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How Retailers Can Prosper in the Age of eBay and Prime

It feels like a long time since the beginning of the pandemic, where once malls and city centers were alive with the footfall of customers and any service could be found across a counter. The landscape of consumer services has now changed irreparably. Online marketplaces, which have increasingly dominated much of consumer purchasing habits since the 2000s, became increasingly monopolistic. Amazon, eBay and other e-commerce platforms are now a one-stop shop for pretty much everything—made possible by the creation of complex global supply chains and unmatched economies of scale, in combination with nationwide distribution centers and an army of delivery drivers.

But these tech-enabled big retailers cannot offer everything to a customer. In many cases, they lack the expertise that smaller, independent vendors can offer—and this is where an advantage can be found.

A USP for Specialists on Par With UPS

Amazon, as large as they are, cannot offer someone to, say, fix your car or mow your lawn and eBay cannot offer a service to unblock your sink or walk your dog. These tasks require skills and services that are still vital in the post-internet age. On my last getaway, I experienced this when renting sports equipment from a waterfront shopkeeper at a remote beach resort. His experience and know-how was first-class. So, the challenge these specialists face is how to offer bespoke services to customers in a convenient, substantial and scalable way.

Technology Takes Services to Customers Like Never Before

And now, prompted by the effects of the pandemic lockdown, an increasing number of retailers are realizing the benefits of augmenting their physical estate with services that bring the shop to the customer’s front door. This is where the rise of mobile retail services has taken hold, providing pre-booked services with minimal contact and disruption to the customer. There are multiple benefits to the customer: Professional services delivered at their convenience, backed up by digital communications to keep them looped in on slot times, stock levels and arrival expectations.

But Mobile Services Need to be Able to Service!

From a retailer’s perspective, a move to mobile services can be as simple as procuring a fleet of vehicles and putting their experts on the road. But on the back end, they must ensure their software infrastructure is up to the challenge. When slots are promised and services are often vital for the customer, missing an appointment is not an option.

This means making sure they have a software system to match the end-to-end mobile customer journey and expectations. That means taking data and putting this journey together, from offering available slots online through to order processing, stocking vans, route optimization and last-mile delivery.

With a robust software system in place, scale and efficiencies can be quickly realized.

Stores Need a Digital Makeover to Ensure Service Delivery

Back in the physical store, manual spreadsheets and creaking retail platforms for ePOS, stock management and appointment bookings cannot provide the level of consistent service and support required by both employees and customers in today’s ultra-competitive retail environment.

Retailers must augment colleagues’ personal expertise with digital means to ensure a more consistent and customer-centric shopping experience. Tablets and mobile devices should be on the shop floor to allow employees to quickly answer customer queries, check stock levels and even execute a purchase.

Even when employees are carrying out services on a customer’s equipment, they can use tablets to photograph or film work done and deliver this straight to the customer to ensure the highest possible standards of quality and safety.

This assisted selling model makes sure employees across the retail business, regardless of their location or skill level, have access to the information they need to ensure a customer-centric interaction.

Adopting Online Innovation to Satisfy Customer Needs

A recent PwC report underlines the vital role technology will play in driving a more customer-centric retail future as consumer expectations continue to rise. The report found that speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service are prioritized by consumers. These qualities were highlighted by nearly 80% of all survey respondents as being the most important elements to ensure a positive customer experience.

The report states: “Those who get it right prioritize technologies that foster or provide these benefits over adopting technology for the sake of being cutting edge.” It continues: “[C]ustomers expect technology to always work (and are unlikely to take note of new technology unless it malfunctions or interrupts the seamless, friendly experience). They want the design of websites and mobile apps to be elegant and user-friendly; they want automation to ease experience. But these advances are not meaningful if speed, convenience and the right information at the right time are lacking.”

Retailers Can Keep Their Digital Hands on the Customer

In a volatile post-pandemic world where more transactions will become digitized, specialist retailers still have an exciting opportunity to interact with a customer base that no longer frequents their stores on a daily basis. They can tap into ever-expanding technology to not only retain customers but truly grow and prosper in ways that were previously not feasible. To do this, they need to shed traditional practices and embrace the new dawn of the customer-focused digital age—in a way that Amazon and eBay can’t!

