Avoiding the growing pains of eCommerce through scalability

Online retail has been on a tear. According to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau, retail eCommerce sales for the third quarter of 2013 hit a staggering $67 billion, an increase of 17.5 percent from Q3 2012. During the same period, total retail sales increased at a modest 4.7 percent.

So as online sales channels continue to push profits, eCommerce executives are scrambling to keep up with the unprecedented growth. Many are looking to replatform their current software to accommodate both a current increase in web traffic as well as a forecasted increase in traffic. They’re looking for scalable solutions that come at an affordable point of entry.

IBM’s WebSphere Commerce, which has been touted by Gartner as one of the leaders in eCommerce solutions, fits the mold as a tool that businesses can grow with. Once an online retailer has secured WebSphere Commerce as its solution of choice, it can begin to develop (or outsource) the necessary skills set to maximize on the investment today and in the future.

Much of WebSphere Commerce’s ability to overcome the growing pains sometimes experienced by businesses in a booming market can be found in its three principal points of entry. With these options, the software can deliver on the needs of a growing business today just as easily as it can deliver on the needs of a leader in online retail tomorrow.

WebSphere Commerce Express Edition           

IBM’s Express version is tailored specifically for the small- to midsize marketplace, providing an affordable entry-level solution for a basic B2B or B2C site. It’s designed to be quickly installed and deployed (at times requiring less than 90 minutes) and incorporates a catalog import utility to easily import a product catalog from a spreadsheet. It also uses wizard-based tools to easily administer the site and provides a comprehensive and complete online solution that can be delivered in weeks versus months. With a low MSRP, it comes with all of the software an online storeowner will need to get started, including a web server, database, commerce engine and starter stores, plus staging and a development license. It runs on the Linux, OS/400 and Windows platforms.

WebSphere Commerce Professional Edition

The Professional edition provides more advanced site functionality than the Express suite to support higher transaction volumes, personalized marketing and pre-built connectors to link to back-office systems like PeopleSoft, CICS or SAP, especially desirable considering few companies use just one platform for all their applications. A wider range of platforms is supported and it includes built-in high availability, clustering and workload management tools to support sites that require 24×7 operations and seasonal spikes in business.

WebSphere Commerce Enterprise Edition

This edition provides an enterprise-wide solution for online procurement that streamlines the approval process using built-in contract and RFQ capabilities to automate B2B purchases, reducing the manual intervention required to conduct business between companies. The Business Context Engine automates this process by allowing each distributor and reseller to have unique pre-negotiated pricing discounts based on set volume purchases paid by a purchase order. This allows the seller to treat hundreds of other businesses in a similar fashion to automate and reduce the costs to conduct online transactions.

Admittedly, the descriptions provided above for each of IBM’s points of entry only scratch the surface in terms of what they can offer a retailer. Strictly speaking from a growth perspective, however, the main advantage when choosing WebSphere Commerce is that a business can retain its investment in that software infrastructure, which will grow according to individual company needs. A business can start with the Express edition, and when the market allows, it can easily transition to the Professional edition.

In a marketplace with double-digit growth rates, the only thing stopping an eCommerce business from riding those successful waves will be the ability to scale accordingly. Moving forward with an eCommerce replatforming project that doesn’t have to be a total rewrite will allow increased profits to come in that much sooner.

To learn more about which edition might best suit your needs today and moving forward, contact the team at NetSphere Strategies. Our staff is certified in the total IBM suite of software and are more than experienced to guide you toward the big profits that others in your industry have been experiencing.