New Government – Labour Small Business Agenda

We’ve are all waking up to a new Government today, with the Labour party about to take control of the country and what should be top of your mind as you get to the office are what the Labour small business plans mean for you.

The Labour Small Business Agenda includes plans to introduce new legislation and regulatory reforms which they claim are designed to significantly benefit small businesses. Here are the main Labour small business policies that they were elected on:

Small Business Exports & BREXIT

In the Labour Small Business Agenda, they say that they will work alongside the Federation of Small Business on a Small Business Export Taskforce, which will look at practical ways they can remove the barriers to exports for firms of all sizes and improve guidance to make exporting easier.

Part of this is that, while Labour are clear that our future lies outside of the customs union, they say that they will make Brexit work by improving on current deal when the Trade and Cooperation Agreement renewal period comes in 2025.

Digital Services Tax

While the LibDems still want to increase the Digital Services Tax on social media firms and other tech giants from 2% to 6%, thankfully Labour scrapped this policy. We all know only to well that when the likes of Amazon get taxed they simply pass the cost on to small businesses to pay.

Scrap small business rates for a fairer system

Labour have commited to scrap the current business rates system and replace it with a system of business property taxation they say is fit for the 21st century. Their new system will reduce the burden on high streets and support small businesses’ ambitions to grow and to move into empty premises, rather than standing in the way of entrepreneurship.

This could be a double edged sword for online only businesses that don’t operate on the high street, so we’ll wait to see if it means a tax hike for ecommerce.

High Street policies

Labour say that they will tackle anti-social behaviour by introducing new town centre police patrols and a mandatory antisocial behaviour police lead for every local neighbourhood – Great news for shop owners, but won’t impact pureplay ecommerce businesses.

However if you do want to open a shop, Labour say that they will revamp empty shops by giving councils new powers to take over empty shops and reopen them without consent from the property’s owners. Councils will be given the power to secure management rights, carry out works and put the property to use, with rent revenues being directed back to the owner. The premises would be offered to local small business for a discounted rent.

Legislate to tackle late payments

Labour will legislate to require the audit committees of big businesses to report on their company’s payment practices in the company annual report. This, they say, will increase transparency for small businesses engaging with potential future customers and will also build awareness within the businesses themselves of poor standards.

Start-up & Scale up

Labour say that their plans will unlock the supply of patient capital for technology-intensive, early stage businesses ensuring that institutional investors and VCs are best placed to invest alongside the British Business Bank. Labour also intend to reform the British Business Bank to give it a more ambitious remit, helping it better support SMEs and giving it a stronger mandate to support regional growth.

SME representation on public contracts

Labour’s National Procurement Plan aims to give small and medium businesses fairer opportunities to benefit from public contract bidding. They will require that at least one SME makes the shortlist when any smaller, suitable contract goes out to tender.

Energy

Labour’s mission to make the UK a clean energy superpower will cut bills for small businesses, create commercial opportunities for them and deliver security with a cheaper, zero-carbon electricity system by 2030. They say that their plans plans will ensure small manufacturers are no longer held back by sky-high energy bills and end the competitive disadvantage with European firms.

While Labour say that British small businesses will play a vital role in supply chains creating up to 300,000 jobs, this is unlikely to immediately impact ecommerce businesses.

Skills

Labour say that they will address skills shortages head on by creating Skills England to bring partners together in developing plans to meet the skills needs of the next decade.

Labour say that they will revamp the Apprenticeship Levy with a new Growth and Skills Levy to give businesses greater flexibility. They will continue to cover 95% of costs for non-levy payers protecting apprenticeship starts in small businesses.

Building

Labour say that they will reform the planning system to build 1.5 million homes over the Parliament, creating opportunities and orders for small builders and tradespeople across the country. They say that they will strengthen planning capacity by hiring more than 300 new planners across the public sector to expedite decisions.

While this might not help your small business directly, it might help you and your employees find somewhere affordable and semi-decent to live!

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Ecommerce SNAFU – Swearing & Cancelled Deliveries

The past week saw both DPD and Tesco hit by tech problems. DPD had a SNAFU when their chatbot started swearing at customers while Tesco had to cancel thousands of food deliveries when their systems went down.

