November 25, 2014 Industry news
Below are some of the themes that emerged from these presentations.
There are significant challenges to becoming omnichannel
The online segments of retailers were often set up as separate businesses. This has led to inconsistent experiences for customers across the various channels available to them as the supporting data exists in systems that were not designed to handle omnichannel operations.
As being truly omnichannel is dependent on the provision of seamless customer journeys across all potential touch-points, any data silos offer a clear obstacle to achieving it.
How technology is being used to support omnichannel experiences
Mobile sits at the centre of the change affecting retail – enabling customers to engage with brands and retailers digitally across any number of contexts.
While the old debate was around online ‘killing’ the high street, it is now more widely accepted that both have the potential to complement the other to provide high quality, digitally-relevant experiences in-store and help retailers to build and develop lasting relationships with their customers.
The future is wearable
The pace of technological change is very rapid at present and will continue to be so. The next technology likely to have a serious impact on retail and customer behaviour will be the Internet of Things and, more specifically, wearables.
Google forecasts that there will be 250 million wearable devices globally over the next few years, all capturing and measuring different kinds of data on a whole range of user activities through technologies such as smart bands, Google Glass and smart watches. This will enable brands to gather together a highly comprehensive understanding of the customer and will lead to opportunities for personalising experiences in far more advanced ways than ever before.
GS1 has a key role to play in enabling omnichannel operations
As the number of channels and fulfilment options has fragmented, and retailers have increasingly looked overseas at opportunities to reach customers in new markets, it is clear that achieving a single view of stock has become far more complex. Having global standards in place is a key enabler of this.
GS1 standards help to enable efficiencies between trading partners in the physical supply chain, and the same principle applies across omnichannel operations.
Furthermore, our identifiers can be embedded within product pages to pull linked data in from relevant, trusted sources and ensure consistency and accuracy in the information provided to customers about any product.
We will be launching a new standard in 2015 to help enable this for industry. Contact david.smith@gs1uk.org for more information.