Omni-Channel as Key Driver for Consumer’s
Brand Experience Enhancement
Alistair Oldfield – Emeldi Group
Rudolf Krammer – NTS Retail
June 2016
www.emeldi.com
Defining Omni-channel digital commerce in Telco
Evolution towards Omni-channel digital commerce
Dichotomy between physical & online channels in Telco
Trends and behaviour of digitally-enabled consumers
Observations, Conclusions
Achieving Omni-channel
Simplification of perspective
Building blocks of Omni-channel
Summary
Demo
Agenda
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What is Omni-channel Commerce
Anyways?
“You can't know where you're going until you
know where you've been.”
- old inspirational cliché
- Alistair Oldfield 2016
4
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Scratching the surface
Birth of Omni-channel concept originates through
innovation initiatives within ecommerce leaders:
Pushing of multi-channel boundaries
Hodge-Podge efforts of trial & error
Driven by what worked best for customers –
shaped by usage
5
Design
User
Experience
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Evolution of digital commerce
from the primordial soup
6
Single Channel
•One touch point to brand
Multi-Channel
•Technical and business unit silos existing and evolving independently
Cross-Channel
•Brand experience not unified
•Business functions still channel-centric
Omni-Channel
•Holistic customer view and brand experience continuity
•Business function channel-agnostic
Most Brave ones Lucky ones
uegzurbo!1
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Opportunity knocks: Omni-channel is still a very new concept
Omni-channel vs. OmniChannel vs. Omni Channel?
Ecommerce, eCommerce, e-commerce – remember those days?
Omni-channel is still a very new concept
Business description is quite well-understood (more later)
Opportunity lies in now applying technical best-practices in deploying a
concept for which business definition is now crystalized and hard lessons
have been learned
Goal of this presentation:
Understanding and executing the correct transformation steps on the first
try…
7
85% of consumers prefer shoppingin a traditional store
62% of customers expect face-to-face interactionswhen buying technology
90% of customers are more likely to buyif assisted by knowledgeable staff
66% of consumers who purchase onlinevisit the store before and after the transaction
Source: timetrade.com / ATKerney / PWC
The Telco store acts as service, fulfillment and
experience center – reflecting one unique
brand experience.
The role of the Telco retail store…
Digitalize In-Store Experience
OMNI-CHANNEL
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
GOODS FULFILLMENT
MOBILE
RETAIL ANALYTICS
STORE MANAGEMENT
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What brick-and-mortar store
mean for Telcos
Primary closing venue for sales
Enjoys very high share of overall telco sales
Consumers place high value on personal
assistance when making final purchase
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Occasional re-visits in case of technical issues
Deserted during low-traffic business hours
Expensive to maintain (rent, staff, bills, etc.)
How can Telco companies improve
the productivity of these stores?
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What does ecommerce mean for
telecom sales?
Slowly but surely increasing online conversion
rates
Relative cost of up-keep is low
Innovative product and plan discovery tools
such as configurators and calculators
Runs 24/7, minimal comparable operational
maintenance costs
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Consumers still highly determined to touch and
feel hardware before purchase
Consumers not prepared for an online-only
shopping experience
How can Telco companies improve
the productivity of their ecommerce?
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Cross-channel Cannibalisation
Primary frontlines of
telecom sales operations
managed separately
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Online Sales
Channels
Physical Retail
Channels
Sales / revenue /
customer:
CHURN
Competition and cannibalization
instead of synergic cooperation
Classic Physical Retail Stores vs. Online Sales Channels:
So many things wrong with this model in digital commerce
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Operational misalignment between retail
and online channels is costing Telcos
1. Bob reviews and compares various phones
and associated plans on his Telco's
ecommerce site, shortlists the services which
are right for him
2. However, when he visits the his Telco's
brick-and-mortar shop to make a final decision
and purchase, the store representative
informs him that there is no discount available
on the selected phone
3. Bob is seeks in vain to understand why –
Bob really doesn’t care about channels
4. Bob decides to evaluate options from other
Telco brands
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73% OF CROSS-CHANNEL
CONSUMERS
experience price and promotion
inconsistencies between stores and
websites under the same banner.
