"Survival of the fittest" – this Darwinian wisdom – captures the current landscape of the ecommerce industry. In recent years, the focus was on growth at any cost, with the most financially robust players emerging victorious. However, the industry is now shifting towards a phase where online merchants must reinvent themselves. The emphasis is moving away from large-scale investments towards maximizing the profitability of online shops, as highlighted in an analysis by Forrester and Shopware.
Darwin's principle of "Survival of the fittest" suggests that it is not necessarily the strongest or largest who thrive, but those who are most adaptable. This idea resonates strongly with the ecommerce sector, which is undergoing rapid change driven by technological advancements. In this environment, businesses must be highly flexible to keep up.
A key advantage can be gained by ecommerce companies that invest early in automating their business processes. This strategic move can help them address significant future challenges such as global competition, labor shortages, and external shocks.
This blog post explores why Shopware is an ideal partner for navigating this significant transformation. It details the specific automation features available on our leading ecommerce platform today and highlights the efficiency improvements achieved by online retailers like BIOMARIS and Thomas Philipps through Shopware process automation.
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Time, resources, money, satisfaction: Unlock the potential of process automation
In your ecommerce business, you likely encounter daily operations that are inefficient and handled manually, even when automation could streamline these tasks. Have you identified these areas? If not, it's time to adopt a "process automation mindset" and address the most pressing issues:
Increasing workloads are causing frequent errors in your team
Existing workflows are cumbersome and inefficient
Employees are spending valuable time on repetitive manual tasks
Your current shop system limits your business progress due to technological and functional constraints
Now, consider the transformative benefits that process automation can bring to your business:
Automating manual processes frees up significant time for you and your team, enabling you to focus on growing your core business
Streamlined workflows reduce error rates, shorten response times, and boost overall productivity
Satisfaction improves at all levels: your team enjoys their work more, suppliers benefit from quicker access, and customers experience enhanced user experience, targeted marketing, and personalized product recommendations
You save costs while maintaining scalability, allowing for profitable growth even in challenging times
It's clear that process automation is a key factor for enhancing your ecommerce business. This perspective is widely shared among employees in medium-sized companies. In a survey by Zapier involving 2,000 professionals, 9 out of 10 reported positive experiences with process automation. They noted that it reduces their administrative workload, allowing them to focus more on customer service. Furthermore, Forbes highlights that process automation has the potential to boost annual profits by 20-30%, primarily through the elimination of inefficient processes.
Shopware leads the way in ecommerce automation
For successful process automation in ecommerce, a robust platform is essential. It needs to be prepared for future challenges, offering a comprehensive range of out-of-the-box automation features. Additionally, it must be flexible, adaptable to merchants' specific needs, and seamlessly integrate with existing systems.
Shopware has positioned itself as a leader in this domain, with a strong commitment to process automation. This is reflected in the fundamental integration of this concept into our company philosophy. One of our guiding principles for customers is: "Maximum efficiency with minimal complexity." Based on this, we have developed and launched a wide range of automation features over the past few years, which we will introduce to you in this article.
Our leadership and innovation in this area have been recognized by leading market research firms. In the latest Forrester Wave™, we achieved the highest score in workflow modeling. Gartner has named us a visionary in their prestigious "Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce," underscoring our dedication to technological innovation, including process automation. In the B2B sector, which heavily relies on automated business processes, we have also been recognized as a "Major Player" by IDC MarketScape.
What does it mean for your ecommerce business to use a modern platform focused on process automation? Here are some key applications:
Shipping, delivery, and payments: Automate the product distribution process by setting rules for shipping costs, delivery options, discounts, and more.
Pricing and Promotions: Execute marketing campaigns automatically and adjust your shop's prices flexibly.
Customer and supplier communication: Keep your customers informed with automated status updates, prompt them for reviews, and streamline the procurement process with inventory notifications.
Personalization: Provide your customers with a unique, personalized shopping experience tailored to their interests.
Scalability: Enhance your automation capabilities by integrating Shopware with top third-party apps.
From rule-based automation to machine learning: Explore Shopware's automation tools
Many processes in your online shop can be streamlined into clear workflows, becoming efficient and error-free through rule-based automation. That's why we created the Rule Builder and Flow Builder.
