**2.2 Challenges in Omnichannel strategy**

The reasons which cause failure in implementing Omnichannel:


For implementing a successful Omnichannel strategy, the above-mentioned items should take into consideration. Based on the researches [17], the value of

**Figure 1.** *Omnichannel evolution.*

*The Requirements of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Frameworks for Integration… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104417*

omnichannel could appear to increase customer loyalty, business revenue, and business agility.

### **2.3 Customer touchpoints**

Customer touchpoints have many vital effects, e.g. between producers and customers, customers can get information about product/service and make appraisals at various points and have an interaction with retailers through several various channels across a complicated purchase procedure [18].

Secondly, it is playing an important role in attracting customers and it is a direct and indirect intermediary between customer and brand [19].

Touchpoints are [14, 19–21]:


Due to the importance of touchpoints, ways should be introduced to track (including real-time tracking, discrete vs. relational relationships) and have an effect on them. Touchpoints are where brands and customers interact. Therefore; it is one of the places to enhance engagement and profitability [22]. The results of touchpoints are gathered from pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase situations [23].

### **2.4 Integration in channels**

As more channels are initiated, more data are gathered in each touchpoint quickly. These data should be collected and be analyzed. This leads to understanding the

importance of data integration among channels, ignoring this integration, leads to customer dissatisfaction and enterprise will be faced with an increase in costs [24]; Furthermore, consumers hope for a uniform, consistent, integrated platform which by this, can seamlessly move through channels (physical store, online and mobile) [25], without seeing any contradictions for example in terms of pricing or availability of the product and this uniformity will generate positive experiences. When channels are working independently from each other, it causes fragmented supply chains and it makes lots of effort to transport a consistent and reliable customer experience [26].

For implementing integration in omnichannel a three dimensions framework can be taken into consideration:


These points show that the omnichannel system should access information all over the touchpoints and can notice any change in any channel in real-time and inform the whole system e.g. if a customer cancels the order, it should be detected and send command to different sections for example in terms of packaging, logistics, payment, etc. to apply the change and re-schedule the plan instantly.

### **2.5 Solutions for Omnichannel challenges with the help of industry 4.0**

As mentioned before, there are challenges in Omnichannel strategy that can be solved with the help of technological developments like Industry 4.0 [30]. Based on Literature [31], Industry 4.0 is defined as "a collective term for technologies and concepts of value chain organization". IoT, Cyber-physical systems, the Internet of services, smart factories are defined as the core of Industry 4.0.

IoT helps in different ways to solve challenges in Omnichannel strategy for example in terms of considering IoT-in-store-environment using RFID, NFC, Beacon to track products and in this regard can prevent theft and provide real-time inventory field [30, 32–34]. IoT by using sensors can detect customers entering the shop (with their mobile devices) and identify them and with the connection to the Omnichannel's touchpoints can figure out the customer's shopping history or recently searched items and offer related products in-store to the customers. By detecting entering customers to the shop, the number of cashiers and staffs which can fulfill their needs can be easily determined and it helps by decreasing waiting time, increase *The Requirements of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Frameworks for Integration… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104417*

customer satisfaction and provide a good experience for customers and finally the chance of re-visiting the store will be increased [35–38].

### **2.6 Product lifecycle management**

### *2.6.1 Definition*

The concept of PLM was initiated to describe the evolution of the product which is categorized as, promotion, maturity, and decline phases [39]. In the 1980s, by introducing concurrent engineering, gradually the concept of PLM is entered in the manufacturing engineering field and it causes new categories in PLM processes for example market analysis, product design, process development, product manufacturing, production distribution, product use, post-sale service and recycling [40].

Product lifecycle management is one of the concepts whose focus is on managing whole product data (live data) from the first step (ideation) until the last step (disposal) together with support the local data and information integration in the stage of product design and development, for instance: assisting designer to access information generated from CAD, CAM, CAE, etc.

### *2.6.2 Phases*


### *2.6.3 Stages*

Product lifecycle consists of three stages [41]:


### *2.6.4 Techniques in PLM*

These are some techniques used in PLM as shown in **Figure 2**:

Concurrent engineering workflow, Industrial design, Bottom-up design, Topdown design, Both-ends-against-the-middle design, Design in context, Modular design, NPD (new product development), DFSS (design for six sigma), Digital simulation engineering, Configuration management.

With the help of the internet and IT, efforts have been made to reduce costs, accelerate product development time and improve quality which are the main factors affecting

customer satisfaction and in the same way increase profit, this is the main goal of the omnichannel strategy [43, 44]. PLM is the concept, which covers stages before production and according to omnichannel which has a great focus on post-production stages, the combination of these two concepts can help to develop omnichannel in the first stages of producing a product. The application of Big data in PLM outstandingly falls behind other areas, mainly for electronic commerce. The worse issue is: it becomes usual that manufacturers do not use stored data and they do not know how to use them [45].
