Choosing the Right Omnichannel Strategy and Software for your Business

Your customers aren't waiting for your business to become omnichannel. They're already shopping that way.

They move from your website to your store, from your mobile app to social media, and from online purchases to in-store collections and returns without giving it a second thought.

They don't see these as separate channels. They see one business. And that's exactly how you need to start thinking about your retail operation.

If your e-commerce platform, POS system, inventory, loyalty program, customer data, and order management systems are all operating independently, you're creating unnecessary friction for both your customers and your employees.

But before you jump on the omnichannel bandwagon just a word of caution: What works for another retailer might not work for you.

It's easy to look at other successful brands and think, “We should do what they're doing.” But your customers aren't their customers. Your business model isn't their business model. And your technology, budget, employees, and operational capabilities may be completely different.

That's why the right omnichannel strategy starts with really understanding your business needs—not with choosing the software.

The goal isn't to copy another retailer's technology. The goal is to understand what your customers value most and then build an omnichannel experience around that.

In this article, we will look at the right way to choose an omnichannel strategy for your business. We will look at the three broad approaches to consider as an online retailer. Then will go in depth into some of the more popular omnichannel packages out there, as well as their pros and cons for various types of businesses and strategies. 

Where to Start When Choosing an Omnichannel Strategy

The good news when going omnichannel is that you don't have to fix everything at once. The first step is understanding what your customers actually need from you.

For some retailers, that means making commerce easier. Customers want to buy online, collect in-store, return products through whichever channel is most convenient, and have accurate inventory information at every stage.

For others, personalisation is the bigger opportunity. When customer data is connected, you can provide more relevant recommendations, loyalty offers, and communications instead of treating every customer exactly the same.

And for lifestyle and community-focused brands, the opportunity may be even broader. By connecting content, services, communities, loyalty programs, and commerce, you can give customers more reasons to engage with your brand between purchases.

So the best approach is to identify the biggest problem you want to solve in your business first:

• Identify where your customers are experiencing friction.
• Find the processes that are costing your team the most time.
• Look at where your inventory information breaks down.
• Identify the systems that aren't communicating properly.

Then choose the technology that solves those problems. Don't start with the software. Start with the business problem. That's one of the most important lessons in building a successful omnichannel strategy.

The Commerce-Driven Strategy 

For some retailers, the biggest opportunity is simple: Make it easier for customers to buy from you. That means focusing on the fundamental parts of connected retail—things like BOPIS, cross-channel returns, real-time inventory visibility, and mobile shopping.

If a customer sees a product online, they should be able to check whether it's available in a nearby store. If they buy online, they should be able to collect it from that store.

If they change their mind, they should be able to return it without having to navigate a completely different process. And if they walk into your store, they shouldn't have to start their shopping journey from scratch.

This is a commerce-driven omnichannel strategy.

The focus is on removing friction from the transaction and making every stage of the purchasing process easier.

Big box retailers generally follow this approach. Their goal is typically to make their digital and physical retail experiences work together to give customers multiple ways to browse, purchase, collect products, and access services.

This approach is particularly useful if your biggest challenges are operational:

• Maybe your inventory isn't synchronized properly.
• Maybe customers can't easily move between online and physical stores.
• Maybe your return process is complicated.
• Maybe your employees don't have enough visibility into online orders.

If those are the problems you're trying to solve, you don't necessarily need to start with advanced personalization or a massive digital ecosystem.

Start by making commerce work properly across every channel. Get the basics right, and you'll have a much stronger foundation for everything that comes next.

The Personalisation-Led Strategy

For other retailers, the biggest opportunity isn't simply making transactions easier. It's making them more relevant.

Think about the difference between receiving a generic promotion and receiving an offer based on something you actually bought or showed interest in. One message feels like advertising. The other feels useful.

A personalisation-led omnichannel strategy uses customer information to create more relevant interactions across your different channels. That could mean personalised product recommendations on your website. It could mean a loyalty offer sent through your mobile app. It could mean a notification reminding a customer about a product they're likely to need.

Or it could mean giving your store employees information that helps them provide a more informed, personalised service.

