Monto builds an artificial intelligence (AI) connector for enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for universal B2B payments. And it will use a big part of the funding money to begin operations in the U.S.

Monto’s platform connects users’ ERP systems to its customers’ payment platform.

“Monto is a strategic decision for CFOs, futureproofing them against a landscape where most, if not all, customers will soon use portals,” says Maya Cohen, the company’s co-founder and CEO. “With Monto, getting paid by customers will be fully automatic, a concept we call ‘zero-touch.’ And we succeed in achieving that by working with, not against, the portals, an important distinction.”

Monto gets new funding

The funding comes from Scale Venture Partners with participation from Verissimo Ventures, F2 Venture Capital, Firsthand Alliance and Room40 Ventures. Monto will use the funding for its U.S. expansion and continued product development.

Monto’s AI connections between ERPs and accounts payable (AP) portals learn each customer’s invoicing requirements to ensure a payment flow for the supplier to significantly reduce manual workload, mitigate the risk of overdue payments and improve cash flow management, the company says.

Monto serves large enterprises from various industries, including publicly traded companies like Shutterstock and TechTarget, as well as technology companies like Miro and G2.

The company’s AI platform has helped suppliers get paid $1 billion through thousands of smart connections to different buyers in more than 300 portals, Monto says.

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Global Ecommerce made over $1.35 billion last year for Pitney Bowes. That was more than 40% of Pitney’s total revenue of $3.27 billion that year. It also led Pitney Bowes’ fiscal first quarter, which ended March 31, with segment revenue of $333 million. Global Ecommerce provides business-to-consumer online companies with logistics services for domestic and cross-border fulfillment, delivery and returns throughout the U.S. and more than 200 other countries.

132 retailers in the Top 1000 use Pitney Bowes as a shipping carrier. Those 132 retailers made more than $529 billion in 2023 web sales, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. Additionally, 68 use it for international ecommerce services, and 16 use it for fulfillment services. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database ranking North America’s largest online retailers by their web sales.

Pitney Bowes Global Ecommerce hits growing pains

In this year’s first quarter, “Global Ecommerce grew domestic parcel volumes 20% in a challenging market and reduced operating expenses,” Pitney’s then-interim CEO Jason Dies said on a Q1 earnings call.

But Global Ecommerce, one of three Pitney operating segments, has also been reporting the company’s steepest segment revenue and earnings declines: a Q1 EBITDA loss widened 14% year over year to $21 million as the unit’s revenue fell 26% to $333 million. By comparison, Pitney’s other two segments — SendTech Solutions (a mailing technology and services unit) and Presort Services (a mail-sortation business) — each amassed relatively strong financial quarters, as Pitney Bowes’ total revenue dipped by 0.005% to $830.51 million.

In 2023, Global Ecommerce’s revenue fell 14% year over year to $1.36 billion, as Pitney Bowes total revenue dropped 8% to $3.3 billion.

Lance Rosenzweig, interim CEO, Pitney Bowes Inc.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based company, under a new interim CEO appointed in May, Lance Rosenzweig, is conducting a review of Global Ecommerce’s options going forward. In addition, it recently sold the unit’s fulfillment services business to Stord, an Atlanta-based company that specializes in providing fulfillment services to online merchants. Pitney Bowes didn’t provide details on that sale but told industry publication Freightwaves that fulfillment services were a “small piece of the business.”

Rosenzweig joins Pitney Bowes after serving as a top executive at several public and private companies, including Boingo Wireless, technical support services firm Support.com, and customer experience software company Startek.

Pitney seeks a new head of Global Ecommerce

Gregg Zegras, former president, Global Ecommerce, Pitney Bowes

The Global Ecommerce unit’s recently departed president, Pitney veteran Gregg Zegras, retired earlier this month. Pitney Bowes has yet to name a replacement for Zegras.

Pitney Bowes said earlier this month that it was in the final stages of an “expedited strategic review of Global Ecommerce to eliminate ongoing operating losses.” The company recently identified $70 million in cost savings outside of Global Ecommerce and expects to eventually realize overall savings between $120 million and $160 million.

Stord’s acquisition of Global Ecommerce’s fulfillment services includes a 640,000-square-foot warehouse facility in Hebron, Kentucky, with robotic automation and other features. Stord said that facility is now the largest warehouse in its North American network.

