• Much of what I’ve said about PIM powered eCommerce in my previous blog comparing ATG to hybris applies here, in fact even more so. The catalogue management capability in Magento is far less sophisticated making multi currency, multi language, multi site stores possible but heavy lifting in terms of customisation and development. Critically UTF-8 is not properly supported and the business tools for managing multiple catalogues are weak in comparison. If you a trading internationally in any serious way think carefully about whether Magento is the right platform for you. Ask for references and uncover the true cost of the implementation. Almost any platform can eventually meet the requirement given enough time, money and pain however what retailers need is pain free, low cost and rapid rollout of internationalised sites and trading functionality.

• One of the biggest issues around selecting an open source platform such as Magento, in particular over hybris, is the commitment to ongoing development and long term roadmap. A significant proportion of the development of the Magneto platform is driven by the open source community. As a result the company (Magento) itself is not in total control of a. quality b. development methodologies and processes c. roadmap and development strategy. Whilst some smaller retailers and online operators might not see this as an issue any significant online operator that is thinking long term (5-10 years) simply cannot take risk. I would in fact argue that even smaller operators should consider the impact of who is directing the development strategy of a product they are basing a significant proportion of their profits and growth on.

• Multi channel, multi channel, multi channel! Magento has an app or so I’m led to believe! Compared to hybris this is quite literally light years behind in terms of strategy. I would simply say this, point me to a single instance anywhere in the world of a retailer operating true, integrated multi channel operations off the Magento platform?

• Implementation community: This for me is the single biggest reason why a serious online operator struggles with the Magento offering.  If you take a look around the market in the UK for instance and look at Magento partners you will find almost exclusively that no major eCommerce systems integrator / developer is using the Magneto platform. Magento attracts web agencies and small ecommerce operators as it requires a low level of investment to skill up (find a couple of PHP developers and you can get started) and Magneto itself provides no barriers to entry for partners to genuinely skill up and get certified before they can begin implementing. Simply download the software and go to work. Yeeks, Risk!

• Ownership: Picking up on the lack of control that Magento has over their partner community (you could never implement hybris without the right training and history of working with similar technologies and neither would they let you) ownership is an important related issue. So your web agency recommends a Magento build and you go ahead. Later you decide that the agency that built your site needs to be fired. Who owns that code, is that code re-usable by another Magento partner, what coding standards were adhered to in order to enable that transfer and what technical documentation was put together and do you have access to it?  Often small web agencies do not adhere to these kinds of rigorous development methodologies which means effectively what you have is a custom build solution on a platform with no real roadmap, no ability to transfer the development ownership and a one way ticket with your development partner. If that relationship fails you will be re-building.  hybris implementations are vetted and supported by hybris themselves, partners have to be highly credible (and go through training, assessment and have hybris professional services on the project) in order to be allowed to implement. When you consider that the two leading UK Magento partners have recently entered into a CVA (protection from bankruptcy) and pulled out of Europe respectively I’m tempted to say, I rest my case!

• Performance and scalability: This is critically important to larger retailers and online operators as they need to know that the investment they make now in growth can be supported by the software. Put simply I’m not aware of a single online operator doing in excess of £30m online in the UK that is running a Magento solution. In fact I’d hazard a guess that even globally these are few and far between.  Until Magento is proven in £30 to £100m online environments there will always be huge concerns around scalability. I would also argue that even for smaller operators performance and scalability is an issue. Whilst it might be physically possible (add more servers) to scale it’s not always commercially viable due to high hosting and associated maintenance costs.

In a new piece of research Portaltech Reply conducted with Research partner, eDigitalResearch, 50% of Smartphone owners have now completed some sort of purchase on their mobile, increasing by 20% over just nine short months, with 11% of Smartphone shoppers now using the device to make a purchase on a weekly basis.

The study also shows that Smartphone owners are increasingly using their phones to shop, browse and research for products via their phones. Over one quarter (28%) of users now use their Smartphone to find product information on a regular basis and remains one of the most popular shopping activities to complete on a phone.

The study looked at the increasing role of mobile in retail commerce and surveyed both Smartphone and non-Smartphone users. The results clearly show the continuing shift in consumer behaviour as more and more shoppers are adapting to new technologies, browsing, shopping and interacting with brands on the move.

The results clearly indicate the growing trend that Smartphones are being used more and more as an essential lifestyle accessory, with almost a 15% rise in the number of consumers interacting with mobile applications on a daily basis.

