Many people have tried to sum up what “digital transformation” means. For the most part, it’s defined as using digital technologies to create or modify processes, culture, and customer experiences to be more effective and competitive.

However, this definition doesn’t address how to measure the effectiveness of a business’ efforts to digitally transform itself, nor does it propose where such transformation efforts should focus within the organization. Digital transformation isn’t an objective, but rather an evolutionary approach. The true objective businesses have when embarking on digital transformation is to improve the organization’s digital maturity.

How to get it Right

Digital maturity is a misunderstood term. People often think of it as a measure of a business’ technical capabilities. They believe the more functional capabilities provided in the portfolio of software and systems that a business has procured, the more digitally mature an organization has become. Buying the latest software is viewed as an upgrade or growth in capabilities, but there is a big difference between the availability of capability and maturity. Organizations can buy digital capability, but they must develop digital maturity.

Digital maturity in its true form is a measure across the people, processes, and technology within an organization and how they come together to provide value effectively. In the case of digital commerce, that value is measured using a variety of commerce key performance indicators (KPIs) today, but the most critical factor is how these forces combine to engage with a digital audience. Do they frustrate, satisfy, or delight the audience?  Do you even know if they do any of those for your audience? An organization must mature their understanding of how to provide value to their digital audience and meet their expectations as they also mature the people, processes, and technology that attempt to meet and exceed those expectations.

Think of digital maturity as a chain that is made of links from a business’ people, process, technology, and audience insight.  That chain is under constant and greater strain that the audience is placing on it.  We know that the chain will break at its weakest point.  We also know that even if the links are currently holding, they will fail as the audience expectation strain increases. Digital maturity is the quality and gauge of the chain.

Let Digital Maturity Be Your Guide

Businesses need to assess people, processes, and technology across all the capabilities that create the digital audience’s experience along with how well they know that audience’s expectations. Only then can a business truly understand their digital maturity and were limiting factors are inhibiting them from delighting digital audiences. Organizations are often focusing on improving what isn’t the current limiting factor to great audience engagement, only to wonder why things have not improved after a lengthy effort.

An organization can have incredibly talented teams with the latest technology, and yet still be limited by how the processes that unify them have evolved. The processes that served the business well will have become a burden and outdated yet are still often overlooked by a desire to add more steps and functionality to an already crippling workflow.

Likewise, having great processes and technology without the human resources that can leverage them fails to capitalize on the opportunity to delight digital audiences. In my experience, it’s almost never the case that technology alone is the limiting factor to success, yet it’s still where businesses spend the most time, money, and effort while ignoring the people and processes that could dramatically improve the effectiveness of the business for a fraction of the effort and cost.

Where You Should Go from Here

Assessing an organization’s digital maturity does more than simply provide a scorecard of where they rank across people, process and technology, and audience understanding. It proves an honest and tangible metric to prioritize the improvement and maturation of a business to align with how its audience engagement expectations. The chain of digital maturity is only as strong as its weakest link. Improving the weakest link in the digital maturation that businesses should focus on if they wish to align and exceed digital audience expectations.

For more information on your digital commerce maturity, read our Digital Commerce Transformation series, and contact our commerce experts today.

In my last blog, I explained what digital commerce looks like in today’s world for businesses everywhere. Now, we’ll discuss what a digital commerce transformation looks like.

Whether a business has created new leadership roles to address digital demands or not, businesses need help evolving in many areas, including:

• Knowing their customer and their current and future digital expectations
• Identifying where the business impedes or restricts realizing those expectations and building a plan to overcome them
• Planning and successfully executing upon how to evolve the people, processes, and technology within the business to a digital-first future

These are critical aspects of transforming to a digitally successful future that cannot be overlooked, such as:

Knowing the Digital Customer

There are many businesses today that have not had a direct relationship with their customer.  Manufacturers, for example, often rely on value chain participants like distributors, dealers, and retailers to build and own the relationship with the end customer. These businesses now find themselves on their heels, and digital customers expect these manufacturers to have a digital presence, play a role in the way the customer evaluates and experiences the products, and be personally relevant to the customer.

Although these businesses find themselves starting near the beginning of understanding the voice of their customer, it’s critical to start to align to the expectations of a digital customer. This extends into knowing your partners, dealers, and retailers along with helping them realize that having a relationship with (over transacting with) a customer is no longer channel conflict, but is essential to aligning to the digital expectation your collective customer base demands.

Even businesses with current direct engagement with customers cannot claim they understand their customers. To become a digitally-obsessed business is to realize that digital demands evolve at an incredible speed, and what you know of your customer today is not what you need to prepare for in the very near future. Regardless of whether businesses are just starting to understand their customer or feel they know their customer very well, digital commerce trends will continue to evolve buying patterns and expectations beyond what they are today. Businesses must prioritize understanding the customer through a continual effort of an external agency or internal team.

Auditing People, Processes, and Technology against Needs

Keeping up with market trends, technology trends, disruptive forces, and evolving digital demands while maintaining a business is difficult, if not impossible. It’s a vain effort to be “heads up” and “heads down” at the same time. Bringing the right people together that can provide market and technology trends along with a clear understanding of the business and what it takes to align to digital demands is critical. Only then can a meaningful evaluation of a business’ current resources, processes, and technology occur to establish where the business is struggling and misaligned to digital customer expectations.