The important part is that all of these interactions are connected. Your customer shouldn't have one profile when they shop online and another when they walk into your store.

The more complete your customer information is, the better positioned you are to understand what that customer actually wants.

What you want to achieve is for your digital experience, loyalty program, personalised recommendations, and physical stores to work together to create a more connected relationship with customers.

This model makes particular sense for retailers where loyalty and repeat purchases are important. If customers regularly buy from you, personalisation can give you more opportunities to stay relevant between purchases.

And when your communications are more relevant, you're more likely to get attention. The goal isn't to send customers more messages. It's to send them better messages.

The Ecosystem-Based Strategy

Then there is a third approach. Instead of focusing primarily on transactions or personalisation, you can build a broader customer ecosystem.

The idea is to give customers reasons to interact with your brand even when they aren't actively shopping. That might include things like:

• Educational content.
• Community features.
• Mobile apps.
• Loyalty programs.
• Events.
• Training or support services.
• Product-related tools.

The objective is to make your brand useful beyond the moment of purchase. Reebok is a good example. Its various digital experiences extend beyond selling shoes and clothing. Customers can use apps and services focused on running, training, product discovery, and community.

Starbucks has taken a similar approach with its mobile ordering and rewards ecosystem, giving customers reasons to use the company's digital platform as part of their regular routine.

This approach can be particularly effective for lifestyle brands or businesses that have strong communities around their products. But it requires more than simply launching an app:

• You need useful content.
• You need relevant services.
• You need customer data to flow between the different experiences.
• And you need a clear reason for customers to keep coming back.

Otherwise, you're simply building another digital channel that customers have no reason to use.

Which Strategy is the Best Fit for Your Company and Brand?

Here's the question you should ask yourself: What do your customers actually want from you?

Do they primarily want convenience? Then a commerce-driven strategy may be the right starting point. Do they want more relevant and personalized experiences? Then personalisation should probably be higher on your priority list.

Do they want community, content, services, and deeper engagement? An ecosystem-based strategy may make more sense.

Of course, your answer might be a combination of all three. But you don't have to build everything at once. Start by identifying where your biggest customer and operational problems are today. Then look at your existing technology:

• What systems are you already using?
• Which systems communicate with each other?
• Where is information being duplicated?
• Where are employees still doing manual work?
• Where are customers experiencing unnecessary friction?

Once you've identified those gaps, you can decide which capabilities should come first. That's how you build an omnichannel strategy that creates sustainable value instead of simply adding another piece of technology because it looks innovative.

And once you know what you want your omnichannel strategy to achieve, the next question becomes obvious: Which software can actually help you get there?

The Best Software Is the One That Solves Your Biggest Problem

Choosing omnichannel software isn't about finding the platform with the longest feature list. It's about finding the solution that fits your business. A small or growing retailer may need a flexible platform that brings e-commerce, inventory, and sales channels together.

A large enterprise may need advanced personalisation, analytics, order management, and integrations across multiple countries and business units.

Another retailer might already have strong commerce technology but need a better CRM to improve customer relationships and loyalty. In other words, the right software depends on what you need the software to do.

Here are several established solutions that address different parts of the omnichannel retail challenge.

Shopify Plus: A Strong Foundation for Connected Commerce

Shopify Plus is designed for retailers that want to manage commerce across multiple channels while having room to scale as the business grows.

It can support connected shopping experiences across websites, social selling channels, and physical retail environments, while providing capabilities such as cart synchronisation and inventory management.

For a retailer focused primarily on seamless commerce, this type of platform can provide a strong foundation without requiring the business to build its entire technology infrastructure from scratch.

One of its biggest advantages is scalability. A growing retailer can start with core commerce capabilities and expand its operation as its requirements become more sophisticated.

The trade-off is cost. Shopify Plus sits at a significantly higher price point than basic Shopify plans, and some capabilities may require additional applications or integrations.

So, if you're a smaller retailer with relatively straightforward requirements, you need to consider whether the additional functionality justifies the additional investment.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Built for Complex Retail Operations

If you're running a large retail operation with complex customer journeys, multiple markets, and sophisticated personalisation requirements, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a different proposition.