The results also show that consumers expectations of mobile websites have dramatically increased  since the first research results last year; 31% of users now say that quick browsing should be an essential feature of mobile websites, compared with just 20% who said the same last June. Other significant factors that people see as essential include security, fast loading images, zoom functions and a professional looking site, reaffirming that consumers expect to find the same coherent retail message across channels.

Smartphone users who said that they never shopped online reduced from 70% last June to 49%, echoing the overall trend of growing consumer acceptance of mCommerce. Similarly, Smartphone owners who said that they expected to browse and purchase more on their phones in the next 12 months more than doubled from 20% to 46% and firmly establishes the importance for retailers to continue to develop and invest in mobile.

Bombay Duck and Portaltech Reply won the prestigious ECMOD Direct Commerce Award in the category ‘Best Website Makeover’, for the re-launch and re-platform of their gift retail website: www.bombayduck.co.uk. With over 100 nominations from the best direct retail brands in the country, Bombay Duck were pitted up against prestigious brands such as ASOS, Notonthehighstreet.com, Boden and Naked Wines.

The judges were impressed by the quality of entries this year and commented on how tough judging had been. Explaining why Bombay Duck won this award, the Judges commented on the “Very clever use of branding and technology” and said: “The new website fully encapsulates the company, the brand, the ethos – all Bombay Duck stands for and uses technology to improve their business process permanently.

Laura Bates, MD of Bombay Duck collected the award with Gareth Tuppenney, Sales & Marketing Manager. Laura Bates said: “We are absolutely delighted to win the ECMOD ‘Best Website Makeover’ award. It’s wonderful to receive such a prestigious award and be to be recognised amongst the cream of the e-Commerce industry.  Launching the new website has been a real team effort and all the hard work has really paid off.  Our customers have told us how much they love the new site and design and we are thrilled the ECMOD judges were equally impressed. The hybris platform and QuickLive commerce accelerator provides us with greater scope and functionality to convey the personality of the Bombay Duck brand, provide our customers with a first class shopping experience and allow us the flexibility to meet our demands as our business continues to grow.”

Bombay Duck is a family run, multi channel business; founded and established by one sister in 1993 and now managed by a 2^nd sister Laura Bates. The company designs and creates exclusively designed and quirky colourful gifts, homewares and accessories that are great quality and good-humoured.

Bombay Duck approached Portaltech Reply because they required a best of breed eCommerce platform that would manage all their product and content data cross channel and which would support both B2C and B2B sides of their business. Portaltech Reply re-platformed Bombay Duck on an integrated eCommerce platform, using the Portaltech Reply QuickLive commerce accelerator for rapid, low risk rollout of their website. The re-platform, features a bespoke B2B trade landing page, with ‘starter’ offers, features on new product or range launches and targeted B2B promotions. Business customers can place orders online, ‘quick order’ previous orders or ranges, view credit limits, print invoices and manage their account information. The site can also back order, advise when products are back in stock & display delivery status information by product line. In addition to this, the team worked to improve usability & functionality for B2C customers; focusing on improving search & navigation, cross and up selling ranges & implemented targeted offers with engaging carousels and feature areas. The team also introduced social networking and an active newsletter campaign.

Gareth Tuppenney, Sales & Marketing Manager commented: “hybris is a fantastic platform that has transformed the way we do business online. It has enabled us to manage and refine the home page and promotions so that our offer always looks fresh and interesting.”

The site went live in May 2010 and is currently trading 62% up YOY and has increased it’s B2B customer base by 25% YOY. Conversion is also up by 50%. Bombay Duck’s customers are thrilled with the improvements too: “I work in my own shop during the day so it’s often difficult for me to telephone through my order.  It’s great that I can now order online at a time that is convenient for me (often very late at night!) and I know that I will have all the information I need.  I can’t think of any other supplier that has a website to rival yours.”

Andrew Walker, CEO at Portaltech Reply said: “We created a ‘Website Makeover’ that affects both the front end user experience and engagement, but also the back end, to improve the companies trading and efficiencies. Bombay Duck’s internal team are now able to manage multiple channels (catalogue, call centre and their B2B and B2C online businesses) with one Content Management System, but have the ability to personalise and target their B2B and B2C customers separately”. Paul Tough CTO at Portaltech Reply added: “We had a great year in 2010; we expanded our hybris client base significantly, attracted some exciting and high profile clients and also won 5 awards. So we are absolutely thrilled that two of our clients won at the ECMOD awards last night: Bombay Duck for ‘Best Website Makeover’ and Thompson & Morgan for ‘Best All Round Business or Brand’.”

