Nick Lansley of Tesco.com Speaks on “APIs and the 4th Screen”

“Tesco in the fast moving world of eCommerce” - Nick Lansley as Head of R&D Tesco.com (the online branch of the British supermarket giant) is one of the most visionary players in European e-commerce.

While so many others are still entertaining dreams of media convergence, Nick Lansley is already steadily preparing Tesco.com for media divergence.

After his keynote on the topic of "Tesco.com and the Fourth Screen" at the 1st Annual European E-commerce Congress last week in Berlin, Exciting Commerce’s Jochen Krisch was able to catch him to ask in more detail about his strategic plans:

Nick Lansley, Head of R&D at Tesco's, about APIs and the 4th Screen from Exciting Commerce on Vimeo.

In the first part he illustrated Tesco.com’s API strategy: What does the development interface have to offer? What type of third party applications does he imagine? From where will he find designers and developers? And how can it be that Tesco allows such as open interface at a time when similar initiatives at other companies would experience substantial resistance?

The second part concerns the intelligent picture frame and the “4th Screen”, a topic which will catch up to e-commerce latest with the new tablet devices.

Back in London, Nick Lansley summarized his impressions from Berlin ("Europeans lead the way with Delivery"):

"In Berlin I learned two things:

1. Britain (and USA) is quite some way ahead of central Europe when it comes to e-commerce service on the web, and
2. We are way behind on the actual mechanisms of delivery. That is, of getting the products to the customer at the time most convenient to them."

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Comments

[Tesco Wines Online]

I have been particually impressed with tesco's vision and API strategy. Moving forward I can only see massive improvements in the mechanisms of delivery.

[Tesco wine deals]

Totally agree, plus now I see the delivery of the grocery app. Tesco are moving faster than all the other supermarkets in the tech industry.