KNOWLEDGESTREAM AT-A-GLANCE

Future of Headless E-Commerce in CPG & Retail

ABSTRACT

1. Headless Commerce: a. What is headless architecture and how does it drive enhanced commerce compared to traditional architectures b. What are the key differences in process/approach/governance compared to traditional commerce c. What are the impact if any on consumer mobile and web journeys d. How/where is the market for this and any early adopters etc., e. When to use / use cases for micro-services / headless commerce? f. What are some of the challenges of adopting headless commerce? g. What type of change management is required for leveraging headless commerce? h. What is in it for business for going down the headless commerce route? i. What are the best practices for leveraging headless commerce? Below are the clarifications to your queries: 1. We would need to prioritize Headless Commerce and get some views from industry leaders on the same. Though, there is a plausible overlap between both these topics, but we would like to keep the research process separate. 2. We request expert opinions from - Head of eCommerce, CTO/CIO, headless commerce architects, Channel partners, Sales and Marketing leadership for D2C sales. 2. B2B2C (SECOND OPPORTUNITY) a. How are CPG companies adopting and influencing to the sales through retail channel partners? b. What are the key metrics being measured and how? c. How are trade promotion effectiveness manages in an online world for CPG companies? d. What kind of tools and technology is used to work with online channel e. What kind of organization needs to be in place to work with digital retail for CPG companies?

PARTICIPANTS

Paolo Beffagnotti
Brand Protection Digital Manager
Bart Groenewoud
Consulting, Learning & Development, Workshop Facilitation
Himanshu Bharadwaj
Creative Director.
Yaron Cohen
UX Researcher
Mary Wirtz Cooper
Cooper Consulting Founder: Strategic Marketing Leader I Brand Builder I Drives Innovation
Maria Leo
Merchandising/Product Development/Retail Strategist
James Copeman
Senior Product Manager at Pivotal Labs
Michael Phelan
Start-Up CMO, Founder & Principal Go-to-Market Pros
John Kaestle
President and CEO, Board Member
Marsha Williams
Technology Executive and Board Member
Lynn Power
Marketer, CEO, Co-Founder, Entrepreneur, Learned Extrovert
Dawn Houghton
Innovation Consultant
Frank Kovacs
Global Head, Digital Business & EPMO
Santhosh Nair
Management Consultant for early-stage companies. 20+ years as Director, Senior Quality Manager, Principal Software Engineer and Program Manager.
Shailendra Singh
eCommerce Head at Unilever
View More >

OBJECTIVES

1. The What - A consensus expert view on the definition of Headless Commerce and its components for omnichannel & supply chain: Determine relevant use-cases across CPG, Retail, Airlines & Hospitality

2. The How - Imperatives around the migration journey from current UX to a Headless Commerce ecosyste: Understanding the key challenges in using/moving to headless commerce

3. The Who - Understanding business readiness and change management requirements around implementation of Headless Commerce: Who are the key stakeholders in this journey? What are the new roles needed in the organization and how do we incentivize them?

4. The How (Part2) - Best Practices in Headless Commerce implementation: Create a capability roadmap priority of importance & feasibility.

100% Complete
Start Date: May 17, 2018
End Date: Oct 29, 2018
2064

CONTRIBUTIONS

ACTIVITY

165 Days

11 Themes

23 Contributors

1014 Posts

1050 Comments

179 Followers

OUTPUTS

10 Slide Deck

1 Video

THEME #1

Trends, drivers, & frictions in Headless commerce

THEME SUMMARY

What are the key learnings from headless commerce implementations and journeys. Pls outline your experience in the below themes/areas

  • Key technical and peoples skills required
  • Change Management and organization readiness
  • Benefits realized (Financial, Technical and Outcomes)
  • Best Practices in implementations

Key trends

The price of your products, the descriptions and how you ship them doesn't change depending on the platform you're shopping on so you need to be able to access them from anywhere, not just an app or a website.

For me it comes down to the customer experience - that's what I own and what our customers engage with. If the booking system is a key differentiator to our business and something that is going to be hard to copy then I'll probably build it, otherwise I'll buy it in.

