TempoCloud to revolutionize the online-offline scene with more stores and live inventory access
Being able to combine online with offline stores quickly and cheaply is something the platform TempoCloud is trying to realize. With a system that allows flexibility in putting an API on top of base e-commerce functions, the service is answering the OMO needs of stores, including those that want to make the leap into e-commerce right away.
Whether it’s called “omnichannel”, “OMO” (Online Merges with Offline) or “a seamless shopping experience”, the linking of e-commerce with brick-and-mortar stores has been a matter on the sales frontline for quite a while now. Already consumer desires have overtaken the current reality. People want to be able to freely buy whatever they need at the time it pops into their heads — whenever and wherever they want.
The rate of e-commerce conversion is comparatively low in Japan, but one company is trying to liberate the current shopping experiences from brick-and-mortar constraints while supporting sellers in the background. This company is the total-e-commerce-support firm NHN SAVAWAY. They were founded in 2004 and in 2013 were made a subsidiary of South Korean IT conglomerate NHN Group.
TempoCloud’s system of connecting multiple e-commerce sites
On April 15th this year, NHN SAVAWAY began offering their new service, TempoCloud, which allows the building of cloud-type e-commerce sites.
TempoCloud offers a variety of e-commerce-related total support solutions, including the building of multiple e-commerce sites, linkage with external functions, overall management, support for mall-scale e-commerce and for omnichannel. Tomoaki Adachi, head of NHN SAVAWAY’s TempoCloud division, says the service “boasts more flexibility than a traditional package and is cheaper than building e-commerce functions from scratch”.
A big feature of TempoCloud is how it easily links with external functions. For example, if you want to add a recommendation function to your company’s site it’s easy to include in the API. In the package e-commerce offerings up until now, adding such things meant extra development and higher costs. However, TempoCloud’s easy linking of API functions allows the add-on of required functions to an e-commerce site that can suit any budget.
One site to manage them all
TempoCloud allows its users to manage and run multiple e-commerce sites via the one control screen and can link data from partner companies such as suppliers. In other words, it offers a system where overall management of numerous e-commerce sites through a common screen is possible.
Furthermore, TempoCloud simply provides the control screen without restricting the form or design of the “storefront” side of the site, allowing the operator to freely create the e-commerce site as they wish. Product and purchase data is handled by TempoCloud’s cloud server, although the site operator is able to possess and use the data.
TempoCloud’s goal is omnichannel
Being able to manage multiple e-commerce sites together with many different partner companies makes for a system of unprecedented convenience. However, what Adachi and his team have their eyes on is the future of retail.
“Our goal is to offer e-commerce site operators the possibility of omni-channel. In Japan, where depopulation is continuing, the overall growth rate of retailers is slowing down. One way to fight against this is to increase sales channels — so businesses that just have stores expand into e-commerce or vice versa.”
Adachi told us about wasted opportunities when the linking of stores and e-commerce doesn’t go well due to organizational issues or inventory systems: “In both fashion and cosmetics, it’s still rare that store staff recommend customers to purchase via e-commerce, because when purchases are made online the sales become unrelated to the offline store. With TempoCloud, if you have a hundred stores you can create a hundred e-commerce sites, one for each of them, and link them together and have the same inventory, or alternatively, each can be managed separately. You can also run promotions, such as through social media, that are specific to each store, and you can maintain and check each store’s sales data.”
TempoCloud’s concept and the way it works allows for a comprehensive system where, by connecting stores with e-commerce, e-commerce with other e-commerce and e-commerce with different solutions, data management, and omnichannel become possible for companies, and a seamless shopping experience becomes possible for product-buyers.
The company is also making headway towards realizing the linking of digital signage. They say that purchases made via digital signage or mirror signage in stores will be able to be managed through the same control screen along with all other purchases.
Installation of digital signage isn’t limited to stores; they can also be established in shopping streets and train stations. NHN SAVAWAY is imagining a live inventory where products that you’ve seen in-store or on your smartphone can be checked and even purchased on digital signage that has been set up in a variety of locations, and the company says they want to build the infrastructure for that into TempoCloud. Along with this, the goal of Adachi’s team from here on is to get rid of the current constraints of shopping experiences by connecting everything through APIs — stores, e-commerce, terminals, payment methods — and thus realize omnichannel.