Having perspectives on the following are all key to critically evaluating the state of a business and identifying room for improvement:

• How technology change impacts process
• How process change impacts skill requirements
• How skill development allows for greater technological adoption

Building a Roadmap to Success and Completing the Journey

Understanding the digital customer and critically evaluating the state of a business are necessary to finding gaps between the two. However, the real complexity lies in developing a clear transformational program to close the gap and align to the digital expectations for a business. Businesses must develop a plan that evolves their digital maturity, addresses the competitive landscape, embraces technology trends, eliminates a technical debt, overcomes limitations in resources, responds to disruptive forces, and considers many other influential forces that will determine its success. The plan must allow agility, the ability to react to changing digital demands, the emergence of new disruptors, and the opportunities that come with a rapidly changing landscape. This task will determine the future success and, in some cases, even the viability of the business.

Most businesses struggle to bring together the voice of customers (VOC) and employees (VOE) with the change management and technology trends effectively to build a roadmap to a new digital future.  Typically, businesses are overly accustomed to their ways, lack insight into what is technically possible, don’t know what new changes in people and processes will have a positive effect or any combination of these. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that businesses overcome these challenges and meet their digital customer on the customer’s terms. Business leaders need only look at Blockbuster and Netflix, or Amazon and Sears to find examples of this undeniable truth. How they respond determines whose fate they will share.

Let us be Your Commerce Partner

At Perficient, our team of digital commerce transformation specialists has helped businesses navigate the complexity of transforming to meet a digitally demanding customer. To find out how Perficient can help your business achieve the same success, contact our commerce experts today.

Nearly all businesses have invested in digital commerce to varying degrees over the past two decades. Previously, digital commerce was thought of as a channel through which the business exposed its way of doing business to a digital audience. This thought served businesses well when the digital audience had little expectation with a business online and were willing to discover how to engage with it best.

But today digital audience expectations are extremely high and demand a frictionless experience that they want from all businesses. Digital commerce is no longer a digital model of a business and its processes, but an experience and expectation that digital audiences bring to the business. The script, as they say, has been flipped.

Businesses that have not realized this transformation make these common mistakes:

• Blaming technology and “re-platforming” without aligning people, processes, and technology to meet digital commerce demands and not seeing different results.
• Focusing on the wrong capabilities and missing the key foundational elements necessary to create experiences that delight audiences
• Overshooting their digital maturity and trying to immediately implement disruptive trends without maturing the organization to do so successfully

It’s easy to see how businesses find themselves in this situation, as most haven’t adopted strategies to align their existing business to newer technologies as it developed. They haven’t stepped back and looked at the digital evolution as a whole and what impact it has had on customer expectation – and these expectations don’t align with how the business functions today.

Digital commerce is meeting your customer when and where they want to engage and transact with your business. This requires a digital commerce transformation that harmonizes the organizations buying and selling of products and services to the digital-first expectations of their audience. Failing to transform and align is certain to drive digital audiences to competitors that do. The consequence of this is enormous with digital commerce as a core driver of future revenue growth.

Why businesses struggle to become digitally obsessed

Most businesses predate the mobile phone and almost as many predate the Internet. This is the best realization that the people, processes, and technology that have made businesses what they are today aren’t aligned to what a digital-first customer looks like or what the way they demand to do business.

It’s not enough to simply label an organization “digital” and make them responsible for the revenue that flows through the Internet as a “channel.” Much of the business and the way it functions outside of this digital team has a direct impact on the ability of this digital organization to achieve the digital-first engagement with customers that’s required today.

Businesses have gone to great lengths to silo these digital organizations with efforts like dedicating inventory, isolating budgets, defining digital-only key performance indicators (KPIs), and many other efforts to in effect create a digital arm without effectively changing the rest of their existing business to support digital-first engagement. This has the effect of simply digitalizing current business operations and exposing them to a digital audience. Remember, nearly all businesses function today isn’t how digital customers want to engage. These siloed approaches, therefore, will not align to digital demands and in many cases will only highlight the misalignment a business has with such demands.

Recent trends have seen new roles emerge in an effort to support a digital-first future. Chief Digital Officers, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Experience Officer, Head of Digital, and many other variations have been created to recognize the importance of doing business the way customers want to engage.  However, these roles will only be effective when they are able to effect change across all departments.  Failure to realize and support the roles in the pervasive changes across a business’ people, processes and technology leads to the limited success many organizations have seen when trying to meet their customer’s digital demands.

In my next piece, we’ll dive more into what the next steps look like in a successful digital commerce transformation. In the meantime, contact our commerce experts today.

A progressive web application (PWA) is a software application built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to run within and depend on a standards-compliant web browser. PWAs exploit their reliance on these browsers to overcome conventional web browsers application development challenges, such as browser-compatibility and feature availability.

There is a tremendous opportunity for a unified and consistent experience across almost all user devices with the various advantages and mature technology PWAs utilize. PWAs have key strengths that responsive websites lack when it comes to digital commerce. Because of this, many digital commerce vendors have chosen to implement their next-generation storefronts as PWAs and their customers are faced with how best to adopt the PWA (if at all) that will be delivered to them in the very near future.

The Advantages of PWAs over Traditional Digital Commerce Sites

There’s a reason for those currently on digital commerce platforms to get excited by this news. PWAs have grown in popularity for various reasons, including their multiple features and ability to expand upon previous concepts in web development such as progressive enhancement, feature-detection, and responsive web design to support as many modern browsers and devices as possible. The pervasive use of standards-compliant browsers on Android devices has allowed PWAs to be a more viable cross-device platform than earlier solutions when your customer-base is primarily Android-based mobile customers. Browsers on Android Mobile devices allow PWAs the ability to behave much more like a native app than a responsive design-based website. These browsers provide a standard way to interface with device features made only available to native apps. Features such as geolocation, camera access, near-field/RFID, graphics libraries, offline mode, push notifications, and add to home screen are some of the reasons why PWAs have risen so quickly in popularity for the right situations.

