Which Enterprise E-Commerce Solution is Best for Your Company?
Nowadays, enterprises have various models that they can choose from when implementing solutions for e-commerce. For organizations that are small or medium in size or completely non-profit, the choices happen to be a little more restricted to open-source models or one-size-fits-all solutions. Find out about various models today, along with their advantages and disadvantages, and find out how you can develop the required skill levels in enterprises to make the most out of such delivery models.
When evaluating models and its vendors, it would be essential to take look at their requirements first, as well as your overall budget, the risk you are willing to take and your IT skills. It would also be essential to find out which model would be perfect for your organization or enterprise before choosing suitable vendors for that model.
Delivery Models: Their Advantages and Disadvantages
1. The Buy Model
With this model, customers actually purchase e-commerce software along with its licensed software. Licensed software is rich with features, well-tested and sturdy and also comes with several integrated pre-built tools. Continuous investment is done by vendors on enhancements and brand new features, though they may be attached to extra costs aside from its purchase price. The marketing time is going to be quite slow, although still faster than that of build models. There will most likely be enough system developers and integrators available that can help you with the required integrations for internal systems, though. As a disadvantage to this model, it will be hard to opt for the ideal product for your personal needs. Oftentimes, you will end up with software that has features you won't really use, although you will still have to pay for the whole application. Also, a lot of the software is stand-alone and hard to integrate along with the available system's future updates and improvements, which may not be helpful for your needs. Plus, it costs a lot of money compared to other solutions; even the required IT skills to use this solution might cost money. Therefore, the overall cost will be extremely high and your risk even higher compared to other models. Lastly, this solution does not fit all since you have to host your own software within hosted data centers.
2. The Build Model
With this model, customers build their own in-house e-commerce applications and integrate them with available CRM and ERM applications. What is great about this model is that you can build everything that you need, while taking complete advantage of personal inner systems and inner IT competencies at the same time. You will also come across as one-of-a-kind within the marketplace due to your implemented one-of-a-kind solution, and every e-commerce channel can be tied together to market in a single system, which fits all. Unfortunately, this model is expensive and risky since it makes use of highly skilled and competent staff at high opportunity costs. There is also a risk in losing such assets to companies that rely on IT as its core, not as its add-on. Marketing time could be very long since you have to build a one-of-a-kind and completely integrated system. The cost of upgrades and maintenance could be prohibitive, too, since you have to use the exact same skilled people who build the build model. There is also a chance of this solution turning obsolete since the project would require it to stay with its current choices of technology.
3. The Platform Model
This model is a hybrid between building your own personal platform and purchasing a software license. It is also completely open-source, which means that this platform can be especially designed and improved by inner IT teams, vendors or system integrators that know about open-source platforms. Source codes are available, API is developed and services can be reused. You will also have a constant community full of developers that are readily available to help you out. A flexibility of ready-made volumes exists, which can adapt to your personal needs, while existing applications are more easily integrated compared to build models. Even though this model practically has no risks and is very easy to control when it comes to budget, it would still need solid sets of IT skills, either internally or sourced via vendors with good knowledge about open-source platforms and inner e-commerce requirements. Overall, it would take more time to use compared to SaaS models.
4. The SaaS Model
This model probably has the most traction and appeal as of late. With this model, e-commerce applications are sold as services and the provided software fits all. First of all, there is no need for customization since everything comes out of a box and every input of data can be done through regular browsers and online connections. Marketing time happens in days instead of weeks or months. No matter what the input is, your e-commerce application can get it almost instantly. There are no upfront costs or scaling issues whatsoever since applications will scale along with your e-commerce application's growth. Upgrades and updates would be part of the overall contract and will be included into yearly or monthly service fees, so no additional secret costs will appear for that. Also, there will be no required hardware investment since the service gets hosted onto the software vendor's servers. Most importantly, there is no need for IT staffs to run your applications of e-commerce; it can simply be left in the business people's hands that make the commercial decisions. There are hardly any disadvantages to the SaaS model; however, some people might object about security issues on shared platforms, the speed of innovation, the difficulties of integration, or brand new features which don't match their personal needs.
Conclusion
By far, the SaaS model would be the most attractive model out there for most small or medium-sized businesses, as well as non-profit organizations that take an approach in e-commerce. For bigger enterprises, this model could sit next to bigger corporate build or bought e-commerce applications. It is easy and fast to set-up, and can serve niche purposes within the overall strategy of e-commerce. However, every organization that is driven on brand recognition, marketing and merchandising should use the SaaS model as their primary strategy. Marketing time and deployment speed would be other primary drivers who can choose this as their primary model. If your IT budget is either low or moderate and you only have minimal in-house IT skills or if the business of e-commerce is brand new to you and you wish to lower your risks upfront, the SaaS model would be the only model out there that can give you chances of returns of investment or securing more business along with your tools of e-commerce. When choosing SaaS vendors, opt for those that provide flat fee services to ensure you don't get penalize by your success after your application of e-commerce begins to scale.
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