Do you have the right strategy for global ecommerce platform deployment?
Following are some of the options that I can think of –
1. Build country specific ecommerce solution and deploy
2. Build county specific ecommerce solution for already matured market (ex: USA, Europe) and build a separate common platform/template for the emerging markets and then rollout
3. Build common ecommerce platform considering large ecommerce market (ex: USA, Europe) and extend the same platform to emerging markets (Ex: Mexico, India, Australia)
4. ..more?
The first option is off course the most “simple” one but unlikely to be a good long term strategy. The strategy for ecommerce expansion in each country could be different. However, the underlying ecommerce infrastructure can’t be too different for each of the countries. Hence the first option will be too expensive to maintain, high software license costs, much longer lead time to market the new features/solutions and potentially many more issues.
The second option will address the developed markets separately and no compromises are made to the country specific requirements. For the emerging markets, a common template is developed considering various country requirements then build country specific requirements and roll out. This approach will likely to be expensive since there is a separate investment for developed markets and emerging markets.
The third option is probably the most optimal solution. However, it is likely to be the most challenging one to build because the template needs to consider requirements of “matured” ecommerce markets and then extend this platform to other emerging markets as well. Also integration complexity (multi currency, language, tax, master data and other legacy/ERP systems) can be quite high. The initial investments on building such platform will also be high. However, as a long term strategy it will be a scalable solution and probably most economical. Also this option will likely to go with only configurable packaged solution stack as it will be extremely cumbersome to build a custom/bespoke solution.
Key issues in building a common ecommerce platform (not exhaustive) –
·Apart from multi currency, multi lingual support, there will be conflicting business requirements and decision has to be taken to build either as a part of template or build it as country specific. However it should be noted that a large part of the effort going into building country specific requirements means that it will difficult to manage future releases and high cost of maintenance
·While the back end business processes can be common and fairly easier to build such an engine (covering order management, inventory, fulfillment/wms) the front end ecommerce, customer services will likely to be quite different. However the approach to build the front end must consider common building blocks (search, shopping cart management, inventory look up, reservation, customer registration, order status etc). Package stack will likely to be the default option even for front end
·As mentioned earlier integrations can be quite complex. However one thumb rule to be followed is – ecommerce platform has to define the way the data exchange will happen with external system and not the other way.
·If the approach (common template and roll out) has to be successful, the roll out has to be faster and even simultaneous rollout must be considered. Otherwise country priorities will overtake the acceptability of common platform may become a huge challenge
·Security, compliance requirements may vary and standardization in such areas will be complex
Recent trend clearly indicates ecommerce solution building is clearly moving away from ground up development (bespoke) since this approach may work in short term but as a long term solution it has many limitations especially for the organizations that are aggressively looking newer business lines for growth and global expansion. Selection of best suited package stack and then building a common ecommerce platform will likely to emerge as a best long term strategy.