Earlier this year, Stord acquired Pro-Pack Logistics, a fulfillment services provider to multichannel merchants in the U.S. and Canada, and it launched Stord Europe with fulfillment centers in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to support B2B and B2C markets throughout Europe. Stord says it manages more than $5 billion in commerce annually through its fulfillment, warehousing and transportation services.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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In June, “layoffs at big tech companies continued to hurt overall IT hiring,” Janco says, adding, “Large high-tech firms continue to lay off to have better bottom lines. Included in that group of companies that have recently announced new layoffs are Microsoft and Google.”

The 5.9% June IT unemployment rate is up from under 4.0% in March, when it was slightly less than the overall unemployment rate, Janco’s data reports show.

But there’s better news on the B2B ecommerce front, especially for IT professionals with AI skills, Janco says.

Although Janco didn’t break out ecommerce job numbers, it has learned that many employers are striving to cut costs by operating more efficiently — and are looking for IT workers who can help develop AI-powered applications and B2B ecommerce connections to boost revenue and profits.

“From our interviews, data, and analysis, we see that many organizations are looking to improve their bottom lines,” Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco, said in an email reply to Digital Commerce 360.

He added that companies realize that IT has some of the highest costs per FTE (full-time equivalents), including contractors and consultants.

“The mean compensation for IT staff now is $103,692 across all organizations,” Janulaitis said.  “If you add contractors and consultants, that number gets closer to $150,000.”

Relying on AI and ecommerce for automation

“Chief information officers are focused on using AI to automate functions like customer support, exception reporting, and routine management of legacy applications,” Janulaitis said. “As that occurs, the number of FTEs is reduced.”

He added that, to develop AI applications, CIOs must hire or retain consultants or contractors who can quickly develop and deploy AI and machine learning solutions.

“Ecommerce and B2B linkages are areas of particular focus,” he said. “Individuals with those skills and experience are in high demand and quickly find jobs.”

Janulaitis added that, unfortunately, IT pros without AI skills are being left out of areas with stronger employment demand.

“Traditional legacy IT pros are another case, and the high unemployment rates hit them directly.”

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Shawn Cope

In Part 2 of our Machine Customers series, we further expand on the emerging $30 trillion business-to-AI (B2A) marketplace. In Part 1, “The coming era of machine customers,” we introduce the concept of a custobot, a “non-human economic actor who obtains goods or services in exchange for payment” (Gartner.) We shared an example of how it could work in practice, and in this second part, we discuss  the technological underpinnings in greater detail.

Kathleen Lewarchick

Since the decision-making around integrated machines is usually complex, we start with a typical custobot journey map. By capturing its flow, people can gain more clarity around their own roles of ownership, responsibility, IP, and security. And the journey really begins in just the first few seconds — dare we say nanoseconds? — within a transactional ecommerce environment.

The First Seconds of Your Machine Bot’s Journey

The first action step in a custobot’s journey is to identify a product need. The machine might do this through a regulated chip or sensor that provides data: examples include usage level, power level, or variations in tolerances. A data point (or need) drives a purchase occasion. You can see how a car wash soap machine (out of suds,) or a battery-powered system (out of juice,) might know when it’s time to reorder. But conditions requiring tight tolerances might be harder to manage, especially in cases where holiday seasonality or weather conditions may come to bear. And yet, predictive “machine customer” buying behavior is much farther ahead than you might imagine. Some vending soft drink machines have built-in thermometers, for example, to assess heat conditions (and pricing).

Once the need is identified, the custobot can use machine-learning and artificial intelligence to conduct a smart search. If the Bill of Materials (BOM) is programmed into a smart machine, the custobot can search on any of the keywords or specifications. If an item was previously searched, reviewed, or considered (through authentication,) that history might also be added to the query.

Once matches are found, the custobot can use pre-determined filters (like budgets, specs, brands) to then evaluate the shortlist of options for consideration. A custobot might know, for example, that there are two acceptable lightbulbs for its smart lamp. Because of the variability of pricing, shipping terms, delivery windows, and taxes, the distributor who gets the buy box or order will likely have the best real-time information and the most positive credentials, such as ratings-and-reviews.

The operative word in all of this is “smart.” Now is a good time to take measure of your ecosystem to determine where you are already ahead, and what obstacles you might have to navigate, in your platforms (ERPs, PIMs, DAMs) and other systems.

