An Omni-Channel Pioneer Explains His Methods Omni-channel retailing refers to the development of a seamless approach to the consumer experience through all available shopping channels, such as brick-and-mortar stores, smartphones, tablet computers, personal computers, direct mail, catalog, and the like. There are a lot of retailers who have made an attempt to establish the Omni-channel opportunity. Most have not thought enough about the overall customer experience as he or she passes through the various phases of the day, and when that customer is likely to use which device or visit which store, tying all of that together. Chico's FAS is a $2.6 billion specialty retailer of private branded, casual-to-dressy clothing, intimates, complementary accessories, and other non-clothing gift items. The Chief Information Officer of Chico's FAS Eric Singleton has led the creation of the FAS Digital Retail Theater. As he explains it, the company elected to refer to this body of work as a theater in reference to the theater of life. In collaboration with other departments of the company, Singleton has created an innovative Omni-channel experience for the women who are his company's customers. The fact that he has played a leadership role in this process provides a model for IT executives in retails and beyond on how the CIO should become more customer savvy, and drive top-line innovation. (To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, including information about Eric Singleton's career path, and his thoughts on the evolution of the CIO role, please visit this link. To read more stories like this one, please click the "Follow" link above.)
Peter High: You’ve recently unveiled a very innovative Omni-channel program for Chico’s, you referred to as FAS Digital Retail Theater, could you take a moment to describe the basics of it? Eric Singleton: About a year and a half ago we wanted to take a step back and really start with a blank sheet of paper on “What did Omni-channel mean?” It’s a word that everybody overuses, along with multi-channel. As we got away from the technology and more into the behavior of the consumer, we felt that we had to pay attention to the behavioral shift of our customer base— in this case, of consumers towards a far more broad spectrum digital experience. This was not for the sake of digital itself, because it was “cool” or “interesting,” but simply because this was just real life the way it was playing out.
To that end, we started to define what that meant. We concluded that if we looked at a typical individual’s daily life from the time they wake up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night and everything in between, we did an analysis of what that typical day-in-the-life was, then we started to stitch into it where our touch points would likely be, then we worked backwards from that as to what devices would likely play a role on these touch points. If you keep working down this chain, what content, what information, what interactive capability would need to exist on those devices for those parts of person typical lifestyle. That became the core foundation for the Chico’s Digital Retail Theater – the “theater” being the notion that this entire thing was really an endless no-end and no-beginning theater that you were in, as a consumer.