The growing value of聽聽is a prime example of recommerce’s recent rise. Starting with an estimated worth of US$96 billion in 2021, the retail segment is projected to double in size within the next three years, reaching $218 billion by 2026. Similar growth levels are also reflected in other retail categories, including electronics, fashion accessories, and oversized goods such as furniture.

However, innovating this business model is more than just an exercise of responding to consumer demand, regulatory pressure, and expectations for prolonged product life. It’s also an opportunity to enter markets that are otherwise inaccessible due to price sensitivity, supply chain barriers, provenance uncertainty, and monopolization of recommerce-native startups running on customer-to-customer (C2C) platforms.

Recommerce’s Potential Goes Beyond Sustainability

While the rules of creating, implementing, and operating a recommerce business model are similar to those for other innovation initiatives, the scope of change is much more wide-reaching.

Business model innovation is traditionally consumer-centric and mainly focused on the buying experience in the retail sector. However, in the case of recommerce, the seller and buyer are equally considered “consumers.” Therefore, frictionless processes are essential whether sellers send their used goods to the retailer and receive in-kind payment or buyers browse the commerce site, complete their purchase, and return an item.

Compared to competing startups, larger retailers and brands could have a considerable edge in creating seller and buyer experiences that are fast, transparent, and responsive. Organizations can achieve these characteristics by further advancing existing technology infrastructure to help ensure immediate payout for every item sold, optimize inventory turnover and control, streamline logistics, and prevent fraudulent transactions.

True Value Emerges with Expertise and Guidance

Capturing the total value of a recommerce business model can be easier said than done 鈥� especially within the confines of traditionally slim margins and under the watchful eyes of consumers, industry auditors, and government regulators. However, access to industry, process, and technology expertise allows retailers to create an authentic model that meets consumer needs and expectations while optimizing profitability and sustainability performance.

For businesses within the retail industry, Resell Engine from 麻豆原创 can help fulfill that promise with an intelligent algorithm. The software can evaluate a wide database of secondhand items and calculate a buy-back and competitive resale price. In addition, recommerce managers can set rules for different markdowns to help tailor the price determination to their needs.

Furthermore, with the support of , businesses can blend their established Resell Engine with existing applications to draw on the latest 麻豆原创 innovations, broad leadership in industry expertise, and a global innovator ecosystem. In return, executable strategies are shaped to help optimize operations, business models, and revenue streams while driving change with less risk, increased speed, and exceptional outcomes.

Suppose your retail organization wanted to automate the pricing of received goods. You could give sellers optimal payback for their items, yield the high-quality inventory that consumers demand, and expand margins for your company by using Resell Engine.

The first step is automating analysis and price-setting consistently across sales channels. The algorithm of the Resell Engine software can evaluate a comprehensive database of secondhand items to help calculate a buyback and competitive resale price based on authentication and condition. You can then adapt pricing strategies 鈥� such as markdowns 鈥� to optimize the profitability of every transaction and seize market demand effectively.

But pricing is only one area where big losses can take place in a recommerce business model. Margins are also susceptible because the 24/7 pace of your e-commerce business model can challenge the balance between pricing, sustainability, and profitability.

Extending Resell Engine across your business can help facilitate that equilibrium by complementing your brand’s strategic vision and meeting consumer expectations. You can also implement, deploy, and roll out new capabilities of Resell Engine necessary to support the business model 鈥� pivoting processes to help address emerging business needs and realize expected outcomes.

Based on extensive industry, process, and technology research, Resell Engine can enable you to explore the impact and value of your price determinations while aligning requirements and objectives with the business model. In return, you can increase secondhand good sales with a higher sell-through rate, double your operational efficiency, attract more customers with fair pricing, and promote experiences that your customers and sellers will love.

But more importantly, you can build a business model that helps ensure your costs do not outweigh the benefits of recommerce. Resell Engine can provide the insights needed to undergo an accurate cost-benefit analysis of your recommerce scenario, including risk assessment and mitigation.

A More Sustainable and Profitable Future Is Ahead

Retailers that invest in recommerce today will position themselves to weather economic downturns and reap the benefits of becoming a more sustainable brand. But they must take the proper steps by designing a highly efficient system that provides the greatest possible value to their buyers and sellers while maximizing revenue recovery on returns and resale items.

