Why Agility is the #1 Critical Capability in Commerce

The events this year have permanently accelerated the move to digital. As always, the shift has not been universal, with the outcome based on their existing digital maturity or their industry segment.

B2C: Retail has embraced commerce and reacted to the pandemic with new capabilities like curbside or contactless pickup, extended holiday shopping deals and flash sales — basically reinventing themselves for a new look Black Friday. But, they are still struggling to engage and delight consumers as they did with a store experience.

B2B: B2B companies are facing new demands from buyers for more online buying experiences that include new product categories or access to bigger online inventories, dynamic pricing and better personalization that removes the friction from the buying process.

Lack of Agility Holding you Back?

Those companies who have been able to adapt the quickest to what the buyer wants and what the market demands, are the ones who are thriving during these difficult times. Of course, every industry is different, but what we are seeing at HCL Commerce is the companies that are succeeding are those that can:

• Offer differentiating brand experiences,
• Scale automatically to handle transaction volumes beyond what they tested for,
• Quickly role out new business services like contactless pickup,
• Support sales teams with new sites with new products or in new geos.

Sadly, the lack of agility is holding many companies back from engaging with their customers and building momentum for their digital transformations.

How Technology Impacts your Agility

Those businesses who decided to go SaaS and multi-tenant for the deployment of their commerce platform were looking for increased agility. They were drawn by the fast implementation, ease of updates that brought them new innovations. But they gave up a level of control over their digital strategy. They may get innovations but at the same time as all their neighbors on that multi-tenant solution, thereby negating any competitive advantage or differentiation. Not the sort of agility you need in today’s unpredictable market.

We believe that to be truly agile, you need the best of multi-tenancy, which simplifies the operational aspects of running your commerce stack, but without introducing additional constraints around:

• Scalability
• Differentiating the customer experience
• Having to share your sales data (even if anonymized)
• Access to services offered by other cloud providers that benefit your business

The list goes on.

Multi-tenant is ‘old-school 2000’s!’ and just doesn’t cut it in today’s commerce reality. The next generation of commerce is cloud native. If you need to get up to speed quickly on this exciting technology that will make a difference to your business and increase your agility, a great place to start is the Tech Talk series on YouTube.

1. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #1 What is Docker
   

    
2. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #2 What is Cloud Native
   

    
3. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #3 Performance Trends in the New Normal
   

    
4. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #4 What is Kubernetes
   

    
5. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #5 Comparing Kubernetes Options
   

    
6. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #6 Google Cloud Platform
   

    
7. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #7 Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
   

    
8. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #8 Anthos
   

    
9. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #9 RedHat Openshift
   

    
10. HCL Commerce Tech Talk #10 – RedHat OpenShift Part 2 (Demo)
    

     
11. HCL Commerce Tech Talk #11 – CI/CD Overview
    

     
12. HCL Commerce Tech Talks – #12 GIT Overview
    

     
13. HCL Commerce Tech Talks #13: CI/CD & Jenkins
    

     

If you are more interested in how the technology is an enabler to the business, watch out for a couple of interesting reports on Cloud Native that HCL Commerce is sponsoring.