How to Prepare Your Business for Ecommerce Success
A step-by-step guide to organizing your team, goals, and roadmap for a painless digital transformation
Time to read: 9 minutes
Regional Success Architect Senior Director
Your digital storefront isn’t the only thing that changes with ecommerce. When you create, uplevel, or extend your digital offering, the organizational structure of your business must change along with it (they don’t call it “digital transformation” for nothin’).
But all that change pays off — in the form of improved operational efficiency, faster time to market, and the ability to meet customer expectations. In fact, digitally mature companies are about three times more likely to report annual net revenue growth and net profit margins significantly above their industry average.
In the midst of all the change, this guide will walk you through important considerations and steps to help reorganize your teams for commerce success.
Step 1: Assess how your business operates
Every brand is unique — so each one will have a different way of operating with ecommerce. Smaller ecommerce startups might have one team deciding storefront guidelines for the entire brand, while large companies may implement commerce initiatives that look and feel entirely different across each geography or line of business.
When evaluating your organization for ecommerce success, it’s best to first take a step back and look at how your business is currently structured — and how you envision its structure in the future.
First, consider how many brands you have and whether you operate in multiple geographies. It’s also important to identify your growth strategy (such as international aspirations) and any specific long-term goals that should be factored into your roadmap.
These considerations will help you determine which organizational model will work best for your business. In our research, brands typically fall into one of four organizational categories. Choose the category that best describes your business today (or where you want it to be in the future) to explore different considerations as you organize your teams for success: