Catch up with Patrick Deloy, Isobar Commerce Founder & Co-Managing Director

Isobar launched the Global Isobar Commerce Practice today, so we caught up with Isobar Commerce Co-Founder & Managing Director, Patrick Deloy, to get insight into e-commerce disrupters this year, opportunities for businesses and brands to reinvent the last mile, and more. Read the full interview below.

Hi Patrick, we’re half way through 2017. In your view, what has been the key e-commerce disrupter so far this year?

There is not really a single big innovation that is disrupting the e-commerce industry in this first half of the year. We are rather talking about many different initiatives that play out, sometimes in competition with each other, and competitive forces including customer acceptance will show how successful these are.

For example, in China, WeChat Mini Programs that are 3rd-party applications that reside completely within WeChat shows potential, but the long-term viability of this model remains to be seen due to the limited functionality attributed to the minimal amount of storage it can use. I believe that it’s the many new initiatives and innovations which will change the course of e-commerce over time, rather than a singular disrupter.

Reinventing the last mile of the customer journey is key for businesses and brands. What’s the biggest opportunity for brands here?

Shortening the checkout processes is key and is something we recommend to brands. One trend that we see now is the prevalence of a “buy now” button on category pages — saving the users an added extra step, which is going to the product display page. Another trend is “partial checkout” whereby users can select which products within their cart page to checkout with first, while the rest of the products they’ve selected remains in the cart thereby facilitating a faster transaction when they do decide to checkout with those products.

Isobar Commerce has key technology partners across the globe. How important is it for partners to continue to innovate their platforms and offerings, to enable businesses and brands to stay relevant?

I believe there are two e-commerce solutions in the technology space that have proven successful and we will see these in the coming years.

Firstly, it makes a lot of sense for technology vendors who create applications and technology solutions, to have platform development and additional services handled by implementation partners. This is what has made Magento, Salesforce and others so successful as it helps to spread the word about the technology, while creating real solution advocates leading to more frequent recommendations of these platforms to clients. This is also what enables both the implementation partners and their clients to provide a wealth of feedback to improve the platform in a reiterative cycle.

Secondly, while the e-commerce space is expanding, there is naturally more space for additional technology providers who provide very specific platforms and services, such as the e-commerce frontend, omnichannel order management system, customer engagement platform, etc. This can lead to an extensive ecosystem that becomes confusing for customers.

The key for clients is to work with an implementation partner that knows the ecosystem well and can advise on the best combination of multiple 3rd-party services which will integrate into a seamless e-commerce experience and customer journey.