What's the deal with eCommerce?

Clients are continually asking me, what's going on with eCommerce? What are our competitors doing? How should we structure the function? Who should it report into? Is it a tactical extension of marketing or should it be purely strategic?

Businesses all share a common goal: drive bottom line growth by leveraging insights, make smarter decisions based on relevant customer insights, increase the margin, increase supply chain efficiency and make the most out of B2C/B2B channels. Yet every business's approach varies wildly, causing a degree of confusion and uncertainty, resulting in an increasingly mobile workforce. Knowing what to do with eCommerce, has never been less clear.

In my opinion, there are only a handful of companies that get it right. It appears if you accept that eCommerce is both strategically and operationally vital to a business, that is in a continual state of evolution and commit to long-term investment, you're doing OK. However, I can see the dilemma: why carve out significant investment to something that's only contributing to 6% of your revenue? Because it's growing at 70%! It's a paradox.

An eCommerce "native" is someone who gets his/her kicks from the thrill of creating something, building a technical capability, diving into the detail and developing teams to win. Most then enjoy playing with the train-set they created by getting stuck into the data/analytics, evangelising and running the P&L. It's a symbiotic circle. One can't exist without the other. As one eCommerce leader recently put it to me "we love to eat what we cook". Perhaps this is one reason why there is such a high turnover in eCommerce talent. Businesses are too quick to turn off the strategic tap in favour of a tactical approach, and vice-versa.

Virtual assistants and smart data will continue to revolutionize the way we spend our hard earned cash, and in turn, companies will need to adapt to stay current. In other words, the eCommerce journey doesn't stop. It evolves. And businesses need to keep on investing and innovating to keep up with consumer behaviour and trends.

So perhaps finding talent with a blend of strategy and operations and maintaining that balance is the answer to a consistent, high-performance eCommerce capability.

The thoughts in this article are my own. They are intended to generate a discussion so please feel free to share your comments below. I appreciate your support.

Please feel free to reach out, I'd be more than happy to discuss further. Get in touch - [email protected] - 07787 254 600