PWAs also have unique advantages over traditional responsive websites, such as:

• Delivering through HTTPS/URL requests
• PWA pages are SEO-friendly and indexed by search engines
• Operational costs associated with PWAs are a fraction of its cost to run and maintain native apps long-term.
• PWAs are fast and do not request loading new pages for every user interaction.
• They rely on APIs to fetch data and reflect changes. They can pre-fetch and cache information and images locally to avoid the lengthy retrieval and display of a traditional web app’s HTML page.
• Native app-like features for Android mobile users

PWAs could even be an alternative to replace simple native apps for Android mobile users because their capabilities and features are similar on Android mobile devices, which creates an opportunity to significantly reduce the technical skillsets required to reach users across desktop, mobile web, and native applications. For organizations with a primarily Android-based customer base, unifying all these experiences within a single common skillset allows a dramatic cost reduction compared to the alternative of having desktop, mobile, and native apps running different technologies on different platforms/systems. The end-user experience becomes much easier to keep consistent than across a myriad of touchpoint technologies. PWAs can become active engagement tools over traditional passive web browsing experiences based on the ability to leverage device features available to end-users and create more compelling and engaging user experiences than traditional browser-based applications.  This allows digital marketers to engage more meaningfully and in a timelier fashion – even when the customer has no internet connection.

When Does a PWA Not Make Sense?

It is no surprise that interest in PWA adoption within digital commerce has grown exponentially in a short period. Still, there are considerations to make before taking that leap, such as the technology choice upon which to base a PWA. Two popular choices, Google’s Angular and Facebook’s React, are leveraged to develop PWAs but offer very different approaches. Other frameworks are rapidly evolving with either dedicated development teams or open communities pushing their software forward. Digital commerce software platforms are selecting a technology upon which they are basing their ‘starter store’, but are making them available as ‘reference applications’. Choosing to adopt these technologies (whether through the vendor’s reference implementation or building upon it independently) will require investment and evolution to keep up as the technology evolves. Businesses need to make sure they are prepared to keep up with the pace of change PWAs will bring.

Another consideration is whether the application you are developing should be a PWA. One must consider several factors before they commit to a PWA, such as:

• If your main interest in the PWA technology lies in their native app like capabilities, you must look at whether your mobile customers are primarily Android or iOS users as the native app-like capabilities are only reliably available for Android users.
• If your application requires a complete offline mode and still includes everything on the app for the user — there are limits to the offline storage in a browser
• If the app’s pages need to be indexed by crawlers
• If it is simpler to develop as a native app
• If you want to monetize the app or sell through an app store
• If you will leverage enough of the benefits of a PWA to invest the effort
• If a mobile app would create a better and more differentiated experience for the target customer(s) and buyer(s) than the limitations that still exist within PWAs

Our Final Thoughts on PWAs in Digital Commerce

PWAs are the natural progression of web apps and present incredible opportunities and benefits across almost all user devices. For clients with a primarily Android-based customer base, the reduction in cost to develop and maintain PWAs versus more traditional web and native app development makes a strong logical case for development, especially in digital commerce areas. Organizations can create new user experiences for Android mobile users by leveraging the ability to add PWAs to a home screen, offline capabilities, reach into the device’s features, push notifications through HTML and JavaScript web app technology, and many other device features to create greater engagement.

There is, however, an even more exciting opportunity for digital commerce organizations to create new user experiences within PWAs than they had available within traditional responsive design web apps. Leveraging the ability to add PWAs to a home screen, offline capabilities, reach into the features of the device, and leveraging push notifications all through familiar HTML and JavaScript web app technology make PWAs a tremendous opportunity for those who have a primarily Android-based mobile customer base and who can think outside the traditional web app box to new and more compelling user experiences. There is an opportunity through PWAs for brands and businesses to differentiate and create value for their customer over the competition.

As a maturing technology and responsive web apps’ natural progression, there will be continuous evolution with PWAs. Still, the benefits far outweigh the costs associated with adopting them in the right scenarios. For more information on PWAs for Commerce, contact our mobile and digital commerce experts today.

On June 4, HCL and Google Cloud announced the expansion of their partnership to bring HCL’s software offerings, starting with HCL Commerce, to Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud Platform will now be the preferred cloud platform for HCL Commerce, taking advantage of the global reach, security, and elasticity of Google Cloud Platform.

Why is this big news for HCL?

There has been concern over the direction and future of the HCL Commerce platform since it was acquired from IBM. Some doubted that HCL could turn an aged platform that had lost momentum in the hands of IBM into a compelling offering that resonated once more with the market. Others had concern over the direction HCL would take with their efforts to rejuvenate the platform in the market and feared that HCL would develop their own software to help expand the platform in areas of AI, machine learning, big data, cloud native and many other areas that are critical to the future of commerce platforms. Some believed HCL Commerce lacked the vision to be relevant in a new age of commerce.

This announcement is a loud rebuttal to such HCL Commerce critics. A partnership with Google, leveraging its many cloud-native capabilities, will give HCL Commerce an accelerated timeline for developing next-generation capabilities based on the proven technologies of Google – all in a cloud-native platform. In the race to develop next-generation commerce features and capabilities, HCL has found a huge accelerator with this Google partnership.

Why is this big news for Google?

Google has not gained the market share that was anticipated with Google Cloud Platform. Although late to the cloud space, so too was Microsoft. However, Microsoft had something Google did not – long-standing relationships and entrenchment within enterprises. Google gains more attention and relevance in the enterprise and business space through this partnership. HCL Commerce powers many large commerce solutions for global leaders and this helps Google penetrate a market that has been difficult to make inroads against competitors. Google can now show how business clients are solutioning with its cloud portfolio and not simply rely on point integration plays.

What does this mean for the future of the platform? Is HCL Commerce now only available on Google Cloud Platform?

