WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

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: digital impacts all industries including those are more dependant on "relations" like wellness.

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: an detailed study of the job market in artificial intelligence and machine learning in Montreal. Along with stats and definitions, it defines and details 19 job descriptions that are related to AI. A reference to keep.

WHY IT MATTERS: 3 major players in cloud computing are battling it out on sales rather than technology as the platforms mature and the enterprise adoption skyrockets. Gartner quadrant provides overview of the major players. Google is immature, AWS has aggressive sales tactics and Azure offering is confusing.

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

WHY IT MATTERS: more insights and guidance on what retailers must do to transform.

WHY IT MATTERS:  a detailed report on disruption elements in a number of industries, including Retail and Finance which are most affected.

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.

WHY IT MATTERS: I don't do news but this one strikes me as interesting and I expect many other changes related to covid that will make their way into our daily lives. Here, indicating you'll be on site or remote for a meeting will become essential (happened to me yesterday - "oups I thought you'd be on site"...)

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: free delivery appears to be a myth based on this analysis from parcelLabs. And in-store pickup is the most popular option. Is this because customers really prefer to pay for delivery or go to the store? - or because the pick-pack-delivery-return costs are too high and as they come down with economies of scale, customers will naturally pick the free delivery option, as they do with Amazon?

WHY IT MATTERS: almost half of all clothes sold in the US are sold online, and more than one third of those are sold on Amazon. The impact of eCommerce and marketplace on retail is real and mainstream.

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

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

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: 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: 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: 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: 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.

WHY IT MATTERS: human nature will dictate return to the office or work from home.

People that DO things for a living - coding, answering calls, writing marketing copy, etc. - don't want to waste 1-2hrs per day traveling to an office to sit in front of the same computer they use at home! Return to the office will not be a huge selling point for them.

People that MANAGE others will crave the visibility and face to face interactions. They will push for a return to the office. And because they are higher up in the food chain, the pressure will be HUGE for workers to return to the office.

Thus I think working remotely will negatively impact your promotion potential within typical organizations and that most workers will goo back to the office at least 3 days per week - even if their work could as well be completed remotely.