| |March 20189CIOReviewStrategies will have to be in line with changing consumer behaviors and preferences to create richer and more engaging experiencesTo stay ahead of the game, companies will have to evolve themselves to understand their end-consumers, their behaviors and pain-points. Strategies will have to be in line with changing consumer behaviors and preferences to create richer and more engaging experiences. This will require organizations embed the `customer first' mentality deeply into their DNAs.Disruptive TechnologiesTechnological advancement is playing a major role in shaping the future of the sector. Be it creating unique and personalized experiences or developing solutions to monitor and automate supply chain, companies are investing heavily in various technologies. To effectively leverage technological advancements, E-commerce players will have to determine the level of investment and the trade-offs in other investments to ensure proper strategic fit of technology for their business. At a high level this decision can be based on the following 2 parameters:1. Business impact: The ability to create efficiencies that will yield the greatest gains across the organization2. Readiness: Time to attain full readinessBased on these parameters, following 5 technologies have shown good promises for fueling the ecommerce industry into a new age of revolution:· Internet of Things: IoT will drive a high business value as it secures proprietary consumer data to create personalized experiences in connected stores, and delivers cost efficiencies in inventory-management. It will revolutionize the overall experience for the consumers, providing insights based on the data collected.· Automation: Automated vehicles/drones will bring cost savings from long-haul trucking of goods and last-mile delivery. These developments will also increase utilization, make deliveries faster and improve road safety. · Artificial intelligence: Artificial Intelligence coupled with machine learning can increase revenues through a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour, while saving costs associated with supply chain optimization. In-store pricing and assortments will be optimized and, when combined with predictive recommendations, will clearly benefit consumers and the organization itself. · Robotics: Robotics will drive cost savings through operational efficiencies, primarily in warehousing and distribution. Software bots can also work faster to complete simple and repetitive tasks. Robotics will enable higher utilization, greater flexibility, improved accuracy and faster transaction times.· Blockchain: Global E-commerce summit 2017 focused on the use of cryptocurrencies along with blockchain as the future of online payments. Blockchain will enable companies to perform high-volume transactions, reduce costs, increase transparency with increased security and revolutionize the buyer, seller and marketplace network through the transaction technology. Evolving Business ModelsOver the past five years, new players with different models, fuelled by emerging technologies, have challenged what and how goods and services are consumed, disrupting the industry's demand and supply sides. For traditional retailers ­ both offline and online ­ there are key elements in these transformative models that could be merged with current business models to better serve the needs of the consumer and reach the next frontier of e-commerce. Four new business models, in particular, show the strongest potential to take the retail and CPG industries to the next level. These four business models are directly related to new models of consumption that have emerged over the past three to five years:1. Next-generation Sharing Economy (rental and secondary markets): Renting out products in a fraction of the retail price2. Behavioral Targeting (BT): BT will allow improving online UX by providing personalized product recommendations, content, search results, site layout/navigation and navigation options. BT will also help gain customer insight through more robust knowledge of customer shopping and purchasing behavior; this can then be used to improve direct marketing efforts3. On-demand Economy: Quick delivery of products/services and automatic replenishment based on consumption patterns4. Services Economy: Service offerings replacing a basket of productsIn summary, for future growth opportunities to be realized, the ecosystem will have to embed the culture of collaboration into their organizations. Instead of being rigidly focused on a specific product or service, ecosystems will draw together mutually supportive companies from multiple industries that collectively seek to create differentiated offerings and capture value they could not reach alone.
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