Omnichannel operating-model structuring

We chart every channel the group sells through, across stores, its own site, marketplaces, aggregator apps and sales teams, as owned or rented on the Control Matrix. The operating model then sets who holds stock, who sets price, who serves the customer and how each channel is measured.

The board approves a channel strategy it can state in a page, and a model that carries it.

• A channel strategy paper: each channel's role, its Control Matrix position and the case for keeping, growing or leaving it.
• A channel profitability view, after commission, delivery, discounts and returns.
• An omnichannel operating model: stock allocation, price governance, order routing and customer service rules.
• A decision-rights chart showing who sets price, range and promotion in each channel.
• A target-setting framework that credits a store for orders it fulfils or collects for the website.
• A twelve-month sequencing plan with the cost and cash effect of each channel move.

• Your board reads contribution margin by channel after all channel-specific costs.
• You see the share of revenue through channels the group owns, and decide how fast to grow it.
• Platform commission is tracked as a share of sales, so the board sees what renting a channel costs.
• Stock availability is read across channels at the weekly count.
• The board reads the number of customers buying in more than one channel.

Channels are added one at a time, each by a different team with its own targets. Stock is split between them without a rule, prices drift apart, and the group pays platform commission on customers who would have bought in its own store or site.

• The same item sells at three prices across the group's channels.
• Store managers see the website as a competitor for their targets.
• Stock is held back for one channel while another sells out.
• Customers return in a channel that cannot see their purchase in another.
• No one can say which channels earn after platform fees, delivery and discounts.

Retail chains, consumer brands and restaurant groups with four or more selling channels, and chief executives who suspect their channels are taking each other's sales rather than adding to them.

Qasim Abbas applies the Control Matrix channel by channel, drawing on more than 16 years inside Gulf family-based and venture-backed groups, so the board sees what each position costs to hold and to leave.

We start from the Control Diagnostic, which places each channel on the Matrix, and fit the model to the point-of-sale, storefront, marketplace and order systems you run and the ledger you keep, whether Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Oracle. See how fees work.

Should we leave the marketplaces we depend on?

Keep the marketplaces that earn their commission and redirect your repeat customers to owned channels. The profitability view shows which marketplaces earn it.

How do we stop stores and the website competing?

By crediting each store for the online orders it fulfils or collects, and by setting a price rule across channels. Both are part of the model.

Is this the same as the Control Diagnostic?

The Diagnostic places the whole group on the Matrix. This service goes further into channels and builds the model that follows.

List your channels on one page and bring it to a private briefing. We show you where two of them overlap and what the overlap costs.