We all rely on technology so much today that when something goes wrong it turns into a crisis for some, while others are more sanguine and simply accept that nothing’s perfect and these things will happen.

DPD SNAFU

DPD had to disable part of their online chatbot when it not only started swearing at customers but also become highly critical of DPD themselves. This was in part caused by customers encouraging the chatbot to be naughty, begging it to be be hyper critical of DPD and to swear. It became a game that was irresistible – what could be more fun than getting DPD’s own AI chatbot to tell you that they are the worst delivery company in the world and that they’d never recommend them to anyone?

The truth is of course, that DPD have regularly been voted one of the top delivery companies in the UK and routinely offer a superb service on most occasions, but AI is still new technology and can sometimes blindly follow inputs from users to give responses that would get a human operator sacked…. and that’s effectively what happened with DPD sacking their AI and disabling part of their Chatbot support!

Tesco Delivery SNAFU

Tesco had a more serious SNAFU which led to no one getting their grocery deliveries on Sunday morning. Even those who were charged for orders will be getting refunds and as you might expect social media was rife with complaints from those who had no Sunday lunch delivered or were running out of nappies for their babies.

Tesco were busy firing off emails with the first informing customers their order wasn’t going to arrive, often several hours after the expected delivery slot had come and gone:

We’re really sorry we’ve had to cancel your order today and for the inconvenience this will have caused. We work very hard to deliver to our customers, but unfortunately, this time something has gone wrong

– Tesco order cancellation email

The second email customers would have received was to help customers re-order, with two variations – one for those that hadn’t been charged and a second for those who’s payment had been taken letting them know the money was being refunded but might take 3-5 days to appear back on their card or in their bank account:

We’re really sorry but we can’t deliver your groceries today because of an issue with our system.

You can re-schedule your order by following the steps below:

Sign into your account at tesco.com/groceries:

1. Select ‘My orders’ 
2. Transfer everything that was in your basket to a new order by clicking ‘Add all to basket’ 
3. Book a slot  
4. Checkout as normal
You haven’t been charged for the order. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

– Tesco delivery apology email

The Tesco SNAFU was obviously the more annoying for customers, especially those who couldn’t jump in the car for an emergency shop, simply didn’t have the available funds in their bank account to pay for a second shop before they get refunded, or who couldn’t find another convenient delivery slot. We do rely on technology one hell of a lot these days and these two SNAFUs are a reminder that when things go wrong they tend to go wrong in a hurry!

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Shopify Sidekick AI powered merchant assistant

Shopify Magic is a new LLM chatbot designed to make running your business more easy. Want to create a blog post, email marketing, or weekly newsletter? Shopify Magic can do all that for you, but what’s perhaps even more interesting is Shopify Sidekick, powered by Magic.

Sidekick is designed to know everything about Shopify and can perform tasks for you such as setting up a discount event. Imagine having Shopify experts on speed dial that you can call on to get things done but with the massive bonus that you don’t have to pay them!

Sidekick understands what you mean and refines your writing for greater clarity. Conversational by design, you can use everyday language to jump start the creative process and overcome writers block. Start with a basic request such as “I want to write a blog post” and with Magic you’ll get some suggestions to choose from and further refine with new commands.

But where Sidekick really comes into it’s own is when you want to do something like create a back to Uni student discount code. With Sidekick being free for all Shopify users, you no longer have to know the back end or how discounts work – Sidekick can not only create the code for you, it can then create an email and send it to your student mailing list!

And then there are more in-depth business us reports that can be accessed, such as a report of your top selling products or a report for products with no sales in the last month. Sidekick removes the need to generate the reports as it can do it for you.

Once you know what your stock is doing, Sidekick can even help you sell it by creating a banner for your shop homepage, segment your customers so you can better market the right products to the right people, and even add product collections to your Shopify shop home page.

Shopify Sidekick gives the power of a team from marketing to design at your fingertips and, especially for those without inhouse expertise, should make managing your business simpler and enable you to perform tasks that previously would have involved at worst spending cash on consultants or at best waiting for colleagues to do the job for you.

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Commerce enabled AI Brain from Rezolve announced

Exciting news for the British tech industry today, a company has released a UK grown AI ecom and data analytics solution which promises to revolutionise the way retailers connect with their consumers.

