| | January 20168CIOReviewhave been the CIO at Dotcom Distribution for nearly five years, serving emerging and established e-commerce retailers, all the while observing how the focus of their businesses and the ways we support them have evolved. From creating and controlling the programming and processes to support flash sales and subscription services, to community-based selling, I have seen many changes. Of all, I would say that the following four have had the most impact on how I perform my own role, day to day. Technical Infrastructure is No Longer a Form of CertificationJust a few years ago, people would question the sustainability of your organization if you did not own and host your own infrastructure. Email servers, server farms, local applications, and closets full of telecom equipment were positive indicators of a long-term plan, responsible investment, and stability. Now, you are likely to be labelled wasteful if you don't turn over email hosting to Google, turn to the cloud for CRM and other enterprise applications, and opt for a hosted VOIP solution for your telecom needs. Because of the amount of mechanization and guided picking technology utilized in our operation, we still carry a significant internal infrastructure but my role has definitely shifted from that of lead engineer to manager of business relationships. I am now evaluating potential partners, negotiating rates and contracts for services and training my people to become more focused on project management than on mastering individual technologies.Identifying Business Intelligence from NoiseSocial media has had a fast and profound impact on all businesses, even on B2B. We have social media monitoring tools in place to track mentions about our own service, which can then serve as the basis of case management reporting and changes to our own processes, product offerings, and marketing communication. We also monitor social to uncover trends about the markets we serve and to gather competitive intelligence. This effort requires endless tweaking of algorithms to suppress false negatives, responses to retailer coupon codes and other drivers of customer delight or dissatisfaction that are not related to our own performance. Just a few years back this would be a very specialized skill-set while today a firm needs to have this ability readily availablein-house ability as keywords and trends change every morning. Because of this, much of my day is spent working with our teams to determine how to find the signals, the valuable information that is hidden in the deafening roar of social media.IThe Emerging Role of anEcommerce CIOBy Nicholas Pendrous, CIO, Dotcom Distribution Nicholas Pendrousopinionin myI
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