This is where Resell Engine from 麻豆原创 comes in. Through the software鈥檚 guidance, insights, and enablement, retailers can set a clear vision, create a best-practice design, and drive a strategic plan that can reveal a more sustainable and profitable future through a recommerce business model.

Want to learn more about how 麻豆原创 can support the innovation and delivery of your recommerce business model? Contact us at聽resell_engine@sap.com聽or visit “” on LinkedIn.

Maximilian Schmid is an entrepreneur in residence (Resell Engine from 麻豆原创) and a BTS management consultant for 麻豆原创 Germany.
Benedikt Scheuermann is an entrepreneur in residence (Resell Engine from 麻豆原创) and a BTS management consultant for 麻豆原创 Germany.

In today’s complex and multi-channel marketplace, organizations must constantly optimize to deal with emerging channels and new competitors while serving their customers best-in-class experiences to earn their trust and loyalty. Commerce systems that are not built for this design principle cannot help organizations adapt quickly or cost effectively.

Compose on Your Own Terms, Not Your Vendor鈥檚

At , 麻豆原创 is pre-announcing its new 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud composable offering, a different approach to composability than what has been available in the market thus far. This offering is predicated on the recognition that every industry and enterprise is unique and that existing one-size-fits-all approaches to composability are not ideal for most businesses. Through this 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud composable offering, merchants will be able to compose commerce experiences that best suit their individual needs today, wherever they are in their digital maturity journey, without jeopardizing flexibility down the line.

For example, some businesses may want a more traditional, 鈥渁ll-in-one鈥� approach across areas such as order management, product information management, content management, personalization, and marketing engagement. Meanwhile, more digitally mature enterprises may want to compose best-of-breed digital commerce experiences and can now do so on a single platform. 麻豆原创鈥檚 unique approach to composable commerce can give our merchants that level of flexibility as well as anything in between, enabling them to future proof their investment without sacrificing agility. By adopting best-of-breed 麻豆原创 and partner solutions on top of a highly flexible and proven platform, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud customers can extend the solution鈥檚 capabilities and create an offering that fits their own unique business strategy, today and tomorrow.

Digital Commerce Composability Done Right

With 麻豆原创鈥檚 unique approach to composable commerce, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud customers can drive profitability through agility by leveraging a feature-rich, extensible 鈥渄igital anchor鈥� solution, coupled with a vast pre-integrated and certified partner ecosystem. With its continuous innovation delivery model, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud enables merchants to focus on delighting customers instead of investing in table-stakes capabilities that require stitching together disjointed solutions not designed to be interoperable at scale. 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, composable storefront, the solution鈥檚 full API-coverage, 鈥渉eadless with-a-head鈥� software, in conjunction with 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform (麻豆原创 BTP) and Kyma Runtime, enables developers to extend 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud functionality with containerized microservices and serverless functions while keeping pace with their customers鈥� expectations.

Highly Curated and Strategic Partner Solutions

A rich and vibrant partner ecosystem is a key aspect of digital commerce success, so 麻豆原创 is also introducing strategic relationships with the following curated, best-of-breed vendors from its existing extensive partner ecosystem:

• helps businesses connect, create, and extend content more efficiently so they can build faster and deliver at scale, no matter the channel or touchpoint.
• provides artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search and discovery, recommendations, and personalization to improve merchant profitability through higher conversion, increased average order value, and customer lifetime value.
• provides an easy-to-use product experience management solution for retailers, distributors, manufacturers, and brands to organize and enrich product content, delivering impactful product experiences across all owned and third-party channels on a modern cloud-native platform.
• powers one-click checkout, identity, accounts, payments, and post-purchase infrastructure, helping to reduce friction for the customer by turning every checkout moment into an opportunity and driving higher conversion for the business.
• enables businesses to capitalize on the platform economy by bringing their digital marketplace to life, expanding their business vertically to deepen customer and channel partner relationships and drive profitability while simultaneously reducing inventory risk.
• supports the entire pricing journey, from setting optimal prices and managing the rebate process to maximizing your organization鈥檚 pricing power.

