Conversational Commerce

Omni channel commerce is growing and morphing now into new capabilities bring into reality a conversational commerce capability that will bringhe the next wave of disruption into the market. Consumers are continuing to drive the change through embrace and experimentation with technology. The tools available to consumers have been growing and expanding in capabilities and the Internet of Things is providing the type of capabilities that produce conversational commerce capabilities that can and will be pervasive across the market. I see these capabilities in the early stages now and experimentation from early adopters from both consumers and retailers are coming togehter with these experiments drive the changes to produce a new conversational market that encourages and allows the smooth blend and transition of shopping and purchasing across all attitudes.





These can be unnerving times for the market partners because of the level and velocity of the disruption. There is an almost overwhelming urge to focus on the change, however it is important during the early stages of this increased disruption on the basics. This is why partners must focus on the foundational framework that will allow them to react and change and experiment with the market to develop and support the new capabilities. Experimentation is the key trait and action required to respond to the change in the market begin driven by consumers and technology. The foundation framework though supports the velocity of change in a manner that is sustainable and robust.





Recently it seems that the focus of partners in the retail market has been operational capabilities such as pick up in the store. This was a requirement to the current stage of the market and I would even call this a type of founcational development because of the way that the operational functions support the retail demands across the shopping methods. The change from conversational commerce adds onto the operational capabilities and the integration capabilities to drive change into the shopping marketplace. This is now the time where data and analytics really shows value in providing a means to sense and respond to the changes. The focus must be the give and take between partners and consumers in a conversational mode that supports reactions to change more efficiently and also provides a means to sense change.





The challenge is that there is no roadmap for the capabilities and the direction that will be demanded for the conversational commerce marketplace and the market partners must focus on the capabilities to sense and respond to the changes. Operational processes focus on efficiencies and capabilities while shopping focuses on communication across platforms, partners and consumers. Shopping capabilities are taking the forefront now because the operational capabilities have already been put into place. There are two requirements to supporting the shopping demands and developing conversational commerce capabilities; interaction between partners and consumers and data analytics to sense and measure the demands and response to the demands.