SMBs Need Help Managing E-Commerce’s Explosive Growth and the Great Resignation

The answer lies in technology

Published: Tuesday, September 13, 2022 - 12:00

(StoreConnect: San Francisco) -- One of the biggest news stories of the past several years has been the Great Resignation. Millennials in particular have felt the brunt of workforce changes from the pandemic and have been pushing back. Nearly 60 percent of millennials feel workplace burnout has increased since the Great Resignation, while globally 83 percent report having to take on up to six new tasks outside of their job descriptions due to their co-workers resigning. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) in e-commerce may particularly struggle with this shift, explains Mikel Lindsaar, CEO and founder of StoreConnect.

“SMBs in e-commerce who are fighting intolerant and rising consumer demands are not able to sustain this level of turnover,” he says. “Companies should brace for a lasting culture of quitting, and, for SMBs, technology can help.”

To combat the burnout and try to offset the extra work, more and more companies are seeking creative ways to compensate their employees, from four-day work weeks to switching to permanent remote work. Even with these benefits, companies should expect this level of turnover as the new normal. Job turnover is 20 percent higher even in this new remote and hybrid working world, and it is anticipated to stay elevated with 37 million people expected to leave their jobs in 2022. If a company was losing a fifth of its workforce pre-Covid, they should expect that number to jump to a fourth.

Meeting e-commerce’s explosive growth

Paralleling the trend in employee turnover has been the explosive growth in e-commerce for SMBs. Keeping up with that demand is a challenge for many SMBs, and, again, technology holds the answer. With global retail spending estimated to reach $6.3 trillion by 2024, there is a massive opportunity to help SMBs handle this boom.

“It’s about the simplicity,” Lindsaar says. “Many companies can do POS and multistore and multicurrency... but who cares about that if you have to do it across 10 different systems?” 

StoreConnect is an e-commerce, point of sale, and content management system built on Salesforce that allows small and medium-size businesses to consolidate all their marketing, sales, and support channels into one system.

Some of the top challenges SMBs are facing include:
• Cybersecurity
• Competition
• Order fulfillment
• Customer experience
• Quality website traffic and visitor conversion
• Visibility
• Return and refund policies
• Finding the right market

The right technology can make all the difference, with a fully integrated e-commerce platform helping SMBs streamline their business processes and compete against large retailers during the ongoing uncertainty in the world.

“The industry has focused on enterprise-size companies, not the small business customer, for too long,” Lindsaar says. “I saw a need for building a solution that allowed SMBs to compete with the Goliaths in the e-commerce space, something that is more needed than ever thanks to the explosive growth of online shopping.”

StoreConnect helps SMBs free staff resources and focus on customers while being the affordable solution. Providing 15 tools in one system, something no other e-commerce system does, StoreConnect allows SMBs to easily scale from 3,000 orders per month to 35,000 orders over two days without any advance warning from the customer and with no negative impact on store speed. Additionally, StoreConnect allows SMBs to run multiple stores from the one system with multiple currencies, designs, product mixes, shipping solutions, and more.

“E-commerce companies are saving $50,000 to $250,000 in the first year of StoreConnect just from efficiencies of a single eCommerce 3.0 system alone,” explains Lindsaar. “And they will be able to keep the same system as they scale up to multiple sites in multiple languages and channels, at the same speed and low cost, being able to compete on a global level like never before. David can really take on Goliath!”

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