Digital Commerce Success Is A Click Away

Since this is my first Gartner blog post, I want to write about something that I love. And nothing gives me more pleasure than discussing how to grow a successful digital commerce business with our clients.

The complex, sprawling world of digital commerce challenges many a business leader. Southeast Asia also presents itself as a particularly challenging geo-region, in terms of the potential and ease of digital commerce (see Figure 1).

Our clients are constantly on the frontline fighting a host of issues, from regulatory, to digital marketing, to payments, to merchant partnerships to fulfillment to warehouse management to delivery fleet problems. My response to hearing these issues? I normally ask them to pause for breath. And I tell them,

“Success (in digital commerce) is just a click away.”

While it might be trite to characterize digital commerce in such simplistic terms, the stark reality is digital commerce has and will always be about getting customers to click on that item or service to purchase. Every function’s sole purpose is in service of that.

Digital commerce business leaders can reduce their tension by focusing on 3 recommendations:

1. Purpose-building your mobile app CX to present a consistent brand experience
2. Fulfilling via optimized supply chain management solutions or with local partners
3. Implementing hyperlocal methods of payment via collaboration with banks, mobile payments and COD

Based on industry estimates, the expected growth of consumer spending on digital commerce for the Southeast Asian region will exceed $88 billion by 2025. This comes from a low penetration of 1.5% of the total retail market, estimated to be worth $5 billion in 2016. While my inaugural article on Gartner does focus on the challenges in Asia for digital commerce, these are applicable for global business leaders too.

Until the next time, I wish you only good things for your digital business.