Ten Themes for 2009: eCommerce Technology
[posted by Brian K. Walker]
If the last year has taught us anything it is that none of
us have any idea how to predict the future. I think we can all agree, the year
was full of surprises. But one of the great luxuries of the job we have at Forrester
is that we talk with lots and lots of people in and around the industries we
cover. In my case I am lucky to have the opportunity to talk shop with
eCommerce business leaders, multichannel retailers, IT leaders, eCommerce
technology vendors, industry media and thought leaders, and (last but not
least) my colleagues at Forrester.
I am not going to venture out with any “predictions”, but
based on all those conversations I want to touch on some eCommerce technology
themes I believe we will see in 2009.
So, with that, and in no particular order:
- SaaS & hosted/managed platforms go
mainstream. Increasingly online and multichannel retailers
cut-to-the-quick and point out at the top of my conversations with them that
“we are really only interested in something we do not need to support
internally or host in any way.” While true SaaS products still leave some
enterprise-class customers queasy, they are increasingly interested in looking
at these offerings. And nearly all are open-to or motivated-to hosted/managed
offerings. Look for incumbent software offerings to add hosted/managed and SaaS
offerings to the portfolio and for business models to be tweaked all around to
overcome obstacles in both traditional license and revenue-share models. We
will be publishing a Wave report on the top 10 world-wide B2C eCommerce
platforms very soon in January 2009. - Social shopping picks up steam and the
experiments begin in earnest. Over the last couple of years we have all seen and
participated in the proliferation of the social platforms. Look for retailers
to seek out ways to participate. Email is maturing for many, and Search is
annualized, time for the new pony. ROIs may be elusive, but the experiments
will be many and interesting. Look for affiliate marketing, RSS, comparison-shopping,
and web-services to all be used in various combination. - B2B eCommerce platform demand picks up.
For years platform vendors have waited for the tsunami of B2B deals to come
rolling in, and it really does make so much sense… efficiency, customer
experience, CRM, globalization, multiplying channels, and traditional
distribution channels under threat. Well, it is not a tsunami, but rather
gravitational pull of another planet. Subtle but there. We will see demand for
B2B eCommerce applications developing, and it will be lead but forward thinking
organizations who are looking to do it right and who are not in any hurry. This
is why, in this economy, it is going to build slowly. I will be covering B2B
platform offerings with a market overview in Q2 2009. - B2C eCommerce platform demand moderates but
remains healthy. If you are a client, I wrote about this recently here,
but in summary – and in honor of Spinal Tap – we are seeing the volume going down from eleven to eight. Many
multichannel retailers are seeing an eCommerce beacon if light in the terrible
retail storm. And branded manufacturers need to replace eroded demand in their
traditional retail distribution models – making the channel conflict questions
much easier to navigate. All that though needs to be mixed with a very
challenging overall economic environment, hence the moderation. Many
initiatives may stall at signing as companies wait for the situation to
improve, while others will not hesitate. - Predictive merchandising becomes
ubiquitous, and the crowd begins to separate. “Predictive merchandising” is
also referred to as “automated merchandising” or “personalized product
recommendations”. Whatever term you like (or are marketing) we will see this
area are the “product reviews of 2007”, where we go from stepped up interest
and demand to a default feature. The incumbent concerns and cultural hesitations
of merchants and marketers will be replaced with an enthusiasm for the improved
customer experience and ROI. Many retailers (and the vendors) will be picking
off low-hanging fruit and seeing some good results even from the lesser
solutions (to start). Meanwhile the crowd of solutions will begin to separate
as the vendors with traction and profits outlast, out-market, and out-invest
the start-ups. For more on personalization see Sucharita Mulpuru’s great
research on this from December 2007. - Multichannel features and services pick up
momentum. This is an interesting area. Will the challenges faced by
retailers lead to further multichannel integration or are the costs and challenges too
high? Many retailers will simplify this down to key features and services that
really meet the customers’ needs – in-store pick-up and ship-to store. Upcoming
research in January will explore the customer trends and opportunities for
retailers to make this easier to accomplish. - Google Analytics picks up share, and the
incumbents fight to retain customers. As we covered in July, nearly everyone is dissatisfied with their analytics package. Google
Analytics has two advantages key to this theme, 1) it is simple and 2) it
is free. As budgets come under pressure, and online retailers evaluate what is
working and where they are spending their money it will be hard to justify the
spend on analytics even if Google Analytics is limited in eCommerce-oriented
capabilities. - We finally begin to learn what Omniture is
up to, but continue to puzzle over Amazon’s enterprise solution offering. Speaking of analytics, why did Omniture buy Visual Sciences (including Atomz Search) and Mercado? Is there a “platform” in there
somewhere? Maybe next year the answers begin to emerge. As for Amazon, no word
on what kind of enterprise eCommerce platform offerings will re-emerge, except
we know it will include “services”. The assets are too great at Amazon not to
seek to monetize them in an enterprise-services context, but the garage door is
down and the mechanics are busy. - Oracle, SAP, and
this eCommerce-platform -thing. Demand from the vast Oracle, SAP, and
Sterling Commerce install-base for eCommerce solutions is growing from a small
crowd to an Obama-sized rally. The time to offer a well formed response is now,
or be clear there is no product aimed at addressing the B2C online merchants
and marketers’ needs. B2B solutions are more attainable and make more sense
with the tight ERP and order management requirements, but the customer
experience and business facing merchandising, content management, and marketing tools
still lack maturity. Acquisitions would make sense here, maybe in 2009. - The walled gardens begin to break-down. We
will talk less about platforms and more about “eCommerce technology environments’.
Keyword: begin. More on this in 2009.
Happy New Year everyone and I look forward to more of those
conversations in 2009.
Cheers, Brian