We surveyed mid-market B2B professionals to learn more about their priorities when selecting an order management system (OMS). The study results shed light on where decision makers focus when approving potential investments, as well as revealed misconceptions about the key drivers of costs related to order management platform selection.

TCO Tops the List

The study found that total cost of ownership (TCO) is the top consideration for mid-market firms evaluating order management platforms, outranking customer service and store fulfillment capabilities. Surprisingly, extensibility and turnkey integrations ranked lowest despite being major drivers of TCO through customizations and implementation costs.

Inventory Visibility is Critical 

When it comes to inventory availability, a whopping 87% rated it as important or very important relative to other priorities. But the motivations go beyond just reducing stock outs and cancelled orders.

Follow the Money 

Minimizing holding costs and improving cash flow management emerged as the paramount benefits according to the C-suite respondents.

As one survey participant put it: “The person at the table ultimately approving inventory projects is the finance team, and you need to make a clear cash flow management and inventory turn business case in addition to the improved sales story.”

Focus on Financially-Driven Justifications

The findings reinforce that mid-market B2B leaders take a financially-driven approach when evaluating order management investments. Building a successful business case means highlighting the potential working capital optimization and hard dollar savings over just customer experience factors.

Do your order management platform selection priorities align with these results? View the full research report to benchmark your approach and uncover where to focus your efforts to gain executive support and select the right system for your needs.

Perficient’s Generative AI Lab, part of our larger Generative AI Innovation Group, is consistently exploring and implementing use cases for generative AI and helping clients operationalize it with policies, advocacy, controls, and enablement.

One use case organizations can consider is Synthetic Data and Document Generation, which allows companies to automate the creation of synthetic (or fake) data for testing purposes, therefore accelerating their digital transformation initiatives.

What Is Synthetic Data and Document Generation?

Synthetic data and document generation leverages large language models (LLMs) and GenAI to generate synthetic test data and documents so organizations can quickly populate and generate PDFs of sample documents for use in testing. Synthetic data created can include personal identifiable information (PII) such as social security numbers (SSN), dates of birth (DOB), policy/account numbers, and more.

Why Should Organizations Consider Synthetic Data and Document Generation?

Many organizations, particularly those within highly regulated sectors such as financial services and healthcare, face limitations in using actual production data or documents for testing purposes. This restriction arises since customers’ PII is present in such data, and test environments usually lack the requisite security safeguards. Today, this challenge is overcome by team members manually creating sample documents with fictional names, SSNs, policy numbers, and other sensitive data – a cumbersome process that slows progress and innovation.

By utilizing synthetic data and document generation, companies can expect these benefits:

• Increase efficiency – By removing the tedious process of generating data and documents manually and replacing it with an automated approach, organizations can be more agile and efficient. This results in better testing and enabling of their technology teams to focus on development and engineering tasks, not data/document creation.
• Reduce risk of downstream PII use – By enabling easy access to synthetic data and documents, organizations reduce the risk of team members using sensitive data in their testing processes.
• Expand AI capabilities – With more efficient testing, organizations can better train their AI models and improve and increase their capabilities.

Who Can Benefit from Synthetic Data and Document Generation?

This can benefit any highly regulated organization that handles documents including customer data like SSNs, DOBs, etc. This includes those in industries like healthcare (both payers and providers), banking, insurance, and lending. Business and technology teams within those organizations – those focused on digital transformation initiatives – will see the most benefit from utilizing this solution.

What’s Next?

Interested in how synthetic data and document generation could benefit your company, or would you like to explore other use cases for your organization? Contact us today.

In today’s competitive landscape, prioritizing customer experience is essential for success, making it crucial for organizations to choose the right professional services partner to help them deliver exceptional experiences that meet customer expectations. This strategic partnership not only requires a firm with technical design expertise but also one that has an understanding of the evolving forces shaping the future of customer experience.

That’s why we are excited to share that Perficient has been named a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Experience Build Services 2023–2024 Vendor Assessment and IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Experience Design Services 2023–2024 Vendor Assessment reports. These IDC MarketScapes highlight leading global providers of experience build (XB) and experience design (XD) services, offering a framework for organizations to compare vendors based on their product and service offerings, capabilities, strategies, and current/future market success factors.

What Does This Inclusion Mean for Perficient?

Our position in these reports underscores Perficient’s extensive global reach, emphasizing our commitment to digital experience as a crucial factor in differentiating our clients’ strategies. Serving as a trusted partner in experience build and design, we offer specialized capabilities in personalization, data and analytics, service design, and product design. Leveraging our industry experience, tangible innovations, and proprietary assets like Envision Online, we bring about transformative changes in our clients’ organizations, enhancing experiences for all its users.