November 8, 2021
How lulu Became a Lemon: A Digital Transformation Fail
Many people sometimes have a tough time figuring out what exactly digital transformation is and why it’s so important. I want to tell you a real-life story of how a once-respected brand, lululemon, has failed the digital transformation journey and, as a result, may fail in a new retail landscape.

The story starts innocently enough with my desire to get my wife a lululemon gift card for her birthday. She has gotten her vaccines and is returning to the gym, so I figured it was a great time to get new workout clothes. I purchased a gift card on March 15 to be delivered via email a few weeks later on her birthday. It was a simple digital transaction that for any company that has its digital transformation act together would be a no-brainer. Well, this is where lulu turns off the tracks and turns into a digital lemon.

On the day of my wife’s birthday, I had planned that she would wake up and see how thoughtful I was in getting her the gift card. She didn’t say anything about the card, though, so I finally asked if she received the gift card. She didn’t know what I was talking about. I had her check her spam folder, nothing. Nope, no gift card.

Thus began a day that would see me reach out and communicate with the lulu team no fewer than six times. It seems that lulu uses a third party for digital gift cards. Each time I reached out to a lululemon “educator” (that is what they call them, and did I get an education), I was told a different story:
1. A simple apology and card being emailed, give it an hour.
2. Sorry, it must be that email address, do you have another email address? Give it an hour.
3. Hmm, seems our third-party gift card provider is having problems today.
4. We located your card, it was sent to: tlaynguyen@gmail.com could I check that email? (I would love to, but that isn’t an email address I have.)
5. Well, we have no control over when the third party sends emails.
6. Digital gift cards are non-refundable, even if you didn’t receive it. Sorry, can’t help you.
7. You have blocked our emails from your computer.
At this point I realized that lululemon, while maybe making great workout gear, is analog to the core. A simple digital transaction like this had them tied in knots, wasted hours of my time and so turned off my wife that she is looking elsewhere for her new workout gear.

This past year has taught us that retailers that can’t hop on the digital transformation train are heading for the precipice. It seems as though lululemon may have already gone over the deep end. The company better hope the malls fill up quickly because in a digital world, lulu is truly a lemon.
April 7, 2021
The No-Code Revolution: 5 Industries That Will Win Big

The year 2020 tested the mettle of countless businesses and industries, but those who were able to stay afloat had one thing in common: the ability to adapt to an increasingly digitized world by embracing future-facing technology.

For companies already steeped in the tech world, these changes came more naturally, but not all industries were equally equipped to transform. For those caught on their back foot, the key was to apply existing technologies to old systems and analog problems.

No-code platforms quickly shot to the fore of these innovative solutions, and their importance will long-outlive the pandemic that was the catalyst for their growth. At its core, the no-code revolution is leveling the development playing field and lowering the barrier to entry of digitization. Programmers and non-programmers alike can now create enterprise-grade application software through graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and configuration instead of traditional computer programming.

It is increasingly clear that these tools will form the prevailing wind of innovation, filling the sails of digital transformation for years to come—some have already called it the most disruptive trend of 2021. Yet many industries are only just beginning to realize the possibilities that no-code truly holds. Here are five of the industries that are benefiting most from the no-code revolution, and tips for how companies in each sector can continue to successfully implement no-code tools.

1. Retail
For years, online shopping was a convenience for many consumers. In 2020, it became a necessity.

After a decade spent struggling to keep up with the rise of online conglomerates, the fate of retail industries was already questionable when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Indeed, many of the businesses that first began to fail in the earliest days of the pandemic were retail giants who relied too heavily on their brick-and-mortar appeal. For brands that bit the dust, the “why” is no big secret: they failed to adopt new digital technologies and lost the loyalty of couch-bound customers.

