[Blog Post] A Connected Retail World Requires Digital Transformation, APIs, and Platforms

WSO2 is helping enterprise retail organizations fulfill their vision of digital transformation and connect their business to the world across both digital and brick and mortar channels. WSO2 is pioneering how the Industrial Internet of Things, Big Data, API-centric architecture, and Cloud services augment digital business strategy and facilitate execution.

Retail industry companies are evolving their 1.0 eCommerce platforms to embrace 3rd party channels, recommendation engines, social media, and user analytics. APIs enable secure, controlled, and timely access to the aforementioned business capabilities delivered by partners. By integrating 3rd party capabilities, rather than building and hosting the capability internally, retailers are able to tap into an extended ecosystem of best-of-breed analytics, customer preference repositories, social sentiment, and business capabilities (i.e. payment, digital marketing, shipment expeditors). Some retailers are adopting APIs to tap into a channel of mobile application developers, external suppliers, and 3rd party digital storefronts. Mobile application developers can connect the retailer with mobile app customers and extend the reach and exposure of retail goods (especially in ‘flash sale’ or ‘sale liquidation’ scenarios). Retailers tightly integrated with external suppliers can use APIs to gauge product demand across the supply chain and enhance product availability. Retailers may also use APIs to integrate with 3rd party retailers and vendors who desire to offer a white-label digital storefront on the retailers digital property. Similar to a department store allocating floor space and advertising to a specific vendor.

WSO2 technology is solving the biggest challenges retail companies face in scaling their transaction volumes (billions per day), lowering security risk, enhancing customer experience, and enabling new digital commerce channels.

eBay routes billions of transactions per day using WSO2′s Enterprise Service Bus. AAA Motor Club of Ohio delivers timely point of interest information to motorists via APIs secured using the WSO2 platform. StubHub deploys WSO2 API Manager to connect their ticket platform with 3rd party mobile applications and expand their new digital commerce opportunities. John Keells Holding captures Point of Sale information using mobile devices and augments their customer database using WSO2 Message Broker. A retailer uses WSO2 Business Activity Monitor (based on lambda architecture and complex event processing) to merge historical and real-time information, analyze temporal shopping patterns, rapidly adapt offers (product recommendations, prices, promotions, and assistance) to the customer’s context. WSO2 Enterprise Mobility Manager and WSO2 Device Manager reduces point of sale provisioning time and satisfies risk assurance mandates.

Do you have a digital platform that can drive your digital business forward across a connected world?

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