At a recent Gartner Marketing Symposium, I sat down with Jeremy Muras, SVP of Digital at Lion Capital, and David Hurwitz, former CMO of BloomReach to discuss the future of e-commerce. BloomReach software helps clients, including retailers, deliver more personalized services and experiences and Lion Capital has a portfolio of more than 12 brands, including Kettle Foods, Buscemi, Picard, Perricone Skincare, and Allsaints. Below is their insight regarding the future of e-commerce. In addition to delivering an experience through all screen types, future experiences will be delivered through new touchpoints such as voice, wearables and kiosks. For example, Staples now has AI-powered product search on touch-screen kiosks in their stores.

Traditional, large-volume manufacturers often have one goal in mind--reduce costs associated with making high volumes of a single item by producing as many parts as possible in the shortest amount of time. That business model works for high-volume products, particularly if automation can be deployed, but it ignores innovation and the competitive edge created by digital manufacturing. The convergence of software and flexible manufacturing makes quick-turn prototyping and low-volume, on-demand production of custom parts fast and economical. In addition, digital manufacturers capture massive amounts of data across their business from the first customer engagement, through the sales and quoting process, and throughout the manufacturing and fulfillment processes. To take full advantage of all the information, understand the complexity of a high product mix and optimize business, companies need sophisticated analytics that cross business domains.

Now that machine learning has moved out of the hands of a select few and is accessible to a broader market and set of use cases; it's good to look at how different technology providers are leveraging it to improve and expand their products in the name of a better customer experience. How can you take advantage of machine learning and AI to improve your e-commerce experiences? Ryan R Donovan, SVP of Product Management at Sitecore, took me through some tactics Sitecore implements in its CMS and e-commerce solution. There are two key focuses for Sitecore's use of machine learning and AI: Donovan pointed out that Sitecore is focused on providing machine learning-based features that provide real value (as opposed to a great demo). And from a backend perspective, it can help with fraud detection, something that every company with an e-commerce model needs to monitor actively.