Retail business and E-commerce is coming closer than before. There was a time, when Retailers saw E-Commerce as a strange and odd one, with a bit scared feeling. That time is slowly vanishing, and we are seeing seamless marriage between these two. Whether they happily live together ? as always it depends on how each other treat others
For all retail business, the challenge always is been to deal with inventory and manage them effectively that business runs smoothly and profitably. Their main business metrics which are seen is, the shelf life of the SKUs / slow moving SKUs/ fast moving SKUs / profit per product category etc., In general Case Customer never comes in to picture for them. But off-late, organisations have started giving loyalty cards that started monitoring the purchasing behavior on a smaller scale.
E-commerce business on the other hand deal only with E-business, and usually works on "0" (zero) inventory . There the main metrics is to know more about customers and their purchasing behavior , and position the products accordingly with up-sell and cross-sell.
Just think of a scenario - where your retail business can be elevated also to an E-commerce platform seamlessly. Of course retail usually is brick and mortar business and E-commerce is 99% technology. But if we create a platform to synergies the both, the outcome may be very encouraging .
One advantage is that, you will slowly start shifting your focus towards the much required customer details rather than only on the inventory. Another advantage is you can sell more products, because, E-commerce is usually pre-order driven business, that means, you can start selling the products which are not there in your stock.
One of the Success story of Retailbean (which is a comprehensive retail management solution) is, it has successfully implemented its retail and Ecommerce solutions in one of the very few 100% organic retail outlets in india, Lumiere Organic Venture Pvt Ltd,. Here our client operate their entire retail stores in different parts of Bangalore, with Retailbean ( including POS terminals), and uses its E-commerce store (http://shop.lumiere.co.in). Effectively for taking orders and delivering to the customers doorstep.
We are sure, these kind of solutions will start benefiting more and more retail business owners to do more business in this competitive world.
If you are interested to know more about the retail CRM solutions which can be easily extended to E-commerce also, do contact us as sales@retailbean.com
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