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ARE YOUR E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS LIVING IN 2006 OR 2016?

Pal Narayanan
Business Unit CIO-OHL
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Pal Narayanan
Over the last decade, e-commerce has exploded from being 2.8 percent of total retail sales in 2006 to 6.8 percent of total retail sales in 2015. The growth of this channel has challenged logistics departments and providers to develop technology to support the demanding needs of consumers. Online retailers are in a unique position, as a "web store" is always open. On top of that, the competitive landscape has changed drastically to where consumers have more online shopping options and are driving expectations of the online shopping experience. Internet retailers constantly strive to satisfy their customers by delivering on these expectations or risk losing the sale to a competitor.

Can your systems support a 24/7 environment?

The demanding e-commerce environment puts even more pressure on a company's logistics and the associated systems that support them. Logistics providers have enough challenges managing labor, space, and resources. There is no room for system uptime to be another one of those challenges. The reliability of systems is paramount in today's environment, as they are expected to perform 24/7 in a high demand market. Without a reliable technology platform, there is a significant risk that operational systems, such as the Warehouse Management System (WMS), will be unavailable during critical times in an e-commerce business.

Systems that were reliable in 2006 may be outdated when it comes to supporting today's e-commerce environment. Today, system reliability is dependent on speed, quick recovery time, and minimized downtime as to not affect the performance of an e-commerce company.

How can you bring outdated systems to the year 2016?


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