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According to a new report from Greenlight Commerce, UK businesses are struggling to prepare their ecommerce platforms for Britain’s departure from the European Union.
The study, which questioned 200 UK-based ecommerce decision-makers from Business-to-Business (B2B) and Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands, found that 78% of decision makers don’t believe their organisation’s ecommerce platform is fully prepared to cater for whatever the outcome of Brexit brings.
Greenlight Commerce says that organisations are particularly worried about how a no-deal Brexit will impact their ecmmerce offering, with 91% believing this scenario will have an effect. The main impacts of a no-deal Brexit identified are confusions about regulations (48%), a difficulty to trade with EU customers (48%), increased delivery times (34%) and a decrease in transactions (27%).
The survey reveals the measures organisations are taking in an attempt to get their ecommerce platform prepared for Brexit, as 47% of respondents have seen their ecommerce budgets increase in response to Brexit, and 78% have seen the threat of Brexit lead to changes made to their ecommerce offering.
“The survey results clearly show that the threat of Brexit is having a significant impact on Britain’s B2B and D2C sectors. Organisations are worried about the effect a no-deal Brexit could have upon their ecommerce offering, with changes to regulations and a difficulty selling to EU customers seen as the biggest challenges,” commented Kevin Murray, managing director at Greenlight Commerce.
“In the meantime, businesses need to ensure their ecommerce platform is optimised and fully-functional. During periods of change and uncertainty, an agile ecommerce platform can help alleviate some of the pressures on an organisation, by showing real-time stock availability and enabling updates to be made easily, for example. It is good to see that the majority of organisations understand this and are investing in ecommerce accordingly. ecommerce won’t fix all of the problems created by Brexit, but a platform that can change quickly to meet changing business needs will certainly help.”
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