To truly benefit from our omnichannel strategy, Kanmo Group has to look beyond simply engaging customers through offline and online means. We want to give our customers flexibility to shop by communicating with a salesperson or through the real-time Retail Pro Prism POS system.

- Bhavin Patel, Omnichannel Director

How Kanmo Group Built Their Omnichannel Strategy with Retail Pro

Background

Kanmo Group was formed in 2005 focusing on retail distribution in Indonesia. Within 13 years of operations, Kanmo Group now operates nearly 200 stores in Indonesia with a market leadership position in kids and baby segment serving tens of thousands of customers monthly with brands like Mothercare and Early Learning Center (ELC), Gingersnaps, Justice and Nike Young Athletes.

The group has since extended its retail portfolio to include brands in fashion and accessories category with Coach, Coast, Karen Millen, Women'secret and Thomas Sabo, grown its distribution business and added travel retail to its growing portfolio, winning the operating rights to be the Master Concessionaire for Fashion & Accessories at Jakarta Airport T3 and launching Travel Gallery. In 2017, Kanmo expanded its retail presence in footwear by acquiring sole distributorship of the global brand Havaianas and launch of the concept footwear store for kids, Wilio.

Omnichannel Challenge

As part of their strategy for omnichannel, Kanmo Group wanted to have a seamlessly unified, real-time view of inventory and multi-channel orders, to have greater flexibility and control in creating relevant promotions across channels, and to be able to identify customers who are shopping both online and in stores.

Bhavin Patel, Omnichannel Director of Kanmo Group, comments, "Kanmo Group recognizes the booming e-commerce market in Southeast Asia. This development urges retail companies like Kanmo to build an omnichannel strategy that delivers a seamless customer experience, whether online or offline."

The omnichannel project aims to bolster Kanmo Group's productivity by upgrading its current software and integrating retail tools and applications to their mission-critical foundation, Retail Pro Prism, which gives them full control and flexibility in tailoring the product to fit the unique business needs, processes, and brand.

Needs:

• New point of sale software with strong promotions capabilities
• Multi-channel order management software
• Customer relationship management software

Solution

Despite an aggressive sales pitch from local omnichannel contender ETP, and after extensive due-diligence solution comparisons, Kanmo Group chose to move forward with Retail Pro, which has been the trusted solution running their retail operations since 2005. Kanmo Group decided to update their in-store systems with Retail Pro Prism POS, the latest technology in the Retail Pro family.

So Kanmo Group chose to unify their operations on the solid foundation of global Retail Pro technology and commissioned their Retail Pro Business Partner, Genie Technologies, to create the best omnichannel plan that leverages Retail Pro Prism capability.

Omnichannel connectivity, however, is still an evolving concept for retail and highly tailored to each retailer's unique technologies, needs, and desired outcomes, so Genie Technologies worked directly with the Retail Pro ProfessionalServices team to create and deploy a solution that would fulfill Kanmo Group requirements.

"To truly benefit from our omnichannel strategy, Kanmo Group has to look beyond simply engaging customers through offline and online means. When you look at the customer behavior in Southeast Asia, you will see that shoppers love to fill up their basket online – but they still prefer to complete the purchase in physical stores," added Bhavin Patel. "We want to give our customers flexibility to collect and check out the ‘basket' they created by communicating with a salesperson or through the real-time Retail Pro Prism POS system."

Adopting Retail Pro for Store and Backend Operations

The first critical step was to establish Retail Pro retail management software as the central backbone for omnichannel at Kanmo Group. In the end, all their technologies would be unified in Retail Pro.

"Our high vision for omnichannel required a holistic approach to managing data, and full integrability in Retail Pro Prism allows us to add customizations to unify all our retail technologies on its foundation," added Bhavin Patel.

Next, the teams began a phased roll out of Retail Pro Prism to modernize the point of sale at Kanmo Group's specialty retail stores.

The Kanmo Group team chose Retail Pro Prism because it allows the sales floor team to manage customers, inventory, and store operations all from the same software they use at checkout, increasing efficiency.

Because the user interface is completely customizable, Kanmo Group could tailor their POS software to reflect the branding and workflows needed for each location, starting with the Justice brand of children's apparel. Retail Pro Prism was also selected for its flexible promotions capabilities, satisfying that requirement for Kanmo Group.

Managing Sales Channels

To connect store and web data, Retail Pro Prism and Kanmo Group's ecommerce provider, SmartOSC, were both integrated with Capillary, which Genie Technologies had recommended as OMS and CRM solutions.

Integrated together, these technologies helped Kanmo Group manage multi-channel orders more efficiently and identify their customers across channels.

Connecting All the Data in Retail Pro

Finally, to close the loop and unify commerce, the teams created interfaces between Retail Pro on the backend and Kanmo Group's other retail technologies – Warehouse Management, Business Intelligence, Human Resource, SAMS, Enterprise Resource Planning, as well as additional bespoke technologies.

Bhavin Patel comments, "Our omnichannel project is dedicated to bringing more convenience and better experiences to our customers. Fortunately, we delivered the full upgrade and integration of software in an astounding six to seven months, whereas the process generally takes close to five years. Working together with Retail Pro, GenieTech, and our other technology partners, we have succeeded in building the right technology foundation for our omnichannel customer experience."

With these technologies integrated together with Retail Pro, Kanmo Group now has a single unified view of customers, inventory, and all other aspects of their business, so they can manage their business more efficiently across channels.

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