Canadian Retailer - Fall 2016 - 24

E-COMMERCE

E-COMMERCE
NEXT PRACTICES
Leading Canadian retailers setting
e-commerce standard by making
the customer's shopping experience
easier and more convenient
BY DAVID MCPHERSON
NEWSFLASH. Did you know Canadian Tire has more

than 30 e-commerce initiatives underway-from search
optimization to order fulfilment? As Canada's friendly
neighbourhood retailer approaches 100 years young,
the bricks-and-mortar national icon, who a mere seven years ago cancelled its e-commerce initiatives, is
now one of the leaders in this new retail world, aptly
dubbed: bricks-and-clicks.
The statistics are lagging, but even the following
most current data from Stats Canada tells a tale of
an area of retail sales that is on the rise: e-commerce
sales by retailers reached $7.7 billion in 2012, up from
$6.6 billion in 2011. Retail e-commerce sales (+16.3%)
grew at over five times the pace of the overall growth
in retail trade (+2.9%) and retail e-commerce sales accounted for 1.5% of total retail sales in 2012.
E-commerce is all about integration, not separation
between the old and the new. To maximize sales, no
matter the channel, retailers need to make the transition between these worlds seamless for the consumer. As Chief Technology Officer Eugene Roman told
a group of his industry colleagues at the CIO Peer
Forum this past April, "We aren't interested in best
practices. That's for our competitors. What we're looking at is next practices."
Canadian Tire is just one of several retailers on this
side of the pond-and abroad-that are raising the bar
with innovative new initiatives for consumers on the
e-commerce front. In this article, we look at a pair of
these retailers' creative solutions and how they are enhancing
the shopper's experience today by connecting with them and
concurrently growing their operations-both online and in-store.
"We consider ourselves on a journey," explains Andrew
Davies, Vice-President, eCommerce, Canadian Tire.
Davies explains that one of the unique things Canadian Tire is
doing is that internally their digital, e-commerce, and IT teams
are all working in a collaborative hub to get the retailer down that
same path on their e-commerce/digital journey. This head office
work environment, similar to the concept pioneered at incubators
such as Communitech in Kitchener, Ont. (where Canadian Tire
has a team) is one that inspires innovation and creativity. "We
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CANADIAN RETAILER | FALL 2016

have all our groups combined in one area," explains Davies. "I sit in one space, with no walls,
with the VP of IT & the VP of Digital. In our space
we have four 54-inch digital screens monitoring customers on our site, and other metrics we
want to pay attention to. Every minute someone
is logging off or someone is not happy...there are
so many things you can see with digital, our customers behave in a different way and so we need
to react differently too. Twenty feet from us are
all the other key people in IT, along with Supply
Chain and Fulfillment."

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Retailer - Fall 2016