Setting Up Your Team for Digital Commerce Success

WRITTEN BY

Steve Jones, VP Sr. Consultant

Kathy Kimple, SVP Sr. Consultant

FITFORCOMMERCE WHITEPAPER SERIES

January 2016

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Contents

Introduction 3

Delivering the Optimal Shopping Experience 3

Why Traditional Digital Commerce Teams Fall Short 4

Taking Inspiration from Agile 4

Using Cross-Functional Metrics to Achieve a Common Goal 6

Tools that Empower Agile Digital Commerce Teams to Succeed 7

Conclusion: Advancing Digital Commerce with an Agile Approach 9

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Introduction

The evolution of digital commerce has given rise to a growing set of customer expectations for the digital

experience, both within and across channels. That experience is enabled by a combination of strategy,

technology, content and features, all of which require an investment of time and resources. Those resources

must work collaboratively – often across functional silos including marketing, merchandising, creative,

technology and more – to deliver an optimal experience.

Recognizing the need to reduce friction in the path to purchase in order to drive as many sales as possible,

forward-thinking retailers, brands and digital merchants are taking new steps to do so with efficiency and

skill. Often constrained by limited resources, these companies are finding it critical to assess and align

organizational design while also leveraging the most fitting technology to enable a seamless, collaborative

workflow.

This paper explores how successful retailers, brands and digital merchants structure their digital

organizations, leveraging technology where appropriate, to achieve maximum effectiveness while operating

under resource constraints. We examine the advantages of aligning organizational design, technologies,

tools and work processes to empower internal teams to work together more effectively.

Delivering the Optimal Shopping Experience

Shoppers don’t think in terms of “channels.” Rather, they simply care about their shopping experience. And

in the digital experience equation, shoppers only see themselves and the brand, retailer or digital merchant.

Everything else that truly comprises that equation is meaningless to the shopper – yet absolutely critical to

the success of the business.

Shoppers want an engaging experience that is, above all, fast and convenient. Those businesses winning

in the digital realm are taking measures to ensure a seamless experience, start to finish, within and across

channels, supporting shopper needs wherever, however, and whenever they shop.

But seamless is just the price of entry. Businesses must immerse shoppers in an experience that draws them

in, commanding their attention in a world of seemingly never-ending distractions. This is no small feat,

requiring retailers, brands and digital merchants to harness site content, messages, promotions, marketing,

and merchandising in just the right combination, often tailored by segment or personalized to specific

shoppers. The end goal is for these elements to converge, appropriately matching shopper needs or desires

with the most relevant retail experience, assortment and message.

Keeping the experience fresh and engaging, from initial interest through purchase and beyond, requires the

engineering and orchestration of many complex, interdependent and moving parts. While the thought may

be daunting, approaching the shopping experience in a strategic, holistic manner is the only way to satisfy

shopper’s high expectations. And it begins with an internal foundation built on the right organizational

structure and the technology needed to power it all.

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Why Traditional Digital Commerce Teams Fall Short

Because digital commerce happens virtually, it’s easy to underestimate the effort required to make it happen.

The experience is virtual; the work required to create it is real. It takes a cross-functional team of contributors

working collaboratively and in alignment to plan, produce, manage and curate a digital customer experience.

This team includes merchandisers, marketers, designers, writers and technology staff. The way a business

develops, staffs, incents and evaluates these functions can mean all the difference between failure and success.

Businesses hire people to manage each distinct area associated with digital commerce, leading to functional

silos. It’s quite common to see someone running the analytics platform, gathering and sharing insights

with marketers and merchandisers. Such a setup perpetuates the maintenance of separate work streams,

responsibilities and platforms to support each specialty. This frequently leads to communication breakdowns,

inefficiencies and missed opportunities. For example, if the marketing department is working on a major

holiday promotion and wrongly assumes the company’s e-commerce technology can support it, the entire

campaign could flop – at great cost.

By breaking down the barriers between the different areas of the digital commerce team, retailers, brands and

digital merchants are better positioned to deliver compelling, engaging content and promotions. This can, in

turn, ensure a standout shopping experience that converts.