With no-code tools, the transition from “customer-friendly storefront” to “customer-friendly front end” is becoming quicker and easier than ever before. By allowing retailers to develop brand-tailored digital storefronts and progressive web apps that are as easy to design as they are to use, these tools will undoubtedly be one of the keys to success as the retail industry fights through the pandemic and looks toward a sustainable future.

2. Insurance
As with many legacy industries, insurance was long caught in the shadow of flashy innovators from the tech sector. But the push for transformation in insurance came not a moment too soon—not only did the year leading up to the pandemic see insurance leaders set their sights on digital innovation, but it was no-code tools that played a crucial role in leading the charge toward change.

By allowing traditionally slow-moving enterprises to operate with startup agility, no-code tools are giving legacy insurance leaders in previously sheltered markets the edge they need to compete with digital-first newcomers.Today’s consumers increasingly expect a seamless digital user experience with everything from social media to gaming to insurance. With no-code tools, these expectations can be met without the need for high-level programmers or IT professionals.

As they look toward the future, insurers who implement no-code platforms will be able to spend more time focusing on the quality of their products and less time losing customers due to outdated tech, all while cutting costs and simplifying operations at every level of their organization.

3. Banking, Fintech and Payments
Banking, another industry rife with legacy enterprises, has faced many of the same hurdles as its insurance counterpart, and it is for many of the same reasons that no-code development tools have extensive potential in the ever-shifting landscape of banking and its adjacent sectors.

Mobile banking applications have already changed the way that everyday people think about, track and interact with their money. In a digital era where remote functionality is as urgent as it is practical, no-code tools can provide financial enterprises of any size with the opportunity to build, maintain and update consumer-facing platforms that meet customer standards, offer cross-platform integration and uphold necessary private data security.

4. Health Care
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a powerful accelerant for a diverse array of health care technologies, fueling rapid growth in fields like telemedicine and remote patient monitoring. As health systems continue harnessing technology to become more efficient and to improve patient outcomes, no-code tools can provide innovative solutions to multiple problems through the entire process of healthcare and treatment.

Calendaring and scheduling platforms that make it easier for patients to arrange appointments, and easier for providers to keep track of them, can be developed and curated without writing a single line of code. No-code platforms are also one of the simplest ways that health care practitioners can offer user-friendly virtual visits, saving time for patients and providers alike, and minimizing unnecessary trips to and from germ-filled waiting rooms. Additionally, the ability of no-code platforms to turn high-level back-end data functionality into a widely accessible tool will make it easier than ever for health care organizations to log patient data securely and swiftly, which can ultimately be leveraged to track illnesses and find treatments, fast.

With the ease of no-code development, health care professionals can spend less time addressing technical difficulties and more time addressing their patients.

5. Manufacturing
Manufacturing leaders have already expressed a keen understanding of the need for no-code solutions.

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) have long been tasked with coordinating, executing and tracking the processes at a given factory or plant, but the rigidity that makes MES so useful for IT components of the manufacturing process also makes it difficult to use for shop floor personnel.

Compared to MES, no-code platforms are cheaper to customize, quicker to implement and easier to update in accordance with changing operational needs. As manufacturers are increasingly expected to produce new, customized products with increasing speed and frequency, the need for no-code solutions will go from being a tech trend to an industry necessity.

Unlike many past disruptive trends, which have often been characterized by their uniqueness, the rise of no-code is making innovation easier and more accessible across the board. While the industries listed above—retail, insurance, banking, health care and manufacturing—are each particularly well-poised to benefit from the no-code revolution, these five sectors mark only the beginning of what is to come.

The development capabilities of no-code platforms will only continue to grow in the coming years. So, too, will the reach of these innovative tools.

February 2, 2021
DevOps and Retail: Transforming Brick-and-Mortar to Brick-and-Click

Brick-and mortar-retail is rapidly transforming with the digital age. As physical storefronts turn digital, it’s safe to say that traditional retail is quickly becoming a mesh of “brick-and-click.”

So, how are retail giants surviving in this new landscape? Interestingly enough, the remaining brick-and-mortar retail are reinventing themselves by applying helpful DevOps principles.

