Blog

The insider view into
retail data integration.

Supply Chain Touchpoints Part 6: The Right Cost

The cost of purchases varies hugely based on how inbound merchandise navigates through the supply chain processes discussed in this blog series. Yet most retailers operate restrictive accounting systems dating back to the brick-and-mortar age that assumes all shipments are created equally.

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Supply Chain Touchpoints Part 5: The Right Time

We are surveying how retailers are enhancing these touchpoints to meet the demands of unified commerce. In each we’ll look at how more robust data integration can lead to greater opportunities to compete in this digital age.

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Supply Chain Touchpoints Part 4: The Right Place

If your Supply Chain Touchpoints don’t get merchandise to the RIGHT PLACE, you are certain to lose competitive advantage.

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Supply Chain Touchpoints Part 3: The Right Quantity

In this blog we’ll survey processes which help you determine “the right quantity.” With the advent of digital commerce, each of these processes has taken on real-time urgency because of the enterprise-wide need to know current inventory positions.

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Supply Chain Touchpoints Part 2: The Right Product

Retailers of all stripes, shapes, and sizes expend huge effort to bring “The Right Product” to their shoppers across all channels. But how do you identify and distinguish the right product from the wrong?

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Supply Chain Touchpoints Part 1

If there is one absolute requirement for retail success in this digital age, it is data integration. Your information systems cannot be insular and self-contained. Everything you do for your customers is part of an integrated process.

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Integrating the Customer Journey—Part 5: Shopper Puts Items Into Use

In this last of the series, we highlight the touchpoints between retailers and their shoppers that occur after the items are purchased.

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Integrating the Customer Journey—Part 4: Shopper Shops

Tracing the customer touchpoints during the actual shopping experience.

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Integrating the Customer Journey—Part 2: Shopper Gains Awareness

Here, we’ll cover the customer touchpoints when a shopper is in the process of gaining awareness of their need or want.

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Integrating the Customer Journey—Part 1: Unscrambling the touchpoints

One of the most challenging features of retailing in the digital age is the ability to both track the customer journey and make it seamless.

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Is there a connector for that?

In the quest to harmonize technical innovations with traditional back-office systems, data integration is taking center stage in the retail industry. The sheer volume of the points of integration has multiplied as retailers pursue new ways to unify commerce, connect with customers, and manage supply chains.

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Announcing: “Integrated Commerce”

Since the advent of Amazon, the retail world has struggled to give a proper name to its own digital transition. Our industry has trialed “eCommerce,” “Multi-channel,” “Omni-channel,” “Brick & Clicks,” and, more recently, “Unified Commerce” and “Singular Commerce.” To my mind, none of these terms describes the challenges retailers face in the Digital Age.

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A Walk In The Retail Graveyard

In recent years, the rate of failure has increased to about five American retailers per hour. The press has named this trend "The Retail Apocalypse."

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Unified Commerce: Implications on Traditional Back Office Systems Part 6

Part 6 Unified Commerce Logistics : When the Express Train turns into the Local

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Unified Commerce: Implications on Traditional Back Office Systems Part 4

Part 4 Retail Inventory Accounting: Tracking Margin Erosion

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Unified Commerce: Implications on Traditional Back Office Systems Part 2

Part 2 Enterprise visibility of Product and Inventory information

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Unified Commerce: Implications on Traditional Back Office Systems

Part 1 Integrating Sales = The challenges of a square peg in a round hole

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A Unified Commerce Back Office

Information flow in a 21st century retailer connecting consumer-facing apps and wholesale apps with traditional back office systems.

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Reflections on OMS – new epicenter

The Order Management System (OMS) is fast becoming the system epicenter for 21st century retailers. Your success in Unified Commerce will depend of the strength of your integration of your back-office systems with OMS.

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Retail data integration in the digital age (part 4)

Data integration is all-too-often the Achilles heel of retailers’ operations. Learn how businesses can work towards a hub and spoke architecture.

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Retail data integration in the digital age (part 3)

Successful interoperability means that users only need to perform data maintenance once and the changes are reflected across the enterprise.

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Retail data integration in the digital age (part 2)

In part 2 of our series we explore the challenges faced when connecting two distinct systems.

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Retail data integration in the digital age (part 1)

The truth is that the entire retail enterprise stands on a shaky foundation when it comes to data integration. How it is approached means everything.

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We've pioneered the
RIBA Retail Data Integration Method
- a step-by-step process that provides early visibility when unforeseen challenges arise in a data integration project.

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