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When Commander detects that something in the road ahead cannot be handled by itself, it gracefully transitions control to Telessist, our novel remote assistance technology. Telessist enables our robotaxi service to scale quicker, safely driving riders through any scenario that the world can throw at us. 
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SaaS-based ecommerce technology offers all the features modern retailers need to serve their customers and run their businesses effectively. And because it’s hosted off-site by a vendor with subject matter expertise in their specific industry and software, good SaaS ecommerce tech is always up to date, always ready to handle new market trends, and always ready to scale as your business grows and changes.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a simple overview of cloud based ecommerce solutions that small businesses should consider.
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Our research indicates what consumers will continue to value as the coronavirus crisis evolves.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: cet article et surtout ce chart indique clairement que l'achat local ne fonctionnera pas seulement si les commerces sont présents en ligne. Ils devront aussi avoir des prix compétitifs, une bonne valeur, la disponibilité, etc. etc.
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Best Practice for Adopting the World’s Most Successful eCommerce Model.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: always the same, reports stress all the elements and solutions on the FRONT-OFFICE and hide under the rug the make-or-break elements of the BACK-OFFICE - probably because they are the most difficult elements to get right. Or maybe is it because they don't know? ;-)
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Don’t believe the hype: retail isn’t failing nor is success tied to innovation for innovation’s sake. What is the future of ecommerce for 2021 and beyond? 5 insights offer the answer.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Shopify is now a leader in the field so their annual report provides important insights.
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In March 2020, some of our McKinsey colleagues argued that the COVID-19 crisis could be the “imperative of our time.” A month later, we noted that it could bring a “dramatic restructuring of the economic and social order.” We stand by those assertions. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an economic and human catastrophe, and it’s far from over. But with vaccines beginning to roll out, it’s possible to be cautiously optimistic that the next normal will emerge this year or next.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: an optimistic viewpoint of the future, very much worth reading as it covers all aspects of the recovery and many elements of digital transformation - remote work, eCommerce, etc.
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A new way to find images on Unsplash
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: machine learning biggest contribution is with image analysis and the visual search feature is a great example of a useful application. Of course search engines and eCommerce are low hanging fruits but what are business use cases for this? Find me the user manual for this part? Where is this product in the warehouse? Etc.
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There’s an old saying that the first fifty years of the car industry were about creating car companies and working out what cars should look like, and the second fifty years were about what happened once everyone had a car - they were about McDonalds and Walmart, suburbs and the remaking of the world around the car, for good and of course bad. The innovation in cars became everything around the car. One could suggest the same today about smartphones - now the innovation comes from everything else that happens around them.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this post is a bit theoretical for someone not bathing in digital transformation all day as I do (mostly). It explores what could come next but more importantly stresses an important fact: we now have a new platform - the mobile phone - in our pockets that has the potential to transform our world. We have started to see this with eCommerce - physical retail stores become irrelevant and we can price compare from anywhere - but we have yet to see the real impact of eCommerce+mobile+cloud+5G. THIS is what I think about most days...
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The eCommerce Trends 2021 report ranks the most significant trends in the years to come based on the opinions of eCommerce experts.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the explosion of ecommerce due to covid lockdown will see impacts in years to come. This list sounds about right regarding what's coming in the foreseable future...
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A hype free guide to an all channel approach to selling your brand direct to consumer.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: useful reference when considering going direct to consumers as there are PROs and CONs for doing it and this report highlights them well.
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From the top 500 report on delivery in Europe
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: 50% return rates stated as "normal" for this retailer: I find it shameful and unsustainable for many reasons (economic and environmental for starters). It is great that only 0.05% end up in the landfill but this is not the case in most organizations: returns are at best discounted and most often trashed. How can small retailers build profitable eCommerce business models when 1in2 or 1in10 orders gets returned? It may work ok for apparel or luxury or other high margins segments, but for most retailers this is not the case. Returns are a problem and they need to be addressed!
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Choose a future-ready commerce platform for your best (and worst) days with this guide.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: picking the right ecommerce platform is not easy. This guide can help - keeping in mind that it is very biased to Shopify strengths ;-)
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The only resource you need to profit from Google Shopping on Shopify. Read this free definitive guide for free today to save yourself time and frustration.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this guide is specific about Google and Shopify but the principles apply to all eCommerce solutions and the various discovery channels out there (facebook, Amazon, etc.). It highlights the relative complexity and expertise required to let your eCommerce website standout in a sea of solutions. Retailers thus must learn new ways to market and merchandize their store and their products to standout online. In the illustration from the guide, just crafting the right title for your product names requires time and effort in order to make it easy for users to *find* your products on Google. Not easy, not simple. This is where Le Panier Bleu can help by reducing the clutter and making local retailers standout when buying local is a concern for shoppers...
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Le Coffre api, c’est un large éventail de solutions innovantes pour chacune des étapes du parcours client ainsi que de l’accompagnement gratuit dans leur intégration. Ces solutions québécoises éprouvées et accessibles à tous visent à améliorer l’expérience consommateur et accroitre l’attractivité de nos commerçants, dans le but de soutenir l’achat local.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a great starting point for retailers looking for #local Quebec #tech solutions. One missing tech may be DVORE www.dvore.com for eCommerce... and www.lepanierbleu.ca ;-)
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So how do the UK’s largest online shops1 perform during checkout, shipping and returns? The study shows that customer centricity ends after checkout and retailers expect customers to seek information from them, rather than the other way around. As a result of this subpar after-sales support, the UK’s online retailers are throwing away millions of pounds in potential sales every month.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this study of 100 post-checkout experiences across UK retailers applies to Quebec, Canada and US as well. Full of useful insights about free delivery, delivery selection, returns, etc.
