Periscope™ Research Shows Retailers Know They Are Not Delivering Omnichannel Experiences Fast Enough

78% say customers do not have a one brand experience across channels

New York – April 21, 2016 – Periscope™, a McKinsey Solution focusing on price, promotion, and assortment optimization, has today announced the findings of research conducted at World Retail Congress 2016, held in Dubai at the beginning of April. Only 21% say they are more confident than a year ago on delivering omnichannel experiences, and 45% say progress is not happening fast enough.

At a time when shoppers are demanding a seamless experience across all brand channels, both on- and offline, retailers are struggling to move at the speed their consumers want and need. Periscope’s survey found 78% admit there is no one brand experience across their channels, whilst also acknowledging that “a well defined cross or multi-channel strategy” was the top innovation that would drive digital growth (64%).

The reasons behind the omnichannel struggle
39% stated that their digital channel alone was suffering from “a lack of internal coordination”, but looking at the broader omnichannel strategy, when asked about their top three challenges the following responses were given:

• Lack of customer analytics across channels (67%)
• Silo’d organization (48%)
• Poor data quality (45%)
• Inability to identity customers across shopping trips (45%)

The enemy within
Only 6% of respondents described their omnichannel readiness as “Excellent – fully implemented”, and 36% described themselves as “Testing a proof of concept”.

Commenting on the findings Channie Mize, General Manager for Retail at Periscope said, “Consumers are desperate for omnichannel experiences, they work across channels, why can’t their favourite retailers? In their minds it is a simple as that, and it leads to frustration, and diminishes brand loyalty. What is clear from the survey and conversation we had at World Retail Congress is that whilst there are technical challenges to delivering omnichannel experiences, the biggest challenge for retailers is the organizational change that needs to take place: the removal of organizational siloes, creation of new processes, and the forming teams that work across, rather than within channels. These take careful planning and execution, but cannot be ignored, because without them any retailer is doomed to fail.”