The Shopware Rule Builder
The Rule Builder allows you to automate business processes without needing programming skills by setting up rules based on specific conditions. As of July 2024, it offers over 50 customizable conditions that can be combined to streamline even complex workflows with ease. This tool can automate various aspects such as shipping and payment processes, personalize your storefront, and execute marketing campaigns automatically. Learn more: Rule Builder.
The Shopware Flow Builder
The Flow Builder is designed to automate your business processes more granularly and individually. It allows you to use triggers to initiate actions and automate complex workflows. You can choose not only internal Shopware triggers but also integrate external software and third-party apps. Some use cases for the Flow Builder include automatically segmenting customers and orders into specific categories, creating and sending personalized messages, generating business documents such as invoices, automating procurement management, and sending event-based notifications to your team. Learn more: Flow Builder.
Want to go beyond rule-based automation and incorporate intelligent algorithms into your workflow? Our AI Copilot is the ideal tool for you.
The Shopware AI Copilot
Introducing your personal efficiency assistant: the Shopware AI Copilot. This powerful tool provides access to over 12 AI-based features designed to make your workflows smarter, more analytical, and automated. As one of the first ecommerce platforms to offer such a comprehensive AI toolkit, we go beyond experimental functions to deliver real value.
The AI Copilot helps you create and translate content like product descriptions and enhances your images with relevant keywords for better search engine visibility. It also generates appropriate product attributes from descriptions and uses intelligent tagging to classify customers, enabling personalized marketing strategies and notifications. For example, it can send personalized messages at checkout, tailored to individual customers based on their shopping cart contents.
In addition to these automation features, the AI Copilot enhances search functionalities. Users can use natural language in your shop's search bar or upload an image to receive recommendations based on the image content. The advanced "text-to-image" feature allows for the automatic generation of unique scenes to showcase your products visually, based on descriptive language. Learn more: AI Copilot.
The suite of Shopware automation tools doesn't stop there. Through Subscriptions, customers can automate reorders via self-service, and our B2B Components provide extensive process automation, specifically designed for B2B commerce. Explore more on our automation page.
How BIOMARIS and Thomas Philipps leverage Shopware automation in their online shops
BIOMARIS, one of Germany's oldest and most prestigious cosmetics companies, offers over 120 products through its Shopware-powered online shop. To streamline complex workflows, particularly for promotional discounts during various events, BIOMARIS utilizes the Shopware Rule and Flow Builder. This setup allows them to automatically classify customers with tags and target them with tailored offers, discounts, and personalized messages. The result has been a substantial increase in conversion rates on mobile devices (+30%) and desktop (+10%), leading to a significant rise in orders. Learn more: BIOMARIS Success Story.
Thomas Philipps, one of Germany's largest discount retailers specializing in home and garden products, is another example of successful use of Shopware's automation features. With over 2,500 products online, Thomas Philipps depends on efficient and automated order processing and marketing strategies for up-selling and cross-selling. To enhance conversion rates, the company uses the Rule and Flow Builder. This allows shop administration staff to set up workflow automation rules without needing developer resources, keeping the online shop scalable. Learn more: Thomas Philipps Success Story.
Entering the new ecommerce era: Process automation with Shopware as a path to profitable growth
Process automation is not just a luxury but a crucial capability for the future success of businesses across all industries. It plays a significant role in the "survival of the fittest" philosophy: only those who can remain highly adaptable during challenging times will thrive in competitive markets like ecommerce. According to research from Deloitte and IBM, businesses have widely recognized this necessity and have been implementing automation and AI technologies since 2021. The "Slack State of Work" report highlights that employees save up to 3.6 hours per week through process automation, allowing them to focus on more important tasks.
Shopware offers the ideal tools for increasing efficiency and achieving profitable growth in ecommerce, including the Rule and Flow Builder, AI Copilot, and B2B Components. For merchants looking to delve deeper into the automation potential with Shopware, we recommend our comprehensive Automation Guide.
Ready to enter the world of process automation? Contact our expert team today to explore the benefits of transitioning to Shopware.
[1] https://zapier.com/blog/state-of-business-automation-2021/ [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2023/03/28/drowning-in-unnecessary-work-heres-your-life-preserver/ [3] https://www2.deloitte.com/bg/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/Intelligent-Automation-Survey-2021.html [4] https://newsroom.ibm.com/IBMs-Global-AI-Adoption-Index-2021 [5] https://d34u8crftukxnk.cloudfront.net/slackpress/prod/sites/6/State-Work-Report.en-US.pdf
