Jason Hayman, partner at Portaltech Reply, spoke to Information Age about how value can be driven from Digital Commerce capabilities, and discussed a recently established partnership with Spryker

When it comes to maintaining customer experience today, organisations of all sizes need a strong, intuitive e-commerce system and strategy. Efficient service must combine with personalisation in line with particular customer needs, ensuring that users are able to receive a consistent experience, wherever they are.

But with customers’ demands always changing, it often proves challenging to retain their loyalty in increasingly competitive markets. Indeed, the slightest misstep in service delivery or customer experience can be costly with a global population exponentially reliant on digital platforms.

One IT service and consulting company dedicated to helping businesses maintain strong e-commerce services and best of breed solutions is Portaltech Reply. Specialising in Digital Commerce solutions such as SAP and Spryker, Portaltech has been taking organisations across the world on commerce transformation journeys since its inception in 2000.

Portaltech Reply partner Jason Hayman spoke with Information Age, to expand on how success can be driven with e-commerce, the company’s recently established partnership with e-commerce provider Spryker, and future trends that are likely to occur in the coming years.

>See also: Top priorities when creating or migrating to a new e-commerce site

Keeping up with customer demands

For Hayman, the biggest challenge that Portaltech’s clients tend to face from the outset of an e-commerce journey is meeting the quickly changing needs of customers. Markets are seeing more and more Gen Z consumers looking for products online, who aren’t nearly as likely to stay loyal to a company if technology lets them down. With this in mind, constant innovation in line with commerce trends is vital.

“In an ever-changing commerce environment, customers are looking for a seamless journey that provides the best customer experience possible,” said Hayman.

“Companies are finding the way in which they operate has to adapt to market demands and trends. For this reason, online marketplaces need to be easy to use and intuitive especially for B2B, B2C and D2C transactions.

“Organisations are also seeing business models change as some traditional B2B companies are offering products on a B2C or D2C model.”

Diversifying offerings with Spryker

Portaltech recently obtained Solution Partner Status with e-commerce company Spryker. This will mean that Spryker solutions implementation and support services will be offered across B2B commerce, enterprise marketing, B2C and unified commerce.

Explaining Portaltech’s goals for the partnership, Hayman said: “Portaltech is looking to diversify their technology solution offerings. Spryker offers customers a new and evolving solution and has been gaining Gartner recognition over the past couple of years.

“Being selected as a Solution Partner is a great accolade for Portaltech. This demonstrates not only are we technically capable of implementing more core solutions but it also demonstrates our understanding of commerce businesses and the challenges in the market.

“The partnership with Spryker will enable Potrtaltech to offer an alternative solution to customers. This will lead to net new logo business, an increased footprint in the Commerce marketplace and increased revenues.”

With Spryker just emerging in the UK market, Portaltech was among the first partners to be offered Solution Partner status.

Future trends

To be successful as a Digital CX services and consulting company, it pays to keep an eye on current and prospective industry trends, and this is no different at Portaltech.

According to Hayman, online commerce experiences will only increase in importance in the coming years, defining success or failure for businesses. As more transactions are performed online, customer experience will be key.

“A poor online experience will drive customers to transact with companies that have a simple and streamlined customer journey,” he said.

“Changing buying behaviour can derail revenue if organisations do not adapt their sales and marketing approach to reach online consumers and position themselves for success.

“B2B tech shoppers use digital channels to help them through the decision-making process which helps them embrace digital too. Organisations who accommodate and embrace these increasingly common behaviours are positioning themselves for growth and ultimately survival.”

The value of commerce market experience

During its 20-year experience in the e-commerce market, Portaltech has demonstrated a strong track record in landing what Hayman claims are “some of the largest deals in the UKI marketplace in recent times”. It’s this extensive and evolving experience that lends itself towards helping businesses achieve the strongest possible online customer experience and e-commerce services.

“Our customer satisfaction ratings are high, and we are always looking to diversify our offerings to meet market and customer needs,” Hayman added.

Offering diversity of e-commerce capabilities, now and in the future, is vital towards ensuring that organisations across all sectors can meet the specific and ever-changing demands of their customers.

This article was written as part of a content campaign with Reply.

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The post Driving value from Digital Commerce capabilities appeared first on Information Age.

Dan Hartveld, CTO at Red Ant, discusses why retail organisations need a robust data strategy to thrive and maintain customer experience

Smart retailers have realised their data is their biggest asset for optimising customer experience. With the amount of data growing exponentially, retail organisations need to know where to start to maximise the potential advantage. A recent Red Ant survey revealed that retailers’ biggest challenge (for 25 per cent of respondents) is data management and integration, to integrate their data estate with tools and technologies to make intelligent business decisions. So surely a data strategy — the single most important resource for organising data — is the ideal starting point.

Yet almost half of retailers (49 per cent) claim their data strategy is clear but not widely understood across the organisation, with a further 16 per cent claiming it’s neither clear nor widely understood. Added to this, 39 per cent lack confidence in the quality of their data, saying it is adequate but could be improved. This lack of focus on data could pose a major barrier to retail transformation success.

One thing retailers are clear on is the value data can provide. While 37 per cent of retailers marked data as a priority, 40 per cent said harnessing it as part of an omnichannel strategy is a main priority and 82 per cent see the value of clienteling, which relies totally on data quality, management and integration. With data at the heart of retailers’ transformational challenges, adopting a robust data strategy is vital to become ‘data-ready’ for retail tech adoption.

Taking a data-first approach

Taking a data-first approach comes down to two things — the quality of data and data integration — to drive a seamless, personalised customer experience. These elements combined enable retailers to connect customers, staff, and store technology in real time via cloud platforms, as well as to back-end systems such as e-commerce and CRM.

Building strong data literacy, maturity and culture do not happen overnight, but are underpinned by a data strategy which should reflect business goals and be shared with key stakeholders business-wide.

Creating an effective data strategy

A data strategy creates a kind of narrative in the business, around the role that data will play in an organisation’s future success. It should be clear and understandable, avoiding jargon and aligned to the business objectives. It should be practical and pragmatic, versus suggesting technology in an unstructured way that isn’t evidence-based when it comes to value.

Make it actionable — aim to do something with this data plan, for instance to increase brand loyalty with timely identification of a customer’s needs. This is a document which needs to inspire the business to think differently. The data strategy will need revising as the business evolves through different stages of maturity, so make it a live document.

The data strategy should comprise business objectives — setting out aspirations within the context of your current situation, for instance your current pain points and competitor activity in your specific space. It must set out your methodology and process for collecting different types of data across the organisation, identifying what that data will help you achieve. Set out some workstreams and initiatives to undertake to get there. It should have a clear roadmap with signposting from current to target state. The first step should be one a retailer can take tomorrow.

Benefits of a data-first strategy

Once data is in order — secure and compliant — retailers can take advantage of this to engage with customers and build loyalty and revenue. An omnichannel retail platform brings essential retail apps together with your existing systems, content, and data into a single colleague hub and is informed by retail data analytics.

Companies that utilise retail data analytics to improve their business tend to outperform their competitors as they gain a single customer view of the entire shopping journey and can reach out with relevant, personalised and timely engagement. In fact, Accenture’s personalisation Pulse Check Survey reported that 91 per cent of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognise, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations.

Using retail data analytics as a part of a clienteling app can improve retail operations, and increase sales in the following ways:

• Generating customer behaviour insights — Collecting data and analysing the results helps retailers to understand how your customers are shopping. By unifying their online and offline shopping channels they’ll enhance in-store customer service.
• Promoting long-term loyalty and repeat purchases — Retailers can filter their data to a personal level so that store associates can provide a superior clienteling experience. With data recommendations, store associates can focus on upselling while ensuring every product suits the shopper.
• Improving return on investment — Understanding the most popular products, customer demographics and recommendations means retailers can utilise their past campaign performances as well as current insights to create personal and effective promotional offers.
• Managing in-store operations — Retailers can make predictions to help with inventory management and streamline back-room processes. Data analytics can pinpoint product popularity, stock levels, speed of service, and average purchase value so retailers can efficiently manage in-store activity.
• Higher customer retention — An omnichannel retail strategy that focuses on personalising the shopping experience and bypasses the limitations of a single channel will encourage shoppers to return to store or buy from the brand online.
• Improving operational efficiency — An omnichannel platform that unifies several operations will shed light on any systems which have become redundant therefore allowing brands to pinpoint any avoidable drains on the operational budget.

