To help retailers manage the rapidly growing digital complexity both online and in-store, industry insight firm Incisiv, in collaboration with Commercetools, Contentstack and FluentCommerce, conducted a study titled “Digital Complexity: Succeeding in Predictable Times.” Director of Incisiv Insights
Gaurav Pant hosted a webinar with Michael Scholz, Nicolla Kinsella and Jasmin Guthmann to discuss the results of the survey, providing valuable insights and guidance to help retailers effectively navigate today’s unpredictable environment. Thus, both the survey and the webinar emphasized the need for retailers to adapt to the changing digital landscape in order to succeed, showing the importance of collaboration to succeed in unpredictable times.
The pandemic has caused a significant increase in digital sales, from threefold to fivefold, which has led to a multifold increase in digital sophistication. Unfortunately, few retailers have been able to effectively expand their capabilities for the coming disruption. For example, while 81 percent of executives believe product revenue is the biggest area of growth, only
6 percent believe they can handle that growth. Similarly, there is a 35 percent gap between the expected growth of digital assets and management efficiency. Although the difference is not so great for other goods, the gap between the main growth areas is still worrying.
According to Contentstack’s Jasmin Guthmann, the growth of digital assets far exceeds the capacity of additional staff to manage them. This trend was further supported by a survey conducted by Fluent Commerce, which found that 66 percent of customers in the US and UK, 68 percent in Germany and 71 percent in Australia check their inventory before going to a store. This creates a gap between growth areas and effective management, and can lead to costly problems such as advertising the final product leading to an unhappy customer. Therefore, retailers must be proactive to close this gap and ensure a seamless and personalized shopping experience.
Worryingly, the research revealed that the technologies and processes needed to maintain the competitiveness of retailers are not up to standard:
2 percent recognized their product catalog system as insufficient and 39 percent considered the in-store fulfillment platform unsuitable. So a new product line or new marketing initiative can take more than three weeks to launch digitally – too slow for today’s retail. This means that retailers must take steps to meet this challenge and ensure that they have the necessary technologies. Also, when customers are dissatisfied and leave bad reviews, customer service and many other areas can suffer.
In response, Michael Scholz emphasized the importance of a strong business engine in the background so that companies are ready to adapt to new emerging channels such as Instagram, TikTok and on-demand TV. He urged businessmen to be prepared for what life throws at them.
The discussion finally turned to the much-anticipated composable commerce technology, which Scholz singled out for its tremendous flexibility and agility that allows retailers to take advantage of ever-changing market conditions. To successfully scale a digital business, he suggested “start small, try and fail fast” to effectively manage change. In addition, he suggested the use of cloud-based solutions to manage seasonal events such as Black Friday, and a unified business engine to manage business operations across countries. front parts
Retailers questioned the complexity of implementing combinable business, but Guthmann argued convincingly that it is not as difficult as it may seem. What’s more, when you look at the flexibility, agility, scalability and low total cost of ownership (TCO) it offers, it’s clear that retailers should be taking advantage of the connected store in 2023 – which was unanimously agreed upon.
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