E-Commerce plays an important role beyond Retail : Gartner Magic Quadrant for E-commerce 2013

When it comes to analyzing trends in the IT space, the bellwether has always been Gartner Inc. Recently they have released their annual Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce, 2013. This report evaluates the B2B and B2C e-commerce providers which enable sales online and nurturing on-line customer relationship. According to the report, E-commerce is experiencing strong growth and has an impact in industries beyond retail.

Some of the key highlights from the report are:

§  Although the success of e-commerce depends on Mobile, social and customer analytics, they also raise the complexity of the e-commerce initiative

§  The customer expectations and experience are being changed because of the rapid evolution of technology

§  The gap between B2C customer experience and B2B customer experience is being reduced. While B2B firms are trying to make their customer experience on the lines on B2C, the B2C firms on the other hand are making use of B2B capabilities such as product configuration for their products and services that are complex in nature.

§  The leaders in the quadrant are IBM. This clearly shows that not only retailers but all companies should strive to deliver exceptional customer experience across all customer and channel touch-points throughout the entire commerce lifecycle.

 Gartner states, "E-commerce has often been associated with online retailing. However, this is not the only industry that is taking advantage of selling. Many B2C and B2B industries are using the Web as a sales channel and, where possible, leveraging the knowledge and capabilities of each other's e-commerce customer experiences."

Gartner adds "E-commerce is moving beyond just an online selling channel to integrated platforms delivering a unified customer experience," and expects that more companies will bring in integration of capabilities such as order-management, digital marketing and content management.

 

The entire report can be read here :

 

https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/signup.do?source=swg-smartercom_medium&S_PKG=ov15281

 

Thanks,

 

Sujay Kumar

12IT-030

E-Business Section B