The IDC MarketScape for Experience Build Services notes, “As an independent digital experience agency, Perficient combines business and technology transformation capabilities including a robust collection of supporting assets and tools, with a focus on the design and build of customer experiences.”

The IDC MarketScape for Experience Design Services outlines that Perficient’s network of global innovation centers “aim to foster creativity, experimentation, collaboration, and continuous improvement among clients, and encourage the development of cutting-edge technologies and solutions.”

What Does This Mean for Our Clients?

This inclusion can continue to strengthen our clients’ trust in us as their partner of choice for experience design and build transformations. Our innovative approach to design allows organizations to move fast, quickly understanding where they stack up against customer expectations and competitors and what they need to do to reach their goals. Our technology and business expertise across multiple CX platforms and partnerships allows us to seamlessly bring that vision into reality with end-to-end delivery across the globe.

To learn more about how we can help in your customer experience transformations, contact us.

Perficient’s Generative AI Lab, part of our larger Generative AI Innovation Group, is consistently exploring and implementing use cases for generative AI and helping clients operationalize it with policies, advocacy, controls, and enablement.

One use case organizations can consider is generative AI code generation, which allows companies to automate and expedite the software development process.

What Is Generative AI Code Generation?

Generative AI code generation is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create or modify source code based on a user’s input or description. Generative AI code generation can help developers write code faster, easier, and more efficiently by automating some of the coding tasks, such as writing boilerplate code, suggesting code snippets, or translating code from one language to another. Generative AI code generation can also enable non-developers to create applications or scripts without having to learn how to code.

Why Should Organizations Consider Gen AI Code Generation?

There are several reasons companies should consider leveraging generative AI for code development:

1. Accelerate Development: Leveraging generative AI for code generation significantly speeds up the development process by automating repetitive tasks, reducing manual effort, and eliminating human error. Generative AI significantly reduces development time particularly for both junior developers and senior developers working with unfamiliar code libraries or languages.
2. Enhance Code Quality: Generative AI ensures consistent adherence to coding standards and best practices. Based on your organization’s standards for writing code, you can apply that when the AI is writing a function so it knows your standards and will format it appropriately.
3. Speed Code Analysis and Documentation: Generative AI can analyze code and identify and document the hidden connections, dependencies, and business logic within it, which is typically a difficult and time-consuming process. This saves time and effort for developers who need to document their code, and is especially useful when moving off of legacy applications where documentation may not exist.

What’s Next? 

Interested in how generative AI code generation could benefit your company, or would you like to explore other use cases for your organization? Contact us today. 

Perficient’s Generative AI Lab, part of our larger Generative AI Innovation Group, is consistently exploring and implementing use cases for generative AI and helping clients operationalize it with policies, advocacy, controls, and enablement.

One use case organizations can consider is augmented research for sales prospecting, which allows sales professionals to find valuable prospects quickly and generate personalized and effective sales reports and outreach content.

How Does Generative AI-Powered Sales Prospecting Work?

Generative AI-powered sales prospecting involves leveraging online data sources to gather relevant information about a prospect, including its competitors, challenges, opportunities, and goals. It also leverages an internal database to map an organization’s case studies and services to the prospect’s needs. The result is a personalized sales pitch, communication scripts, and offering templates tailored to the prospect.

Why Should Organizations Consider Generative AI-Powered Sales Prospecting?

Typical sales prospecting includes sifting through vast amounts of data to identify and engage with potential clients. Traditional methods often involve time-consuming manual research, resulting in high overhead costs and a considerable drain on resources. Moreover, the accuracy and personalization of outreach are frequently compromised due to the volume of information that sales professionals must navigate and produce.

AI-powered sales prospecting offers a more efficient way to prospect, helping sales professionals:

• Find valuable clients with low overhead research costs: By automating the research process, sales teams can significantly reduce overhead costs while still getting comprehensive insights into potential clients, allowing them to focus their efforts on building meaningful connections and closing deals.
• Improve the quality and effectiveness of sales content: The sales team can ensure every call, email, and pitch resonates with their target audience by integrating personalized insights that speak to unique needs, ultimately enhancing the quality and effectiveness of communication.
• Easily map company services with prospect challenges: By automating the connection between prospect challenges and the company’s offerings and experience, sales teams can efficiently develop a unique selling proposition for each individual target.

What’s Next?

Interested in how augmented research for sales prospecting can benefit your company, or would you like to explore other use cases for your organization? Contact us today.

