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According to Fujitsu’s Digital Transformation PACT Report, a lack of direction behind digital transformation is costing UK retailers dearly, with as much as £827,000 being wasted on failed digital transformation projects.
The Retail Times summed up the report’s findings. “With digital disruptors entering the market, retailers acknowledge that they need to digitally transform and agree that the ability to change will be crucial to their business’ survival in the next five years (84%). In fact, 16% named new entrants into the retail space as the most influential factor driving their digital transformation. However, at present over half (53%) say that they are facing challenges including a clear lack of digital skills in the organisation. All of the retailers surveyed (100%) admitted their customers expect them to be more digital.”
Our experts help leading retailers and merchants overcome barriers to eCommerce growth every day. In this article, we’ll lay out some of the common challenges we solve, and use real life examples to show how they can be overcome.
Without the right technology, the flexibility to adapt to meet changing customer and business needs, and the expertise to implement a successful digital strategy, barriers to growth soon arise. Take one of these elements away, and commerce is impeded and unable to flow efficiently. The main challenges can be split into three headings - Technology, Agility and People - with some examples provided below.
Technology constraints
- Non standard integrations
- Complex business logic
- Complex product catalogue
- Supporting huge peaks in demand
- CMS restrictions
- Security, compliance and quality issues
Business agility
- Meeting specific trade customer needs
- Advanced B2B features
- Moving from B2B into B2C, or vice versa
- Agency and platform fees too high
- Inflexible platform
- Lack of visibility across operations
People and expertise
- Falling sales
- Lack of website traffic and conversions
Many of the businesses we work with have made the decision to move from an out of the box, eCommerce platform such as Magento, to 9xb’s Peracto platform. Mass produced to be adaptable to a wide variety of businesses, off the shelf platforms meet the needs of most businesses, certainly for a time, but they require your business to fit existing configurations.
Requirements beyond existing capabilities such as those stated above, are usually time consuming and expensive to achieve. This doesn’t lend itself to businesses who want to be agile, or who have complex integration needs - key ingredients for success in today’s changing retail landscape. Take a look at some of the challenges we’ve solved for our clients.
Who: UK's biggest vehicle parts distributor
Challenge: To reliably fulfil 000's of orders per day, all within 30 mins
Solution: An agile eCommerce platform supporting over 500,000 product SKU’s
Read case study
Who: Apple's biggest B2B reseller
Challenge: Outdated eCommerce platform unable to keep pace with changing customer needs
Solution: New site combining B2B and B2C eCommerce with intelligent use of data and feature-rich content
Read case study
Who: Premium desserts company
Challenge: To transition from B2B to B2C market for personalised luxury cheesecakes
Solution: Technology enabled transition into B2C market, offering luxury cheesecakes for home delivery
Read case study
Who: UK's #1 bathroom retailer
Challenge: Delivering a seamless customer omni-channel experience
Solution: Up 319 places to #5 in retail 500
Read case study
And we can do it for you too. Challenge us!
