WHAT DOES KEROS DO?
Keros is focused upon “K-Commerce” – our platform for ecommerce projects. It’s a technology solution to manage omnichannel activities. More than a web front-end and marketing platform, the K-Commerce modules cover all of the activities for multichannel retail – including order management, in-store, product catalogue, marketplaces management – all backed with extensive management information and marketing insight. K-Commerce is an enterprise solution, with a focus on companies who are focused upon growth. Our flexibility and scalability (with an integrated, software-as-a-service) model, allied to retail-focused nature of the components, suits companies who are ambitious to grow internationally and across channels, without being held back by technology.
We simplify eCommerce complexity
WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT THE PLATFORM AND YOUR APPROACH?
Three things set our approach apart: the retail experience of our team, the focus on our customer’s growth, and the integrated, simplicity of operation. Our platform is based on the know-how of the founders, who’ve been working together since 2008, and our long experience in retail. My own background covers European leadership of a global brand (Guess) as well as hands-on retail startups, so we’ve seen the challenges of pan-European scale and fast-growth flexibility.
We’ve therefore created a platform that integrates the important elements of multichannel – customer experience (online and in store), order management and orchestration, data and insight. Retailers are too busy to spend time working across systems and processes and need to be able to control the whole business easily. It is this simplicity – even for complex activities in changing, growing retailers – that sets our platform apart. It can manage the complexities of a real, demanding multichannel project – click and collect, return to store, ship from store, international, multicurrency. Our platform is one that will integrate back-office, operations and ERP into multichannel.
MORE THAN THE FRONT-END
As a CFO of a European brand, I saw first-hand the operational complexities of taxation and how that can inhibit growth – European VAT (with separate rules in each country, different rates for categories), international tax and duty rates, and (if selling to the US) the differing sales tax rules state by state. We set out to solve this problem from the outset, building in an understanding of location and regulation so that businesses could grow without friction, delay of overhead. We also have a Marketplace module that allows easy access to sell on the world’s largest marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Another unique aspect of the platform is its ability to scale seamlessly, from a few hundred orders a day to many thousands. By removing potential back-office pains and disruptions, our platform becomes a growth accelerator for our clients.
GROWTH FOCUS
The simplicity and capability come together when we consider international growth. Our clients – like Benetton, Mandarina Duck, True Religion – are international businesses who want to operate locally to be close to their customers around the world. With Keros a client can open a new country in moments on their own. They decide the assortment, the currency, the services they’ll expose to the customer and then they can launch on their own. So the cost of scaling is reduced. Keros gives complete independence to the retailer on when, where and how they want to grow.
WHAT ARE THE RETAIL CHALLENGES IN THE COMING YEAR?
The consumer’s behaviour is changing significantly – how they seek, find and buy products. The challenge for retailers is to identify the changes and follow and control them where they can. Global businesses see that there are different pressures and changes in each and every country, and so defining those is important – but so is the ability to act in a different way for each country.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ADDRESS THIS?
We have an internal R&D team that looks at our clients’ commercial activities and needs. This is not a software team, but rather business methods and operation. The members are store managers, traders, operators. From this deep understanding of our clients’ businesses we direct our software team’s priorities. We are also working with partners, for example in payments, to get increased insight to the end-consumer’s behaviours. In addition we have a team that monitors all of the changes to taxation and legislation in Europe and international markets so that we can always be up to date. This gives our clients an advantage on logistical, management and compliance fronts and allows them to focus on their customers and their business.
AND FINALLY?
We created from scratch a technology that could meet these needs but which was also engineered from the outset to be agile, flexible and scalable – offered to clients on a SaaS basis. Put simply, “We simplify eCommerce complexity”.
Keros in brief
Date launched: 2014
Global reach – office locations: Headquarters in Mendrisio (Switzerland) with offices in London, Tel Aviv and Kiev
Date launched in the UK: October 2017
Number of customers: More than 40 stores are using our technology including Benetton, True Religion, Twinset, Cisalfa, Mandarina Duck and soon Everything5Pounds
Number of employees: Over 40
Number of partners: 33
Contact details for further information:
Twitter: @KerosDigital,
Phone: 0203-910-1898,
Email: tal.ofer@keros-digital.com
London Office: 136 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6PX
This Company Spotlight was produced by InternetRetailing and paid for by Keros Digital. Funding articles in this way allows us to explore topics and present relevant services and information that we believe our readers will find interesting and informative.