HCL has already shared plans to bring the full power of the Google Cloud Platform portfolio to bring the limitless scalability of cloud-native technology to HCL Commerce. In fact, HCL customers can leverage Google Anthos today to run hybrid and multi-cloud deployments of HCL Commerce. The freedom to run the platform on any combination of cloud and on-premise deployments is already a compelling differentiator for many HCL customers, and HCL continues to support all deploy patterns even with this announcement. This does not mean that HCL customers are now required to run HCL Commerce in Google Cloud Platform, although there may be some advantages that come over time for deploying in this way.  What this does mean for HCL Commerce is a clear roadmap and technology stack to leverage and influence within a world-class cloud environment without the need to aggregate many point solutions from multiple vendors or try to develop its own proprietary technology in an already crowded market.  HCL Commerce has a strategic go-to for an entire portfolio of cloud-native tech upon which to grow its offering.

What about privacy? Does Google own the data in these deployments?

It is natural for businesses to be concerned with the terms under which data in cloud deployments are governed. We are in the age of data being a competitive advantage, and companies are concerned with all the privacy and security needs that surround it. HCL and Google explicitly state that Google does not own the data within these deployments. Customers do not have to give up ownership and privacy of data to attain the benefits of the cloud-native capabilities Google Cloud Platform has to offer.

What does this mean for existing HCL Commerce customers?

HCL Commerce customers will see a roadmap that continues to innovate the same platform they run today with a predicable direction and technology stack. This allows customers to better plan and align to adopt these features and capabilities over time as HCL embraces more of what Google Cloud Platform has to offer. HCL Commerce customers also have a clear direction upon which to base their own shifts to cloud and cloud-native technology without having to worry about forcibly moving from their existing software to a new offering and separate product roadmap. It’s the same product and software whether you choose to run it in Google Cloud Platform, on premise, Azure, Amazon, OpenShift or any cloud provider or any combination thereof. HCL Commerce customers can move to cloud on their terms while knowing there is a clear focus on the future for the platform, whatever direction their cloud journey takes.

How can Perficient help?

As a Premier Google partner with an awarding-winning HCL Commerce practice, we are uniquely positioned to navigate these new waters and help with the evolution of your HCL Commerce investment.

We not only have the expertise, but also the experience. We recently helped launch HCL Commerce v9 in Google Cloud Platform for one of our multinational, enterprise clients, allowing them the ability to continuously scale without the limitations of a more conventional architecture.

Wondering what HCL Commerce and Google Cloud Platform means to you?

It can be difficult to understand the best path to take for your business, but we’re here to help you align your goals with your technology strategy and determine the best way to move forward.

Contact us to learn more.

Tremendous change continues to happen daily as COVID-19 forces all of us into a new reality. As people practice social distancing and are forced to work from home and stores along with other gathering places close, digital channels become a critical connection to the outside world for us as social creatures. Trends are already emerging online to support their business, communities, customers, and employees. Here’s a look at how digital businesses have pivoted in the last few weeks.

Delivery Models Are Surging/Changing

The world is quickly adding new terminology to its lexicon as it combats COVID-19. Terms like “social distancing” and “flattening the curve” are ever-present and businesses are quickly adjusting to align (and in some cases comply) to efforts to help deal with the virus. Food delivery firms were quick to pick up on the need to respond to fears and social responsibility implementing contactless services during the pandemic. Local restaurants and businesses and those who depend on them are viewing gig economy delivery options as a lifeline during these times when brick and mortar locations are forced to temporarily close.

Online purchases have surged in recent days and the need for local, last-mile delivery is struggling to keep up with demand. Big names in grocery stores, restaurants, and eCommerce are all hiring to respond to the increase in demand, with Amazon getting the most eye-catching headline – Amazon has looked to increase staff by 100,000 to handle the increase in demand during this time. 

The ability to effectively pivot to reach the end customer has proven to be vital to the viability of businesses during the COVID-19 crisis. Businesses that are not enabled to change their delivery and eCommerce fulfillment demands are currently under significant threat while others continue to provide for the end consumer in these uncertain times. Long after this crisis subsides, businesses will be forced to look at how their digital relationship with their customer and their ability to deliver during times of crisis and disruption will support them in the future.

Supply Chains and Fulfillment Are Being Disrupted

There will be a “massive” shuffling of supply chains globally after coronavirus shutdowns. The initial wave of the virus within China has created shortages of products, equipment and parts from suppliers that were felt even before other regions of the world reduced operations. Border closures, factory shutdowns, and quarantines have shown some businesses just how fragile some supply chains have become. “Single-point-of-failure” within the supply chains are made visible during times like these, and those that fail to develop diversification within supply chains will continue to suffer disruptions in the future.

Businesses that participate in marketplaces and fulfill through third parties and dropping-shipping across their supply chain are seeing resiliency as traditional touchpoints with consumers are frozen. However, even those businesses that warehouse and fulfill through Amazon have faced disruption in Europe as Amazon EU Closes Supply Chain For Most Merchants Amid Covid-19 Pandemic to prioritize essential products for customers. 

Retail meat purchases surged to almost 70% in a week due to the outbreak in North America. The ability and agility for food producers to route delivery from foodservice to food retail is helping restock shelves that would create panic if left empty. Even the #ToiletPaperApocalypse has caught suppliers off guard and demonstrated that even everyday items with ample supply can be a challenge to inventory and manage logistics. Limits on products have become necessary to stem panic buying and hoarding in an effort for businesses to show care and compassion to their customers. Businesses will look to broaden their supply chain, react more quickly to demand with faster scalability in production, and provide earlier analytics and real-time data to remain informed and react to panic.

