Shift to digital creates revenue rewards

Asia-Pacific commerce trends: shift to digital creates revenue rewards

• A 5% shift in customer purchases to digital channels generates a 3.5% boost to revenue growth

26 February 2018: A new Deloitte Access Economics report for Sitecore, the global leader in experience management software, brings fresh evidence on commerce trends in Asia-Pacific. The Asia-Pacific commerce report quantifies the benefits of digital business within the Asia-Pacific region showing that a 5% shift in customer purchases to digital channels generates a 3.5% boost to revenue growth.

The Asia-Pacific commerce report is based on a survey of over 1,000 businesses in the Asia-Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, India and Singapore.

The report’s key findings are:
• The use of digital channels to support sales activities is expected to grow, businesses are aiming for a 5% shift in channels from traditional to underpin their customer and growth strategies.
• Businesses face an emerging risk of fragmentation in sales channels, with many having 8 channels for sales. This fragmentation has an impact on overall customer experience and operating costs.
• Digital helps businesses keep up with competitors (cited by 17% of businesses) and drive sales (10%), but more importantly they recognise the impact of the online experience on the overall customer experiences (76% citing this as a priority). Businesses have recognised the importance of the end-to-end personalised customer journey and using digital channels to also build engagement and brand.

Deloitte Access Economics partner, and the report’s principal author, John O’Mahony, said: “Digital strategies can’t be thought of as simply online sales to reduce costs. Consumers want better experiences across multiple channels.
Businesses in the Asia-Pacific region are aware of just how pivotal having a focus on the customer journey is, with over 80% of those we surveyed agreeing that continual engagement is important.”

Deloitte NZ Consulting partner, Grant Frear, said: “Online competition has highlighted the need for businesses to improve the customer experience across physical and digital channels. A focus on the end-to-end ecommerce journey using personalised content ensures businesses can make the most of each interaction and strengthen customer loyalty.”

While there are many digital channels available, websites and email remain the centrepiece of most digital strategies because of their effectiveness in providing information to and communicating with customers. 72% of surveyed businesses in the Asia-Pacific region noted that a website was very important to their business operations, a much higher proportion than other traditional or digital channels.

“This reinforces that ecommerce needs to be considered as more than just an online shopping cart,” said Anthony Chan, Sitecore Head of Strategic Products for Greater Asia. “The technology that powers digital commerce needs to help businesses manage the end-to-end customer experience. It’s not just about the transaction—it’s about the overall customer experience, online and offline. And businesses need digital marketing technology that supports that.”

The report identified three key actions for businesses to focus on including:
1. Embrace the multi-channel customer journey and ensure a consistent experience across physical and digital channels
2. Invest in an integrated and consistent system that can bring customer data together from multiple sources while increasing efficiencies
3. Analyse customer data and increase the scope of personalised communication with customers.

The Asia-Pacific commerce report can be downloaded or read here.

ENDS

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