It’s often said that opposites attract.  As far as personal relationships are concerned, I haven’t found this to be the case.  However, for people working in the eCommerce and multi channel world, the ability to attract or bring together opposites is becoming increasingly important.

Here are six sets of opposites that come to mind:

• Developing strategic IT architectures and embracing rapidly emerging technologies.
• Listening to what the customer wants now while anticipating their future needs.
• Balancing cost versus capability in solution design.
• Delivering personalised customer experiences and super-fast web site performance.
• Managing divergent goals of stakeholders from marketing, stores, supply chain, IT and finance.
• Building sound return on investment cases in the context of rapidly changing business models and technology.

(I’m sure there are many more than six, so would welcome your thoughts on others.)

So why is the ability to attract opposites important ?

These opposites exist whether we like it or not.  They are created by an overall business context of rapid change – for example, technology, consumer behaviour and globalisation.  At an organisational level the collision between the digital and physical worlds and the stakeholders in both can be explosive.  The successful business finds a way to navigate through this to deliver compelling and consistent customer experiences, drive profitable business growth and engage their own business stakeholders.   And, in some cases, it’s the tension between opposites than leads to true innovation.  The unsuccessful business gets caught up in internal politics, decision paralysis and falls behind their competitors.

So how do you attract the opposite ?  Here are some tips to help you:

• Think of the strategic IT architecture as the foundation.  If you have a solid foundation then you can easily experiment round the edges.  Be prepared to try out third party components as a fast way to extend capability.
• Just do it.  Sometimes you’ll need to take a risk – be happy to make mistakes because you’ll learn from them and move forward.  Try out small-scale initiatives where the business case is uncertain and extend/iterate as you learn more.
• Be pragmatic.  Better to make a decision based on limited information that to sit wondering while the world moves on.  Getting something to market quickly will give you useful insight that can be used to plan the next stage.
• Innovate collaboratively.   Gone are the days when an organisation would themselves have all the knowledge needed to develop a detailed requirements specification and then ask a supplier for a quote.  These days, good suppliers will have a wealth of experience that can help shape your requirements and therefore lead to a better solution.  It’s also a faster and more cost effective way of working.
• Design for performance.  Think about performance right from the design stage.  When building new solutions, keep a performance log to track decisions (e.g. about functionality or integration) that can affect performance.  Make sure that everyone understands that there may be compromises to be made.
• Manage cross-functional relationships.  Those functions have a major impact on the success of multi channel initiatives so embrace them and enable them to share in the rewards.

So who’s doing this well ?

Halfords Head of Multi Channel talked about how “cross functional commitment is key to success’ at the Multi Channel Retail Summit in February 2011.  Further details can be found here.  There’s also an interesting interview with Simon Forster, Debenhams Head of Online Trading in May’s edition of Internet Retailing which gives an insight into how they have dealt with some of the above opposites.

However, because insight about internal company processes is typically confidential, it’s easier to judge by results.  eConsultancy recently showcased seven multichannel retail success stories here.  It’s interesting to note that Argos, (a Salmon client), having been first to launch a Click and Collect service in 2000, continues to be a multi channel innovator, for example with the trial of an immediate 90 minute delivery service in 2010.   There’s also lots of information about our work with Halfords on their multi channel initiatives and success on the Salmon website.

While occasionally the challenges can seem daunting, the ability to attract opposites is critical to multi channel business success.  Indeed, for some of us, it is the very opposite-ness of these elements that makes the multi channel world such an exciting place.