Robust and diversified supply chain and fulfillment systems that provide real-time analytics and the ability to respond to events as they happen are not just needed today – they are critical. We should be thankful that some of the most critical products and services we depend on already flow through such systems. Businesses can take lessons from them and quickly respond to be a healthier, more resilient organization going forward.

Marketing and Personalization is Actually Becoming Personal

In times like this, brands and businesses want to appear relevant and reflect a compassionate, human tone. Collections for local charities, community programs, and hiring programs for those laid off are appearing in local news daily. Even large companies are striking a humanitarian tone with firms such as Netflix doing its part to support those who have helped them be so successful. 

As a Canadian, I am proud to share stories of our businesses both large and small that are helping respond to disrupted and limited supply. Labatt’s Canada is mobilizing its Disaster Relief Program to produce hand sanitizer and small businesses like Top Shelf Distillers are producing hand washes to help supplement. Some are even donating their products to hospitals, emergency crews, and the military.

Large companies across the board know that there will be fallout in the months to come and people will face hardship. Ford recognized the need to change its message and offer help to its customers with short-term relief during the uncertain weeks ahead. 

Businesses have to be mindful that critics will find efforts like this as opportunistic and hollow attempts to prey on fear. However, those who focus on delivering real value and help to customers and communities will be long remembered for their actions and have an obligation to make their example known so that others may follow suit. 

Conclusion

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has disrupted everyday life and business as we know it. The changes we have seen serve to highlight how critical digital is during not only pandemics, but all crises and disasters that we will experience and overcome. Although it may feel like this pandemic is here to stay, it will pass. The effects on how businesses plan and operate digitally will ripple on long after COVID-19.

On Monday, December 16, 2019, Insite Software was acquired by Episerver. This acquisition provides significant opportunities for both organizations. Episerver is known for its digital experience, personalization, and marketing automation capabilities. However, Episerver’s digital commerce product has been listed just outside the leaders in the eyes of analysts and the market. Episerver also has limited exposure in North America. By acquiring Insite Software, Episerver instantly gains a market presence in North America. With Insite’s leading B2B digital commerce core platform, Episerver will be able to provide its long list of existing customers a more compelling B2B commerce offering and hop into the leaders’ category.

Episerver and Insite Software join an ever-growing list of acquisitions in the digital commerce space as of late. However, unlike some of these recent acquisitions, this one is easily understood. Both Episerver and Insite products use Microsoft standards for .NET MVC, leveraging Angular and React and other extensible frameworks. This is appealing to many organizations that have significant investments in this technical stack.

These two platforms also share a similar headless API approach to their platforms, which makes integration of the two easier than other systems. In fact, many .NET-focused enterprise infrastructures deploy Episerver products within their existing InsiteCommerce system because of natural synergies between these solutions. Bringing Insite’s product suite and Episerver under a single owner can only strengthen those synergies as these platforms evolve into the next generation.

It will be interesting to watch as Episerver’s customer-centric digital experience platform and Insite’s B2B eCommerce purpose-built solutions align under one banner. As a long-time partner of both Episerver and Insite, Perficient is excited to help new and existing clients realize the value of this acquisition can bring to their own digital transformation.

“Headless commerce” has quickly become the buzzword of the eCommerce world, but many are unsure of what a headless commerce experience actually entails. Often times, when organizations set out to develop a headless commerce architecture, they fail to consider how business processes and workflows will grow, change, and improve over time. As a result, many businesses discover that certain commerce functionality is missing from their stack, data is disconnected, and changes to their customer experience is difficult. 
This is why Elastic Path set out to revolutionize headless commerce with a system that is flexible, service-based, and most importantly, built to seamlessly grow with your business. So while it’s impossible to predict where your business will be in five, ten, or twenty years, building a headless commerce system that can easily change and evolve with you isn’t. 

Headless commerce explained

At its core, headless commerce is the decoupling between a front-end eCommerce experience and back-end processes and transactions such as order management, shipping, and payment processing. This divide enables the two to operate and evolve independently of each other, and gives businesses the ability to build and deploy new touchpoints and experiences without jeopardizing existing ones.
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the key to delivering headless commerce functionality. Built to provide a seamless front-end experience, APIs are not a program or even a server, but rather a set of code that governs how various applications interact and communicate. So developers can achieve maximum flexibility in the creation of front-end experiences that utilize APIs as the go-between to retrieve and deliver information, rather than direct interaction between the front and back-end systems. 

Embedding commerce everywhere with APIs

APIs give businesses the power to not only improve their microservices and commerce touchpoints, but to expand them as well. Businesses can now place “buy” buttons on social media channels, create commands for purchasing through virtual voice assistants, use chatbots to assist customers throughout the buying journey, and even allow customers to purchase products or experiences through virtual reality simulations. To survive in the world of modern eCommerce, it’s imperative that you explore these avenues as ways to introduce new touchpoints outside the traditional webstore and mobile application. 

Connecting the dots with Elastic Path

When moving towards a headless commerce approach, many companies oversimplify the process and think decoupling the front-end UX and the back-end processes is all there is to it. But with the growing trend of integrating external touchpoints and building new commerce experiences, it can become more complicated and quickly become an unmanageable array of touchpoints that need constant updating.
Unlike other digital commerce offerings on the market today, Elastic Path is making headless commerce scalable. Its Cortex API consolidates commerce data and functionality to seamlessly orchestrate customer experiences. It intelligently manages dependencies between services to provide customer experiences in a way that allows user flows to change without constantly updating touchpoints. In addition, Elastic Path Commerce services can be updated and reworked without disrupting the existing experiences or front-end applications. Creating new touchpoints has never been simpler, and developers can easily create new ways to engage and interact with customers outside the traditional channels, without expensive and time-intensive back-end development. 