It’s about data quality, not quantity

There’s no point in having vast amounts of data if you aren’t utilising it properly. Data must be compliant, high quality and integrated with all existing, new and third party systems to maximise the potential from any retail tech investment, boost long-term customer loyalty and revenue.

An effective data strategy will serve as the bedrock for all this, so that customers and store associates can be empowered in equal measure with the right product and customer data. Digital leaders will ensure consistent communication across all customer channels, and the success of their planned projects.

Related:

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Four key data management steps for effective ESG reporting — Patrick McCarthy, chief revenue officer at Precisely, provides four key steps for utilising data management in ESG reporting processes.

The post The importance of a robust data strategy in retail appeared first on Information Age.

Vandana Singal, director, solution consulting at Pimcore Global Services (a Happiest Minds company), discusses the importance of digital transformation for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies

It has been a time of revelation for the CPG industry and consumers. Just as panic buying for items like thermometers, toilet paper, bottled water, and hand sanitiser exposed a side we didn’t know, who would have thought that retail and CPG companies would lead the change and deliver on customer expectations? After all, as a McKinsey’s industry study reports, 40% of CPG firms with digital and analytics investments have gained returns just above the cost of capital.

With the onslaught of the pandemic, the digital transformation curve in retail and CPG segments began to register an epic climb. From $500 million in 2021, CPG manufacturers are set to increase their data and analytics services spending to $4 billion by 2030. The floodgates opened as retail and CPG firms quickly adapted to consumer sentiment, digitalisation, online ordering, and new delivery methods like buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickups.

While the two industries became the first responders in the pandemic, their legacy systems, processes, and capabilities have time and again hindered their opportunity to keep on reinventing and reimagining themselves. So, as CEOs of prominent CPG companies acknowledge the need to embrace and operate from a higher sense of purpose, often their organisations report a lack of skilled resources, out-of-date software models, and inadequate IT infrastructure. Undoubtedly, digitalisation has given them the courage to surge ahead in the uncharted future, but there is work to do: especially linking clear strategic vision to their actions.

With this in mind, here’s why digital transformation must occupy the centre in the future strategy of CPG companies.

Leading with a purpose

The pandemic revealed compulsions to shop in sustainable ways. Rather than wait for governments to make big-step changes, consumers promote retailers that help them ‘shop for values’. Along with organic products, fair trade, conscious commerce, and recyclables going up, retailers and CPGs scrutinise the brands allowed on their platforms.

A case in point is the online marketplace for premium sustainable goods – Hive. CPG ecopreneurs understand how aligning their business models to current thinking (around conscious commerce) relies heavily on data and analytics practices. In 2022, the critical CPG metrics of productivity, agility, speed to market, and customisation will see a new entrant — purpose. From operations to product design, the brand purpose for CPGs must be embedded into the end-to-end business.

Redefining customer value

A clutch of consumer trends emerged in late 2021. Millennial spending rocketed; social media made for the new shopping window as omnichannel spending rose; loyalty shake-ups escalated for retailers that reported stockouts; and consumers renewed engagement in out-of-home activities.

CPG and retails brands experienced intense growth during the pandemic (more absolute growth in 2020 than in the four years of 2016 to 2019) because CPG companies and retailers managed the supply chain disruptions and the unprecedented demand volatility. However, for CPGs to locate the new epicentres of consumption, they must realise the pandemic-triggered gravity shifts — namely, lifestyle shifts; work and leisure at home; relocation to non-urban spaces; and overall reduction to in-store shopping. Ultimately, customer value insights will fuel hyper-personalised product innovations.

Forever adapting to the next normal

The COVID-19 pandemic may have changed the CPG industry forever. The maelstrom forces of relevancy, safety, and affordability have meant that retailers must keep adapting to a continually new normal. Affordable health, hygienic, and organic commodities are commanding premiums, but the rules of establishing and reinforcing trust are changing. Brands with expert communication that focus on no-frills, unprejudiced compassion, and sharper value proposition messaging are maintaining the perception of quality.

What will 2022 and beyond look like? Going from responding to the pandemic, to recovering and navigating forward means management of several priorities simultaneously — tracking changing consumer preferences; identifying growth micro-pockets; adjusting to shifting commercial strategies; and finally embracing technology that makes them more agile to pursue opportunities.

Heavy focus on analytics

Contours of the next normal for CPG companies entail a consumer-centric, analytics-driven, comprehensive approach that increases top-line growth. The reality can, however, be disturbing. Consider a $3 billion+ organisation with over 30,000 products that still uses 100% manual, paper-based data management. This is thankfully changing.

On average, CPG companies reported an 8% increase in technology budgets over the past three years. The focus is clear: the shift from ‘passively digital’ and ‘exploring digital’, to ‘actively digital.’ CPG companies embrace predictable analytics and allied technologies building on cohesive data management platforms. For instance, Teamcore, an AI-based startup, uses machine learning to power intelligent workflow automation that tells CPGs and retailers why products aren’t selling and what they can do about it fast.

Customer service reigns supreme

A study details the four business models shaping the future of digital commerce: sharing; personalisation; replenishment; and service. Regardless of the model, the striking fact for retailers and CPGs remains the emphasis on customer service.

As CPG brands migrate to Direct-to-Consumer models (PepsiCo built an end-to-end D2C system – Snacks.com – in less than four weeks), customer service assumes higher significance. With more customers demanding customised relationships with brands, nurturing customer experience is a game-changer. Also, with the increasing volumes of cross-channel communications, CPGs and retailers must improve their customer service expertise. Be it email, chatbots, or social media, retailers and their customer service advisors must not only respond to all queries but do so with nuanced empathy in the COVID-affected environment.

Looking forward

In today’s uncertain economy, even as CPG business leaders study regional impacts, customer bases, and segmental demands to firm up their growth strategies, the emphasis on digital transformation (investments and advances) will not wane. The coming months will throw up more success stories of data science meeting fast-changing consumer demands, how CPGs and retailers are leveraging automation for flawless execution, or even leaning on sales data analytics and machine learning algorithms to circumvent market volatility.

The revelation period for the CPGs and retailers is poised for some exciting twists and turns. Stay tuned!

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WIT Interview: Jo Graham, CIO of Boohoo.com — Jo Graham, CIO of Boohoo.com and CIO of the Year at the 2022 Women in IT Awards UK, spoke to Information Age about the keys to success in her role, and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in tech.

The post Supercharging digital transformation in the CPG sector appeared first on Information Age.

Jo Graham, CIO of Boohoo.com and CIO of the Year at the 2022 Women in IT Awards UK, spoke to Information Age about the keys to success in her role, and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in tech

As the chief information officer at online fashion retailer Boohoo.com, Jo Graham has taken a people-focused approach to leadership in the ever competitive e-commerce space. Having overcome supply chain and personal challenges to help navigate the organisation through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, Graham delivered 140 projects during the first two years of the pandemic, as well as overseeing a business continuity plan to ensure resilience against threats to operations.

The tech leader was awarded with the accolade of CIO of the Year at the recent Women in IT Awards UK, and has demonstrated a keen focus and desire towards investing in a talent pool entrenched in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Graham spoke to Information Age about how she puts across her tech vision at Boohoo.com, the keys to ensuring DEI in the tech industry, and closing the skills gap in tech. You can watch the discussion below.