Perficient’s Generative AI Lab, part of our larger Generative AI Innovation Group, is consistently exploring and implementing use cases for generative AI and helping clients operationalize it with policies, advocacy, controls, and enablement. 

One use case organizations can consider is Internal “ChatGPT”, which can offer a secure and efficient way for companies to leverage the power of chatbots while maintaining control over their internal data. 

What Does Internal ChatGPT Do? 

Internal ChatGPT can enable employees to retrieve information from various documents and databases within a company’s internal network. Users can upload documents in different formats, such as PDFs or Word documents, and request summaries, bullet-point lists, or ask questions related to content and receive simple and direct responses. This solution streamlines information retrieval, enhances productivity, and ensures data security by keeping sensitive information within the company’s internal network. 

Why Should Organizations Consider Internal ChatGPT? 

There are several reasons companies should consider implementing Internal ChatGPT: 

• Easier navigation of company information: Whether it’s searching for specific policies, historical company data, or industry-specific knowledge, employees can simply interact with the chatbot to obtain the company information they need. This eliminates the need for manual searches through multiple documents, saving valuable time for employees. 
• Enhanced privacy and security: One of the primary concerns for companies when employees use external AI tools or platforms is the risk of data leakage. With Internal ChatGPT, employees still benefit from the efficiency of AI without the need to rely on external tools.  
• Customized use cases: Internal ChatGPT can be tailored to meet the specific needs of each company. Whether it’s HR policies, industry-specific regulations, sales history, or other use cases, the chatbot can be trained to provide accurate and relevant information based on your business needs. 

What’s Next? 

Interested in how Internal ChatGPT could benefit your company, or would you like to explore other use cases for your organization? Contact us today. 

Perficient’s Director of Commerce Strategy Justin Racine was recently named one of CMSWire’s Contributors of the Year.

CMSWire is one of the leading communities of CX professionals, whose goal is to advance its members via high-impact knowledge. The Contributor of the Year recognition is awarded to authors whose articles greatly resonated with the CMSWire community of professionals this year.

Justin brings a unique perspective to his columns covering ecommerce, customer-focused experiences, and branding strategy. He covered a multitude of topics throughout the year, all of which can still guide companies as we head into 2023:

• The Communal Side of Customer Experience – A purchase is only part of the equation for a transaction – the other side is enabling your customers to connect with each other and share their love for your brand.
• Guess Who’s Back, Back Again – QR’s Back, Tell a Friend – QR codes have been resurrected from the dead and are a fantastic way to enable customers to shop or digest information right from their mobile device.
• The Customer Experience Secret Amazon Doesn’t Want You to Know About – Inventory transparency is the “secret sauce” to driving exceptional customer experience in digitally-enabled commerce environments in 2023.
• Be a ‘Method Customer’ to Improve Customer Experience – Step into your customers shoes and live through the experiences your brand has. It will help more than you think in redefining how customers want to interact.
• Be Like Chris, Empower Social Employee Personality Engagement – Don’t be afraid to enable your employees to go above and beyond through social media – it just might gain national news coverage.
• Cheap Beer and Recessions: How to Survive and Thrive with Exceptional Customer Experience – Price isn’t always the most important factor to customers – focus on enabling experiences and nostalgic feelings through your brand to help lift you through an imminent recession in 2023.
• Retail Is – and Always Will Be – Integral to Digital Customer Experience – Digitally-led experiences are more important than you think in driving in-store foot traffic. Leverage digital and in-store as a tag team duo that can’t be beat in 2023.
• Are You Ghosting Your Customers? – Don’t leave your customers on read – focus on social and customer service channels to make sure all customer concerns are heard and dealt with.
• Influencer Marketing Lessons Learned from Kanye West Fallout – Think twice before enabling a celebrity to endorse your brand – but if you do, make sure to do your homework on their past before you give them your product to promote.

Read more from Justin Racine on Perficient’s blog, and contact us to work with Justin and our team on your commerce strategy. Our experts have helped some of the world’s biggest brands across industries create experiences that delight and deliver results.

If there’s one thing leaders have in common right now, it’s the need to harness the power of digital to create new value for customers and employees, while at the same time managing the profound changes likely to accompany these new opportunities.

This requires a cohesive digital strategy. But unlike traditional strategies that attempt to predict the future, planning horizons for strategic roadmaps have become shorter and shorter as markets become more and more fluid. An effective strategy needs to be adaptable and grounded in the pragmatic realities of actually executing on that strategy.

This reality is why we’ve changed our approach to strategy and transformation. It’s continuous and iterative, with cycles that feed real-world insights back into strategy decisions in real time.