Taking Inspiration from Agile

Simply put, to thrive in today’s commerce world and satisfy the new – and ever-fickle – digital consumer,

digital commerce teams must become agile. Many are taking their cues from people in a range of functions

and industries that are embracing Agile project management methodologies and concepts born out of

manufacturing and software development. The Agile framework and approaches were designed to help cross-

functional teams get their jobs done better, faster and at higher success rates.

The Agile philosophy can be traced back to the lean manufacturing principles developed in the 1950s.

Its primary goal is to maximize efficiency during manufacturing in order to boost productivity and lower

costs. Software developers adopted this approach to manage projects requiring teams to work in parallel

and alignment as they quickly produced a cohesive software release building upon the sum of each team’s

contributions.

Agile teams tend to be lean teams. Lean teams benefit from momentum and speed – and, in turn, the ability to

operate at an unprecedented pace. These are the teams that help their businesses achieve an advantage and

grow. To be leaner, they are cross-functional and multi-disciplinary.

“Managing with a focus on the horizontal flow of the work process through highly empowered and

effective teams is the key to competitive organizations.” – Lean Teams: Developing the Team-Based

Organization

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Embracing a cross-functional, multi-discipline organizational approach is the logical and proven way to

create the necessary cohesion across the digital commerce team. Rather than assign a single person to own

responsibility for a single area – such as digital marketing, creative, content, or merchandising – businesses

could hire with multi-discipline and cross-functional in mind. This manifests itself in hybrid roles such as those

focused on both SEO and content, or on both merchandising and marketing.

The benefits of this organizational design are palpable. With a flatter hierarchy, communication happens more

rapidly, collaboration is more effective, and it takes less effort to get ideas off the ground.

CAPABILITIES NEEDED TO SUPPORT DIGITAL COMMERCE

MERCHANDISING DIGITALMARKETING

CREATIVE FULFILLMENT INVENTORYMANAGEMENT

SITEOPTIMIZATION

CONTENT TECHNOLOGY 3RD PARTYPROVIDERS

FLUID ROLES OF A HYBRID TEAM

CREATIVE

CONTENT

Marketer Website Manager

INVENTORYMERCHANDISING

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In an ideal world, everyone on the digital team would be knowledgeable in all areas associated with

digital commerce. When each person is able to wear multiple hats, the result is a superstar generalist.

As digital commerce teams adopt agile principles and mindsets, they will progress along a maturity curve from

occupying silos to excelling in a multi-discipline, cross-functional manner.

Using Cross-Functional Metrics to Achieve a Common Goal

To effectively make use of an Agile approach, retailers, brands and digital merchants need to select and apply

the appropriate performance metrics. The work required to support digital commerce, by its collaborative

nature, can lead to confusion regarding individual responsibilities. Or it can result in a bunker mentality with

individuals working as hard as possible to achieve their own goals, which aren’t aligned across the organization.

Clearly defining responsibilities is the first step to success. The next step is ensuring key performance indicators

across functions align to support a cohesive shopper experience.

Performance measurements should combine function-specific and cross-functional factors, engineered to

address the interdependencies required for digital commerce. For example, a digital marketer may be measured

on the amount of traffic driven to a website, while the digital merchandiser might be measured on products sold.

But they both impact site conversion positively or negatively. If the marketer drives unqualified traffic, conversion

suffers. If the merchandiser doesn’t present product in a compelling and relevant manner, shoppers won’t buy. If

the traffic and assortment offered don’t converge in a relevant manner, conversion will be impacted.

ADOPTION OF AGILE PRINCIPLES AND MINDSETS

SILO APPROACH

CROSS FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

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The argument can be made that the performance measurement of both functions should include conversion

(a cross-functional goal) in addition to function-specific goals.

Tools that Empower Agile Digital Commerce Teams to Succeed

Nearly everyone in digital commerce feels they have more work than the resources to complete it successfully.

To achieve all this, digital commerce teams need the right technologies and tools, ones that make cross-

functional/multi-discipline organizations function effectively. Specifically, these tools should be built to support

an Agile workflow and collaboration so disparate roles can more readily work together.

