Back in May, Adobe reported that e-commerce sales for that month alone eclipsed the entire 2019 holiday shopping season and a recent holiday study by Criteo shows that 88% of shoppers plan to continue purchasing holiday gifts online and sending them to recipients.
Retailers have been growing their digital business, and everyone – media, analysts, and even I – have been focused on them. But it’s not just retailers. The ecosystem is growing as well. And as it grows, and the holiday season comes closer, all the players in this ecosystem must ask themselves if they are built for the scale that’s coming their way.
The Ecosystem Around Retailers
Think of the parcel delivery market, which goes hand in hand with more retail digital business, it’s been booming. New players are emerging daily. Crowdsourced delivery providers, supply chain solutions, mobility solutions, and even drones, to name a few.
And what about the logistics companies, with all the different buying channels and extended delivery methods – logistics, micro fulfillment centers, real estate. That’s all growing too. And then we have the customer and their expectations: they just expect more, whether it be convenience, trust, product selection, fulfillment models. The list goes on.
As the list grows and the ecosystem gains more, I can only think of scale. Is this ecosystem built for scale? And can it scale in time for Christmas 2020?
Back in May, Adobe reported that e-commerce sales for that month alone eclipsed the entire 2019 holiday shopping season and a recent holiday study by Criteo shows that 88% of shoppers plan to continue purchasing holiday gifts online and sending them to recipients.
Retailers have been growing their digital business, and everyone – media, analysts, and even I – have been focused on them. But it’s not just retailers. The ecosystem is growing as well. And as it grows, and the holiday season comes closer, all the players in this ecosystem must ask themselves if they are built for the scale that’s coming their way.
The Ecosystem Around Retailers
Think of the parcel delivery market, which goes hand in hand with more retail digital business, it’s been booming. New players are emerging daily. Crowdsourced delivery providers, supply chain solutions, mobility solutions, and even drones, to name a few.
And what about the logistics companies, with all the different buying channels and extended delivery methods – logistics, micro fulfillment centers, real estate. That’s all growing too. And then we have the customer and their expectations: they just expect more, whether it be convenience, trust, product selection, fulfillment models. The list goes on.
As the list grows and the ecosystem gains more, I can only think of scale. Is this ecosystem built for scale? And can it scale in time for Christmas 2020?
Scalability for Growth during Peak Season
While retailers need to be prepared for their customers to do most of their holiday shopping online, they must also prepare their ecosystem for scale. They need to ensure that their e-commerce infrastructure is robust enough to handle more traffic in a longer holiday season.
At Bringg, we are a critical part of our retail and logistics customers’ infrastructure, so naturally, we wanted to scale up as well. We understood that scale for a SaaS company was about cloud capacity, back up servers, etc. That was simple. But scale is beyond just systems.
We needed to ask ourselves whether our organization, product, and culture are ready for scale. Were our customer support teams built for the influx of customers, additional partners, newly deployed products (like click & collect), faster deployments, and increased delivery and fulfillment orders?
And while we are in hyper-growth, we are always focused on remaining agile. It is our agility, market expertise, customers, and partners that have made us rethink our team structure. And it is our culture that has enabled us to quickly adapt to the changes needed to ensure that as our customers scale, we scale; as our customers urge speed, we deliver faster; as our customers demand a connected network, we onboard more partners; and as our customers need best practices, we stay on top of industry knowledge.
So as we head into the peak season, I am confident that as we scaled up, we built the best solution to enable our customers and partners to scale up and delight their customers as well. Enjoy the ride.
