The new platform, announced Monday (Aug. 18), is designed to give independent retailers some of the same resources enjoyed by Fortune 500 companies, with the help of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
“Most small eCommerce sellers rely on disconnected tools—like spreadsheets, shipping apps, and manual systems—that don’t talk to each other. This leads to poor visibility and bad decision making,” the company said in a news release. “Because they lack volume and rely on unscalable systems, small businesses can’t negotiate better deals on storage, shipping, or staffing.”
By contrast, GoodWares added, larger retailers have access to “integrated, data-driven systems” to streamline operations and reduce costs at scale. This opens a huge gap: bigger players thrive, while their smaller counterparts struggle.
In addition to GoodWares AI and blockchain tech, the company uses what it calls its Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG), a “dynamic, visual brain” that monitors changes such as shipping delays or supplier issues and “instantly shows the ripple effects across the entire operation.”
The trend of small businesses leveraging digital tools for their eCommerce needs is something PYMNTS explored last year as the holiday shopping season approached.
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That same report pointed to research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report, “New Report: SMBs Race to Critical Mass on AI Usage” which shows that 61% of small businesses say thy use AI to automate daily tasks.
In related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the three-decade evolution of eCommerce, which has lately seen retailers embed banking-like services into shopping experiences, such as installment plans and savings rewards, “blurring the line between commerce and FinTech.”
For example, Google recently debuted a series of payment updates designed to court online shoppers such as an expansion of the company’s pay-over-time options, which let shoppers in the United States choose from buy now, pay later providers like Affirm and Zip through autofill on Chrome in a few clicks.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “What Consumers Do When Their Go-To Credit Choice Is Unavailable” found that a third of shoppers buying essentials would skip the purchase if their preferred payment method were not offered.
“If the first three decades of eCommerce were about digitizing the store, the next three may be about digitizing the shopper,” that report concluded. “The lines between online and offline are already blurring. In 2055, we may look back at the idea of a checkout page the way we now view fax machines.”