What to Do Next – Engaging Your Technical Experts

Data Preparation

On most B2B sites the current level of data is often quite sparse. Custobots will make purchasing decisions based primarily on information systems rather than personal relationships and will place a heavy emphasis on comparing a product’s attributes. This means you must vastly expand on the amount of detail available for a product’s specifications and attributes.

It also means that a strong push should be made towards standardized product attributes — now, while there is still runway left. According to Wes Smith, the President/CEO of the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED), through the IDEA’s data synchronization services, “the electrical industry continues to advance its product standardization effort, focusing on a goal of harmonized industry data that is consistent, compatible, and complete.”  IDEA is the Industry Data Exchange Association and is jointly owned by NAED and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA).

Why standardize? Because it benefits every participant in the customer journey and will do so for machine customers one day.

Streamlined Products and Pricing with Optional Authentication

Common to B2B websites is the practice of locking catalogues behind an authentication wall. This could shut out guest purchases and present a roadblock to acquiring new customers. However, when a custobot encounters a digital store front as either a guest or authenticated user and it finds limited or no products, a website may rank lower in algorithms, resulting in lost opportunities.

Similarly, in B2B, pricing for a particular product is negotiated per customer or contract, and the price is hidden behind authentication. This pricing method simply won’t work for a custobot that wants to purchase and must at least have an opening price point for comparison. While there is merit in having a better price for volume customers, standard advertised prices are needed at the very least so you don’t risk losing easy sales and lowering your preference rankings in algorithms.

Influencing the Industry Standards

Start Search Engine Optimization (SEO) now to influence the artificial intelligence (AI) models that future machine customers will leverage. If models think specific attributes (e.g., “fit” or “material”) are the most important factors in a buying decision and your products score well there, you will likely win customers based on this foundational groundwork. Large language models are known to have some inherent bias and setting authority for search terms is an important first-mover advantage in the world of machine customers.

In Summary

The coming world of machine customers is already well underway. Setting a place at the table for your new customer requires smart planning and preparation. Since digital moves quickly, start by gathering a cross-departmental, cross-functional team and identifying what people know and don’t know about machine customers. This team can then identify gaps in a custobot customer journey, and then work with subject matter experts to assess the feasibility of solutions.

Pairing Product Management with IT resources will help uncover roadblocks to data flow and create the right single source of truth for product and pricing management. Pairing Marketing and IT resources will help uncover roadblocks to the golden order through API and SEO management. At the very least, by this time next year, everyone in your organization should know what machine customers are and why the company’s digital and IT investments will continue to grow.

Say hello to the new face of customers.

About the authors:

Shawn Cope is the Director of Front-End Engineering for Xngage LLC, a B2B digital commerce services company with more than 60 clients across the industrial trades. Throughout his career he has cultivated a passion for bleeding-edge technologies and crafting user experiences.
Kathleen Leigh Lewarchick is the VP of Marketing for Xngage. She is the former PURELL® Hand Sanitizer Brand Director, has co-created automated replenishment products with Amazon Business, and created telehealth solutions for a company that she later helped sell to CVS Health. 

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About 30,000 businesses on the marketplace use Alibaba’s AI tools to increase product exposure in targeted markets, a practice sellers on the marketplace say helps them grow even with limited internal staffs.

“Using AI has helped put my Alibaba.com store on autopilot and saved us a lot of time since it’s just me and one employee managing our business,” Sieu To, deputy managing director of Vietnam-based electric fan company Hanh Sanh Co., Ltd., says in an Alibaba press release issued today.

Alibaba.com is a unit of Alibaba International Commerce Group and serves more than 48 million buyers and more than 200,000 suppliers on its ecommerce platform worldwide.

Kuo Zhang, president, Alibaba.com

At an event to mark the United Nations-sponsored MSME Day today in Geneva, Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, participated in a panel discussion presented by the U.N. International Trade Center on the inclusion of small and midsized business in global trade. “As we promote wider adoption of our AI tools amongst MSMEs, we also hope to expand our global supplier base … we are building a global supply chain by and for MSMEs, leveraging AI,” he said.

Last month, the marketplace company surveyed 500 MSME companies that do business on Alibaba.com and range in size from one to 250 employees.

Among the survey’s findings:

• 25% to 35% of respondents use AI on a daily basis.
• Using AI tools led to an average 37% increase in product exposure to promote growth in commerce.
• Companies using AI tools accepted 70% of product optimization suggestions.