- CFI Group
Misaligned Business Functions
=
Bumpy, confusing shopping
experience
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Source: Forrester Research Web-influenced Retail Sales Forecast
-2.25%
7.74% 7.53%
Offline-only
Sales Growth
Online-influenced
Sales GrowthOnline Sales
Growth
Overall consumer behaviour is
gravitating towards digital commerce
Consumer trends show the increasing significance of the role online
channels to overall retail sales bottom line over the next 2 years (2016, 2017)
Most consumer electronics
purchasing decisions are now made
online
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
WEB-INFLUENCED CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SALES
Percent Transacted Offline
Perc
ent
Researc
hed O
nli
ne
Source: Forrester Research Web-influenced Retail Sales Forecast
Enormous
disparity between
source of lead
generation vs.
venue of sales
finalisation
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Capabilities considered “important” or “very important” to online consumers:
Consumer expectations demand uniformity
between online and offline worlds
83%: Clear indication of when items will arrive
71%: View of in-store
inventory of products
64%: Store
locator
52%: Buyonline and have order
shipped to a store for pickup
50%: Buy online and pickup in
store (same day)
49%: Reserve online, pickup,
and pay in store
Source: Forrester Research Web-influenced Retail Sales Forecast
“Click-and-collect”
“Order Status”
“Endless Aisle”
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Foot traffic in Telco brick-and-mortar shops depends more and more on
online search, compare, shortlist & select, and inventory capabilities
Online inventory much larger than physical (i.e. saving the sale via the
“endless aisle”)
Click-and-collect use-cases:
removes checkout process (removing barriers is the name of the game)
significant impact on online conversion rates
Consumer is highly digitally enabled: expects same from sales rep
expects similar sales tools/capability/awareness of his/her own
experience across channels
Synergy is required between
online/offline channels
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Conclusion:Taking the “e” out of ecommerce
$
Online Offline
Conversions online low, however research online is high
Acquisition starts online, almost always
Needs to be recognized and reflected internally within organizational
structure
Consumers do NOT make a distinction between channels within the same
organization
Gartner: "we should stop calling it e-commerce and call it just commerce"
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Omni-channel in
telecommunications is much
more involved than seamless
integration between
ecommerce and physical sales
channels
ALL touch points are
affected
True Omni-channel refers to
the connectedness and
unity of the business
operation as a whole
What does an efficient, robust
Omni-channel platform look like?
Sounds simple, is that all?
Source: Telco 2.0 Research
Customer PerspectiveTelecom Operator Perspective
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Omni-channel is not a mash up of distinct channels, it is a mashup of common
functionality delivered through a common frontend
Omni-channel is not common customer experience (look & feel), it is continuity of
customer experience
Omni-channel ecosystem does not refer to a well-integrated set of business
operations across various channels, it refers to a single business operation which
addresses all channels
Omni-channel is NOT simply “multi-
channel” done well
Om
ni-
chan
nel
Business operation unity Continuity of experience
Experience can
only be aligned
through
alignment of
business
function
Single UI
platform,
business layer,
and data layer
are the key
Flexibility in
introducing new
channels key –
(plug and play)
Creating a seamless customer experience
across all existing and emerging touch points
Mu
lti-
chan
nel
Om
ni-
chan
ne
l
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All touch-points: Anywhere, Anytime,
Anyhow
Everything…
…that a customer touches
…that a sales representative touches
…that a call centre operator touches
…that a technician touches
If it shows…
…customer data
…product data
…order data
…billing data
…customer interactions
(chats/support/leads/opportunities)
…then it MUST be mounted and served to all users
from the Omni-channel platform
OrganizationalTechnical
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Achieving Omni-channel means
simplifications in fundamental perspective
Telecoms generally posses 5 areas of complexity which need to be
overcome in order to create manageable Omni-channel platform:
1) - Products
Multiple products and complex
offerings
Convergent offers built on modular building blocks
2) - IT
Legacy, silo’ed, fragmented
Robust platform, housing common business function
3) - Channels
Offline business, viewing online as
sales support
Omni-channel business function
Processes
Many, complex, manual, dis-joint
Full automation on unified
business platform
Governance
Internal rigidity, complexity and
competition deeply ingrained
within DNA
Agility, lean-and-mean
Simplification of Products
Telecommunications product portfolio is complex,
changes frequently
Billing: 10Ks combinations of:
products & services
options
rules
Imperatives:
Define limited modular combinations of products
Migrate:
Introduce incentives for customers to self-migrate –
may take time
Decommission & auto-migrate
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Simplification of IT
Telecommunications SOAs undergoing technical transformations, consolidation, and
convergence of systems.
