Over the years I've had a chance to work a ton of eCommerce Projects and it never seems to amaze me, Clients are not ready for their next eCommerce move. Do they know they need to enter the eCommerce world? The answer is Yes!, But How ? -is the question to be answered. It does not matter the eCommerce Platform that you are entering the market with, however what does matter is that you as a company have an end goal in mind.

Very often, clients I've had a chance to work with are anxious to bring their full view of the omnichannel experience to their customers all at once, and even though I understand the urgency to get products to the market, the most successful implementations that I've seen are those that are incremental in nature. The reason I use the word "in nature" because not all of the projects I've worked been based on Scrum or Agile principles, where the goal is that incremental approach. Many of the organizations function as an hybrid, bouncing between waterfall and agile ( wagile ).

As the establishment of different methodologies evolve before their project kicks off, these organizations are busy doing their day to days, business as usual, following up on customer request, supporting past projects that really never end, and overlooking one of their most coveted assets, eCommerce Customer Data. Whether you call it the 360 degree view of the customer or the Customer's Golden Record, finding a short and/or long term solution to managing customer data, ranks as one of the top challenges I've been presented with, in 95% of the projects I've worked within the last 10 years.

Therefore, understanding and establishing a System of Record or Source of Truth for your customer's data, is key to insuring your eCommerce project is ready to start. Is this totally conclusive? No, however its highly important, and customer data will continue to create hurdles forsome foreseeable time to come, as organizations continue their search for aggregate enterprise solutions.