Since the advent of the Internet, the sales paradigm has been completely rewritten, introducing significantly disparate channels between them, dividing processes into a digital hemisphere and a physical hemisphere. Today, it's easier than ever to merge these two worlds, and it doesn't have to mean an increase in prices.
Before the Internet disruption, retail revolved around catalog orders and physical stores. For a long time, brands treated online commerce as a separate business from their own distribution network. Over time, most companies have realized that, although omnichannel order fulfillment involves complex and varied processes, customers ultimately seek a satisfactory and consistent experience.
Feeling the pressure to meet expected results, companies rushed to enhance their customer experience. However, this often comes at a great cost and compromises operational excellence. This is partly because many of these companies already had established processes that were segregated, using a multitude of business partnerships and differentiated systems. Isolated operations are not ideal for creating the unified experience they seek.
Like a magic trick, merging different worlds seamlessly without disconnects, interruptions, or discrepancies is difficult to achieve. Creating an illusion of unity, without flaws in the order fulfillment process, requires impeccable agility and skill.
Leaders who recognized where the industry was heading set out to arrive first. These pioneers forged innovations to achieve this merger, creating systems such as "Buy Online, Pick-Up In Store" (BOPIS). Other innovations included those offering greater access to inventory, with free home delivery options for out-of-stock or bulky items.
To achieve this illusion of unity, companies must be strategic about their storage locations and must also have real-time and accurate visibility of their inventory and processes. This is necessary in an ecosystem where customers send, exchange, and return orders at different locations and from multiple channels. The most obvious solution to unify processes is to use an omnichannel strategy with a single platform that includes products in transit, is aware of availability, and optimizes the origin and route of items at all times. OMNIX is a SaaS platform, an omnichannel solution triggering actions to maintain operational continuity by integrating all processes into a single platform, providing real-time data flow visibility.
Supply chains, formed by networks of companies relying on each other to supply and fulfill orders, cannot account for all customer requirements, limitations, and circumstances. They need to adopt management systems such as the one offered by OMNIX because it provides visibility, control, and analysis at different levels, including at a granular level. Thus, companies do not have to deal with resolving the problems that the disconnection between the physical and digital world generates, as a platform like OMNIX allows them to dynamically model their networks based on all given needs and limitations, creating a "micro-supply chain" optimized for each order. With current technology, brands can even offer personalized delivery options for each customer, regardless of the channel, thereby increasing their own efficiency.
Again, regardless of the sales channel, whether online or physical, companies investing in these platforms can always source from the best location and choose the best possible routes with the best carriers to optimize the order route. As a continuous real-time process, it adapts immediately and re-optimizes the flow when conditions or requirements change.
Moreover, beyond maintaining a uniform and consistent customer experience, by converging systems and flows, it allows for an improvement in operational excellence by introducing more opportunities for order splitting and consolidation. More than ever, unified platforms like OMNIX make it easy for companies to provide complete transparency about orders, through status updates, comments, and also through their online stores.
The convergence of the physical and digital worlds is inevitable, and OMNIX offers a solution for this to happen effectively and seamlessly. Intelligent software and unified platforms now enable companies to adapt their supply chains to balance both customer and business demands.
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