Introduction and challenges
In an increasingly connected world, the barriers between physical retail (stores, catalogue) and digital retail (e-commerce) are disappearing and new channels, such as social commerce or connected products are emerging. We now speak of phygital commerce or unified commerce which reflects the fusion of these channels around a single notion: the customer experience.
Faced with these developments, companies must redefine their distribution strategy, namely redesign the global customer experience by ensuring end to end consistency across all channels, regardless of the position in the purchasing cycle (research, purchasing, post-purchase, after-sales service, etc.). It is also necessary to ensure consistency between all the processes involved in this experience: assortment management, pricing, order to pay, order to delivery, and after-sales service.
It is about having an end to end approach to the execution chain, from the supplier to the end customer via logistics, point of sale and transport, maximising synergies and resource sharing.
Finally, it is a question of setting up an IT architecture that is adapted to the mixed channel strategy, with synchronised solutions that are consistent with each other and with the target customer experience (sales tools, customer solutions, after-sales service tools, etc.)
The approach must be designed in such a way that the customer experience can evolve (as well as processes and systems) in an agile way to meet new, as yet unidentified channels.
How we can help
Argon & Co assists companies in defining their strategy for the various distribution channels and on all aspects of their implementation including organisation and new functions, business processes, store operations, logistics organisations, and IT systems:
- Determination of the distribution strategy, framing of the necessary changes, definition of a transformation plan
- Definition of changes in business models and the associated customer promise (offer, prices, services offered and associated costs)
- Modelling and assistance in choosing the optimal scenario (customer experience, cost of new services, stock levels, logistics resources and costs, store/home transport costs, and store operations). Our approach combines the commercial and operational aspects to allow the best trade-offs in terms of “offer/customer services” and “process / operating costs and investments”
- Support in the definition of functional and application IT architectures to break down silos between channels (order management system, transverse traceability base, etc.)