Digital Commerce: Paving the Way for the Next Phase of Growth

Rapidly changing consumer behavior and supply chain disruptions brought on by the pandemic have forced companies to pivot to new business and delivery models and to deploy new modes of customer engagement. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) commerce, omnichannel commerce, and adoption of digital channels for sales and payments have grown rapidly during and after pandemic shutdowns. This led to a growing demand for digital commerce services across industry verticals with service providers expanding their revenue by nearly 30% between 2020 and 2021.

These emerging trends are covered in Avasant’s Digital Commerce Services 2021–2022 RadarView^™. The report provides business leaders a view into the changing landscape of digital and traditional commerce and highlights key trends in the market shaping the enterprise commerce function. It also helps in identifying the right service providers that enterprises can partner with to reshape and implement their digital commerce strategies.

Avasant evaluated 26 providers using three dimensions: practice maturity, partner ecosystem, and investments and innovation. Of those 26 providers, we recognized 17 as having brought the most value to the market during the past 12 months.

The report recognizes service providers in four categories:

• • Leaders: Accenture, HCL, Infosys, and TCS
  • Innovators: Capgemini, Cognizant, IBM, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro
  • Disruptors: Atos, LTI, Mindtree, and NTT DATA
  • Challengers: Birlasoft, Mphasis, Softtek, and Zensar

Figure 1 from the full report illustrates these categories:

“Digital commerce is now fundamental to businesses in all industries,” said Fred Pond, distinguished Avasant fellow. “Brands must build direct relationships with customers, activate new channels of engagement, and focus on providing a unified commerce experience to customers in order to build long-term customer loyalty.”

The full report provides several key recommendations to business leaders, including the following:

1. Embrace new delivery and business models.

• • Retailers and manufacturers should evaluate new delivery and business models such as D2C and enterprise marketplaces that can drive business growth and help prepare for future disruptions.
  • Automotive, electronics, and manufacturing companies can turn to subscription-based models to grow their recurring revenue. This can help them increase customer retention, improve operations, and generate new revenue streams.

2. Optimize the supply chain to expedite delivery and contain costs.

• • Enterprises should focus on improving real-time visibility, transparency, and efficiency by building smart and connected supply chains that are automated, analytics driven, and AI-enabled. They must leverage the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robots, and drones to digitalize and optimize supply chains.
  • Retailers and manufacturers should invest in new fulfillment strategies by hiring employees to expedite last-mile delivery and enable models such as BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup in Store).

3. Leverage providers for end-to-end commerce and transformation of the customer experience (CX).

• • Focus on CX convergence by integrating sales, marketing, commerce, and customer support services. As digital customer journeys become crucial to enabling end-to-end CX, businesses should build an integrated CX strategy.
  • End-to-end CX programs are a priority. Engaging with providers across the complete CX value chain, including CX strategy, experience design, and technology implementation will lead to greater value.

“Enterprises must harness the power of digital commerce to accelerate business transformation,” said Shwetank Saini, Avasant research leader. “They should enable integrated back-office systems with intelligent, customer-facing functions to improve the delivery experience.”

The full report also features detailed RadarView profiles of 17 service providers, along with their solutions, offerings, and experience in assisting customers in their commerce transformation initiatives.

This Research Byte is a brief overview of the Digital Commerce Services 2021–2022 RadarView™ (click for pricing).