Internet Retailer's September magazine includes a special in depth feature on the technology its Top 1000 retailers (IR500 and IR Second 500) are using. With many retailers and senior retail executives already looking ahead to 2013 as far as strategy and planning go, in addition to Shop.org's Annual Summit earlier this month, the timing of this article in no mystery.
One of the key messages in this feature is the amount of vendor consolidation that's happened in the last few years across the eCommerce and retail industries. Vendor stability and their ability to continuously deliver on all aspects of an agreement play a huge role in technology selections. It makes sense - many retailers today are cautiously vetting vendors to learn about long term company strategies and direction. Retailers want to know that the vendor and solution they select today will be the same vendor and solution in one, two, and several years in the future. Retailers put such heavy investments into technology and solution providers and need to ensure they’re selecting the best partner for short and long term success.
Another key point in this article is the growth of Software-as-a-Service-based solutions for leading online retailers. This article sheds light onto multi-tenant SaaS-based eCommerce platforms and the benefits that come with on-demand solutions. OrderDynamics client Aleva Stores is featured in this article and discusses how the OrderDynamics on-demand eCommerce platform enables scalability and growth for their 10 retail websites.
An important consideration for retailers evaluating SaaS vendors, as raised by Derek Gaskins, CEO of Aleva Stores, is ability of the platform to be integrated into other best-of-bread tools. With an open-source or licensed software platforms, retailers are free to custom develop any and all integrations they choose by paying a third party developer or having developers on-staff. With SaaS platforms, the retailer must rely on the vendor’s technology integration plan. Many retailers have been put in tough situations with their SaaS platforms in which delays in adding third party support or huge upfront fees are often required.
OrderDynamics solved this problem through our Highly Integrated Virtual Ecosystem™ (H.I.V.E). OD H.I.V.E™ is a vast collection of pre-built integrations to leading third party technologies across marketing, social media, payment, and fulfillment. Clients like Aleva Stores are able to benefit from drastically reduced or eliminated integration fees, and an improved time-to-market deployment over open-source and licensed eCommerce platforms.
Read the full article on InternetRetailer.com.
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