From Best in Class to Best for Me: How to Future-Proof Your Commerce Stack

According to the Forrester Analytics Consumer Technographics® COVID-19 Survey, due in part to the pandemic, a majority (51%) of people say they are buying things online more frequently than they did in the past. And online buying isn’t slowing down any time soon: 45% of US consumers plan to continue online purchases even after the pandemic subsides.

In a Myplanet on-demand webinar, our guest speaker from Forrester, Emily Pfeiffer, described how this current reality came to be and what brands should think about when it comes to building digital experiences. Let's take a closer look at some of those themes.

The three phases of commerce software evolution 

According to Forrester, in the earliest days of ecommerce, technology operated in a kind of pangea: ecommerce was a big, monolithic entity that was isolated from the rest of the business. It was treated like a different business entirely, with its own P&L, its own product stock, and its own customer experience. Online buying was still niche during this phase, so customers who purchased online typically didn’t go in store, and vice-versa.

Then came continental drift, where individual functions like order management or CRM systems got broken off into their own modules. This evolution coincided with consumers starting to buy more online and in-store. Instead of customers buying via one channel or the other, a single customer might purchase small things online and also pop into a store for a closer look at something more significant.

We’re now in the individual continents phase of ecommerce technology.  

The dual cores of modern commerce technology

On the webinar, Emily spoke about how beyond the proliferation of ecommerce technology, the biggest shift is that commerce itself is no longer the core of ecommerce technology. As buying and selling online is now table stakes, ecommerce vendors have shifted to a dual core model, either focusing on experience or operations.

Best for me, not “best in class”

According to Forrester, given the complexity of vendors in the landscape today, brands must start their journey from a business problem or customer demand first. In previous phases, the choices were often limited to monolithic solutions with all modules provided by a single vendor. At Myplanet, we are seeing that now that microservices and integrations allow for almost any experience to be built, brands need to identify what’s pushing them (cost savings or business priorities) or pulling them (market or customer demands) before they start selecting software. In the end, each brand will walk away with a curated suite of “best for me” technologies. 

Borrow digital maturity from system partners

Emily also noted on the webinar that building a curated suite is a difficult task as brands also have to maintain existing business lines during the transformation. Further, identifying needs and sourcing relevant technologies requires a level of digital maturity that not many organizations currently possess. 

Instead of using these factors as a reason to delay investment, realize there’s a shortcut: your system partners. 

Iteration is the only strategy

On the webinar, Myplanet discussed how in the past, brands could make a single commerce investment and rely on it for years. That’s simply no longer the case. Instead of making big plans and spending months - or even years - building out a commerce implementation, brands need to identify their minimum needs. From there, they need to implement single pieces of their desired experience, building and iterating as they go. This will not only increase speed to market, but will also allow for feedback loops and rapid testing with real customers, in-market. 

While a scary prospect for many companies, this is also where a good partner can help: their knowledge de-risks the tests at the outset, meaning more time spent learning and less time spent cleaning up messes. 

Watch the full webinar on-demand.