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On average, 30% of customers will return what they bought online from you during the holidays, and the vast majority will do so within the first month of the post-holiday season. We’ll show you how to reduce holiday returns, automate the returns process, and protect yourself from fraudulent returns.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: very informative post about returns with useful stats, solutions and links to help retailers manage returns. Especially useful during Holiday shopping but true all year around. Moreover, as retailers move from bricks to clicks, they have to consider this important new aspect that eCommerce brings to the forefront.
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Micro-fulfillment technology could deliver a faster service for customers while boosting profits for retailers. Read more in this report.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: last mile delivery is the Achille's heal of eCommerce. This report provides a great overview of the micro-fulfillment solutions out there.
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Amazon generated $1.6 billion in profit and $3.9 billion in revenue for the postal service in fiscal year 2019, with the postal service delivering 1.54 billion Amazon packages — about 30 percent of Amazon’s total volume last year. With more people relying on deliveries during the coronavirus pandemic, that number is expected to grow throughout the end of the year and well into next year.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Amazon delivery cost now account for 17.8% of sales, increasing. It ships billions of packages via postal service in US (and Canada and elsewhere) but reports like these seem to indicate it may want to build its own delivery infrastructure. And this would be bad for eCommerce as Amazon would control the whole supply chain and obviously keep the savings for itself. Graph is from The information: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazons-massive-spike-in-delivery-stations-poses-threat-to-usps
louisenns's curator insight,
November 16, 2020 5:22 AM
WHY IT MATTERS: Amazon delivery cost now account for 17.8% of sales, increasing. It ships billions of packages via postal service in US (and Canada and elsewhere) but reports like these seem to indicate it may want to build its own delivery infrastructure. And this would be bad for eCommerce as Amazon would control the whole supply chain and obviously keep the savings for itself. Graph is from The information: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazons-massive-spike-in-delivery-stations-poses-threat-to-usps
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Find out the main differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus, including pricing, plans and benefits, to determine if it's time to upgrade your store.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the best comparison of Shopify store options that I've seen to date.
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A l’approche des fêtes de fin d’année, il est d’autant plus important de les soutenir pour les accompagner dans cette période transitoire. Pour y voir plus clair, voici un listing non exhaustif d’initiatives à privilégier pour participer au soutien de l’économie locale française.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: every country, state, region is faced with similar problem: keeping local stores alive during covid shutdown - and then later on in the face of eCommerce popularity. This article provides a non exhaustive list of French startups that focus on helping local retailers.
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Paul Clarke, Ocado's chief technology officer, has said he envisions the company eventually moving to completely "dark" fulfillment centers—ones that would be fully automated and employ virtually no people.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the acquisition of robotics for Ocado fulfillment centers could be seen as one more tech announcement. But buried in this Fortune article is this quote from Ocado CTO that summarizes the ultimate goal of grocery eCommerce: dark warehouses with robots doing all the work. This may sound very futuristic but in fact it is the consequence of the grocery eCommerce business model: the only way to make money is to have robots to the work that consumers do when pushing carts in the store.
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Initially starting with 250 bookshops, more than 900 stores have now signed up in the US. “We went from selling $50,000 (£38,000) worth of books in all of February, to selling $50,000 a day in March, then $150,000 a day in April,” said Hunter. By June, Bookshop sold $1m worth of books in a day. The platform has now raised more than $7.5m (£5.7m) for independent bookshops across the US.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this is a great example of the way small local businesses can survive - by creating marketplaces to sell and promote their wares. This is a vertical marketplace (focus on books). You also need horizontal marketplaces (focus on all stores on a street or region). And you need amazing search engines to let you discover merchants and their products.
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Everybody likes to get a package. In 2020, we'll send more than 100 billion of them--and that number could double by 2030. Who will deliver all those packages, and how? In this edition, The Next Normal explores what's ahead in last-mile parcel delivery.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: parcel delivery has become the primary volume for postman. Why not have delivery routes - postman or milkmen - to deliver the parcels and not just the mail? Would this not be a more cost effective solution than delivering one by one?
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One of the questions I see and hear quite often, is, "can Shopify be a marketplace? Like Etsy or Amazon? I want my sellers to have their own controls". So what exactly is the problem here? Shopify is great for eCommerce. Why can't we just hit an Easy button and make it be a marketplace, too, voila??
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: shopify as a marketplace is question I've been asking for months (or any other eCom solution). After all, once you build your own eCommerce website on Shopify, all the components are in place to create a marketplace: products, categories, inventory, etc. After all, a marketplace is nothing more than a superset, a combination of all those individual shops? Well, not really. A marketplace is more than a collection of products. It is a destination that provides a single user account, consolidated shipping and delivery, a single destination to resolve customer issues. It is a service, not a technology. Thus, even though Shopify has the *technology* to build a marketplace, it does not (yet?) have the infrastructure to provide the *service* that a marketplace requires.
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The Marketplace Maturity Model SM (MMM) is an industry-first model for Ecommerce operators to providing a reliable guide for implementing or iterating an online marketplace.
Farid Mheirs insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: looks like marketplaces have become a "thing" and merit their own maturity model. Given inherent complexity I guess this is warranted. Plus McFadyen are most experienced, they should know.
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Curated by Farid Mheir
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WHY IT MATTERS: a very interesting article about a robot taxi system, how it works and its limitations. Fun read to understand what is possible and what is not in self driving tech today. This is important because many of digital transformation use case depend on this for profitability (for example eCommerce delivery cost should reduce drastically when this available).