The survey also found that companies from developing countries accounted for much of the use of the marketplace’s AI tools. “Among the top 20 countries making the most frequent use of Alibaba.com’s AI tools, approximately 50% are from developing countries,” Alibaba says.

Earlier this year, Alibaba.com launched the latest AI-powered version of its Smart Assistant global sourcing tool. Alibaba describes the tool as an “intuitive personal guide to sourcing that helps small business owners discover new opportunities, stay up-to-date on trends, seamlessly track orders and more in a single, efficient touchpoint.”

Alibaba adds that businesses on Alibaba.com can diversify their product sources in markets known for specific product categories.

For example:

• In Northeast Asia, buyers can connect with natural ingredient skin care suppliers out of Korea and partner with home furniture and camera, photo and accessory manufacturers in Japan.
• In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is a supplier hub for seasoning and condiments, and home and outdoor furniture. Buyers can also seek out expert suppliers in India and Pakistan for loose gemstones and horse racing gear.
• In West Asia and Europe, carpets, men’s clothing and construction and building machinery suppliers can be found in Turkey. Buyers are able to tap into suppliers in Germany for industrial machinery and suppliers of wine, textile machinery and women’s apparel from Italy.

“Alibaba.com has helped me expand my business beyond Europe into markets like China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Ghana,” says Maria Francesca Aceti, CEO of nutritional supplements supplier Deltha Pharma.

On its website, Deltha says it is looking for distributors throughout the world.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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In 2021 IBM filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. It alleged that ecommerce technology on Rakuten’s shopping website and mobile apps for providing cash-back offers infringed its patents. IBM says it tried to negotiate a license with Rakuten for six years without success, according to Reuters.

In the complaint, IBM says that it partnered with others to launch Prodigy. Prodigy was one of the first ecommerce services before Rakuten was founded in 1997. According to the complaint, Rakuten “took those prior innovations made by IBM and others to create and run its new business.” It also used more of IBM’s innovations as it developed, according to LawStreetMedia.com.

U.S. District judge Gregory Williams said in an oral order that he was “pleased to hear that the parties have reached an agreement to settle this case,” says Reuters.

The lawsuit had been set to go to trial on June 24. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in detail in the court filing.

In North America, 18 online retailers in the Top 1000 use IBM for order management services. Those 18 retailers generated more than $90.56 billion in web sales in 2022. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of the region’s largest online retailers, ranked by their annual web sales.

IBM, AI and sustainability

IBM recently released a study of 20,000 consumers across 26 countries showing that more than half would like to use:

• Artificial intelligence (59%)
• Augmented or virtual reality (55%)
• Bots or virtual assistants (55%)

Meanwhile, just 9% of those consumers said they’re satisfied with their in-store shopping experiences. However, that figure is slightly higher at 14% for ecommerce experiences.

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The company, which provides cloud-based services and an ecommerce platform for merchants, expects “a challenging season” for shoppers and retailers alike. And “we can’t say shoppers didn’t warn us,” Salesforce said. That’s because shoppers have been searching for savings and waiting to make big purchases, it said.

“After remaining largely resilient throughout four years of economic uncertainty, consumers are finally feeling the pinch,” Salesforce said in a statement. “From sustained inflation to supply chain woes, consumers worldwide have been through a lot.”

Nearly a third of global shoppers (32%) reported using alternative credit services like buy now, pay later (BNPL) more frequently this year, according to Salesforce research.

Salesforce defines the holiday season as Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. In North America, 76 of the Top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2022, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $116.97 billion in web sales.

Here are Salesforce’s five predictions about the 2024 holiday shopping season.

1. Chinese shopping apps will take over

The first Salesforce holiday shopping prediction revolves around two factors: prices and China. The company said 63% of Western consumers plan to purchase from Chinese shopping apps during the 2024 holiday season. That includes merchants such as Aliexpress, Cider, Shein, Temu and TikTok. And it all comes down to price, Salesforce said.

Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail at Salesforce, said sales increases have been “almost purely because of price increases, not increase in products sold.”

Order volumes have been falling since 2022, Salesforce said, and shoppers want their purchases to feel worth it. Salesforce projects that these Chinese shopping apps will take 21% of sales outside China itself in the 2024 holiday season.

2. Middle-mile shipping puts strain on margins

The second Salesforce prediction is that brands and retailers will spend an extra $197 billion on middle- and last-mile expenses during the 2024 holiday shopping season. That would be a 97% increase over last year’s holiday season.