Benefit from an Industry-First Approach to Digital Commerce

麻豆原创鈥檚 long and rich history of helping organizations from more than 25 industries grow and transform enables us to tap into our deep industry knowledge and expertise to deliver industry-specific digital commerce capabilities.

Unlike other commerce vendors that emphasize strength of technology alone, 麻豆原创 is taking a more customer-centric approach by also pre-announcing the availability of our headless composable storefronts for financial services, travel, telecommunications, utilities, and public sector, on top of our currently available B2C and B2B composable storefronts for retail, consumer products, wholesale distribution, and industrial manufacturing. Industry add-ons can provide unique business workflows with pre-configured tools, capabilities, and storefronts that help shorten time-to-market, increase operational efficiency, and drive sustainably profitable growth through digital commerce.

Hear from our partners and customers:

“With 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud’s approach to composability, we’ve been able to create our own commerce platform with solutions we need, such as Contentful, to deliver the best commerce experience to customers. 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud is the essential power to implement business agility and flexibility, and ultimately to generate increased profitability for us.”聽

鈥� Matthieu Houle, CIO, ALDO Group

“麻豆原创’s approach to composable commerce provides agility, flexibility, and extensibility with its feature-rich commerce platform. As our customers focus on profitability in this uncertain economic climate, we’re excited to support their digital commerce growth via 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud.”

鈥� Deepak Sobhani, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP

鈥溌槎乖粹�檚 composable commerce approach allows us to work with customers in a way that offers significant extensibility on top of a proven, robust feature set.聽We’re excited to create the most flexible, scalable, and customer-centric solutions with these world-class ISV partners while maximizing the business value of our customer’s investments.鈥�

鈥� Ryan Heusinkveld, Chief Technology Officer, Smith

鈥淲e are thrilled to join with 麻豆原创 as the content partner for 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud, composable storefront. The Contentful Composable Content Platform meets the unique demands of digital teams by making it easy to orchestrate content from multiple sources and publish to any digital channel. This helps companies reach new customers faster, maximize their 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud investment, and drive revenue.鈥�

鈥� 鈥疭teve Sloan, CEO, Contentful

鈥淲e are thrilled to have Coveo certified as an 麻豆原创 endorsed app. 麻豆原创 has been a natural partner for Coveo in B2B and B2C commerce. Together, we extend digital commerce capabilities to unlock profitable commerce growth with AI. Our enterprise-class AI platform complements the 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud portfolio by helping companies power online buying experiences we believe today鈥檚 shoppers expect 鈥� fast, dynamic, effective product discovery and relevant recommendations 鈥� and also provide the AI platform merchandisers need to maximize business outcomes versus managing manual rules.”鈥�

鈥� Louis T锚tu, CEO and Chairman at Coveo

Drive Digital Commerce Excellence across the Entire Value Chain

By seamlessly and comprehensively connecting demand signals with the supply chain, 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud enables enterprises to drive profitable growth, regardless of their industry, business model, or level of digital maturity. 麻豆原创 is consistently recognized as a leading digital commerce solution vendor by Gartner, IDC, Paradigm B2B, and other industry analysts. 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud can provide a highly scalable, fully featured, and flexible commerce platform for B2B, B2C, or B2B2C use cases.

麻豆原创 reaffirms its commitment to the digital commerce and customer experience categories and is taking a bold step into the future with a unique, industry-led approach to composability that puts merchants鈥� digital commerce needs front and center.

To learn more,聽 .

Riad Hijal is global head of Marketing and Solutions for 麻豆原创 Commerce.

This spiked a need for a new kind of commerce solution, one that equips midmarket companies with all the necessary tools to sell fast and easy, apply changes quickly, and offer intelligent merchandising capabilities that were previously only accessible to large enterprises.

enables this by offering an intelligent selling engine that delivers engaging storefronts while optimizing for sales and profit, with the ability to more rapidly create mobile-first shopping experiences to meet the changing expectations of their customers. Businesses can take full control of the customer journey, drive world-class omnichannel customer experiences, and create a competitive edge by choosing to start with easily configurable building blocks or create completely custom commerce experiences.

