Ernie Schell, executive director of Marketing Systems Analysis, says everyone pays attention to how important it is to have a unified database for managing customers, orders, and inventory in a multichannel environment. But it’s just as important to focus on the back end of this data.
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Schell offers two tips for best practices in multichannel systems integration.
Focus on your accounting platform. There are many ways that you can wind up with misleading data, ranging from mismatched accounting months/calendar months to how sales are defined.
Focus on your reporting platform. Whether you use a reporting platform bundled with your solutions or run independently of them, the way data is fed to these and updated on a regular basis needs to be carefully planned.
“From analyzing the results of promotions to customer segmentation to simply tabulating sales by channel, you need to be sure that the way the front end is set up is consistent with what the back-end reporting tools are supposed to deliver,” Schell says.
If you want to know more, Ernie will be speaking on this topic at the Operations Summit in Memphis May 2-3. For more information, go to www.operationssummit.com.