Creating great customer experience (CX) is known to be one the most powerful ways to boost your digital sales these days. However, this time I will not write about the frontline of customer experience directly, but the importance of smooth and efficient operations and processes on the background.
The challenge comes often especially when a B2B company jumps in to D2C (direct to consumer) online business or vice versa. In any case, I dare to claim that operations and process optimization is a relevant topic for everyone, all the time.
We always aim to start new projects with a Discovery phase, which is targeted to go from strategy, and move to the requirements with the planned business solutions and services. Here are some operational aspects we take into account during the Discovery:
- Create a vision and set strategic goals for the online services/business. This sets the basis for everything, also for the operations planning.
- Identify the key operational stakeholders and ensure that they are on board with the vision and targets. If you don’t get the buy-in from the main operations stakeholders, you face a bigger risk of failure and problems later on.
- Make sure the roles and competences of the stakeholders match to the set vision. Make sure you have people involved (internal or external) that have experience of the operational topics in question.
- Ensure close cooperation model with the most important stakeholders. This is important during the project and also in the day-to-day operations.
- Start creating an operational model and processes on high-level. There’s no need to over-do this, but documentation created together with the most important stakeholders defines roles and responsibilities and ensures success.
The good thing these days is that almost all operational functions can be outsourced, and it’s many times a wise thing to do for some parts. However, my own experience has shown that one should pay attention to picking the right partners for the operations, as even big international companies are not always providing great quality of service (especially if they are among the cheapest alternatives).
It’s also important to think about which operations you really can and should outsource, as customer service is a great example of a function that requires deep understanding of the internal functions and sold products and services in many industries.
I have also personal experience of working as an operations manager for the online business. I can recommend that all companies should have someone whose role it is to ensure that the operations run smoothly overall and are developed continuously in a holistic manner. Naturally, all operational areas need their own owners and responsible persons, but once again close cooperation between the stakeholders is one of the key elements of success.
Here are some key operational areas to be considered in digital business:
- Customer service: handling all kinds of inquiries, requests and claims. Also possibly assisting and creating orders on behalf of the customers.
- Sales: Pricing, assortments, bundles, quotes, opportunity management, contracts, promotions, campaigns…
- Marketing: Leads, campaigns, user segments, content, social media, newsletters, automation models…
- Master Data (for e.g. products and customers): rich and good quality data, usually from CRM/PIM/ERP. Product variants, categories, attributes, configurations, BOMs…
- Logistics and warehouses: product delivery times and options, availability, replenishments, warehouse management, returns, export deliveries, pick&pack&ship…
- Legal: ecommerce regulations and laws, Privacy, personal data processing, GDPR…
- Payments and Finance: VAT, settlements, refunds, reconciliation, invoicing, book keeping, reporting…
- Analytics and user insights: Web analytics, surveys, feedback, customer expectations, KPI’s, dashboards…
- IT: Architecture, infrastructure, system support and development, requirement gathering
- Management: Vision and strategy, targets, KPI follow-up…
Happy to discuss this this topic further and exchange thoughts, if you are interested. We have vast experience of online business, process and operations planning and optimization. We can also help and offer services for you to outsource parts of your online operations. Most likely I will tell more about “ecommerce-as-a-service” later on.
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