International Expansion

Omnibusiness: the foundation of omnichannel at large international companies

Why is it so difficult to implement the omnichannel strategy in large, international companies? First of all, due to their size, they tend to be less agile, less adaptable; they are more prone to embrace the silo mentality: departments, markets or business units operate separately and do not really communicate with one another.

Also the scale of such projects makes it hard to determine work scopes, priorities, and schedules.

How can one successfully lead to an omnichannel transformation in a large company?

This was the topic of the presentation by Daniel Kierdal from SAP and Marek Sodolski from e-point, which they gave during the Omnichannel Retailing Forum.

Define the scope

When a large company starts to consider an omnichannel transformation, it turns out they struggle to define the project scope and draw it borders. It occurs because the omnichannel transformation area overlaps with the areas of responsibility of diverse stakeholders: managers of various departments, markets, business units. They all have their own proposals and tasks to handle.

This situation creates a major risk that the project will become diluted due to the multitude of possible solutions and proposed initiatives. The team will start working on numerous specific ideas in isolation, losing sight of the complete visions and goal priorities. When a project is vast and comprehensive you really ought to take a bird's eye view and determine an action plan.

What is worse, we operate in a highly mutable environment – what matters today, may be less important tomorrow. Uncertainty is the permanent element of doing business. To minimise the risk of erroneous resource allocation, one should answer the following question: “What would be a real game changer in our situation?”

Game Changer

Changes are best made by addressing the challenges and issues that will produce the most obvious results. What kind of change is needed to bring the best effect? We should focus on the thing that will produce the largest and the most tangible improvement – this is what a game changer boils down to.

When you look for one, consider Time2Market, which is how fast we can complete a given project, test if it works in practice, and verify its performance. Time is of utmost importance: the stakeholders are not usually very patient. They are all waiting to see ROI!

So when you determine the project scope, it is a good idea to follow the two criteria: the size of expected results to be brought about by a change and the time needed to implement it.

MVP

To sum up: we recommend working with precisely defined projects with clear borders. Such initiatives also benefit from determining MVP – the minimum viable product. It is all about drawing a list of must-have functions, the absolutely key features or aspects of a project. One should know how to differentiate those from the ones that can wait.

By using the MVP tool in the omnichannel transformation of a company you can fairly quickly produce a specific effect and reference point, which will be instrumental for future growth.

MVP makes it possible to perform a reality check at a fairly early stage and see how our omnichannel strategy works and if it produces the outcomes we want.

Conclusions

While technology matters a great deal, equally important is the project management methodology that puts the omnichannel transformation process inside a robust frame. With this approach, we can control such a vast project and not be discouraged by its gargantuan size.

For large, international companies it is important to have the ability to see themselves as single organisations rather than a conglomerate of markets, departments or business units.