Turning Business Software Inside Out to Support Customer Commerce

Build Your Business Around Your Customers, Not Channels

The Need to Reorient Your Business Around Customers

Today’s consumers have never had more options for researching and purchasing products. Online sales and new digital channels provide virtually unlimited assortment, price transparency and visibility to the opinions and experiences of millions of shoppers around the world. Ubiquitous information on demand has raised consumer expectations of businesses. If shoppers can see the price for a product on the other side of the globe, they expect just as much transparency from businesses in their community. Because they are empowered with knowledge and alternatives, more than ever before, the power rests with customers.

Yet most businesses are struggling to keep pace with rising expectations for consistently excellent brand experiences across all channels and touchpoints. Because ERP technology was built to serve the needs of employees, not the needs of empowered shoppers, customer needs can go unmet. Today’s customers expect accurate inventory information, cross-channel order history and flawless order execution, but legacy technology in place at many businesses is poorly suited to meet those expectations.

As businesses look to support these new customer expectations, they are realizing that their back-office systems, which were designed to support employees and internal operations, handicap them when it comes to orienting around the consumer. Many organizations have ’80s-era traditional ERP at the center of the enterprise, surrounded by a patchwork of point systems for specialized functions. The result is that businesses can’t adapt to evolving customer expectations, instead spending millions of dollars to stitch together and maintain a patchwork of siloed systems.

Since legacy systems were designed around departmental processes, rather than around the customer, these businesses are unable to understand their customers and turn insight into business advantage. Because their customer data is spread across CRM, ecommerce, marketing and multiple systems of record, they cannot reward their most profitable customers, predict demand or ensure repeat business.