This week I, along with other thought leaders, had a chance to sit down and talk with Gary Schoch, HCL’s global GTM head for their newly acquired Digital Commerce platform (formerly IBM’s WebSphere Commerce). Gary discussed HCL’s perspective on the product and why HCL acquired the platform. He also spent time discussing the philosophy HCL is adopting while it invests heavily in developing the next iteration of what is now HCL Commerce. It was encouraging to hear a distinct and coherent message coming from HCL after so many months of silence while the acquisition closed.

Continuing to Deliver Excellence

It was interesting that a conversation about HCL and its acquisition really started by talking about IBM. But it quickly made sense when Gary outlined that, not only was HCL interested in acquiring a platform that is core to generating revenue for its customers, but also that IBM wanted to ensure that it believed the acquiring company would succeed and do right by the existing customer base. After all, these customers are, in many cases, still heavily committed to IBM technology, and at the same time, the level of its customer’s digital commerce success is still vastly important to IBM. This, combined with HCL’s partnership with IBM and HCL’s desire to bring its philosophy of “value beyond the contract,” makes the transfer of the platform’s stewardship to HCL seem like a natural fit. This was not IBM abandoning the platform. This was a thoughtful transition, and one that IBM believed would be in the best interest of its customers. HCL is excited to invest in what will be a strategic growth offering for its enterprise software division.

Room to Grow

This also means that with HCL, the platform is not beholden to IBM technology. It is free from having to provide a “completely blue” offering that aligns with a larger corporate directive. HCL Commerce is WebSphere Commerce, unchained. HCL’s intention for its Commerce platform to become more open and flexible is clear in its roadmap. It has a more integration-first focus and the freedom to partner with true best-in-breed technology, innovative thought leaders, and researchers. The market can expect to see more agility and innovation in the future for the platform and customers can expect more capabilities sooner through a more streamlined delivery model. Gary stated clearly, “Our goal is to deliver as fast as or faster than our customers.”

Focusing on the Customer

It was also enlightening to hear that HCL’s philosophy for the platform is centered on the importance of collaboration with customers. “Those digital commerce vendors who have listened to customers have grown their market share, while those who have not have suffered,” said Gary. Many digital commerce vendors in the marketplace are currently trying to differentiate themselves by investing in the next set of features they hope can generate demand and attention in the industry. In an effort to ensure that the investment HCL makes in the platform aligns with more than simple feature requests, HCL’s approach takes customer opinions and needs into account when deciding the direction of the platform. HCL wants to deliver value by providing capabilities that align with its customer’s digital roadmap. That’s why HCL has outlined plans to deliver value by being both forward-thinking for its customers and providing capabilities that align with where its customers want to take their business. This plan makes HCL a partner in their customers’ success. It allows HCL to provide a core platform with capabilities aligned with customer roadmaps, which in turn enables customers to focus on building differentiating capabilities and customer experiences. Gary said it most clearly when he stated, “My competitor is not a vendor. It’s my customer’s competitor.” That’s something every customer wants to hear.
I have seen HCL’s philosophy first hand as it meets with customers. HCL shares its roadmap openly with customers, favoring taking notes over making presentations and listening over speaking. There is a sense of excitement in the HCL team, and it’s easy to see that they are committed to the platform and the success of its customers. They understand that there are issues that need to be addressed and technical debt that must be resolved. They also understand that customers expect them to be thought leaders and help keep pace with the ever-changing digital commerce industry. Gary is challenging his team to be forward-thinking by asking questions like, “What will 5G mean for commerce?”, “What is the next machine learning technology we should be adopting?” and “When will AR/VR be the way customers engage?” Clients like to hear there is a longer-term plan full of innovation and thought leadership.
Gary has also stressed the importance of partners like Perficient in the future. Perficient is glad to be part of helping create what HCL Commerce will become in the future and deliver new value to clients. The digital commerce landscape is at an inflection point, and the platform decisions businesses make now will have a lasting impact on its success or failure. Perficient and HCL both understand this and know that a digital commerce platform is a mission-critical aspect of a client’s business. We look forward to continuing to be a trusted partner of HCL and for many HCL Commerce customers in the future.
Learn more about HCL’s acquisition of WebSphere Commerce.

When news broke that HCL had acquired several IBM products, including the infamous WebSphere Commerce, many were left wondering how the platform would change. However, the general focus of WebSphere Commerce Version 9 (V9) is not set to shift, but rather, HCL plans to enhance the features of V9 to enable commerce players to enhance digital channels and modernize eCommerce platforms faster and more efficiently.
For those who have yet to upgrade to V9, the time is now. New capabilities that will roll out once the acquisition is complete are crucial to delivering an elevated experience for customers and streamlining digital efforts. For retailers who are ready to move to V9, there are three key areas to evaluate and consider in your business.

1. Business and Technical Knowledge

Understand your business and identify where the gaps in content and technology lie. Most retailers know their business and their customers. They know who their target audience is and what they want. However, retailers don’t have the best data on the touchpoints with their customers, making it difficult for them to know how to market more effectively. There is a lot of competition in retail, and standing apart from the crowd can be challenging. Retailers often struggle with finding a way to create timely content quickly and consistently replace old content.
For instance, retailers that offer a variety of promotions during the holiday season need a way to create content advertising their offers and replace outdated digital ads daily. Many retailers struggle with processes like this, as the workflow and systems they push content through aren’t optimized for constant change. Retailers tend to be technically savvy and know that they need to provide these types of experiences, but don’t always know or have access to the technology to do so.