We call it strategy for the real world.

Organizations that want to make the most of their digital opportunity should also adjust their strategies to accommodate for this new reality and focus their efforts on key areas needed to reach their digital ambitions.

We see these key focus areas as:

Digital Business Transformation

Leading organizations are bold and disruptive. They are exploring new opportunities, defining their future vision and roadmaps, proving value and ROI, aligning their leadership teams, and making the case for digital investment.

Technology Transformation

Digitally mature organizations are constantly rethinking their core technologies, considering new ones, and determining how to scale them across their enterprise. All while getting the most from the people, platforms, and data they already have in place.

Organizational Change

The only constant is change, and organizations should prepare their teams to adopt new ways of working. This includes rethinking their operating models so they can get the most out of their people, grow new skills, and introduce new ways of working.

Business Velocity

Digital leaders understand how to streamline fundamental processes and supply chains, have a clear picture of financials and analytics, and understand their company OKRs and KPIs, in order to optimize and accelerate their business.

We’ve organized our Strategy and Transformation offering to mirror these key areas and better align to what digital leaders should be focusing on to change, grow, and run their businesses.

A Deeper Look at Envision – Our Approach

While you’re creating solutions for today, you also can’t lose sight of defining a future. That’s why we use our Envision framework to blend the visionary with the pragmatic to help you rapidly identify opportunities, define a customer-focused vision, and develop a prioritized roadmap to transform your business.

Our nine-part video series highlights our Envision approach, which helps our clients use real-world insights to make strategy decisions in real time.

Insights: Powered by real-world outcomes and data-driven tools, we quickly spotlight what matters most to you and your customers.

• Insights / Market
• Insights / Business
• Insights / Systems

Ideas: We rapidly design and innovate big ideas that guide your vision and inspire your teams for the future.

• Ideas / Experience
• Ideas / Operations
• Ideas / Technology

Investment: Vision without execution is a daydream, so we align your resources and ideas to get to market as fast as possible.

• Investment / Outcomes
• Investment / Program
• Investment / Roadmap

So, whether you need expertise in changing, growing, or running your business — or all three — we can help you prepare a strategic agenda that gets you to the future fast — without losing sight of the needs of today.

Contact us to get started on your real-world strategy.

Improving customer experience is a top priority for most organizations looking to grow revenue. To deliver on this imperative requires identifying customer problems, developing a plan to profitably solve those problems, and building the necessary CX infrastructure.

Most CX leaders shouldn’t approach this task alone, and there are experienced partners ready to support them. That’s why Forrester published the Now Tech: Customer Experience Strategy Consulting Practices, Q1 2022 report. This listing of CX strategy providers includes Perficient and 32 other vendors, and it helps CX leaders understand the value they can expect from a CX strategy consulting practice and to select one based on size and capability.

How CX Strategy Consulting Providers Can Help

In the Now Tech report, Forrester defines a CX strategy consulting practice as, “A consultancy that supports a company’s CX transformation initiative with expertise in the areas of strategy, experience design, business processes, and/or technology infrastructure.”

“CX strategy consulting practices can be found in a variety of services firms. And though these firms have different backgrounds and core strengths, they all generally help CX leaders:

• “Diagnose customer problems that are lucrative to solve…
• Develop a plan to solve those customer problems profitably…
• Build the infrastructure needed to execute the CX transformation.”

Perficient’s Inclusion as a CX Strategy Consulting Provider

Perficient was included in the report as a midsize provider, which we believe is testament to our expertise leveraging digital capabilities to build seamless, personalized, and satisfying customer journeys.

Our strategists employ a strategic formulation approach, Perficient’s Envision Framework, to help clients get to the future fast, using three cumulative phases: Insights, Ideas, and Investment. It’s how we help clients rapidly identify opportunities, define a customer-focused vision, and develop a prioritized roadmap to transform their business.

Do you know how ready your company is to create, deliver, and sustain exemplary customer experiences? Learn more about Perficient’s five-week CX IQ jumpstart that will help you highlight priorities, create strategic alignment, and guide decisions about where and how to improve CX.

Delivering great digital experiences for your customers has never been more important. And as digital engagement becomes increasingly omnipresent – involving multiple touchpoints across offline and online channels – it’s also never been harder to achieve.

Choosing the right partner to combine creativity and implementation to illuminate and differentiate your experiences is key to success. Forrester published the Now Tech: Global Digital Experience Services, Q4 2021 report to help technology, commerce, and marketing leaders understand the landscape of providers and select the best one based on fit. Only 37 providers, including Perficient, were included in this report, and they were analyzed based on market presence and capabilities.

