Single, Multi, Cross, Omni-Channel Commerce and continued..

Evolution in the way a brand is interacting with its customers is having centuries old stories. Every brand used its own way to interact with the customers in early stages and later when the technology advanced the mechanisms are more structured and called it with names. It started from Single Channel in which a brand will interact with the customers through only one channel, even the brand doesn’t have another channel to interact with.

Later point of time, the concept of multi-channel came into the commerce industry in which a brand can interact with the customers through different channel but the details of the interaction through one channel is not known to another one.

The new invention of cross-channel commerce addressed the drawback of Multi-Channel commerce; people often mistaken that cross-channel and multi-channel are same but the information exchange between channels happens only in cross-channel. The key example of cross channel is that it enabling customers to order through online and pick-up at the store.

Omni-Channel Commerce is Evolving

Omni-Channel commerce is the new concept in which all the channels has the access to the same data, therefore it enables the customer to interact with multiples channel simultaneously without losing any information between channels. All channels are connected to a single information repository for Customer Data, Products, Pricing, and Promotions etc.

There are various challenges involved in for upgrading to an Omni-channel environment from an existing cross-channel or multi-channel environment. The major challenge is to centralize the data and enables real-time communication between channels and the central data store.

Omni-Channel concept is evolving now and most of the big commerce chains need to align and strategize their supply-chain management to get the maximum benefit using Omni-Channel Commerce. This involves various steps such as;

• ·         Identifying the various channels
• ·         Understanding the data flow from various channels
• ·         Designing a central data store to store and maintain all the data from various channels
• ·         Design all channels to make sure that the data flow is consistent across channels
• ·         Design the integration in such a way that there is no delay in retrieving latest data 

From Stylish Eye Wear to Google Glass

Anyone remember the character John Anderton from the movie Minority Report, the character portrayed by Tom Cruise? If I see anything related to that movie, the first thing come to my mind is when John walks through a Shopping Street with a forged retina, he is addressed by a different name by the Shops over there. All the details about a person are recorded and the primary key is his retina, interesting idea isn’t it?

Relate this with a commerce scenario, when you walk to a store, representative is addressing you with your pet name that only your friends know, and asking about a smart phone that you have purchased one month back and talking about your interest in Golf and over and above they are asking you that ”Sir, we have an amazing collection of badminton rackets, do you want to have a look? “, and you are really went to the shop to purchase a badminton racket for your daughter. What an amazing shopping experience!

Here comes Google Glass, you wear an eye wear; everything you want to know is in front of your eyes. When you drive you can see the map, when you a see a building you will get all the details about that building, you can take a picture without holding your phone or a camera, record videos without holding anything.

Google Glass is the next era of computing in which we do more natural interaction and use more compact and high end devices to engage when we move around. Google Glass is in its primitive stage with various features added for its developer and trail user release. The trial user program is called “Glass Explorer Program” and the selected users’ need to fly New York to experience the Google Glass.

Google Glass is using Augmented Reality and using voice commands for responding, you need to say “OK GLASS TAKE A PICTURE” to take a photo instantly. Google Glass is already equipped with following features.

• Take Photo
• Make Video
• Weather
• Map
• Translate
• Search
• Flight Details

Google Glass and e-commerce in future

• As a representative of a shop, when a customer is coming to the shop, I can take a picture of the customer and do a search instantly to pull out the customer social details; it may instantly send a message to customer for me to allow accessing his public profile and customer can approve the request using his Glass. Based on that social profile, I can better serve the customer.
• As a customer, I am interested in a product in the shop and I want to see how the reviews on this, I can send the picture of the product and get all the reviews about the product instantly from the internet or I can price comparison with other retailers
• If I have placed an order online and I want to collect that in store, I can just scan the QR code associated with my order using the Glass,  and go to the store and provide the details to collect the item

There are ‘n’ numbers of possibilities when we think about Glass and e-commerce. If the Google Glass is getting popular, e-commerce with Glass would be the next future and we may call it as ‘g-commerce’.

Going Digital in 2013

‘Going Digital’ will be the significant change that we are going to experience in 2013 in commerce. Growing usage of internet (thanks to Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter) is impacting the online shopping as well. Customers are looking more on online shopping because of the following reasons,

• Rewarding policy and structure
• Get to know the feedback from other customers
• Flexible Return Policy
• Fast and Flexible Delivery Options
• Pick in Store, Reserve in Store etc
• Personalized shopping experience through Content, Communications and Promotions

In 2013, E-Commerce area is going to be exciting due to various factors. I have accumulated few trends that are going to influence the Digital Commerce in 2013.

Cross-Channel Commerce: Multi-channel Commerce is going to impact highly on the E-Commerce area. Retailers would be planning to advance their traditional E-Commerce application and offer the shopping experience through different channels like mobile, tablets, kiosks, in-store etc. Cross-channel integration also demands for a centralized inventory system and track the in-store inventory online so that customers can reserve the product in the store and collect from there within a short time.