This interview is being presented in the lead-up to the 2022 Women in IT UK Summit, happening on the 19th May 2022. You can register your interest in attending the event here.

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The post WIT Interview: Jo Graham, CIO of Boohoo.com appeared first on Information Age.

Suzette Meadows, lead consultant, contact centre/unified communications at Exponential-e, discusses what retailers can learn from supply chain disruption

Supply chain disruption shows no sign of abating in 2022, with shipping industry experts warning that delays created by the pandemic are likely to continue well into this year, which suggests there’s more turbulence on the horizon for the retail sector. It’s a challenging market right now, particularly given the lack of warehouse space that many businesses are currently facing in the UK as e-commerce sales continue booming.

The learnings we take away from this situation, and the last two years as a whole, will be paramount in helping build better strategies, implement more efficient processes, and invest in better technologies to mitigate future challenges, and deliver a more seamless customer experience, whether online or in store.

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Investing in the right tools to deliver a consistent retail experience

Technology has undoubtably become influential in all aspects of our daily lives and has hit every part of the retail ecosystem. The impacts of the pandemic created a boom of online shoppers, who aren’t going away any time soon. Consumers are now more inclined to search and buy products online, with unlimited options as the tantalising grip – retailers though must endeavour to continuously adapt to keep ever with ever evolving customer demands. This goes for physical stores too, as customers that become more tech savvy increasingly expect brick-and-mortar stores to keep up with exciting and new digital innovations. An additional part of this retail ecosystem that can be revolutionised by technology is the industry’s operations, which can and should be stabilised and made more efficient.

Whilst no retailer can predict what will happen in the future, they can invest in technology that helps cope with erratic seasonal or supply rise and falls and help prepare for whatever lies ahead. Investing in software solutions that can help to stabilise operations and prepare for unknown terrains is a good place to start. For example, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can provide transparency into the entire business process by tracking all aspects of production or distribution, financials, and back office. Workforce management solutions also provide many features that analyse and predict customer demand and match them with available resources, to ensure you shift patterns and staffing levels are as efficient as possible

These kinds of tools are critical in supporting an omnichannel approach, streamlining processes and gaining greater insight into the business, allowing retailers to make real-time decisions based on what’s best for their customers and employees.

Contact centres are the new face of the store

With changing customer expectations, the majority now demand a seamless, fast-paced shopping experience, be it online or in-store. They want a fast and efficient approach to shopping, both in-store and online. This is also true of customer experience.

Inevitably, that will see our use of digital channels increase and further elevate the pivotal role contact centres now play in the retail sector. Through an omnichannel mode of customer service, contact centres can assign, manage and more effectively track actions and improve customer outcomes.

Customer service agents, in turn, are now at the heart of the digital service delivery as they interact with customers over digital channels such as webchat, video and social media. With access to customer data, the contact centre is ideally positioned to play a role in planning and managing contact across the customer lifecycle.

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Building stronger relationships through technology

Nearly two years into a pandemic, one undoubted learning is the importance of putting empathy at the heart of the customer experience. The use of digital channels, especially video is one way in which customer service agents can do so. Customers often show frustration when being forced to speak with bots and automated voices, as opposed to real people. Even if a customer appears frustrated online or on the phone when speaking with a human, it’s often a face-to-face interaction that gives the required added layer of communication to help take the heat out of escalating situations – body language.

Technology also plays an integral role in helping customer service agents build an accurate picture of a customer’s situation and as such, demonstrate greater empathy towards it. Using big data and analytics solutions for example can help them focus on what their customers are actually telling them. The point being that while human empathy is critical to a good customer experience, the best agents will not only be able to use their own skills, but will also be able to work alongside technology to improve their customer service delivery.

Using technology to drive better experiences on the high street

Retail organisations have been engaged in a battle between online and in-store shopping for some time. While this battle was certainly heightened by the pandemic, plenty of ‘e-tailers’ and traditional retailers have weathered the challenges and come out the other side stronger. Typically, it’s been those that have demonstrated ingenuity, persistence and a willingness to innovate.

One brilliant example is a UK-based pioneer in sustainable energy, using technology to deliver seamless, fully immersive customer experiences, intelligently utilising data to enhance service quality and streamline the purchasing process. Its use of remote payments and digital menus on its innovative electric forecourts makes it possible to get deep insights into customer behaviour, and in doing so, create a foundation for truly personalised, bespoke experiences to be automated. For example, when a visitor connects to charge their car, their regular coffee could be automatically ordered for them, or even a booking made at the gym, or one of the featured restaurants.

Retailers that follow suit will be able to maintain that all-important human touch, while simultaneously introducing a level of efficiency that would previously have been inconceivable.

A strong network – the foundation to seamless operations

The ups and downs of the last two years have made it clear: retailers must continuously innovate to compete, and that means make the most of the tools available. Only through the help of technology can they support a seamless customer experience, and consequently, future growth.

Solutions that enable scalability and flexibility in particular will be crucial to building a more resilient sector that can handle peaks and troughs in demand. Investing in strong IT solutions that allow for this flexibility, scalability and that are designed to meet each unique requirement, is the foundation to seamless operations.

The post What the retail sector can learn from supply chain disruption appeared first on Information Age.

Teodor Blidarus, CEO and co-founder of FintechOS, wonders whether buy now, pay later (BNPL) can remain a widely viable retail lending approach post-pandemic

BNPL is a hot topic for financial services. Lockdown has driven a surge in online sales, and BNPL is taking up market share as a digital alternative to traditional credit. Is it time for a showdown?

Online sales rose by over 30% over the first year of lockdown, with some industries seeing jumps of up to 60% in digital sales. BNPL allowed retailers to embed instalment payment plan options directly into the digital sales journey on their site during a period of rising online sales, but is this the only driver for the surges in the BNPL market?

In March 2021, The Ascent found more than 55% of consumers said they’d used BNPL, up from less than 38% in July 2020. 41% of respondents said they’d done so to save money in case of unforeseen circumstances, while 25% said it was because they’d already lost income.

Due to the coronavirus lockdown, consumers have been tightening their belts. This has made BNPL an attractive option for spreading costs out over a longer period, but what happens once the economy has returned to normal?

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Can Gen-Z be trusted with BNPL?

BNPL may be a new buzzword, but it’s not a new concept. It’s estimated that, nearly a hundred years ago, in 1925, one out of every seven dollars spent in the USA was as part of an instalment payment plan.

The popularity of paying for items in instalments was actually a primary reason for the Great Depression, as consumers taking advantage of this new purchase option fell behind on payments and got themselves into debt.

That’s the source of the very reasonable fear that BNPL will cause another credit crisis as it enables consumers to spend beyond their means. Over 30% of BNPL customers have made a late payment, so this doesn’t seem irrational.

Yet, reports have shown a 50% increase in the number of US consumers who claim to understand the consequences of BNPL. This isn’t surprising, given that 97% of young people believe financial literacy is important. With the younger generation becoming more financially savvy than their elders, is BNPL now a safer option than it once was?

Research shows 68% of Gen-Z budget and save more responsibly than their elders, while according to Finextra, more than a third of young people in the UK have over £1,000 in savings.

The pros and cons of BNPL

For consumers, BNPL means:

• No hard credit checks: Only a soft credit check is required, which won’t impact credit scores whether accepted or declined.
• No interest or fees: Since BNPL is paid in set instalments over a planned period, there is usually no interest charged. Likewise, since retailers pay BNPL providers to meet customer demand, consumers don’t need to pay fees.
• Retroactive take-up: Customers can take up BNPL retroactively on products they’ve already paid for if they have second thoughts or unforeseen circumstances occur.

Retailers, on the other hand, can expect a 20-30% increase in conversion. There only seem to be two outstanding points in favour of credit cards:

1. Rewards and special offers: Firstly, credit cards often reward customers with benefits like travel insurance or frequent-flier miles. BNPL, however, could easily take on those options if consumers are interested in them.
2. Flexibility: BNPL is a set plan that covers a specific purchase, whereas credit cards can provide a flexible amount of credit that can be used in various places, paid off in part, then spent once again. Yet, of course, this leaves the possibility open for debts to spiral out of control.

