In
today’s world, advancement in technology is resulting in customers expecting a
very intuitive shopping experience. Digital eCommerce platforms and application
leaders should focus on these key capabilities which will impact its future.
·
Technology will help them differentiate from
their competitors and attract new customers in the following ways:
A B2C experience has become ubiquitous, and today all B2B customers expect a
B2C shopping experience.
·
Capabilities need to be prioritized based on
“business value” and “ease of implementation”. Digital eCommerce capabilities that will not add significant business value to end
customers and have higher implementation costs should be pushed back.
·
A customer experience that incorporates
interactive and conversational visual interface has a bigger impact on the
conversion funnel.
·
Unified commerce experience across all
channels and throughout the customers’ shopping journey offers flexibility and
consistency to deliver a superior customer experience.
·
New business models such as IoT enabled
eCommerce, enterprise marketplaces, subscription and replenishments can help
companies move toward digital eBusiness from a completely new perspective,
there are new digital technologies which can enable these capabilities with a
faster time to market.
· AI (Artificial
Intelligence), personalization engines, guided selling,
API-oriented architecture, and product configurators are key technologies and
architecture that enable compelling customer experience and digital business
models.
·
Persona and scenario-based customer
experience coupled with new eBusiness models have a critical impact on the
success of digital e-commerce. Persona-based customer experience not only
differentiates digital e-commerce offerings but also results in increased
conversion rates and repeat purchases.
·
Digital e-commerce is getting more visual.
People can find similar products using visual search. They can buy directly
from streaming video with identifiable goods or from social media images using
buy buttons, or view customizable products in 2D/3D using configurators.
Leading organizations have tapped into immersive technologies such as Augmented
Reality (AR) to create a more engaging experience by
mixing digital
images and the physical environment. Image and
video have never taken such a prominent position in the customer shopping
experience.
Digital
eCommerce is becoming a starting point for digital business. Besides selling
primary products and services, organizations are tapping into new business
models such as IoT enabled eCommerce and enterprise marketplaces for new
sources of revenue. They’re turning one-time product sales into ongoing service
relations and becoming marketplace operators that facilitate transactions among
customers and third-party sellers. These business models enable organizations
to move toward digital business using digital commerce as the starting point.
B2B
eCommerce – The great promise of B2B e-commerce is to simplify everything
related to procurement. In business, this is often a complicated process going
back and forth with constant negotiations. All this requires countless e-mails,
phone calls, and face-to-face meetings: very time-consuming at the end of the
day. By centralizing offers and demands on a single platform, it becomes easy
to bring transparency in the process, making the exchanges flow more
effectively. A company’s procurement department can thus search for and compare
them more easily.
