What’s next for the e-commerce game in Malaysia?
A chat with Vaibhav Dahbade, Founder and CEO of Anchanto
The Covid-19 pandemic saw businesses jumping onto the e-commerce bandwagon with gusto. What was supposed to take years to achieve in terms of business digitalisation was compressed into a year. As competition for online shoppers’ wallets stiffens, what’s ahead for e-commerce in Malaysia? How can retailers prepare for it?
Vaibhav Dahbade, Founder and CEO of Anchanto, sheds some light on the matter in a chat with Asia Connects. Headquartered in Singapore, Anchanto provides proprietary SaaS products to boost the e-commerce capabilities of businesses worldwide, including major brands like Garnier, L’Oreal, Maybelline, and more.
Asia Connects: Amidst the online retail evolution in Malaysia, especially among brick-and-mortar SMEs, what are the common mistakes that retailers make?
Vaibhav Dahbade: As brands and retailers try to cut through the noise and competition, they realise that every order missed or cancelled creates a domino effect. A wrong delivery leads to a negative review, which in turn translates to sales loss. When order volumes had grown automatically during the pandemic, this impact was even more prominent as even a small percentage of order errors meant many unhappy customers.
While SMEs understand the negative impact of missed orders, cancellations or errors, they tend to go for in-house software applications which don’t help solve the problem. Or they try to look for technology that aligns 100% with their existing SOPs. But what they really should be looking for is the technology that is built considering the best industry SOPs and practices in mind.
To succeed in today’s e-commerce landscape, every business needs to work with multiple systems, partners, and players. This is why our domain agnostic products are equipped with 150+ integrations with marketplaces and webstores and last-mile carriers, accounting and financing tools, enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, and third-party systems like SAP. Examples of such technology are our two platforms – Anchanto OMS (SelluSeller) and Anchanto WMS (Wareo).
These integrations enable businesses to run asset-light operations, eliminate redundant operations, save resources, time and investments, and leverage automation to achieve high efficiency and productivity.
AC: How can Malaysian SMEs seeking a ‘ReLaunch’ and make the most of their online sales channels in the fourth quarter of this year?
Vaibhav Dahbade: Mega sales like 11.11, 12.12, and Christmas can be an excellent opportunity for SMEs looking to bounce back. To make the most of this season, SMEs need to ensure that they don’t wait too long to launch promotions. They need to remember that they have a limited time to convert month-long traffic to sales. Otherwise, customers will never know about the promotions, and this leads to a low conversion rate.
Things get complicated if businesses are unable to track the progress of their e-commerce campaigns in real-time. Since the sales period is usually limited to very few days, it is crucial to know how their promotions are being received by their customers at every moment. This can only be achieved if they have a centralised view of all promotions along with key metrics across channels in real-time. This will enable them to make quick decisions if things go south on one channel at any time during the sales season.
Along with these factors, businesses need to have an accurate sales forecast, follow reports and analytics religiously, have updated catalogues and web stores, follow marketplace trends and policies, and above all, be ready for unexpected challenges.
AC: Where are e-commerce trends and growth headed in Malaysia, and how can SMEs prepare for it?
Vaibhav Dahbade: The pandemic has not only made people buy online more but has also made them miss buying offline. So, both the channels will continue to co-exist with capabilities like ‘click-and-collect’, and ‘try-and-buy’ being the game-changers.
Next, businesses that already have warehouses and teams fulfilling their products will start serving other e-commerce brands. This is because many brands are looking for enablers within Malaysia, and anyone with the e-commerce fulfilment know-how can monetise this knowledge to maximise revenue.
With Malaysia’s e-commerce market estimated to grow by 14.3 percent between 2020 and 2024, SMEs seeking to grow concurrently with the market must plan their digital transformation strategies well in advance, rather than hastily doing so at the journey’s latter stages. The challenge now is that Covid-19 has caused significant disruptions to Malaysia’s business landscape, necessitating enterprises to adapt quickly. This makes the playground equal for businesses of all sizes- meaning that the early technology adopters will have the opportunity to achieve an edge over their competitors.
AC: Leveraging mega sales is indeed crucial. What can e-commerce retailers learn from past mega sales?
Vaibhav Dahbade: 2021 has already witnessed two mega sales – 9.9 and 10.10. More than 1.65 million orders were processed via Anchanto’s platforms during the 9.9 sale, while more than 1.44 million orders were processed on 10.10. This is a massive jump compared to last year. We predict that the coming 11.11 is going to be even bigger this time. This means enormous order surges, which requires rapid fulfilment and a unified strategy for e-commerce.