Omnichannel Strategy: Hurdles and Success Factors

Key Barriers to Omnichannel Success

Several factors hinder businesses from realizing the full benefits of omnichannel:

• Technology Integration: Many businesses struggle with outdated systems and fail to integrate necessary technology.
• Data Utilization: Proper utilization of data, combining digital, transactional, and financial data, is crucial but often overlooked.
• Organizational Knowledge Gap: A significant knowledge gap in digital strategies exists at the management level.
• Customer Understanding: Businesses must grasp real-time customer desires to offer seamless experiences across various channels.

Combining the Strengths of Start-ups and Legacy Companies

The adoption and effectiveness of omnichannel strategies vary widely across different industries and sectors. This diversity is largely influenced by the contrast between startups and traditional, legacy companies. Each brings unique strengths and challenges to the digital table. Startups, often digital natives, excel in agility, innovation, and a willingness to adopt new technologies. They're unburdened by legacy systems and can rapidly adapt to changing digital landscapes. This agility enables them to experiment with and implement cutting-edge omnichannel strategies effectively.

In contrast, legacy companies, while they might struggle with outdated systems and a resistance to change, bring invaluable industry experience, established customer bases, and brand recognition. These strengths, when leveraged effectively, provide a stable foundation for adopting new technologies and digital strategies. This means, the key to success in the digital age lies in combining the innovative drive of startups with the experience and resources of legacy companies.

The Role of Education and Vision

Another crucial step in overcoming omnichannel barriers is education, particularly at the C-suite level. Additionally, a clear digital vision is essential for guiding a business's strategy and operations in the digital domain. Many companies are still struggling with the basics, such as an optimally mobile-optimized website that loads quickly and provides a positive user experience. Of course, this experience must also be consistent across all other channels. Because even for traditional brands, the website or a social media channel is in most cases the first touchpoint in the customer journey. There is also the ROPO effect (Research Online, Purchase Offline): Many established brands are critical of digital sales channels because they do not see a sufficiently good ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend). What actually happens is that customers continue the customer journey offline after the first digital touchpoints and ultimately make a purchase in a physical store. If companies were to link the data points correctly here, they would see how much impact digital channels have on the customer journey and how important a consistent omnichannel strategy really is. It is up to the C-level to understand this and implement it in the company.

This often has to happen by bringing new people into the company who have the appropriate skills and mindset. OMMAX offers support here by working as an extended workbench for decision-makers in companies. In this way, the skills are brought into the company to ultimately turn it into a digital leader.

Learn how OMMAX brings digital skills into companies with Digital Advisory Boards.