The company said attacks in the Red Sea from Yemen-based Houthi forces and rising crude oil prices are driving container costs up worldwide. A Houthi spokesperson stated in December that they would target “ships affiliated to Israel or transporting commodities to Israeli ports” and continue to do so if “food and medicine keep not accessing the Gaza Strip.”

Salesforce cited a Reuters report assessing that “any ceasefire agreement would lessen the tension in the Middle East.” To date, Israel and Hamas have not agreed on terms for a ceasefire that would end the current Israeli military campaign. Israel has pushed for a six-week ceasefire, whereas Hamas has pushed for a permanent ceasefire.

Moreover, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has stalled delivery times and added expenses for retailers. But despite these challenges, Salesforce said, retailers shouldn’t push shipping expenses onto consumers.

More than half of shoppers say they are more likely to purchase online than in a store if delivery is free, according to Salesforce. This is also in line with Digital Commerce 360 research.

Garf said retailers are getting more stringent about returns, as well. That has also led to retailers pushing buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS).

3. Shoppers embrace AI to search for the perfect gift

Salesforce said that artificial intelligence (AI) influenced 17% of online purchases during the 2023 holiday shopping season. Predictive and generative AI contributed to $199 million in online sales during the 2023 holiday shopping season, it said.

This year, Salesforce anticipates that more consumers will leverage AI, whether they know it or not. Already, 53% of shoppers Salesforce surveyed said they are interested in using generative AI for discovering gift ideas.

As Google embeds generative AI into its search tool, Salesforce said, retailers will be able to transition from keyword searches to natural prompts for finding products on their websites. Salesforce said it predicts search will drive a conversion rate nearly 3x better compared to traffic not engaged with site search. It also predicts a 1.8% conversion rate across all geographies and verticals in the 2024 holiday shopping season.

Salesforce announced AI, Data Cloud and Commerce Cloud features at its Connections 2024 conference at McCormick Place in Chicago on May 22 and 23.

4. Black Friday becomes Cyber Friday

Among the Salesforce predictions is that ecommerce will capture 7% of in-store sales on Black Friday.

Nearly two-thirds of shoppers Salesforce surveyed said they’re waiting until the Cyber 5 period to make large holiday purchases.

“The big news is that Black Friday is going to be the biggest day for digital,” Salesforce said.

Survey respondents cited convenience, free delivery and the ability to search for the best prices as their top reasons for going online. Additionally, 72% of surveyed consumers told Salesforce they prefer to shop online during Black Friday.

5. Retailers tap loyal shoppers to avoid skyrocketing digital marketing costs

Digital marketing costs are becoming more expensive as the United States prepares for another presidential election and Chinese companies buy more advertising inventory, Salesforce said.

“This means that brands and retailers have to better engage their existing customer base amid this tug of war over digital advertising space,” it said.

As a result, Salesforce said, shoppers are doubling down on loyalty programs. 63% of shoppers are making more purchases from stores where they can earn and redeem loyalty points, Salesforce said.

Salesforce Shopping Index data indicates that the rate of repeat buyers increased 8% over the last two years. Furthermore, 46% of shoppers say earning and redeeming loyalty points is the second-highest factor, behind price, influencing where they buy, according to Salesforce data.

The final Salesforce holiday prediction is that loyal, repeat buyers will make 40% of purchases in the 2024 holiday season.

“This season will be competitive, intense, and no doubt all about pricing and discounting strategies,” Salesforce said. “It’s never been more important to rely on your customer data for guidance and insight into marketing campaigns — especially the holiday promotional calendar — that keep your loyal customers buying more and buying from you.”

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The recommendations will come from The Shopping Muse, a next-generation retail assistant from Dynamic Yield, which Mastercard owns. Shopping Muse uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to help customers choose items such as accessories or shirts.

Online clothing shopping has been somewhat slow to move from bricks and mortar to online because people like the in-person experience of trying on clothes. However, according to Mastercard, Muse recreates the in-store experience — as much as possible virtually — by translating consumers’ everyday language into tailored product recommendations.

How Michael Kors will deploy Mastercard’s Shopping Muse

“As a trailblazer in ready-to-wear fashion, Michael Kors is a perfect example of how to put our ready-to-use technology to use,” said Ori Bauer, the CEO at Dynamic Yield. “Shopping Muse is helping translate the signature Michael Kors service to the digital world, delivering a satisfying shopping experience as singular and impactful as the brand’s aesthetic.”

