CEGID Connections 2018: New perspectives for the omnichannel customer

CEGID, a company specialized in publishing management software and information systems for companies and entrepreneurs, organized for the first time Cegid Connections. This annual event allowed it to unite customers, partners and users around its new credo and to announce its new areas of growth.

Matthieu du Payrat, Head of Retail & Digital, spoke at a conference on the theme: "Modernizing your IS to provide an efficient and innovative "omnichannel" platform" in the wake of feedback on Lacoste. Here is the report of the meeting:

Rethink retail

"There is a real synergy between digital and retail, 55% of sales are positively impacted by digital, but the opposite is also true, since it is now the turn of stores to be impacted by digital sales, which requires us to rethink all processes," explains Matthieu du Payrat.

Indeed, today, user paths are becoming hybrid with in-store withdrawals that can result from an online booking. There are two main trends: e-reservation, for products with lower value and greater depth of stock, and click'n' collect no longer relevant for products with higher added value and which require a longer restocking time. We have also noticed for some time the democratization of the ship from store, which allows to offer online a product available in store and absent in stock. All these are new ways for the customer to address a payment platform, hence the need for suppliers and brands to effectively question their own processes and ask themselves the right questions about the choice of architecture.

The decisive choice of architecture

Ten years ago, solutions were not yet mature, and the choice of architecture was quickly hampered by technological considerations. Today, with the technologies in place, the question is becoming difficult, because these are long-term choices. Among the questions that must be asked when setting up an architecture, these are essential:

• Which customer promise should be kept? (delivery times, services offered...)
• What volume do we want to deal with architecture, and in what type of temporality - real time or not - (For example, the Chinese giant Ali Baba recently broke all records by processing 812 million orders in a day...)
• What type of payment: it is necessary to think beforehand about the promise you want to have in terms of payment fidelity
• What type of legal organization: what structure will drive web revenue, how will revenue be allocated between web and retail, how will inventory management be handled according to channels?
• Logistics schemes: what are the transport schemes, delivery modes (crossborder or not) etc...
• Operational organization: With increased convergence between retail and digital thanks to omnichannelal, which generates common repositories and customers, it is necessary to think about processes in order to manage them as efficiently as possible.

Once these architectural questions have been asked, it is necessary to understand all the functional building blocks that will have to be deployed: either by using dedicated solutions or by relying on its E-Commerce solutions. Today, there are 4 main types of architectures to differentiate:

• a Centric Point of Sale (POS) architecture that is capable of playing a real ERP role, and that will manage all functions and repositories. A solution rich in terms of multi-channel functions, very oriented for operational staff and interesting for all finance and purchasing subjects -
• a Centric ERP architecture, designed for financial and purchasing functions, with a "light" integration between e-commerce and retail. It is the ERP that directly manages the warehouse, with some integration between e-commerce and POS. A solution that integrates the history of a preliminary channel, with omnichannel functions and rich financial functions. An effective solution for finance operational staff with a consolidated view of customers, stocks and orders in CEGID.
• an architecture based on a strong POS and ERP system where all e-commerce orders are processed through the POS system, which manages orders, sales prices and global order management. An omniscient POS and a strong ERP that combine the advantages of the two previous solutions, deployed in particular by various companies of the LVMH group.
• a modular best-of-breed architecture, based on bricks dedicated to each function: a very rich architecture but also very expensive in terms of build. It is very modular and real-time, with an Order Management System (OMS) that is the conductor and controls the order processing.

The example of Lacoste

Matthieu du Payrat reminds us that, beyond the choice of architecture, we must never lose sight of the mantras of the retailer confronted with the digitalization of his marketplaces: "anticipate the target, be agile, in a test & learn approach, manage complexity and transversal processes, promote collaboration". Here are the 4 detailed points to develop an effective omnichannel architecture:

• Anticipate the target: Define a long-term architecture that will ensure that current and future needs are properly addressed.
• Test & Learn: it is also necessary to adopt a test & learn approach. Indeed, in an environment that is constantly innovating, it is necessary to regularly test the potential of new concepts.
• Manage the complexity: The omnichannel involves transversal processes and many IT bricks. It is necessary to manage the coordination within each project, and the overall coordination of the different initiatives that you are carrying out in parallel.
• Favour collaboration: We are working on projects that affect your entire organization, at the crossroads of digital and retail, business and IT. It is important to have clear and collaborative governance in place.

As such, it is Thomas Voisin dit Lacroix, in charge of marketing and distribution for IT at Lacoste, who recounts the brand's experience when confronted with the choice of onmateriality: "Lacoste being an old brand, therefore with a fairly important information system history, we had to be agile in our archi Indeed we already had 6 different ERPs, and 6 adjoining POS. Even though we were strongly marked CEGID, we still inherited almost all the ERP systems on the market, which made our information system a real gas factory.

The main challenge for Lacoste was therefore to add a simplifying layer in order to interface these ERPs and to bring all these subjects of omnicanality: "Faced with the need to aggregate warehouse stocks, stocks in transit, etc... on marketplaces with sometimes 50% return, the WHO naturally came to impose itself as a radical way to rationalize our system. »

A case study that proves that today, faced with the multiplicity of solutions available, the role of the integrator is increasingly decisive as it allows the customer to highlight his own failures before launching a project and choosing a dedicated solution.