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Running Head: The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group THE IMPACT OF DIGITIZATION ON THE E-COMMERCE INDUSTRY - THE WAREHOUSE GROUP

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 2 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 3 The organization's business model and an overview of the megatrend ...................................................... 3 Concepts and theory used ........................................................................................................................... 6 Findings and recommendations .................................................................................................................. 7 Strategic plan ............................................................................................................................................... 9 Implications for practice ............................................................................................................................ 10 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 11 Reference List ............................................................................................................................................ 12

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 4 Thanks to AI, a lot of things that were previously only feasible in science fiction are now realities. There will be significant changes in how humans and machines interact over the next few years as a result of the great development made in the field of artificial intelligence. These machines will have the ability to foresee problems and take charge on their own. Artificial intelligence-based digital twin simulations are already in use across a wide range of industry sectors. These technologies will create previously unimagined process prediction opportunities and enable new business models. When businesses want to make wise judgements about their products, services, and business plans, data is crucial. Digitalisation has made data collecting simpler than ever. The issue right now is that while the amount of data being collected is growing significantly, the majority of it will never be used. One of the key digital trends for the coming ten years will therefore be technologies that can really study, assess, and apply data (Guo & Chen, 2023). The market for data utilised in business analytics is already led by organisations like Salesforce, SAP, SAS, and Microsoft. This digital trend is anticipated to grow and become increasingly important for autonomous mill operations; thus, more technologies will follow. The Warehouse Group's tribes, such as customer strategy, customer engagement, and customer fulfilment, are focused on the customer journey and mission. There are squads made up of chapters within each tribe, and these have a variety of conventional skill sets. In his capacity as CDO, Anderson supports the e-commerce and digital chapters, which bring together experts in e-commerce, marketing,

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 5 technology, digital media, customisation, and SEO. The data tribe, the home tribe, and the customer fulfilment tribe all have her as a cosponsor. Three brands owned by The Warehouse Group—The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, and Noel Leeming—are being transferred from their own web platforms to the Salesforce commerce cloud. According to Anderson, since Salesforce serves as the main platform for the marketing and customer support functions at Warehouse Group, it makes sense to connect customer data across the organisation. The company have access to a plethora of data by developing a single customer view within a brand and then at the group level (Yang et al. 2023). The company may apply the learnings from one brand to improve the user experience on a different brand. The company noted on the NZX that it was essential to increase speed to market and productivity when it made the conversion to agile business model six months ago, and it was thoroughly inspected at the time. The business searched for instances of businesses that have "gone agile" around the world, speaking with European banks and telcos as well as Silicon Valley tech giants like Google and Netflix that, according to Anderson, "are born natively this way." While it was going through its own transition, it also spoke with Spark, a telco that had previously switched to the agile methodology. In the case of the Warehouse Group, digitalisation essentially refers to adjusting to shifting customer behaviour patterns. Businesses must concentrate on enhancing online shop accessibility and enhancing the sustainability of operations if they want to preserve a competitive advantage, particularly in light of

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 7 there are symbiotic relationships between the four distinct characteristics and that changes in one of the elements may affect changes in the other elements. Findings and recommendations A downturn in earnings, growing competition concerns, and shifting customer expectations have forced The Warehouse Group to restructure. The organization's operations were also convoluted and compartmentalised. To handle client engagement, it had three separate call centre teams and five different platforms, and there were silos identical to these in the marketing department (Capurro et al. 2023). In order to better serve clients, The Warehouse Group needed to cut expenses and avoid duplication of work. As a result, Salesforce became the focal point for all of its customer engagement efforts. The usage of Service Cloud to unify call centre teams and give team members access to customer support across all brands has been the focus of one of The Warehouse Group's initial transformation initiatives. Once complete, this integration will allow the company to allocate call centre resources to whichever brand most urgently needs them. Team member productivity will increase as a result, and client wait times will decrease. In conjunction with this connection, The Warehouse Group is making use of the Service Cloud to enable clients to get help through any channel of their choice. Agents have access to both Live Agent and social media messages through the Service Cloud Console, allowing them to manage numerous conversations

