Moving away from ecommerce, next stop: everywhere commerce

Starting to work at my current employer back in 2006 I was wondering why the images and product information for online presentation were technically separated from those being used for the printed catalog. There were some more things like that which let it become obvious that there is a clear differentiation between online and offline commerce. During the years the different channels were merged together more and more but somehow the barrier was kept up between the two worlds - as it is or were the case for the majority of similar companies out there. The last two years were, from my point of view, some quite exciting ones. We had a project running which had the task to define a first-class ecommerce platform for tomorrow business. Although we started with a primary focus on the (classical) ecommerce layer, it became quite clear that the specified platform had much more potential than just to enhance the existing web shop business. With the emergence of this platform the remaining barriers keeping the different channels aside are about to be removed. The deep integration of a point of sales (POS) application with a mobile app as well as a classical web shop or the call center organisation became possible. While working on the project, I came across an article published in June 2012 by Jochen Krisch on excitingecommerce.de where he wrote about the failure of multi-channel strategies. Having our project in mind, which clearly allows to fully integrate different channels in every thinkable way, I asked myself two questions:

1. Are we wrong in trying to create an integration platform for all available and future channels or
2. What do others do wrong in leveraging their availabilities?

The first question I swept away from my mind as I for myself expect the platform to be the future for commerce on different channels. That led me to the second question and a german saying: if everyone jumps from the bridge it does not necessarily mean that it is the right way to go. Reminded of my first days at work, I wondered if business isn't about selling products ... no matter how? If the latter is true:

• Why should a product description in one channel be a totally different from that on another channel (keeping aside the different presentation technologies)?
• Why should the checkout process be handled in a technically different way from that on another channel?
• Why should a customer identifying itself at the checkout (in an real world shop) not receive any special offers in another channel or be credited with money as being a steady (channel independent) customer?
• Why should the underlying software platform be a different one for all channels?
• Why not force to integrate all channels naturally by using the same technologies enabling the business to create competitive offers?

Maybe the failing companies did not have any good ideas on how to integrate their different channels. Maybe they even did not have the right software platform to do so. I believe that in order to be successful on integrating different channels it is heavily required to have both: the right software platform as well as good busines strategies. Additionally, the right devices need to be available in a critical mass. If these requirements are met, multi-channel can work and it will work.