Posts Tagged ‘eCommerce’

Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends

Published on September 6, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

Recessionary Forces Challenge Organizations To Not Only Right Channel, But Also Personalize

Organizations with e-commerce initiatives face a flurry of competitive forces that challenge existing assumptions put in place a decade ago.  On the operational efficiency front, organizations must battle reduced product margins, shorter product life cycles, greater pricing transparency, and increased friction in multi-channel sales.  From a strategic differentiation point of view, organizations must enhance product offerings with services, improve the customer experience with loyalty top of mind, and tailor personalized experiences that support self-service options and mobility.  In addition, as customers have shifted their buying behaviors, social channels gain importance in how organizations engage their key stakeholders.

E-Commerce Evolves To Meet Next Gen Requirements

Given the landscape, organizations must adjust to less control of their business than the prior decade.  The rules have changed.  Buying behaviors have evolved.  Consequently, organizations must relearn and reengage to revive their e-commerce initiatives.  They should establish trust, not obfuscate through half-truths.  They should focus on influence, not attempt at regaining control.  Consequently, e-commerce must play a key role in the transformation of the customer’s buying experience.  In fact, next generation e-commerce initiatives must address 12 shifts such as (see Figure 1):

  1. Ownership. Governance transitions from a siloed role to part of the overall buying experience.
  2. Approach. Organizations shift from top-down messaging to bottom-up advocacy.
  3. Business requirements. Efforts focus on completing industry vertical specialization.
  4. Marketing style. Initiatives target bolstering brand trust.
  5. Channel management. E-commerce re-integrates back to the overall buying process as a significant entry point to customer lifetime value.
  6. Business process. Functional excellence grows into end to end perfect orders.
  7. Personalization. Improvements in technology enable tailored buying experiences.
  8. Business analytics. Business intelligence moves from basic reporting to real-time decision support.
  9. Social media. Non-existent programs evolve to address one of the greatest trends of the decade.
  10. Product margins. Organizations must evolve to grow profitable revenues.
  11. Product life cycle. Decreasing product life cycles require better inventory management and demand planning.
  12. Deployment options. Multiple options exist and organizations have more opportunities to experiment with try and buy SaaS alternatives.

Figure 1.  E-Commerce Evolves To Meet Next Gen Requirements


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Event Report: Epicor Perspectives 2009 – Continued Transformation Towards Next Gen Apps

Published on November 10, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Perspectives 2009 highlights continued market, corporate, and product transformation

Epicor Perspectives Hall of SolutionsEpicor's Community Managers James Norwood Vice President of Product Marketing on Epicor's Roadmpa
Pool at Caesar's PalaceA Night With Tom Papas At Epicor Perspectives 2009A Night With Tom Papas At Epicor Perspectives 2009A Night With Tom Papas At Epicor Perspectives 2009

(Photos by R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC.   Copyright © 2009 All rights reserved.)

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Epicor hosted over 1500 partner, customer, and employee attendees at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, NV.  Conference highlights include:

  • Update on Epicor 9 adoption. Epicor has (deployed 11/19/2009 ) shipped 30,000 seats to 60 customers since GA in December 2008.  More than 890 customers have purchased the product with 590 implementations in progress.   The company hopes to be in 50 countries and 30 languages by end of year.

    POV: With over 22,000 customers worldwide, product adoption may at first appear below average.  But given the recessionary factors, Epicor has done well in taking its time to ramp up and build customer references for this next generation app.  Epicor’s success will require a future specialization into verticals and indirect partner channels.

  • Shared benefits program. Epicor launched a new program to improve implementation outcomes with shared risks and benefits.  Vendor and customers will own project scope definition and agree on outcomes and ROI.  If the project is under budget, Epicor shares the savings with the customer.  If the project runs over budget, the customer pays for half the contracted professional services hourly rates.

    POV: Epicor builds on its previous program where it targeted a 1:1 license to implementation ratio.  While there may be open issues about unintended consequences (i.e. as raised by fellow Enterprise Advocate Frank Scavo), Epicor’s intent to change the relationship is a great step towards improving outcomes for clients in the enterprise software world.

  • New eCommerce solution. Epicor launched an all-in-one eCommerce solution that covers design to delivery.  Users of Epicor Commerce can synchronize master data elements such as products, pricing, customers, and inventory levels while managing website content and delivery.  Other features include support for payment options, merchant account/gateway integration, and tax calculations via Avalara.

