Enterprise Times met with Bryan Mahoney, Co-founder and CEO at Chord Commerce. The discussions easily flowed about brands, content, development and technology trends relating to the digital commerce. Chord’s commerce-as-a-service software offers scalable headless tech software, together with data management, insights, and governance tools. Bryan says Chord helps sophisticated brands do customer experience, right. He believes it’s time for a better approach to commerce built by operators to empower the next wave of brands.
Bryan discussed his six thoughts to succeed in digital commerce
- For any business, particularly for digitally native brands, product content is the most important content you have to manage. It is a business’s moral responsibility to manage that content in the best-in-class tool. This is to enable organisations to continue shape it and syndicate that content wherever customers are.
Bryan Mahoney, Co-founder and CEO at Chord Commerce - The future of commerce is that it will be everywhere. Organisations need to be nimble to take advantage of those opportunities that develop in their sector. Having the ability to be visible to your target audiences is going to be really important for brands.
- This issue may be more relevant for US based brands. There is a reckoning coming for businesses, in terms of the way that data is collected and used. Organisations need to embrace a privacy-first approach to collecting data. Chord Commerce has built privacy-first tools that lets brands get the most out of first party data. However teaching organisations how to achieve this will become an issue that businesses will need to manage.
- Performance has occasionally been an afterthought for some organisations. Google has confirmed that they will take speed into consideration for page rankings. Brands will be penalised for slow page loading. As a result, businesses no longer have the option to trade-off between richer features at the expense of the performance. This will require a fundamental shift in how digital front-ends or commerce experiences are ultimately built.
- As previously mentioned, commerce is everywhere. This means borders – state and international borders are being eroded. Some US companies are still reluctant to sell outside the US. However, many brands are achieving international sales in a more innovative way. They are international from day one. Because customers are everywhere, businesses have to ‘show up’ and meet them, wherever customers are located.
- Brand must also focus on profitability. Over the last few years, some businesses have prioritised growth over profitability. However, this relationship is not sustainable or builds better brands. Margins have not always been important for some digital native direct to consumer brands. Businesses need to create products that consumers want to buy. That allows them to create a business that is sustainable. Enterprises need to focus on margin and products, and growing brands. This can only be achieved in a way that is rooted in business fundamentals.
