13th “Online Handel“: E-Commerce is coming of age?

And that it is still far away from being grown up, as the title of the event ”Coming Of Age” already indicated. The insight reports of the speakers rather gave the impression of a young teenager trying to find himself. And this is a good thing, as only the companies who dare to try out new trends, to evolve and are also ready to fail, will be sustainably successful in E-Commerce.

Digitization, Conversational Commerce, Bots – also the current trends and buzzwords show how fast the e-commerce world is evolving and how important it is to keep the pace. Several best-practice presentations provided ways on how online business can work in the digital age of Amazon, eBay and Zalando and what really matters.

While the study by the ECC about success factors in E-Commerce dealt in a theoretical way with the needs of consumers, Andrea Skersies provided insights into the practical reality at Zooplus. With a consequent focus on customer loyalty Zooplus is continually optimizing their services and webshop and even managed to become the overall winner of the German Award for Online Retail 2017 (“Deutscher Online Handel Award”). In addition, Kornelia Telkes and Eszter Kerdö from KALA Fashion presented impressingly how Customer Experience can be arised even without a real shop counter.

The second day of the congress convinced by a different perspective on digitization: In several workshops the participants developed challenges and possible solutions for the required organizational development. What is Digital Leadership? How does Business Agility work? How can Human Resources Management and recruiting be practiced in our digital age?

A fitting finish to the event was Jürgen Bock from Otto Group, who identified company culture as an underestimated factor of success for digital transformation.

#ONH17