A new report by Gartner has identified some key trends in e-commerce. In the 2011 Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce released November 3, 2011, Gartner’s definition of the e-commerce market continues to expand beyond vendors who enable online sales for B2B and B2C commerce. It has now broadened e-commerce to include the whole customer experience during the entire sales process.
This broader definition aligns with our approach to Smarter Commerce that integrates and transforms how companies manage and adapt their buy, market, sell, and service processes putting the customer at the center of decisions and actions. Smarter Commerce helps companies engage with their customers – today’s digitally transformed and empowered customer – in new ways and optimize their operations accordingly. That is, the business processes related to the buying of goods and services, the selling of those goods and services, the marketing that occurs before they are sold, and the servicing of the customers after they’ve purchased them.
IBM is in the “leaders” quadrant of the report for our complete set of core e-commerce capabilities and our ability to execute globally. Over the last year, we have expanded these capabilities by adding technologies gained through its recent acquisitions of Coremetrics, Unica, and Sterling Commerce, including Web analytics, email campaign management and marketing, content management, configure/price/quote, distributed order management and fulfillment capabilities.
The report highlights that leaders embrace emerging technologies, such as social and mobile capabilities. We were recognized for our efforts in this area in the report, which stated, “The vendor has production clients who are using IBM WebSphere Commerce social capabilities to drive online sales via communities like Facebook.”
Other trends identified in the report included increased globalization, new industries that are expanding their e-commerce capabilities and more demand for e-commerce SaaS, hosted, and outsourced offerings.
Read the report, the 2011 Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce, Gene Alvarez, Chris Fletcher, Praveen Sengar, Sharon A. Mertz, November 3, 2011.
About the Magic Quadrant
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