Technological upheaval in all sectors of today has left us wondering what our next step in digital transformation could be, especially with the world smitten by the pandemic. With a recurring need to hasten growth and accelerate customer satisfaction, it is essential to leverage existing digital transformative methods to enhance the user experience. After all, the happiness of the end-users is synonymous with an enterprise’s growth.
With lockdowns bringing in hesitation among individuals to step outside to buy even essential items, they looked for an alternative means to achieve the same, thereby enabling e-commerce to gain immensely from the phenomenon. According to IMARC Group, the global e-commerce market has reached a value of US$13 Trillion in 2021 and is expected to reach US$55.6 Trillion by 2027 (CAGR of 27.4%). A boom of this sort is pushing e-commerce businesses to look for digital transformation solutions to enhance their user experience and satisfy their ever-increasing customer bases.
Before we investigate the methods to enhance user experience, we must first understand the three main technological areas that drive the e-commerce industry. These include cutting-edge application (Mobile/Web) architecture, data analytics, and IT infrastructure and operations. In this blog, I have tried to elucidate the importance & impact of IT infrastructure & operations on an e-commerce business. However, in the quest to find the right infrastructure solution for a business, one should understand that no solution can be tailored without gaining a comprehensive understanding of certain challenges prevalent in the businesses/ industry. A few of these include:
- Query pile-up: E-commerce players are often flooded with a host of questions about orders, return policies, refunds, etc., that need immediate attention to keep their customers satisfied and happy. Unfortunately, finding human resources to help you cater to these customers’ constant questions might be a costly and time-consuming affair.
- Dynamic work environment– Every business has a dynamic working environment that often requires these players to scale up or scale down their IT requirements based on current website traffic, daily business operations, and seasonal changes. If this is not effectively done, attaining a competitive edge would be a farfetched idea.
- Mismanagement of incidents– An inevitable part of every business is the appearance of certain incidents and events that eventually disrupt daily operations and hinder various processes that are vital for those businesses. The last thing an e-commerce player wants is the loss of its customers due to systems downtime.
- Security threats- A constant uphill battle for every e-commerce business is to secure its IT infrastructure since it is vulnerable to security threats such as ransomware, malware, data breaches, etc. If such threats are not prevented, it could lead to the leakage of sensitive information into the hands of third parties who could tamper with crucial business data.
Through my experience of helping large e-commerce clients to improve their infrastructure & operations maturity, I have developed a 4I principle of solution design to mitigate the above-mentioned challenges. These 4Is form the base of an Infrastructure & operations transformation solution design resulting in elevated user experience for our client’s end customers. The 4Is are:
- Intelligent automation: With a boom in automation, most business and IT-related processes that previously required human intervention to complete, can now readily be converted into automated solutions. AI/ML-driven chatbots that are multilingual and contextual are enabling E-commerce players to benefit from the ever-increasing host of queries piling up on the customer support window in an automated manner. These chatbots, through cognitive interaction, gauge the sentiment and tone of voice of the customer to understand the context of the situation and provide personalized replies to them.
- Integrated infrastructural models: Prevalence of infrastructural models such as serverless architecture on cloud, microservices architecture, containerizations, etc, aid in flexibility and scaling of current business operations. Hence, employing the right fit model for your business and integrating digital infrastructure that seamlessly connects with the entire ecosystem of tools to deploy and manage applications, is of utmost importance in today’s scenario to cater to the ever-changing and dynamic working environment.
- Information Technology Service Management (ITSM)– Fortunately, the growth in IT has enabled businesses to mitigate and manage the plethora of incidents/events/tasks that spring up in businesses at a rapid pace. Using ITSM tools such as ServiceNow allows a single system of engagement that, once incorporated into your business, enables you to manage these with agility. This is done through trained ITSM teams who monitor a host of workplace technology that range from laptops to any software applications deemed critical to all businesses.
- Inspective surveillance: Ensuring that your business has a secured working environment and infrastructure that is constantly monitored and inspected for security threats will safeguard any crucial information or data from being stolen or leaked. Tools that provide Identity and access management, network security, data security, and security operations will provide the controls needed to keep your business and data safe.
An upward inclination towards opting for better IT solutions to solve business problems in the E-commerce space has brought about a constant need for evolving and innovative mechanisms that will generate revenue growth and adaptability to dynamic working environments. But the question of which technology will best suit your business to achieve this goal is of prime importance.
At Brillio, we will help you answer this question and provide you with all the necessary digital transformation solutions to grow sustainably and profitably. Making use of our experienced resources and innovative technologies, we bring to you our proprietary platform- Brillioone.ai, which is a one-stop solution to equip you with all the right tools to gain a competitive standpoint in the e-commerce marketplace. It has multiple beneficial models such as OneCloud, OneCX, and OneAutomation. Brillioone.ai is a suite of capabilities and solutions to accelerate the most mission-critical facets of any digital transformation journey for your e-commerce business.
