Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President, Oracle CRM, shares his perspective about how companies are increasingly seeking a unified platform to deliver a cohesive customer experience across all commerce channels in a chat with Deputy Editor Sanjay Choudhry.
Q. What is the primary catalyst driving cross-channel flows today across organizations?
The primary catalyst in enablement of cross-channel flows is the rise and increased adoption of smart phones. These are becoming very powerful personal computers. People who are short on time have begun to use mobile phones to add a significant channel in the acquisition of any product. It is very common now for people to use their mobile phone inside a store to compare prices from the retailers at their end with other retailers. Mobile phones are really energizing the transformation from multi-channel to cross-channelcommerce.
Q. How does the unified crosschannel commerce model affect the bottom line of retailers?
It is important to understand the impact across users from the bottom line. Most retailers incorrectly credit sales to a single channel. They will publish their e-commerce sales, theirretail point of sales, and their call center sales without realizing that many of those fields may not have started or held specifically to that account. The companies that can really understand and implement cross-channels passionately will be able to offer customers a much richer experience and journey through the various phases of customer relationship. Those that realize where the customers have been and where they are going can synchronize information without making them to restart the entire process. Such companies will be able to gain in the topline and the bottom line.
Q. What kind of solutions does Oracle offer for unified cross-channel commerce?
The primary platform that enables us to offer cross-channel processes to retailers is called ATG (Art Technology Group) that we acquired in 2010. ATG is a leading provider of e-commerce software and related on-demand commerce optimization applications. Its solutions enable enterprises to provide a cohesive online customer experience with merchandising, marketing, content personalization, automated recommendations, and live-help services.
What we at Oracle realized was that we had to find a technology that would be pervasive on all channels in order to enable crosschannel consistency. Web technology is present as an object online, but in the core center it is present on kiosks, smart phones, etc. ATG had this enabling technology and the best e-commerce platform with multi-site capability. The technology allows you to focus individually on a single channel or even a part of a channel. You can build a website, a mobile site, a call center site, or a kiosk site. You can build a site for India or for any other country. It offers the real power of multiple sites backed up by a single unified merchandising platform. Retailers can price, promote, and place products in one place across multiple sites. So ATG has become the fundamental platform for our cross channel specialty. It is backed up with the integration of ATG with our Retail Global Business Unit both for the point-of-sale device as well as offline merchandising platform for the people to mix-match within the stores.
So today we find ourselves in a very unique position – we are at the inflection point of a very significant transformation where the portfolio of our products is the best in class. We are the only vendor who can provide cross-channel CRM, commerce and retail experience.
Q. Could you tell us something about your USP? Why should people go for Oracle products and not those of your competition?
I actually think that the validation of any particular market happens when there are more than one vendor trying to provide solutions to players. I think e-commerce and the marketplace that some people define as cross-channel CRM, e-chunk commerce or even customer experience management have been largely defined by companies such as IBM and Oracle. IBM has had a very similar view on this transformation and it has made a number of acquisitions.
We believe is we will be able to deliver a solution far advanced than other solution providers. Our goal is to offer a combined portfolio to our customers, execute it quickly, and deliver products in the market place with a faster turnaround. I don’t see anybody else having as broad and deep a portfolio that retailers need than Oracle.
Q. If a retailer wants to go for a cross-channel commerce platform, what tips can you give them?
I think before they look at products, retailers should agree that they are facing very significant challenges from their competitors. And their competitors are not the people with the retail stores but increasingly the borderline companies and start-ups who are entering a particular segment without the traditional assets and, potentially, the traditional liabilities.
The most important thing for retailers to realize is that if they don’t know their customers today, they will quickly lose them to somebody in the start-ups. The most important thing for them is to move away from location-centric strategies to customercentric strategies. The next step for retailers prior to implementing CRM is to figure out the segmentation of the customer base and then to determine how they want to reach out to each segment across marketing, selling, and servicing flows. They then have to enable those flows in a multichannel and cross- channel format, which means really personalizing the experience that the retailers have between themselves and their customers. We enforce the values of customer relationship with the loyalty program. Retailers have never been customer-centric and customers are invisible to them because they essentially transact through credit cards or cash.
Q. Consumer expectations from commerce are rising. What are the trends driving this new cross channel landscape?
First is the increasing significance of the Internet. Second is that the Internet has multiple channels. It exists not only in the PC or laptop but also in the call centers and kiosks.
Within the Internet, there once used to be limited number of sites. But now with the advent of social networks, there are thousands of sites where you have to place your products and reach your customers. This is a significant factor that is driving the increase in expectations of commerce.
There are many other catalysts such as the rising competition. It is what we can call the perfect storm for retailers where competitors are evolving their channel strategies and the consumers are demanding the cross-channel experience, largely driven by the mobile platforms.
Q. What according to you is the ideal cross-channel selling model for a retailer?
It will be different across industry and marketing, selling, and servicing processes. I think there are some clear and simple cross-channel processes that people need to look at in retail such as blending the online experience with the offline one by, say, buying online and picking offline. These are clear and simple processes that customers will appreciate. It is also really important to enable mobile commerce and allow people to interact with a particular process through their smart phone or cell phone.
Increasingly customers are using mobile phones as platforms not just for product selection but also the payment vehicle. For example, the Japanese market is already quite advanced with using the mobile phone as an electronic wallet. The ideal cross-selling business model tends to be industry-specific. For retailers, there are very simple and obvious processes that people should implement and we are very much there to support these organizations as they set out for these transformations. Those retailers who enable crosschannel processes will ultimately be better than those who don’t.
Q. Could you tell us something about your India plans?
India has been a big business for Oracle and we have a large population of employees in the country. Some of our largest development centers are in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Indian economy has great potential and we have been fortunate to establish a very good CRM business in India. We are expanding our efforts in all the areas of CRM, including B2B and B2C, across all the industries, not just the traditional telecom and financial services segments.
We are increasingly seeing CRM strategies deployed in retail and the travel and transportation space as well as the public sector. We find that Indian companies are very progressive in their CRM strategies because the market is competitive with a mix of local and international companies. The advantage for us is the everincreasing customer base being generated within the Indian market.
Q. How do you assess the Indian retail industry?
If you look at the number of shopping malls in Indian cities, India is at that inflection point where you witness exponential investment and revenue growth. The shopping experience is fundamentally changing. More and more people are going online, taking advantage of services through smart phone devices. India is very much at an upward inflection point and I see the country having enormous growth in the retail sector.
*This interview was originally published in December 2011 issue of Images Retail.
