Digital (e)Commerce Platform Landscape

This article tries to empower businesses, with the requisite knowledge, of what is needed to build a modern-day Digital (e)Commerce platform.

The below diagram depicts the typical techno-functional building blocks of a standard B2C \ D2C online Digital (eCommerce) Commerce landscape.This will help:

•  plan and architect any custom open source solution that you envisage
• evaluate any package like IBM WCS, SAP Hybris, Oracle ATG, Demandware, Majento etc. These packages will need to be bundled with other products to get sufficient coverage of the overall landscape.

Let us briefly introduce some of these building blocks:

MDM (Master Data Management) \ ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) – The core master data related to the merchandise you plan to sell online, might reside on a dedicated MDM system or might just be there in the Material Management module of ERP.

PIMS (Product Information Management System) – Depending upon your specific needs, this data will need to be appropriately enriched and organized for your online business; the interface for this activity is facilitated through PIMS.

WCMS (Web Content Management System) and DAM (Digital Asset Management) – While the textual enrichment of the master product data happens in PIMS; it needs to be further beefed up with other media assets to make up for the lack of touch and feel in the online channels. While these media assets are stored and organized in DAM; the overall display of these in a coherent fashion on the online Storefront in controlled via WCMS. This system also helps manage the layouts, the eMarketing spots and the content to be displayed on these spots, based on manual merchandising associations or as suggested by the integrated Recommendation Engines.

DAM is the source of all assets that needs to be sprayed to the perimeter caching engines \ CDN (Content Delivery Network).

Online Storefront – This is where you try to attract, engage in your customer with the aim of converting the online visits ultimately into a purchase. The experience the customer has as part of this first mile impacts his / her loyalty and further advocacy to other friends and family.

Ratings and Review – This has become an integral part of online business. These are built-in most of the packages; while there are other third party players like BazaarVoice, Pluck (now acquired by Sprinklr) etc.

Checkout required some specific integration \ processing like:

•         Tax component – is country specific and is facilitated either by the ERP Financials or other dedicated third party components.
•         Payment Gateway – depending upon the kind of money tenders allowed for the online business the appropriate set of payment providers are integrated.
•         Fraud – There are certain engines that can predict the fraudulent nature of a transaction

Order Management System (OMS) – During the browse and checkout phase, the Global Inventory Manager plays its role about adjudging the accurate ATP (Available To Promise) and ATD (Available To Deliver) figures. This becomes even more crucial in a MultiChannel model where inventory is shared between channels.

Once the Order is confirmed, the entire forward and reverse logistics process is managed by OMS. It also shares order life cycle status, aggregated from different sources, with the Storefront as well as the CS (Customer Service) systems.

Post order confirmation, OMS processes involves:

•          Creation of the order
•         Deciding on the fulfilment channel and source
•          Creation, consolidation and scheduling of shipments \ consignments
•         Managing the Pick and Sort processes - the actual process is typically performed by a WMS (Warehouse Management) system
•         Packing and Verification
•         Manifesting and Carrier Management over the last mile delivery stretch
•          Manage Cancellations and Order Modifications
•         Manage the entire Reverse Logistics process – Returns scheduling and PickUp, Refund \ Exchange, deciding on the next course of action wrt to the returned inventory.

IBM Sterling OMS is one of the leading players in this space.

Warehouse Management System (WMS) – For a brick and click player, WMS already exists; the success of this multichannel model depends on the optimization of the shared inventory model ensuring fulfilment of all demands with the right kind of supply forecasting along with the downstream procurement processes. However, things are relatively easier for an Online only player.

A typical WMS system, for online delivery, will involve:

•         PreReceiving – Appointment Scheduling, Contractual and legal requirements etc.
•          Receiving and QA
•         PutAway
•         Picking – Item, Cluster or Order
•          Handing over to the system responsible for last mile delivery preparations (Pack, Verify, Manifest, Ship….)

SAP, Manhattan, Sterling are some of the competitors in this space.

Customer Service – This is a primary lifeline of the online business – providing assistance to the customers on:

•         Additional information on merchandise
•          Guidance on purchase – Phone ordering
•          Order Status
•         Order Amendments, Cancellations and Return \ Exchanges
•          Resolution of customer complaints and feedback
•         IVR for incremental payments for order amendments
•          Customer Appeasement – through vouchers, credits etc.
•         Customer Relationship Management

This typically comes bundled with individual eCom packages.

ERP \ Legacy Systems – The role of ERP \ Legacy system might vary between organizations; below are some of the key processes it might help execute:

•          Material \ Merchandise Management – Procurement, Master Data etc.
•          Product LifeCycle Management (PLM)
•         Price Optimization
•         Demand Forecasting
•          Inventory Management
•          Warehouse Management
•         Supplier \ Seller Management
•          Tax Management
•         Finance and Compliance Management

Decision Support System (DSS) \ Analytics – To get a complete 360-degree picture of an online business, analytics related to the following areas are needed – some of it might be sourced through the standard Data Warehousing (DW) \ OLAP processes; where the data volume is pretty huge, it might need implementation of more sophisticated Big Data storage and processing techniques:

•         Recommendation Engine / Personalization– it might depend of aggregated segmentation intelligence or on individual browsing and purchase behaviour through Machine Learning (ML) algorithms
•         Merchandising Analytics
•         Web Analytics – including AB\MultiVariate testing and HeatMaps (to optimize the User Experience)
•          Supply Chain Analytics
•         Financial Reporting

The insights obtained here helps drive the formulation of the marketing strategy and campaign design – through traditional and Digital routes and amalgamation of both.

Enterprise Integration – Irrespective of whether a platform is built custom or by utilization of COTS package, it the seamless integration of different elements of the ecosystem (both technology and process), that decides the success of a Digital Commerce initiative.

Infrastructure – The best of class product design, implementation and integration, might still fail if the underlying infrastructure is not sufficiently capacity sized and tuned for the intended performance objectives. Fault Tolerance is the key to the overall system availability in the Five 9 zone. The decision to host the solution on a cloud or a DataCentre (DC) depends on the size, budget and priorities of individual organizations. Even the DCs are nowadays modelled as private clouds. As modern day solutions involve a host of products and other third party services \ micro-services; in all practicality, it ends up being a hybrid infrastructure.