nChannel's Retail Roadmap: A Guide To Improving Multichannel Operations This Season & Beyond

Leader in Multichannel Management Software Launches Two Apps to Help Merchants Manage Product Info & Insights

For retailers recently, delivering a cohesive shopping experience is critical, no matter what their size – and it can mean the difference between breaking-through or just breaking even, particularly during the holiday shopping season. nChannel, the leading provider of multichannel management software that simplifies selling for retailers, today released a guideline to help retailers navigate the multichannel landscape, along with a suite of cloud applications that make it easier for sellers to manage product information and access better intelligence about business performance.

Research shows 71 percent of today’s shoppers expect to view in-store products online, and half want the ability to buy online and pick-up in-store. Retailers are expected to deliver a robust, cross-channel experience, and this is the time of year when they really need to shine. According to nChannel historical data, customer orders increased by 15 percent and the total revenue of all customers increased by as much as 43 percent during last year’s holiday shopping season.

“Seventy percent of our business happens in November and December, so it is imperative that we get it right,” said Scott Black of Texas Tamale Company, which ships fresh, gourmet tamales anywhere in the country. “We used to hire an influx of staff every holiday to help us manually input orders, putting a huge strain on our resources. With nChannel, we’ve automated the process making our operations more efficient, reducing errors and ultimately, helping us deliver a better experience for our customers during the ‘hottest’ season of the year.”

“Today’s consumers are engaging with sellers in many different ways and they expect a level of service, simplicity and style in every aspect of their shopping experience,” said Steve Weber, president & CEO of nChannel. “Extending offline business in an online market can present unique and very costly challenges, which is why nChannel has developed a solution that was designed specifically with the multichannel merchant in mind. We know the hurdles and our platform is making it easier for retailers to manage operations and uncover new opportunities.”

nChannel’s guide to managing multichannel operations includes:

• Be Deliberate: The Web is more than just an advertising medium. To get the most out of it, create a deliberate online strategy and invest time and dollars into your online presence - just as you would a physical store.
• Consistency is Critical: Products and pricing must be uniform across all of channels. Customers should have the same experience no matter how or where they are shopping with you.
• Simply the Best: Select best of breed systems for your business from your eCommerce platform to your point of sale solution and your financial management tool. Make sure you integrate these offerings to create efficiency and understand where there are new opportunities for growth. For example, you may realize that you need additional physical stores or that certain online marketplaces can drive more sales.
• Track & Monitor: Connect your supply chain to improve inventory tracking and purchasing with vendors – ensure you never run out of stock and understand what’s selling and why. By staying on top of performance, you can better identify areas for improvement and which channels are most successful.
• Customer Service is King: Focus on customer experience. Period. Process orders quickly, ship the same day, communicate status and respond to inquiries with speed and accuracy. Last November and December,100 percent of nChannel’s customers shipped items within two days or less of the order date. Remember to personalize each shopping experience by knowing your customers’ order history and offering product suggestions that make sense. Treat Web orders as part of your business, not as an exception.

nChannel’s new applications make it easier for sellers to follow this roadmap for success by delivering innovative features that extend the capabilities of the company’s cloud-based AppSuite offering:

• Product Information Management: Creates a single version of the truth for all products to help sellers go to market faster. The app collects product data from systems, spreadsheets and suppliers and can organize the details by region, brand, season, promotion, etc. to simplify updates and merchandising. It can also perform bulk updates to help sellers manage pricing and promotions, as well as enable them to search key product data more easily.
• Business Intelligence: nChannel’s app analyzes relevant company data real-time through pre-built dashboards. With data that already flows through nChannel, the app helps sellers track and compare business performance by region, product, category, store, channel, etc. and by timeframe (i.e. by quarter, month, week, day or half hour).

For more information, visit www.nchannel.com.

About nChannel

nChannel is the leading provider of multichannel management software that simplifies selling for retailers of all sizes. nChannel provides a single, cloud-based platform that easily integrates with existing systems to help sellers improve the management of product information, streamline supply chain processes and enhance the overall shopping experience for customers. With better business intelligence and increased exposure, nChannel subscribers are improving multichannel operations resulting in new opportunities for repeat business and revenue and making them more competitive than ever before.