SuiteWorld - pizzas, surfboards and the e-commerce Holy Grail
- Summary:
- NetSuite pursues the Holy Grail of in-store and online with SuiteCommerce InStore as Billabong and Domino's sign up to the e-commerce push.
Omnichannel and omnibusiness means omnidisruption, said NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson as he announced SuiteCommerce InStore, the latest enhancement tothe firm’s e-commerce offering.
SuiteCommerce InStore is positioned as a system to integrate omnichannel capabilities into a mobile-first, point-of-sale (POS) solution that unifies the online and in-store customer journey. SuiteCommerce InStore is designed to empower the sales associate and elevate the shopper's brand experience.
SuiteCommerce InStore features include:
- Full-featured POS with built-in reporting to provide real-time views into store statistics and cash management.
- 360-degree customer profiles with a timeline display of purchases, returns and support requests regardless of what channel a shopper is in, enabling store associates to be more personalized and relevant in the experiences, offers and communications they provide to customers.
- Omnichannel order management to provide real-time visibility into all inventory held across the company, allowing customers to purchase products regardless of location in a single transaction, including cash-and-carry, ship-to-home or pickup in another store.
A continuous buying journey that allows customers to buy from an ecommerce shopping cart or a wish list from directly in the store, push in-store items to a shopping cart or wish list and automatically add purchases to their My Account order history online.
According to the NetSuite descriptor:
Customers are able to access products they have added to their ecommerce shopping carts or wish lists at the point-of-sale and add them to an in-store transaction with a few clicks. Products that shoppers would like to save for later can be added back to their ecommerce wish lists.
The full capabilities of NetSuite's omnichannel CRM provide a retail associate access to a comprehensive 360-degree customer history from the store floor. A visual timeline shows all purchases, returns, exchanges, store visits and service requests regardless of channel, with the ability to drill into any transaction.
Or as Nelson put it:
It’s the same platform for online and in-store experiences. This is the Holy Grail of in-store and online. It’s a unified experience. This is not coupled with your website; it is your website, in store.
In practice
Among the ecommerce customers attending SuiteWorld is surf and skate wear retailer Billabong International.
The firm has an objective to move away from multi-brand retailing in favour of single-brand retail with a unified customer experience across offline stores, online stores and wholesale channels.
NetSuite's SuiteCommerce platform will be progressively rolled out across Billabong's operations over the next year, enabling Billabong to monitor and manage all of its branded global websites from one single platform. This will support 190 currencies, 19 languages and multi-country tax compliance.
The roll out will provide a constant real-time flow of customer, order and inventory information across all of Billabong’s sales channels, which is intended to improve engagement with online shoppers, retail operations and wholesale partners.
Wholesale partners will have their own password protected site to make purchases, review order history and account details, speed repeat purchasing and manage payments and credits. They will also be able to access and download key content, assets, videos and marketing collateral.
Billabong will also be able to streamline phone, fax and email orders for business-to-business partners, who will have access to a flexible, self-service commerce system and SuiteCommerce will provide Billabong with a scalable order management solution to control inventory more efficiently.
Kadima Lonji, global CTO at Billabong, cites the ability to manage inventory better, the creation of a single customer repository, and the oportunity to have a global system in place as the benefits achieved:
A platform that can solve all these things is very critical. In the new world you have to have a system that has a retail component and an e-commerce component. Today if you walk into one of our stores and you want a particular colour or size and that store happens not to have it, there's no easy way for us to see other stores or the web, if we have that product.
In the new world, with inventory in a single place, we'll be able to solve that. That's critical for us in terms of saving the sale. If you have 300 stores like we have, and if every day in one store we can save one sale, 300 stores times 365 days times our average order that's $125 that's $13m automatic.
Elswhere pizza giant Domino’s has implemented a new equipment and supply online ordering system for its network of over 1000 independent US franchisees, built on the SuiteCommerce platform.
This allows franchisees to order equipment and supplies online. Integrated with Domino's franchisee support organization, the new platform streamlines the equipment and supply ordering process for franchisees through self-service payment and shipment tracking.
The system is also integrated with Domino's North America ERP and warehouse management systems in order to enhance the ordering experience by providing Domino's customer service representatives with the data visibility they need to improve the accuracy and efficiency of phone orders.
The result is that Domino's staff can now better assist with online inquiries as well as helping franchisees reduce the time required to order supplies from weeks to hours, or even minutes.
Kevin Vasconi, Domino's Pizza executive vice president and CIO, says:
We are well known for using innovative technologies to enhance our customer experience, but what we do for our franchisees is equally important. We are significantly improving the efficiency, availability and functionality of our franchisee ordering system, ultimately providing an improved experience for our franchise partners and a platform for Domino's to drive future growth opportunities.
The system was deployed by Capgemini which helped Domino’s to establish a commerce architecture strategy, define a customer information strategy to generate actionable customer analytics across channels and enable a common global POS system.
Capgemini is also in play at restaurant chain TGI Fridays where it will deploy NetSuite ERP, including finance and accounting services.
Disclosure - at time of writing, NetSuite is a premier partner of diginomica.