With 15 years of E-Business experience at dmc, the company I joined earlier in 2009 has seen quite a number of trends and hypes come and go. We have helped our clients implement some of the more successful ones and quite a few of our ideas have become E-Commerce best practices and innovative approaches to Travel-Commerce. We are looking forward to 2010 for more to come.
Here is my list of topics that we will be putting special attention on:
- Multi-Channel: Most retailers will continue to leverage a hybrid approach with a focus on E-Commerce but including offline and mail order channels in 2010. True Multi-Channel retail and travel solutions however leverage web technology to process customer, product and order/shipment data across multiple channels and devices to turn their various channels into a single, customer-focused retailing environment. This includes the mobile supported transition from online to offline mode and the support of online research for offline purchase (see also the ROPO study by TUI, Google et al.), and a thorough integration with order management, the right E-Enabled and E-Enabeling ERP solution and Multi-Channel Content and PIM solutions and processes.
- Social commerce and Off-Site-Focus for relevant user participation: After experimenting with several web 2.0 approaches, brands and retailers focus more and more on relevant participation of the users into the entire supply chain. Those interactions can happen on-site but most of them happen or at least will be triggered off-site – where the users are.
- Usability and Design: With more and more e-commerce features becoming a standard for any given shop, the main differentiation available is through products and content of course, but the usability and design of a storefront are definitely the right additional aspect to focus on.
- Shop-Platforms: Whilst some retailers, especially the online pure plays rightly consider their shop platform a major differentiating asset and thus prefer a bespoke solution (mainly for individual innovation/differentiation and control), more and more focus is on the marketing and merchandising side of things assuming all shop commodities being available out of the box or custom of the shelf (focus on time 2 market and cost). On demand shops like demandware, hosted solutions built on IBM Websphere Commerce or Intershop Enfinity and custom solutions based on the typo3 based dmc mb3p platform have proven to be valid technology foundations for the different models. Other shopping cart technologies like Magento or Oxid eSales will continue to gain attention but the service provider landscape for those newcomers still needs to mature. The right levels of ability to attract and convert, feature versatility, scalability and performance at a controllable TCO will continue to depend on the right combination and balance of business model, service provider and technology approach. Through our 15 years of experience in E-Commerce we have developed and refined the means to get this equation right for you.
- Internationalization: True E-Business happens on a global level and more and more brands and retailers pursue a global approach with storefronts for individual countries and languages and custom distribution setups. At dmc we have helped numerous customers to set up international E-Businesses including E-Commerce solutions and Travel-Commerce portals by developing and executing multi-year roadmaps. Our services include E-Consulting, E-Branding, E-Technology and E-Services for international E-Businesses.
Happy 2010 and all the best for your ventures and businesses!