The solution enables brands to:

• Sell anywhere — make the store the destination: 麻豆原创 Upscale Commerce delivers rich mobile-first, cross-channel, in-store experience for shoppers and makes it easy for shoppers to intuitively shop by swiping, pinching, and tapping their devices.
• Sell intelligently — big or small, sell smart: With built-in artificial intelligence (AI), brands can create a unique storefront experience for each shopper at scale and deliver intelligent, relevant experiences that optimize business profits. Intelligent capabilities also help to convert one-time purchases into subscriptions.
• Speed and agility — start fast and go far: Brands can start small and scale as they grow using no code tools out of the box to create new and fresh shopping experiences in days and using low- and no-code tools to easily extend and build the perfect fit solution.
• Keep the promise — deliver on the brand promise: Brands can sell and ship from everywhere with an agile order orchestration and fulfill orders from the closest stores.

Transitioning Customer Engagement from In Store to Online

One organization that experienced these changes firsthand is Swedish fashion retailer . JOY, which for many years has delighted Swedish women with quality clothes, has re-emerged in a completely new form. JOY no longer has any physical stores and is instead focusing on e-commerce and personalized fashion advice. The founders see JOY as a startup building next-generation e-commerce based on AI and slow fashion 鈥� a more sustainable alternative with clothes lasting several seasons. JOY is also the first company in the world that has selected the combination of the cloud-based solutions 麻豆原创 Upscale Commerce and the Emarsys platform for customer engagement functionality.

鈥淲e are definitely in a paradigm shift within e-commerce and digital channels. The retail industry has so far been able to make a living from using large product catalogs, but they do not provide the best customer experience. Instead, customers want inspiration, advice, and, in our case, also ready-made combinations of clothes that suit their own style 鈥� and lasting several seasons,鈥� said Anna Ullman Sers茅, CEO and co-founder of JOY. 鈥溌槎乖� Upscale Commerce fit our needs perfectly. The solution is very flexible, allowing us to make changes quickly and to provide more content than just a traditional product catalog. This frees up more time for us to truly focus on engaging with the customers online, much like we did when we would meet in stores.鈥�

Powering Social Selling with Top Social Media Platforms

Another option for brands pivoting to direct customer engagement is selling through social media channels, more commonly known as 鈥渟ocial selling.鈥� With careful and considered targeting of the right products at the right time, it is possible for midmarket brands to drive down the cost of customer acquisition as products find customers directly through algorithmic targeting. However, this means that having the right type of information about products and the right content in posts is critical 鈥� as is for that information to be up to date.

To deliver on this opportunity, 麻豆原创 Upscale Commerce integrates into social media platforms, enabling organizations to easily start taking advantage of social commerce. The solution makes it easy to connect an online store to a Facebook business account, continuously sync the product catalog, create a Facebook Shop, and use that to drive new sales opportunities to consumers. The result is a consistent shopping experience on social media, with the front-end and back-end business processes fully integrated.

Hackathon Spurs New Ideas to Solve Customer Pain Points

To meet individual customer challenges, the 麻豆原创 Customer Experience team in Canada recently hosted a hackathon, in which teams of product experts and solution integration partners battled to create brand new online shopping experiences based on specific, real-world client requirements for fashion, automotive, and retail 鈥� all within 麻豆原创 Upscale Commerce.

Judging criteria was based on overall creativity, use of available product extensions, ease of shopping experience, time-to-market, and how well the solution drives customers toward long-term loyalty and advocacy for the brand. After a day and a half of competition, the event culminated in a final virtual pitch presentation, with taking home the award for Most Creative, and awarded for Best Use of Technology.

鈥淎s a judge, I was truly impressed with the quality and quantity of results after only a day and a half of hacking, showcasing incredible innovation, creativity, and accomplishment by small teams in a small amount of time,鈥� said Fr茅d茅ric Bouthillier, CEO of . 鈥淭he teams鈥� rapid development of new, innovative experiences proves the time to value of 麻豆原创 Upscale Commerce and headless commerce solutions.鈥�

The events of the past year have changed the way people shop and the shift to online purchasing is here to stay. Now midmarket brands don鈥檛 have to settle with a simple direct-to-consumer webstore. With 麻豆原创 Upscale Commerce, businesses have the ability to put the customer at the heart of everything they do, connecting front- and back-office data, simplifying and automating complex sales processes, and delivering insights in real time that enable seamless, personalized experiences that grow revenue.

