WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

We expect technology spend by CMOs to increase 10x in 10 Years from $12 billion to $120 billion, unlocking a huge opportunity for marketing technology companies and opening the door to the Decade of the CMO.

Predicts 2019: New Deployment Models, Channels and Technologies Spark Digital Commerce Growth

Driverless vehicles are hardly a novel concept anymore, but what is really going on in the autonomous car industry? How do self-driving cars work? Who are making these cars? Why is it taking this long? This article will answer these questions.

The End of Free Returns + Sales Tax Everywhere? Discover the 10 eCommerce Trends That Will Impact Retailers and Consumers in 2019.

At the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas this week, billed as the world’s largest conference for retail and e-commerce innovation, fashion tech startup Heuritech launched the world's first artificial intelligence (AI) service that can predict fashion trends based on the analysis of millions of images shared every day on social media.

This is an industry report designed to establish benchmarks for how organizations are developing and maintaining the quality of software in 2018.

Average open rates are between 15% and 25% range, depending on industry, so for the 75% to 85% of recipients who do not open any given email they receive, the subject line IS the email. The ultimate email marketing guide is free to discover the trends that will impact email marketing in 2019.

Beyond the world of email marketing in the wider world of business, the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on productivity and employment has risen to prominence in the last two plus years as more affordable systems have become available from vendors. This has naturally prompted marketers to review the potential marketing applications of AI. To answer this question, in our guide to marketing applications of AI , Smart Insights has reviewed the opportunities and tools for AI across the customer lifecycle. This report highlights the critical trends and techniques that will help you transform your brand-customer relationships using the most powerful channel in your marketing mix: email!

In 2019, email marketing remains one the most effective techniques for digital marketers, so keeping up-to-date with the latest trends, best practice techniques, and technologies for email marketing remains extremely important. Our recent Managing Digital Marketing in 2019 report shows that over two-thirds of marketers rated email marketing as providing the highest or medium return-on-investment (ROI) when compared to other channels.

The role of a chief executive requires vision above all else. At Shoptalk, execs from Gap, Macy's, Nordstrom, Lowe's and a host of disruptors offered insights from a unique industry perch.

“No industry,” wrote Harvard Business Review at the close of 2018, “is failing faster than retail.” At risk of contradicting the Crimson: bullshit. Sweeping proclamations make for great sound bites and (scholarly) clickbait. But the truth? Not so much.

At the opposite extreme lay headlines trumpeting “voice-search buying,” “Instagram-worthy pop-ups,” and “VR-enabled O2O experiences.”

What the data shows — and what the leaders we spoke to from brands at the forefront said — isn’t that retail is failing nor that success is tied to innovation for innovation’s sake. Instead, it points to the now unignorable center of commerce: customer choice. What is the future of ecommerce for 2019 and beyond? 10 insights offer the answer:
Ecommerce v Retail: The Dichotomy Ends
DTC Emerges as Commerce’s Future
More than “Digitally Native” Tactics
Content Becomes the Holy Grail of Growth
Physical and Digital Solidify Their Relationship
Social Commerce Evolves or Limps to the Grave
Channels Must Deliver on Their Promises
Mobile Buying Is (Almost) the New Normal
Micro-Moments Win or Lose Conversions
International Ecommerce Expands to the East

Google Glass lived a short, sad life. And when you look back, it feels like a bit of a dream. But the dream isn’t over yet, because Glass has found itself an industrial career.

development or prepackaged integrations. CSPs have web, desktop and mobile app interfaces that let users navigate through and work with the different content services. The platforms may also offer prebuilt solutions for vertical and horizontal content processes such as case management, legal matter management, contract management and many more. CSPs are available on-premises, as hosted services, in the cloud (SaaS and/or PaaS) or in hybrid architectures that combine cloud and on-premises storage and/or services.

Gartner has recognized ThoughtSpot as a Leader in the 2019 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI Platforms. ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics platform makes it easy for anyone to get insights in seconds.

It’s an incredibly exciting time to be working in the retail industry. Ten years from now, consumers will look back and say: “Did shopping really look like that in 2019?”

Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup, has raised $940 million in financing from the SoftBank Vision Fund, a whopping amount that will be used to expand its delivery service, add new partners, hire employees and scale up its fleet of self-driving bots. Nuro has raised more than $1 billion.

In China, the either-or retail equation is being cast aside for New Retail, which merges the best of the in-store and online experiences. To Alibaba, success these days also means helping brands go omnichannel. An increasing number of brands are doing just that, tapping Alibaba’s New Retail tools, erasing the lines between online and offline. 

The key to New Retail is the mobile phone, which provides the critical connection between online and offline retail to consumers. Brands in China have an advantage here because they don’t need to convince consumers to download and use their apps. That’s because they know 500 million consumers already have the Tmall app. “China is moving much faster than the West in this evolution because the Western retail model is built on legacy systems. China’s model is disruptive,” said Frank Lavin, CEO of ExportNow, a company which helps Western brands sell to China. “China does not have the legacy of malls and big-box stores like the West. China has no traditional retail model to defend.”

Service performance has improved recently for most CPG companies. But getting goods from plant to shelf involves more hurdles and more complexity than ever before.

Digital transformation is a long game. At the same time, it has to start somewhere. Over the years, the biggest digital transformation priority for companies has continued to be the customer experience. That work is aimed at fixing and modernizing the customer journey. Once this happens, digital transformation tackles more sweeping efforts that involve multiple groups. This is why the organizations who are further along the six stages of digital transformation develop customer-centered roadmaps and then divide and conquer against those initiatives across the enterprise.

Digital transformation was initially intended to modernize technological infrastructure, migrating costly, dated, and complicated hardware and software solutions to more agile and scalable cloud and mobile platforms. But since the early days of digital transformation, the speed of technology innovation has only increased. Now the digital in digital transformation has to keep up with all relevant technology trends as they represent disruptive threats and competitive opportunities. This is likely a key driver of 2018’s dramatic rise of substantial digital transformation budgets.

The experts predict that AI will outperform humans in the next 10 years in tasks such as translating languages (by 2024), writing high school essays (by 2026), and driving trucks (by 2027).
But many other tasks will take much longer for machines to master. AI won’t be better than humans at working in retail until 2031, able to write a bestselling book until 2049, or capable of working as a surgeon until 2053.