While change and novelty may seem appealing, the relevance and effectiveness of technology investments make all the difference in establishing a lasting benchmark in the marketplace.
To respond to this forum and discuss directly with the Madagence teams on the retail technology choices, come and meet them at the Tech for Retail show on November 28 and 29 in Paris.
As the pace of digital transformation accelerates, it’s healthy to step aside. The opportunities for innovation are so great that they can overwhelm e-merchants’ time and money. While change and novelty allow it to take center stage for a while, the relevance and efficiency of technology investments make all the difference in establishing a lasting reference in the market.
First and foremost, innovation should be synonymous with investing through a serious and non-bling-bling approach, with simple features that vastly improve the customer experience. For example :
- different delivery methods for each item in the shopping cart, in one order;
- grouped orders to receive everything in one shipment and one package;
- online B2B offer to its trading partners (wholesale, retail, etc.).
These options seem obvious and generally do not emphasize a trader’s ability to innovate. They are therefore not favored by marketing campaigns or by the media.
However, under-offered by online merchants, while essential, such features must be mastered before they can take a higher step in innovation.
Sorting out the superfluous and the super vague
NFT, metaverse, blockchain… These buzzwords are circulating a lot in the world of technology and innovation. Before you start exploiting these complex techniques with phenomenal application potential, you first need to know how to take full advantage of traditional exchanges. AI needs to get behind the fundamentals of e-commerce.
The success of these technologies is often based on a coherent long-term business and technology strategy. They require significant investment and high risk taking because they anticipate the market and customer needs.
If this strategy is poorly calibrated, it will create significant economic waste, sometimes fatal to a company, and diminish the enthusiasm of general management, which has demanded overly ambitious results from CIOs and business teams. Early investments in these fads, at the cost of consolidating e-commerce fundamentals, will often prove unprofitable.
A solid foundation as a suitable launch pad
Conversely, other buzzwords such as OMS (Order Management System), market mechanisms, data, are headless terms that are widespread but still vague for many. Yet it is through these conditions that innovation in the e-commerce sector must first be introduced.
The associated technologies are now mature and the use cases proven. The teams will be much better able to understand them and deliver the expected project.
Order orchestration, marketplace architecture development, headless approaches, B2B2C and B2B2B e-commerce can multiply the commercial potential of a manufacturer or a distributor. These concepts make all the difference because they make it possible to build a solid foundation to move to the next level of innovation.
The best way to protect against risky investments due to technology fads is to benchmark yourself against what’s happening in the market, analyzing existing solutions to accurately meet the needs of your business model.