How online retail becomes enterprise commerce

Traditional e-commerce is growing beyond itself: it is no longer just about the digitalization of sales channels, but rather about the transformation and bundling of a large number of business-critical processes - under a holistic strategy and with the aim of a cross-system solution for the digital future. But what growth potential is there in such enterprise commerce models? Who can benefit and how? And what aspects are involved?

1. growth with digital services

Simply optimizing costs by digitizing processes will not yet lead retailers and manufacturers out of the price trap. In the long term, value-added offers beyond the original products are more decisive for business success today. Digital technologies also enable new services that significantly expand companies' value chains. But only when a service significantly simplifies a complex task or decision does it create sufficient added value for users.

2. end the separation between development and maintenance

Commerce platforms must be constantly developed further, as customer expectations are changing faster and more clearly than they did just a few years ago. It therefore no longer makes sense to make a rigid distinction between development and maintenance. As a customer, we want permanent innovation; as an e-commerce company, this means continuous development and investment. The return on this investment is competitive enterprise commerce.

3. marketplace models become top dogs

Traditional wholesale is particularly threatened by the growing online B2B marketplaces and the associated disintermediation, i.e. the skipping of intermediate stages between manufacturer and buyer. Disintermediation will lead to substantial shifts in market share and have a massive impact on the B2B sector. For standardized products in the lower price segment in particular, i.e. for commodities and products from the maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) sector, there is no way around the marketplaces.

4. enterprise commerce? Not without my cloud!

The basic idea behind the cloud concept is to outsource structures and services that were previously set up and maintained monolithically and in-house to services and thus scale significantly better. Scaling requirements often arise in expansion situations, for example into other countries or through the expansion of the service portfolio. Cloud systems not only offer significantly more options in such a scenario, they also improve the flexibility and speed with which companies can react to new requirements.

5 Only data in context is worth anything

The key to successful online marketing and e-business lies in continuous data collection and analysis. However, in contrast to traditional web analysis, not only is the movement data of online visitors evaluated, but all business-critical data is taken into account. For a comprehensive and valid overview, all data must be put into context. The result: Enterprise commerce is no longer conceivable without business intelligence.

6 What else was offline versus online?

The success of offline marketing measures increasingly depends directly on the performance of online marketing channels. SEO and SEA in particular are decisive factors here. It is therefore important to consider both areas together if the motive is to be the success of the company and not that of a specialist department. The customer journey is the linchpin of all marketing measures - and just because a certain customer journey is not currently included in the tracking strategy does not mean that it does not exist.

7 The digital world is asynchronous

The demand for customer centricity also means the end of traditional synchronous communication processes. This is because the world of commerce is becoming increasingly complex and hundreds of processes are becoming interlinked. However, rigidly working through tasks along the process chains costs customers too much time. Asynchronous communication allows tasks to be distributed and prioritized so that they can be processed at the right time. This turns a succession into an orchestrated coexistence.

The theses are compiled from the Annual "Future topics in e-commerce 2017". The current issue can be downloaded free of charge at Netz98.de can be downloaded.