CRM
Billing
Order Management
…
Consolidation efforts need to translate to visible value for the end-user:
IT simplification focus needs to include customer-facing front-ends (greatly
lagging)
Simplification of Channels: The Foundation of Omni-channel
Unity in customer experience
across all touch-points is
enabled through the following
4 pillars:
1. Common Presentation
2. Common Function
3. Common Customer
View
4. Common Analytics
Customer Experience Unity
Omni-channel
Common
presentation
layer concept
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1. Common Presentation Layer
Light-weight GUI
WCM / CMS driven – all channels
Web-based Common GUI
(common presentation)
Customer Portal
(self-care)
Ecommerce platforms (browse,
compare, and buy)
Help and
support
Marketing websites / micro sites
E-billingPartner
Integration
Kiosks
Mobile
PoS
Single presentation layer
Consistency in experience
Content Biz MgmtLook & Feel
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Features & Benefits of Light-weight
approach
Web-based:
Responsive design providing consistent experience for all devices
(desktop, tablet, mobile, POS, etc.)
Business-user-driven – flexibility in pushing broad-spectrum UI
changes with minimal technical intervention – faster T2M
Consistent navigation, look & feel, experience across all touch-points
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Liferay – Viable provider for Telecom Omni-
channel portal container
ICT point of view
• Housing for ecommerce applications
• Micro-services architecture
• Modularity benefits without DevOps complexity.
• Easy to integrate and customize
• Connects easily to existing systems
• Allows for creation of new services quickly
• Supports popular front-end frameworks
Business point of view
• Single, consolidated platform
•Easy-to-use interfaces
• Simple for non-technical users, consistent across channels.
• Supports customer campaigns, retention & loyalty, and digital transformation
Customer point of view
•Touch-point-agnostic
•Consistent experience and view on interactions with brand
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2. Common Function:Unified Business Layer
Common API (access to all digital services)
Product Catalogue
BillingOrdering
IntegrationDigital services
Automated processes
CRM
API
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Characteristics, Features & Benefits
of common function
All channels derive, and in turn provide, functions based on underlying API:
Ensures consistency of business function across enterprise
Channels build mashups functionality based on centralized API
Introduces a platform for cross-channel performance tracking and
sales commissioning
Creates opportunities for extending functions globally:
Significantly faster go-to-market for new offerings
Changed intrinsically pushed across all channels
Increased monetization through building shared services which provide
aggregated functionality
Fundamental building block for
effectuating true Omni-channel
platform
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Emeldi Commerce®
Powering the Omni-channel Commerce Experience
• 100% Telco specific platform
• Omni-channel solution
providing a unified interface
across all frontline channels
• Supports the whole customer
lifecycle
• Flexibility to coexist within an
ecosystem sharing a legacy
CRM (e.g. Siebel) if required
by the operator
eSales eCare Mobiles Sales Retail POS Customer care dep.
Emeldi Commerce® Omni-channel Platform
Unified frontline channels
Omni Platform Orchestration
Customer Management Product Catalogue Order Management
Pre-integration to TELCO Backend Solutions
Connectors to backend domains
Standard Telco backend domains
Billing Integration Provisioning ERP BI
Legacy CRM
Optional integration per
Operator’s architecture
Retail Management Inventory Mgmt
BSS Integration
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3. Common Customer View
Connect/consolidate
customer profile
information/functions
across different systems
into a single system of
record
Portal Profile
Ecommerce profile
CRM Profile
Support Profile
Billing ProfilePartners
Profile
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Common Customer View Motivations
& Challenges
Technical transformation should execute consolidation in 1st phase
Master customer profiles and extension data to be migrated,
aggregated, and stored in central CRM
Newly-
appended
Profile Datasets
Base Customer
Profile Data
Unified
Customer View
MSISDN Challenge: One customer, multiple MSISDN,may not be identified as a single customer
Unified Customer View may require new identity model
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Migrating: Automate and Incentivize
De-dup migration waves, hits most customers, but
enough gaps remain for further action
Various de-dup automation strategies exist –
analysis will yield best approach
Billing address, subscriber names, email,
MSISDN,..
