Solve Customer-Related Challenges and Achieve Operational Efficiency

Today's retailers

By enabling customers to have the same shopping, purchasing and tracking experience regardless of venue, best-in-class retailers are becoming cross-channel and customer-centric.

Any cross-channel strategy must center around order capture and fulfillment, visibility and flexibility. These four critical components must be seamless and completely integrated in order to assure a unified shopping experience.

IMPROVING THE RETAIL EXPERIENCE

In order to meet customer-related challenges - and improve customer loyalty retailers must invest in sales and fulfillment solutions. A change has taken place within selling and fulfillment where a multichannel experience has shifted to a crosschannel experience.

"Customer expectations are higher now than they've ever been, and these expectations will continue to rise," says Jim Bengier, Global Industry Executive, Retail, Sterling Commerce. "Customers are becoming more aware of the possibilities. They're technologically savvy, and they want to be sure they have the same experience, regardless of the channel."

For retailers, providing an optimal customer experience can be a powerful differentiator. Giving customers a consistent experience across a brand will garner and maintain customer loyalty. So whether they shop online, by phone or in a store, they have the same quality experience.

But in order to provide this consistent experience, retailers need to integrate their data so that they can get a holistic view of their customers. This way, they can have a single order repository of all customer information across all channels and divisions. But in order to get a holistic view of their customers, retailers must optimize their order management processes.

USING SUPPLY CHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Supply chain technology can help retailers deal with their current challenges while growing both their top and bottom lines. According to Bengier, this technology must be flexible and integrated so systems can all "talk" to each other and offer visibility to cope with all the evolving changes within the supply chain. One such change is that more products are coming from Asia, which means retailers need longer lead time from order to market.

Implementing a flexible and integrated supply chain solution will help retailers grow their top line with superior customer experience, and it will help them grow their bottom line by gaining efficiencies and reducing costs. "With a solution that offers flexibility, integration and visibility, retailers will be able to take out redundancies and unnecessary processes while dramatically increasing efficiency," Bengier adds.

MANAGING TRANSPORTATION

As the supply chain gets longer, retailers need visibility to be able to successfully manage their transportation issues, which include the ability to track shipments and understand how long it takes product to get from one place to another. A solid transportation management strategy will allow retailers to easily move product around based on customer demand. Transportation management solutions should have alerts that will pop up if there is a disruption in the process.

"Transportation management is becoming more and more important with the consolidation of carriers and rising fuel costs," Bengier points out. "Transportation is a huge expense for retailers and they are trying to cope with this issue as costefficiently as they can."

Investing in technology that centers around order management, supply chain visibility and transportation management is critical for retailers. They need a partner that can help them economically streamline processes across the supply chain helping them avoid redundancies, reduce complexity and create greater synergies with customers and partners.

STERLING COMMERCE STREAMLINES PROCESSES

The Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite, which incorporates Sterling Order Management, is an end-to-end supply chain solution that includes both order fulfillment and multi-channel selling capabilities. The solution achieves cross-channel sales and service across an extended global enterprise. It assures a positive, relevant, compelling customer experience, creates cross-channel synergy and offers retailers true operational efficiency.

The Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite automates the sales process from product configuration through order capture. It also simplifies order management across any channel. In addition, the solution extends assortment and service offerings through suppliers and service providers.

The Sterling solution efficiently synchronizes complex order processes for faster response time. Offering real-time visibility of a retailer's supply chain, which is necessary to automate customer- and partner-facing operations, the solution also ensures on-time delivery of all products and services across an extended enterprise to endconsumers at anytime and to anywhere.