Asia represents a significant market for retail, offering extensive opportunities for brick-and-mortar and online retailers. Asia’s e-commerce market alone is expected to reach a value of US$2 trillion this year, according to Euromonitor International.

So how can retailers in Asia successfully expand into other countries in the region? After all, each Asian country has its own way of doing things, and what works in one place might not work in another. 

1. Create the structure to fit your business

Choose an Order Management System that enables you to pick an organisational structure to best suit your business needs. For example, you might divide your organisation into brands or geographies or a combination of both. Or you might set up different types of organisations, such as retail, marketplace, and wholesale. Next, you’ll define which data should be unique to each division, and which should be shared. 

2. Share data across divisions where appropriate

Allow each division to access all locations and inventory across your organisation while defining their own rules for how they fulfil orders. 

That said, just because inventory and locations are shared doesn’t mean you have to sell all that stock via every division. You can also use inventory rules to virtually segment what stock and locations you make available to promise to each brand or region. This provides granular control over what you sell where so you can easily:

• Only sell a subset of your products in a particular region.
• Test a new product or category in a market.
• Apply different buffer or safety stock levels by brand or region.

3. Enable an integrated cross-brand experience

When each business unit can access the locations and inventory of other business units, you can explore new fulfilment models. 

For example: 

Cross-brand click-and-collect

Let’s say you’re a multi-brand organisation with stores, and you use your stores as pickup locations. Some customers may live closer to a Brand A store, while others will live closer to a Brand B store. If a customer places an order on the Brand A website, can they pick it up from their local Brand B store?

If instead of home delivery, you offer pickup at their closest store, are they more likely to make an additional purchase while they’re there?

Cross-brand merchandising

While some of your brands may have very distinct products, others may not. What if you could test popular products or accessories from one brand on the online storefront of another? Could you gain new insights into customer segments and behaviour? Or increase the average order value?

Cross-brand returns

No one likes returns. Especially not customers. But what if you could offer them more convenient return options? If customers can return an online purchase at any of the stores in your network, would that make them more inclined to buy? After all, more than 50 per cent of consumers review return policies and processes before making a buying decision.

Cross-region fulfilment

What if your Singapore website receives an order that can’t be fulfilled from a Singapore DC or store? Can your Singapore website check to see if the item is available in Malaysia instead?

In short, if you can share stock and locations across your brands and regions, it gives you new ways to add value and convenience for your customers and provide a truly integrated cross-brand experience.

4. Use templates to accelerate expansion

As you grow, it’s important to maximise economies of scale. That’s where templates come in. 

In Fluent Order Management you can create a reusable set of templates for business rules and processes that serve as the base fulfilment logic for each new region or brand. But it can be modified to meet local or brand-specific requirements. That way you can accelerate the rollout and bring on new brands or regions in a matter of weeks. Templates can be used for user roles and permissions too.

5. Provide local language support

Finally, as you expand into new geographic regions, make sure staff can use the system in their local language. Especially store staff who pick and pack online orders. This reduces training time and user errors – which can be particularly important if you use seasonal workers to support your peak season.

Fluent Commerce is a global software company focused on inventory data management at scale and distributed order management (DOM) for commerce. Fluent Order Management provides accurate, real-time inventory availability across all locations, order orchestration, fulfilment optimisation, fulfilment location management, in-store pick and pack, customer service, and reporting. This enables retailers to ensure they never oversell or undersell and to deliver their orders profitably every time. For more information visit fluentcommerce.com