In this year’s global edition of the Omnichannel Leadership Report from NewStore – a retail survey that audits around 275 brands across several key international markets – Australia has emerged as a frontrunner in providing consumers with outstanding omnichannel experiences.
The research, which offers first-person perspectives from mystery shoppers as direct feedback to the brands involved, is designed to provide retailers with an internal lens for measuring their omnichannel success at the brand level and making any necessary improvements. In the case of Australian omnichannel, however, there’s a lot that retailers seem to be getting right.
“The Australian market is often seen as a leader in innovation,” says NewStore president Rick Berger, “so it doesn’t surprise us that they’re ranked in the top three overall in the report and number one in the online section. The e-commerce market in Australia in particular is in rapid growth with four in five households now buying online, and we only see that getting better. We found 80 per cent of the Australian brands we audited offer click and collect, and 66 per cent of them have live chat features on their website – and that just shows how omnichannel is becoming more and more mainstream in Australia.”
According to Berger, the post-pandemic resurgence of brick-and-mortar retail has been a contributing factor to consumers’ demand to be met anywhere they want to go on an omnichannel journey – whether that be in stores, at home, or on a plane travelling back from a vacation – so long as that experience is seamless to them.
“From an in-store perspective, we found that 88 per cent of brands in Australia can check inventory in other locations, be it another store, a warehouse, or a distribution centre,” says Berger. “This is really huge, because in order to do omnichannel right, you have to have accurate inventory. Being able to see inventory at any location, and then serving up that inventory so that the consumer doesn’t walk away empty-handed, is critical. Then on a smaller level, 98 per cent of the retailers we audited offer contactless payment in store – which shows that a lot of these omnichannel features are being increasingly adopted across Australia.”
One of the key takeaways from the NewStore report is that omnichannel penetration is happening everywhere – and it’s becoming more standardised. Whilst the pandemic has certainly been the catalyst for innovation in stores, click-and-collect has now shifted further into the mainstream, encouraging brands to increasingly use their stores more as fulfilment centres. With this kind of evolution now being seen broadly across retail, it’s clearer than ever that digital transformation needs to be tackled with urgency – and it has to be done right.
“I think people now realise that you simply have to have omnichannel or digital capabilities to be at all relevant,” says Berger. “Where brands get held back, however, is when they try to integrate their old technology with modern systems – that’s hard to do, because they’re not meant to be integrated. So you end up with a separate inventory master, order management and e-commerce systems, all of which are not natively created to talk to each other.”
NewStore’s own solution is unique in that the platform’s capabilities are integrated out of the box – but they can also be deployed modularly, meaning that the journey of deploying an omnichannel solution doesn’t have to be taken all in one go.
“Retailers are still holding back – not because they don’t want to get omnichannel in place, but because it’s hard to do,” explains Berger. “It’s expensive, especially if you’re leveraging legacy technology – so you really do need to have a change agent, somebody who can and will champion the mission to the whole organisation. Because it takes a village to deploy omnichannel capabilities – it’s technology, it’s data, it’s people, it’s process. So much goes into delivering omnichannel that the sheer scale of it often holds brands back from achieving success.”
Now that the Australian omnichannel customer experience is recognised as a world-leading force, the clear message for brands is that the will to undergo digital transformation is something that has to come straight from the top and needs to be a core focus for the business.
“What we find is that the most successful retailers are those where there’s a CEO or chief digital officer who has told the company that this is priority number one,” says Berger. “So it really does need to be a focus for the company, and it does take all facets of the business to help deliver success. It has to be one of the most important functions that a company is engaged in.”
For more insights from the NewStore Omnichannel Leadership Report, click here.
