At the Coalface Podcast - eCommerce Tech & Trends

In this episode, Jason guests on the Better Automation Podcast This is taken from E06 of the Podcast Jason discusses eCommerce/Omnichannel integration and automation in depth in this deep dive interview!

Ashwin is the Founder & CEO of CustomFit.ai - https://www.customfit.ai CustomFit.ai is a SaaS, B2B Focused Experience & Hyper-Personalisation Platform CustomFit.ai differs from B2C eCommerce personalisation platforms in that it focuses primarily on content and customer journey personalisation vs search, merch & product recommendation personalisation. CustomFit.ai tracks all website interactions from the first landing page to detect the optimal path to engagement for that individual visitor/customer. CustomFit.ai also integrates with CDP & Marketing Automation platforms for further marketing segmentation and engagement. In this episode, Jason and Ashwin discuss the key differences between B2C and B2B digital experience personalisation and how B2B businesses can level up their customer experience through all stages of the customer journey lifecycle.

Rathna is the Founder & CEO of FlavorCloud - https://flavorcloud.com FlavorCloud is a Global, SaaS, Turn-Key Cross-Border Logistics & Shipping Platform FlavorCloud allows any eCommerce website to access global shipping options through a single, turn key integration FlavorCloud helps eCommerce merchants to easily offer shipping to almost any country in the world, at the best possible price FlavorCloud makes cross-border shipping as easy as shipping across town and it helps eliminate surprises for customers by ensuring that all taxes and duties are fully pre-paid at point of purchase In this episode, Jason and Rathna discuss the evolution of eCommerce, the challenges of cross-border commerce and how merchants can turn these challenges into strategic differentiators for their brands

Andy is the Co-Founder & CEO of Storyhub - https://www.storyhub.ai Storyhub is an 'in-beta' SaaS eCommerce CX intelligence and insights platform that turns data into stories that merchants can easily understand and then act on, in near real time Storyhub essentially helps merchants find, understand and nurture their biggest fans Storyhub gathers customer & brand data from merchant operational systems (eg eCommerce, helpdesk, shipping, returns, reviews, live chat platforms etc) and other data sources , then using AI & NLP weaves it all together into a social timeline like storyboard of insights that tell unique, actionable, internal stories and then creates action points that allow brands to keep their finger on the pulse of their customers Storyhub brings all e-commerce and CX data together, to find the hidden issues behind bad experiences - in one place This storytelling acts much like a human data scientist would but the process is 100% automated In this episode, Jason and Andy discuss the importance of deep customer understanding, respect and appreciation as the catalysts for customer stickiness and brand loyalty

Eric is the Founder & CEO of ClikDone - https://www.clikdone.com ClikDone is a new SaaS eCommerce platform in pre-release beta ClikDone is an eCommerce platform expressly engineered for busy service based businesses that need more than traditional eCommerce functionality ClikDone supports quote based sales, as well as sales based on combinations of products and services. ClikDone also offers configurators and calculators so customers can easily estimate the cost of their jobs by entering simple details online In this episode, Jason and Eric discuss how complex service based businesses differ significantly from product based businesses and how typical product focused eCommerce platforms don't work well in these environments

Daniel is the GM - Shopify at Rewind - https://rewind.com Rewind is a data backup and restore platform for SaaS platforms Many people don't know that most SaaS platforms (including Shopify, BigCommerce etc) don't routinely back up your data to make it available to you in any meaningful way SaaS platforms DO back up your data in case THEY make a mistake and need to recover the data If YOU make a mistake with your data and it gets corrupted or deleted in error, then you are pretty much on your own Basically, every business needs a BCP - Business Continuity Plan - and backing up your data in a routine, automated way should be a big part of any good BCP In this episode, Jason and Dan discuss the importance of a sound data back up and disaster recovery (DR) plan for your SaaS platforms

