"Amazon doesn't kill retail, it just kills bad retail" - John Winning, founder of Appliances Online
I think one of the biggest "panic" buttons on most people's radars now is that 800lb Amazon gorilla steadily making its way to Australian shores.
Let's be honest for a moment.... This was always going to happen.
Whether it was Amazon, or another retail giant, or even the mass-adoption of the international marketplace that is ecommerce… it’s irrelevant. The concept of saving your order for your rep has been dying for years. Amazon just made it more obvious.
So what do you do about it? Well, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to that question (and if someone claims there is, I'd wait to see if their pants caught fire). However, there are a few focus areas I think businesses should be moving on. The most important is something I've spoken about a number of times before.
Add value.
Sounds far more simple than it actually is, I know. However, it is truly crucial to thriving in this changing landscape - so you'll likely hear me say it several more times.
In the spirit of adding value, I wanted to tell you about one of the lesser-known tools we have in the Commerce Vision tool belt to help you out.
Mobile Sales
Much the same way we built Customer Self Service for users, we built Mobile Sales for reps. Both of them have the same deep connection to your PRONTO ERP (and PRONTO CRM for Mobile Sales!) so the data for your users – whether they’re reps or end users – is as accurate as possible at any given moment.
Why should I care?
Well, personalisation is important. It’s important in the ecommerce space, and it’s just as important when you’re in front of a customer. As a customer, would you rather the rep walking through your door already know the expected due date for your backorders, or wait while they phone customer service, and only after you ask them? Conversely, as a business, would you rather your rep have direct access to customer information like backorders, or waste time asking your customer service team to locate that information (even if it’s not happening in front of the customer)?
As I mentioned in the blog post the other week, automation is one of the best ways to reclaim time. Whether it’s automating tasks in the ecommerce space, or eliminating repetitious tasks entirely by putting the right information at the fingertips of the people who need it most, it all means that the different parts of your business can spend more time adding value. And at the end of the day… If you’re not adding value, then that 800lb gorilla just got a whole lot heavier.