Interactive Media will be used widely to keep the customer engaged and entertained.

Recommendation Engines will be massively used for providing a personalized customer experience. Personalized Communication and Offers will make a big difference in the new-generation online experience.

Loyalty Management: Increased usage of Loyalty Points would be another trend. Currently, most of the retailers are offering loyalty points on purchase. Customers are also getting educated about the points and they are more inclined towards purchasing with the benefits of points. Third party Loyalty Providers like Payback etc. is getting common with Customers and retailors are integrating with third parties if they don’t want to maintain an in-house loyalty system. Apart from Points, more loyalty schemes including specific discounts, privilege to pre-order products etc. would be added features in 2013.

Small players must be planning to go online and enable the online shopping experience with minimal cost. This will make the Service Providers to think beyond ATG Commerce, WCS and Hybris. Small scale E-Commerce application like Demandware etc. will be active in the market to support small retailers.

Social Media has already done a great job for E-Commerce in 2012, it was a great start and different small retailers and organizations have utilized Social Media very well. It would be interesting to see how Social Media –E-Commerce integration is getting evolved in 2013.

Significant Strategic Changes by internet game changers like Google will impact highly on E-Commerce area. The major change is that Google’s decision to end the free Product Search and replace it with a paid service called Google Shopping. This will ensure that, reliable and competitive retailers will continue giving better shopping experience to the Customers and eliminate the retailers who list products since the service is free. Also this gives an alert to the retailors that they need to be ready to face any challenges because of the rapidly changing E-Commerce world. Retailors required to adapt these changes quickly and enable their systems else they cannot sustain in a perplexing world.  

Going Global: Expanding the business to other global areas through online. Many retailers finding that going online will be the safest and preferred direction to expand the business so as the revenue targets.

Expand the Customer Services: Improve the customer services through 3rd party review sites by providing feedback and take necessary steps on negative reviews and appreciate the positive reviews. This practice is currently followed in TripAdvisor.com etc. and the responses from the vendor will make a significant impact on gaining new customer base and retaining existing ones.

‘Going Digital’ will be necessary for every retailer in coming years but that doesn’t means that they have to pull the shutter for their in-store shops. Though few of the customers still want to purchase in store by feeling the product, those will also want to check the product online before going to store. This is increasing the possibilities of cross-channel integration.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping

New Generation eCommerce application – Business User Point of View

As a customer perspective we all know that what we look for when we visit an online shopping site through any channel like mobile, tablet or a computer. The key factor is that every customer would look for how easily can I find my desired product and how easily can I complete my checkout process.

In any online shopping, business objective is to attract more users and convert those users into customers. When an organization tries to improve their online shopping experience, the first priority is to enhance the customer experience through personalized offers and pages, quick navigation and search (Faceted Navigation) and easy checkout by providing various checkout features like express checkout etc.

When everybody striving hard to improve customer experience, are we not thinking about the business users like Content Admins, Merchandisers etc.?  Most of the organization must be having a legacy eCommerce application and most of them want to migrate to a latest eCommerce engine that can satisfy the new generation customer needs by using improved technologies. While organizations are putting all the efforts to do the same, most of them try to skip or de-scope the requirements from their business users. Is that fair to do so since business users needs to play a key role to make the site much more interesting once it is ‘on live’.

One of my previous customers, which we were decommissioning their legacy eCommerce application and replacing with a new eCommerce engine powered by ATG Commerce, I got an opportunity to have detailed discussion with their business users includes Merchandiser and Content Author. They were so excited that a new application is going to be ready and that will improve their experience and reduce the manual work that they are currently doing as part of the legacy application. Highly motivated business users were giving requirements and explaining what they want to see in new system and what are the improvements they want in order to ease up their daily workload.

After analyzing the business user’s requirements, we came up with effort estimation and submitted to the business leads for approval. As I said earlier, business leads’ focus is to spend money on improving the customer experience and generate revenue to the organization. They found meeting business users’ requirements is not important and decided to either de-scope or implement it on a later point of time. That means it is not going to get implemented in a near future and as a result the business user experience will not be better than the current, in fact it will not be as good as their current system.

As a business user concerns, the requirements that he had given are valid for him as well as organization. We can classify these internal requirements except the Catalog Management, Pricing etc. in simple statements.

• Change of business rules like maximum order total, maximum number of items to checkout etc. without any code release
• Change of content inside marketing slots, promotional contents etc. without any code release
• Change of static labels and instructional text without any code release
• Control over the content displayed on the site like order of appearance, style etc.
• Flexible integration with Content Management system and Merchandising Tool

Most of the business users are asking for flexibility in terms of running and controlling the online experience. When we think that in their point view, these requirements are fairly genuine. If a new version of iPhone is getting launched, no business user wants to raise a ticket to the support team and wait to get the carousel changed on the home page after a server downtime; even Business Leads don’t like that.

