Navigating the ‘boundary-less commerce’ landscape

The worlds of online and offline retail are rapidly converging and customers have come to expect a seamless experience and consistent service regardless of where the transaction is occurring. The pressure is now on for retailers to keep abreast of the rapidly changing commerce landscape in order to maintain their competitive advantage and encourage customer loyalty.

In the new boundary-less and connected world of e-commerce, customers are no longer loyal to one retailer or brand, often using technology to compare the best deals and making purchasing decisions accordingly. The organisations that recognise and react quickly to changing customer demands, adapting to deliver their offerings accordingly, will be the retailers that succeed.

Legacy IT systems are often complex and expensive to change, slowing down the ability of an organisation to react. Ignoring the problem, however, can prove to be a much more expensive mistake, causing a successful company to lose ground. In extreme cases, such as Kodak’s denial of the rise of digital photography, it can spell the demise of the organisation.

Some years ago, it was standard practice for an organisation’s business or IT plan to span 5 to 10 years into the future with stakeholders buying into the concept of embarking on a ‘transformation journey’. Technology and staff were chosen to execute the changes that had been created internally over time and for some this approach did deliver business value.

We are now operating in a fast-paced environment and technology use is causing alternate and disruptive patterns of consumer behaviour, restricting organisations’ abilities to analyse and predict their behaviour in the long term.

So how do organisations approach this new world of business transformation and successfully execute the transition into boundary-less commerce? We recommend focusing on the following:

• Understanding the problems that the business is facing by utilising available data.
• Establishing a governance framework that allows access to the right data at the right time.
• IT encouraging business to work closely and form an agile ‘SWAT’ team that reviews problems, creates solutions and agrees the overall business case for new and existing features.
• Continuously reviewing and updating the technology, a sort of ‘conveyor belt’ to give an up to date picture of the business and what is needed to keep on track.
• Working with suppliers to ensure there are no boundaries or obstacles in the service delivery.

The primary advantage of this approach is that it enables organisations to respond quickly to changing consumer dynamics, as well as increasing the predictability of execution in any business transformation. Businesses are able to simplify complex issues and improve efficiencies, allowing them to constantly innovate and differentiate themselves from their competitors.