Rezolve AI Limited, a UK AI innovator announced the introduction of its transformative AI platform, ‘Brain’. This development promises to catalyse a new era of ecommerce interaction and data analysis, further boosting the UK’s reputation in the global AI arena.

Brain

‘Brain’ allows users to interact with ecommerce sites conversationally via text or voice in 95 different languages, asking detailed questions and getting responses that shows in-depth product knowledge. This innovation redefines product discovery and customer interaction with a previously unseen level of personalised service.

Dan Wagner, a veteran tech-entrepreneur and CEO and Chairman of Rezolve gave me a demo and frankly it’s impressive. Got a chinese consumer shopping on your website? Not a problem, they can submit questions to Brain in chinese and receive answers in chinese, even if you’ve never had your website translated. And this is not just a search engine, feed Brain your data in whatever format you have whether it be tell it to scrape your website or send it an SQL spreadsheet and then it’s ready for conversational interrogation by customers.

The big problem Dan tells me, is us humans have been trained to work in a dysfunctional manner, starting our search with a few hopeful keywords and then perhaps narrowing down our search with tick boxes and category menus. You can forget all that with Brain, and give customers the ability to ask complex search questions such as “I’m going to my best friends wedding in July and need a gift, they like gardening, cycling holidays and gourmet dining, what would you recommend?”

But that’s just product, what if you’re a services type business where queries can be even more complex. For instance, take travel, you can ask Brain “I’m in Rhodes and want to get home, what’s the first plane back to the UK with seats for four adults and can you recommend a connection back home to Reading from wherever the plane lands?”

This conversational style of asking detailed queries and receiving responses that exhibit deep product understanding and relevance really is a game changer and better even than those gift sites that ask who the present is for (male/female, friend/relation, mother/sister/aunt etc). These interactions can be carried out in any one of 95 different languages allowing instant interaction regardless of nationality and retail store. This approach to product discovery and customer interaction revolutionises the ecommerce landscape, offering a level of personalised service previously unseen.

myBrain

Meanwhile, ‘myBrain’, built on the same robust AI platform, enables businesses and consumers to analyse their own content effectively.

So myBrain differs from Brain in that I can feed it the content I want it to respond to. As a journalist, I’m already imagining the next time the government drops a fifteen hundred word report… I can upload it to myBrain and ask for a summary. And then when it’s too complex and I don’t understand the summary (which happens all too often!) I can ask it to simplify and explain it in language a five year old would understand.

And of course, there’s nothing to stop me uploading multiple bits of content and asking myBrain for an overall summary of the related (or unrelated) bits of content.

All of this is of course early days and doubtless Rezolve will continue to develop their large language models and AI capability. But three cheers for the British tech industry… it’s great to see cutting edge developments coming out of the UK.

Brain is more than a product; it is a catalyst for a new era of business efficiency, empowering organisations to harness data and deliver superior customer experiences. Britain has always been at the forefront of developments in search and retrieval and from the early 90s I have been working with the very best minds from Cambridge University in shaping computer-aided text and image retrieval. Brain is the culmination of decades of sophisticated British technical engineering and Brain today leads the world in Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models engineered for commerce.

– Dan Wagner, CEO and Chairman ,Rezolve

Rezolve’s Brain is yet another example of great British AI innovation. AI has the potential to transform our public services, create better jobs and grow our economy. Alongside our global leadership on AI safety, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology is driving innovation throughout the UK, creating the environment for companies to start-up and grow.

– Michelle Donelan, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology

Rezolve’s conversational AI offering – Brain – is perfectly aligned with the changing trends in the retail industry and has the potential to be a game-changer. Not only is it enhancing the consumer experience and driving business growth, but it also delivers real-time insights using Data & AI/ML (machine learning), at scale. Brain is at the vanguard of AI developments based on distributed computing, federated data architecture, effective AI/ML models and an open API interface providing a plug & play experience for B2C & B2B customers and their ecosystems.

– Saurabh Chandra, Managing Director, Boston Consulting Group’s Platinion

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Understand website signals to search engines ranking & your competition

Ensuring your website accurately represents your business online is essential to any business growth whichever sector you’re in. Not having a website perform is potentially detrimental to your brand and new business acquisition.

