THG on ecommerce industry charm offensive
THG has launched a five point package of features to lure retailers to its Ingenuity ecommerce platform as a way of integrating Artifical Intelligence into sales and marketing of consumer goods to to grow market share from competitor product platforms like Shopify.
Speaking THG’s Future of Commerce event last week Vivek Ganotra, chief executive of Ingenuity, said the platform will offer a consumer-like shopping experience for the retailer along with B2B-specific features such as personalised guided buying based on custom trading recommendations, fast reorders, price lists, product catalogues, visual merchandising, purchasing and invoicing.
“We have to think about the whole customer journey, not just the individual parts of it,” he said.
The five new products it hopes Ingenuity will lure other retailers to use their platform are:
A “Headless Commerce” solution which will give brands the freedom to create a website interface by decoupling the front-end and the back-end of THG’s platform.
A Commerce Academy to educate customers on all facets of eCommerce (technology, operations, and marketing); Insights IQ which analyses data for customers; Social Commerce to use TikTok more effectively and “collaborate with a vast network of influencers and content creators”; and to launch in February 2024 a new service called Ingenuity’s Marketplaces solution which manage inventory, pricing, and fulfilment to marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, as well as a customer’s own sites.
THG chief executive Matt Moulding insists that Ingenuity is the secret sauce of the business and can grow the revenue and value of the business in the long term.
In April he said: “In THG Ingenuity, we appointed a highly experienced CEO to focus on long-term, higher value enterprise accounts. The repositioning of the division is on track with the strategy now paying dividends, evidenced by recent announcements and a strong 2023 pipeline.
“We are nearing completion of a three-year major infrastructure investment programme. While this has inevitably involved significant investment and transition costs, the less than 2-year return on investment is pleasing. The global capability it now provides gives us increased confidence in our ability to continue to capture market share whilst accelerating both profitability and free cash flow generation.”
Also, THG is also working with rival Amazon on a local initiative to provide opportunities for 100 underprivileged and under-represented individuals of any age to kickstart their careers in commerce and technology.
THG is also to offer a new training programme for those completing AWS re/Start Programme to help kickstart commerce and tech careers.
Ingenuity’s Fundamentals of ecommerce Programme set to be rolled out on an ongoing basis in 2024 covering subjects including data and analytics, digital marketing, fulfilment and operations, trading and merchandising, project management, user experience and design.
Vivek Ganotra said: “This is just the beginning of our commitment to support individuals through their career journeys, creating positive change in the Northwest and beyond. Drawing our candidate pool from AWS re/Start graduates guarantees resilient and technically skilled individuals who have already built solid foundations of cloud, Python and Linux knowledge, positioning them to make a truly transformative impact in the tech industry. The programme is designed as a hybrid learning experience, incorporating remote learning alongside in-person training at Ingenuity’s prestigious tech campus in Manchester to give learners the best experience.”