THEME #2

What are the key learnings from headless commerce implementations and journeys?

THEME SUMMARY

Key learnings from headless commerce implementations and journeys

  • The positives: Improved user/consumer experience, diversified digital channels, increased flexibility by decoupling the front-end from back-end
  • Challenges: High Capex investment (architecture redesign, development, hours, licensing), skilled technology resources to develop & support new applications, security upgrades and policy compliance
  • Technology and Organizational Readiness: Run pilots and constantly engage with key stakeholders to measureimpact, designing a micro-service/API based architecture, people (Skill) & tech. readiness

Positives from the Headless commerce journey

Another plus if we go headless ,we might have a better interaction with our customers ,we can respond to there suggestions faster and address there complaints during user experience design process ,

when we try to analyze value of headless commerce ,we immediately understood few things ,we can make quick changes in a flow and front end ,it has significantly lower development cost and lower risk in term of disaster recovery and business continuity ,better load balancing

Challenges in headless commerce implementations

but when we started talking to a our tech partners ,cost of licensing agreements actually went up ,based on what we are currently paying ,and cost of infrastructure and support we will need ,also went up .

in my view ,its not secure enough ,also when we try to separate front end from back end in 2 separate architectures, cost of redesigning our existing applications will go way up ,not to mention cost of designing front end

Technology readiness requirements

We will need to bring people with new skills sets ,cost of troubleshooting will go up ,it will bring lots of stress to our existing IT team , lots of additional hours and overtime cost . also we will have an issues with recruitment and retention

early engagement was key, and bringing them in at the very start of the project really helped to remove some blockers. On top of this we needed good DevOps support, as part of the requirements for using a different environment was embedding automated security testing within our Dev stack.

Key Observations & Learnings

there is probably a slower maturity / benefit curve initially as more things need to be bought in and integrated at a lower level into the front end

We thought this would be a simple IP white listing activity but because of the uncertainty and perceived risk it ended up costing $15k of support and development costs to create the interfaces we need! It gets to a point where it is cheaper to buy new than reuse!

THEME #3

Traditional to headless commerce - To be or not to be

THEME SUMMARY

Traditional to headless commerce - To be or not to be

  • Headless commerce has a direct impact on technology evolution and IT transformation initiatives on the supply chain side.
  • This may have a positive impact on order conversion and deliver additional revenue, however the ROI for such initiatives may vary based on geo. markets and industry segments
  • Technology teams will need to upskill and work more closely with business stakeholders, IT budgets may have joint custodians (IT+business functions)
  • Supply chain and warehouse orchestration systems may need to upgrade to cope with additional orders. Packaging processes and workflows may also need change to address speed of delivery expectations

How does headless commerce impact other stakeholders

Big impact on the relationships with consumers, companies have to provide a customized experience, quickly deal with the product requests having a huge impact on the supply chain. They have to be flexible & share more information.This could shorter products lifecycle impacting supply chain processes

for the supply chain, there may be a need to scale the platform if those elusive additional orders come through! To do this properly, the back end systems need to be isolated and protected from front end changes by building an API layer and redirecting integration through these new services.

How can organizations prepare themselves for migration to headless commerce?

There is also an assumption that the IT department of the past should still exist, IMO we should be moving away from siloed technologoical knowledge towards business product ownership, and I say this from having sat on both sides of the fence

Bringing these together under one team sat within the commercial or product space means that there is communication of quality and cost requirements, and this is vital for the delivery of systems like this.

How do back-end functions like supply-chain, logistics and warehouse management get impacted with such a change?

That means that for the supply chain, there probably isn't a change apart from the need to scale the platform if those elusive additional orders come through! To do this properly though, the back end systems need to be isolated and protected from front end changes.

In an omnichannel world with multiple order types and fulfilment methods, some form of order orchestration system might be required, and building this may help to join up new tools and provide some insulation from the warehousing systems needing to change in the future.

How different is the supply-chain operating model for a traditional e-commerce to headless commerce? What could be the possible ramifications to last-mile logistics and returns?

