Gartner: Four technologies that will have a significant impact on digital commerce in the next two years

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According to Gartner's 2021 Hype Cycle for Digital Commerce, in the next two years, as visual configuration, digital wallets, customer identity and access management (CIAM) and virtual customer assistants (VCA) become increasingly mainstream, these technologies will have a significant impact on digital commerce.

“Digital business is a fast-moving market where competitive pressures and the need for innovation drive the frequent emergence of new technologies,” said Sandy Shen, research vice president at Gartner. “Enterprise application leaders can use the Hype Cycle to understand which technologies will fade over time and which ones will have a significant business impact. By understanding the capabilities and challenges of each technology, they can make informed decisions based on the resources they have.”

CIAM, digital wallets, visual configuration, and VCA will enter the steady climb and recovery phase of the technology maturity curve in 2021 (see Figure 1). At this stage, specific examples of how enterprises benefit from technology are becoming increasingly apparent and widely known.

Figure 1: 2021 Digital Commerce Technology Maturity Curve

Source: Gartner (October 2021)

Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)

CIAM tools manage identity, authentication, and authorization in external identity use cases. Increased privacy regulations and reliance on remote interactions have increased the importance of CIAM for businesses and their customers.

“CIAM can also improve the user experience (UX) in B2C and B2B commerce, the gig economy, and government-to-citizen (G2C) interactions,” said Shen. “By the end of 2021, 86% of organizations will compete based on user experience (UX). Industries that have little competitive differentiation in products and services will rely on online experiences to differentiate themselves.”

Digital Wallets

Digital wallets provide trusted credentials for users to conduct transactions remotely or in person through connected devices. This technology has demonstrated many benefits, such as making the customer payment experience more convenient and increasing revenue, which has been successfully demonstrated in industries such as parking, transportation, retail and digital commerce. Lack of support for digital wallets may affect customer conversion rates and be seen as a competitive disadvantage.

Virtual Customer Assistant (VCA)

A VCA is an application that interacts with, communicates information to, and/or takes actions on behalf of an organization’s customers. The COVID-19 outbreak has accelerated the adoption of VCAs, bringing some use cases into the mainstream, while new use cases in healthcare or brand marketing are also emerging.

As VCAs become the first point of digital contact for customers, they can provide proactive recommendations and interactions that build customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Visual Configuration

Visual Configurator enables sales representatives and customers to see a visual representation of the product options and features they have selected. This technology is more relevant to B2B transactions, allowing customers to purchase complex finished products through digital commerce without training. Organizations that are the first in their industry to adopt Visual Configurator can significantly increase their competitive advantage and generate cost savings.

Recent technological improvements, such as more realistic visuals, are driving rapid growth and widespread adoption of visualization configurations in digital commerce operations.