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BNPL taking USD 10 billion from credit providers

It’s no wonder that BNPL is taking share of wallet from credit cards wherever they’re prevalent. In fact, McKinsey believes BNPL Fintechs are “…diverting USD 8 billion to USD 10 billion in annual revenues away from banks”.

This isn’t the end of the story for BNPL players, however. Various BNPL Fintechs, from Klarna to Affirm, are now offering credit cards to those users who trust their digital specialty, but still need the flexibility of traditional credit.

Not just content with taking a share of the pie from credit card providers, BNPL players are now coming for the rest of it. In this environment, it’s essential for traditional credit providers to offer the same kind of digital options.

Overcoming the barriers to BNPL

So, how can traditional credit providers and banks enter the BNPL space? It’s a recognised product model and straightforward to institute. There’s only one thing getting in the way: technology.

According to a BCG survey, 70% of companies failed at digital transformation and received almost no return on their investment. Digital transformation isn’t a sound investment, at the moment, so how do you enter the BNPL space without overhauling your technology?

That’s where high-productivity financial infrastructure comes in. Innovative digital technology can connect with your existing infrastructure and allow you to offer innovative embedded finance products like BNPL without having to replace your technology.

This is more than just a bundle of digital tools acting independently. It’s a new way of looking at banking architecture from the core out. Without it, BNPL providers will continue to take market share away from traditional credit providers who are stuck in a cycle of failed digital transformation.

The post Retail lending: can BNPL still work post-pandemic? appeared first on Information Age.

Martin Gaffney, vice-president EMEA at Yugabyte, shares a cautionary tale of picking the wrong software for a modern omnichannel service, and explains why such an approach won’t work long-term without edge computing

Once upon a time, there was (and still very much is) a huge global retail giant trying to run a vast e-commerce site. Featuring thousands of sellers and millions of products, this was supported by multiple applications which handled large volumes of data and detailed how all the products for sale were listed, displayed, grouped, filtered, searched and presented.

They aimed to give users a personalised, seamless buying experience. To do this, the organisation, quite rightly, was making full use of microservices at scale. These were powered by a cloud-native technology stack exploiting all the right names: Kafka, Akka Streams, and Apache Cassandra as the database. And all these great services were being deployed in a multi-data centre topology, using a multi-cloud deployment strategy.

You’re probably beginning to suspect an enterprise CIO ‘but’ coming. And you’d be right, however, it might surprise you to learn that though this wasn’t (or isn’t!) a telco, or an IoT company, or real-time monitoring system — the ‘gotcha’ was around edge computing.

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Close to the edge

If you’ve been monitoring the progress of edge, this won’t surprise you. Edge is a distributed computing paradigm focused on bringing computation and data storage closer to the sources of data to reduce latency and save bandwidth.

If, as many do, you see ‘edge’ as a tool for specific applications rather than for business, well, things have moved on. If you run databases in the cloud, you may need to update your thinking around edge computing.

Before we get back to my customer experience war story, a brief explanation is in order.

Edge is not a new topic for the Internet of Things or 5G people. Really, it’s not that new for any company that runs a network to support a business; it’s just that expectations have changed. Most industries have some requirement to keep track of big pieces of plant and kit, be it manufacturing, transportation, logistics, energy, or oil and gas. In the past, if it took a few seconds to get data back when you called up a request from your server, it didn’t matter. But, business started to speed up, and you needed that answer back quicker, and you also started to ask many, smaller and smaller things how they were doing too.

In the past, retailers had their own on-site computer that talked back to the company network and reported stock levels and all that good stuff. All this was fine when there wasn’t a rush or any issues, but a network failure between a high street store and the main data centre or cloud farm meant (among other things) the checkouts go down, and you can’t trade until it’s fixed centrally. While this is happening you are losing money and customers are voting with their feet.

The in-store network is now much better. If I’m in Waitrose with my little handheld supplied device, scanning an intriguing box of cornflakes, that purchase gets zapped to the equivalent of the local server in the manager’s office and is added to my virtual basket. The speed of that microtransaction isn’t important; but if there was no local network and it had to be pushed all the way to the store’s data centre in Bracknell to reach the price database, checkout would be really slow, especially given the multiple transactions by multiple shoppers.

I’m a picky customer, so I like to do some online price and product checking before I buy. If I see some great cornflakes on the website, or some amazing new antioxidant prune juice concoction for my health kick, and it isn’t in store after you promised me it would be, I wouldn’t be too happy.

If I am online and buy the last Apple MacBook Pro 64Gb in Rose Gold in your shop – you had better tell the store right now, before you take my money. You must be able to tell them this is now sold, and they cannot sell it to the customer at the front of the queue eager to buy it.

Keeping the busy digital-savvy shopper happy

So, in a world full of people like me, who want to interact with the retailer on that local network, but also in the cloud, data interactions have become more complicated than they used to be.

The store now needs to make sure it’s got my item on the shelf, or in the backroom ready for me if I’ve reserved it. If I travel to pick it up and it’s been sold to someone else, I’m not going to be pleased. Picture the annoyed tweets and poor Google reviews, which nobody can afford now that we all shop and compare in cyber space. To effectively deliver the 360-degree customer service you have promised, you need to tie the two — the shop network and the bigger company cloud network — very tightly together.

Ultimately, the latency and efficiency of return of message I expect from my industrial edge, I now need in my previously more relaxed retail context.

Another aspect of this is the ultra-fast, optimised pricing you now need. You can’t leave that to some buyer in the main office, the computers have got to be doing this with all your EPOS and SKU data in real time. The best way of managing this and achieving true commercial ‘edge’ capability is via a distributed database.

So, you distribute part of your main working product database into each location. Every supermarket outlet gets a copy of the price and product location database, which is constantly updated in real time. If it gets disconnected from the network, it doesn’t matter; prices are the latest ones it had before disconnecting, so it can carry on and resynchronise when the network comes back.

Even better, because of the way these databases are written, integration between the edge (the store) and the cloud is quick, interactive and automated. You don’t have to worry about batch jobs running at the end of the day, or manual intervention to ensure that everything is working, scripting, monitoring, checking and recovering effectively. All that is now built in, because these are the intrinsic features of a modern distributed SQL database.

Is this the end of the Point of Sale (PoS)?

Jeff Watkins, chief for engineering at AND Digital, discusses whether digital transformation during the pandemic has brought an end to the Point of Sale (PoS). Read here

Right tool for an edge-y job

This brings us back to my real-world customer example. The client was trying to do all this with NoSQL, and it just wasn’t cutting it.

The company ended up having unsustainable difficulties maintaining true consistency across their range. Too many times, things were no longer available, or they were failing to sell something because people didn’t know it was available at the right time at the right place. This ticked their customers and their selling partners off. Worst of all, the central IT team was spending un-budgeted money fixing and unpicking the inconsistencies in the database.

In technical terms, the NoSQL database they’d chosen was just not adequate for the systems of record that formed the core of its commercial responsibilities.

The good news is that by going for a distributed SQL option instead, they achieved extremely high-volume ACID-transactional consistency across a multi-region deployment on multi-table transactions. They also saw very low latency for high volume reads, and the system is now far more bullet-proof in terms of uptime and resiliency.

In a world where you want to achieve high customer service with superior customer experience, and gain full value from omnichannel at the data level, a distributed, transactional database with edge computing may be your best option.

It’s good to have a choice, but even better to get what you thought you were buying in the first place.

The post Why omnichannel won’t be successful long-term without edge computing appeared first on Information Age.