Some shoppers shop online and then return to brick & mortar stores. With the closing of many store locations, the return/exchange process needs to be easy for shoppers. Logisitics need to be thought through regarding the distribution model. Easier return policies and logisitics would be helpful.

Headless commerce has a big impact on the relationships with consumers, companies has to provide with a customized experience, quickly deal with the product requests and this has a huge impact on the supply chain.

THEME #4

Best Practices and the future for Headless Commerce

THEME SUMMARY

summary

  • Headless architecture allows key consumer expectations to be acheived
  • Enabling changes to content management without disrupting back end enables rapid testing and implementation
  • Brands that are excelling in digital have adopted headless and innovating and evolving at rapid pace

Best Practices

With headless commerce in place, you can test templates and approaches. In other words, you can experiment with a new solution on a back end solution while keeping the front end solution in place.

if company had a proprietary streaming engine and a pre-existing CMS that housed media-rich content...a perfect opportunity for a headless architecture because it meant the client could keep their existing content but still expand their eCommerce offerings without disrupting their entire business.

industries likely to move first

Service based segments will naturally take the lead on this, they have fewer restrictions on what they can change and why

South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong are popular on Tmall too. Indeed Australia plays an important role, the web is a valuable way to bridge the distance gap with other countries

impact on purchase behavior

the only thing that the customer should observe is an increase in iteration and improvements to the service / journey / new features landing.

headless commerce system allows Amazon to have a Dash Button, a little electronic device you might fasten to the side of your washer so you can easily reorder more detergent by clicking it. Dash Button orders increased by 70 percent in the past year and now occur twice per minute.

Company examples

if there's a transaction that involves any type of commerce, Alibaba wants to be the company that enables it. Amazon is often thought of as the place for consumers buying from businesses, but Alibaba's products are also pushing to enable business-to-business and consumer-to-consumer transactions

Michael Kors - They needed to maintain a strong, consistent brand experience across all digital platforms while re-examining the original structure and build. The conclusion was a headless architecture approach.

THEME #5

Communicating Headless Architecture

THEME SUMMARY

Headless Architecture is a hot top that is increasingly important in digital space. What is it, how do you talk about it and why is it important

  • We explored what is headless architecture with focus on explaining to non tech savvy folks
  • We explored the key consumer benefits and why this of value

Headless architecture decouples front end consumer content and back end systems to unlock an array of development options needed to compete in today's environment

offering a breakthrough user experiences, gives developers great flexibility to innovate, and helps site owners future-proof their builds by allowing them to refresh the design without re-implementing the whole CMS

Order capture with flexible front-end wherever that front end is needed. The order flows through to back-end processing from multiple touchpoints so does not have/need a defined front-end experience

Critical enabler for ecommerce offering speed and flexibility

With headless commerce your front end and your interactions with consumers can move at the speed of consumer technology

headless commerce provides an important technology building block to reach the holy grail of commerce: Excellent & Consistent X-Channel Consumer Experience.

Headless Architecture enables consistent, user friendly experience across digital channels

It is a technique to interact with your customers in the most appropriate way for whatever channel you are using (in store, web, mobile, IOT...

very user friendly environment and accessible thru all gadgets. It's the convenience and the familiarity that matter the most

This experience is increasingly important particularly to younger generations who have increasingly high expectations of their digital experience

E-commerce professionals need to invest in an intuitive AI driven , modern headless website layout, high-quality graphics and photos, readily available and condensed info and mobile-friendly visual search if they want to convince youngsters of today that you’re worthy of their time.

Gen Zers prioritize finding things quickly and 60% of them will give up using slow websites and apps.

Ease of search, quality of graphics and customized experiences are key consumer benefits

E-commerce professionals need to invest in an intuitive AI driven , modern headless website layout, high-quality graphics and photos, readily available and condensed info and mobile-friendly visual search if they want to convince youngsters of today that you’re worthy of their time.

