Introduction
The present page serves as an overview for the topic. All available documents for the topic can be found here.
About the Topic
Omni-channel Commerce
"Omni-channel commerce" is a commerce paradigm that is characterized by the integration of all commerce channels and their respective touchpoints (e.g. retail store, call center, mobile, online store, POS). It enables customers to experience a seamless shopping experience while using multiple channels simultaneously.
For customers, it is especially the parallel usage of several channels at the same time, that differentiates omni-channel from multi-channel. On the merchant’s side, the technical challenge in fulfilling this scenario is the seamless and real time data integration and data access, which is based on the centralized view of all data. Centrally managing all data, such as product data, transactional data, customer data, order data and inventory data is a precondition in this context.
Omni-channel commerce focuses on understanding the customer’s patterns and preferences and on truly supporting the customer’s specific needs. This is only possible by optimizing people, processes and technology to serve customers across all touchpoints.
The understanding of "channel" as a "commerce channel" is different from the Intershop-internal use of channel in our software.