Alex Sayyah, CEO of Aleran Software, provides five lessons for e-commerce organisations to learn in order to build their B2B audience

If your company supplied popcorn tubs to movie theaters, microchips to auto manufacturers or furniture to department stores last year, you have my heartfelt sympathies. But take heart: you’re not the only the B2B leader who is happy to leave 2021 behind.

The pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in everyone’s offices, supply chains and public health systems. Every industry scrambled to find new ways to attract, engage and service customers. Companies lost longtime clients whom they believed were rock solid. Everyone was forced to pivot, retool, furlough or do worse as long-held assumptions about market demand shifted.

The new year promises to be different, however. B2B is booming because commerce is becoming e-commerce. Forrester Research recently predicted that B2B e-commerce in the US would soar from $1.1 trillion in 2020 to $1.8 trillion by 2023. I’ve seen an inexhaustible range of companies — small, startup, enterprise, legacy — smartly shift their entire selling process to the digital realm.

These trends provide B2B companies with a roadmap. You can’t beat e-commerce, so join it. While there may be no guarantees, if you know your audience and embrace these five lessons that have emerged from the crucible of the last year, you’ll increase your chances of success.

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Jo Smith, CTO of OnBuy, spoke to Information Age about the keys to success in her role, and challenges that she’s overcome at the online marketplace. Read here

Relationships

Relationships are more important than ever, but no one wants to talk to you — at least yet. B2B is not just about knowing your target audience, but also your buyer’s journey. Frankly, your B2B target prospects probably don’t want to talk to you until they’ve spent ample time researching your products, services, company, brand and reputation.

Keep these numbers in mind: as many as 70% of B2B buyers have decided to make a purchasing before they even contact sales. Over 70% conduct online research before purchasing. Nine out of 10 say online content plays a “moderate to major” role in their decision to make a purchase, and 62% start with a web search as one of their first three steps toward buying. 33% research products now more than before COVID. Almost 90% would just rather run all or part of their buying journey themselves.

You’ve got a lot more ground to cover well before your buyers reach the on-ramp, which means your presence, your content and messaging must be aligned before you’ve even met your business-customers. Controlling the narrative ahead of time is how those relationships begin.

Access

You may never again set foot in the same room as your best customer. Reluctantly or not, we were already making the shift to digital platforms at Aleran, but COVID-19 gave us a very big push. There are certainly B2B sales teams waiting to knock on doors again, but only 20% of B2B buyers would like to return to in-person sales, McKinsey found.

That reluctance extends into all arenas, including suitcase-and-sample scenarios where field sales were the norm, such as medical and pharma. 75% of sellers and buyers now prefer remote selling, even after the lockdowns ended. The shift isn’t just about not wanting to be in a room with a stranger. An enormous social, behavioural, and logistical transformation has occurred. E-commerce is the new access.

Taking the next step: how will B2B sales evolve in 2022?

Kevin O’Regan, senior vice-president EMEA at Seismic, predicts how B2B sales will evolve over the course of 2022. Read here

Technology

You need to grow and tend to relationships with your target audience, but those relationships will only be as good as the technology you deploy. Your technology is your connection. I’ve seen too many organisations succumb to the fear that digital platforms will take all the flavor out of their brand. But if you choose the right solution, you’re going to have more interaction, more connection, and more opportunities to convey your brand. E-commerce soars when it’s part of a high-quality omnichannel solution designed with B2B complexities in mind.

Still not sure if tech is the answer? Private equity firms — key players in the B2B ecosystem —tend to keep their finger on the pulse of future-friendly concepts. You can sense which way the wind is blowing by the new talent they bring in.

For example, PE firm Sterling Group just brought in a new technology director, Carsten Weber, to lead tech value creation across its portfolio. Sterling views technology investments as a critical way to boost “meaningful opportunities for value creation at industrial companies”. Take another look at that word: meaningful. A digital first business growth strategy isn’t a temporary trend — it’s the differentiator. Without technology, there aren’t meaningful opportunities for value creation.

Connection

It might seem counterintuitive, but digital drives more human connection. One of today’s most compelling paradoxes is that while markets are more complex, and the buyer’s journey has a thousand detours — I’ll get to that point in a moment — there’s a clear imperative in that complexity and journey. Bring your digital A-game along with your values and best practices. Empower your sales teams to provide an impeccable level of responsiveness, personalisation and flexibility. If you’re concerned that you’re dropping the ball, you’re probably dropping the ball. If you don’t know if there are gaps in your sales process, there are likely gaps.

Another neat paradox: given our reliance on remote platforms, B2B and B2C are more related than ever. B2B has always eyed B2C for cues on how to best attract and build a customer base. Now, you don’t have to look that far. Without focusing on every individual consumer transaction, you’re still focusing on people. Often, the B2B buying process involves between six and 10 decision makers who each perform their own research with their own agendas, concerns, and relationships to each other. In certain sectors, that decision is also a moving target.

Concurrent with the rapid-fire shifts wrought by the pandemic is a quicksilver cadence for technology and process developments. New competitors emerge all the time. Your job is to make the process of deciding and therefore connecting easier, simpler, and — here’s that word again — more meaningful.

Contact is loyalty

In one of his recent columns, author and angel investor Maynard Webb addressed the heartbreak and surprise that companies experience when losing customers they assumed were “locked in.” As the former COO of eBay, Webb knows a thing or two about the ground shifting under his feat. Companies always need to know how customers feel about their relationship, he wrote. You shouldn’t have to ask. If you don’t know, you’ve lost contact.

Lean into the power and scope of an omnichannel marketing strategy that integrates online and offline marketing tools (yes, you can still make a phone call) and a smart sales team that works in tandem with marketing. You’ll be able to keep that contact alive. Aim to forge lasting connections and relationships with all the decision-makers involved in a buy. Make sure that each one of those six to 10 folks is accounted for.

While it’s key to have all the information out there already, provide your teams with even more — demos, walk-throughs, print, digital assets, interactive catalogues — so every contact point is also an opportunity leveraged to educate and enlighten. Your audience should be able to understand and appreciate your features, functions, and value. The more they know, the more they can buy into that value you’re providing.

This is all happening right now. While it’s a pleasure to say goodbye to 2021, these realities have been coming to the fore for years. The beauty of B2B’s evolution is that we now have the tools, the technology, and the wisdom to know how to create a successful multi-dimensional B2B selling strategy. All we have to do now is follow through.

The post Five lessons for building your B2B e-commerce audience appeared first on Information Age.

Ben Wellman, brand program manager at OpSec Security, discusses what brands need to consider when it comes to retail in the metaverse

Few people would have heard of the word ‘metaverse’ until Mark Zuckerberg’s October 2021 announcement, but since then it has become a new buzzword, with expectations that it will have a profound effect on all areas of our lives, including our shopping habits.

The metaverse is a shared virtual 3D world or bunch of worlds, which are immersive, interactive and collaborative. In contrast to the regular internet, which is something you look at, with this version of the internet, you are inside it, where you experience it as a virtual version of yourself – basically as an avatar.

This exciting virtual world full of avatars can be used for practically anything, whether it’s hanging out with friends playing games, for work, enjoying a concert or shopping.

The hugely popular online social game Fortnite was quick grasp the potential of the metaverse, when in 2019, it launched a live concert within the game’s virtual space. Here, players were able to attend a live Marshmello concert, and a year later, rapper Travis Scott delivered a five-concert series, attracting nearly 50 million attendees.

Meanwhile, in an effort to build recognition, skateboarding brand Vans launched a virtual skatepark in Roblox that lets players try new tricks, earning points to redeem in a virtual store to customise their avatar. Vans described the metaverse as the best place to build brand awareness among their core demographic of 13 to 35-year-olds and that by the end of 2021, the online park had seen more than 48 million visitors.

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Get ready to shop in the metaverse

The face of retail is everchanging, as we have seen with the rise of e-commerce and pop-up shops on social media. Now, there is an exciting opportunity for retailers to go to the next level and kickstart their move into VR, using the metaverse as a new and exciting platform to sell their goods in a virtual environment.

