INTERVIEW

The Robert Bosch Tool Corporation in North America is a leader in the design, manufacture and sale of power tools and accessories. Sonesh Shah, Vice President of Brand Marketing and Digital at the Robert Bosch Tool Corporation, explains that his role in e-commerce and digital marketing has evolved to encompass IoT and brand marketing as Bosch wants to ensure that digital strategy is part of a holistic brand approach to addressing an evolving marketplace.

Today, e-commerce platforms represent a significant part of the company's overall marketing and sales strategy. In fact, Shah says that e-commerce platform sales are so important to their current strategy that it has changed the way the organization is set up. “A few years ago, we actually split our internet channel into its own separate sales channel,” he says. “That was a really big change for our organization since we had spent many years segmenting by industrial business and big box business only. Now we look at the internet business on its own.” He adds that Bosch’s realization of the importance of ecommerce led them to build a center of excellence for digital, which encompasses everything from ecommerce sales to digital marketing to technology has now been closely aligned with the brand marketing organization. “If you’re a retailer today and you haven’t already invested in eCommerce—especially if you are retailing fairly traditional products—you’re in big trouble,” he says. “For us, that understanding is what led us to establish an e-commerce center of competency, which later became our digital center of competency.”

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