At first glance, “organizational agility” may seem like a buzzword that doesn’t actually mean anything. In reality, it’s the most important characteristic a business can have in a changing market and economy.

The term refers to a company’s nimbleness in the face of change. Take the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance. When quarantining kept consumers at home and caused stores to shut down, businesses that had failed to digitally transform were left with no way to sell or connect with customers. Those that practiced organizational agility, however, were able to quickly pivot to online sales, direct-to-consumer (D2C) selling and even alternative manufacturing that addressed a societal need (e.g., apparel brands producing masks). 

What industry-changing event could come next? No one knows, making it crucial to stay organizationally agile for market changes big and small.

What Is Organizational Agility?

Organizational agility is a company’s ability to react and move quickly when the market changes. These changes can include everything from economic distress and emerging competition to new technology and shifting consumer behavior. 

The reason agility is so important is because failure to adapt can leave brands and retailers without the proper tools to do business, resulting in a loss of customers and revenue. Exercising organizational agility requires three key components:

• Foresight to predict and anticipate changes instead of letting them take you by surprise 
• Preparedness with the right tools and plan in place to pivot quickly
• Flexibility to move with changing times instead of holding on to “the way it’s always been done”

What Are the Risks of Failing to Stay Agile?

Organizational agility isn’t just about staying trendy or “keeping up with the times.” It’s about safeguarding your company to meet the changing needs of your customers and employees while staying resilient against factors that could derail your business — new competitors, changing legislation (e.g., General Data Protection Regulation) or economic downturns. 

Failure to adapt to industry and environmental changes results in:

• Decreased efficiency and security. Manual processes, workarounds and outdated policies lead to human error and slowed productivity. Worse, failure to automate operations or conduct regular check-ups on your business processes can lead to compliance issues and security breaches.

• Lost customers. Modern consumers demand savvy experiences — and they’re more than willing to jump ship if they don’t get them. Don’t have a mobile website? The 85% of US consumers who own a smartphone won’t be able to browse your products on the go. Companies that are hard to get in touch with also risk frustrated customers and the opportunity to build long-term loyalty. 

• Less revenue. No customers? No sales. New brands and retailers are joining the industry daily — all of whom were born in the digital age, making them that much more resilient. If customers can receive a better experience with a more modern brand, they will, eliminating your sales and resulting in poor reviews. 
• Employee shortages. Studies show that employees are 230% more engaged and 85% more likely to stay beyond three years in their jobs if they feel they have technology that supports them at work. Employees who are stuck making do with outdated technology or strategies that don’t account for industry changes risk losing talented employees to savvier competitors. 

What Are the Benefits of Organizational Agility?

It’s impossible to predict coming market changes, and there are a number of factors that can lead to a company’s demise. But organizational agility puts brands a step ahead of lagging competitors, resulting in a number of benefits beyond simply staying in business. 

Increase productivity and innovation

Preparing for changes that may come your way means you’re not reacting in the moment. When economic downturns occur or consumer behavior changes, you’ll be ready, freeing your team up to focus on other activities like customer experience or product innovation. Plus, with digital transformation and automation, your teams can reduce manual work, increasing productivity and operational efficiency. 

Win more customers

More than ever, consumers care about who they buy from and what they stand for. Demonstrating organizational agility in the midst of change shows customers you’re dedicated to serving their needs even when the environment is less than ideal. Offering tools like an app or expanding to channels where they shop most allows you to meet customers where they are and capture new audiences.  

Outlast competitors

Staying agile also allows you to bypass stagnant competitors and even win over their customers. When changes in the industry occur, organizational agility can mean the difference between thriving and merely surviving. 

Improve employee engagement

Agile brands empower their employees to look ahead, make modifications and prepare for change early and often. Plus, reliable e-commerce tech reduces daily frustrations, keeps employees connected and helps teams meet their goals more often. 

How Can Brands and Retailers Become More Agile?

Increasing your organizational agility is not an exact science. What it takes to become resilient differs across industries and companies. But in general, you can improve your nimbleness if you:

• Embrace change and disruption. Don’t fear change. Some of the cornerstones of commerce have come as a result of change: industrialization, e-commerce, social media and retail media networks, to name a few. Research shows organizations that embrace change face fewer obstacles during disruptions and even experience 15% more benefits. 

• Automate e-commerce. You won’t be ready for unplanned disruptions if you’re manually monitoring prices, updating listings or keeping spreadsheets of metrics. Automation and centralization is the modern marketer’s best friend, making it easy to meet the requirements of merchandising, marketing and advertising without constant upkeep. 

• Keep data at the ready. Data is absolutely critical to monitoring trends and anticipating changes. Without it, you’re stuck making guesses and hunches about your business position and next steps. Even spreadsheets and disparate metrics from each platform you sell on won’t cut it. Deep brand analytics give you increased visibility across your entire portfolio to grow sales, protect your brand’s reputation and manage your digital shelf presence.
• Have expert guidance in your corner. Not sure how to navigate the waters of change? You’re not alone. It helps to have guidance from those who have been there before. Look for e-commerce experts with decades of experience who can help you predict trends, protect against interruption and put a plan in place for realistic growth. 

Rithum Keeps Your E-Commerce Business Ready for Anything

At Rithum, we know the effects market change can have on brands and retailers because we witness it every day on the front lines of the industry. Our e-commerce platform gives you a complete multichannel solution to automate listings across channels, glean brand analytics, market against competitors and execute flawlessly on the digital shelf — all from a centralized solution. 

