Just over a year ago, the world witnessed as our societal and cultural norms became challenged under the duress of an unexpected pandemic. The disruption proved monumental, impacting our daily lives, from how we work and learn, to how we greet friends and family, our economy, and beyond. Partnerships proved vital.
Amongst the disruption came unforeseen advancements in innovation—a result of necessity. I estimate that eCommerce adoption advanced by five years as people shifted to online shopping during the lock down. Although the circumstances were scary and sad, they also delivered a massive opportunity for visionary and nimble companies to help support a displaced community. Agility was and is the key to success, and to achieve this, organizations should be looking to work together, a concept that’s not necessarily natural for business owners. But at Fast Simon, we believe that partnerships are a crucial factor for success, and as such, we’re pleased to share some new collaborations intended to scale our business and to facilitate the growth of our customers.
BigCommerce
In March, we announced an expanded partnership with BigCommerce, a leading Open SaaS eCommerce platform for fast-growing and already established brands. The retail industry’s fiercely competitive nature combined with today’s COVID-induced challenges require that merchants go above and beyond to delight shoppers while maximizing value. Fast Simon is now a BigCommerce Preferred Technology Partner, providing BigCommerce customers with unprecedented AI-powered merchandising, site search, and personalization. Fueled by data around shopper behavior, store inventory, and visual signals, Fast Simon supports BigCommerce merchants, including B2B, B2C, and headless commerce, to increase conversion rates and average order values (AOV). This is done by automatically matching shoppers’ purchase intent to the merchandising priorities.
We’re thrilled to see BigCommerce scaling their practice in response to growing demand and the integral role we are playing to support their success, and ultimately, their customers’ success.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce
Also, in March, Fast Simon announced a collaboration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce. The goal is to enable Dynamics 365 customers to automate manual work and deliver AI-powered shopper experiences by extending our AI-driven merchandising capabilities directly to Dynamics 365 customers.
“Fast Simon’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce is an example of how our partners benefit from our interfaces to build enhanced platform capabilities for our customers,” said Balaji Balasubramanian, the general manager of Dynamics 365 Commerce at Microsoft.
Collaborations are essential for growth, and in May, Fast Simon announced that it was accepted to the Shopify Plus Certified App Program. These strategic relationships with trusted partners mean that more merchants will have access to our supercharged merchandising capabilities, our serverless-search engine, AI visual recommendations, and more. We look forward to announcing some exciting news shortly – from new products and features to other strategic collaborations and more.
Stay tuned!