Jason recently featured on the Ecomonics Podcast: On Apple On YouTube Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:32 Living off-grid 04:09 Long-term impact of covid in the industry 06:23 Importance of the fundamental foundations of a business 09:18 The metaverse  28:59 Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and it’s environmental impact   38:35 Advantange of retail today 01:04:49 Parting wisdom and how to reach out to Jason In this episode Jason talks all things eCommerce, retail and the Metaverse Jason also shares his thoughts on living off-grid and where the world is headed more generally This is a fascinating chat and dives deep in areas Jason hasn't talked a lot about before

Fern is the COO of Omnivore - https://www.omnivore.com.au Omnivore is a SaaS based, omnichannel product listing, data feed and integration platform Omnivore has out of the box, pre-built connectors for all major eCommerce platforms, marketplaces, social & ad platforms and shopping comparison websites Omnivore makes it easy for merchants to list their products on many different digital sales and marketing channels simultaneously and then integrate orders from transactional channels back into a core eCommerce platform or ERP for fulfilment In this episode, Jason and Fern discuss the importance of a well planned omnichannel strategy and how merchants can onboard new, popular channels quickly, easily and relatively cheaply

Jason Recently Spoke at the DTCX3 APAC Virtual Conference Here is his track from the conference where he discusses DTC strategies for B2B brands Many B2B brands want to establish DTC routes to market but have no idea where to start or how to measure success This talk covers all the basics of the why and how for you to sink your teeth into

Ido is the Founder & COO of Revuze - https://www.revuze.it Revuze have developed a unique, proprietary, AI driven, CPG product sentiment and insights engine called Sentimate - https://sentimate.com Sentimate is a consumer insights SaaS platform that claims: "Get instant and free access to 1 billion consumer product insights — indexed, analyzed, and ready to be used for your market research." Sentimate helps global CPG brands track the consumer sentiment around their products in near real time It does this by capturing and unifying User Generated Content data (primarily customer/user reviews) across thousands of major websites and marketplaces worldwide In this episode, Jason and Ido discuss the importance of monitoring and acting on customer sentiment for localised/regionalised product enhancement, marketing and New Product Development (NPD)

Yair Miron is the Founder & CEO of Rise.ai - https://rise.ai Rise.ai is a complete gift card, store credit, loyalty and associated customer experience SaaS platform & app originally built exclusively for Shopify Site builder platform Wix acquired Rise in May of 2021 and Rise technology will soon be coming to Wix and other platforms Rise also integrates with other popular apps and platforms such as Klaviyo, BOLD Apps and Loop Returns for a more seamless, end to end customer experience In this episode, Jason and Yair discuss how to identify market gaps, build a popular Shopify app from scratch and how merchants should build out a unique and differentiated customer experience despite heavy competition

Chris Jarvis is the Founder of uReturn - https://ureturn.ca uReturn is a new, Canadian startup SaaS platform designed to efficiently automate and manage the returns process for (primarily) eCommerce and Omnichannel merchants You can think of uReturn a bit like a reverse logistics order management system The entire goal of uReturns is to make returned, resalable items available to sales channels as fast as realistically possible via smart routing and returns logic uReturns goes way beyond traditional returns UX platforms and dramatically enhances the experience for both merchant and customer In this episode, Jason and Chris discuss how the reverse logistics industry is badly broken and how uReturn intends to help fix it

Tom Coburn is the Co-Founder & CEO of Jebbit - https://www.jebbit.com Jebbit is a 'Quiz Commerce' SaaS platform for eCommerce Jebbit allows merchants to create interactive quizzes and gamification experiences that gather zero/first party customer product preference data to create a hyper personalised, guided shopping experience Jebbit allows merchants to recommend the right products, to the right customers, at the right time, in the moment based on product preferences the customer provides in real time In this episode, Jason and Tom discuss how and why merchants can and should gather detailed customer preference data in a fun, customer friendly way and then use that data to personalise the customer journey now and into the future