Fortunately, as technology advances, e-commerce platforms are evolving to anticipate and facilitate the

collaborative work required to support digital commerce, including:

• Rapidly pushing fresh content

• Gaining and maintaining a cognitive, data-based understanding of shopper behaviors

• Making data-driven decisions

• Moving quickly from creative ideation to execution

Pushing fresh content

Even a lean (e.g., 4-person) digital commerce team can operate effectively with the right tools. In keeping with

a strategy to use branded content to drive the shopping experience, a digital commerce team should make

significant site changes weekly. With the right processes and technology in place, a small team can easily

and effectively communicate and collaborate around orchestrated changes and then time the changes to

go live. For instance, while the merchandiser handpicks selections for that week’s collection, the content and

marketing staff work on copy and visual design.

The team then organizes all changes in a “release,” which it can schedule for any given date and time, completely

eliminating the staging concept for significant workflow and efficiency gains.

Gaining cognitive data-driven understanding of customer behaviors

Big Data and analytics are important to all retailers, brands and digital merchants. Unfortunately, we have

found that most retailers don’t employ full-time analysts, so most of the data they collect goes largely unused.

In an ideal world, everyone on the cross-functional, multi-disciplinary team would be data savvy and have

access to a single repository of relevant data. This would enable each member to easily see data about trends

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(such as declining interest in a promotion), categories (such as large movement of a certain product) and more.

With the right digital commerce solution, the team could also pinpoint intent from onsite search. This helps

identify quick-win opportunities, allowing retailers to target better terms in real time for optimal merchandising

and promotions.

Making data-driven decisions

Hand in hand with the understanding of customer behaviors and intents comes the need to make data-driven

decisions. If everyone on the digital commerce team is on some level an analyst and understand how to make

data-driven decisions, the organization can move faster. This is in sharp contrast to relying on a single data

analyst who sits alone and must serve all data-related needs across the retailer. By pairing this proclivity for

data with the ideal technology, retailers can focus on the right and most meaningful data and even be fed

suggestions for next best steps.

vs.

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Moving quickly from creative ideation to execution

The technology and tools used to enable digital commerce are no longer the purview of technical power users.

Advanced platforms empower everyone – even those with creative functions – to deploy their ideas directly by

bypassing both limiting templates and the often backlogged IT group. As a result, they can more efficiently

and quickly shape the shopping experience.

Streamlined, collaborative workflows and automation can greatly extend the work capacity of a lean digital

commerce team, making it easy to:

• Collaborate and release all site-related changes in an orchestrated manner

• Know who worked on an activity or asset last

• Communicate asynchronously about all site-related elements

• Notify and alert teams and individuals about site changes or issues (such as missing images for a product

being prepared for publication)

• See data insights in the context of actions and tasks

Just as mobile content management has become part of everyone’s role on the digital commerce team,

the same is holding true of data analysis.

Conclusion: Advancing Digital Commerce with an Agile Approach

The key to digital commerce success is to avoid monolithic, slow-moving teams, rigid processes, and

cumbersome technologies. Successful retailers, brands and digital merchants are embracing a multi-discipline,

cross-functional approach to building their teams. And they are empowering them to succeed by equipping

them with a technology platform and tools designed with Agile in mind to improve implementation, ease

collaboration and encourage rapid innovation.

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This white paper is made possible by the support of:

WebLinc is the commerce and operations management platform for fast growing online retailers. Mid to

large-size retailers consistently outpace their competition with the modern, agile technologies of the WebLinc

Commerce Platform and the company’s strategic expertise. Based in Philadelphia with satellite offices in

New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Toronto, WebLinc powers commerce sites for dynamic, high-growth

retailers including Sanrio/Hello Kitty, Urban Outfitters, Inc.’s brands Terrain and BHLDN, U.S. Polo Assn., Stila

Cosmetics, Rachel Roy, and others.

To learn more, visit www.weblinc.com.

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FitForCommerce is a leading consulting firm, helping ecommerce and multichannel retailers and manufacturers

grow their online retail operations. Our consultants bring decades of practical, hands-on experience to guide

merchants in defining ecommerce strategy, selecting the right technologies, and building online marketing,

merchandising and best-in-class website experiences — all using a rigorous ecommerce Diligence process and

a vast knowledge base built on our work with hundreds of leading retailers.

973.379.7399 | info@fitforcommerce.com | www.fitforcommerce.com