Modern customers want to smoothly traverse online and offline worlds as they contemplate purchases.
A leading China-based home furnishings chain group faced several obstacles as it strived to meet the expectations of modern customers: Its existing siloed systems that were hard to iterate and couldn’t match the needs of fast-paced flexible retail.
Its traditional enterprise system needed to adapt to the changing consumer preference for navigating purchases across both offline and online shopping environments. This was necessary since its physical store set-up features demonstration items only; customers then order these items online via their mobile devices.
Further, having expanded into non-conventional areas like food service, digital product sales, financing, entertainment and fitness, the company now needed to develop a business ecosystem in the home/life space—a new market for the retailer. It also needed a strong versatile operating platform to win in each of these markets.