There are many names used but Headless Ecommerce is at the top of the list as it conveys the ultimate benefit of enabling your business

Headless CMS or Decoupled CMS is used as well. Actually, I like this one as it has the word "commerce" in it - easier conversation with the business... as long as you keep the discussion on a business advantages level and do not go around throwing IT words

We explored various analogies to illustrate what it is and some personal examples of why it is so important

Headless website developments unleash full potential of your website and provide users with better experience. In other words, you could have a modern car even less performance than an old one, but now you and your passengers will get a better final performance and experience in any situation.

clients expect immediacy and to be as fast as "Gold Standard" aka Amazon. They want it all: Customized shopping experiences, speed to market, quick moving platform, fast integrations and updates. It was not fun to explain to clients the integration or updates could takes months, not days or hours.

THEME #6

Decision Making For Headless Architecture

THEME SUMMARY

Companies have many variables to consider when making the shift to headless architecture. We explored how they go about deciding to make the change.

  • Transitioning to headless architecture is a large undertaking and there are many factors impacting the decision making process.
  • Strategic, functional and emotional considerations are involved and each company varies in what ultimately causes the tipping point to make the move
  • While there are many benefits, there are cases when headless architecture may not be ideal

SURVEYS

people | 7
Which of the following do you feel cause a "tipping point" where companies recognize the need to move to headless architecture? Select up to 3. Thanks!
Legacy system challenges
14.29% 1 vote
Complexity of managing content
42.86% 3 votes
Inconsistent channel experience
57.14% 4 votes
Need for more personalization
28.57% 2 votes
Challenged to drive scale
42.86% 3 votes
Need for dynamic pricing and promotions
28.57% 2 votes
Desire for more speed and flexibility
85.71% 6 votes
Other? just let me know anything critical missing and i'll incorporate into this survey
0.00% 0 votes
 

Headless architecture offers the potential for a new level of functionality and development flexibility

For companies with complex content and customer requirements headless ecommerce presents an unprecedented opportunity to deliver consistent, personalized, and innovative customer experiences fast

when organization decide to go for headless architecture is mostly driven by personalization/customization needs of the users, however this would also benefits them from the point of view of user friendliness and comfortness of experience

As businesses want to drive scale and diversity, headless architecture is a key enabler

Headless architecture makes sense as purchasing becomes more distributed. If customers are buying in multiple places and looking for your solutions across other marketplaces,

Business will want to provide their products and services to the largest audience possible. A decoupled architecture enables you to present your business consistently across multiple channels of your own (omnichannel) and others (marketplace)

Emotional factors are key drivers and can cause a "tipping point" that the current approach is not working and a change must occur.

data intensive firms with a lot of their core processes running on legacy systems held together - as you say - by band aids.

Companies that know they are lacking either technological or business agility may find themselves threatened by the opportunities that their competitors may have. Some perceived, some real.

This a big undertaking that must be met with the right frame of mind and expectations.

Usually with revolutionary processes people tends to overestimate the effects at the beginning, then underestimate these on a long run

he ongoing maintenance and delivery of tools like AEM and Magento are not considered during these meetings, and it can lead to organisations being trapped in a world where they are reliant on third party consultants and external engineers for much of there development.

Past experiences impact the decision making process

I've found Inertia to be a huge blocker that needs to be overcome. Many businesses have been oversold significant packages and tools over the years that have promised to deliver the benefits in the survey through turnkey packages

Senior executives have often been wooed by huge companies promising them the benefits of flexibility, and showing them demos of achieving the impossible. It's not unheard of for these solutions to be priced at below cost as well to tempt people in.

In some cases headless architecture may not be ideal. It's a big undertaking and companies must be ready, with right resourcing, mindset and expectations of what's needed.

your website does not have enough contents

f you don't have a good IT team, it will be under pressure to develop the headless architecture.

fkkfkkd

I would want to make very sure that my processes, my links into my other systems and my data access will be organised once and once only to be re-used by the multiple presentation layers to avoid band aid IT.

