Canadian Retailer - Spring 2014 - 25

Watanabe: Today we have a robust
customer database that is based on
transactional data. We also have an
abundance of pre- and post-purchase
behavioural data for Web, digital and
customer service. The big opportunity is bringing these two worlds
together to allow consumption by
the end user in a meaningful way.
An example is a product offer that
has high behavioural engagement
(opens, clicks, social mentions) but
low sales. How can a more integrated view help a marketer get to the
root cause?
Connell: We've always taken a
big data approach to e-commerce
by starting with focusing on the
structured data first. We look at
unstructured data more for anecdotal information, but we find the
information that we get back from a
survey v email v call centre data is
much more structured and actionable. Once we get to that point of
having a tool that we employ to
monitor customer sentiment from
the unstructured data and marry it
in to the established profile of the
customer in your CRM, that's going
to be an amazing day.
Versluis: The reason a lot of
systems are flawed from a legacy
POS perspective is that no one ever
expected this hybrid shopper. First
there was the brick-and-mortar
shopper, but then you had this huge
online world. And, the abundance
of information available to retailers
who can leverage this data properly
is astounding. But, you've got to be
able to separate the signal from the
noise. There's a lot of unstructured
data out there that's rendered meaningless without the proper context
and insight.
Simmonds: As an independent retailer, we're lucky to be very close to
our customers and enjoy an intimate relationship with them already.
But, that's not to say that the data
that we collect isn't important and

meaningful. We can target emails
and marketing pieces toward our
customers based on the frequency
of their visits and other things. The
closer you are to your customer
with respect to understanding their
wants and needs, the better you are
as a retailer.

James Connell, Roots Canada

of the touchpoints of the customer-
social media, online, in-store-and
selling our experience. We have to
continue to strive to be the best that
we can be within our marketplace,
despite the disrupters.
Carter: Everyone is going to
continue upping their game with
respect to customer service. For us,
it's about ensuring that every trip to
Aritzia, whether in-store or online,
reflects that beautiful, high-touch
experience with our very attentive
sales associates, awesome music
that plays, amazing interior design
and beautiful product. That's what
we need to continue to focus on.
That will keep people coming back
over everything else.
Watanabe: Disruption is more of
an evolution and will come from
customers' changing needs. For
example, we are seeing growing de-

"It comes down to playing to your strengths without trying to
be all things to all people. Realize the assets that your target
customers value and prioritize your investments to create further
differentiation. That's the role that Omni plays in terms of
building a truly integrated shopping experience-that's our goal."
- PETER WATANABE, Staples
MC: What are some of the disrupters that might make your omnichannel efforts a little more challenging?
Connell: The integration of media
into the retail space is going to
be very interesting. What magazines and film are doing from an
e-commerce perspective, which is
very preliminary at this point, could
change the game entirely. The ability to have a product on the television screen that you can purchase
is getting closer. We need to look
at entertainment and media as an
enabler for commerce.
Simmonds: Everything can disrupt
if you allow it to. One thing that
we're focusing on is integrating all

mand for 'click and collect' features
such as ship-to-store, buy online
and pickup in-store, so the experience between the Web and store
has to be easy and ideally seamless. Business customers have told
us they want Staples to have every
product they need to be successful beyond office supplies. That's
where our Marketplace initiative
comes in and we are rapidly expanding our assortment.
Versluis: All retailers need to become channel-agnostic. We've always
had the mentality that you shouldn't
punish the customer for the ways in
which they choose to shop. If you
want to come in-store or go online,
we should be allowing then to do

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Canadian Retailer - Spring 2014

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