To find out more about Portaltech Reply, or to organise a demonstration of Portaltech Reply’s QuickLive hybris accelerator module, contact: mark.adams@portaltech.co.uk , or call us on: 0207 981 0980

www.portaltech.co.uk www.quicklive.co.uk

This is a highlight from a recent Linked In discussion on why would an organisation choose hybris over ATG. My original comments plus some further thoughts…….

In a nutshell (some of this is covered in the Analysts reports but most of it you have to gain from experience of implementing and working with the technologies) the key advantages of hybris over ATG are:

• PIM powered commerce: The PIM is at the heart of hybris and makes the technology more capable and more easily integrated in a multi channel environment. Notably multi site, multi language and multi currency sites (s) are virtually out of the box on hybris.
• Speed of development: hybris is a lighter weight technology stack and can be developed on at pace compared to ATG. Key areas are speed of development environment set up, data modelling, CMS set up and configuration, page template development. Need I go on?
• Java standards compliancy: Java by the book means you can train (and make useful) a good java developer much faster on hybris than ATG. Time to effectiveness on ATG impacts access to quality people, speed of skilling up and cost of resources generally across the board, all the things that hamper ATG projects.
• Partner strategy: the hybris partner strategy considering the size of organisation is far more advanced. This is demonstrated by the strength and depth of the partner network. Hybris is a heavily focused, partner centric software company. The services team remit at hybris is focused on partner enablement and partner support not project implementation. When was the last time you would have said that about PS at ATG , if ever?
• Development resource marketplace: The hybris resource market is still very much owned by specialist hybris implementers. With ATG you have a huge contract market developed over the last 10-12 years where the skilled resources follow the highest fee payer, so generally the latest and greatest ATG project. Go to any, and I mean any existing ATG customer and let them tell you this isn’t true.
• Flexibility in business with partners and customers. This is legendary, as any partner will testify to; I don’t think any more needs be said on this matter.
• Access to product development and product strategy: As a partner Portaltech Reply gets very close access to both product development and product strategy teams when required. In my experience with ATG that happened once a year.
• Who can tell me what happened to BEA after the Oracle acquisition? How many of those great people (and the software) are actually left after that acquisition? Successful businesses are built and managed by successful people. During an acquisition many of these good people are lost and the business leaders move on. I fear this will be the case with ATG (and its already happening) and that impacts customers, projects and partnerships.
• The Frankenstein syndrome: Whilst the ATG solution is a strong complete stack in terms of marketing presentation / positioning the reality (ask any ATG implementer after a couple of beers) is something different. The search solution and call centre was acquired after the Primus acquisition. ATG took years to get integrate this properly and to the best of my knowledge search just never really worked well in a large catalogue / high traffic environment. For confirmation, go to the ATG customer list, identify the customers with large catalogues and ask, how many of those customers run ATG search and not a third party search technology.
• Demonstrations: If you are running an evaluation right now think carefully about what you want to see at the demonstration stage. Pre-canned demos are ATG’s speciality. Take a look under the hood, ask for demonstrations of specific scenarios. Ask for access to the CMS to make changes to CSS / key template regions. Ask for a demo of a base installation to then configure multi sites / multi currency etc. With  hybris this stuff is basic, even a sales guy (me) can demo this. And I promise (I’ve been witness to this) not even an ATG Architect will go near this stuff in a demo, unless of course they are wokring for hybris……..

One might argue that I am presenting a one sided argument, and of course that’s fair comment! ATG has a strong feature set, particularly around merchandising and their call centre / knowledge centre. The solution demos very well and the Analysts rate ATG highly. Rightly so, they are market leaders in many respects. At the end of the day customers need to make their own minds up, evaluate each technology on its merits at the time but critically, to ask the right questions and uncover the key strengths and weaknesses of the respective platforms.

11:00am 20th June,  Internationalised Trading Workshop:

Mark Adams, Sales & Marketing Director, Portaltech Reply

Payment Landscape Developments: Unraveling The Complexities

Learning Objective: What you need to know to walk the tight rope in managing the complexities of international card scheme charging methods effectively

The biggest change in the payment landscape over the last year has been the increasing awareness of retailers as to the true total value costs of international payments. Payment structures are a major piece of the puzzle in branching out internationally. Each country has its own payment instruments, regulations, clearing systems and legislation. For retailers to maximize their sales worldwide, it is necessary to accept the most popular local payment method in each country.