THEME #7

Exploring Headless Architecture For CPG & Apparel Industry

THEME SUMMARY

Consumer and market dynamics are driving a need for companies to have more capabilities to deliver personalization, consistent omni channel and a modern digital experience and ecommerce

  • CPG and apparel companies are lagging vs other industries in making a shift to headless architecture
  • There is increased recognition headless architecure can be a key enabler.
  • Retailers are having a significant impact as a major part of CPG and Apparel companies is brick and mortar retail

CPG & Apparel companies have been slower to shift to headless architecture

Those who invest and are early adopters are likley the ones to gain share of category. This trend is real and needs to be adressed

most CPGs are large and change moves at a snails pace within the organizations, due to; the amount of layers and process within a company for new ideas to take root

These companies have been and continue to be driven by traditional retail. They see the shift to digital as important but often reacting out of fear of being left behind

The reason CPG is slower to adopt headless architecture, as CPG has is typically been purchased more in store than online as compared to other categories

when does it become urgent, when they see the bottom line erode due to market share loss. When lord and taylor has to close most stores, or sports authority goes out of business the time of urgent action has passed.

These companies want to move ahead and there is increased recognition of the benefits

these companies want to move ahead, all you have to do sit in strategic planning meetings to hear the wish list, Yet the reality is that it is not as urgent as lets say a union contract, or machine upgrades to keep supply going. Therefore for many it becomes a long term item

Apparel and food ware companies will need to use the business opportunities of headless architecture to enable an excellent and consistent cross channel customer experience. And this is going to be hard, because they often don't have a good cross channel experience.

The shift opens up many possibilities and those who have experience with ecommerce start to see and invest in the potential

heading towards headless architecture is an evolution that is developed in those companies that have already been doing eCommerce for a while and now want to take it to the next level by decoupling the back end from the front-end.

opens up the possibility for deep personalisation of the website and brand, while keeping common back end elements. You can potentially run multiple shops using the same architecture with low maintenance costs, and only minor customisation.

The dynamics of retail are having a big impact on these companies. They recognize an even bigger change is coming and they need to be ready

the emergence of the Amazon platform is the primary driving force for CPG companies to adapt, adopt, re-assess their business models...

Amazon purchase of Whole Foods is going to push the whole industry to morph in the next couple years.

The barriers continue to be time and cost. It's a big undertaking that requires deep understanding and preparation

It is a big investment and the proper tech development takes time to do it right

CPGs do not want to think of their company as not agile, yet in reality the time it takes a CPG to understand the trend, as we have been discussing and then enacting it, would be 2 years. Within that time the need has changed

As expected, there are differences between tier 1 and smaller players

The bigger players in CPG and the new start-ups are going to be the more likely to first adopt the changes. The big companies have the resources and start ups tend to be scrappy and interested in disruption. The mid sized companies are more liekly to be me-too follwers

The differences between the major and tier 2 players are the opportunities available, how much you can further expand your market share and engage with consumers. When properly developed, tier 1 players have a huge competitive advantage

Many brands large and small are having success, particularly in apparel, personal care and cosmetics

growth of very small brands focusing on very narrow demographics. Companies like .boohoo.com, and Undandy creating custom experiences and thechapar.com creating concierge clothing experiences.

A good case to explore is the one of Michael Kors that have been using headless commerce for a while now, a technology that allowed them to use a single code-base that could be leveraged to create several front-end types of experience. .

THEME #8

Let's make the case for Headless Architecture

THEME SUMMARY

How do you present the case for making the shift to Headless Architecture with emphasis on CPG and Apparel industries

  • These companies are striving to make a shift to omni channel and build e commerce capabilities and source of volume but have lagged other industries
  • Effective story telling is a combination of functional and emotional elements
  • It's about business enablement and achievement first...technology second

SURVEYS

people | 7
During our case study topic we have been exploring how to most successfully "pitch" a CPG/apparel company on shifting to Headless Architecture. Which of the following elements would you prioritize if you were making the sales "pitch"? Please select the 4-5 that would be most important to your story. Thanks!
Rational - strategy enablement
57.14% 4 votes
Rational - sales potential
42.86% 3 votes
Rational - cost and time savings
42.86% 3 votes
Empathy - demonstrating understanding of the challenges they face
28.57% 2 votes
Cost of remaining "status quo"
28.57% 2 votes
Story of competitor who successfully shifted
28.57% 2 votes
(horror) story of company who did not
28.57% 2 votes
Tell story with as little technical language as possible
14.29% 1 vote
Ease of implementation
14.29% 1 vote
Sell benefits not technology
85.71% 6 votes
Ask questions, minimize the "tell"
28.57% 2 votes
Use their customers "day in a life" to illustrate the need
57.14% 4 votes
Other? if so, please just post your suggestion and i will add
0.00% 0 votes
How sales channels and the market have changed
14.29% 1 vote
 

Start with the state of the market and benefits....how the shift enables the business

you should not sell the technology itself, but the business advantage that it brings. Even to IT, as they have to sell it internally to the business.

