No Images? Click here Dear , What a difference a month makes. Last month, after weeks of speculation, anxiety - and outright fear - Amazon finally touched down in Australia. And what do you know? The sky didn’t fall, a nation of shoppers didn't disappear overnight and life, for Australia’s ecommerce community at least, seems to be going on as normal. Their reaction to Amazon’s downunder invasion has been surprisingly muted - more of a sigh than a shriek, really - and quite the contrast to some of the downright apocalyptic thinking doing the rounds in the run-up to the ecom giant’s local launch. So what accounts for this unsettling air of calm? Relief? Or something more like complacency? If you take our very poor showing in a new survey measuring load times on e-comm websites around the world, it looks troublingly like the latter. Not to put too fine a point on it, Australia’s results were dismal, with the slowest loading websites of all countries surveyed, second only to China. That’s not good by any measure and we need to be doing better than this. In the world of 2018, with its information overload, fake news and ever-accelerating oscillations between outrage and indifference, one could be forgiven for thinking that all the drama of the Amazon takeover has turned out to be little more hot air. Forgiven, yes. But still very wrong. Make no mistake, Amazon is here and is coming for you customers. We were ready for a fight back then. We still should be. In other news:
Phew! Lots to do in 2018. Is it always this busy this early in the year? Happy reading! Jonathan Cotton, AU fails Amazon challenge with second slowest sites in the worldAustralia’s e-merchants disregard Amazon threat as a new report shows local load times faster only than China... The industry was ready for a fight back in October, spending big on technology, refreshing customer-facing systems and integrating processes to improve offerings. Not so now. “The numbers involved may be considered fine margins, but the slightest delay in user experience can have a ripple effect on sales” IBM digitises global shipping supply chainBig Blue and Maersk look to reinvent logistics using blockchain... IBM and Maersk's ambitions are high: Create a global trade digitisation platform built on open standards and designed for use by the entire global shipping ecosystem. "Rationalising such a large network of disparate partners is a challenge, but it is also a task to which blockchain technology is particularly suited" World’s top IT companies tackle Industry 4.0 – with free educationTech giants come together to train world’s workers to survive Fourth Industrial Revolution... Ever felt like you were missing just a few of the skills required to truly excel at your 9 to 5? Turns out you’re not alone. "Re-envision an educational system based on lifelong learning that can fully prepare workers for the jobs of the future" Cloud overtakes on premise, driven by finance functionPaperless processes, automation and efficiency gains hard to ignore… For the first time in A/NZ, the deployment of pure cloud-based financial management solutions has outstripped on premise deployments in the hotly-contested mid-market space. "The biggest appetite [is] happening in industries that some might have thought were traditionally late adopters" The downside of DevOps: faster isn’t always betterDevOps is gaining popularity - but there are limitations, writes Phil Kernick, CTO at information security specialist CQR… The appeal of DevOps is its apparent ability to reduce the time required for the development process. “Suddenly, there is an uncomfortable tension between doing the development job fast and doing it well. And the ‘do it fast’ approach is winning” Timber supplier trading goes digitalWhy Hermpac chose Flow Software for EDI… When its trading partners requested electronically-submitted invoices, building supplies manufacturer Herman Pacific looked to Flow Software to provide the necessary integration. “Customers are getting their invoices a lot quicker. We save time and money. And it is more reliable.” This week's sponsor: Latest articles by this vendor: - Heating up the Australian market… Upcoming events: > Overcoming the challenges of digital transformation | Feb 20-21 | Canberra iStart is proudly supported by these leading Australian software providers: Latest Buyer's Guides ERP Buyer's Guide | CRM Buyer's Guide | HR/HCM Buyer's Guide | BI & Analytics Buyer's Guide Privacy statement: We have sent this weekly eNewsletter to you at your e-mail address: [email address suppressed]. iStart will never share your e-mail address, but you may from time to time receive other event invitations or partner communications from us. You can opt out of these by managing your subscription preferences, where you can also update your e-mail address and other details. Find out more about iStart | Advertise with iStart | Subscribe
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