The 麻豆原创 Upscale Commerce solution, , is the next-generation intelligent selling engine that can help midmarket brands to achieve fast growth, create differentiated experiences, and leverage intelligence to optimize sales and profits.

Bob Stutz is president of 麻豆原创 Customer Experience.

Each of these industry challenges has a direct impact on B2B commerce activity, requiring distributors to work diligently to maintain, or even improve, customer experience.

Arrow Electronics, a global distributor of electronic components and computer products, presented the topic of e-commerce resiliency during a recent industrial supply webinar alongside John McDonnell, industry executive advisor at 麻豆原创.

During this session, Michelle Moore, vice president of Digital Technology at Arrow Electronics, discussed how key industry trends are impacting Arrow Electronics鈥� commerce strategy and what it is doing from an IT perspective to .

COVID-19鈥檚 Impact on B2B Commerce

High market competition is forcing distributors to get creative and find new revenue sources. To make matters more complex, today鈥檚 B2B buyers are taking a note out of the B2C playbook and demanding more products be delivered faster and with more delivery options. This trend was especially prevalent in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to accelerate.

Over the past year, distributors also saw unprecedented changes in demand 鈥� decreases and increases depending on the industry subsegment represented. Distributors have generally determined where their new baseline is, but this unpredictable demand makes forecasts highly uncertain, with more frequent out-of-stock and over-stock situations placing a strain on businesses. These tumultuous times underscored the need for distributors to quickly and strengthen their business network.

Workforce challenges involved keeping workers safe but productive, with many back-office functions working remotely. This change emphasized the importance of employee communication and pulse checks to maintain business continuity and stay in sync with organizational needs. The increase in employees working from home also caused staffing shortages in distribution centers and placed unforeseen stress on IT departments. In addition, workers had many personal challenges during this period, making it a stressful time for both leaders and employees.

Furthermore, the current health, environmental, and trade challenges have caused distributors to move from maintaining continuity towards increasing overall longevity. Technology is acting as the catalyst to bring these new business models to life by supporting distributors鈥� ambitions to increase the diversity of offerings and customer share of wallet.

Building a Resilient Business Strategy

An effective strategy to overcome the challenges brought on by COVID-19 consists of three phases: respond, recover, and reimagine.

• The response phase is the process of reacting to the pandemic and understanding how it will affect the business.
• Recovery is considered an ongoing phase that allows distributors to move forward from their new baseline.
• Distributors must reimagine business, resulting in the ability to think and act fast, by developing new business models that break traditional rules. This phase may include experimenting with changes distributors were already considering before COVID-19, just at a faster pace.

Forward-thinking distributors aspire to differentiate themselves from the competition and generate greater customer loyalty by providing more value-added services. Technological advancements traditionally used for B2C consumer experience have dramatically changed the B2B buying experience, especially during the last five to 10 years. Customers are also showing the desire to collaborate with distributors to develop complete solutions for specific business needs while simultaneously partnering with fewer suppliers who can still deliver the same great products and services they need.

Distributors are also recognizing the need to better support the business continuity of their customers by implementing flexible buying and delivery options. During the pandemic peak, customers needed to have more patience and change their expectations about when they would get their products and services. Due to unpredictable supply patterns and social distancing measures, technology served the important purpose of enabling greater transparency and supporting e-commerce channels.

Digital Transformation in Action

The pandemic has caused forward-thinking distributors to accelerate initiatives as a way to differentiate from competitors.

One solid example of this innovative thinking comes from U.S.-based beverage distributor . This company is improving its interaction with customers and suppliers through 鈥淧roof,鈥� its new B2B e-commerce platform.

The examples don鈥檛 stop there:

• Industrial distributor Grainger added a visual search feature to its mobile app, allowing customers to shop directly from a photo.
• Brakes, a B2B food delivery service, has addressed supply shortages by quickly pivoting to a direct-to-consumer business model in a mere seven days.
• Amazon Business introduced a smart shelf that restocks itself.
• Sigma Healthcare now offers personalized customer experiences on its platform with customer-specific branding and log-ons.