2. Business Strategy and Readiness

Once retailers identify their content gaps and agility deficiencies, they can move on to evaluating their business strategy. Generally speaking, retailers have well-defined business strategies. The problem lies in their readiness to change and evolve. Many retailers are bound by what they’ve done in the past, and struggle to truly transform themselves to be successful, timely, and innovative enough to be a differentiator in their industry and rise above the competition.
Once the strategy is clearly defined, retailers must tackle their readiness gaps. Think about what internal transformations need to take place. As many retailers have moved to eCommerce over the past decade, it’s not uncommon that there are just a few capabilities and tools missing from the technology stack that was implemented. Other possible issues could be that the system was not implemented properly initially, or that the platform is so antiquated that it creates a bottleneck in the stack as a whole. Adding to the technology stack, fixing initial implementation issues, and upgrading outdated systems will allow retailers to be more agile.
Though these seem like simple fixes, retailers often find that the systems causing the bottleneck are the ones that are the most fundamental to their operations. Legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or outdated product information management (PIM) solutions can become significant barriers in expanding digitally as they are almost impossible to replace all at once while continuing business operations. It’s wise to build a plan to phase in or phase out technology rather than doing it all at once, both from an operations standpoint as well as for your IT team.

3. Existing Platform Footprint and Compatibility

Retailers tend to be better positioned than B2B entities because they usually aren’t operating on such antiquated platforms. Rather, they’ve been forced to evolve as the internet has advanced. While new implementations and upgrades may be necessary, retailers are now faced with keeping up with the experiential shift that’s occurring in the marketplace. There is a paradigm shift in technology so even if a retailer has up-to-date platforms and systems, there are new initiatives that must be addressed and incorporated in their stack.
Advanced technology such as headless commerce, internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), voice assistance, and more are all creeping into the realm of customer experience. If retailers fail to provide experiences that incorporate new technologies such as these where necessary, they will be doing their customers a disservice and falling behind competitors who are making these shifts.
Beyond those experiences a retailer can provide directly to the consumer, there are now many third-party platforms where retailers can interact. Opportunities for application programming interface (API) connections can empower retailers to enable interactions even though they aren’t the author of that touchpoint. Examples include external marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon, social media platforms like Pinterest or Instagram, applications that are built to work on devices like smartwatches, and voice assistants such as Alexa and Google.
Creating those microservice interactions is important to not only expanding the touchpoints where you can connect with your customers, but also to improving the customer experience. Retailers are starting to embrace the mindset that they have both a compelling experience that they own and operate for touchpoints they control, as well as the ability to provide a superior integration for touchpoints they don’t control.
WebSphere Commerce V9 is an amazing opportunity for retailers to improve their agility and make more meaningful connections in commerce. You need to both understand and evaluate your current business and technical knowledge, and understand where your readiness deficits are. You need to know your tech stack and existing platforms inside and out, while understanding where improvements can be made and how your platforms will be affected by an upgrade. Strategically shifting to adopt new eCommerce trends and market more efficiently will develop stronger touchpoints and relationships with loyal customers in the long run.
To learn more about the process and preparations required before migrating, download our guide on Upgrading to WebSphere Commerce V9.

Digital business is the way of the present and the future. However, many businesses own and operate so much technical debt that they face a long road of strategizing to remain competitive. The relentlessness of digital disruption makes it impractical for businesses to operate in the same way they have for decades. Consequently, digital transformation strategies have become critical.

Companies that are risk-averse or hesitant (but committed) to change should consider bringing in a senior-level change agent to the C-suite whose primary job is to facilitate organizational change. A change agent will ensure the organization remains agile and seizes opportunities to compete.

The competitive landscape isn’t going to get less competitive. It’s going to get more so.

3 Digital Transformation Strategies to Consider:

1. Fix Your Future Problems

Transformation takes time. During a digital transformation journey, you have to see where the puck is going, not where it is now. Instead of investing resources to solve your current problems, invest in those that could come up three years from now. You will leapfrog your competition by taking this approach.

Dust off the complaints, criticisms, and stressors so you can get to the heart of the problem. You may find that multiple challenges can be simplified to two or three key pain points. Alleviate those, and the solution is like a spider web; it flanges out and addresses a number of needs. Your current issues might disappear completely over the next three years.

2. Solve Problems Your Competitors Can’t

First, ask yourself, “What is our top challenge or inhibitor to growing the business?” This initiates thinking around where your business is struggling the most, failing to keep up, or not recognizing its revenue potential. Struggling to come up with an answer? Then, ask, “If we don’t do anything, what would happen?”

Every business has a competitive advantage. Other questions to ask include, “What are our competitors doing to solve this problem that we aren’t? What can we do that our competitors can’t to solve that problem?”

3. Leverage Your Existing Resources

We recently implemented an online catalog for a large cooperative, which spans the retail, energy, agriculture, and home building industries, to use with its network of members. As we continued working on incremental business improvements, we discovered a quick win when attempting to set a meeting with one of the executives.

After learning that he wouldn’t be available for the next 30 days, we asked why. We hoped to better understand the business. As a result, we learned that they were preparing for a large event where all of the client’s distributors come and place their annual orders. “He has to make sure the catalogs are all printed and shipped and delivered, and it’s a stressful time,” the team said.

We suggested using the online catalog on tablets during the event. Once we explained the concept, the client said, “Do you realize that’s going to save us $8 million a year in printing?” The solution came at no additional cost to the client. It was simply thinking about what they already had in place and using it in a slightly different way.

Want More Digital Transformation Advice?

The digital transformation strategies I share in this blog post draw from Perficient’s e-book, “How to Make Digital Transformation Gains in 2019.” In it, my fellow Perficient Chief Strategists and I share real-world examples from conversations with today’s leading brands at various stages of digital transformation. Our 10-chapter e-book features our business insights, actions to take now, and client success stories. Download it here or via the form below.

