konknaijaboy | On 02, Jan 2014

This year’s Retail Tech Spending Survey highlights the focus on the customer’s desire to have access to the “endless aisle.”

The 2014 Retail Tech Spending Survey showed big increases in fulfillment-related categories nearly across the board, as retailers focus on making products available to customers anytime, anywhere. With the rapid rise of e-commerce and m-commerce, customers are increasingly demanding access to inventory data in order to choose how they want to receive the product.

Books-A-Million’s industry has seen a significant portion of business move online either through digital delivery or physical orders. Here, we talk with Books-A-Million SVP of IT and Booksamillion.com president Cy Fenton to discuss the challenges he faces in a changing, technology-driven industry.

How has fulfillment changed in retail, especially as we see a rise in retailers’ investing in fulfillment-related technologies?

Fenton: The big driver here is mobility, both with the consumer and the supply chain. Customers are increasingly demanding product availability at all times, which means warehouses need to be able to ship to stores and customers in an on-demand environment. In order to accomplish this, inventory visibility has to be universal and accurate.

The mobile customer wants to be able to see if the product is available in the store, and if not, how quickly it can be shipped to the store or their house. The DC (distribution center) needs to be able to supply that data in order for the customer to make an intelligent purchase decision. At the DC level, mobile devices are enabling not only faster pick, pack, and ship but also allowing instant inventory adjustments and real-time information to be available for both customers and in-store associates. Ordering takes place 24/7, and this data needs to be updated in real time. If a customer wants a specific product, and it says there is one in the warehouse that can be at their house in two days, it better be available and at their house in two days, or you just turned an opportunity to wow the customer into a complete failure.

You mentioned mobility as being a driver on the customer side. How has mobility affected other parts of omni-channel, besides fulfillment?

Fenton: That all comes down to the customer experience. In this year’s survey, nearly 46 percent of respondents plan on investing in customer experience management. This is almost exclusively driven by mobility giving customers more power than ever before. They have access to pricing, inventory, and marketing from not only you but also from your competition. This is where it comes down to more than price. Google recently had a study showing that roughly 60 percent of retail purchases have some kind of mobile influence, whether it be research, purchase, or response to marketing efforts. Mobile devices count for a small portion of direct sales, but they are involved somewhere in the process of most sales.

Customers expect to have a great experience with your brand across channels, and mobile devices are where a lot of the interaction takes place. Customer experience is driven by data on the retailer side of things. The more you know about that customer, the more customized you can make their experience. Amazon is a company that did really well at this, offering recommendations that fit their customers’ preferences, rather than just being random items that may be on sale. This has driven all of retail to be better focused on the customer and how we interact with them. When you look at mobile marketing, for instance, it is not just sending out emails you can get on your phone. It is about having targeted marketing that hits you when you are near the store or have looked up information on a product. If we know that most customers actually purchased a different product when they looked up this one, we can send out a message with an offer for that product. Marketing needs to hit the customer at the time of decision, and it needs to be personalized. Random offers are out, and targeted, personalized mobile marketing is in.

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