James Taylor is the Founder & CEO of Particular Audience - https://particularaudience.com Particular Audience is a dynamic eCommerce website personalisation platform for commerce Particular audience also helps merchants personalise the customer experience across other digital platforms and services via native integrations with 3rd party marketing tools Particular Audience is a true 'Search & Merch' platform, personalising the customer experience across site search, category merchandising, product recommendations and content In this episode, Jason and James discuss how important it is to personalise the experience for each and every customer if they are to feel valued, appreciated and ultimately brand loyal

Mike Angell is a Co-Founder & CTO of Fractal - https://www.fractal.is Fractal is a new Gaming NFT Marketplace Mike's well known Fractal co-founders are: Justin Kan (co-founder of Twitch), David Wurtz (founder, Charm.io) and Robin Chan (Founder & GP, Goat Capital) Mike is a legend in the eCommerce space and this is his 2nd time guesting on the Pod (he was also on E81) - he is our first ever repeat guest Fractal co-founder David Wurtz was also a previous guest on E96 of the Pod In this episode, Jason and Mike discuss how Fractal came to be, how he got involved and how he thinks Web3 will dramatically impact commerce as we know it

Subbu is the Founder & CEO of Zycada - https://www.zycada.com Zycada is SaaS based website performance optimisation platform Zycada uses completely unique and proprietary technology to help accelerate websites by fully caching them all around the world, ensuring the content is being rendered from close to the site visitor Zycada differs from traditional CDN's in that it even caches dynamic content and data ensuring performance is not compromised by having to fetch this dynamic data in real time In this episode, Jason and Subbu discuss the root causes of site performance issues and how businesses can solve for them for better web rankings, customer experience and ultimately sales and profit

Sam is the Founder of GiveTree - https://www.givetree.io GiveTree is a coming (launch planned for April 2022) social good and fundraising NFT marketplace platform combined with a social good focused Metaverse platform Sam had a vision to combine charitable fund raising and NFT's - GiveTree is the fruit of that vision Sam went from knowing almost nothing about NFT's to building a HUGE Discord community around his project in a matter of weeks - such is the power of the Web3 In this episode, Jason and Sam discuss all things Social Good/Impact, Web3, NFT's, how Discord plays an essential part of most successful Web3 projects, how Crypto underpins Web3 transactions and how no one really knows how Web3 will turn out yet This is the first of many episodes dedicated to Web3 and key players in the space

Peter is the APAC Sales Director for impact.com - https://impact.com impact.com is a US-based SaaS partnership management platform with 14 offices across the world including 2 in Australia impact.com helps technology vendors, merchants and agencies manage all types of partnerships and collaborations across the entire partnership lifecycle impact.com makes the creation and logistics of partnerships seamless, easy and collaborative - from Discovery to Recruitment, Contracts & Payments, Engagement, Optimisation, Analytics and beyond In this episode, Jason and Peter talk about how partnerships are the new growth hacking and how the top leaders in eCommerce don't go it alone - they do it in close collaboration with key partners that bring unique and valuable synergies to the table for mutual benefit

Sara is the CMO of Brightpearl - https://www.brightpearl.com Brightpearl is a UK based, end to end SaaS omnichannel operations platform for merchants Brightpearl encompasses IMS, OMS, WMS, POS, CRM, Demand Planning, Financial and Analytics modules You can think of Brightpearl as a SaaS ERP in steroids, designed for mid-size+ retailers In this episode, Jason and Sara talk about the state of retail and how brands can leverage modern omnichannel tech like Brightpearl to ease all facets of their business operations*This episode was recorded before the announcement in late December 2021 that Brightpearl was to be acquired by Sage

Karen is the Founder & CEO of ShipperHQ and WebShopApps Karen is an iconic tech pioneer in the eCommerce space, helping merchants improve eCommerce experiences for their customers since 2008 ShipperHQ is a SaaS platform that helps manage highly complex shipping rules, custom logic and calculations on eCommerce sites ShipperHQ is based in Austin, Texas and has out of the box integrations with all popular eCommerce platforms In this episode, Jason and Karen take a stroll down memory lane and discuss what it takes to build ground breaking eCommerce tech in a highly competitive industry while creating an environment where teams can do their best work