MSPs Ecommerce Question Time

The one-hour online event took place on (Black) Friday 25th November 2022.

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Over 50 people attended:

Three polls were collected during the event:

Written questions and comments that came in during the event included:

Dale Clancy (from Borders College in response to question about the college possibly running an ecommerce course): The course was developed at Borders College but there was a lack of uptake initially. New staff are now looking to re-launch this and embed this in the current FT provision.

Mark McKenzie (GuitarGuitar): There is no MBA for e-commerce in Scotland. Whilst our colleagues and universities are generally outstanding at core software engineering and computer science principles, couldn't agree more with lack of focus on mid-level+ education for e-commerce.  There is little focus on levelling up and helping SMEs from £1M to £100M companies.

‍Gordon Fraser: How does a small business or startup afford the costs of e-comm consultancy?

Zishan Ashraf: Granular data is important. The fundamental way to create step change is to begin with measurement, you need to begin with numbers and data to build an ecosystem around it. We need to start with data and the Scottish government needs to instruct a report into ecommerce to capture the data.

John McSloy (CTO, INDEZ): (In response to DST question) See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-agrees-transition-toward-new-global-tax-system

Tommy Butler (Glasgow Entrepreneur): Business will just move address overseas if tax is higher in UK. Training is key for the future of scotland business with regards ecommerce. Also have to show business the benefits of ecommerce. Most retailers are scared of ecommerce. need to push forward with training.

Dave Ross-Tomlin (Shopify): Shopify just did some research on Black Friday Cyber Monday which looked at sustainability. In the UK sustainability is a big focus for shoppers. Nearly two in three (62%) consumers are willing to wait longer for a product to arrive if it lowers its total footprint, and four in ten (40%) are willing to pay more for sustainable products. People want this. Happy to share with anyone who wants to see it.

Marianne Rutz (Consultant): Agreed Zishan! Hiding behind "no data" is not acceptable. We might just want to start with the data we have got! Even if it's UK wide data. Imperfect Action is better than no action!

We have looked through the video record of the event at https://youtu.be/w7XJ_155FH0 and extracted a few key quotes:

Gus Grubb (Head of Faculty at City of Glasgow College) - 3:36 on video: “I believe there's a great opportunity right now for the Scottish Government and Ecommerce to capitalise on growth … so, is it the right time for the Scottish Government to develop an Ecommerce Strategy for Scotland".

John Nixon (Ecommerce Director at Scott Direct) - 5:25 on video “There’s no qualification in ecommerce anywhere in Scotland so we always end up having to train staff ourselves”.

Stephen Kerr, (Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party) - 7:01 on video “There is no course or recognised qualification in Ecommerce in Scotland … The answer is something along the lines of a (training) voucher”.

Colin Beattie, (Scottish National Party) - 10:18 on video “There’s certainly a big gap in the provision of training in Ecommerce … The skills are not in the Universities and Colleges’ … Scotland underperforms in Ecommerce compared to the rest of the UK, we only have 2% of the market”.

Ann-Maree Morrison MBE - 18:25 on video  “(the problem is) the lack of use of the private sector to input with the ecommerce teaching … vouchers would be a good answer for that”.

Daniel Johnson, Scottish Labour Party - 19:45 on video “We do need to have a specific focus on SMEs and that’s why John Nixon has a specific focus on vouchers”.

‍Stephen Kerr, (Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party) - 21:06 on video ”We’ve got to believe that the solutions that Ecommerce can bring to business are for all businesses”.

Daniel Johnson, ( Scottish Labour Party) - 21:52 on video “If small businesses are not accessing (ecommerce) we’re just going to fall behind and ultimately they are going to die”.

Zishan Ashraf, (Shopify) - 23:01 on video “I find it astounding that the Scottish Government has no data of which ecommerce businesses exist in Scotland”

Colin Beattie, (Scottish National Party) - 25:38 on video “I think there should be a review of Ecommerce in Scotland”.

‍Daniel Johnson, (Scottish Labour Party) - 28:37 on video “Shoppers don’t want to know about businesses that are not online”.

Stephen Kerr, (Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party) - 31:09 on video “We do know that Scotland is behind the rest of the UK (in Ecommerce)”

Willie Rennie, (Scottish Liberal Democrats) - 36:40 on video “ We don’t know how we compare in Ecommerce (to other countries), we don’t have the strategy and we don’t have the plan”

Jamie Macdonough (Serial Ecommerce Entrepreneur) - 45:20 on video “Do you realise that the Digital Services Tax was badly implemented and are any of you at Holyrood planning on damaging other small businesses in a similar way with another badly thought out tax on small businesses”.

‍Willie Rennie, (Scottish Liberal Democrats) - 33:39 on video "What we need to have is a proper consideration of what tax would actually work because we are taxing a system rather than individual companies and the system that we were taxing before was bricks and mortar. Now we’re taxing something that’s online that’s much more difficult to get our heads around”

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