Next in the Series

This blog series is part of a special series inspired by our e-book. In the next post, Perficient Chief Strategist Eric Roch shares tips for launching an IT modernization program.

Subscribe to our Digital Transformation weekly digest here to get the blog posts automatically delivered to your inbox every week. Or, follow our Digital Transformation blog for this series and advice on the topic from all of our thought leaders.

About the Author

Mike Rabbior has 20 years of experience in the digital commerce industry. He began his career at IBM and spent nearly a decade helping to design and grow its industry-leading flagship commerce platform, WebSphere Commerce. Then, he helped form Trifecta Technologies Canada, an IBM business partner that provided its clients with a trusted advisor and strong solution delivery. In 2014, the company was acquired by Perficient.

Mike possesses strong and deep expertise in nearly every business vertical and technical domain. He also leads client conversations regarding strategy and transformation.

With HCL’s acquisition of several IBM products, including Websphere Commerce, many are wondering how those platforms will be affected. HCL has asserted that they are not setting out to change the strategic direction of WebSphere Commerce, but rather they aspire to add to it. This acquisition isn’t going to fundamentally change the architectural direction that Websphere Commerce Version 9 (V9) introduces, but rather it will expand upon it to deliver more features, faster.
Version 9 is more than a typical software update, it is a refresh of the platform that has evolved over the past 20 years. It’s a fresh look on how eCommerce systems are developed, deployed, and maintained. When upgrading your B2B eCommerce platform to WebSphere Commerce V9, there are three key areas that require evaluation.

1. Business and Technical Knowledge

Start by understanding your current business and technology environment. It’s important to maintain a deep knowledge of the latest best practices for your industry. In this case, B2B organizations are seeing a shift in the digital and technology expectations of their customers.
The modern buyer is no longer exclusively using a telephone to place orders or a desktop to do research. Mobile devices are changing the way business is being conducted, and this new model is forcing many B2B organizations to evaluate their strategies and be more proactive in their digital evolution. Another trend that B2B businesses are observing is minimizing their distribution network. More and more, these businesses are wanting to directly reach their end consumer rather than relying solely on the middlemen and distributors to survive.
In addition, B2B best practices are transitioning to emphasize differentiated experiences. Providing great digital commerce experiences is becoming the rule rather than the exception, and B2B organizations are recognizing the need to provide experiences that are unique rather than similar to the competition. If you and your competitors are all operating on the same systems with the same capabilities, how can you possibly create an experience that stands out? Knowing what capabilities you require to do that is crucial when upgrading. Even though B2B businesses aren’t selling directly to their customers, it’s still important to create a more compelling value proposition than their competitors have.

2. Business Strategy and Readiness

Once you have clearly identified the gaps in your knowledge and determined areas that require attention, you need to assess your B2B business’ ability and readiness to adopt a new system. Take a look at your capacity across marketing, merchandising, digital content, branding, and other critical aspects. You should assess the maturity of your customer experience, branding, digital marketing, and content creation, as well as your ability to react to change and growth.
Historically, B2B organizations lack a sense of urgency when it comes to evolving technology. As a result, they often start to feel pressure to evolve their digital experiences only when those who are more technically enabled arrive on the scene. But adopting a mobile-centric strategy or expanding your selling channels beyond your distribution network will only enable you to catch up when you’re already falling behind your competition. It’s far more effective to use your eCommerce platform to stay ahead of these trends and know where your shortcomings are.
Another common issue B2B businesses face when evolving their eCommerce strategy and platform is a lack of marketing experience. Due to their maturity, many B2B entities have failed to dig deep into the world of marketing and content creation. Knowing how to effectively create content, manage it, and perform other functions such as automating campaigns is an area that V9 can help with.

3. Existing Platform Footprint and Compatibility

As digital commerce platforms evolve to meet the needs of businesses and the digital commerce landscape, it’s imperative that B2B organizations understand how to best embrace the newest iterations of these platforms. Know how the existing and mature platform has served your business over the years.
Many B2B entities that have implemented the WebSphere Commerce platform have failed to stay up to date on the latest features, fixes, and capabilities as IBM rolled them out. These systems have been built, deployed on the back-end, and left to run for years without continual maintenance and upgrades. A significant number of retrofit migrations, outdated paradigms, obsolete code, and archaic processes (aka, “technical debt”) have made these systems more of a burden to these businesses and their budgets than a resource.
The problem arises when failure to make these enhancements comes to a head. Billions of dollars in revenue are flowing through these systems and all of a sudden, one day it’s announced that the current system version is progressing to end of life and will no longer be a supported platform. At this point, upgrading is no longer a choice, but rather a requirement. Changing, replacing, or upgrading a system is not a process for the faint of heart. When billions of dollars in revenue stream are flowing through this system, it’s risky to implement changes without proper technical knowledge and strategic planning. Those B2B businesses that haven’t upgraded their WebSphere Commerce platform for an extended period of time will also likely face issues when it comes to legacy hardware and data storage migration moving to the cloud.
WebSphere Commerce V9 is an exceptional opportunity for B2B businesses to assess their technical debt and plans to eliminate such debt, all the while embracing more modern and agile solutions. You need to assess your current business and technical knowledge, and understand how your business strategy and readiness plays into your upgrade plan. You must know your existing platform and what areas will be affected by your upgrade. While you need to consider the state of your existing solution before your migration, it’s also important to note the benefits that this type of migration will provide. The features on the new V9 architecture will change the way you approach eCommerce, and will ultimately deliver a better, faster, and more dynamic customer experience.
To learn more about the process and preparations required before migrating, download our guide on Upgrading to WebSphere Commerce V9.