International and local credit and debit cards, gift cards, direct debits, real-time bank transfers, bank transfers, cash and bill payments, cash on delivery, eWallets, prepaid methods, cheques…

Lesson 4: Managing your partner

Bombay Duck have been nominated for the re-launch and re-platform of their B2B gift retail website: www.bombayduck.co.uk. Founded and established by one sister in 1993, Bombay Duck is now managed by a 2^nd sister Laura Bates, whose team designs product in London and manufactures product all over the world. Bombay Duck is characterised by individuality and passion; a brand set up to offer collections of exclusively designed and quirky colourful gifts, homewares and accessories, that are great quality and good-humoured.

The site was re-platformed on hybris, using the Quicklive eCommerce accelerator in December 2009 and has since driven sales increases of 62% year on year and has introduced online B2B account management functionality,  line by line stock availability information, bespoke product features, improved promotions and superior usability.

“We are delighted with the QuickLive/hybris platform and thrilled to be nominated for an ECMOD award.  Having one site for both our B2B and B2C customer groups which is fully integrated with our accounting system and call centre module, has improved our efficiency and consistency and most importantly has provided our customers with a fantastic user experience.‘ Laura Bates, MD of Bombay Duck

We are also keeping our fingers crossed for Thompson & Morgan, another client who re-platformed their business on hybris, using the QuickLive Commerce Accelerator in 2010. As the leading horticultural retailer in the UK, Thompson & Morgan needed a robust platform that would support their multi-channel business for the foreseeable future and enable them to scale and grow with multiple brands, languages and currencies. Launching with 7 websites in May, Thompson & Morgan have experienced a 100% revenue growth and a 114% conversion increase.

“In Portaltech Reply, we have discovered a partner who is forward thinking, able to rapidly offer and implement solutions that support our business and who works with best-of-breed partner technologies. ”
Clare Dixey, Group eCommerce Manager, Thompson & Morgan

This year, ECMOD received a record number of entries, so we are thrilled with this achievement. Please keep your fingers crossed for us all next Wednesday, when the winners will be announced at a glittering gala dinner at the Lancaster Hotel, in London.

The infrastructure has a built in CDN (Content Delivery Network) which is able to serve content to servers located around the world meaning a user coming in from Australia will be served as if the hosting environment was located locally. This is an absolute necessity for any business which has significant international traffic or sites that specifically serve particular regions. The first customer to launch on Portaltech Reply’s Private Cloud Hosting Platform is Long Tall Sally that already serves customers around the globe and has regional sites for US and Canadian. New customer launching on the Portaltech Reply Cloud Hosting Platform include Space NK and Lockhart Catering which are due to go-live early summer.

Sign up now for our upcoming interactive workshop at Internet Retailing’s Expo on March 24th at the NEC exhibition centre in Birmingham:

‘Using technology to exploit customer behaviour and drive sales cross channel‘

Portaltech Reply are experts in Multi Channel Retail and technology solutions for eCommerce. This workshop has been created to engage key stakeholders of brands and retailers, in an interactive activity that will demonstrate the challenges and key technology considerations that should be made in order to secure a future proof, integrated multi channel system for your business. The exercise will be approached by marketing and sales channel and customer target group and will involve direct interaction and discussion with your peers.

What you will learn:

You will come away from the workshop with a good understanding of the emerging technologies you should be implementing now or considering for the future, by retail channel, as well as suggestions on the appropriate solutions required to achieve your goals.

• Identify and implement the right technology to support your sales and marketing needs, short & long term
• How is your customer interacting with technology cross channel ?
• How can you leverage cutting edge technology to exploit customer behaviour?
• What technology is needed to support mobile cross channel?
• Convert that browser into a loyal customer and a sale!

SIGN UP NOW

About your workshop leaders:

Rachel Wilkinson, Head of Brand & Retail

Rachel has a background working for multichannel retailers Woolworths and The Early Learning Centre and expertise in brand development, marketing, product development, licensing and buying for international retailers and global brands.

Rachel is responsible for the strategy and execution of integrated multichannel eCommerce and mCommerce brand and marketing solutions across all customer touch points. Rachel will challenge and drive clients to consider the application and implementation of their brand values and attributes and act as the interface between technology and the online retail experience.

Mark Adams, Sales Director

Mark Adams is a Director at Portaltech Reply with responsibility for sales, marketing and consulting. Mark works with retail clients across the UK, Europe and the US helping them to define and shape their eCommerce and multi channel business requirements and is also responsible for the management of the company’s eCommerce technology and service partnership’s.