Shopping Muse first launched at the end of 2023, with fashion retailers, including Michael Kors, getting early access. Next, Dynamic Yield is looking at use cases for furniture retailers, expanding to other categories thereafter.

Daniel Citron, CEO of tech company AI.Fashion, which specializes in creating fashion imagery with AI, tells Digital Commerce 360 that AI has a future in the apparel shopping experience.

“In the fashion industry, AI opens up new opportunities for creativity and innovation,” Citron said. “It empowers brands to deliver highly personalized shopping experiences consumers increasingly desire.”

Citron says AI can help bridge the gap between the virtual and in-person clothing shopping experience.

“Embracing AI is not just about efficiency,” Citron said. “It’s about enhancing the human touch in fashion, ensuring that creativity and technology work hand in hand.”

What it’s like to use Shopping Muse

Not everyone is convinced Mastercard’s Shopping Muse technology is ready for prime time. Currently, for example, the tool returns dozens of results for a request to see a comfortable shirt to wear while playing golf and was given dozens of choices. A search for a pair of “brown flip-flops,” meanwhile, also yielded many choices while also bringing up swimwear and sandals.

“Even at total capacity, I don’t believe this will be the future of shopping,” says Greg Zakowicz, senior ecommerce expert at the marketing automation platform Omnisend.

Zakowicz tested searches, refining results by height, weight and the description of a long torso. Those queries and additional changes produced similar results, albeit reordered.

“I see virtual assistants like this being useful for recommending similar products based on something you are currently viewing,” Zakowicz adds. “Still, mass adoption of tools like this seems unlikely, especially for something so individually nuanced as personal style.”

Still, other major retailers are looking for AI solutions in apparel use cases as well. Amazon, for example, is looking to it for fit recommendations and improving conversions. Meanwhile, eBay is leveraging AI to upgrade its discovery experience. In furniture, Ikea is also deploying a shopping assistant, which is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

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The smaller screen size can make it more difficult to find products, so Casio UK and its G-Shock watch website, have been using content personalization and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search in an effort to boost conversion. So far, it seems to be working.

One way has been through creating a sense of urgency. Casio UK has tested FOMO (fear of missing out) messaging on its website. Monique Green, ecommerce manager at Casio UK, told Digital Commerce 360 that an SKU with less than 10 remaining units for sale will display messages such as “last chance” or “only five left in stock.” This has driven conversion rates up to 18%, according to Casio.

Using technology from Nosto, Casio UK’s website will display how many times a product has been viewed (on its Casio site) or purchased (on its G-Shock website) in the past 24 hours. Nosto is a commerce experience platform (CXP) that offers automation and AI tools to provide insights on ecommerce data.

Casio sells watches, calculators and musical instruments. It has different ecommerce websites for:

• North America
• Latin America
• Europe (including a separate website for the UK and Ireland)
• The Middle East and Africa
• Asia and Oceania

Casio UK taps Nosto for personalization tools

Although Casio sells wholesale, it said it wants to encourage shoppers to buy directly from both its Casio and G-Shock websites. Using a Nosto feature, Casio and G-Shock’s UK websites have achieved a 40% conversion rate on a retention campaign that triggers a pop-up message offering consumers a discount code. The catch is that it appears when a shopper copies and pastes product details to potentially search online for the same product elsewhere.

Danny Power, head of digital at Casio UK, told Digital Commerce 360 that the retailer’s focus “has been on DTC improvements in the past 5 years anyway, to understand the customer more and serve content that fits.”

He added that Casio UK had “a lot” of customers shopping directly on its websites during the pandemic, but that tailed off over the past few years and is building back up toward peak levels.

“Stock was difficult to move to retailers as their warehouses shut, so customers had to come direct during [the COVID-19] pandemic,” Powers said.

Additionally, Green said, Nosto will generate a pop-up on Casio UK’s site suggesting returning visitors pick up where they left off. That pop-up would take consumers to pages they’ve already visited, nudging them to convert.

“If I want to put a banner on the site, that’s a bit different,” she said. “I would go in and manually do that. But a lot of the things like PLP, products gone out of stock, that would drop to the last page. No one wants to see an out-of-stock product they can’t buy. So that’s, I’d say, like 90% just working in the background.”

Product recommendations

Casio UK said it also uses Nosto’s product recommendations feature “to help consumers find the right products quickly.” The retailer said it uses A/B testing to optimize where those recommendations appear across its site. That can include triggering a notification on a product listing page that a newer model of a product is available. This is driving 26% of sales on G-Shock’s UK site and 11% on Casio UK’s.

