Omnichannel management: How a central platform improves the interaction of your employees
Omnichannel commerce should be convenient and simple for end customers, but as a company you have to tame an octopus to ensure that: Lots of channels, touchpoints and processes that, like the many poor people, have to be coordinated in the company in such a way that everything runs smoothly. Ultimately, it is important that employees break down silos, overcome old boundaries and work together to operate more efficiently internally and offer end customers a seamless shopping experience externally. In order to guarantee this, the technology must also play its part: One prerequisite is a central backend platform that networks all channels and standardizes data so that processes can run automatically and the entire team works with the same basis and data in real time.
Break down silos for more efficiency in the team
Let's take a look behind the scenes to identify the roles and demands of each employee and department and show how a central platform streamlines omnichannel management:
Ecommerce Manager
The e-commerce manager is at home in the digital world. This means that he must be flexible in order to be able to react quickly to innovations, to implement changes and thus to keep your company's online presence up to date. This is the only way he can leverage new potential, open up markets or try something new without much effort. As a rule, he works at the interfaces to the marketplace, content and social media managers, sales, logistics and web design - this alone shows the advantage of a central platform that makes the same data available to all employees . In addition, the e-commerce manager benefits from the fact that he is no longer slowed down by the cumbersome existing IT, but can quickly and easily integrate further touchpoints from the world of e-commerce via the backend platform without a large ERP project to kick off.
Marketplace Manager
The Marketplace Manager concentrates entirely on the marketplace business: Amazon, ebay and Co. are his playgrounds. Above all, he has to keep an eye on the competition and take care of content and advertising. He benefits from the automatisms that the backend platform guarantees, because he doesn't have to worry about logistical problems, but can concentrate fully on the peculiarities of each marketplace, develop campaigns and implement the necessary measures to stand out against the competition to claim there. A backend platform also allows other marketplaces to be connected within a short period of time.
Social Media Manager
Instagram, facebook, Pinterest, Twitter: Social media platforms are extremely important in customer communication. A major challenge of social networks is that companies have to be innovative and authentic here. Easier said than done, because developing new ideas and successfully implementing them in a specific channel takes a lot of time. A backend platform takes care of logistical processes and allows social media managers to concentrate on this core task.
Customer Support
With the increasing number of sales channels and touchpoints, customer support is also becoming more complex, because inquiries and comments reach the company today in many ways and in various formats. Despite everything, it must be ensured that the customer receives a satisfactory answer in a timely manner and that he does not have to describe his problem again every time he is contacted. The backend platform helps here: Since each order looks the same in it, a ticket can always be created and processed using the same processes. All data is stored centrally, which makes the work of the support team much easier because they don't have to switch between different touchpoints. This minimizes the risk that customer inquiries remain unanswered or that colleagues are not on the same page after repeated contact. The homogenized processes also help to quickly familiarize new colleagues in support, since the tickets are always created and processed in the same way.
Customer Relationship Manager (CRM)
A central backend platform stores and manages a large amount of harmonized data that can be evaluated in the CRM and used equally by marketing, sales and customer service, for example for personalization. In addition, the platform ensures stable processes that contribute to customer satisfaction.
UX Designer
The user experience, UX for short, is a key factor for online shops these days. Clumsy shops that have to be adjusted with a great deal of programming effort quickly fall behind. It is important that the online shop can be updated quickly and flexibly in order to always guarantee an excellent UX. A backend platform decouples the online shop from the existing IT. Ultimately, the UX designer also benefits from this, because this way he can flexibly implement his ideas and, for example, also quickly implement A/B testing.
Financial Accounting
Different payment methods, shipping service providers, countries, returns: all of these points are relevant to a company's finances. A backend platform acts as a kind of central subledger for the entire e-commerce and thus saves a lot of effort in financial accounting.
IT manager
The IT manager is responsible for ensuring that all systems are running stably. Marketplaces, online shops, social media and other channels increase the number of systems. By decoupling the entire e-commerce world from the existing IT system landscape and ultimately behaving like just one interface, this work is made considerably easier.
Product Information Management (PIM Administrator)
As a technician, the PIM administrator ensures that product master data is created from the individual systems. He benefits from a backend platform, since he does not have to worry about the specifics of the marketplaces and shops, because the integration runs automatically via the display variants of the individual channels.
logistics
Parcels and packages are packed in the warehouse, regardless of the sales channel through which the orders were generated. Thanks to the backend platform, every order looks the same, which also benefits logistics.
Chief Digital Officer (CDO)
The central task of the CDO is to make the company fit for the digital future. And as quickly as possible. However, if he wants to implement an e-commerce business model, he often faces a major problem: the existing systems are not designed for this. A backend platform like the ROQQIO Commerce Cloud helps him because it makes it possible to make an outdated ERP system "online capable" - even during ongoing operation, because the ERP is decoupled from the online world.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
The CEO wants to run a successful company. In omnichannel commerce, a backend platform offers, among other things, a short time-to-market when developing new sales channels, supports the expansion course and also ensures efficiency gains when employees work together. If IT works smoothly, the CEO can focus on strategy instead of investing a lot of time and money in lengthy IT projects.
Success through optimized omnichannel management
Omnichannel commerce is channel-independent, dynamic and customer-centric. In order to be able to map this externally across all sales channels and touchpoints, the silos within the company must also be broken down. This requires a technical solution that automates processes as much as possible and also makes it possible to work across departments.
This is where the ROQQIO Commerce Cloud comes into play: The backend platform separates the entire e-commerce from existing systems such as ERP, merchandise management and financial accounting and brings together all data and processes in a harmonized manner. As a result, employees overcome departmental boundaries and can act together and flexibly, instead of each department working with its own data reservoir and the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. This makes working in a team more efficient and ensures less stress and fluctuation among your employees. And ultimately, the end customers notice that too.
