Its been a labor of love, but its finally here. Yes, I’ve actually published The ROI Of Agile Commerce.

 

One of the most common themes we hear from firms looking to invest in pushing their digital agenda forwards is “show me the money.” It's not that eBusiness professionals don’t believe us when we say that investing in a customer-centric, flexible future vision is a good thing. In fact, most of the time they are absolutely on board and nod sagely, frowning while we describe this bright and shiny vision. They then scratch their heads and ask that trickiest of questions, “how?”

 

The problem comes more in the fact that any investment in agile commerce must be balanced against all the other investments an organization is considering. Opening new stores, expanding into new countries, product development, acquisitions, rebranding. None of these things go away, and no firm is ever in a position to stop all other activity for a couple of years while they implement a multichannel overhaul.

 

We’ve done a lot of research over the last few months to help those frowning, head-scratching eBusiness professionals answer three key questions:

 

  • How big does the investment need to be? Firms are often reluctant to share the gory details of budgets, but we’ve uncovered some examples of the level of investment that leading multichannel firms have been making.
  • Where do the benefits come from? Ultimately, an agile commerce strategy must result in an improved bottom line. But there are a range of places such a result can come from: increased revenues, improved profitability, reduced operating costs, and others. In this report, we share some examples of firms that have realized very tangible benefits.
  • How can I convince my senior stakeholders to invest? The all-important question. We also take a look at how agile commerce business cases are built and look at how to enumerate the benefits in a way that will help you gain traction.

I would love to create a magic template that every eBusiness professional can fill in to create the perfect business case, but clearly that’s never going to happen. But what I can do is share some of the battle scars from agile commerce trailblazers and hopefully provide a framework for more firms to follow in their footsteps.

 

We will continue to build the agile commerce playbook and I look forward to seeing some of you at Forrester’s eBusiness Forum in November. I’d love to discuss this further over a drink to celebrate your success in securing your agile commerce investment!