Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bob Dufour, President of Fusion (Part 6)

Bob Dufour: Another one that we see a lot is the ability to easily connect partners. I think there’s a technical integration opportunity out there for showing how people can connect. Those are all tied together. Having the products in this ancillary space, having the product suppliers, being digitally enabled, and having technical connections that can be universally plugged in or unplugged. That will make all those transactions work a little bit easier.

There are two other things that I think are opportunities. One of them is cross-device. What we’re seeing so much now is that people start on online or mobile, go to a call center, and then come back. It is important to be able to manage those transactions from a single point of view, organize that, and say, “I know what you did online. When I see you on the mobile device, I recognize you and I can serve up something that’s reflective of what you did versus I don’t know who you are. I’m starting over.” If I end up in a call center, I would want the agent to be able to understand that I’ve gone through that journey. I’ve already got a price. I just want to ask a few more questions. More and more consumers are going from one device to another.

The final one that I would say is being able to know and help distributors what to sell when. If I just use the use-case of tourism, a lot of the airlines and online travel agencies have gotten really good at the experience and the sales opportunity in an online environment. That seems to be morphing into a mobile environment although the experience is yet to catch up.

Then you’ve got all of these stuff that occurs. I’ll go back to that family from Chicago. They’ve gone to the airline website and they’ve bought the ticket. Now, there’s three or four months in between. A family is thinking about certain things and business person is thinking about different things. What is it that they’re thinking? At what time and what can I offer them?

Another use case of that would be entertainment. I’m going to a broadway show but I’ve got a family. I think about transportation, dinner tickets, and baby sitters. I’ve got all of this stuff but I’m thinking about those things at different points. I’m probably not thinking about parking as soon as I bought the show tickets but maybe I’m thinking about, “I got to get a babysitter before I finalize this.”

This segment is part 6 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bob Dufour, President of Fusion
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