Retail in the metaverse will not be limited by channel, device or medium – it will be all around us, in a multi-layered, extended reality, in which the world becomes interactive, connected and shoppable. For example, can you imagine sitting inside Jaguar Land Rover’s latest electric car to see how it looks and feels, then a moment later attending an exclusive Valentino fashion show, before visiting Burberry’s store in Tokyo? Well, that is the future of retail, and it’s already happening now.

Jaguar Land Rover uses VR to let consumers virtually test-drive its Velar car. After the recent boom in fashion and virtual gaming platforms collaborating with each other, the industry has seen some of the world’s luxury labels introduce their designs digitally to gamers. Among them is Valentino, which has been working with Drest to host the world’s first luxury fashion game, which was launched in December 2021. Meanwhile, in 2021 British luxury fashion house Burberry created an interactive virtual replica of its flagship Ginza store. Visitors were able to navigate around the virtual store and purchase items from Burberry’s Spring/Summer 2021 collection by selecting digital icons.

This is the future of retail therapy, where the metaverse has the potential to bring a whole new meaning to the ‘virtual shopping’ experience and presents exciting opportunities for brands. Whereas bricks and mortar once defined how and where we shopped, the immersive worlds accessed through VR headsets in the comfort of our own homes will be limitless. Some even describe this as 360-degree retail, where storytelling and new forms of engagement will become normal.

Consumers and brands face new challenges

While the metaverse may be a golden ticket of new opportunities for retailers, there are very real security risks that also need to be considered. For example, in this new, yet to be explored metaverse, there’s the danger of consumers coming across a virtual man wearing a trench coat selling fake designer watches. How can consumers tell if he is selling the genuine article, or fakes? Ensuring your brand and products are protected in the metaverse is going to be a serious challenge.

Monitoring for intellectual property (IP) infringement across the various components of the metaverse will not be easy. If consumers have bad experiences in the metaverse, such as buying fake goods, this can cause great harm to their reputation online and in the real world too. This is why it is important that they take steps to protect their brand and IP as well as their customers. It has been suggested that operators within the metaverse should establish strategies for protecting users’ IP, in the same vein to how YouTube, eBay and Amazon work to protect rights holders from illicit activity on their platforms.

Retailers should work with expert partners and invest in technology that can help them detect counterfeit goods whether they are sold online or in the metaverse. By using tools such as AI monitoring software, brands will be able to identify if and where their products are being advertised at significantly lower prices. This should instantly prompt an alert so that they can take action by reporting illegitimate offers.

Brands should also adopt an effective QR strategy that allows consumers to track and trace every single step of the production process to the finished product. They can do this by accessing the brand’s website where they can authenticate the purchase and register it as well as seeing its lifecycle.

Finally, leveraging blockchain solutions can also help create a more transparent supply chain and reinforce consumer trust in the product being sold. Blockchains tell the story of where the products have been and how they have been produced, which will reassure the consumer that what they are buying is authentic.

While we are in the early stages of the metaverse, its evolution will no doubt pick up pace with the roll-out of 5G. Retailers and brands that are stuck in the real world and don’t embrace this new and exciting technology stand to be left behind. Equally, those who enter the metaverse will very much need to stay one step ahead of the cyber criminals.

The post Retail in the metaverse: considerations for brands appeared first on Information Age.

B2B live video shopping provider Bambuser has announced the launch of a new platform, dedicated to helping brands set up and improve their live commerce presence

The new Bambuser Academy platform looks to strengthen the organisation’s position as a leader in live commerce, and educate brands on how to get the best out of such infrastructure.

Its target audience will range from e-commerce professionals, to retail strategists and marketeers, with the initiative set to feature beginner, intermediate and advanced courses.

Programmes will cover production, editorial strategies, e-commerce optimisation and content creation.

A relatively new digital sales opportunity and marketing channel, live commerce has proved vital in gaining and gauging real-time feedback for retail professionals.

Marketing and retail operations powered by livestreaming are known to be increasingly gaining traction among brands, with social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram getting involved in recent times.

According to Coresight Research, the live commerce sector could reach a $25 billion market share in the US by 2023.

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“Nothing is more important to us than our clients’ success, which Bambuser Academy will empower them to achieve,” said Maryam Ghahremani, CEO of Bambuser.

“It will also meet the retail industry’s huge demand for education on live video shopping. Bambuser is the best equipped company with the most qualitative and quantitative data within the industry, so it is a natural step for us to trailblaze education and continue to lead the way.”

Head of Bambuser Academy appointed

In line with the platform’s launch, Cecilia Demant has joined Bambuser as the Head of Bambuser Academy.

Demant, who is also active on YouTube with a subscriber base totalling over 35,000, rose to become one of the first editors in chief for a notable brand using live video shopping.

The new appointment will bring vast experience in producing and hosting over 250 live shows using Bambuser’s technology, as well as understanding around being both behind and in front of the camera.

Tech Leader Profile: OnBuy CTO discusses her role in the e-commerce space

Jo Smith, CTO of OnBuy, spoke to Information Age about the keys to success in her role, and challenges that she’s overcome at the online marketplace. Read here

About Bambuser

Launched in 2007, Sweden-based Bambuser has been powering video shopping infrastructure for brands such as Samsung, Farfetch and LVMH.

The organisation launched its One-to-Many product in 2019, which can be integrated with third-parties, including Salesforce, Shopify and Magento.

More information on the newly launched Bambuser Academy, including how to enroll, can be found here.

The post Bambuser Academy launched to educate brands on live commerce appeared first on Information Age.

As CTO of UK online marketplace OnBuy, Jo Smith is constantly looking into how her organisation can continue to thrive using tech in today’s highly competitive e-commerce space. With demand for online retail infrastructure skyrocketing since the start of the pandemic, OnBuy aims to give more power to small businesses and consumers across the country, through facilitating secure transactions powered by PayPal, and not selling its own products. Prior to joining OnBuy in August 2021, Smith served as CTO of Virtual College Ltd.

In this Q&A, Smith discusses the keys to success in her role at OnBuy, the skills needed to prosper, and the biggest tests she’s had to overcome.

How do you go about communicating your tech vision to the organisation?

For me, the tech vision has to be aligned with the business vision. I never put this together in isolation and won’t make assumptions before coming into the business. Through making the effort of aligning business and tech, you’re always pushing against an open door, because you end up explaining how business goals will be met using technology.

When coming into the business, I look into the operations of that business, and also find out where we are from a technical perspective, especially where our pain points are which are holding us back. Businesses that I’ve gone into previously have suffered from a number of issues, whether this be through lack of performance or outages occurring, lack of process or missing skill sets and therefore the improvements that need to be made not only improve tech operations, but also the general operations of the business, so it is a joint benefit, making communication far easier and often received more positively. This also helps towards communicating with the workforce, because when staff recognise these issues are being acknowledged and addressed, they’re more likely to work alongside you as you are working towards a common goal.

What are the most important skills that are needed to successfully carry out your role?

Listening would be the most important skill. I’ve served in many technical roles, and early on in my career senior members of staff would often walk in and assume they knew more than I did. This can demotivate you, so I always try to remember that when I go about my work as a CTO.

I’m surrounded by experts who have each worked in cyber security, infrastructure, development and other areas of tech for 10-15 years, and as a CTO you can’t go in and assume you have all those skillsets yourself. You need to get all those experts with those different and valuable skills to work together effectively, to meet business needs. This also means asking the right questions, without fear of any question possibly being daft, and interpreting what each member of the team can offer, before determining what route to go down. You should never be afraid to ask questions in this role, and relay back to ensure you’ve understood staff feedback.

What is the role of the CTO?

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What are the biggest challenges you have faced in your role?

At OnBuy, the biggest challenge has been recruitment — getting the right people into the business. New hires not only need the right skillset, but also need to be a good fit for the team. There’s no point bringing someone in who has the right skills, but isn’t a good enough fit. But overall, finding those right candidates in the job market, and gaining their interest in working for the business, has been a big challenge.