In this post, we’ll peek into cases of innovation and horror stories from historically brick-and-mortar retail chains and brands. From Target, to Balian Group, Sears and other companies, we’ll discover the importance of DevOps in this new brick-and-click multi-channel retail environment.

Target

In an effort to increase agility, Target engineering teams embrace something they call “the Dojo”—immersive, six-week training sessions with hands-on DevOps and Agile coaches. As Target CIO Mike McNamara recently told the Enterpriser’s project: “The Dojo has been fantastic in getting teams engaged with agile and DevOps, removing the natural resistance and fear of change, and then supporting the team through the changes while maintaining productivity. It’s been a huge success for Target.”

The result of these sessions is increased comfort with methods including containerization and tools that enable continuous integration and continuous deployment. McNamara also noted their grassroots approach; they encourage open source activity and listen to their engineers when they petition the use of new tech.

“Our engineers have fully embraced DevOps,” he said.

Bailian Group

For another case study, take Bailian Group, a large Shanghai retailer that operates 6,000 grocery and department stores. By the time Bailian entered the online marketplace, it suffered from a severe lack of agility, non-native web apps and underutilized server assets.

“Our transition from traditional brick and mortar to omnichannel business presented a great opportunity but an equally large challenge,” noted Lu Qichuan, director of IaaS and Cloud Integration Architecture at the Bailian Group.

Qichuan and Bailian realized that to stay relevant, they had to cut long development cycles and embrace “new cloud application development tools and processes that foster a CI/CD and DevOps culture and increase innovation and time-to-market,” he said.

They ended up implementing a private cloud using OpenStack. Now, midway through their cloud transition, they estimate to have 10 million virtual machines by the end of 2020.

Sears

While the previous two examples had positive outcomes, digital transformation has not gone over well for other retailers. Sears declared bankruptcy in October 2018.

In its final years, Sears was in a sticky situation. To the chagrin of former CEO Eddie Lambert, surveys found their customers preferred to shop in stores as opposed to online. Disregarding customer desires, however, Sears attempted a big data play with its “Shop Your Way” program, under which Sears gathered user data to then sell. The program floundered, resulting in consumer irritation and loss of sales as reported by Business Insider.

Writing for InformationWeek, Emily Johnson reminded us that evaluating DevOps using the wrong metrics will ultimately lead to failure, citing customer satisfaction as the No. 1 goal.

In its final years, an abrasive Sears leadership halted any sense of DevOps to flourish. A disengaged Sears CEO Lambert created “a climate of fear,” according to Busines Insider reports. It appears the retailers that stay afloat encourage agility and intrapreneurship—this means encouraging innovation, not fear.

DevOps Aids the New Omnichannel Retail Benchmark

Brick-and-mortar are evolving into omnichannel retailers that bridge physical and virtual spaces. Take IKEA’s augmented reality app, which visualizes items in a house. From Disney, to Startbucks, Nordstroms and elsewhere, physical storefronts embrace digital offshoots of their core model to augment the traditional retail experience.

Surprisingly, physical storefronts aren’t completely dead. They still offer conveniences for urban environments with high walking scores. See the emergence of Amazon physical locations for ironic evidence of their benefit. Other storefronts and pop-up shops have taken on a museum-like quality. The flagship Funko store, for example, creates impressive displays and interactive exhibits, pulling in flocks of weekend shoppers that want more than a dull e-commerce shopping cart.

DevOpsGroup similarly describes a “reverse showrooming” movement; consumers research products online to then purchase in person. This enables brands such as ASOS, which is emphasizing social media and free worldwide deliveries, to stay competitive.

“Retailers have been forced to re-evaluate their business strategies and understand how new technologies will affect their offering,” according to the DevOpsGroup website.

DevOps Turns Bricks to Clicks

Online shopping has sufficiently disrupted retail, and brick-and-mortar must reinvent themselves to stay relevant. An open-minded leadership and a commitment to fast development, dynamic scaling, uncompromised availability and open source technology underpin a successful evolution.

