Delivering digital due diligence and insight to the private equity community

You may be eyeing a retailer or brand that’s showing double-digit online sales growth, but what could be achieved with more investment, changes to the site or wider multichannel operation? Modelling online sales potential requires a financial eye combined with strong industry knowledge to sense check the forecasts.

Although some businesses are lucky enough to have backers with deep profits and patience, most retailers are required to demonstrate online commercial performance to generate cash and profits. In many cases the site will need to positively contribute to the top and bottom line of a wider multichannel business.

Online retailing has many measures, but it is not always clear which multichannel KPIs are crucial to overall sales and profits.

At the turn of the century many high street retailers were unconvinced that online retail could reach even 25% of their total sales. A decade later and now many are preparing for 50% or more of their sales to be online. For etailers, a similar process has taken place where many now derive more online sales from outside the UK than they do from their domestic customer base.

The development roadmap for ecommerce is often a cause of conflict, especially when there is a need to drive international growth. In any large retail or consumer business there will be a range of conflicting priorities, often being championed by different parts of the business.