For New Technology Implementations: In-House or Vendor?

The eternal dance of technology and commerce heightens the intimacy of their dependency. And so while ecommerce becomes more powerful in its functionality, more creative in its possibilities, and greater in its reach of customers and potential customers, the complexity of the technology that is used to carry out these solutions also increases.

In other words, it is becoming more complex to carry out new technology implementations for ecommerce. And this is leading to a rising number of brands and retailers that are turning towards vendors for help.

In fact, a study by the Internet Retailer’s Top 1,000 found that 66% of retailers utilize the professional services of a vendor for their ecommerce operations. The remaining smaller slice of 34% manage their ecommerce platform in-house.

Handling each and every aspect of ecommerce operations is becoming more and more of a challenge, taking up more and more time. And so brands and retailers are increasingly seeing the benefits of working with tech vendors.

Yet not all companies are using vendors for the same reason. So what are the main reasons for using a vendor?

• Almost 8-in-10 are using the services of a vendor to implement personalization.
• For 70% of brands and retailers, they hire a vendor because they don’t have the expertise.
• For 64% of brands and retailers, they hired a vendor for their specialization capabilities in their field.
• And for 48% of brands and retailers, they believe that vendors are faster at launching a project.

And with tech vendors specializing in ecommerce solutions, they hold a slate of professional services spanning web design to marketing and optimization that can be used to boost and optimize digital experiences for brands and retailers.

Moving forward

Even before the pandemic began to plague the world, 81% of retailers were set to increase their spending on ecommerce technology. And then beginning in March, all forecasts and expectations were thrown out of the window, as every business redoubled their focus and strategy on digital experiences.

If 81% of retailers expected to boost their ecommerce tech spending, then the other 19% have already joined the majority out of necessity rather than preference.

PS: UV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud vendors. Contact us to see how we can work together.