Issue #31 - The bloated team vs the bloated digital stack
In This Issue: Vile Rumour & Gossip | Bloated Teams & Stacks | Project to Product
Recovery:
More activity in customer programs being started, new people in new roles (inevitably leading to new tech being bought), and finally new frustrations - slow hiring processes and recovery happening in little bits..
Trajectory:
Tech firms have proven they can’t lock it down forever - so SaaS is trying to win new clients again. The word is DMEXCO was not bad, and the eCommerce Expo in London was strong, so maybe, just maybe…
It is interesting that when times are good tech firms go all ICP-heavy, but when times are tricky they often revert to the “Trade Show” hammer, then regret it for a few years afterwards as sales blame them.
Vile Rumour & Gossip
Shopify POS
A very big subject for a truly disruptive piece of tech. Some strong opinions out there about the strength of this refreshed and improved app. Only a few months old, and some very happy customers. But also some very suspicious SI partners and competitors. Because POS isn’t simple – in-country financial certification in each territory and functions like stock availability make sure of that.
Put simply, Shopify is including a POS that others charge a great deal of money for. The gloves are on. The real losers (of course) will be the traditional players such as Aptos etc., who still hide behind their smoke and mirrors when it comes to mobile POS.
Self-deprecating SFCC
We read the stars at Dreamforce, and they (the rumours) suggest that Commerce Cloud is changing significantly over the next little while. Perhaps being subsumed into a single large platform which is overlaid with AI agents.
The way this is being messaged has spooked some who were in dialogue to buy SFCC. Frustrating, but probably not that surprising given how long Salesforce has owned Demandware and managed to “sort of” keep it in the game. We bet BigCommerce are licking their lips. The Canadians certainly are.
Customers are ready to move
There is a huge wave of senior digital leadership ready to move roles. Many are 5+ years in-post (they’re used to more like two), and whilst the current economic uncertainty has held them back for a couple of years, they are keen to move. We should know – they ask us whether they should all the time and the volume of that chatter is only increasing.
Why is that relevant? If nobody moves, nobody buys. It’s that simple. Every new CMO, CDO or COO will change things, buy SaaS and change agencies. Impact a gogo!
Bloated Teams & Stacks
Things are shrinking. We are picking up a trend across almost every sector and scale of business that there is a movement towards smaller teams and digital stacks.
Stacks first. Whether or not it’s achievable, we know that many merchants are deliberately trying to reduce the number of apps in their stack.
For example, as we see subscription platforms offer some loyalty, it’s an excuse to turn off other loyalty tooling. Some are living with less ‘best of breed’ and more ‘good enough’. Stand-alone checkouts are definitely under threat, and (oddly) some Customer Service platforms are edging into search/merch territory. BTW if you have yet to read the Adweek article on knowledge graphs you must.
Teams second. There is an untold story about implementation teams. A few months back at a dinner with two enterprise/composable brand owners I witnessed them discuss a team of 15 against a team of 80, to get the job done on time. It was one-way traffic.
The outcome was clear. Big SI’s sell those big teams, but these leaders were vehement that small teams always deliver more quickly and to a higher standard. This story is being repeated both with customers and with the SI’s we speak with. They’d rather have a multi-year relationship at a lower level than have a big gig where the customer is bruised in the end.
One of our community has a new role coming as a technical leader and told me last week that every single internal role is mirrored with at least one from an agency, doubling up on every workload. Surely this can’t make sense?
Project to Product
We held our first “scratch the surface” collective conversation a few weeks ago within our customer group. About 20 of us debated the challenges of the journey, where to even start, and how to get buy-in. I’ve shamelessly lifted and shifted a few queries from one member to explain where people are starting:
How do you create the definition of a product and how do you map product owners to products?
What size of team/squad is needed per product(s)
Does product owner make more sense when you are selling an ecommerce product as opposed to selling items through an ecommerce channel?
What is the alternative to product owners?
Should product owners own processes?
Who do product owners report to?
We ended up spending as much time talking about working practices and how to get agile teams to ‘finish’ as we did the product itself. But we do seem to be defining those product roles much more than before and getting them to be senior and accountable. Everyone wants to be a product owner it seems!
Buyingtime Dictionary
Frequently used (but never about you) phrases from Buyingtime Ltd.
Newspaper
/'nəwΩp(a)pər/
adjective
1. got a new issue every day
"Why is everyone wheeling chairs in for the stand-up? It's only 5 minutes in the diary," says the newbie.
Misery drips from the veteran's eyes. "Oh, sweet naivety." They hang their head. "Newspaper is here," they whisper.
