December 2024
Unlocking Omnichannel Excellence
Pickup and return in store are table stakes. The business case for what comes after them.
December 2024
Pickup and return in store are table stakes. The business case for what comes after them.
Retail has moved beyond offering good products. It is about delivering connected experiences across every channel — and omnichannel integration is no longer optional. It is both a requirement for survival and, done properly, a real growth opportunity.
Most retail consumers now shop across multiple channels, and nearly all of them expect a consistent experience across every channel and device. Yet only a small share of retailers have fully integrated omnichannel capabilities — and surveys consistently find that while retailers acknowledge the importance of omnichannel fulfilment, most are dissatisfied with their own performance in it.
That gap between expectation and delivery is both the challenge and the opportunity.
Buy online, pick up in store. Buy online, pick up at curbside. Buy online, return in store. These give customers control over how they receive or return products, and the majority of retailer websites now offer them in some form.
Target's same-day services — pickup and curbside — have accounted for a substantial share of its digital growth, running into billions of dollars in sales. The opportunity now is not in offering these at all, but in the back-end integration behind them. The complexity is real: it requires investment in systems and in training. The return shows up in retention, where retailers with strong omnichannel execution hold on to dramatically more of their customers than those without.
Brands implementing ship-from-store meaningfully increase online fulfilment capacity while cutting last-mile delivery cost, by treating physical stores as fulfilment nodes rather than only as retail space.
It requires real-time inventory accuracy and store staff who are trained and incentivised to pick and pack. That second part is where most implementations fail, and it is an operating-model problem rather than a technology one.
Endless aisle lets customers order out-of-stock items in store for shipment from a warehouse or another location. It prevents lost sales, reduces markdowns and improves inventory turnover. AI-assisted inventory allocation extends the same logic across the network, reducing both stockouts and excess.
Both need genuine integration between online and in-store inventory systems. Click-and-collect customers also convert at a materially higher rate than online-only shoppers, which is the part most finance teams underestimate when they evaluate the investment.
A seamless online-to-offline experience creates journeys without friction, and friction is what loses customers. Brands with strong omnichannel engagement retain far more of their customers than those with weak execution — and retention compounds in a way that acquisition spending never does.
Omnichannel is no longer about connecting channels. It is about rethinking the customer journey in a digital world. The next frontier includes hyper-personalisation at every touch point, decentralised inventory and loyalty systems, immersive experiences that blur physical and digital, and sustainability built into fulfilment and packaging rather than bolted onto the marketing.
Brands like Nike, Target and Walmart are already investing heavily here. The gap between them and everyone else is widening, and it is not primarily a technology gap.
Originally published on LinkedIn.
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