During this webinar with the Department for Business and Trade, you will learn about tools that can help you analyse your websites performance, the signals it sends to search engines, how to understand keywords and how your competitors are performing against you in global markets.

DIT will discuss best practice for localisation in international markets, how websites should be functional and not statics as well as the services the Department for Business and Trade provide using these tools to support your international growth.

You’ll need to register in advance for this webinar, which takes place on Thursday, the 6th of July 2023, running from 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM.

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Generative AI video tailored human video for ecommerce

Brands have been able to personalize text, images and audio in their marketing campaigns for years and with the onset of AI resources, this has helped them scale their work. Now, Generative AI video platform Gan.ai has announced a $5.25M seed funding round as they breach the final frontier of personalising video for mass marketing campaigns.

With Gan.ai’s studio-quality video personalisation software, brands simply need to record a video once, add dynamic keywords to a script, and Gan.ai will generate millions of hyper-customized videos in one click. Businesses can also create personalised landing pages with Gan.ai and deliver videos via preferred communications platforms, enabling specific interactions with users and tailored call-to-actions. 

This shockingly intrusive for consumers but at the same time shockingly effective for advertisers. For instance if you know the name of your customer, you can insert this into the video. The genie is out of the bottle and generative AI video is here to stay so the best advice is to explore your options and get onboard ahead of your competition.

We record videos with influencers and celebrities, and now with Gan.ai, when they call out your name and tell you to take a personalised call-to-action the results are astounding. We saw a 5x increase in our Video Completion Rate, 3x increase in open rates, and 2.5x increase in our Click-Through-Rate .

– – Tejnoor Grover, gaming platform Mobile Premier League

The platform integrates with Shopify, Calendly, Stripe, Salesforce and Hubspot for businesses to create unique shopping and payment experiences also. Moreover, Gan.ai’s end-to-end solution also provides businesses with granular customer insights and video performance analytics. 

Gan.ai was founded in March 2021 by Suvrat Bhooshan and is headquartered in California, US. Suvrat previously worked at Facebook AI Research (FAIR) having completed his masters degree in computer science from Stanford University. His deep-learning papers have been published and cited over 300 times. Today, they are a team of 35 with a leadership team that includes Anupreet Singh as Chief Revenue Officer and Kushaagra Goyal as Chief Technology Officer. 

Anupreet Singh was US and Europe lead at Mettl (acquired by Mercer) and scaled up business from zero. Most recently, he was the GTM leader at Slintel (acquired by 6sense), where he achieved 0-$5M ARR in just two years. Kushaagra Goyal, leads the development of their disruptive generative AI technology. He has five years of experience working at Databricks, Rubrik and Samsung. He has published over ten patents in this field. 

We’re empowering marketing teams around the world to generate a higher return on investment for video campaigns. Imagine a food delivery company being able to send a personalized video from a brand ambassador, addressing its customer by name and how they enjoyed items in their last order, or a clinic reminding a patient to book a follow-up appointment. This hyper-personalization leads to much higher conversion rates vs other static forms of communications. 

With Gan.ai, businesses will be able to scale their video personalization process while seamlessly integrating it with existing workflows. We’re excited to grow our operations with the new funds, and expand our sales and engineering teams across US and India. 

– Suvrat Bhooshan, Founder and CEO, Gan.ai

Gan.ai boasts a global customer base that includes brands such as Samsung, Zomato, vivo and gaming platform Mobile Premier League. In the US, Gan.ai has been used by some of the biggest brands including the largest chain of optometry and ophthalmology clinics, EyeCare Partners. 

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Preparing for AI transformation of ecommerce

AI will drive the next industrial revolution of ecommerce. Mark Stanley, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Shopware takes a look at the “how” and the “why,” as well as what you can do to better prepare.

AI will drive the next industrial revolution of ecommerce. Here’s a look at the “how” and the “why,” as well as what you can do to better prepare.

As pervasive as it is, AI is still in its infancy. It’s early days and while there’s resounding excitement as to what it can do and make possible, the reality is this is just the beginning. Sometime soon, AI will be part of everything—woven into the fabric of our day-to-day lives in ways we’re only beginning to fathom.

