarts. Others, like travel agencies, are mostly gone.

But some companies are embracing change even during the height of success.
A recent Forbes interview with Xerox’s retiring CEO Anne Mulcahy highlighted her strategy to focus Xerox on “paperless printing” even though the entire organization was basically built on paper-producing technology. Rather than focus on paper, Mulcahy instead said the company’s value was always about the creation, management and dispensing of information, “Democratization of information, however it happened.”

Threats to existing business models aren’t only coming in the form of digitization.
Look at the shoe business. In ten years, Zappos.com went from a germ of an idea to a $1 billion company. Their model? “In March of 2003, we made a decision to be about customer service,” say their CEO, Tony Hsieh, in a recent Fast  Company profile. “We view any expense that enhances the customer experience as a marketing cost because it generates more repeat customers through word of mouth.”

Customer experience as a marketing cost. It’s a whole new way of looking at the shoe business (or retail in general), and it’s a hit worth a cool billion in a short amount of time.

I can’t believe that billion dollars was incremental business to the overall market. That share came out of somebody’s  hide. And that means an existing shoe business could have done it first if the thought process and the courage to act  was there. If the Zappos model works, it can be applied to anything, and it appears that’s exactly what Zappos intends  to do.

And the radical ideas keep coming. Chris Anderson has a controversial new book, Free, that describes a future he believes will be centered largely around business models that give away 95% of their offerings and make money on the remaining 5%. Are Anderson’s ideas open for debate? Sure, but they and other seemingly nutty ideas should be regularly and honestlydiscussed. One of them may well be the next billion dollar idea.

It doesn’t take wholesale change in the marketplace to significantly disrupt a business model.
A drop in business of 10-15% can have massive impact, as many have clearly seen in the current economic downturn. But the economic downturn has not sunk all boats. Amazon.com reported a sales increase of 18% and a net income increase of 24% for their first quarter this year.

As e-commerce continues to be the growth vehicle in retail, and as Amazon continues to dominate e-commerce, I wonder how brick and mortar retail models will adapt. I believe there are many opportunities today to leverage both the growth and value of e-commerce and existing physical real estate.

Certainly, tying the web experience and the store experience together via cross-channel capabilities is a must. In the industry, we talk a lot today about capabilities like order online and pick up in store, and I think those are good.

But how can we take it further?
For example, I know from my experience with in-store kiosks at Borders that a lot more people than I expected still aren’t comfortable shopping online. They want someone to help them use the kiosks, and then they want to pay with cash at the register. Why not use our store POS systems to take cash payments for online orders? What if we took it a step further and took cash payments for other sites’ orders. What if the physical store essentially became an affiliate for a pure play e-commerce site and took the cash along with a commission? What type of opportunities might that open for both the pure play and the brick and mortar store? What other reasons should customers continue to shop physical stores well into the future as technology and delivery systems continue to improve?

What challenges does your business face in the coming years, or what businesses in general do you see most at risk? How could your business model change — maybe radically — to address those challenges? Or, do you think this is all hogwash? Let’s discuss.