Tactic to focus on outdated view of e-com needs big upgrade: McKinsey

With e-commerce sales doubling in the past five years and markets expected to almost double again by 2026, companies are making sizable investments in their e-commerce capabilities.

Delivering on this vision requires companies to put digitally driven commerce at the centre of their organisations so they can orchestrate experiences that meet customers’ ever-rising expectations. McKinsey calls this next horizon of value ‘NeXT commerce’.

Claiming that this is not some far-flung fantasy, McKinsey said some large incumbent companies are quickly generating tens of millions of dollars in new value through a deeper commitment to digitally driven commerce, while many more are struggling to make the leap or are scared off by cost or channel-conflict concerns.

McKinsey’s survey of nearly 50 senior commercial executives, more than 75 business leaders and over 1,000 digital-commerce programmes found that six global forces—accelerating e-commerce, fast-changing consumer behaviors, sky-high customer expectations, less forgiving capital market expectations, massive advances in tech and data, competitive pressures—are exerting massive pressures on legacy business models.

Successful companies are becoming indispensable to their customers by using digital to move past basic transactions and provide experiences that solve a much broader set of their customers’ problems, McKinsey said.

Many companies are avoiding the hard choices they need to make, often because of internal politics, fear of channel conflict, and large gaps in capabilities and tech, thereby missing out on the full potential value available to them, it added.

ALCHEMPro News Desk (DS)