The Hindu Business Line : Challenges in e-commerce

Retailers nowadays are looking at futuristic e-commerce solutions to compete in the global market. The expectations are in the following functional areas:

Content management

Order management and fulfilment

Finance

Customer marketing and service

Analytics

Content Management

Web site design should allow the user to update/modify the contents in the product and marketing aspects. The templates may be provided to create the new pages with different options, so that the processes can be standardised/modified and replicated in so many aspects. The speed at which the page loads, and background logic calculations with rules in the Web page, should be fast so that the customer does not find it difficult to place the order. Maintaining the Web site should be easy while end user experience should be good, to encourage customer self-service for order capture.

Order Management

The distribution chain (DC) fulfilment should be made for all types of SKUs (stock-keeping units) instead of for only one category. Consolidation with subsidiaries and partners has to be improved in the Web access interface to improve the business in the multichannel strategy. Ensuring the facility to order a new product (which is not available in the catalogue) is important so that the potential new products can be added with ease. Provisions for sending the order through mobiles can be considered. It may be noted that Japanese language support is essential in Japan. The different type product’s order-delivery-pricing can be provided so that the pricing can be done to specific situations as per the client’s rules and regulations.

Order Fulfilment

The distribution chain fulfilment model should support ‘pick from store’, service from shared/dedicated distribution centres and from drop ship vendors (DSVs). Delivery models should support the self pick-up in store system, fleet delivery from retailer, direct service from DSV to customer and third party delivery and ‘conbini’ (delivery of the goods to nearest store where the customer will come and pick up the goods) also.

Finance

Versatile payment options should be made available to support all the avenues of payment - cash transfer from bank, post office, personal check/money order, registered cash mail, payment at the nearest possible store (conbini), credit/debit card. The site should support other revenue generation activities, with the additional information on the customer response.

Customer Marketing

Different types of marketing promos should be supported, such as price-offs, percentage offs, buy-one-get-one-free, multiple unit offers and slab rate offers. Campaigns and promo activities can be stored with unique options, so that the different campaign results can be analysed in the future for the viability of further repetition/implementation with modifications.

Customer Service

Customers should be provided with enhanced facilities on addition/modification in the personalised “My Page” details. Further personal data security is to be considered in Japan. If the data is shared with a third party, then prior to sharing, the permission for and purpose of the data should be clearly indicated. The customer may be presented with the list of regular purchases in the last three months so that modifications/additions/ finalising the order would be completed in the least possible time.

Substitution of the SKUs should be upgraded with the automatic option of most popular substitution choices, taking into account the previous history of substitutions of the respective customer. If the customer needs, navigation help may be provided for getting easy guidelines on troubleshooting processes.

Analytics

Every customer has to be identified uniquely with their shopping preferences across the departments and channels so that there will be seamless improvement in the customer satisfaction and efficiency in the customer interactions. Customer-specific data may be generated apart from the data on orders (like demographic details) to assess the targeted marketing. Using the stored data on campaigns/marketing promo activities, simulation of various metrics can be provided to enhance the margin, revenue and product penetration in the customers’ market.

Different segmentation analysis should be made possible to derive prospective results/conclusions on new customers, old customers, category-wise purchase behaviour, demographics, partner traffic, up-sell and cross-sell promo activities, geographic segmentation, repeat purchase patterns, conversion pattern analysis, browse-to-buy ratios, Web contents viewed by customers, site conversion analytics and on searches (failed, top, successful). Retailers are looking at futuristic e-commerce applications that combine areas of customer service with self-service personalisation, marketing and analytics, order fulfilment and different payment options to provide a better experience and drive efficiencies. This will involve combining different software products and components to achieve the result.

(Thanigan Appavu is Senior Consultant - Retail, CPG and Distribution, Domain Competency Group (DCG), Infosys. Sandeep Rao is Technical Architect - Retail, Infosys.)

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