What to do? You spent months pouring over your choices, listened to internal concerns and external advice. You raised your CAPEX over 5 years for your businesses eCommerce / web platform - and that was in 2003! Now as 2008 fast approaches it's finale - IT Directors, eCommerce Directors.... now look at what to do next? Review their KPIs and decide "Divorce" from my current platform - or seek advice and "counselling" to work through what has been a difficult time for most in the glorious marriage of eCommerce and Retail!                                                                                                                                                                        

The great divide? What will your businesses next move in eCommerce be?

So what will retailers, e-tailers and most companies that have a commerce related business in 2009 look to do (assuming of course that you have just finished your 5 year plan of eCommerce development and you have to decide what to do next!)

So first set of questions, would be something like: How was it for you?

Looking at the start of this blog, business leaders already went through the process to get your business into a "Live" eCommerce environment - so:

• Did you achieve the results that you were looking for?
• Did you hit all the KPIs that were agreed as part of the investment?
• Did you eCommerce Teams work and deliver efficiently as they could?
• What were you key pain points? but also...
• Where were your best wins? (let's celebrate success!!)
• Was the integration that seemed straight forward back in 2003 - as straight forward as you expected?
• Anything still outstanding from your development path that you feel you missed some key opportunities?
• In house skills - have these developed and adapted?
• Are you ready for the next 5 years?

Enterprise |Robust | Scalable

These are the key words that we, as consultants, use with our clients - and in return are these are the same words that our clients and potential clients use when describing their requirements, wants and needs for their next e-commerce platform.

The list below (in no particular order!) is a small snapshot of what has been discussed in terms of Enterprise ready, Scalable and Robust eCommerce platforms available to retailers, all in addition have a selection of tool sets and applications to keep the most adventurous e-commerce team busy for years:

Elastic Path: One of my current favourites just now. Nimble, agile and cost effective. They have a great deal of flexibility when it comes to integration and adaptability. This cost effective Java eCommerce platform suits a wide range of businesses and with its customisable business logic that allows very simple shopping cart checkout procedures or even more complex ones is a key consideration when it comes to the consumer being able to checkout quickly however the complex nature of the basket algorithm. As it’s a Java/J2EE framework, it can be expediently integrated with most existing data stores and even legacy applications as well as accounting, ERP, CRM, and SCM systems.

ATG: a robust, flexible, scalable e-commerce software platform designed and tuned for top performance and maximum uptime. ATG installations have supported over 10 million visits and over 100,000 completed orders per day, and over 300,000 concurrent users. The ATG Platform is a complete e-commerce Internet solution for business that reduces risk, cost, and project duration with no sacrifice to flexibility or future expansion

WebShphere: WSCommerce provides companies of all sizes with a powerful customer interaction platform for cross-channel and online commerce - supporting all business models. WebSphere is designed to set up, operate, and integrate e-business applications across multiple computing platforms using Web technologies. It includes both the run-time components and the tools to develop applications that will run on WAS.

MS Commerce Server: is a Microsoft tool for building e-commerce systems. It helps businesses to create e-commerce solutions and Web sites with high-performance, familiar tools that simplify setup, management, and administration tasks. Full-featured Web business applications and extend your business across networks, while allowing you to integrate e-commerce solutions within your existing infrastructure and B2C and B2B opportunities as well.

DCP: Conchango’s very own commerce platform based on Commerce Server 2007 - but with added functions and features making this application an out of the box ready proposition for e-tailers. DCP will provide retailers with greater flexibility over their online content. The DCP can be integrated within retailer’s back end systems to create a scalable solution that allows retailers websites to be easily managed and a great platform to develop in the future.

Amazon: Winning clients such as M&S, Toys ‘R’ Us and using the 10+ years of the Amazon heritage within e-commerce – with the benefits that this bring with their additional developments in consumer centric features and solid robust framework that drive clients to align with such a powerhouse of a brand in e-commerce. The commerce platform is a multichannel solution that empowers retailers to quickly and easily enable a unique, branded customer shopping experience, providing an unprecedented choice in how customers discover, order, pay for and receive products across store, web and phone channels.

However the costs associated with e-commerce development, delivery, licensing and on going management and support - never mind new feature sets and enhancements to keep up with the latest changes in the way that consumers use and interact with the web - and most important of all - purchase products from!

The above list of e-commerce partners, platforms and software gives the client the security and reassurance that the software that they are licensing has been devised, built, maintained and supported by a crack team of developers and business architects that will continually release the updates that the client needs. This is why of course they pay their annual, monthly or quarterly license fee? They also look for technical support and advanced technical support that only the creator of the software understands fully - and again - this is why in some cases these fees are set with a premium.

I have spoken to a few IT Directors and e-commerce Senior VPs that have been tasked with either a "divorce" or "Counselling" but with even more stringent KPIs and deliverables - as well as a head count cut to keep the profitability as high as possible - as margins get squeezed out even more to compete on the world wide web. So the old adage "one bitten, twice shy" seems to make sense here.

These companies - are no longer looking at e-commerce "blind" anymore but instead looking at hard and fast figures in order to plan how they execute their next 5 year CAPEX and deliver some real tangible and actual year on year results - which will be based on actual deliverables and pre-requisite features and functions that their business has now either grown into or developed via their usage and web statistics. To some of the already existing platforms this could have an impact on timescale, licensing, complex infrastructure changes or additional changes to their business practices that although defined - may need to change to accommodate the platform rather than the platform adopt to their business practices.

