I had the pleasure to attend #SprykerEXCITE 2020 in Berlin. Yes, I attended in person, but 1000+ people enjoyed it online. Here comes my recap & learnings:
Networking has changed
I miss the time where I could discuss with customers and prospects over a networking & drink reception. Conferences and Networking have massively changed, but people have clearly pivoted to digital. And the right tools and platforms enable this dialog, from LinkedIn up to Slido make polls and live conversion possible.
Transformation never ends
Rose bike‘s eCommerce Director Sara Volkmer talked about how their traditional family business transformed from store and catalog business to a digital driven company who has created customer experience across any channel. „Transformation Never end. When you are online you are not done. You have to stay hungry“ said Sarah. By the way they do 80% revenue online today.
E-Commerce has massive growth ahead
The potential of online revenue growth is by far not reached. Looking at the data from Statista on the US market shows that every segment has room for online revenue growth.
In food online only drives 8% of revenue. Please also check out my Data Talks Episode on „Will Food eCommerce become mainstream?“
Spryker is on a winning streak
CEO Alexander Graf shared that Spryker grows 100% YoY for the third time in a row now. Well done! There is the myth that All e-commerce vendors are massively growing due to Covid. To my insights this is not true for all. (You May enjoy my blog on what’s behind the growth of Shopify & Big Commerce)
From eCommerce to Unified Commerce
Spryker is not only enabling their customers to become marketplaces in their industrie, they are moving to an End 2 end offering in digital commerce & digital experience. Alex called it „enable transactional business models everywhere“. That means Chat commerce, mobile, app, social, store etc.
Tech makes the difference
It is no longer a question of what, it is a question of how. Scale and speed matters for growth any industry. The vendors that do not switch to modern technology will not survive and cannot meet the expectations of their customers in B2C or B2B.
Without going too deep APIs, Usability, Self-service, no-code, Cloud and SaaS are only some key factors that modern platform bring by default. Legacy vendors will have to undergo this transformation to stay relevant. Which means for customers of old tech generation it means they have implement twice if they select a yesterday tech in 2020. that has massive impact on TCO, speed and operational impact. (Another reading commendation is: Creating a Connected Data Ecosystem: The Key to Achieving Impact at Scale)
Fast Time to Value
We live in the world of now. Consumers or business people don’t want to wait. So called PBC (packaged business capabilities, as Gartner calls it) is the answer of Spryker to offer Pre-build modules that can be used right away.
(PS: Riversand did the same with industry PIM/MDM solutions for retail, energy MRO, manufacturing, food etc.)
Business Outcomes:
Among all e-commerce KPIs, the conversion rate seems still to be the number 1 priority. The reading recommendations for e-commerce Manager are:
⁃ Hyperautomation & how to make it work in e-commerce
⁃ How data impacts conversion rate, margin and time to market
Data Talks 