WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting to see the challenges that people find with their eCommerce solutions. As with all surveys, take with grain of salt.

WHY IT MATTERS: a good overview, well presented of tech trends for executives. Beware: for long-term strategy discussions only!

WHY IT MATTERS: a good and simple intro to the concept.

WHY IT MATTERS: interesting stats and useful information for all companies as they make their plans for return to the office. In particular this stat which indicates that 1 in 3 may look elsewhere if return to the old way is projected.

WHY IT MATTERS: paypal raises its fees to 3.5% + 50¢ per transaction. Add to that the other costs of being online - shopify store fees, Poste Canada delivery fees, return fees, support, packaging, etc. etc. - and you quickly rack up 15$ or 20$ for a 100$ buy. When online is a side retail channel (what it is for most small retailers), then those fees come on top of physical store rent and employee salaries. No way they can make money. Something's got to change to make eCommerce profitable.

WHY IT MATTERS: returning to the office, yes or no? full time or part time? The talk of the town these days it seems. More important question is: WHY return to the office? To sit in front of a computer all day? Nope. The buzzword seems to be all about caring for ancestral human behaviours and needs: rituals, tribes, ... Anthropology more than technology.

This long article from The Guardian explains what they are with some useful examples. It details with success the experience of early adopters of digital technologies and their experiments with new office behaviours that digital transformation mandates.

The article reminds me of my software development experience. As I started to use Agile methodology and 3 week sprints, I found that it was best to have everyone on-site for the first few days of the sprint, to align everyone and let design decisions flow from conversations between team members. When the backlog was groomed and everyone was coding, then developers were better at home for the next few days, at their own pace and schedule using videoconferencing and messaging to share. Then bring them back for the final crunch - all together to pull in with the testers and the UAT team. So not 2 days home, 3 days in the office. More like 2 day workshop, then half day meetings to regroup every few days, then 2-3 days (or more) of crunch time before the sprint end.

For digital transformationalists like me, office rituals are important because the remote working tools have serious limitations and it is often best to sit next to your colleagues at regular intervals to be productive and efficient.

WHY IT MATTERS: the data is clear on the impact of UBER and others over taxis - here in NYC but trend is same everywhere we assume. Many charts in this post that show decline of yellow taxis over time, impact of covid shutdown and the recovery.

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: great comparative study of 6 of the biggest tools with all kinds of great insight. Beware this is marketing material from sharpSpring with obvious biais!

WHY IT MATTERS: mirakl has analyzed 50K sellers with 60M+ SKUs and released the first marketplace index. Some useful data nuggets in there.

WHY IT MATTERS: an essential read to best define new marketplaces and have a chance to compete against Amazon

WHY IT MATTERS: headless solutions are all the rage in web development, including eCommerce. This ebook pulls it all together with good insights and analysis followed by overview of 14 tools. Useful.

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: CDPs are maturing fast and should be considered first in organizations that look at centralizing the customer data.

WHY IT MATTERS: eCommerce is starting to specialize, showing the limitations of Amazon a-to-z "the everything store". As raised in this short post, the specialization comes from the pick-pack-delivery side of eCommerce - logistics - as shoes, furniture and pizza can all be sold on the same website - say Amazon or Shopify - but require vastly different logistics to fulfill the order. We will see technologies appears to answer those special needs in the future.

With Le Panier Bleu we recognized that limitations of eCommerce for small retailers often are related to the high cost of delivery by mail (poste canada, UPS or other) and that a marketplace solution must address those concerns. This post just provides insights into one aspect of this.

WHY IT MATTERS: digital marketing has become more complex, with 8000+ solution in the most recent marTech solutions map. Fortunately processes and tools are starting to appear to help manage this complexity.

WHY IT MATTERS: I find EA to be useful as a practice and approach. However it deployment in organizations often fails because EA architect tend to boil the ocean without bringing value. Agile EA is an interesting concept but again, I fear it may not deliver value. But the approach should inspire and guide solution architects, analysts, managers and other software specialists in organizations.

WHY IT MATTERS: this article explores the cost of cloud computing for large SaaS companies that rely on cloud computing to run and operate their business. The basic argument is that cloud computing is amputating Billions from the market value of those large organizations. It should be read by every software engineer in every corporation and the proposed solutions implemented rapidly.

This statement summarizes the post best: "For a new startup or a new project, the cloud is the obvious choice. And it is certainly worth paying even a moderate “flexibility tax” for the nimbleness the cloud provides. The problem is, for large companies — including startups as they reach scale — that tax equates to hundreds of billions of dollars of equity value in many cases… and is levied well after the companies have already, deeply committed themselves to the cloud (and are often too entrenched to extricate themselves)."

WHY IT MATTERS: yes, technology and digital transformation affects all industries. Here a detailed look at beautyTech solutions.

WHY IT MATTERS: there are now enough company experience to start drawing conclusions and best practice. What's interesting here is that IT transformation (not *All* digital transformations) have bigger success when they focus on bottom line improvements than top line ones. Yet, most projects focus on the top line. Hhhhmmmm, this should make some CIOs review their project portfolio, no?

WHY IT MATTERS: not a big fan of surveys like this one but jump to the 10 recommendations for marketplace sellers for useful tips. 

WHY IT MATTERS: I like this model because it is simple to understand makes sense. Not all MM are like that. That being said this document skims the surface so don't expect much more than generalities - and plugs of contentful and its Canadian(!) customers.

WHY IT MATTERS: NFTs are in the news these days and this reports highlights some of the recent transactions along with the position of NTFs in the blockchain ecosystem.

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: in reality it really doesn't matter I guess but I find this annual report a good reminder that creativity takes many forms... including in the naming of logo types (electric tape?). Fun to read when you are waiting for the bus.