Open Minded to Open Source

It's to this end that more and more larger companies are now looking to the Open Source community and associated platforms and software that is available for their e-commerce requirements. Once regarded within the business community as a place "only for hackers and geeks"  as well as "not for enterprise standard software" - as time change so do peoples mind set with what the Open Source Community can bring to the table in terms of a flexible, open platform that delivers

 

To this end I have been looking at what Open Source ‘alternatives’ to the ATG, DCP, WebSphere, MS Commerce Server... etc.. platforms that come with a high degree of ‘tools’ and ‘scalability’ but also come with a lot of integration, development and licensing costs that push the price tag beyond a lot of mid-tier and successful e-commerce businesses. - that starts to look beyond the traditional heavy duty licensed platforms and see that the Open Source Community also has some very good, solid and robust platforms - but with an easier price tag and great flexibility for these type of business.

Final thought on scalability, which is always a concern that I hear from clients, when you look at Open Source and PHP for example - always good to keep in mind that one of the biggest websites in the world, FaceBook, is built and developed on Open Source PHP and can sustain over 70million users! Now that is scalability on a grand scale!

Below are a pick of some of my favourite Open Source e-commerce Platforms that could be considered in a cost saving and inexpensive deployment for the retailer that may have neither the budget or inclination for the platforms mentioned earlier.

 

 

osCommerce is the leading Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is powered by a dedicated, strong, and ever growing community, and is released under the GNU General Public License.

Everything you need to get started in selling physical and digital goods over the Internet, from the Catalogue front end that is presented to your customers, to the Administration Tool back-end that completely handles your products, customers, orders, and online store data.

As expected from a platform such as this it is rich in features:

· Supports unlimited products and categories

· Multicurrency support

· Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products

· Object oriented PHP back-end | Web Browser Install and Plugin support

· OsCommerce is a popular platform and with that has gained a larger support base, and forum for help guidance and ongoing support.

Freeway is the most advanced Open Source eCommerce platform and Freeway offers selling methods only previously available in enterprise class or niche bespoke systems. Without having to purchase a commercial system and then paying a developer to build a custom installation, Freeway does what you need out of the box. Of course Freeway is great for selling products but it also sells events AND services AND subscriptions. From appointments and time based bookings to event ticketing and subscriptions Freeway is the eCommerce platform for how we want to sell!

· Sell Service, Events, Subscriptions and Products

· Single page checkout

· Super easy installation

· Call Centre back-end

· Search Engine Friendly URLs

· AJAX driven Admin tool

· Simple Template system

· 2 Level CMS

· Affiliate programme

· Multiple shipping and payment options

· Promotion codes / Gift certificates

· SMS Marketing

The Magento eCommerce platform combines the flexibility of open-source technology with industry-leading features to provide merchants unprecedented control over store operations

Versatility and Freedom - Control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions and more.

Attract and Convert: Key SEO features and user experience will attract and convert more qualified customers, leading to business growth.

Expand your Market: Reach more customers by creating targeted micro-sites using the multi-store retailing functionality:

· Integrated with Google Analytics

· Multiple Images with Zoom

· Add to Wishlist

· Send to a Friend

· Batch Import and Export of Catalogue

· One Page Checkout

· Multi Lingual

The Apache Open For Business Project is an open source enterprise automation software project licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0. By open source enterprise automation we mean: Open Source ERP, Open Source CRM, Open Source E-Business / E-Commerce, Open Source SCM, Open Source MRP, Open Source CMMS/EAM, and so on.

Apache OFBiz is a foundation and starting point for enterprise solutions, be they for one organization or one million. OFBiz can certainly be used out of the box. OFBiz is great for creating specialized applications for use out of the box by other organizations. OFBiz is also great for organizations that need more than what an OOTB application can offer in order to grow their operations, but find the deployment and maintenance costs of traditional enterprise systems that can handle such things to be unreasonable or unjustifiable.

Apache OFBiz offers a great deal of functionality, including:

· advanced e-commerce

· catalogue management

· promotion & pricing management

· order management (sales & purchase)

· customer management (part of general party management)

· warehouse management

· fulfillment (auto stock moves, batched pick, pack & ship)

· accounting (invoice, payment & billing accounts, fixed assets)

· manufacturing management

· general work effort management (events, tasks, projects, requests, etc)

· content management (for product content, web sites, general content, blogging, forums, etc)

· a maturing Point Of Sales (POS) module using XUI as rich client interface

Summary

This is only a snapshot of the Open Source platforms, companies and technology out there in the marketplace just now. This is also just a personal view of what I am seeing out there and that I like what I am seeing and hearing.

I am only thinking out loud (well on my Blog at least) that in times of an economic slowdown (whether that is implied or actual) , where e-tailers may have been “burned” in the past with expensive and expansive complex e-commerce platforms – that a lighter and more flexible offering maybe well be the choice for them in their next excursion on the web.

I also am strongly in favour of openness and collaboration – which the open source community delivers in terms of help, assistance, guidance, code and that single focus which is to help and assist in the overall quality of the end product.

So where will your business end up?

A Divorce or some Counselling?

 

Interested?

Drop me an email and get this in a readable PDF document.