When COVID-19 hit, our customers, like Candleberry, myGoods and PureFormulas, were able to adapt to changing demand and protect their market position. Now, in the face of economic instability, we’re giving customers tools to stay resilient and increase their e-commerce execution. 

Will your company be agile enough to maintain stability when push comes to shove? Explore the Rithum platform and Managed Services, or request a demo to start safeguarding your business today. 

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When’s the last time you got out a pencil and paper to do long division? Or used a Rolodex to look up a client phone number?  The answer doesn’t matter — we have technology to do these things for us, whether it’s as simple as a calculator or as complex as CRM software. 

That’s the beauty of automation. When it’s done right, it makes processes so seamless, you can’t remember doing them without technology. 

Today, every industry has adopted automation in some form — and e-commerce is no exception. E-commerce automation is responsible for the experiences behind some of the world’s favorite brands. Are you using it to its greatest potential? 

Let’s take a look at what e-commerce automation is and how it can supercharge your online selling with a few simple applications.

What Is E-Commerce Automation?

Automation is any technology that uses conditions and logic to perform repetitive tasks without human involvement. 

E-commerce automation is technology that performs e-commerce tasks and processes like inventory management, order fulfillment or customer communication. 

Anything else you want off your plate? There’s a good chance automation can handle it. 

Just remember: Automation is designed to handle all the standard, mundane tasks that take up your team’s time — not the ones that require true human input. With e-commerce automation, you’ll have more time to focus on things like building partner relationships, strategizing ad campaigns and strengthening the brand. 

How Does (E-Commerce) Automation Work?

At its core, all automation involves three main components:

• Trigger — an action like a purchase, customer inquiry or website click that starts a workflow or automated process
• Condition — a rule (think if/then) that dictates if a particular action should be taken
• Action — the final outcome of the workflow once the conditions are met

Not to worry — you don’t have to automate e-commerce functions yourself. Most e-commerce automation software comes ready to work out of the box without any coding required. No more incessant clicking. No more manual searching. Just automated ease for all your processes.

Examples of E-Commerce Automation

There are countless e-commerce tasks you can apply automation to, including (but not limited to):

• Notifying customers about the status of their order
• Monitoring inventory levels
• Reordering low product
• Reporting performance
• Alerting internal teams of special circumstances
• Bidding for ad space
• Monitoring competitor prices

Ready to try your hand at automation? Here are some common use cases in various areas of e-commerce you can test the waters with:

E-Commerce Automation for Marketing: Amazon Advertising

When setting up your Amazon Advertising campaigns like Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, an automation tool can be incredibly helpful in managing things like bidding and making bulk changes.

The way it works depends on your goals. When the objective is to generate high-volume sales and increase Buy Box potential, you can use a specific set of automation rules to optimize bidding for a greater return on ad spend (ROAS). At other times, when the goal is higher profit margins, you can put a different set of rules in place to boost your cost per order (CPO) or advertising cost of sales (ACoS).

Once you get comfortable with automating your Amazon Advertising campaigns, you’ll find there are countless ways to achieve any number of objectives.

E-Commerce Automation for Selling: Pricing Strategies

If there’s one challenge all marketplace sellers face, it’s product pricing. Price an item too high, and you’ll get beaten by competitors. Drop it too low, and you may compromise your profit margins (while potentially breaking critical pricing policies and agreements too).

Why not leave it to the robots?

An automated pricing strategy monitors the delicate balance of marketplace pricing for you. 

• Want to win more of the buy box at the highest price possible? Set up algorithmic repricing. 
• Need a better way to match what competitors are doing? Use rule-based automation to automatically adjust product price based on your desired minimums and maximums. 
• Looking for a way to easily meet pricing policies and agreements? Use a price manager tool to ensure consistency across marketplaces and webstores at all times.

No matter which pricing automation method(s) you use, you’ll position your products to gain more visibility across more channels without adding the work or stress of violating compliance agreements.

What Are the Benefits of E-Commerce Automation?

Automation has made believers out of professionals across industries. Today, 70% of leaders believe automation helps businesses build more effective teams. In addition, automation:

• Saves time and money

E-commerce automation keeps employees from spending time on “busy work” so they can focus instead on critical problem-solving and strategies that move the business forward. It also saves money by consolidating processes and allowing salaried employees to use their time more wisely. 

• Boosts productivity and revenue

While manual processes keep employees from advancing the business, high-value tasks help grow it faster. When you outsource simple tasks to automation technology, you free up team members to work on high-potential items like assortment planning, designing new ads or engaging customers on social media. 

• Keeps you compliant

Marketplace compliance can be costly if you infringe on your agreements. But it can also be costly to spend hours auditing and reviewing. E-commerce automation is designed to assess your marketplace data and correct human error to keep you from expensive mistakes. Plus, it gives you peace of mind and frees up employees to focus on other tasks.

Rithum Automates Your E-Commerce Operations

The more e-commerce tasks you automate, the better positioned you’ll be to expand your business and soar past competitors. From scheduling cross-channel promotions to automating reorders, there are countless ways to optimize your e-commerce operations.

Rithum experts know which e-commerce activities to automate — and which to leave to your teams — for the greatest return. We help brands and retailers like you automate everything from digital marketing to fulfillment so you can scale your business across more channels. 

Contact us today to learn how our Managed Services offering can help automate your e-commerce operations for the highest return.

Editor’s note: This blog post was originally published in October 2018 and was updated in September 2022 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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