Lightwell Business Technology Blog

The annual event IBM describes as an opportunity to “learn new ways to understand your customers, turn insight into action, and transform the ordinary into the extraordinary” is swooping into Tampa from May 16-18. Lightwell is thrilled to be part of creating that opportunity. Will you be there?

If you aren’t registered yet, check out our previous blog post for the top 12 reasons to attend IBM Amplify. And if you need a couple more reasons, how about an opening keynote address by Academy Award nominee, author, and entrepreneur (don’t you just love Fabletics?), Kate Hudson, and a live performance by Grammy-nominated musical artist, Elle King!

As a Gold Sponsor of the conference this year, Lightwell is hosting a Solution Center booth (#610) and participating in two sessions. Here are the details.

Not Just another Conference

IBM Amplify is one of the year’s most anticipated events for companies that are focused on delivering great customer experiences across channels, while improving customer acquisition, loyalty, and profitability. In other words, for you.

Will you be at IBM Amplify 2016 in Tampa May 16-19?

“Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.”  ~Michael LeBoeuf

Lightwell team members were among the more than 33,000 attendees at the National Retail Foundation (NRF) Retail’s BIG SHOW 2016 in New York City. The Javits Center exhibit halls, ballrooms, and smaller session rooms were swelled to capacity with retailers, technology vendors, and other industry thought leaders and innovators.

Large conferences can be overwhelming, to say the least, so it’s important to focus on networking and coming away with a few great kernels of knowledge, a connection, or a new way of better meeting the needs of your customers.

Unhappy Returns

If you’re like most of us, you’re still picking pine needles out of the corners of your family room (if you’ve even taken down your tree, that is), scraping dripped candle wax off your furniture, and you have at least one shopping bag filled with presents to return that weren’t quite right.

Maybe you thought you ordered Women’s size 8 slippers for your 16-year old daughter, but you actually received Men’s size 11. And since you ordered online, now you have to package it up, print out a label, call UPS, etc., etc. Not that I’d know anything about that sort of mistake…

On this final day of 2015, many of us are making resolutions for the coming year and fitness is often at the top of our lists. It's no suprise that technology is now available to help motivate and keep us moving, so we can increase our chances of being in the measely 8% of people who successfully achieve their New Year's resolutions (Statistic Brain Research Institute).

Fit What?

Even if you aren't counting your steps on a Fitbit (I'm only at 3059 at this writing), chances are you’ve heard of the company and how its products are literally disrupting the world. Just six years after launching the first fitness tracker online, the company has become the epitome of a successful startup, shipping millions of units to 54 countries around the globe. But Fitbit couldn’t maintain that level of achievement without a whole lot of infrastructure. Again, technology to the rescue. One of the ways Fitbit has managed its complex B2C and B2B omnichannel operations is with the NetSuite ERP solution.

Set a Goal

When a technology vendor or your own CEO tells you that you need an “omnichannel” solution, do you know what they really mean? This may seem obvious but it’s important to clearly identify your organization’s goals and expectations and make sure everyone is on the same page before moving forward to implement any technology solution. You need to know where you want to go before you can get there.

Delivering great B2B customer experiences across channels is a hot topic these days—but without the right technology solutions to bridge the gap between front-office and fulfillment operations, it can be extremely challenging for B2B companies to achieve.

An order management system can play a critical role in harmonizing and optimizing customer- facing processes across a fragmented application landscape.  Without the right order management system, many B2B businesses are unable to support their customers’ growing demands for the streamlined, seamless purchasing experience they already enjoy with their B2C transactions.

So, how do you know what to look for in an order management solution?  A very reliable source of guidance is Forrester Research. Forrester recently released a new report, The Forrester Wave™: B2B Order Management, Q4 2015.