On the latest episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives, host Kailin Noivo is joined by Lisa Camm, Head of Digital Transformation at Fortnum & Mason, to discuss the challenges of digital transformation and the importance of addressing production-level bugs efficiently.
Discover how Fortnum and Mason leverages AI while maintaining a personal touch with their customers, and the processes and challenges of migration and modernization of the tech stack at legacy companies.
Join them as they cover touchpoints such as the critical role of technology in operations and strategic thinking at organizations, challenges of migration and modernization of the tech stack at legacy companies, the role of AI in enhancing the customer journey, and strategies for dealing with production-level bugs.Using AI to Supercharge Business Growth
AI has been the trend of the year and will likely continue to be part of every conversation in the coming years.
If you were to log on to LinkedIn, you’d be greeted by an array of posts about how it’s changing the landscape of the working world and how it’s going to open up new opportunities for us. Whether or not you agree with this is up to you, but we can’t deny the impact of its existence.
Some see AI as a shallow buzzword, whilst others choose to see it as a revolutionary innovation that is not to be taken lightly. In the world of eCommerce, it tends to be the latter. AI is constantly being used to take the eCommerce industry to take businesses to the next level, and no one knows this more than our latest podcast guest, Lisa Camm.
Leveraging AI for eCommerce Growth
Lisa explains how her company uses different AI tools like Chat GPT and analytic platforms to recommend relevant products to customers and facilitate an enhanced customer experience. However, don’t be fooled as there are still a few challenges. One of which is bringing AI to the customer space; the risk of losing out on human interface with the customer. Hence, AI needs to be used selectively to enhance customer experience.
The Challenges of Modernizing a Legacy Tech Stack
This has been a huge challenge in the modernization of Fortnum and Mason’s tech stack. As a legacy company that has built a huge reputation with their customers for having personal connection and human touch, integrating new technologies is difficult but necessary.
To combat this challenge, the team approached the modernization in phases, redesigning the foundations so that the business would not be affected by the technology changes.
Lisa explains that, from a business perspective, it almost seems that they are staying stagnant, but if you observe their technology, there has been a complete shift in functionality, which has allowed them to make it much easier to deliver their customers’ needs.
Identifying and Addressing Technical Issues and Bugs
Lisa explains how catching production-level bugs is spread across all stakeholders. For instance, a customer may point out that Apple Pay is not working for people within the organization who notice glitches on the website or the purchase process. All this information gets fed back to the IT department for real-time corrections. In fact, she explains how she obsesses over the checkout funnel to see where the highest drop-offs happen, which indicates a problem area.
What can fellow eCommerce businesses learn from this? Well, we should always be vigilant and prepared for any technical issues that may come our way, because you never know. As great as technology is, it can sometimes be unpredictable, and the problems we come across – especially those that affect the customer experience – can be crushed and sorted if we keep an eye out.
When to Look for Technical Issues
In fact, if sales fall short of the weekly target, the first area Lisa looks at is identifying if there have been any technical issues. From that information, the next step is determining how big the problem is and how many customers it has impacted.
Lisa explains that sometimes it’s hard to prioritize because of the noise from customer-facing verticals that distracts the team from understanding the issue’s impact.
The Unknown Impact of Bugs & Issues
We simply do not always know the impact of technical bugs and issues until after it’s happened. It’s why strategic planning is so vital to understanding them, as it helps us draw upon issues in the past that we can learn from and, with any luck, fix them in the current issues.
Listen to the Full Episode Below!
Tune in to the episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives with Lisa Camm to find out more about AI and technical issues in the eCommerce world:
👉 Apple: https://bit.ly/46wxGva
👉 Spotify: https://bit.ly/3rM0CQY
Lisa is a highly strategic Project Manager, committed to helping IT departments maximize their contribution to the business’s success. She is passionate about business and technology integration, customer engagement, retail technology, and innovation. Lisa previously had a five year stint at Burberry and Harvey Nichols, where she led Harvey Nichols’ digital roadmap for Retail and Hospitality and other strategic projects.
