
Unlocking omnichannel for retail businesses fast and driving growth
Omnichannel has become a buzz word in the telecommunications industry, but the basics are not new and remain the same: providing business users and/or consumers with a consistent and satisfying experience regardless of the channel or the device they use.
To provide a consistent experience from a product perspective, many vendors propose solutions that often focus on replacing all legacy environments and back-end systems with a completely new omnichannel stack. However, as described in a recent paper published by the TM Forum, there are typically 4 different approaches that can be followed, out of which the complete replacement of the legacy back-ends is a long, tedious and very costly exercise.

But as Communication Service Provider (CSP) are struggling with increasing cost pressure and the need of a short time-to-market for new products and propositions, they are looking for alternatives. One of the other, more preferred, options discussed is to provide an overlay or Enhancement Layer between the channels and the legacy stacks, which ensures that the different front-end channels will have a well-defined, unique and standard way to interact with different legacy back-ends. The techniques that are used in that scenario are based on open API (Application Programming Interface) standards towards the channel fronting interfaces, as well as the back-end systems, and a service application or Microservices architecture layer translates and coordinates the provisioning of the different legacy services and applications. This solution approach is evaluated to provide the best balance between time-to-market, cost and risk.
Where is the drive for Omnichannel coming from?
The real Customer Experience is the result of all the interactions a customer has with the brand. It is not only depending on the channels, but also defined by the messaging the customer receives and the consistent look and feel of the brand in all channels. A holistic customer experience across digital and non-digital channels is required. They need to complement and enhance or even enforce each other.
“We are the hosts and customers are invited to the party. We need to improve their experience every day.” — Jeff Bezos
Customers are more and more used to the very intuitive way of doing business with pure online shops (online retailers) and other companies providing various internet services. To remain relevant and to differentiate, many traditional (off-line) retailers are forced to think and act like software companies. In fact, many have started building similar in-house applications or subscribing to a SaaS solution to embark on the digital transformation in the industry. Whilst doing this, retail businesses (on- and/or off-line) must ensure that their new and old channels provide the same consistent and deliberate (i.e. wanted) Customer Experience (CX). This requires that the processes applied in all their channels are aligned.
Driving this consistency across the digital and non-digital channels is much harder to decide upon and implement than bolting on a commerce layer to traditional systems. Retail businesses need to ensure that the deliberate customer experience, captured by their key processes, are configured consistently everywhere and not only in the different front-end or back-end systems.
Demands of modern IT programs or embracing the digital transformation
While businesses contemplate the implementation of Omni-channel solutions they are faced with a shift from a traditional IT approach to modern software development paradigms (like Agile/Scrum, DevOps, Squads/Tribes, etc.) and the demands of IT teams and vendors for a “cloud first” IT strategy.
For many service providers, the barrier towards Omni-channel innovation is formed by their outdated legacy commerce platforms. The different applications require often long development cycles and elaborate deployments which are not in line with the needs to today’s businesses where new product offerings need to be pushed out in near real time. No wonder that so many vendors active in this space can convince the retail business decision makers that the only solution is to consolidate, or upgrade, or replace, all their systems with a new state-of-the-art system that can do all.

Microservices and open standard API’s to the rescue
However, a solid and workable alternative can be provided by using an Enhancement Layer between the channels and the legacy IT commerce platforms. It works very well for those businesses who want to quickly establish a single combined sales and order-orchestration platform for all of their existing and new front-end applications.
But it provides more benefits. Firstly, it provides immediately a consolidated informational view of the customer, his offers, purchased and installed products, shopping history, etc. Secondly it also allows consistent commercial offers to be created across all channels, creating new horizontal capabilities (like commercial bundling of legacy offers) and sharing common business rules (e.g. sales logic) across the channels, thus creating a consistent customer experience. Thirdly, it permits the definition and quick launching of new commercial products across the business lines, where each is supported (potentially) by legacy platforms and independent from changes made to those platforms. Finally, it also allows for an independent evolution of the channels and the legacy IT platforms.
Such an Enhancement Layer can be implement very well using Microservices or a generic services application architecture. Although these are not new concepts, we now have tools and technologies to support the Microservices approach very effectively, completely in line with the new development standards mentioned above.

The major benefit for companies is that Microservices are individual pieces of business software that provide functionality which can be developed, deployed and supported by a small team from cross-functional disciplines, independently from the software language used in other (micro) services. This means a lot of more freedom and the ability to scale with various focussed skills compared to traditional development projects. In the latter situation, all developers in the teams are required to use the same coding language, standards or frameworks, and require a deep knowledge across the board of the overall functionality of the solution is required across the board for aligning on the internal interfaces between the modules.
The clear advantage of the Microservices architecture is the reduced complexity for adding new specific functionality to an already existing suite, once the interfaces have been well defined, enabling a faster and more agile development of the commerce platform.
The key to enabling this is the API architecture that accompanies the Microservices. Defining the right set of APIs will ensure that every channel can call the same business functionality or Microservice, which in turn ensures in a standard way of handling the request. The service (or another Microservice that is called) then translate the request into different requests to the legacy back-ends. It maps the standard request to the different legacy systems and coordinates the responses to feed-back the result to the relevant front-end channel(s). This facilitates quick implementation of Omni-channel where manual syncing between the different legacy back-end systems is not required.
With this approach, the implementation risk is reduced because no legacy back-end platforms need adapting, for which the knowledge is often unavailable anymore in the company, except for the proverbial individual who knows it all. It allows for a fast implementation, showing quick results to the business and the customers because retail business can only enable the channels they need and implement the Omni-channel offers they want to push to the market fast.
While it might look that Microservices based architecture might be a good solution for the Omnichannel CX challenge, it comes with some words of caution. Firstly, as Cornway’s law states, the solution design reflects the organization’s communication structure. When embarking on a Microservices architecture led solution, one should be ready to adapt the organization structure. This, as anyone would know, is not an easy task. Secondly, one can get carried away by the flexibility of Microservices and land up with technical sprawl — multiplicity of technology, tools and languages. Getting experienced people on the task is like always key. Even more so with microservices, as the quality of its implementation defines the effectiveness of your future organisational processes.
Conclusion
We have proven that the API-driven Microservices approach is very effective in several customer engagements with several CSP’s across the globe. Using our Omnius product suite, a large Tier 1 Operator in Germany executed the digital transformation of all its sales channels across mobile, fixed line, Pay TV and Internet Access line of businesses to delivery simplified product bundling, improved SIM’s performance and a consistent deliberate customer experience for all their channels.
Going forward the most successful CSPs will open-up the APIs of their Microservices architecture to allow other (third parties) to add additional services to their overall portfolio and even open new channels. Together they can unlock their Omni-channel capabilities faster and further than their competitors, and consequently boost their margins and drive profitability to new heights.
~ Written by Rick Centeno, General Manager at Dynacommerce
More about our Omnichannel solutions on our Dynacommerce site