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 8 at once. They also have instant access to client data, which they may use to provide quicker, more specialised service. The Warehouse Group is currently developing an Einstein-powered chatbot that will answer frequently asked queries from clients, like "Where is my order?" Since 20 to 30 percent of call centre volume is currently accounted for by these enquiries, there is a significant amount of time that could be saved and used by the agents to serve other clients more quickly and personally where necessary. The Warehouse Group's marketing is also moving in the direction of digital, and to help with this, marketing for all brands has been consolidated under one roof (Košovská et al. 2022). Although there are still discrete teams for each brand, they are collaborating to rethink customer engagement. The previous year has been all about using Marketing Cloud to design and automate customer lifecycle communications, as well as the fundamentals. Including welcome journeys, post-purchase trips, and loyalty mailings, marketing has so far delivered a total of 85 automations across its brands. Communications are developed and distributed more efficiently with the help of Marketing Cloud. The conversion rate is double digits. The next stage of transformation for The Warehouse Group will involve using Commerce Cloud to boost marketing and merchandising efficiency. With the aid of Einstein Predictive Sort, the Warehouse and Warehouse Stationery brands are already utilising Commerce Cloud to deliver a seamless online experience and boost sales. Einstein Predictive Sort makes use of both customer data and artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver more customised product outcomes (Tudor, 2022). This strategy increases conversion while cutting down on the time clients must spend looking for what they want. When it introduces Commerce Cloud to the rest of its brands, the company wants to build on this success. The usage of Audience Studio to combine and activate client data is the second fascinating endeavour that is planned. The Warehouse Group is interested in learning more about its customers and how they interact with its brands both online and in-person. This information will be incorporated into Einstein Product Recommendations and used to customise marketing. The Warehouse Group's hierarchy, decision-making, and organisational structure have changed as a result of the adoption of the agile business model. This method involves expanding the scope of decision-making authority and empowering teams. It is stated that the formation of "cross-functional, autonomous agile teams" is implied by the agile structure. The hierarchical structure is substantially

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 10 Often, this transition seems overwhelming. Implementing change, much less a seismic upheaval, is never simple. The advantages of digitising processes and tools and aligning strategy to delivery, however, outweigh the effort needed: they increase productivity, quality, and cooperation; they speed up response times and time to market; they reduce risk; and, most importantly, they give you more flexibility to compete and creative in a constantly changing environment. In this part, a strategic plan to implement the recommendations of The Warehouse Group is explained below. Strategy Ways to adopt Objective Alternate option Risk rate Apply customer- centric approach It can be implemented by analysing the customer needs and feedback. To make more customer satisfied with the service of the company Customer service tools can also be adopted to apply this strategy. Medium Update business model This can be done with the help of new market trends and changing business vision. To keep business trends up to date and also get future opportunities. This can also be implemented by selecting effective team so they can wor5k on the required changes in the business model. High Apply change management This can be done by making proper change plan to adopt any organisational change To adopt any change within the organisation This can also be implemented through sharing the changes need to make with the team so they can adopt those within the organisation Medium

