Publisher:
Telstra Wholesale
Name:
How APIs are driving the modern omni-channel retail experience
Copyright Date:
06/03/2024
Copyrighted By:
Telstra Wholesale
Family Friendly:
Yes
Language:
English
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How APIs are driving the modern omni-channel retail experience


How APIs are driving the modern omni-channel retail experience


In recent years, omni-channel retailing has emerged as a gold standard for businesses looking to meet consumers on their own terms. Yet for many retailers, the implementation of a solid omni-channel strategy has loomed as difficult and expensive. Thankfully, this is no longer the case.

Australian businesses searching for a smart solution to their omni-channel worries need look no further. It’s called API-led connectivity, and it’s driving the modern retail experience.

Bypassing the need for a complete IT and organisational overhaul, while unlocking the benefits of omni-channel retailing, APIs enable an efficient method for retailers to manage inventory, fulfilment and customer data in real-time.


The endless aisle: catering to the modern customer

A smart retail strategy begins (and ends) with the consumer, and omni-channel retailing represents a continuous, seamless and consistent experience for the customer, no matter where and how they choose to shop.

For this reason, it’s not enough for a retailer to simply launch an online store or develop an app to go with their bricks-and-mortar presence, and call it an omni-channel offering. As Joe Skorupa explained in last year’s RIS Retail Technology Study, every channel in which a retailer does not appear, is one where it becomes invisible.

One prominent business to have embraced omni-channel retailing with a view to enhancing customer experience is TUMI, the global luxury travel brand. According to Rob Cooper, general manager of TUMI North America, the company’s goal is to “present our vast product assortment to customers in an ‘endless aisle’ format, while ensuring products can be fulfilled with the customers’ convenience in mind”.

Whether a customer chooses to purchase at a department store, or they buy ‘on the go’ at the airport and need the product delivered to their door, TUMI’s omni-channel approach is about meeting customers’ demand for a personalised and convenient brand experience.

At the same time, prioritising a continuous customer experience across multiple channels also enables a business to play to its traditional strengths. A bricks-and-mortar retailer can build its digital presence for added visibility and sales, while retaining consistency of brand.

 

What is an API and why does it matter?

 

API-led connectivity: omni-channel behind the scenes

A true omni-channel strategy means achieving seamlessness not only in customer experience, but in the people, processes and systems that make up the business itself.

On the surface, such a whole-of-business undertaking can seem prohibitive in cost and time – yet API-led connectivity offers the key to omni-channel success. Businesses are discovering there’s no need to build a new system from the bottom up, as API-led connectivity allows existing channels and new channels alike to communicate and exchange data in real time – meaning a comprehensive omni-channel strategy is within closer reach than ever before.

When TUMI embarked on its omni-channel approach, it quickly identified APIs as the necessary link between its POS, customer data, inventory and fulfilment. With the APIs in place to build bridges across different parts of the business, TUMI staff are able to view customers, orders and distribution information from a single, centralised view – allowing the company to make better decisions about improving customer experiences, labour, sales and, ultimately, global expansion.
 

An accessible advantage: API-led solutions

While other IT integrations are capable of linking different channels with a hard-coded, bolted-on approach, API-led connectivity has the advantage of being compact and adaptable to change. It can unlock a suite of benefits, such as personalised offers for customers based on the data they’ve provided in multiple channels; real-time order management to fulfil orders as quickly as possible from the most suitable warehouse, store or third party in the retailer’s network; and geo-targeted marketing.

Each of these capabilities has previously served as a competitive advantage to those businesses who have the technological and financial means to access them – but thanks to APIs, they’re accessible as a collective to those retailers who implement simple technological solutions, clearing them a direct path to fulfilling customers’ needs.

Where adding digital capabilities and new channels to the retailer’s arsenal is hard, and the rewards can take time to show, APIs make it easier to build the customer experience around existing structures, as well as enabling a business to keep pace with the ever-changing marketplace. In the era of omni-channel retailing, API-led connectivity is a seamless and transformative way to meet the customer on their terms – and it’s bound to transform the face of business at the same time.


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