WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: visual search is a major feature to help discover products as eCommerce marketplaces catalogs explode with millions of products. Text based searches return too many results and categories are often difficult overwhelming.

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: is reCommerce a things for real or is this just a fancy new marketing acronym? In any case, this study provides contact and background and data to explore the concept.

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: wow! not often do I stumble upon a trend report that actually has valuable insights, trends and recommendations. And not too biased towards Shopify!

I pulled one chart on the importance of customer service but there are many more. Must read for anyone serious about eCommerce, big or small.

WHY IT MATTERS: this list of technology questions for 2022 feels like an answer to the question "what is digital disruption?".

We have reached a moment in time where old technologies - eCommerce or videoconferencing for example - are finally breaking into established industries. And the impact, at scale, cannot be found in technology but rather in every single industry it disrupts.

Very thoughtful piece, very good questions.

WHY IT MATTERS: read this short paper to convince yourself you need to go way beyond dashboards to understand the customer behaviours.

WHY IT MATTERS: grocery technology evolution is difficult so I take this journey as a guide for technologies that will enhance or improve the shopping experience, not replace it altogether - at least not in short term.

WHY IT MATTERS: search is clearly an essential component of eCommerce sites. With the move to small screen mobile devices and marketplaces with millions of products, finding what you need is not a question of browsing categories or keyword searches. eCommerce sites need AI-driven search solutions that enable users to ask questions in natural language and get personalized results in return. At least this is the claim here. With the rise of privacy, this is not easy . But data seems to suggest that users will give very personal information if and only if it delivers value to them, and indirectly for the retailer (higher conversion, etc.). Anyways, very interesting read.

WHY IT MATTERS: an overview of retail technologies that live on the edge in retail stores. A good overview of what's possible. Waring, this is a Dell infomercial so much biais is expected.

WHY IT MATTERS: 2 of 2 interesting visualizations in this short post - unfortunately the full report is for members only ;-(

WHY IT MATTERS: 1 of 2 interesting visualizations in this short post - unfortunately the full report is for members only ;-(

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: 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: as marketplaces become popular, finding a specific product in a catalog of millions of products will become harder and harder. The holy grail is visual search: snap a picture of something and get some AI to help you find something similar, or that matches well with that. eBay has made tests, Google lens has returned amazing results in my recent experience. Not sure what Amazon is doing but I assume it is top of their list.

Facebook is a major player in this game as it wants to make marketplace the shopping destination (don't forget it owns instagram as well). So the investment in grokNet is critical and recent results appear promising, though not yet perfect. 

So if you build a marketplace, as we are for panier bleu, then this is an area of innovation we cannot afford to bypass.

WHY IT MATTERS: warning! this article is not about your typical "robots will rule retail" or "everything has to be AI driven unless you die". Well, in some parts it is.

The reality check that retailers - and their technology vendors - must make is: retail is difficult, focused on the bottom line, with no appetite for innovation with short term results. Retail innovators must find a way to experiment while staying focussed on the bottom line.

Best quote: "‘I think the majority of the problems come from the unwillingness, perhaps the fear, of investing in something that
doesn’t automatically bring a load of cash onto your balance sheet."

WHY IT MATTERS: technology is the last frontier for retail as the sector has failed to make investments in recent years, staying with more traditional store design. Now this is not possible anymore and this article from McKinsey highlights key elements with more info links.

WHY IT MATTERS: the future of ecommerce lies in marketplaces it seems - I know as we are knee deep in this for Le Panier Bleu. Retailers face the challenging task of creating their eCommerce presence by being present where customers are. This means your product catalog has to be visible on *multiple* marketplaces, from your ecom store to Panier bleu, to Amazon to Google shopping, etc. Thus you need to manage your product information - descriptions, prices, inventory, etc. - in a central location. This is what a PIM is all about.

WHY IT MATTERS: short eBook on trends and use cases for edge computing in retail. Useful to realize that cloud is not just about centralized computing mainframe-style, but must be paired with edge computing as we do with laptops and cell phones...

WHY IT MATTERS: no one knows how stores will change but this eBook brings some interesting store concept and retailTech examples. Don't expect too much from the title though...

WHY IT MATTERS: acquisition of magento by Adobe has taken a few years to integrate but it seems that the process is over. This comparison is quite high level but provides good insights to get started. The net-net: magento ain't your open source project anymore and has moved into the corporate grade solution, with the good (support, features, integration to Adobe portfolio, ...) and the bad (pricing, inflexibility, ...) that comes with it.

WHY IT MATTERS: this short intro on selling in Amazon marketplace highlights a key concern for small retailers: customers are aggregating on marketplaces (Amazon being the largest for now) and you need to be able to dynamically decide what you sell, where, for how much and consolidate all the orders in a single. Where better than your existing ecommerce website - magento, shopify, hybris or other? Used to be this was done on your ERP (for large retailers) or POS (for single shop owners) or PIMs and OMS for those with more mature eCommerce architectures. Now it looks like you'll do everything to centralize in the Ecommerce store.

WHY IT MATTERS: je mets mon commentaire en français parce qu'il s'adresse spécifiquement aux amis du panier bleu. L'article de Ben Evans soulève une question importante et fait la démonstration que non, Amazon ne sait pas. Et que pour Amazon, pour l'instant, peu importe. Mais pour le panier bleu et sa place de marché, le marchandisage et la curation de contenu sera importante. Essentielle même. Et qu'elle sera peut-être le différentiateur et la clé du succès. Le panier bleu ne gagnera pas en créant une place de marché mais en réglant les enjeux des commerçants (coûts élevé des cartes de crédit, logistique, livraison, retours et publicité) et en offrant aux consommateurs une destination pour trouver des commerces et des produits québécois. 

En gros, il faut régler les problèmes du commerce de détail, et la technologie ne résoudra pas tous les problèmes à court terme...

WHY IT MATTERS: very useful reference of different technologies that power smart stores