2 elements to explain the shifting to the headless architecture: how the markets and the sales channels have changed

A good starting point is the customer. CPG and Apparel companies are very customer-centric in both the functional and emotional needs of their customers

A custom built story that explains a day in the life of your customer can bring out the ideal moments of interaction with your services/products, and reveal how these are not serviced by your current business model.

With each interaction with you (in both scenarios) you define what goes well and what goes wrong, or is missed, is frustrating. This complete overview leads you to empathise with your persona and see why at certain points they have no choice to take their business elsewhere.

Exploring the customer journey and asking reflective questions builds understanding and leads the audience of the need for change

by asking questions you can make them reach the realisation themselves. Far more powerful than laying it out to them

The great benefit of this is that you can bring this to the client as a human story that is understandable to each. They may even get mad at their own company for creating these situations, but at any rate very interested to get this solved.

Functional and financial benefits and analytics are certainly important

Since a headless architecture only require you to build a presentation layer that taps into business logic connected to data, the effort to develop a new sales channel is very low. A company can customize sales channels to satisfy very specific groups where volume may be low, but margins high.

costs to run separate divisions with individual strategies, P&Ls and back office is probably more then if unified under HA (of course we would have to pull some #'s to support-costs of current running-including on going upgrades to old systems)

Emotional is an important and powerful part of the equation.

only once the human level solutions have been but accepted do you explain the technology required to make this happen.

be a company that believes in being current & innovative to attract and keep staff (especially millennials)

An effective approach is to have a story that connects with cross functional leadership and avoids technical speak.

one of the greatest obstacles for IT- being able to articulate the business proposition ( in non-IT terms).

you should not sell the technology itself, but the business advantage that it brings. Even to IT, as they have to sell it internally to the business.

A strong project lead makes or breaks success. You may have a great solution but If you don't do what you say and are not easy to work with its all for naught

project leader was excellent, well organized and exercised flawless followup.

a successful track record with happy clients who are willing to go on record to extol your efforts and capabilities would be a differentiator.

Examples are powerful of those who succeed and the pains of those who have not

I would pull some facts and stats from retailers such as Sears, K mart, 5th and pacific, Radio Shack, Nine west, Toys R Us as examples of companies that fell behind

Michael Kors's https://www.sparkred.com/blog/michael-kors-case-study-a-journey-to-headless-commerce/

THEME #9

Change management and implementation

THEME SUMMARY

Shifting to Headless Architecture is much more than a technical investment and requires strategic and change management leadership

  • Adding a new system will not fix all issues;;;;it is an enabler for organizations to take a fresh approach to remove frustrations and set up everyone for a new level of success
  • Do not underestimate that people will intentionally or unintentionally put up roadblocks
  • Employee loyalty and retention are at risk but can be turned to a positive with the right leadership
  • Proactive change management and the right supplier are critical

Headless Architecture enables simplicity, flexibility and increase abilities to serve the customer. But, the process to make the shift is complex as it changes how your business and teams operate

The challenge for CTOs and CEOs is how we can bring changes in the organizations to streamline operations, improve productivity, and allow easy adoption in the employees

How to go about increasing the collaboration between IT and business - with multiple front-end websites built and maintained by different IT teams, someone has to lead the collaboration between the business and the IT

It impacts legacy systems, processes, documentation and changes team dynamics.

Developing new methods for delivery - is it going to be done in sprints? scrum? agile? Who is going to own what? The need for new project managers, product managers and owners, and even scrum masters.

As we move to headless in any venue it naturally creates a little bit of a chasm between various development teams and the temptation to throw things 'over the wall' to the other teams.

