Commerce 2.0 Supply Chain Integration

This drive and focus of consumers on the shopping capabilities rather than the market channel is made up of three major contributors; consumers, retailers and the supply chain.  I have focused previously on the initial two contributors; consumers and retailers because it is vital for retailers to understand and embrace the changing marketplace and consumer practices.  The third contributor, supply chain, provides retailers with the execution capabilities that will determine the success of the retailers. After all, it doesn’t matter that a retailer is highly tuned to the needs and desires of the consumer if that retailer cannot deliver the goods.  The supply chain network supporting these needs is also a very complex network of partners, services and capabilities.

This network must be formed and nurtured to meet a common strategy supporting the sales demands of the consumer.  These demands and supply chain requirements will be revised according to the delivery demands of the consumer. The limitations of these services are based solely on the imagination of the consumer and the supply chain partners.  These demands require a highly collaborative network of supply chain service providers that are focused on meeting the demands of the consumer.  This requires a primary focus on the demands of the consumers and not a focus on the individual success of any one partner.  The success of the supply chain in this new environment depends on the collaboration of services across the partner network.  

This focus on partnership will allow the network to meet the demands of the consumer, or the end customer, to ensure the success of the the entire chain from the raw materials to the end consumer.  This requires that the network strategy focus on the true end customer, the consumer, and each partner in the chain can then focus on how the strengths of the individual partner can be utilized to meet those end requirements. This is performed by what I would define as a classic business process modeling exercise of the entire supply chain, including the end consumer.  While this may be a classic exercise, the focus is anything but classic due to the continuous change that is driven into the requirements and process and the range of contributing factors on these processes.  

The retailer is the ‘face’ to the consumer of their shopping outlet and the supply chain is the ‘body’ of this shopping outlet.  The supply chain provides the support and services that are the result of the consumer shopping from the initial delivery, through any channel, through the potential return of the purchase back into the retail supply chain.  The demands of the consumer are driven by the imagination and tools available to the consumer.  The velocity of this change cycle can be overwhelming and requires a strong collaborative network to support these demands.

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 consumers’ experience?  Improving the consumers 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?

Commerce 2.0 Data Collection

The Big Data challenge is twofold, one is the collection and storage of the data and the second is utilizing this data.  Both of these aspects are at the same time dependent and promoting each other.  They are dependent because the data collected should from one perspective be driven by the use of that data.  They are promoting each other because the needs and capabilities of one aspect feed the other aspect.  The challenge here however is a classic ‘chicken or the egg’ question; does the utilization drive the collection, or the collection drive the utilization?  I think that the challenge is to collect the data based on a future potential and not on a current need. It is important to build the collection capabilities based on the future potential because you want to ensure that you have historical information for queries and analysis when you identify the need.  

At one point in time this concept was almost overwhelming from a cost perspective and an analysis perspective.  The cost of storage was expensive and the tools and computing horsepower were in their infancy in the ability to support search and comparison requirements of large amounts of data crunching.  These limitations drove frustration from the business and technology staff at the same time.  From the technology perspective there was a great deal of difficulty and effort required to justify the cost of the of equipment to support the objective.  From the business perspective there was a great deal of frustration because it seemed that any time one analysis determined the need for additional data, the technology either did not have the data or required a great deal of effort to create the analysis.  A third technical frustration was the time involved in collecting and analyzing the data.

Current capabilities have overcome the technology hurdles; storage and computing power is cheap.  These capabilities are also changing and improving on a continuous basis.  This has allowed the potential of Big Data concepts to at least start to be realized.  With this realization comes a new realization, though, of the real, or additional, potential achievable.  This realization is driving new desires and needs in technology and capabilities.  We have seen the changes realized in the consumer market and shopping capabilities encouraged and driven by improvements in mobile technology.  There are similar capabilities encouraged and driving in the research and analysis of data by improvements in Big Data technology.  My advice is to not cut yourself short, or hold yourself back, by limiting the amount of data that you collect.  My advice is to collect everything from every aspect of the consumer market so that your analysis can go where it needs as your analysis and questions expand.

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 consumers’ experience?  Improving the consumers 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?

Commerce 2.0 Data Needs

An important aspect of communication and engagement is the data that is developed and captured related to the customer interaction.  This data provides the basis of the ‘ company memory’ captured and collected throughout the customer relationship.  The small retailer utilizes the salespersons’ memory of the interactions with the customers as the basis for the company memory.  This is obviously much easier because the human brain is a very powerful tool that store and relates vast amounts of information.  In order to be successful in this new social shopping environment retailers must develop a method and the means to collect, store and then most importantly access information in a manner that develops the engagement and retention of the customer.

Ten years ago this would have present a major hurdle to overcome, however today’s advances in Big Data tools and techniques can be utilized to support the business requirements.  These capabilities have been supported and encouraged by the reductions in storage costs so that we have now reached the point where all data can be captured for future reference and use.  Its not just the NSA that captures the information related to interactions with others!  The technology also provides retailers with the capability to communicate and develop the relationship with their customers.  This technology allows the retailer to develop the two-way communications that customers demand in their interaction with the retailers.

Big Data technologies provide the tools to develop the two-way communication, however these are only tools and the magic is realized from the manner in which you use these tools.  The tools can collect a vast amount of data that requires business objectives and query techniques to actually turn the data into information.  Vast amounts of information is useless unless there is an objective for using the data and techniques to query and analyze the data.  This is a necessary and critical exercise to turn this data into information in order to realize the value and turn the interaction with the customer into two-way communication.  

I have found a general rule of thumb that I use to help to explain technology and technical tools; the easier a tool is to use, the more complicated the technology.  This Big Data challenge is no different and requires skill and patience to bring value.  The Big Data challenge is simply a hurdle to overcome, it is not a small hurdle and it is also not in insurmountable hurdle.  I think the trick with Big Data is to focus initially on the collection of data and not how it will be used, data use will change and grow over time and so it is important to collect all data that is related to any interaction, no matter how small or where the interaction occurs.

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 consumers’ experience?  Improving the consumers 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?