On this week’s show We are going to delve into one of the most popular eCommerce CMS: . To do this, we interviewed Santiago Goicoechea, Sales Executive for Spain and Portugal at Magento Commerce, who will explain the keys to this ecosystem and the differences between Magento Open Source, the free one, compared to Magento Commerce, the premium one, to understand each other. We will also see how the integration of Magento works in the Adobe environment and what other services they are integrating. A very complete analysis!
Interview with Santiago Goicoechea
6:51 What is the current size of Magento in Spain?
Below 100 customers between Spain and Portugal. Together they are making an annual turnover of 500 million. The evolution shows an upward trend: we have an average of 25 to 30 new clients each year, a rapid growth. Little by little Adobe is having more presence and equipment in Spain, so companies are learning more about Magento. At Adobe we are 150 people and half are from the Magento team.
9:26 What are the Magento types out there?
The free one is called Open Source and Commerce payment. But that does not mean that the payment platform is not open source, but rather that the platform belongs to the client and is open to the code, which generates flexibility. There are no closed doors.
Magento is an open source platform, where you can touch the code, and within there you have the Magento Opensource, which is free, and the Magento Commerce, where you pay a license with consulting, hosting and technical service. The price is variable depending on the volume of business: we normally talk about 1% of online sales. When you propose the project to the client, they must understand that their way of working is going to change and that they are going to be more autonomous and have more flexibility, with improvements in the user experience.
19:06 In my head the fight was Magento vs PrestaShop and now Magento Adobe is competing more against Salesforce. How do you see the competition map?
o Shopify are customer sources, Where customers come from who want to grow: When they hit a bottleneck, their next step is Magento Commerce. I don’t compete against them, I feed on clients who were there before. My real competitor is Salesforce, almost unique: we compete head to head because they are two powerful products with different philosophies. It is a SAAS where you adapt to their way of working while Magento has a more flexible philosophy with extensions and open source.
28:08 There was a big leap between Magento and Magento 2: I know that many who used the former did not jump to the latter. What was the barrier to that product evolution?
There is a big difference functionally. If you compare what Magento version 2 brings you compared to version 1, there are many differences. But migration is expensive version 1.9 is out of print and there is an obligation to move to the next version because there is no maintenance or you may have problems with the payment gateways. The company is forced to migrate, which means 3 to 5 months of work. Sometimes we don’t sign clients, not because they don’t like it or because of the price of the license, but because they don’t have money to do the migration.
32:59 In a webinar we did a few months ago about international reference they used Magento. What specific characteristics do B2Bs have that differentiates them from B2Cs and that makes their challenges require more advanced CMS such as Magento?
A B2B business at the process level is more complex than a B2C, because they have more types of clients, they negotiate offers, different price catalogs depending on the client, they have a longer and continuous relationship with the client… A B2C project seeks a clear increase in turnover, in B2B too, but with improved service, loyalty and user experience.
40:56 Do you have your own development team or to make a website the way is to look for Magento partners?
We have professional services where you can choose to have Adobe take care of it or other partners to do it. We find it above all in the enterprise sector, of large companies. For other industry, commerce always goes hand in hand with certified Magento partners, that must be up to date and ensure the quality of the implementations. We work as a team, we create a client-partner-Adobe triangle.
43:35 What are the challenges that you identify today in the eCommerce sector to bet on this route?
My response changed with COVID, it has made the end user mature. The public has evolved in the use of technologies and online shopping, forcing companies to run to develop their digital strategy. Personally, I have been overwhelmed with work since the pandemic began, it is true that it is difficult to make decisions, but the projects have multiplied for us.
What worries me is that culturally in Spain there are still many businessmen who are reluctant to pay for a license because so far things have not gone badly for them. The market is very competitive and you cannot give up, you have to promote. Even a small company from a well-positioned small town can find potential clients anywhere in Spain, with shipments in 24 hours.
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