It is really up to the business leads to take a decision based on the value addition that the organization is going to get by implementing these business enablers. Service Provider’s business consultants need to go an extra mile and help the Organization’s business leads to understand the priority and benefits of these requirements. Business Users are also an integral part of any eCommerce application as well as the organization.

What business requires...?

As part of different assignments, I have got an extensive experience of interacting with customer that includes Business Leads as well as Technical Architects. In most of the meetings be it Technical Discussion and/or Requirement Analysis, the common conclusion of these meetings is ‘What business requires?’ and adding an action item in the tracker to the relevant Business Lead/Analyst. Here I am trying to answer this question in a way that what I understood from my experience so far.

Majority of the online shopping websites are implemented or getting implemented/maintained using multiple third party frameworks and applications. What drives an organization to decide on the framework/platform/application/product that they want to leverage to improve their business?  Answer to this question is not so easy; it is based on various factors such as

• License Cost
• Organization’s prior experience
• Product Owner’s Credibility
• Market Feedback on the products
• Sales Presentation from the Product Owner
• People’s mind

Whatever reason that drives to choose the products; the organization normally spends a lot of money in research and analysis on choosing the Product. Will that end there? No, as we aware it won’t end there. Now the Organization has to recruit able people both business and technical to enable the IT department for implementing/improving their online shopping experience. Apart from this, the major decision is to choose a Service Provider that the organization believes that the provider can do the implementation at a Minimal Cost.

What I was trying to explain here is that for enhancing the shopping experience, before choosing a service provider itself, the organization must have spent enough effort and Dollars for deciding the various products they want to use for their eCommerce engine. In some cases the organization will engage the preferred service provider during these activities also.

Once the requirement analysis and fit-gap analysis starts, one important point that every key people from the service provider must have in their head is that we are here to help the business to implement the requirements with a minimal cost. I have noticed that most of the Business Analysts have very limited knowledge on the products, and this limitation was resulting in listing down all the ‘fairy-tale’ requirements. When these requirements come to the Technical Consultants for doing fit-gap analysis, they normally mark these for heavy customization of the product or not possible categories. This will make the Business upset because they have already spent lot of money for the product and now they have to shed lot of Dollars to make it in the way that they want.

This is the real problem in any online shopping experience project. This problem is getting resulted in the question in the title of this article “What business requires?”. What business requires is very simple, every organization in this world wants their online shopping as good as Amazon.com at least, if it can be better than that, then business requirements ends there.

Though the above statement is true, business will be happy if the service provider can meet most of their requirements with a minimal cost and make it ‘live’ in a short period of time. Service Provider’s Business Analysts have to play an important role here. Rather than writing down the requirements that business team gives to you, every Business Analysts have to follow some practices that will help the business as well as service provider to streamline the requirements to enhance the shopping experience with a minimal cost.

• Business Analysts should be trained in the relevant products as a functional perspective and they should be educated about the limitations of the products as well
• Business Analysts should understand the Organization’s business and key areas
• Help business to redefine the ‘fairy-tale’ requirements to meaningful requirements that can be achieved using the product by minimal customization
• Help business to understand the cost of implementing the fancy requirements and how much can they benefit out of those requirements
• Help business to understand how they can achieve long-term and short-term goals and redefine the scope of implementation
• Engage a technical person if required

If a Business Analyst can come up with a list of requirements that can be implemented by the product purchased by the organization with minimal customization, technical team can provide a positive fit-gap analysis sheet that offers low cost to the organization. This will help to get a confidence on the service provider initially and that can bring up more revenue.

The initial phase of project is very critical and the Business Analysts have to play an important role in streamlining the requirements. In fact they have to identify “What business requires” and help the business to understand “What business really requires”.

Customer Experience Architecture

Today I was going through an interesting article about customer experience reference architecture. This document will give an insight on how new generation eCommerce application has to be modelled. Worth read for both technocrats and business analysts.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/entarch/oracle-wp-ra-customer-exp-1891281.pdf

Cheers!
Rajeev

Scheduler with ATG StartSQLRepository

I was struggling to identify that how can I reuse the components that used by startSQLRepository batch file to import data to a repository using an ATG scheduler. After doing so much of research I found that it is very simple.

ATG internally uses TemplateParser component to load the repository. This class file has several static methods, here our interest would be on runParser() method which accepts a String[] and PrintWriter object. The String[] should pass the exactly same arguments as StartSQLRepository command without -m. Instead of -m, we need to pass -configPath (you can get the configPath using this.getNucleus.getConfigPath(String serverName)).

Example

String[] args = new String[5];
args[0]="-repository";
args[1]=getRepository();
args[2]="-outputSQL";
args[3]="-configPath";
args[4]=configPath;
int temp = TemplateParser.runParser(args, new PrintWriter(System.out, true));

This works!

Reference - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/documentation/atgwebcommerce-393465.html