The e-commerce landscape in the years ahead

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the e-expansion of commerce to new firms, customers, and product types. It has given customers access to a wide range of products from the comfort and safety of their own homes, and it has allowed businesses to continue operating despite contact restrictions and other restrictions.

We spoke to Punit Gupta, Founder & CEO, EasyEcom, to understand the trends, threats, challenges, and future. EasyEcom is an end-to-end solution for omnichannel retail and streamlines the day-to-day operations for the retailer working with some of the largest and fast growing D2C brands and e-Commerce sellers.

The post-COVID trends that have become permanent

Despite persistent cross-country differences, the COVID-19 crisis has increased dynamism in the e-commerce landscape and broadened its scope. Meanwhile, in many countries, e-commerce transactions have shifted away from luxury goods and services and toward everyday necessities that affect a large number of people.

Due to the possibility of a new wave of the pandemic, the convenience of new purchasing habits, learning costs, and the incentive for businesses to capitalize on investments in new sales channels are some of the changes in the e-commerce landscape that will most likely be long-term.

Punit Gupta, Founder & CEO, EasyEcom

The role of cloud in the e-Commerce industry and its future in India

The e-commerce industry has been rapidly changing with upward gains in recent years, but it is the ongoing pandemic that has catalyzed the industry's growth. Traditional businesses have undergone digital transformations to better serve their customers through multi-channel or omnichannel options, the most important of which is e-commerce. The advantages of using cloud solutions for e-commerce players, whether established or newly minted and digitally transformed, are numerous.

Simple and cost-effective Scalability: Cloud solutions allow businesses to quickly and easily expand their online / e-commerce presence in response to business growth, changing demands, and other external factors. Scaling up operations by investing in own servers and other IT infrastructure takes time. It also necessitates a large number of financial resources, which slows down the company's growth.

Wide-ranging Stability: Sudden or seasonal spikes in traffic caused by promotion or sale can cause the system to crash. This results in dissatisfied and angry customers, as well as a loss of business and sales opportunities for the company. Cloud-hosted solutions offer a wider range of features and are better equipped to handle sudden spikes in traffic and demand, ensuring a consistent customer experience and optimal business performance.

The threats and challenges

Cloud computing gives us the ability to access applications as utilities over the internet. It enables us to create, configure, and personalize business applications over the internet.

High costs involved – Purely on a hardware basis, the cloud turns out to be more expensive than on-premises systems. However, if you consider the costs to manage the infrastructure, cloud still is cheaper overall. For small firms though, this can be a daunting task to use cloud as they have to shell out more resources to run their applications.

Portability – Another issue with cloud computing is that applications should be able to be easily moved from one cloud provider to another. Vendor lock-in must be avoided. However, this is not yet possible because each cloud provider's platform uses a different standard language.

Privacy and Security – Cloud computing's biggest challenge is information security and privacy. Encryption, security hardware, and security applications can all be used to address security and privacy concerns.

Interoperability – It means that a platform-specific application should be able to use services from other platforms. It's possible thanks to web services, but creating them is a difficult task.

Benefits of Artificial intelligence

Although it may still take the place of science fiction and robotics in the minds of some, it is now an integral part of our everyday lives. Artificial intelligence is now almost everywhere, from automated cash registers to advanced security checks at airports. And, little by little, it's making inroads into e-commerce. In fact, many businesses are already utilizing the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to improve their customers' shopping experiences. Artificial intelligence, as it advances, has the potential to permanently alter the e-commerce landscape in the years ahead. Machine learning is a current AI application based on the idea that we should be able to provide machines with data and let them learn on their own.

Machine learning, as applied to e-commerce and marketing, refers to the various methods of data analysis in which computers find information without being told exactly where to look for it. When exposed to massive amounts of data, machine learning algorithms can extract patterns and use them to generate insights or predictions about future conditions. Although it is still in its early stages, artificial intelligence has already had a significant impact on industries such as finance and healthcare in a relatively short period of time. And the advantages of AI are now making their way into e-commerce.

It is important to note that artificial intelligence is not a product in and of itself, but rather a powerful tool for developing better products that meet the needs of customers. Yes, even if it may appear paradoxical for a machine, artificial intelligence's greatest strength is that it can help e-commerce create a more human customer experience by personalizing it. The modern solution has advanced intelligence built-in to ensure a top-notch customer experience. AI features help plan inventory better, process orders in the most efficient fashion and accuracy. That, in turn, drives customer satisfaction and brand loyalty and growth.

The rise of direct-to-consumer (D2C) in India

The expansion of e-commerce and growing online shoppers has led to the growth of e-commerce and D2C brands in India. Post lockdown, Indian retail space has witnessed a huge jump in the number of D2C brands as companies are increasingly investing in making themselves digitally ready. An increasing number of brands are using a direct approach to reach out to consumers with an aim to build stronger relationships and provide them with a tailored brand experience.

Omnichannel technology providers aim to solve that through cutting edge AI-enabled solutions. They provide more than 150 single click integrations to enable brands with omnichannel sales access and fulfilment automation. This helps brands to automate their operations which helps reduce errors and augment customer experience. That in turn drives growth and brand value.

COVID-19 provoked digital transformation

Covid19 has fastened the pace of digital transformations across industries. In order to continue various commercial operations and business survival, digital solutions became increasingly essential in the last one and a half years. E-commerce has witnessed significant growth, with long-lasting effects, in emerging countries as well.

In the midst of the pandemic, customer interactions and transactions become more digitized, pushing brands to go digital. Overall, the aftermath propelled a major change in the ways of eCommerce, a transformation of a lifetime.

The pandemic paved the path for businesses to become digital

The pandemic has had a significant impact on people's lives and livelihoods in ways that no one could have predicted. Increased reliance on digital has served as a wake-up call for businesses to adopt and accelerate their digital transformation in order to boost resiliency and inventiveness.

According to a new McKinsey Global Survey of executives, their companies have decreased the time it takes to digitalize customer and supply-chain interactions, as well as internal operations, by three to four years. In addition, their portfolios' proportion of digital or digitally enabled products has climbed by seven years.

Digitization is the most significant tool in the E-commerce industry

Adopting digital technology and procedures in your company to fulfil strategic business goals is what digital transformation entails. It's a multi-pronged procedure that has the potential to change the culture and structure of an organization. The eCommerce industry isn't immune to the digital tsunami. Innovations in the domains of digital technology have lessened the importance of distance, whether geographical or linguistic. This has made it easier to find products that fulfil consumer needs while also ensuring product quality and reputation. Therefore, e-commerce stores have become increasingly important in people's lives.