Of course, this increased reliance on technology necessitates a hardened look at how development and operations communicate, and brick-and-mortar retailers must adopt the behaviors of tech companies to retain agility.

This may come in many forms: new user-facing digital experiences, microservices for composability in niche omnichannel environments, containerization to package code that scales well, distributed data stores, heightened user data security or smart incident management techniques, to name a few.

Traditional retailers, then, should dissuade their doubts against agile. DevOps can aid retail by reducing redundancy, cutting costs and streamlining production and distribution.

— Bill Doerrfeld

January 8, 2019
How DevOps Eases The Holiday Shopping Experience

“I have been building retail software for 15-years,” says Harper Reed, CTO, Modest, CTO emeritus, Threadless, and former CTO, Obama for America. “With the advent of DevOps, development is now about how we can make the online experience better for the customer,” says Reed. It used to be about taking care of the systems.

Today, the infrastructure is in software with Amazon and the Cloud, with what DigitalOcean is doing with Docker, and with what CoreOS is doing with server deployments. Before cloud-based infrastructure, the enterprise used the data center, which was a fortress that operations had to protect. It wasn’t as easy to think about the customer with those kinds of concerns to look out for. Now everyone has time to think about the customer.

“With the cloud, you can start to have the same lifecycle with infrastructure that you had with the software that actually ran your ecommerce,” says Reed. Teams can leverage a uniformity of tools for measuring performance. Because everyone is using the same tools, it becomes easier, more uniform, to test the software. “We can all be thinking about the user,” says Reed.

With DevOps, infrastructure in software is making the online Holiday shopping experience easier by scaling up in the cloud using very simple scaling rules. “In 2007, 2008, I was CTO of Threadless and we had very good software, but we had to plan months ahead in order to scale things up during the Holidays,” says Reed; “today we don’t have to think, what is our capacity going to be, how am I going to add 15 more servers? We just turn up the budget on Amazon and away it goes.” Of course, scaling keeps shoppers from experiencing server time-outs and slothful transactions.

Because scaling is already addressed, teams can focus on development efforts on the front end, on making the user experience better. The time teams would have spent scaling the back end they now spend ridding bugs and adding and improving services and features, and doing it all much more quickly thanks to continuous deployment.

As a result of a stronger commitment on the front end, efforts become possible such as you see today where stores like Everlane , an online clothing retailer has partnered with Postmates, an on-demand delivery service to drastically cut order delivery times, including same day deliveries http://blog.postmates.com/post/104856354257/powering-on-demand-logistics using Postmates API.

“I visited a pretty well-known ecommerce startup in the Valley a couple of weeks ago. I can’t name the company, but their technology team had zero ops people because they are able to manage all of the ops that they need through software,” says Reed. This retailer hires developers who handle the ops and they don’t have to split their team up, which means more people are building better features.

They’re not spending their time managing hardware sitting in a data center somewhere. They don’t have to manage their bandwidth consumption as much. “They can do it through a control panel in software rather than by making calls to a data center,” says Reed.

And the faster the ecommerce site is, the better the conversions will be. “If your site is very quick, which goes hand in hand with scaling and how you handle capacity, the better the experience will be for everyone from the consumer who is purchasing the products to the retailer selling them to the shipper shipping them out,” says Reed. This all adds up to increased customer satisfaction.

Through continuous integration / deployment, DevOps is able put customer feedback into action very quickly, creating and testing fixes to customer experience issues, which teams can then immediately deploy. “Since we started using DevOps concepts in development, the product development cycle has decreased the time it takes to get things done and into the marketplace,” says Reed.

Before if you were a user and you reported a bug, the enterprise might well have said, “well, okay, we’ll get to it after the Holiday season because we don’t want to change anything at this critical time for fear of introducing more issues”. “Now,” says reed, “we’re able to do some testing and make sure it works and that it’s the right path for us. We’re able to get there very quickly and then we can make a more educated decision on whether now is the right time to make the change.”

Further, the online retailer has the opportunity to consider whether making the change immediately might save a significant amount of sales that would have been lost.

December 18, 2014