That also means that every business—no matter the sector—has a shot at getting “good” at it and embracing AI in a way which will propel it forward, specifically by helping to serve customers more effectively and efficiently. In that way, AI will be the driver of the next industrial revolution as it applies to the world of ecommerce, not unlike the last one we experienced courtesy of the dawn of the internet and the world wide web.

That may sound like a big statement, but hear me out: AI will march up the value stack to provide deeper personal experiences for shoppers. What would take many hours of development could be curated via a series of simple natural language commands. Plugged into our wider technology ecosystem, AI could understand relevance at a much deeper level and thus provide real-time benefits to merchants. While most attention will be on visible use cases, the real impact will be on invisible systems which automate, facilitate and accelerate back-office tasks. Content creation and curation will lead to more bespoke experiences for software users.

AI’s transformation of the ecommerce industry is well underway, optimising business operations and automating and enhancing. By providing a personalised and seamless shopping experience, AI adds significant value for customers, offering tailored product recommendations, improved search functionality, and faster response times for customer support inquiries. Additionally, AI can optimise shipping and delivery processes, ensuring quicker and more accurate deliveries.

It also enhances CX, personalising product recommendations based on browsing and purchase history, improving search functionality with natural language processing, providing instant customer support by way of chatbots and virtual assistants and gauging customer satisfaction through sentiment analysis to improve services.

Furthermore, AI algorithms analyse user data such as browsing history, past purchases, and preferences to generate personalised product recommendations. These tailored suggestions help customers discover relevant products more efficiently, leading to increased engagement and sales.

Core capabilities like voice shopping, made possible through AI-powered voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, are game changers, enabling customers to search for products, place orders and track deliveries using voice commands. This technology not only simplifies the shopping process but also makes it more accessible for users with visual impairments or other disabilities.

Then there’s visual search, AI-based visual search technology allows customers to upload images and find similar products on ecommerce platforms. This feature enhances the shopping experience by making it more intuitive and convenient for customers.

Dynamic pricing, through which AI algorithms can analyse real-time market data to determine optimal pricing strategies for products, helps retailers and marketplaces stay competitive, maximise profits, and better manage inventory.

AI systems can also identify and prevent fraudulent activities by analysing transaction data, user behavior patterns and other variables, ultimately streamlining fraud detection and prevention. This technology helps ecommerce businesses protect their customers and maintain a secure shopping environment.

In terms of supply chain optimisation, AI can be used to optimise supply chain operations by predicting demand, automating inventory management, and identifying potential bottlenecks. This leads to reduced operational costs and more efficient delivery of products.

All to say that these AI-based functionalities, taken together, are a means toward “superpowering” people, brands and businesses to help them do what they do, just better.

Now that we’ve established what’s happening and how, there’s much to be said as to how you can help prepare your business to adapt to both this epic paradigm shift and AI-driven changes.

1. Invest in workforce development. As AI reshapes the ecommerce landscape, businesses must invest in upskilling their workforce to better understand, develop, and manage AI technologies.
2. Second, collaborate with stakeholders. Ecommerce companies should collaborate with customers, suppliers, and regulatory authorities to address AI-related concerns such as data privacy and security, algorithmic bias, and ethical considerations.
3. Encourage a customer-centric approach. Ecommerce businesses should prioritise customer satisfaction and adapt their AI-driven strategies to better cater to the needs and preferences of their customer base.
4. Monitor AI performance. Companies should regularly evaluate and adjust their AI systems to ensure optimal performance and maintain a positive customer experience.
5. Embrace agility and innovation. To stay competitive, ecommerce companies must be agile and open to innovation. This includes adopting new AI technologies, iterating on existing solutions, and exploring new business models.
6. Be forward-looking. As AI continues to evolve, the ecommerce industry will likely experience even greater advancements in personalisation, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. Businesses that embrace AI and adapt to the changes it brings will be better positioned to thrive in this dynamic environment, while those that resist may find it increasingly difficult to compete. The overall impact of AI on ecommerce is poised to be transformative, with both companies and consumers benefiting from a more seamless and personalised shopping experience.

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