Is there a Future for a Commerce Cloud?
For many, the question posed in this post is not a question at all. Many are fully bought in to the concept of eCommerce applications (or at a bare minimum, services) existing only is a SaaS delivery model. To be clear, there are many ISVs that deliver enterprise-class services that surround retailers’ eCommerce applications. Tax, payments, Web analytics, product imagery, A/B testing, customer support, etc all represent areas where ISVs are already delivering solutions in a SaaS delivery model.
The question posed in this entry however is more complex. There are eCommerce application vendors today that deliver their applications in a hosted model, basically allowing retailers to offload expensive infrastructure. There are an even smaller number of ISVs that deliver what most approximates true SaaS, The key differentiator is the ability to “customize” the application and “own” the application so-to-speak.
Given the economics of Retail at the moment, there is more than a groundswell of support for any opportunity to buy an eCommerce solution without buying the infrastructure that is traditionally required to actually run it. Furthering this movement is the reality that eCommerce buying decisions are now more than ever being driven by business constituencies inside of Retail organizations. Marketing and merchandising executives are much more willing to focus on rapidly-delivered features and capabilities at the expense of technical control and integration.
But can there be a compromise between the business and IT organizations inside of Retail? Can marketing and merchandising executives get a highly functional application, complete with workflows and features that allow them to have a pseudo turnkey solution while at the same time providing IT with a scalable, standards-based platform that can be developed on top of, integrated to, and supported? Perhaps.
The answer may be a set of componentized, commerce-specific services in the cloud that allow for basic assembly and sequencing into a true application architecture.
More on this topic to come…
I am responsible for eCommerce and cross-channel retailing for Microsoft’s Retail Industry Team. In this capacity, I have worked with many global retailers to assess eCommerce and cross-channel retailing strategies and how technology and business processes can be used to accomplish strategic initiatives.
I leverage my background in retail supply chain and consumer experience technology to align retailers’ customer facing application portfolios with the realities of retail enterprise applications and enterprise data paradigms.
Prior to joining Microsoft, I held positions at Oracle Retail, Retek, and Accenture. At Oracle Retail, I was a product manager responsible for supply chain execution systems. While at Retek I held functional architecture responsibilities for Retek’s supply chain execution systems, including integration with other ERP functional areas such as merchandising, financials, order management and point-of-sale. In my role at Accenture, I was responsible for leading custom development and implementation teams for large retail ERP projects, including direct-to-consumer operations. I have been quoted in industry publications and have lectured at a variety of venues.
My retail solutions experience includes verticals such as hypermarket, grocery, specialty, soft lines, C-store and hard lines. This experience included traditional brick-and-mortar as well as multi-channel fulfillment models.
