By Stephan Schambach, Demandware Founder & Executive Chairman

During the past 15 years I have spoken with many retail and consumer brand CEOs about ecommerce—always pleading to give it more attention and weight in their overall strategy. As ecommerce matures, retail CEOs are faced with cross-channel opportunities and challenges—single-format retail is no longer considered "state of the art". Many CEOs are struggling to understand the cross-channel expectations of their consumers and ecommerce's role in their strategy because they have the background of a buyer or legal/finance. Attempts to delegate cross-channel strategy to lower-ranking mid-level managers have failed, typically because these managers were never given the power to change the core purpose and business processes of the company.

So, who should be in charge of cross-channel if it is so important? The answer is, in my opinion, the CEO. Because it is a radical redesign of how consumers experience a brand, only the CEO has the mandate and the power to rally all stakeholders and employees to embrace this new world. But the current generation, with a few exceptions, doesn't have the cross-channel knowledge, entrepreneurial drive and creativity it takes to master this challenge. During the next decade, supervisory boards will look for the next generation of CEOs to turn single-format brands into cross-channel powerhouses, and single-format retailers into truly differentiated cross-channel retailers who can deliver a level of integrated experience to consumers that the Amazon's and Zappo's of this world can't match.

At the same time, ecommerce is, for many retailers, the only format that has been forced to deal with the new, demanding cross-channel consumer everyday. Even though they command only 5-10% of the company's revenue today, their influence is growing due to channel shift and higher margins in the ecommerce channel. So, when the supervisory boards are looking for the next generation of retail and consumer brand CEOs, chances are many are recruited from VP eCommerce positions. From this perspective, I can only welcome the level of networking that the ecommerce crowd engages in through Shop.org and other organizations. Keep doing this. The relationships that are forged here will be the foundation of careers that will go far beyond ecommerce-to the future retail CEOs.