There are many barriers and biases that need to be considered....political, personal and emotional. This changes status quo and folks wonder what it means for me and "is my job secure?" *add from li

Political: what will this do to my power base. Will I have a smaller or larger team/budget in the new situation? Who will I report into, and what does that do to my authority/independance

Emotional: I am afraid that I will not be able to cope with the new situation, the technology, the colleagues, the processes)

Lack of communication and collaboration are major barriers (add paolo forget to explain

lack of communication, employees are not aware and involved, lack of resources to properly address the change, company culture fails to motivate the team

Not finding collaboration partners across different departments is another barrier when implementing headless commerce changes. This could be because the culture is risk averse and unwilling to be blamed for failures.

preventing derailers - what in it for them add frank's survey quote

Show the long term vision and not just hard numbers to convince people. Do not show how big the change is., but show how big the opportunity is.

sell it to the teams on how HA will be better for them, not the company-them personally. If you haven't figured out how it will effect and help the person at their desk, it will be a hard sell.

preventing derailers -

A supplier can play a very important role in the change management effort. Their distance from the emotional and political forces at play allows them to keep their eyes on the true benefits to realize, A good supplier understands that Change Management is about the journey, not the destination.

I would equip the leaders with tools to help them deal with lack of motivations when problems arise. I believe that if there are no incentives for employees to stay when these problems arise

preventing derailers - add johnkastel on team roll out

There are several ways to do this 1) fund an existing internal PMO directly dedicated to your program and he/she co-reports to you and the PMO office 2) embed your PMO in an existing office with relevant connections 3) have a key sponsor or mentor help your PMO

....personally select people.....They have the ultimate approval before an application was deemed ready for release....then they become the training teams to roll out the new applications

A key differentiation for a supplier is to go beyond their technology pitch and provides added value to prepare for the journey by sharing best practices from a range of business models.

The biggest challenge....getting the right advice. There are so many platforms, technologies, and products out there. It is tough to get an expert who not only has holistic experience, is a problem solver but also understands the subject matter deeply.

A supplier can play a very important role in the change management effort. Their distance from the emotional and political forces at play allows them to keep their eyes on the true benefits to realize, A good supplier understands that Change Management is about the journey, not the destination.

Given the challenges and complexities, the CTO/CIO role is critical to lead organizations through the technical and emotion, bringing a vision and savvy change management

Today it is headless commerce, tomorrow there will be something new. Technology is never stagnant. Either the organization can progressively keep improving or wait until it becomes absolutely critical, or else disaster is about to strike in order to adopt new systems.

The CIO/CTO need to get the executive team and board of directors to understand the benefit of headless. Once he/she proves that it eases the backlog frustration they become champions rather than frustrated customers. One of the best metrics is to use backlog statistics from before & after.

The shift to Headless Architecture goes beyond the core IT team. It impacts the overall organization and ultimately, it "takes a village" to ensure success..

Headless commerce does not start with IT or ends with IT. IT starts with business and ends with business. Everyone in the organization should feel part of such changes.

Times have changed and today businesses are heavily dependent on technology. It does not pay to keep any distance with technology and focus on other aspects of business anymore.

THEME #10

Case Study -- you are in charge!

THEME SUMMARY

This theme utilized a case study scenario to identify how you would make the case for an investment in headless architecture, prepare the organization for implementation, as well as the metrics that should be measured.

  • The rationale for headless architecture revolves around the customer experience, functional enablement, flexibility, speed and cost savings.
  • Major technology investments such as headless architecture need to be championed by IT leaders AND the business leaders.
  • The organization must be prepared and requires a top down and bottoms up approach
  • Establishing and holding true to the right metrics is critical

SURVEYS

people | 12
please vote on the 3 metrics that you would prioritize to measure impact of headless architecture
Increased speed to market (time to get new solutions running)
75.00% 9 votes
Increased # client transactions
50.00% 6 votes
Unique visitors to your site
16.67% 2 votes
Visit conversions.
50.00% 6 votes
Margins
16.67% 2 votes
Cost to do business
25.00% 3 votes
Cost to develop new solutions
41.67% 5 votes
Customer loyalty - Net Promoter Scores (NPS), reviews
25.00% 3 votes
Employee satisfaction
0.00% 0 votes
other -- is there something missing?
0.00% 0 votes
Site functionality
0.00% 0 votes
 

