Time to check your technology

You may have invested in e-commerce technology, but there could still be a struggle integrating it with your existing systems.

Outdated systems limit the ability to rapidly prototype, test and launch new digital offerings and drive consistent experience across channels, thus hindering your efforts to compete with modern, mobile-first e-commerce architectures. You may be forced to make incremental changes, rather than a complete transformation.

Modern retail space is dominated by the need to deliver a unified, connected experience. It has become more important to able to rapidly reinforce our e-commerce capabilities, creating in-store common channel environments and expanding our customer base. We need to work harder to deliver a seamless experience that functions on every device.

Technology will become a competitive battlefront

Global retail e-commerce sales are expected to reach $4 trillion by 2020, so what we can expect to see as the competition and adoption of key technologies continues to increase?

Traditionally, retailers have used technology as an enabler of table stakes features and have competed on aspects such as product assortments, price, promotions, store footprints and marketing.

However, with fast-changing consumer trends, the retailers with the best set of tech tools will win. These include consumer-facing front-end digital presence and both platform and architecture to ensure back-end systems work efficiently.

We will see a digital shift, not transformation

There will be an accelerated shift to mobile and cross-platform interactions. The mobile share of global e-commerce is expected to grow to 70% by 2017, as we see consumer behaviour such as online shoppers starting transactions on one device and ending on another become standard practice.

In a hyperconnected market, brands must rely on well-differentiated services and solutions to create and maintain a competitive edge. In order to do so, sometimes they must forsake their legacy systems and adopt emerging technologies in order to fully embrace and execute digital strategies.

Office Power can provide their dealers with, advice, e-commerce support and software to help with growth and expansion, furnishing them with the technology to drive their speed of development in online markets.