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Top 5 Myths of Digital Commerce

J. Schelstrate

J. is the CRO of Atlas Digital Group.
5 min. read

"Running a high-performance digital commerce operation that serves as the leading sales channel for a broadband provider is easy” – said no one who has successfully achieved high-performance digital commerce. This myth exists across parts of our industry, which costs businesses substantially with inefficient spending and lost growth opportunities. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

#1 All We Need to Do Is Take Orders on Our Website

Fact – The legacy approach of simply connecting a website to a billing platform to take orders lacks key capabilities needed for high performance in a competitive marketplace. Next-generation digital commerce solutions like Atlas CORE take sales performance to the next level by enabling operators the ability to:

  • Continually optimize sales experiences based upon what is best for the customer and take back control from rigid back-office systems
  • Utilize data transparency throughout the entire sales journey to drive effective performance management
  • Support automated and nonautomated flows to unlock new opportunities for sales success and lead capture
  • Leverage a highly configurable platform where updates can be made in hours versus weeks

#2 We Are a Smaller Operator – We Don’t Need to Implement Digital Sales Until We Are Larger

Fact – Regardless of the size of your business, the fiber race has begun, and the winners will be digital. A well-designed and managed digital commerce strategy is a distinct competitive advantage for any sized operator. Those that rely on digital to drive growth are better positioned to accelerate market share gains.  Every day you delay implementing a digital commerce solution, you are missing out on the quickest, most efficient way to acquire and retain subscribers.

Additionally, more broadband providers are discovering that focusing on a digital-first experience delivers rewards they didn’t know existed – such as improved customer satisfaction, better tracking of marketing campaign success and increased profitability.

#3 Detailed Analytics Aren’t Important Because We Have Simple Offers

Fact – The lifetime value of internet customers is large enough that even small improvements to conversion yield significant dividends. It is critical to have detailed visibility into every step of the purchasing journey and to have the ability to understand where, when and how to optimize the sales experience. Offers are important, but equally important is understanding customer behavior. A platform like Atlas CORE empowers operators to identify and operationalize critical performance data such as:

  • Which sources of website traffic are most effective at converting sales
  • Whether marketing campaigns are yielding their expected results
  • Whether address matching is optimized across each market and technology
  • Points of friction that need to be addressed
  • How performance compares by market, technology, brand or other customer segment
  • How your company’s performance compares across a peer ecosystem

#4 We Can Just Hire Talent to Augment Our Existing Team to Manage Digital Commerce

Fact – Staffing an experienced team to effectively manage digital commerce will often take years and is expensive. The right skill set can be difficult to find, and the learning curve is steep. Attempting to repurpose existing talent to lead and manage digital commerce will likely result in missed opportunities and slow growth as staff gain an understanding of best practices.

Conversely, with a managed services model, operators can immediately engage a team of industry veterans with the expertise to manage and optimize a digital sales channel. This enables operators to leapfrog years of trial and error and deliver immediate sales results.

#5 Our Current Back-Office Systems Adequately Support Digital Sales

Fact – An adequate digital sales solution may not deliver adequate sales as competition increases. Attempting to rely upon homegrown solutions or leveraging order-taking functionality from other back-office systems cannot compete with purpose-built next-generation digital sales solutions. 

More often than not, these solutions do not perform well. This is because they were not designed with the customer sales experience as the top priority. As a result, the operator experiences difficulties with change management and data transparency, not to mention the solutions are expensive and take many months to build and integrate.

The better strategy is to use a purpose-built digital commerce solution for the broadband industry like Atlas CORE. Our solution offers an out-of-the-box implementation that includes an optimized sales experience, a dynamic and flexible platform, full-funnel analytics and deployment in only a few weeks.

Conclusion

No matter the size of your business, offer set  or back office, an effective digital commerce operation can be the difference between winning and losing the fiber race.

Atlas Digital Group provides broadband operators the only purpose-built and fully managed digital commerce solution that quickly transforms an existing website into an efficient subscriber growth channel. Contact us to get started.