Single, Multi, Cross, Omni-Channel Commerce and continued..

Evolution in the way a brand is interacting with its customers is having centuries old stories. Every brand used its own way to interact with the customers in early stages and later when the technology advanced the mechanisms are more structured and called it with names. It started from Single Channel in which a brand will interact with the customers through only one channel, even the brand doesn’t have another channel to interact with.

Later point of time, the concept of multi-channel came into the commerce industry in which a brand can interact with the customers through different channel but the details of the interaction through one channel is not known to another one.

The new invention of cross-channel commerce addressed the drawback of Multi-Channel commerce; people often mistaken that cross-channel and multi-channel are same but the information exchange between channels happens only in cross-channel. The key example of cross channel is that it enabling customers to order through online and pick-up at the store.

Omni-Channel Commerce is Evolving

Omni-Channel commerce is the new concept in which all the channels has the access to the same data, therefore it enables the customer to interact with multiples channel simultaneously without losing any information between channels. All channels are connected to a single information repository for Customer Data, Products, Pricing, and Promotions etc.

There are various challenges involved in for upgrading to an Omni-channel environment from an existing cross-channel or multi-channel environment. The major challenge is to centralize the data and enables real-time communication between channels and the central data store.

Omni-Channel concept is evolving now and most of the big commerce chains need to align and strategize their supply-chain management to get the maximum benefit using Omni-Channel Commerce. This involves various steps such as;

• ·         Identifying the various channels
• ·         Understanding the data flow from various channels
• ·         Designing a central data store to store and maintain all the data from various channels
• ·         Design all channels to make sure that the data flow is consistent across channels
• ·         Design the integration in such a way that there is no delay in retrieving latest data