Organizational, operational and technology challenges are hampering retailers’ efforts to meet customers’ demand for a seamless shopping experience across all channels and touchpoints.

That’s the conclusion of a commissioned by Accenture and Hybris Software, a commerce platform provider. The study was conducted online by Forrester Consulting with more than 1,500 multichannel shoppers and 256 decision-makers from retail and manufacturing organizations across the UK, US, France and Germany. You can see an infographic summarising the results here.

Retailers view omnichannel maturity as a key brand differentiator for their companies, and improving their ability to provide customers with a seamless shopping experience across all channels, as a top priority, according to the study, Customer Desires Vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding the Omni-Channel Commerce Gap, conducted by Forrester Consulting. However, the study shows that nearly all – 94 per cent – of retail decision-makers surveyed as part of the research said that their companies face significant barriers to becoming an integrated omnichannel company.

The survey also found that 71 per cent of the shoppers expect to view in-store inventory online, and 50 per cent expect to buy online and pick up their purchase in a physical store. Yet, only 36 per cent of the retail decision-makers surveyed said that their companies are able to provide customers with in-store pickup of online purchases, online visibility of cross-channel inventory and store-based fulfilment of online orders. All of these capabilities are considered vital for seamless retailing.

“39 per cent of customers surveyed say they are unlikely or very unlikely to visit a retailer’s store if its website does not provide physical store inventory information,” said Chris Donnelly, global managing director of Accenture’s Retail Practice. “Additionally, the research also shows that retailers who struggle to implement robust seamless capabilities online also experience challenges meeting customer expectations in offline channels. So this is a particularly big challenge that requires immediate attention.

“Increasing adoption of eCommerce and mobile technology by consumers underscores how important it is for retailers to introduce digital commerce into every aspect of their business to keep up with – and hopefully, outpace – their competitors.”

Technology and integration barriers
According to the survey, 40 per cent of retailers reported that they are having difficulty integrating back-office technology across all of their channels. The survey highlights a key area for improvement, which is the ability to have a consolidated, accurate view of real-time inventory across stores and distribution centres.

“As customers expect retailers to provide consistent and contextual service across every channel and interaction, retailers need to adopt new technologies that enable this critical transformation to omnichannel customer engagement and service,” said Brian Walker, chief strategy officer at Hybris. “This is going to be vital to meeting customers’ expectations and, frankly, survival for retailers.”

Although 46 per cent of decision makers surveyed said they already have a dedicated omnichannel team, – one that includes members of all functions, – conflicting priorities and organizational silos remain a key challenge. Two additional key barriers identified as preventing retailers from becoming an integrated omnichannel company are difficulty in sharing customer data and analytics between channels, countries or locations, and a lack of in-store associate training.

According to the research, in-store pickup of purchases by consumers emerged as a key capability that bricks-and-mortar retailers must be able to provide their customers if they expect to compete effectively against online-only retailers. Nearly half (47 per cent) of the customers surveyed said they use in-store-pickup options to avoid online shipping costs, 25 per cent so they can collect their orders on the day of purchase, and 10 per cent simply because they find it more convenient to pick items from a store than having them shipped to their home.

Not everyone agrees with the study’s findings, however. Noting the uptake of multichannel shopping from retailers such as M&S, John Lewis and Sweaty Betty, Pontus Kristiansson, VP EMEA at RichRelevance, which provides omnichannel personalization services to retailers, told Mobile Marketing:

“We’ve seen increased adoption of eCommerce and mobile shopping over the past year, and more brands are coming to us asking for ways in which they can deliver a more personalised omnichannel shopping experience for their customers.

“This doesn’t mean that we should abandon the high street stores or even catalogue shopping – especially when consumers these days are regularly checking retailers’ mobile and online sites as part of their in-store shopping experience. By consolidating the overall shopping experience across different consumer touch points, retailers will be able to offer a concierge-style service to the consumer, and thus increase overall brand loyalty.”

You can register for a webinar to discuss the findings of the study here.