Another major test for me revolves around OnBuy’s rapid growth; it’s a fantastic business with so much going on, so it can be difficult to keep up with everything that there is to learn about the organisation. I’ve now been here for five months, and with all the aspects of the job I’ve been getting involved in, it already feels like I’ve been here for years! It’s all staying focused on doing 10 things right, rather than trying to get 100 things right and never achieving it.

I’ve been quite lucky in that the last three businesses I’ve been a part of, I’ve served as the first IT director or first CTO, so when I arrived at OnBuy, I felt reasonably prepared for being the first CTO here as well and the challenges that the business faces.

What advice would you give to other tech leaders in your position?

Never assume you know it all. I’ve learned a lot from places where someone’s come in with pre-conceived ideas, and you wonder how much they really know having not worked in the business before. I’d advise talking to the team before you come in. Before joining OnBuy, I spent evenings after work at my last job talking to the OnBuy team — I probably sent them barmy, but finding out how operations work is vital.

People may have chuckled when I have referred to previous experience in the process of looking at a problem to solve. But it can be helpful to use this to show how to possibly overcome it, while not dictating that’s how it should be done. It’s also important to base your strategy on the maturity that the business is at, as this will always vary, and measures that worked at one organisation, may not work at another, especially five or more years later.

Finally, never fix something that isn’t broken for the sake of making your mark. If something only needs tweaking, it may only be a case of further staff support being needed, then enable that to happen, and if something really is broken, fix it.

The post Tech Leader Profile: OnBuy CTO discusses her role in the e-commerce space appeared first on Information Age.

Alexander Graf, co-founder and co-CEO of Spryker and co-author of The E-Commerce Book, discusses why the fortunes of social commerce lie outside of social media

Social commerce, or livestream shopping, is forecast to transform social media into one big shopping channel. The whole buying experience, from initial product discovery to check-out, will take place on social media, with the consumer never stepping out of the app.

A lot of serious players agree this will happen. TikTok has launched its shopping facility in the UK, stating: “E-commerce is a big opportunity for TikTok, and it’s something we’re investing in significantly. We think it’s a really significant moment.” It also stated that its internal data shows that one in four TikTokers either research a product or make a purchase after watching a video mentioning a product.

More consumers are shopping on social media platforms like Facebook, which could end up benefiting smaller brands. Accenture predicts social commerce will be worth $1.2 trillion by 2025, growing three times faster than traditional e-commerce. It also claims that by 2025, Gen Z will be the second largest set of social commerce users (29% of all expenditure), followed by Gen X, which will account for 28% and Baby Boomers only 10%. As a result, social will comprise no less than 17% of all e-commerce sales by then, too.

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Predictions miss the mark

Yet, I believe these predictions may not reflect the development of social purchasing that will actually occur. In the noughties, it was perfectly conceivable that Maria and Anna, friends on Facebook, interact after Anna posts “I think these products are good” on her profile, and Maria is influenced to then buy a product on Anna’s recommendation.

Even back then, all this sounded very promising, but it just wasn’t happening. A few years later, thanks to social media, users were now potentially very much at the centre of an online purchasing chain, either helping generate a buying impulse with a Facebook status update or by supporting the brand by writing SEO-helpful product reviews.

As I said then, “Social commerce is still about selling, but now it is no longer the product that is the beginning, but the human being [and] the user is much more in the foreground as a producer or at the beginning of the process. Providers are not within reach or transaction competition, but in competition for the attention of the user. For Amazon, I am a buyer; for Etsy and Polyvore, a producer.”

At that time, potential consumers needed to be lured into the retailer’s environment online/offline, then they purchased the product. But the purchase only happened after a participation process involving the consumer searching on the website, asking friends, sharing ratings, etc. We were all going to share, “like” things, then leave social signals on the web and people would participate in the online transaction both before the purchase, during the purchase, and after it. There were lots of moving parts, and a lot of free work by the consumer to help the brand.

None of these services, sites, or ideas made it work. Not one survived the Amazon wave, or the ASOS wave. The reality was that though people were there to buy, and payment facilities were there if they wanted them, people still went to Amazon or even – at the time, less so now – the Sears or Walmart online shop.

That’s because users prefer to buy from solid e-commerce portals. They trust the range, they trust the safety, they trust the fulfilment process. On Facebook, people expect to connect to share ideas, to share pictures from their prom night, or whatever. On Amazon, they buy stuff. The gap between those two orientations has always been so wide that it has just never been possible for even the biggest social networks to become relevant players in the e-commerce space.

Instagram potential

Have things changed enough to make this latest wave of social commerce viable? There is potential for change with Instagram. Within Instagram, there are influencers and brands that were solely built within the social ecosystem. So it’s not a brand manufacturer using a network as an advertising channel, but a brand built within the channel. If there’s some sort of exclusivity of the product and an easy way to check out, the two worlds may be merging in that specific instance.

Social commerce could well be huge in China or India. WeChat is already a big force in social commerce. For various historical and social reasons, Chinese consumers did not experience ‘Retail 1.0’ (bricks) as much as Western consumers. So social commerce doesn’t have so many gaps to bridge. Another key difference with Chinese social is that it often supports a network system where 10 other friends can agree on buying a product and then get a discount together, which is behaviour we have not really seen scaling in Western markets yet.

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Adding social to e-commerce environments

A new generation is emerging that may not feel so strongly about buying from Amazon, rather than through social channels. But as it stands, advertising on Facebook and other social media environments drives consumers to businesses but does not facilitate the sale. Where I see social commerce, though, is on Amazon, in a qualified way – using dark patterns in marketing. So a consumer might see on Amazon that there are 100 other people looking at the same product, and 20 people bought it in the last hour. There’s only 40 available, so buy now to get your 5% discount.

This is used a lot on hotel booking sites, where it’s claimed so many people are looking at this same room, so you should buy now. This probably isn’t true, but is a neat conversion trick. I think we will see more of this type of use of social signals in e-commerce environments. I predict that social commerce applied to existing sales platforms in this way looks likely to be a stronger contender for the future of retail than social commerce or livestream shopping that is embedded within people’s social media experience.

The post Social commerce has a bright future – but not on social media appeared first on Information Age.

The pandemic has forced a shake-up of the retail industry, and 2021 saw some radical changes in sales models, with traditional in-store retailers adopting digital apps and clienteling to offer a hybrid in-store and digital presence. This created an innovative digital impact on the consumer experience and brought back the human touch of ‘in-store’ assistants to support the sales process. The chasm of customer service standards has widened, with those organisations which embraced digital transformation outclassing others who have retained their existing business models. 2022 may be the year for retail brands left behind to pay the price for holding back on innovation, and invest in digital technologies.

Innovative retailers have been pushing the boundaries of technology’s potential to deliver an omnichannel digital customer experience, and we predict that this digital revolution in retail will step up a gear next year. Meanwhile, consumer lifestyle, behaviours and values have continued to evolve, to include a buyer’s increasing sense of purpose, community and ethical responsibility. It will be critical in 2022 for retailers to have a strong business purpose which is aligned to a greater social belief, customer lifestyle value, or environmental cause than its core products and services, which creates an emotional link between the brand and its consumers.

Three sectors primed for a digital commerce revolution

Boris Lokschin, co-founder and CEO of Spryker Systems, identifies three sectors primed for a digital commerce revolution. Read here

Omnichannel all the way

As Gartner has affirmed, omnichannel will be omnipresent. Retailers that woke up to the necessity for connecting all their channels during the pandemic will continue to benefit from the transformation to their business, while those that have yet to commit to evolving the customer experience will find themselves increasingly falling behind.

