WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: useful to see the growth of marketplaces in recent years. The list is interesting but the analysis provides insights into what's now become an essential component of eCommerce. And let me tell you from experience, building a marketplace is difficult... ;-)

WHY IT MATTERS: application performance management solutions like newRelic can go beyond monitoring server performance and deliver insights into business related metrics, which is essential in eCommerce operations.

WHY IT MATTERS: I agree with those 6 recommendations.

WHY IT MATTERS: after you're done enabling analysis of your internal data - from eCommerce, ERP, etc. - you should look at external data - weather, demographics, etc. - to provide context and generate useful insights.

WHY IT MATTERS: CPQ tools are essential components of a B2B eCommerce solution. This guide provides an overview - although biased because cloudSense is a product on the salesforce marketplace.

WHY IT MATTERS: always good to go back to basics, here for eCommerce dashboards.

WHY IT MATTERS: amazing reference to understand the most common hacks in digital: SQL injection, cross-site scripting and many more. A reference to bookmark.

WHY IT MATTERS: quadrants, marketscopes, waves and other market landscape analysis often provide information more important than a rating of solutions. Buried in most are very useful market analysis and visions that can help you understand the solutions out there and define your own priority matrix. Here I highlight IDC eCommerce framework, which you can find in the 2020 solution landscape report.

WHY IT MATTERS: read the report to get insights on the eCommerce market landscape back in 2020. Beware, this is an excerpt for VTEX only.

WHY IT MATTERS: as with all gartner quadrants, skip to the end for the content and market analysis sections for the useful insights in the field of APM. As we move to digital, monitoring and debugging when issues arise becomes more important than ever.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting reference of key eCommerce metrics. Moreover if you are a shopify store the solution appears to be free (to be validated).

WHY IT MATTERS: an outstanding presentation on what it takes to create a microservice architecture at scale - here for Netflix. More interesting than the technical details - which are plentiful - are the explanations of the work required to change an architecture "in flight", while the solution is running and expanding globally. Plus with a n outstanding speaker. Must listen.

Slides are here: https://www.slideshare.net/InfoQ/mastering-chaos-a-netflix-guide-to-microservices-70048469 

WHY IT MATTERS: essential metrics for anyone with an eCommerce website.

WHY IT MATTERS: a must read article that summarizes very well the state of ecommerce marketplaces.

WHY IT MATTERS: in the report you'll find this useful landscape of API solutions. Biaised because of its source - postman is an API tool provider - nevertheless is useful.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting review of cognitive search solution - read AI-driven. What sparked my interest most is the note from Forrester that companies should "choose more than one vendor solution" as it probably means that the field remains immature. I'll know soon as I need to pick a solution from the list - or maybe multiple? ;-)

WHY IT MATTERS: NPS is widely known and used in eCommerce and retail in general. The new version based on earned growth is described here as NPS 3.0. It is interesting to see how it is calculated and should make a lot of readers wary that their internal legacy systems (from POS and ERPs to their newer eCommerce websites and mobile apps) lack the information to compute the new NPS metric... 

WHY IT MATTERS: eCommerce growth continues, especially regarding B2B (see market overview, as usual it contains good insights). I always question the tool selection (17 over 140 solution gartner says it tracks) so read with huge grain of salt. Legacy solutions with serious technical limitations show up in leader quadrant (sap, salesforce), and niche solutions are positioned because I assume they have market penetration. So use other sources when selecting eCommerce solution but questions vendors in the quadrant on the PROs and CONs gartner highlights.

WHY IT MATTERS: an interesting guide to help select the right tools and solutions in a world of rapidly evolving solutions.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting to see that software solutions that reach maturity - such as ERPs - have a tendency to specialize. This quadrant highlights leaders in a specific market (product centric enterprises). I wonder when we will start to see the same with eCommerce... Not that specialized solutions don't exist but that the industry remains so immature that companies are in their first or second versions of eCommerce and thus gravitate to generalist solutions like shopify, magento, etc.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting the information you can find in an IPO prospectus about the costs, the margins and the other realities of running and retail business. 20% acquisition costs + 20% sales & service costs appear to be very good benchmarks for retailers doing back of the envelope cost calculations. So you need at least 40% gross margin to expect to turn a profit when selling online and in-store.

WHY IT MATTERS: seems you can get away asking for very personal info if it is perceived as useful in the shopping process.

WHY IT MATTERS: membership programs are popular and this report provides a number of good reference numbers.

WHY IT MATTERS: everything in this article rings true, from the high cost of omnichannel and especially returns, to the opportunities that remain of having a physical store. The conclusion: you have to change processes, resource allocation and technology to make omnichannel work.