Green said Casio UK doesn’t have options on its site to save a product for later or to compare it with another product. However, the site shows recently viewed products at the bottom of the page as consumers are browsing.

“So for example, our GA 2100 is our best seller, and we have it in like four different colors,” Green said. “So before, you would only see that product when you clicked on it. Now, when you click on that product, you can see the different colors also on the PDP.”

Improving search functionality

Casio said Nosto’s AI-powered search makes it easier for consumers — especially those on mobile — to find products on its website by entering attributes including color, shape, or product names.

12% of Casio and G-Shock UK’s site visitors use the search bar during their buying journey. But Casio said its “previous search functionality suffered from a lack of advanced product data processing, meaning it couldn’t provide relevant matches to complex queries unless the team spent time manually linking attributes for each product.”

Other technology Casio UK uses

Green said Casio UK also uses Yotpo for user-generated content. Yotpo is a retention marketing platform that retailers can use to produce reviews, text messages, email, subscriptions and more. Casio UK also uses Hotjar, which offers website heatmaps and behavior-analytics tools.

Heat maps are “really useful, especially when you’re trying to see what’s annoying people or bugs,” Green said. “Or if someone’s clicking on something loads and it’s not working, it helps you pick up things on the website. … But because it requires you to go back and watch it, it’s quite time consuming.”

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At the same time, Salesforce has been expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) suite and its corresponding large language models (LLMs). CEO Marc Benioff said in an earnings call with investors that web users create “hundreds of petabytes of data” each day that AI models can use for training and generating output. One petabyte is the same as 1 million gigabytes, which is also the same as 1,000 terabytes.

Benioff said Salesforce is now managing more than 250 petabytes of data for its customers. That will “be absolutely critical as they move into artificial intelligence,” he said.

“The one thing that every enterprise needs to make AI work is their customer data, as well as the metadata that describes the data, which provides the attributes and context the AI models need to generate accurate, relevant output,” Benioff said. “And customer data and metadata are the new gold for these enterprises.”

He said that growth in Salesforce data is giving momentum to Data Cloud, and that “it’s the first step to becoming an AI enterprise.”

In North America, 76 of the top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2023, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $136.077 billion in web sales.

Salesforce had cut 10% of its staff in January 2023. The job cuts cost the company $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion. As much as $1 billion of that came in its fiscal fourth quarter.

AI continues to guide Salesforce revenue growth in Q1

The 11% growth rate matches the rate at which Salesforce revenue increased in its fiscal Q4 2024. Of its $9.13 billion in total revenue during Q1, Salesforce brought in $8.59 billion from subscriptions and support. That’s a 12% year-over-year increase.

Although revenue grew at the same rate in the last two quarters and exceeded $9 billion, this marked the second time since Q1 of fiscal 2021 that Salesforce revenue did not grow quarter over quarter. Gross profit grew to $6.91 billion in Q1 2024, from $6.12 billion in the year-ago period.

Chief financial officer Amy Weaver said revenue was at the lower end of Salesforce’s previous guidance because of “continuing pressures on professional services, some license revenue volatility and the continued measured buying environment.”

In the Americas, she said, Salesforce revenue grew 11% year over year. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), it grew 10%. In Asia-Pacific, it grew 14%. Weaver added that from an industry perspective, the public sector and financial services both performed well. She said retail and consumer goods “were more constrained.”

Benioff said Data Cloud was included in a quarter of Salesforce’s $1 million-plus deals in Q1. Additionally, Salesforce added more than 1,000 Data Cloud customers for the second straight quarter.

Einstein — Salesforce’s platform that allows users to connect their data, customer relationship management and more using artificial intelligence — is generating hundreds of billions of predictions per day, he said. That’s trillions per week, he added.

Salesforce Connections 2024

Salesforce recently announced new AI, Data Cloud and Commerce Cloud features at its Connections 2024 conference at McCormick Place in Chicago in late May. At the conference, president and chief marketing officer Ariel Kelman showed Salesforce’s new features during the main keynote. He highlighted the software company’s generative AI-powered copilots, including specific ones for merchants and marketers. Salesforce also announced Commerce Cloud updates for checkout, headless commerce, composable commerce and digital engagement.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports. Here’s last quarter’s update.

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