[STEP BY STEP] What Frameworks Should I use to Qualify Good Software for my Business?

Future Commerce Podcast: eCommerce, DTC and Retail Strategy

This season on Step by Step, we are asking what does “seamless” mean to my eCommerce business and how do I demystify that in a way that helps me select the right solutions and softwares that make a seamless experience come to life? Just like the suiting and the apparel that KASHIYAMA provides to its customer, there is no one size fits all solution in eCommerce today. Selecting software correctly and well in your organization requires a lot of orchestration and effort and sometimes some frameworks and tips and tricks on how to do that well. BJ McCahill knows all about this and has incredible insights to share. Listen now!

In this episode:

• {0:10:19} - “We calculated at one point there were over 10 million combinations of types of products that you can order. So just looking at the platform where we were going to house our website, that was a huge consideration. Even though initial order volume wasn't going to be that high, we knew the data complexity needed something that was robust and something that could support that.” - BJ
• {0:15:13} - “Obviously all of these software companies are trying to sell you something. And so maybe they're putting their best foot forward. So you may need to dig a little bit deeper with recommendations from people in the industry, recommendations from agencies that you're working with to make sure that what they're explaining to you is how it works in reality as well.” - BJ
• {0:19:05} - “Budget plays a huge role obviously in any business decision, but specifically in terms of software selection, you hear the term Total Cost of Ownership, and that is really, really key to think about. The number that you're seeing presented by this software or this agency is not maybe the total number that you're going to end up paying.” - BJ
• {0:30:08} - “We needed to be able to offer a seamless experience between in-store and online and not every software was going to support that, but it was something that we learned was going to be key to our customer experience that we were offering to be able to really deliver that omnichannel experience for the customers.” - BJ
• {0:31:59} - “One of the nuances in modern commerce is that you get to this stage of growth where the choices that you make severely feed back into the mindset of how you build your business and they become sort of sympathetic to each other. Having flexibility and being able to build quickly are underappreciated parts of having a software stack.” - Phillip

Associated Links:

• Learn more about BJ McCahill and KASHIYAMA
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• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

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