Incentivized strategies offered to customer to get
the job done:
Unified bills – ease of use
Limited offers/credits – when adding
subscriptions to profiles
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Common Customer View in Both
Directions
Benefits of unified customer view in terms of true
continuity of customer’s experience are self-
evident
For operators, enormous amount of value can be
gleaned from organized and compartmentalized
customer data into a single system of record…
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4. Common Analytics
2012 Forbes: “Five Years From Now, CMOs Will Spend More on IT Than CIOs
Do”
2016-19 Marketing is becoming increasingly technology-based
Marketing budgets already are larger –and faster growing –than
IT budgets
IT budgets are expected to grow 4.7 percent during this period
Marketing budgets predicted to grow 9 percent during this
period
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Customer Journey Analytics
We are currently seeing two key trends in IT ecosystem within the
enterprise:
Emergence of digital marketing as a key spender and decider in
IT
Emergence of customer journey analytics as key focus of digital
marketing efforts
Gartner: During the next three years, 60% of digital commerce analytics investments will be spent on customer journey analytics.
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Addressing the problem with customer
journey analytics
Customer-facing business units are:
independently addressing respective needs
deploying their own analytics solutions
Business case Immaturity
Fractured IT / Systems of record
Independent channels
Fractured Processes
Organizational Structure
1) - Products 2) - IT 3) - Channels Processes Governance
Evaluating customer engagement in channel silos misrepresents the
complete picture of a customer journey
Data is fragmented in silos
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Data Capture Nucleus
Care
• Omni-channel assisted care
• Personalized customer interactions
• Proactive care
Sales• Improved targeting
• Personalized/appropriate offers
Marketing
• Targeted marketing
• Track customer engagement through different channels
Omni-channel platform will virtually stand as sole data-capture engine for enterprises in better understanding and serving their customers
Omni-channel will emerge as nucleus to
customer analytics in the enterprise
Conceptual Architecture
Channels
•Online (ecommerce, self-care)
•Retail (store, kiosks, agent desktops)
•Care (call centre, chat)
•Partners
•Mobile (native apps / hybrid apps)
Common Presentation
•CMS / DMS
•Authentication / Authorization
•Look & Feel
•Responsive UI
•Business user autonomy
Common Function
•Universal Telco Business API
•Telco Product Catalogue
•Ordering
•Commissioning
•Telco Processes
Common Customer View
•Customer interactions, leads, opportunities
•Consolidated Customer Profile
•Customer profile management and enhancement
•360 view
Common Analytics
•Improved targeting
•Omni-channel assisted care
•Targeted marketing
In Summary…
Closing the Gap between store, desktop
and mobile is very much a top-down
transformation in business processes,
governance, and function
However….
Multi-channel patch-work and tactical
work-arounds will no longer meet the
expectations of digitally enabled
customers
True Omni-channel business vision can
only be realized by fully coordinated
technical and business efforts
Laying down carefully-considered
fundamental IT framework aligned to the
Omni-channel principle is key
Channel Strategy
Integrated Business Function & Product
Management
IT Building Blocks
Embrace personalization
CRM
ERP
Finance
Order Management
IDENTIFY YOUR CUSTOMERS AND THEIR NEEDS
CREATE PERSONALIZED OFFERS
CHECK DATA USAGE
UP & CROSS-SELLINGBASED ON PREFERENCES
CREATEWISHLISTS
Retail Store
Loyalty
Billing/Charging
ACCESS TRANSACTION HISTORIES
eCommerce
Common Customer View Motivations & Challenges
1
2
3
4
5
7
8
9His next
shopping
experience is
highly customized
to his past
interactions
Peter sees
an ad on TV
for a mobile phone,
looks it up on
his mobile device
He goes
online on his
desktop to
review
the product
360 Customer
View
He uses
ecommerce map
to locate nearest
store, places
a reservation
to try it out
The map
links with his
mobile device
He visits the
shop, tries the
phone, purchases
it using the QR
code from his
online reservation
He is
prompted to
share his experience
and create an
online profile
to manage
his account
His profile is
used for future
customer interactions:
a thank you
email is sent
with vouchers
He shares
his experience
online, which
is integrated
to social media
Establishing a unified
view on customer
equates to establishing
a 360 view of customer
Can only be achieved
through proper
technical consolidation
of profile data
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A use case
Come to the store
to pick up the goods
Receive
additional consulting
(cross- & up-selling)Buy, leave
and enjoy
Explore, order or reserve
online via webshop