Black Friday: BOPIS and Cloud top priorities for retailers in 2018

Black Friday and other holiday season promotions provide a great opportunity for retailers to quickly deliver an increased conversion rate or larger basket size.  US-based National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates total spending to increase by 3.6% for the second year in a row, from $655 billion to $678.8 billion, and the average consumer spending to increase 3.4% this year, from $935 to $967.

For many retailers, the holiday season accounts for a third or more of their annual sales. This year, retailers are focusing on solutions which allow them to adapt faster, handle higher volumes, and capture more sales across channels.

Shape the Cloud to Meet Your Needs

Cloud-based solutions are an excellent choice for retailers who want to integrate their systems so they can achieve higher efficiency, agility, and scalability. This makes it easier for retailers to adopt new technologies, innovate, scale up, and effectively streamline their back-office and inventory processes to accommodate holiday peak sales.

Openbravo Commerce Cloud runs on Amazon Web Services and so offers round-the-clock reliability, security, server availability, and maintenance at a lower cost. It allows retailers to choose and focus on any number of strategies to attract customers and drive sales. This could be adding more points of sales, such as pop-up stores or mobile POS in stores, or managing larger, seasonal assortments, setting targeted promotions, or delivering omnichannel fulfillment options more effectively.

Getting Up to Speed with BOPIS

This holiday season, over half of consumers will look to avoid at least some of the crowds and opt for the Buy Online, Pickup in-Store (BOPIS) fulfillment option. But without an integrated system which can streamline inventory movements, up to 70% of the value of an order can be absorbed by shipping and packaging costs alone. Furthermore, many retailers are still struggling to get it right. This recent study suggests that two thirds of shoppers think the BOPIS process still needs improvement.

So, BOPIS is one way retailers can bridge the gap between online and offline, allow customers (and retailers) to save on shipping costs and avoid having to wait for delivery.  Customers have the option to buy or reserve product online with the intent of picking it up or trying it on in-store.  Not only does BOPIS provide a great opportunity to improve customer satisfaction, but also gives the customer the possibility to make additional in-store purchases at the physical store upon pick-up.

The same omnichannel infrastructure required to execute BOPIS can also be used Buy online, Return in Store (BORIS) scenarios and managing out-of-stock situations faster, whether the item is located and brought in from the closest location, reserved for pick-up at a different location, or ordered for home delivery – depending on what is most convenient for the customer.

To see how BORIS and BOPIS scenarios could be executed using Openbravo´s POS solution, watch a step-by-step demonstration here: Change the Game in Omnichannel with Openbravo Commerce Cloud.