    POV: Commerce customers at Perspectives were expressing interest in the new SaaS-ready options as well as hosted options.  Prospects should take a close look at the Order Hub integration from retail activities to the back end ERP systems as this will prove the greatest integration value.

Feedback from 37 customers remain mostly positive

Conversations with 17 Vantage, 12 Enterprise, 5 Avante, and 3 Vista customers showed quite positive customer sentiment.  Most (15/17) Vantage customers expected to move to Epicor 9 in 2010.  Key drivers:

  • Key functionality addressed in newer release
  • Better usability
  • Newer technology
  • Greater ROI

However, only 3 Enterprise customers, 2 Avante, and 1 Vista customers expected to make the move in the next 12 months.  Key drivers for not making the upgrade include

  • Economic recession
  • Waiting for functional parity
  • Over customization of existing product

Your POV.

If you get a chance, let us know:

  • Which Epicor products do you use?
  • When will you migrate?
  • What do you think about the shared benefits program?
  • Will you look more closely at Epicor as an alternative to SAP and Oracle?

Feel free to post your comments here or send me an email at rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.

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Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone

Published on August 31, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Proliferation and access to new social tools creates significant challenges for organizations

Organizations engaged in Social CRM initiatives often start out by monitoring the chatter and conversation across a few platforms and channels such as Facebook and Twitter.  As these organizations increase their savviness, they quickly realize the enormity of the challenge.  The exponential number of touch points and algorithmic channel complexity puts to shame yesterday’s eCommerce strategy and the dated tools designed to address multi-channel.  In order to cut through the high noise to signal ratio, organizations must determine how best to manage the complexity and scale of data being generated, amidst a transforming landscape where:

  • CIO’s no longer determine technology adoption – business leaders and individuals initiate a groundswell.
  • Consumer technologies provide more innovation, usability, and reliability than what’s available to the enterprise.
  • Disparate systems results in fragmentation of key information despite new deployment options.

Basic business questions must be addressed in every Social CRM initiative

Despite the massive scale of collected, fragmented data, Social CRM initiatives complement other relationship management initiatives in asking and answering key questions such as:

  • Do we know the identity of the individual?
  • Can we tell if there are any apparent and potential relationships?
  • Are they advocates or detractors? (added 8/31 07:25 am PT)
  • How do we know whether or not we have a false positive?
  • What products and services have been purchased in the past?
  • Have we assessed how much credit risk we can be exposed to
  • What pricing and entitlements are customers eligible for?

Organizations seek automation technologies to resolve master data issues.

Master data management (MDM) provides a set of technologies that address the acquisition, cleansing, enrichment, and distribution of data.  With so many channels and so many sources, Social CRM initiatives require MDM technologies that (See Figure 1):

  • Resolve matching of a broad range of data types. Organizations will want to associate individuals to products, services, orders, contracts, incidents, location, etc.
  • Deliver consistent and accurate enrichment of data.  Organizations will want to append trusted data sources, hierarchies, and relationship information to cleansed information.
  • Provide timely synchronization in federated environments. Organizations can expect their data to be federated as social media tools and SaaS deployments push data beyond centralized repositories.

Figure 1. Consistent Information In Social CRM Requires A MDM Backbone

20090831-ccm2

Figure 1. Consistent Information In Social CRM Requires A MDM Backbone Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Recommendations – apply continuous customer management (CCM) processes before implementing MDM technologies

Form follows function. MDM technologies should not be implemented without a clear understanding of how customer management and data governance processes will be adopted.  Five hallmarks of CCM include (see Figure 2):

  • Proactive sourcing of data. How can data be kept up to date at every touch point.
  • Right time delivery of information. What should be delivered when, where, why, and to whom?
  • Links to action. What can be done to create actionable insight?
  • Assessment of results. What metrics help paint the overall picture?
  • Refinement of process.  What lessons learned can be applied to future initiatives?

Figure 2.   Continuous Customer Management (CCM) delivers 5 unique stages

20090831-ccm

Your POV

Have you begun your Social CRM strategy without MDM?  What MDM issues do you face?  If you have put MDM to use in Social CRM, let us know any lessons learned.  Post your comment here or reach me direct at r at altimetergroup dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.

Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

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