Key Takeaways 💡
Why automation is the future of ecommerce
- Manual methods don’t scale - automation ensures consistency, speed, and accuracy.
- Leading ecommerce brands prioritize AI and automation to boost profitability and productivity.
- Three levels of automation define the maturity curve: 1.0 (basics), 2.0 (dynamic systems), and 3.0 (AI-driven orchestration).
- Automation improves customer experience and operational efficiency simultaneously.
- Now is the time to audit, align, and experiment to remain competitive.
Scaling a successful business isn’t just about injecting cash and watching it grow. It hinges on building highly efficient processes that are reliable and scalable, making things easier, not harder, as sales grow.
Yet, far too often, great businesses are held back by inefficient methods and systems. It is an easy mistake to make, but the true cost of manual processes is often underestimated.
In an age where speed and precision are survival traits, online businesses must automate their ecommerce operations, every possible part of it. In many ways, the use of advanced automation can predict the success of a brand. If your brand embraces the transformative power of automated processes, you will soon see highly profitable growth at scale. Meanwhile, others keep putting it off, thinking it can wait for another day. Before long, such brands are struggling against a rising tide of inefficiencies, rising costs, and lost sales.
But it’s not too late to turn the tide. In this blog post, we discuss exactly why automation is an essential part of ecommerce, and how you can use advanced automation to drive phenomenal growth in this new phase of ecommerce.
Why advanced automation is no longer optional
To start with, many brands will simply adapt their existing processes as they begin selling on more channels. Makes sense, right? After all, it has worked so far.
However, the problem is that manual methods don’t work at scale. They’re more error-prone and labor-intensive.
Very soon, you run into a chronic shortage of time and resources. By this point, you’re pinned down by those inefficient processes that ‘worked fine’ for one or two channels, but have become unmanageable as you strive to scale. And here’s why:
- Complexity – Modern ecommerce is too complex for manual methods. You need workflows that account for the different rules, fee structures, and other requirements of each marketplace. With customer service, returns, multiple regions, and different fulfillment models added into the equation, it becomes very clear: manual management just isn’t sustainable.
- Speed – Speed is the new competitive advantage in a market that’s constantly adapting to fluctuating demands and new trends. Winning the ‘Buy Box’ can come down to adjusting your prices within seconds. Automation is the only way to do this effectively at scale.
- Tight margins – Marketplaces know they’re the #1 stop on the buying journey, and fees have grown to reflect this fact. With a bigger cut taken from your revenue by each marketplace, brands must be able to identify which SKUs are profitable using predictive margin tracking. Advanced pricing rules are also important to automatically ensure profitability.
- Customer experience - Many consumers will pay more for a superior customer experience, like faster shipping or optional extras. Fulfillment must be ultra-efficient, and customer service needs to be prompt, effective, and always-on. Without automated backend operations driving better experiences for the customer, reviews will suffer, and sales will fall behind.
- 20% of leading ecommerce businesses prioritize investments in automation and AI
- Using generative AI alone can increase margins by 1.9%
- Combining generative AI and process automation can increase productivity by 3.4%
- Automated content creation can save 45 hours each week
- Automated marketing can reduce overheads by 12.2% and increase QLs by 451%
- 76% of consumers want personalized recommendations and interactions
- 90% of consumers want an immediate response to a query
The brands that scale over the next five years won’t just spend more; they’ll automate smarter, adapt faster, and use data to uncover new opportunities.”
Jorrit SteinzCEO & Founder
The future of marketplace selling: Where automation is headed
Consumers expect seamless and easy shopping experiences across all channels. But, as we know from behind the scenes, ecommerce businesses must work much harder to achieve the consistency, quality, and efficiency that consumers demand.
The gap is widening between businesses that embrace high-level automation and those that don’t. The frontrunners are accelerating ahead with faster, smarter, and more precise operations.
Curious how they're doing it? Discover real-world strategies and expert insights through this on-demand webinar - it is packed with practical examples that show exactly how automation is transforming marketplace selling.
What’s your automation level?
As with other sectors, there are multiple levels of automation at play in ecommerce: Automation 1.0, Automation 2.0, and Automation 3.0.
Many online businesses have already implemented ‘Automation 1.0’ by syncing their data feeds, for instance.
But the market leaders are now using ‘Automation 2.0’: capabilities like dynamic repricing, customer service automation, and algorithmic stock allocation to manage their operations with high efficiency and consistency as they continue to grow their channels and sales volumes.
With AI ecommerce technologies rapidly maturing, Automation 3.0 is just around the corner. This will see digitally adept enterprises fully automating their complex processes so that they can achieve more with fewer resources.
Some are already harnessing the power of AI for automated product category mapping and for creating new content and product bundles. Soon, we’ll see more agentic AI processes entering the ecommerce ecosystem too, taking care of highly complex processes with minimal supervision.
What ecommerce leaders must do now:
Each moment that you’re not using automated processes takes a bite out of your profitability and market position. So, let’s make the next part easy. This checklist maps out a proven path for identifying your priorities and implementing automation that will help you scale.
Checklist: How to prepare for the next wave of ecommerce automation
- Phase 1: Audit - Identify manual process bottlenecks and estimate time wasted on tasks like redoing listings or adjusting prices.
- Phase 2: Align tech stack - Ensure your stack is scalable, AI-ready, and integrated with the right ecommerce tools.
- Phase 3: Adopt a data-driven mindset – Use data to make smarter, real-time decisions across channels.
- Phase 4: Experiment to keep winning – Use A/B testing and iterative strategies to optimize automation continuously.
Today, it’s clear that automation is a necessity if you want to compete seriously in ecommerce. In this digital arms race, only those brands that adapt quickly will prosper and dominate the market in the years to come.
The future is automated
Don’t get left behind. This is a tremendous opportunity, and automating ecommerce operations means you can spend your efforts where they will have real impact, instead of performing a task that a machine can do faster and better.
With data-driven and AI-powered operations pushing your brand forward, you can adapt to the market much faster and scale globally without making things harder.
