Stay on Target: Spider-Man and the Omnichannel

We’ve been talking about the Omnichannel quite a bit, both in the OrboNation blogs and around the OrboGraph offices. It’s an important topic for financial institutions and retailers alike.

One not-so-minor detail under debate is whether the term is “Omnichannel” (which is what we’ve been using here the majority of the time), or “Omni-Channel” (which is used by more than a few industry news sources).

When I ask Andy Leonhardt, VP Sales at OrboGraph, he votes for the dash. “Look at Spider-Man,” he says. “Every True Believer knows there’s a dash!”

Really?

Points go to Andy for his stunning recall of pop culture minutia. (He can also tell you the name of the pilot in STAR WARS who kept saying “Stay on target” during the assault on the Death Star. I guessed “Red Leader?” “HA! Everyone knows it’s Gold Five!” he laughed.)

Foiled again.

Well, not this time, Andy. While it’s up for grabs all over the web and in trade magazines, we’ll go with the no-dash “Omnichannel” in our conversations. Like “Superman.”

Meanwhile, it’s worth looking at the trails blazed in the retail space – – and the hurdles they still need to overcome — while retail banking adopts the Omnichannel approach. In the age of Amazon, customers now expect lightning-fast delivery of orders. Retailers are using stores as e-commerce fulfillment centers to fill “click-and-collect orders”  — and keeping things in stock is becoming an enormously complex task, to say the least.

Read all about it at Innovative Retail Technologies. (Where, by the way, they don’t use a dash in “Omnichannel.”)

Chances are you’ve had experiences – – good or bad – – with the retail Omnichannel environment. I had a particularly satisfying experience tracking down a hard drive online at Bestbuy.com and picking it up that same day at the local physical store. Share one of yours on the comments section!