The Growing Complexity of Building Omnichannel Enterprise Applications
A Statista research reveals that one out of every two eCommerce decision-makers from North America and Europe believe that omnichannel strategies are imperative. In addition, experts also forecast multichannel sales to cover 46% of eCommerce sales by the end of 2023, up by 5.6% from 2019. Also, the hybrid workplace demands acceptance of all manner of employee devices over the course of everyday workflows.
Indeed, omnichannel enterprise applications are all set to become the mainstay as they provide a seamless user experience throughout, irrespective of the channel. But, they have their own set of challenges as well. Without further ado, let's get into the nitty-gritty of the same.
What is an Omnichannel Strategy?
An omnichannel strategy aims to deliver a smooth and consistent experience across various channels, including online, mobile, and on-premise or in-store. Omnichannel could also mean providing a customized user experience depending on customers' or employees’ interaction with a brand.
For instance, if your brand has an app, a physical store, and a website, you would want to provide a consistent experience across all three channels. You can even ensure that customers can switch between these channels without hindrance.
Apart from this, companies successfully adopting a customer-centric stance and focusing on two or more critical cross-channel journeys can leverage several self-service options. The use of automated systems like IVR (interactive voice response) or chatbots helps meet customer needs without a live agent's assistance. Assisted workflows and self-guided workflows can make support helpdesks more effective and efficient. This approach not only reduces the time to manage calls but also increases promptness and efficiency of response.
With an omnichannel strategy in place, businesses are better equipped to build a loyal customer base and boost their ROI. For instance, a proficient omnichannel system notifies consumers' intentions and their prior actions to the customer service agents before initiating the conversation to enable faster resolution time. This improves customer satisfaction since the agent personalizes the interaction. Enabling powerful and consistent omnichannel experiences for employees allows them to be productive and effective from anywhere at any time.
Challenges of Omnichannel Enterprise Applications
When running a business, keeping up with the changes is never easy. Along those lines, it's imperative to be aware of the omnichannel enterprise application challenges to avoid unnecessary expenses and effort.
Lack of Data-Driven Corporate Mindset
Omnichannel enterprise applications rely on large volumes of data to design consistent and effective omnichannel journeys. However, if the business does not have a data-centric corporate mechanism, it cannot leverage the data firehose to customize user experience across different channels.
Inadequate Technical Skills & Resources
Teams are often unable to adopt the omnichannel strategy because of technical and financial limitations. Creating rich strategies that span channels and effectively acting on those strategies calls for specific skills and knowledge of a range of technology options.
Issues With Data Integration & Quality
With varied data sources, companies struggle to maintain a cohesive view of customers or users. While integrating data from various sources, there are problems associated with losing vital information and matching multiple data formats. Even if data is fully integrated, data quality is still a major cause of concern. Data may contain errors, duplications, and contradictions.
Creating Consistent Experiences
When customers try to switch between different channels, they should not feel as if they are communicating with multiple companies. Employees interacting with the same enterprise business tool from different devices should not feel they are working on separate systems. However, despite knowing this, businesses face challenges in delivering personalized and consistent experiences in real-time across different operational channels.
No Transparency
During the multichannel journey, customers share their personal information, providing a gamut of data that can be used for personalization. But, when all the data goes into siloed systems, businesses cannot get an overview of customers; they have to act on half the information, which isn't ideal.
How Can Novigo Solutions Address the Omnichannel Complexities in Enterprise Apps?
The following are the areas where we can help address the complexity of building omnichannel enterprise applications.
Cross-platform Design
Understandably, users today have several devices. Therefore, while building an omnichannel application, it is crucial to focus on creating an app that works consistently across all devices, including Android and iOS. Besides, seamless and consistent experiences across desktops and smartphones are game changers. Favourably, low-code platforms like Outsystems provide headway for agile platform design and development.
It's noteworthy that cross-platform applications help ensure consistency. A unified experience is deployed across different platforms. So, businesses can ensure a unified strategy for developing and testing applications.
Responsive Design
The omnichannel approach raises the profile of the mobile element of enterprise applications to give access to an app anytime and anywhere to fulfil tasks. Enterprise apps initially catered to web and desktop browsers alone. However, since the advent of mobile-first practice, a responsive design has been embraced by all kinds of users on different platforms. Therefore, enterprises should consider implementing immersive, intuitive, and responsive designs a priority. Businesses can develop an app that is consistent across all screens, including smartphones and tablets. This way, they can suffice the omnichannel demands of customers without compromising on the interactive experience.
Self-Service Capability
Implementing self-service capability is the need of the hour, for it facilitates a seamless and frustration-free user experience. Owing to the growth of remote work culture during this pandemic, there is a growing demand for in-house IT teams to resolve infrastructure issues. Enterprises depend heavily on IT teams, which overburdens the latter. As a result, they fail to address issues in time or detect or even mitigate risks leading to unforeseen downtimes or vulnerabilities.
To reduce dependency on IT, a good practice is to empower users with self-service options. These options could include interaction with a chatbot or access to a knowledge base or service catalogue to identify solutions and address the same without expert intervention.
Conclusion
Surely, the complexity involved in building omnichannel enterprise applications is something to take note of. Yet, with the right partner, such complexity can be addressed. Enterprises must have flexible apps supporting emerging technologies to provide a seamless user experience across multiple channels and devices. With the increased sophistication of apps, their role in delivering a proven customer experience will only increase.
At Novigo Solutions, we help businesses develop omnichannel enterprise applications and power them to facilitate personalized UX. We combine technical knowledge and capabilities in behavioural sciences to create robust, intuitive, and secure apps. Connect with us to know more!