It's an enterprise-grade platform designed to support large-scale commerce operations and connected customer experiences.

Its strengths include advanced analytics, personalisation capabilities, cross-channel coordination, and the ability to support complex retail environments. That makes it particularly relevant to larger retailers that need more than basic e-commerce functionality.

But there's a catch. Enterprise software comes with enterprise-level complexity. Pricing is generally based on the specific requirements of the business rather than a simple public monthly subscription, and implementation can require significant planning and technical expertise.

The learning curve can also be steep. So if you're a small retailer looking for a straightforward solution, this may be far more technology than you actually need.

But for a large organisation with complex requirements, that additional capability can be valuable.

Brightpearl: Connect Your Inventory and Operations

Sometimes the biggest omnichannel problem isn't the storefront. It's what happens behind it.

If you're struggling to keep inventory synchronised across Shopify, Amazon, physical stores, and other sales channels, a platform such as Brightpearl may be worth considering.

Brightpearl focuses heavily on multi-channel retail operations, helping businesses connect inventory, orders, reporting, and other back-office processes. This can be particularly useful for growing retailers that have moved beyond a single sales channel and are finding it increasingly difficult to manage everything manually.

Its reporting capabilities and integrations with major commerce platforms can help provide greater visibility into what's happening across the business.

The downside is that the more sophisticated the system becomes, the more time your team may need to spend learning how to use it effectively. And for a very small retailer, the cost and complexity may outweigh the benefits.

But if you're processing a significant volume of orders across multiple channels, having your operational systems connected can make a substantial difference.

Endear: Focus on Customer Relationships and Loyalty

Not every retailer needs another platform to manage inventory. Sometimes the biggest opportunity is improving the relationship between your sales team and your customers.

That's where a CRM—customer relationship management system—comes into the picture. A CRM helps your business organise customer information and use it to manage more personalised interactions.

Endear is designed specifically around retail CRM and customer engagement, making it particularly relevant to retailers that want to strengthen loyalty and personalised communication.

It can help teams create targeted campaigns, manage customer relationships, and connect loyalty-related information with their broader retail strategy.

The platform is designed to be relatively user-friendly, which can make it easier for retail teams to adopt without requiring extensive technical knowledge. However, it isn't designed to replace a full inventory or order management platform. For a startup or very small retailer, the additional cost may also be difficult to justify.

But if your business already has its operational systems under control and wants to improve customer engagement, a retail-focused CRM can be a useful addition to your omnichannel strategy.

Magento Order Management: For Complex Inventory and Fulfillment Requirements

Then there are retailers operating at a much larger scale. If you're managing high order volumes, multiple warehouses, international operations, or complex fulfilment requirements, you may need a more powerful order management solution.

Magento Order Management is designed to help retailers manage inventory and fulfilment across multiple locations and channels.

Its capabilities can provide greater visibility into inventory and give businesses more flexibility when deciding where and how orders should be fulfilled. That can be particularly valuable for international or high-volume retailers where fulfilment decisions have a significant impact on cost and customer experience.

The downside is complexity. A sophisticated order management system requires careful implementation, integration, and ongoing management. It can also become expensive, particularly when you're dealing with a large and complex retail operation.

So this isn't necessarily the right solution for a small retailer looking for a simple way to connect an online store to a physical shop.

Conclusion

Don't buy technology simply because another retailer is using it. Start with the problem. Define the outcome you want. Then choose the technology that helps you achieve it.

If seamless commerce is your priority, look for strong e-commerce, inventory, and cross-channel capabilities. If personalisation is your biggest opportunity, prioritize customer data, CRM, loyalty, and marketing functionality.

If you're managing complex fulfilment, focus on inventory visibility and order management. And if you're building a larger customer ecosystem, look for software that can connect commerce, content, customer data, and digital experiences.

Because the goal of omnichannel isn't to own more software. It's to build a retail business where your systems work together, your employees have the information they need, and your customers can move between channels without friction.

Get that right, and your technology becomes more than an IT investment. It becomes part of your competitive advantage.