The Challenges of Cross-Channel Fulfillment to the Retail Supply Chain - Part II

As a Consultant working with Retail Industry Solutions Unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Prasanna specializes in helping retailers assess the current performance of their business processes and identify any gaps that can be addressed through process or technology intervention. Prasanna works with leading retailers to develop solutions that help them remain competitive and relevant in the modern environment. Prasanna holds a Masters degree in Operations Research from a premier Scottish university, and is also a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from the Modern shoppers expect their retail experience to be channel-agnostic. Their experience needs to be seamless no matter what channel the interaction with the retailer takes place on, how many channels the interaction eventually involves, and whether or not a single transaction spans across multiple channels. This rapidly materializing requirement will impact each and every function of the retailer, and their response will be key to their staying competitive and relevant to the modern consumer. Providing such a channel agnostic experience necessitates increased sophistication on the part of the retailer. The retailer can no longer function in traditional organizational and technological silos. In Part 1 of this two-part series on cross-channel fulfillment in retail, we examined the customer drivers pushing retailers towards cross-channel, and the aspects of the supply chain that retailers would have to transform in order to adapt to the cross-channel environment. In Part 2, we consider recommendations that retailers can adopt in order to successfully make the transition to the cross-channel environment