Wal-Mart’s Omni-channel Synergy

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the September-October 2017 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

September-October 2017

When it comes to the next generation of supply chain management, the future just may be now. That’s one of the conclusions reached by Greg Gorbach, an analyst at the research firm ARC Advisory Group, after surveying supply chain executives, including subscribers to Supply Chain Management Review, on the digitization of their supply chains. In “The Great Digitization of Industry,” Gorbach notes that while it may take years for the widespread adoption of new technologies such as machine learning, additive manufacturing, smart factories and advanced analytics to become commonplace, digitization across verticals is happening faster than many of us…

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“We’ll be the first to deliver a seamless shopping experience at scale: No matter how you choose to shop at Wal-Mart—in stores, online, mobile or a combination—it will be fast and easy.” –Wal-Mart 3-Year Growth Plan

Retail has always been competitive. But, with the rise of pure-play e-commerce giants like Amazon, an over-abundance of retail stores and an ever-changing consumer, it’s hard to imagine a tougher environment for brick-and-mortar retailers.

Jumping into e-commerce is no longer an option for any major retailer that wants to survive. As a result, many are hatching plans to integrate the different distribution channels of their businesses in order to compete in the new retail landscape, what we’ve come to think of as omni-channel distribution. We think there’s a better way. Rather than integration, which can take time to accomplish, the goal should be to create a seamless synergy between the different functions of the organization—perhaps we can call it “synergization.”

Our aim in the following pages is to establish that the perfect execution of the omni-channel customer experience is better implemented through omni-channel synergy than omni-channel integration, which has certain drawbacks. In fact, being “overly integrated” could result in rigidity and tardiness in responding to a fast-changing retail environment that is driven by changing consumption patterns and new technologies such as the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence.

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