Release notes v1.38 – v1.39

In the releases of NextChapter v1.38 to v1.39 we have made some nice improvements. The most important developments at a glance are:

Reserve in-store

It is now possible to reserve items in the store via your webshop, after which the consumer can view and buy the item in the store. NextChapter eCommerce sees this as an important functionality for retailers who want to focus on omnichannel sales. What benefits can be gained from this?

The retailer:

Would like to have customers personally in the store for extra customer loyalty and service

Can entice customers who are still unsure about a purchase online to come to the store in order to successfully complete the sale there

Can offer clients personal expertise and expertise (added value)

Provides the ability to more easily sell alternative or additional items

Can reduce returns

The consumer:

Can see, feel, smell, try on a product before buying it

Has more confidence to definitively purchase the product

Avoid unnecessary returns

Can go to the store at a self-chosen time within the reservation timeframe and have the product with certainty (similar to click & collect)

Can pick up the reserved product on the same day if desired, making this a variant of same day delivery

In short, this new feature offers many advantages for retailers but also for consumers. Il will make it easier to bridge the gap between the online and the offline world. Want to know more? Contact us for more information.

Omnichannel improvements

Improved cross-docking process visibility

We have made improvements to the display of the status of cross-dock shipments. In such cases, items are brought from multiple stock locations to one central point before being delivered to the consumer. Updating the shipment status to “Completed” was already possible manually, but now also functions automatically.

Other updates and improvements

Personalization based on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

NextChapter pays a lot of attention to Artificial Intelligence because it will become one of the most important pillars in the NextChapter platform. Currently we can personalize products 1:1 (so completely personal) on the homepage, on category pages and on product detail pages (recommendations). In addition, NextChapter can already deliver fully personalized emailings.

We will be adding new parts over the next few months. The most important are: personalized search results, checkout sales and so-called non-category suggestions. Our AI solution is expected to deliver double-digit organic revenue growth. We are currently conducting 3 pilots in which we test these expectations.

At the moment we can only apply AI to webshops with sufficient volume. The idea behind this, is that the learning machine must receive sufficient data, and that is only possible with sufficient visitors. We will also develop a more accessible variant within 3 months with which we can provide this to webshops with smaller volumes.

Low VAT rate adjustment

As of January 1, 2019, the low VAT rate for the Netherlands has been increased from 6% to 9%. In NextChapter, the adjustment of the percentage for this VAT rate has been made generically.

Import timings

The timing logic for imports has been extended. It is now possible to have timings differ per day per import or even exclude whole days.

EU legislation

Due to new European legislation, a person residing in the EU should be able to order from any webshop within the EU. However, the webshop is not obliged to deliver to all countries in the EU. In NextChapter it is now possible for the customer to enter a billing address in Austria, for example, but only the Netherlands can be selected for the delivery address. These are situations that will not occur often in practice, but for which NextChapter is now prepared. This setting must be implemented per webshop.

Migration

Several NextChapter customers have migrated to Order Management 2.0.

Bugs

All issues in all applications have been resolved and live, making the platform error-free.