Behind the scenes of the Mass Market Retailers Click&Collect

Mass Market Retailers Click&Collect

In a scenario increasingly characterized by omnichannel retailing, Click&Collect (that is, online purchasing and goods collection at stores or at collection points such as “lockers”, partner stores or post offices), can be considered as a connection point between the world of online shopping and the physical point of sale, providing advantages for both of them.
Consumers in fact benefit both from the advantages of online transactions, thanks to the possibility of gaining access to a vast amount of products, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and also from the physical channel convenience, as it is possible to choose when and where to collect products, thus reducing usual e-commerce times and shipping costs.
For retailers, the Click&Collect model represents an additonal channel to attract and involve customers and therefore increase sales.

But what does starting a Click&Collect service imply? Which are the key aspects to be considered to guarantee customers a punctual service?
Our experience, obtained with companies operating in the MMR (Mass Market Retailers) world, proves that it is essential to feature IT systems that allow monitoring warehouse product availability, perform price and promotion controls and updates, or manage transfers and goods collection in a simple and fast way.

Thanks to retail management applications, which guarantee optimization for many of the operations required at points of sale, it is possible to perform, for example, product-on-shelf mapping.
This is the case of Gruppo Unicomm, which for its Famila, Emisfero, etc. points of sale, has adopted a mobile app on Android devices, with integrated barcode reader, which allows operators to acquire, via this terminal, article correct position in corridors and send it to the ERP for an updated mapping of every item in store.

How to apply Click&Collect in the B2B world?

An aspect that turns up to be most interesting is the Click&Collect service extension to the Ho.Re.Ca. channel like, for example, bars, restaurants, etc…, which need to perform frequently repeated purchases and cannot always keep up with courier-delivery times and costs. Thanks to the integration between our retail management app and B2B e-commerce, the MMR world companies can rely on a complete system, capable of managing not only online purchases by the Ho.Re.Ca. channel, but also product collection at selected points of sale, on dates and times chosen by the customer, according to Click&Collect logics.