Think about the last time you made an important purchase. Did you have to buy each individual piece and build the product to the correct specification? More often than not, the answer is no. If you’re buying a car, you expect it come assembled by a trained and certified technician and mechanic. Looking for a new smartphone? Packaged nicely and ready to use is usually preferred.

Why are companies still entrusting their commerce platform to an on-premise solution?

So it begs the question: why are companies still entrusting their commerce platform to an on-premise solution? In what we've discussed previously as the third era in commerce, our modern commerce partners can handle all of the challenges that come with building the right platform, so that you can focus on the most important thing — your business.

We understand that some of you may be skittish, and that’s okay. Handing over the reins to your online empire might sound scary, intimidating, even crazy. But in actuality, with the right commerce platform partner, it can empower your business to be innovative, more agile, and — perhaps most importantly — a true disruptor in your industry.

When talking to Echidna CTO, Mike Pierce, he explained that today’s Silicon Valley startups and global tech giants drive online expectations. And consumers expect every online brand they do business with to meet those expectations. It doesn’t matter if you’re a manufacturer, a distributor, a retailer, or a local flower shop: when it comes to commerce — your customers expect innovation on pace with the leaders in your market. But most companies don’t have the IT engineering and UX design talent to compete with the Amazons and the Starbucks of the world. This is how cloud-based commerce platforms and system integration partners, like Echidna, provide a leg up. Building on the out-of-box capabilities of these platforms, we help companies attain best-in-class commerce experiences while eliminating the operational overhead of hardware infrastructure and platform maintenance.

Trusting someone else to provide such a core capability to your company is scary, we know. But it’s not new. A century ago, factory owners faced a similar dilemma when regional utilities began delivering electricity as a service. Companies had to decide whether to trust these utility providers with the operations of their factories or retain their own engineering staff, equipment, and facilities to obtain the same result. Ultimately, the market favored electricity as a distributed service over on-premise generation, and private power plants went the way of the windmill. The bet paid off and eventually gave rise to the digital age we know and enjoy today.