A customer walks into a store to return a pair of shoes. The store associate asks for a receipt, the customer hands them an email confirmation from an online purchase.
These shoes were purchased on line, shipped from warehouse inventory, not sold in the store from the store inventory.
How do you manage the return of an item that was bought online but is being returned to the store?
How do you manage updating your inventory?
Can your point of sale system (POS) access the original purchase and customer record to make the return, and perhaps exchange process, seamless for the customer? Does your POS know who your customer is?
What if you don’t have the correct item to complete the exchange in the store but the customer saw it available in your online store? Do you let them leave the store with the risk that they never complete the purchase?
How can you ensure that your customers can transact with you anytime they want, on any device, in any location?
A recent study from the e-tailing group found that only 56% of mid-market retailers can access online orders in stores.
Retailers need to have a central repository for order, customer and product information. The goal is to integrate your customer and employee facing systems to the central repository for consistency and accuracy of data visibility.
Having a centralized inventory and order management system (OMS) enables you to provide a seamless, anytime, anywhere customer experience.
Enabling your store associates to view a customer’s online and offline purchase history, manage returns no matter where the original purchase occurred, look up available stock not only in the store but also in the warehouse, and then enabling ship-to-home or ship-to-store for pick up options creates a complete 360 degree customer experience.
Only an integrated OMS and POS can provide this 360 degree view of your customers and your business. In fact, you might consider the OMS the new POS.
Imagine how it would transform your business if your POS did know who your customer is…
