Creating a connected commerce experience? Don’t forget about this make-or-break step.

Thirty years after the first wave of e-commerce, many organizations find themselves with a complex ecosystem of legacy technology, disparate data, fragmented strategy and siloed organization structures. That’s a tough combination for planning and navigating change, much less transformation. 

The top three pain points heard, repeatedly, across commerce businesses are:  

1. Improving the customer experience,  
   
   
2. Optimizing for multiple (sales) channels 
   
   
3. Making the right choices in modernizing technology platforms  

This requires connecting dots: not just with customer facing experiences, but across internal teams, technologies, and programs.  So, what is the best path forward? 

One of the crucial steps is to conduct a current state commerce review. Jumping straight to the technology and implementation can be a costly mistake. Conducting a review is essential for understanding your organization's current position, identifying areas for improvement, and making informed decisions about the future. The most successful organizations take time to understand their current capabilities and gaps, relative to their future vision and goals.

Conducting a current state commerce review 

Whether the conversation focuses on top user needs or on the endless inner workings, gaps, and needs of the organization, the key is keeping a practical balance. Conversations like these will unlock far more value than a series of disconnected programs run by different business functions. 
 
A current state commerce review considers how well your revenue channels and technologies are supporting your overall business goals. It provides the organization with honest feedback about internal and external gaps. Most importantly, the review should be systematic and methodical. The goal is not to criticize. Instead, the intent is to work as a team, share perspectives, and identify opportunities and gaps.  


More benefits of a current state commerce review include: 

Informed decision making: Provides a clear picture of your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). 

Identifying inefficiencies: Uncovers bottlenecks, redundant processes, and areas of waste. 

Setting realistic goals: Establishes a baseline for measuring progress towards future state objectives. 

Risk mitigation: Identifies potential risks and vulnerabilities. 

Resource optimization: Helps allocate resources effectively by understanding current utilization. 

Alignment with business objectives: Ensures that initiatives are aligned with overall organizational goals. 

Smooth integration of new technologies: Provides a foundation for evaluating and adopting new technologies.

 

But how can you help direct the conversation to be a productive one? Some of the questions the team should be discussing are: 

• Given our growth goals, where do we need to improve our digital capabilities?  
  
  
• How has our strategy evolved over time? Which changes should we consider regarding product delivery, marketing campaigns, or customer service?  
  
  
• Is our current organizational team structure setting us up for success? 
  
  
• Does our culture and leadership support or detract from our commerce goals? 
  
  
• Is our strategy sustainable over the long term or is our commerce goal reflective of current trends that could die out? 
  
  
• What are potential issues across marketing, customer service, or technology that could arise? 
  
  
• How well do we deliver on the commerce fundamentals? Are customers able to easily find their product and checkout? 
  
  

  Understand the needs of your core customers  

  You can’t execute your commerce goals without talking about why you’re doing it in the first place: your customers. Each customer interaction touchpoint shapes their perception of the business.  An important piece of the current state review is to research, understand, and align on the needs and journey of core customer groups – especially the customers that drive the most value for the organization.  
  
  
  In the world of commerce, this ‘experience’ consists of so much more than the purchase transaction. It includes learning, researching, browsing, comparing, buying, receiving, and sometimes, returning or asking for help. As obvious as this sounds, this is where most companies struggle the most – orchestrating multiple departments and technologies to deliver one simple, seamless experience for a customer. And you're only as good as your worst experience. 
  

  Know where you are... really 

  Doing the hard work of a current state review and having honest conversations among teams and leaders sets the stage for a strategy that will drive much greater reward. As a result, a series of opportunities (and roadblocks) to improving the business and customer experience will be identified – setting your connected commerce goals up for long-term success.