Headless architecture boosts the user experience and support developers to be more flexible and move at the speed of business,

too often companies are about what do we have to do to be acceptable to customers. But customer expectations are changing and increasing, competition is improving. This is not about offering bells and whistles....its about moving at the speed of business and the customer

the biggest benefit of headless e-commerce is about creating a more seamless and consumer led experience. This means that businesses that operate consumer first and with a service mindset will make the most sense

The rationale begins with the L/T vision of the company and how headless architecture is a key enabler to delivered the strategy and desired customer experience

it's a question of long-run vision. If the business is thinking long-run about growing, and even acquiring competitors (unlike some short-run strategies for companies who want to be sold), then headless architecture is the right move that will allow the company to diversify and develop more niches.

how what will happen two years out if this is not done and compare and contrast that from a customer and competitor point of view, in essence, use scenario planning to show the future with it and without it

Customer experience is key and customers' expectations are rising

Consumers are looking for a consistent interaction with companies: whenever they want, whatever they want and however is most convenient at the time. This is the case to be made to the board...: it's about business enablement, not about IT.

the organization wants to create unique and consistent brand experience across all channels

Cost savings are a key benefit....both actual and the cost of not being prepared

IT cannot move at the speed of business, and that costs us opportunities that the competition is taking advantage of. We are at a disadvantage. Headless Architecture enables us to get back in the game.

HA is an investment in simplifying IT and reducing cost - though that is a longer term objective as moving to HA is costly. But necessary for larger enterprises

Headless architecture provides protection to mission critical back end systems while being able to drive the changes needed to meet front end consumer needs

let's not forget about the inherent advantage when it comes to cyber-risk. In headless you have the ability to rely on internal API's and such to feed the data. Within that architecture you can do a much better job of interrogating the data streams prior to them touching your back-end systems

with multiple front end capability you have the option to shut-off access points and re-route them to other options should they be compromised.

Preparing for the shift to headless architecture requires great change management and building organizational buy in

he proper employee engagement plan is necessary. WHY is this change important and necessary to the survival of the business? HOW will it impact your job? WHAT AND WHEN are you expected to execute change?

Investing in education prior to piloting is critical. Bring onsite a workshop where employees can learn about the technology and spend time bantering back-and-forth. The result will be a much more knowledgeable team with a common language to work through the issues.

Preparing for success requires having the right people on point and making the right system integrations between the front and back end.

organizations must define who's the best position to serve a link between the business and the IT before moving to HA.

good backend and systems integration capabilities are crucial because these are the foundations for everything that comes after (e.g. the front-end experience or experiences). If a company has good enough of an API that's easy to integrate into all sorts of UIs

Establishing clear metrics upfront requires a holistic and realistic expectation of what can be delivered

metrics must be kept simple. The most important part of measurement is to install the analytics tools from the first version itself so that you have enough data to measure over a long period of the lifecycle of Headless architecture implementation.

There are several optimization benefits to Headless commerce and each organization should evaluate how much they can gain from it both in terms of cost and time.

Multiple metrics should be established around customer, financial and implementation

Increased # client transactions: the ability to build better or specialised front ends can be justified by an increase in unique visitors to your site, converted into sales transactions.

Margins: the business case for headless revolves, amongst others, around the lower cost to create new front ends

While headless architecture is a major technical investment, the panel believes the best results will come when there is a true partnership between the business leaders and CTO demonstrating this ????

the partnership (of CTO and business units) is critical but it needs a different type of CTO with more collaborative integrative supportive approach with the BU, the GM of the BU needs to defines a clear detailed strategy and communicate effectively to the CTO

More often than not whenever a design project is on a technical platform that has high investment and a lot is at stake, the decision making on the design ideas gets taken over by technology department folks instead of Marketing or CX.

THEME #11

Wrapping up