Data integration is vital

Data integration, harmonisation and intelligent management will become even more vital to retailers wanting to offer exceptional, seamless customer experiences. Integrating legacy, third party and new systems to make the data work for them will be central to their omnichannel ambitions. Delaying or putting integration off won’t be an option, as customer demands increase, and retailers need to become more proactive in meeting their needs.

This means educating retailers and their CXO decision-makers across the board about how quickly and easily they can use what they have already to launch omnichannel services, from clienteling to order management, workflow, and fulfilment.

WIT Summit Canada — establishing hybrid leadership and digital-first customer service

The recent WIT Summit Canada hosted an array of discussions between IT and business leaders from across Canada, on how they’re looking to recover from the pandemic, and the importance of workforce diversity. Read here

Evolution of the workforce

As diversity and inclusion become central to every business’ recruitment and development strategies, the shape of the workforce will continue to evolve. In retail, as across wider industry, this will mean that all businesses will be expected to have fair, transparent, supportive people policies which will need to stand up to public scrutiny. Retailers will increasingly use people values as a way to differentiate between and select vendors or suppliers to work with. The role of the store associate will continue to be elevated as they grow into their roles as tech-enabled shopping companions, whether they’re in store or doing a virtual consultation.

Improving in-store and online customer experiences in 2022 will involve digital innovation and intelligent data management, to create truly personalised information which is communicated with a higher purpose – all of which is delivered via customers’ preferred channels and part of an omnichannel strategy.

To maintain competitive advantage, retailers will need to implement a future-proof, highly optimised, data-driven and customer-focused solution which can provide exceptional digital experiences.

The rise of the conscious consumer

Over the last 18 months, consumers have asserted an increasing amount of influence over retailers in terms of delivering what matters most to them, at an ethical and environmental level, and how they want brands to treat them. As we move into 2022, it will no longer just be about sizing and availability of products and services. Retailers’ values will matter more and more, and their ability to offer additional information to facilitate more ethical trading decisions will be critical. Delivering on this 360-degree customer service proposition will make the difference between customers choosing them and a competitor.

The rise of the conscious consumer, concerned with sustainability, diversity and responsible business practices, means that retailers will need to ensure that their values chime with their target customers. As far as retailers’ customer service models are concerned, we’ll see the need for a hybrid digital experience. This means offering a digital customer service which is supported with real-time customer service store associates, with all the information they need at their fingertips to prove the status of ethically-made products and reassure customers – something only the right in-store tech can make happen.

Responsible Tech Series 2021 Part 1: exploring ethics within digital practices

Part 1 of the Responsible Tech Series 2021 explored ethics within digital practices, unpacked what’s what in the provision of information, and debated the matter of privacy. Read here

Key 2022 retail tech trends

While shopping in store will become increasingly popular as customers become more confident, some innovations that came about during the pandemic will become a permanent part of the shopping experience:

• Personalisation and shopping by appointment, where the store associate knows the customer, their wants/needs and is able to look after them throughout the shopping journey, owning the relationship (and thus any sales commission) online, in-store and beyond. The challenges for retail brands to truly personalise their store, according to changes in consumer needs and preferences, are real.
• Click and collect/BOPAK will become even further embedded into the seamless shopping experience because customers expect to be able to pick up their purchases at their convenience, meaning stock management and inventory will become even more essential to efficient store operations, especially when there are challenges to the supply chain.
• Virtual consultations as an extension of clienteling. Customers want to be able to shop on their own terms, and sometimes that means from the comfort of their living room rather than in a store. Retailers will need to be able to facilitate this over the long term, and that means ensuring their virtual services are able to integrate both new and existing customer data – simply offering a top-layer video call with no data behind it will not be fit for purpose.

The post 2022: a surge in retailer digital innovation and business purpose appeared first on Information Age.

Propelled by the pandemic, consumers are increasingly moving towards online shopping, due to the simplicity and convenience of the shopping experience. As we look to 2022, we can expect to see e-commerce continue to build on the accelerated growth experienced in 2021.

There are three key areas of consideration for merchants next year: the need to localise payments amidst rising interchange fees; how to best leverage buy now pay later; and the accelerated growth of mobile commerce.

Localising payments will be critical

The pandemic has brought the world closer than ever before, but selling internationally will remain complicated in 2022. With a rise in interchange fees looming in the US next April, and a hike in fees for transactions between the UK and European Economic Area post-Brexit kicking in this fall, merchants around the world are facing an unenviable choice: absorb these increased costs, or pass them on to customers in the price of products or services – a move that could deter future sales. With cross-border sales predicted to account for 20% of global e-commerce in 2022, the impact of higher fees will be felt across the business community in the form of decreased authorisation rates and increased costs.

There’s a misconception with fees that ‘it is what it is’ and there’s nothing merchants can do to increase cross-border conversions – but there is another way. By partnering with paytech providers, sellers can avoid cross-border fees altogether in 2022. That is, merchants can leverage a network of local banks through these payment processors to route transactions via banks in the same region as the cardholder. By localising transactions in this way, merchants not only reduce cross-border fees from card issuers but increase payment authorisation, since banks are more likely to approve purchases that are made locally.

To increase authorisation rates, we will see more merchants take advantage of local currencies and payment methods. Failing to do so would be an unnecessary barrier to increased revenue as those using local currencies are reporting a 12% increase in sales. The same goes for payment methods. Local payment methods such as the EU’s SEPA or Boleto in Brazil make consumers more confident in their payments, hence its growing importance to merchants who are looking to streamline the payment experience.

Effectively localising global payments is now a must for international sellers looking to capitalise on the explosion of e-commerce post-pandemic.

Venturers Club roundtable: driving success within e-commerce

A recent Information Age and Venturers Club roundtable explored how success can be driven within e-commerce, and the challenges faced by online businesses. Read here

Increased adoption of BNPL

As the pandemic continues to put pressure on consumer spending power, Buy Now Pay Later will continue to boom in 2022. But what does this trend mean for merchants?

Retailers are attracted to the promise of higher conversions and average order sizes. And while BNPL helps customers to spread their cost, it’s important to note that not all customers are eligible to use this payment method because of a “soft credit check”. This is an instant credit check taking place at the time of purchase, unlike credit cards where all checks occur prior to any purchases. This soft check examines any previous shopping history and a few other pieces of information.

However, if part of the information the retailer needs is not available, and there is no history of the customer on their records, they may fail the checks and the payment may not be successful. What this ultimately means is that higher conversions are not a given. In fact, authorisation rates with BNPL can sometimes be significantly lower than your Visa and Mastercard authorisation rates.

Failed checks could drive some customers to shop elsewhere. As a business, BNPL is a great payment method to offer your customers, especially when you work with a provider that can fund you the full amount upfront – meaning the instalment payments don’t impact you at all. But retailers must go into it with their eyes wide open, and be aware of the risk of lower authorisation rates and failed transactions. This could result in some loyal customers getting frustrated by the failed checks.

Basically, don’t expect BNPL to be the magic bullet that will drive sales.

Fraud scenarios in the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ ecosystem

Shahnawaz Backer, principal security advisor at F5 Labs, discusses how fraud scenarios can occur in the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ (BNPL) ecosystem. Read here

Mobile first market place

A key channel gaining ground this year is mobile commerce. Predicted to reach $3.56 trillion globally by the end of 2021, m-commerce now makes up more than 70% of total e-commerce sales. In an increasingly competitive market, online retailers must be ready to meet their customers whenever and wherever they choose to shop next year — including on their mobile devices. This means now is the time to stress test digital marketplaces to ensure a user-friendly experience, no matter which device a customer uses to access them.

Mobile sites should be easy to navigate and even easier to checkout. Simple fixes like integrating your website with social media channels can turn casual scrolling into casual shopping, as consumers look for goods on channels such as Instagram and Pinterest. These channels also offer a great way to reach customers at the start of their purchase journey and a well-timed ad campaign or personalised offer can make all the difference in getting customers to hit the buy button.

The post What e-commerce retailers can expect in 2022 appeared first on Information Age.