Arrow鈥檚 Digital Transformation Journey to Resilient Commerce

Arrow Electronics Inc. is a global distributor of electronic components and computer products that also provides value-added services. The company is based in Colorado and currently generates over US$1 billion in annual revenue across four Web properties. Its sources of revenue include the development of new products and services, the reinvention of existing ones, and acquisitions.

Arrow鈥檚 digital transformation began in 2015 when it acquired a B2B marketplace built on old technology that would not adequately scale or support the organization鈥檚 high growth ambitions.

Moore shared that 鈥淗istorically, it [commerce] was more about having a Web presence and getting something up there for people to see you, know you, and use you, across the Internet.聽 That is shifting toward overall automation for customers and simplification 鈥� the one-stop-shop mentality.鈥�

From the beginning, Arrow鈥檚 commerce strategy has focused on addressing a variety of customer bases and needs, including consumer-based B2B, e-commerce, and marketplace portals. To best meet these needs, Arrow鈥檚 primary commerce objectives have been centered around maximizing customer satisfaction while minimizing the cost and complexity of its solutions.

As a part of this transformative initiative, Arrow Electronics adopted 麻豆原创 Commerce Cloud to help drive costs down while increasing capabilities. The distributor restructured data, people, processes, and technology, which thereby increased the performance and scalability of its operations. It also implemented vital data governance models and moved its commerce platform to the cloud to aid compliance and business agility.

Looking ahead, the distributor will continue working to consolidate commerce operations across its Web properties, standardize site capabilities, and implement modern search capabilities. The distributor will continue to merge key business requirements with relevant technologies, allowing it to simplify and consolidate its business architecture in a way that supports agility.

Missed the 鈥淏uilding a Resilient E-Commerce Business with Arrow Electronics鈥� webinar? .

More than ever, customers demand the freedom to choose how, and when, they engage. That could be as simple as browsing Instagram and seeing products that inspire them, making a purchase or upgrading a subscription in the early hours of the morning to unlock new tracks from their favorite band. It goes even further when you consider the COVID-19 crisis, and the impact that has had on buying behavior. Consumers may not want to go into a store, or they want to make more purchases online. It is critical for brands to have that understanding of their customer鈥檚 needs.

麻豆原创 has a very competitive, well rounded portfolio of products to help brands deliver a world-class customer experience. However, we are always thinking about how the pieces work together as a whole and ways that we can improve upon them. And that鈥檚 where Emarsys comes in.

Emarsys is not just another customer engagement provider. Emarsys is an innovative and easy-to-use fully integrated customer engagement platform that allows companies to deliver truly personal customer interactions across email, mobile, social, SMS, and the web at scale. Emarsys is recognized as a leader in the (Independent Platforms), published in Q4 2019, and in the , published in Q3 2020.

To really put the strength of Emarsys in perspective, consider this: Emarsys systems manage 10 billion personalized interactions per month.

Those credentials already make Emarsys a perfect fit for 麻豆原创, but it is worth exploring what we see as a marriage of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and commerce. Most customer relationship management (CRM) systems are islands in a software landscape. This means organizations must use third-party systems to connect their commerce solution with their operations, which is cumbersome. The 麻豆原创 Customer Experience portfolio already integrates the two, so brands can fulfill a commerce process seamlessly — for example, when an order is made and it flows back to distribution and fulfillment — without disruption, pause, or issue.

Put simply, with the strengths of our current portfolio and the addition of Emarsys, 麻豆原创 CX will power 鈥渃ommerce anywhere,鈥� a foundation of omnichannel personalized engagement, meeting the customers where and when they choose to engage, on their preferred channels and on their terms.

We anticipate that the deal will close in the fourth quarter of 2020. After the closing date, Emarsys will become part of 麻豆原创. We cannot discuss any joint plans until closing. However, I can tell you that 麻豆原创 is committed to its focus and continued leadership within the broadly defined customer experience space. Our mission remains unchanged: we are focused on delivering a world-class customer experience portfolio of solutions to our customers. Acquiring Emarsys will bring us closer to those goals.

Bob Stutz is president of 麻豆原创 Customer Experience.