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 11 Implications for practice The significant changes in retailing brought on by digitalisation necessitate a combination of in-depth examinations of both how individual aspects are changing and how these changes fit into a bigger transformation. Our theory indicates that several aspects of digitalisation have reciprocal interactions, which call for awareness of their interconnection and ongoing evolution. Our paradigm offers a middle ground between overly strict and too lenient definitions of digitalisation in retailing. Too strict definitions run the risk of fading into obscurity over time, while too lenient definitions run the risk of being useless since they offer no direction at all. Our analysis suggests that such a concept of digitalisation in retailing is problematic given its extensive and ongoing evolution, despite the frequent calls from scholars for good and sound definitions that can be utilised over time and shared by everyone. We started with a general concept of digitalisation, which we defined as the incorporation of digital technologies into the retail industry. From there, we moved into a more detailed framework of the digitalisation of retailing at the retailer-consumer interface. Therefore, we believe that more investigations into the digitalisation of retailing can effectively use the proposed framework as a heuristic tool for additional study. Prior assessments of the economic effects of universal access to either wireless or broadband technology have been the primary focus of attempts to gauge the impact of ICT. Nevertheless, strategy discovered larger benefits connected to rising utilisation of digital technology and apps, rather than access alone, when building a thorough methodology to quantify the impact of digitisation (Kádárová, Lachvajderová & Sukopová, 2023). Additionally, we discovered that benefits extend beyond the purely economic to include the social and political arenas. Digitisation advances slow however consistent financial development, with economies in the most progressive phases of the process helping by 20% more than those in the beginning phases. It has been shown that digitisation brings down joblessness, improves personal satisfaction, and expands residents' admittance to public administrations. At long last, digitisation makes it feasible for states to work all the more straightforwardly and actually. Conclusion By examining how digitalisation of retailing affects four components of the retailer-consumer interface, this article has detailed some of the more comprehensive shifts that have taken place. Apart from that, the business model of The Warehouse Group has been explained in this study along with the megatrend of digitisation. On the other hand, a conceptual framework of the company has been portrayed in this

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 13 Reference List Journals Akram, U., Fülöp, M. T., Tiron-Tudor, A., Topor, D. I., & Căpușneanu, S. (2021). Impact of Digitalization on Customers’ Well-Being in the Pandemic Period: Challenges and Opportunities for the Retail Industry. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(14), 7533. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147533 Bikse, V., Lusena-Ezera, I., Rivza, P., & Rivza, B. (2021). The Development of Digital Transformation and Relevant Competencies for Employees in the Context of the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Latvia. Sustainability, 13(16), 9233. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169233 Capurro, R., Fiorentino, R., Galeotti, R. M., & Garzella, S. (2023). The Impact of Digitalization and Sustainability on Governance Structures and Corporate Communication: A Cross-Industry and Cross-Country Approach. Sustainability, 15(3), 2064. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032064 Guo, X., & Chen, X. (2023). The Impact of Digital Transformation on Manufacturing-Enterprise Innovation: Empirical Evidence from China. Sustainability, 15(4), 3124. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043124 Kádárová, J., Lachvajderová, L., & Sukopová, D. (2023). Impact of Digitalization on SME Performance of the EU27: Panel Data Analysis. Sustainability, 15(13), 9973. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15139973 Košovská, I., Hallova, M., Váryová, I., Šilerová, E., Hennyeyová, K., & Cihelka, P. (2022). The Digital Economy in the Context of Digital Transformation and Their Impact on the Electronification of Accounting Processes in the Slovak Republic. AGRIS on-Line Papers in Economics and Informatics, 14(4), 53-65. https://doi.org/10.7160/aol.2022.140405 Saptaputra, E., Basiroen, V. J., & Septian, D. E. (2021). Digitalization of Small Batik Industry: UI/UX design to support Batik Lasem E Commerce. IOP Conference Series.Earth and Environmental Science, 794(1) https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/794/1/012121 Tudor, C. (2022). Integrated Framework to Assess the Extent of the Pandemic Impact on the Size and Structure of the E-Commerce Retail Sales Sector and Forecast Retail Trade E-Commerce. Electronics, 11(19), 3194. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11193194

The Impact of Digitization on The E-Commerce Industry - The Warehouse Group 14 Wang, Y., Jiang, S., Wu, C., Cai, X., & Wang, F. (2022). Impact of the Global Megatrends, COVID-19, and Digital Economy on Professional Career Management Transformation in Asian Countries. Sustainability, 14(17), 10981. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710981 Yang, G., Wang, F., Deng, F., & Xiang, X. (2023). Impact of Digital Transformation on Enterprise Carbon Intensity: The Moderating Role of Digital Information Resources. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(3), 2178. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032178