Social Commerce Execution

 

Execution is important in all aspects of retail and it is especially important in the social commerce practices because of the interaction between social networks, eCommerce and physical stores.  Due to the nature of the interactions and the tools involved in these interactions execution takes on an especially critical requirement and key to success.  There is no other way to succeed without a focus on execution and maintenance of the communications and functionality that makes up the social commerce marketplace.  The social commerce marketplace is a very cohesive framework that connects many moving pieces and because of this it requires a great deal of focus to ensure identification and incorporation of changing customer demands.

Due to the number of interacting pieces that make up the social commerce framework along with the number of participants the social commerce marketplace a dedicated focus is required to monitor and support changes demanded by the participants.  This is a full time job for a team of people because of the intersecting activities and the volume of discontinuous change resulting from these interactions.  There is always a new service or a new network that materializes on the market at unplanned intervals that can suddenly change the direction and impose new requirements on the market.  Each of the interacting pieces that make up the social commerce framework are on different schedules and can be taking different directions based on their priorities and also the participants demands and then each of these changes must be analyzed for impact to the other interacting pieces in order to maintain a cohesive social commerce marketplace.

This is also especially difficult because the interacting pieces and the social commerce participants do not develop a cohesive inclusive plan to address participant demand.  Each participant reacts to the demand and changing market in a manner that is beneficial to their own plans and ability to integrate new demands.  This requires a flexible framework and infrastructure in order to support the changing demands and more importantly it requires a continuous focus on analysis and execution in order to react and incorporate the changing demands and changing capabilities of the marketplace.  

This is a big change for the large legacy retailers, and I believe this is a large factor in their struggles to maintain their place in the marketplace.  In the social commerce marketplace identification of demands and how to address those demands are important and even more important is the ability to execute to meet these changing demands.  There is an old saying that is even more true today in this social commerce marketplace; if you don’t do it right the first time, when will you have time to re-do it?  

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?