Rising from the ruins of the failed
first attempt, mobile commerce (m-Commerce) has staged many industry pundits
writing its obituaries. Format of retail in India has seen huge leaps and
bounds over last 2 decades. From tradition retail to online and now mobile
commerce, the model has evolved exponentially. These days a lot of retailers/ e-Retailers
are shifting preferences to the mobile ecosystem. As number of people with
smartphone and tablets continues to grow, mobile commerce growth is outpacing
traditional e-Commerce growth by almost 200 percent. As more and more people
are expected to shop through their mobile devices, building a mobile ecosystem
for retailers is not at all a cake-walk. Mobile commerce needs a robust technology implementation and
constant check on the updates happening within. Technology is a key factor that
can make or break any business. “Many of our clients had a significant trust deficit when it came to
technology vendors. Many of them had spent huge sums of money for very little
tangible results. They were very reluctant to look at us as a partner and we
faced a lot of scrutiny. But over time, we have been able to cement very strong
relationships based on results we have delivered,”
says Mangesh Panditrao, CEO & Co-Founder,
Shoptimize
Technologies such as fast data
transmission, better mobile devices that are equipped with improved computing
capacity, enhanced data storage and better UI etc. are some of the check-points
in m-Commerce strategy making. M-Commerce is a combination of technology
convergence of Information Technology and telecommunication which together
becomes information and communication technology (ICT). Every business, eyeing
their spot in the mobile ecosystem has to have the best of above mentioned
technologies. “More than ever, retailers are grappling with the
dual mandate to drive not just better efficiencies, but also greater innovation
for the needs of tomorrow. Retailers are increasingly moving from merely
incremental levels of performance efficiency to building new digital
business capabilities”, said Prakash
Balasubramanian, Vice President,
Retail Consulting, Cognizant. Understanding the right approach for a
mobile strategy is crucial to drive cross-channel activity, user satisfaction
and (ultimately) profitability of m-Commerce initiative.
The EMS
era..
Mobile commerce is hot – in fact
beyond impulse categories such as food ordering and cinema tickets booking,
mobile commerce has strengthened its root as a significant source of revenue
growth for retailers. With such elevated stakes, retailers either develop their
mobile technology in-house or outsource it to a third-party solution provider.
For big giants, building their own mobile technology mechanism is possible but
SMBs don’t find it feasible. “In this fast growing retail industry,
clients should focus on product innovation, ways and means to improve on the
manufacturing techniques to reduce costs and improve product quality. For
achieving this, it is imperative for brands to rely on outsourcing the internet
retailing part to stay focused on their forte and make use of the industry
expertise of the technology solution providers and rely on enablers like us to
handle everything else”, said Mayur Karwa, Founder
& Director, eShopbox.
An IDC report indicates that 20%
organizations found it hard to maintain and support such solutions in-house and
40% faced integration challenges. Thus, many m-Commerce technology solution
providers have come up to aid these retailers/ e-tailers to extend their
presence on mobile ecosystem in order to keep them contending for the retail
wrestle. Speaking on the same Abhinav
Singh, Co-Founder, SaleAssist
said “building a mobile technology is as
important as managing a core website. These days’ smartphones have dramatically
changed the face of commerce in India. Even an offline business needs to move
towards having a mobile presence as millions of users engage with companies
using their mobile devices.”
These mobile enterprise solution providers work as quickly as
the technology demands. They offer a portfolio of tools and services to
companies that moves with the speed of its customer. Such solution providers
not only aid their clients to boost sales and profitability but also develop
sound strategy to achieve other goals. This includes operations, logistics,
data analytics, consumer
relationship management, payment gateways, supply chain managements and what
not. What they give is a “complete enterprise solution” to define the time,
effort and cost required to mobilize a business. Speaking about the recent
trend in mobile technology, Nitin
Purswani, Founder & CEO, Zepo
said “after
Flipkart’s announcement to shut its desktop website and shift to app-only
store, following largest fashion e-tailer Myntra, one can certainly sense the
relevance of mobile technology in the current e-tail landscape. Moreover, the
biggest breakthrough in mobile technology is the announcement by Google to rank
the mobile-friendly sites higher than the non-friendly counterparts. Almost every e-tailer has reported surge in
its mobile traffic and is devising various schemes to bank on this trend.”
FarEye, a
cloud-based enterprise mobility platform that helps companies such as Bluedart,
Snapdeal, Bajaj Capital, Apollo Healthcare, Pepperfry amongst many others
increases the efficiency and effectiveness of a retail brand by helping them
schedule jobs, track execution and evaluate performances all in real time. It
is very tough for companies to build such expertise in-house. “IT feels threatened as
they face many challenges primarily because of enterprise integration and
technological volatility. If built in-house the other worries would entail
security issues, increased costs, restricted IT budget, increasing complexity”,
said Kushal Nahata, CEO & Founder, FarEye.
These solution
providers work more as a CTO (Chief Technical Officer) of the company handling
all the technical aspects. But still many retailers think outsourcing is not a right decision as a
third party won’t be able to understand the nitty-gritty of a business and thus
things can get more complex.
The road ahead..
M-Commerce resulting out as the convergence between IT and TCT gives many
value-added services to a customer on the move and therefore it has significant
business opportunities for providers of such services. Many companies have
started using mobility applications and solutions to improve the efficiency of
employees. Such solutions are in high demand and mobile enterprise companies are
largely focusing on these touch points. “The
future holds a lot of scope for mobile enterprise solution industry and it will
evolve a lot depending upon the growth of m-Commerce. There are a lot of things
happening around iOT along with big data and right data. So, mobile devices,
iOT and big data will affect enterprise mobility in a big way” says Abhijeet Kumar, Co-Founder, Winjit Technologies. As
enterprise mobility is no more an option for retailers but rather a crucial
business requirement, it will be interesting to see how the industry will find its
way to become a catalyst for big small businesses.
[Note: This article has been published in Retailer Magazine (August, 2015 Issue) under my byline.]
