Fast growth leads to challenges as pandemic drives eCommerce to an all-time high

The fastest-growing eCommerce companies share a number of key characteristics, among them being able to keep up with technology change, shipping orders in a timely manner, and providing real-time insights on the status of an order.

This is among the findings of a new report from API transformation company Jitterbit, which also shows that as the number of applications requiring integration and the number of integration challenges rises, so does businesses' reliance on integration vendors.

The study finds that fast-growing companies are more likely to have integration challenges, and also 50 percent more likely to use an integration vendor to design and/or implement integration projects.

48 percent of respondents report the challenge of connecting more than 10 applications, while 16 percent say that they need to integrate between 16 and 20 applications and five percent more than 20. Meanwhile, just 28 percent of respondents say they integrate between one and five applications.

Consumers in the US will spend nearly $710 billion on eCommerce this year, according to eMarketer, up 18 percent over last year. In addition, eCommerce is expected to reach 14.5 percent of total US sales in 2020, an all-time high and the largest share increase in a single year.

"With consumers staying home as much as possible, their purchases have shifted from in-store to online, benefiting retailers that have embraced modern e-commerce technology," says Shekar Hariharan, vice president of marketing at Jitterbit. "This report uncovers the characteristics of fast-growing companies, including which e-commerce platforms they use, which payment gateways they rely on, which types of applications and backend systems they integrate, and how they integrate those systems."

The full State of E-Commerce Integration 2020 report is available on the Jitterbit site and there's also an on-demand webinar to discuss the findings.

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