How a Strong Digital Experience Service Provider Can Help

In the Now Tech report, Forrester defines global digital experience service providers as “partners that can define, design, build, and manage digital marketing, commerce, and customer experiences in the context of your business transformation.”

According to the report, “A strong global digital experience service provider will integrate its offerings end to end to:

• Deliver differentiated experiences by bringing creative to the fore…
• Design, build, and operate digital marketing, commerce, and customer experiences…[and]
• Analyze and optimize your customer experience and business success.”

Perficient’s Inclusion as a Global Digital Experience Service Provider

This is Perficient’s first inclusion in one of Forrester’s global provider reports, which we believe is testament to our company’s global growth and expansion over the last several years.

Our Perficient footprint now stretches across four continents and 10 countries, with 6,000+ colleagues globally. Not only is our footprint global, but we are increasingly partnering with global enterprises to transform how they connect with customers and grow their business.

Perficient’s multi-shore, fully-integrated, global delivery approach continues to be a key driver of success for these enterprise clients. A truly optimized global delivery strategy incorporates a balance of nearshore, onshore and offshore delivery models to enable agility. This ensures our clients have a team with the right skills in the right place at the right time, and are taking into account the nature of each project as well as where it is within its lifecycle.

For more information about Perficient’s global delivery approach, click here.

In this episode, Jim and Kim look back on Season 2 of the podcast and recall the moments where our guests helped call out what strategy really is and what it takes to execute in today’s digital landscape.

Season 2 episodes referenced:

• What if You Could Speak Marketing and IT? An Interview with Robert Nelms.
• What if You Never Had to Go to Your Doctor’s Office Again? An Interview with Tom Swanson.
• What If You Could Reinvent Retail…Again? An Interview with John Gregory.
• What if You Could Innovate On Demand An Interview with Andy Hunt.

Listen Now

Subscribe Where You Listen

Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | Stitcher

Meet the Hosts

Jim Hertzfeld is Principal and Chief Digital Strategist for Perficient. He works with clients to convert market insights into real-world digital products and customer experiences that actually grow their business.

LinkedIn | Perficient

Kim Williams-Czopek is a Director of Digital Strategy at Perficient. She works with clients to devise digital experience strategies and how to translate strategies to tactics. She specializes in digital commerce, digital product development, user research and testing strategies, and digital responsibility.

LinkedIn | Perficient

We’re excited to announce that Perficient has extended our South American footprint and expanded our nearshore delivery capabilities with the acquisition of Overactive – a nearshore software development firm based in Montevideo, Uruguay, with additional locations in Colombia, Argentina, and Chile.

With this acquisition, we’re strengthening our nearshore delivery capabilities and capacity with enhanced custom software application design, development, testing and support for customers, accelerating innovation and time to market. We’re also gaining strategic client relationships with Fortune 1000 customers across several industries, including financial services, healthcare, technology, and business services sectors.

This acquisition and addition of more than 700 colleagues grows our Perficient Latin America team to more than 1,500 talented developers, designers, and digital innovators. It also marks a milestone for Perficient, where the size of our offshore delivery team now exceeds our onshore team, further demonstrating our commitment to our optimized global delivery model.

Our Perficient footprint now stretches across four continents and 10 countries, with 6,000+ colleagues globally dedicated to transforming how the world’s biggest brands connect with customers and grow their business.

An Exciting Addition to Our Nearshore Offering

Over its 13-year history, Overactive has been providing innovative and scalable technology solutions to international clients. With a focus on both delivery excellence and rapid scalability, the company has been able to quickly assemble the right teams to exceed its clients’ digital transformation needs.

This experience will be a welcome addition to our existing nearshore offering, and our clients will continue to realize the benefits they have come to expect from our nearshore teams, including time zone compatibility, bilingual developers, and high-quality teams delivering cost-effective solutions.

Our Dedication to Global Delivery

Perficient’s multi-shore, fully-integrated, global delivery approach continues to be a key driver of success for our clients. Our global talent, coupled with our strong U.S. presence, enables our clients to scale quickly, innovate rapidly and reduce costs to better meet rising customer demands, transform their business, and outpace the competition.

A truly optimized global delivery strategy incorporates a balance of nearshore, onshore and offshore delivery models to enable agility. This ensures our clients have a team with the right skills in the right place at the right time, and are taking into account the nature of each project as well as where it is within its lifecycle.

For more information about Perficient’s global delivery approach, click here.

To read the news release about the Overactive acquisition, click here.