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Fabio Gerosa, Sales Director Italy of Couchbase, explains why today’s retail companies must be able to count on a database designed to obtain superior performance and availability, to meet the expectations of online customers 24/7 and globally.

Today’s leading retailers and e-commerce companies are facing many IT challenges. They are faced with ever-increasing demands to deliver great customer experiences that are fast and personal, contextual and localized. At the same time, they have to manage volumes growing of users and data, while reducing costs and time-to-market. These expectations, combined with the competitive pressures of global giants, push to reformulate existing applications.

Retail – Dislocated data

Upgrading legacy systems can be a daunting task, especially for established retail businesses. Thousands of physical stores, in addition to an online presence and mobile applications, lead to having data dispersed across various systems. With the likelihood that most of these services and applications have grown organically over time, failing to provide a cohesive experience to customers.

World-class database performance

According to the estimates of the B2C eCommerce Observatory, the value total reached by online purchases in our country in 2022 is 48.1 billion, 20% more than in 2021. Organizations not only have to face competition from their sector – be it clothing, cars, electronics, office supplies or other products – but also that of Internet companies such as Amazon and eBay. These tech-savvy, digitally born companies are known for the way they continually improve their e-commerce applications. As well as the speed and agility with which they release new features.

Retain customers

The overall goal of these companies is to unify all customer interactions that occur across the web, mobile, and point of sale. And through that create a seamless experience that improves business and customer retention. And therefore it is essential to choose a database platform that allows you to scale and add new services with flexibility.

Retail – una user experience articolata

Organizations are increasingly complex. The retailer today has acquired new business units, added new channels or implemented programs such as customer loyalty monitoring, thus going through a series of technological evolutions. A traditional tech journey might start with a physical store. Then add a separate loyalty program, build an online store as a completely separate business unit, develop a corresponding mobile application. The user experience can include in-store, online and mobile shopping, home delivery and product pickup, a loyalty program and rewards/points.

The benefits of relying on a database with superior performance

As for the technologies in use, a current ecommerce platform can be built on numerous point technologies. Technologies that can represent a monolithic system of systems, making complex add more data and give users a better experience. this is due to the inability to customize and update. There is simply no agility.

Adopt NoSQL database technology

To meet the needs of today’s digital consumers, retailers are leveraging NoSQL databases to move from monolithic solutions to microservices-based architectures. Digital Economy companies are adopting NoSQL database technology to build and run modern web and mobile applications. Why? Because NoSQL is more effective than relational technology in meeting the performance, scalability, availability, agility and cost-effectiveness requirements of these applications.

More adaptability

These pressures create a new set of requirements for operational databases, which must:

• Deliver data requests with sub-millisecond latency.
• Scale to meet peak demand (such as Black Friday), easily and affordably.
• Provide 24x7x365 availability.
• Easily adapt as data types and queries evolve.
• Acquire, aggregate and archive multi-structured data from many sources.
• Support multiple channels and devices.
• Replicate data between data centers globally.
• Integration with other big data tools like Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, and more.
• Speed ​​up and simplify development.

Offer a valuable customer experience

The operational database must also be versatile to support a variety of use cases. For example customer profile management, shopping cart, shop sessions, product catalog and prices. Or the 360-degree view of the customer and the management of the loyalty program, to name a few. For architects, developers, and operations engineers, the pressure to deliver great customer experiences, reduce costs, and accelerate innovation has never been greater.

A database with superior performance for retail

When it comes to customer experience, performance and availability are key. Whether customers are aware of it or not, their interactions happen with a database. They access data about products, customers, engagement, and if the data is not readily available, the customer experience will suffer.

The buyers they expect every request, whether it’s to find and view a product, add it to the cart or proceed to checkout, to be handled immediately, in sub-second times. It doesn’t matter what time it is or what time zone they’re in, whether it’s Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday or Super Sunday. Shoppers expect ecommerce web and mobile applications to be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, anywhere in the world, on any device.

Always meet expectations

Historically, relational databases have been the bottleneck, due to the difficulty of managing variable and increasingly significant data volumes, but also due to the ability to maintain performance and availability. Today, businesses need a database designed for superior performance and availability that meets the expectations of a global, 24/7, online customer base. As a result, across all retail and e-commerce categories, from automobiles to fashion to office supplies and more, innovative companies are adopting NoSQL to improve customer experiences, operational efficiency and agility.

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