Forrester predicts that by 2018, over 11% of total retail sales in the US, some $414 billion, will come directly from transactions completed in digital channels (online, tablet, mobile). 1 Established markets in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Canada are seeing growth rates for online spend in the 10% range, with emerging markets like India soring to a rate of 50%. 2 The time to get into the business of global ecommerce is now! Choosing the right ecommerce partner can deliver tremendous results: robust growth in online visitors and revenue, surges in customer demand and rapid expansion into new markets. Use our comprehensive 3-step checklist as you explore ecommerce solutions and make the most informed decision possible for your business. Ask yourself and your leadership team—what are you trying to achieve through your online channel? To start, identify and document your goals. Enter Your Goals: 1. 2. 3. Example Goals: • Expand and deploy rapidly across global markets with time to revenue around 3-4 months • Minimize risk by maintaining compliance with complex international trade regulations and security standards • Create significant cost savings from decommissioning redundant systems or adoption of ancillary services Ecommerce Solution Buyer’s Guide A checklist for global success Define your objectives STEP 1
Transcript
Forrester predicts that by 2018, over 11% of total retail sales in the US, some $414 billion, will come directly from
transactions completed in digital channels (online, tablet, mobile).1 Established markets in Europe, Asia, Latin
America, and Canada are seeing growth rates for online spend in the 10% range, with emerging markets like
India soring to a rate of 50%.2 The time to get into the business of global ecommerce is now! Choosing the
right ecommerce partner can deliver tremendous results: robust growth in online visitors and revenue, surges
in customer demand and rapid expansion into new markets. Use our comprehensive 3-step checklist as you
explore ecommerce solutions and make the most informed decision possible for your business.
Ask yourself and your leadership team—what are you trying to achieve through your online channel?
To start, identify and document your goals.
Enter Your Goals:
1.
2.
3.
Example Goals:• Expand and deploy rapidly across global markets
with time to revenue around 3-4 months
• Minimize risk by maintaining compliance with complex international trade regulations and security standards
• Create signifi cant cost savings from decommissioning redundant systems or adoption of ancillary services
Ecommerce Solution Buyer’s GuideA checklist for global success
Defi ne your objectivesSTEP 1
Digital River Ecommerce Solution Buyers GuideDigital River Ecommerce Solution Buyers Guide
Solution
Solution type: Identify which of the following architecture/operational models the vendor’s commerce suite supports (multi-tenant SaaS, single-tenant SaaS, hosted/managed or on-premise)
Target market: Understand whether or not the solution’s technology is specialized for your specifi c industry
Cost of ownership: Look for the technology and services that will generate the most for a TCO that is within your budget requirements
PCI compliance: Confi rm the level of vendor/solution PCI Compliance. Identify all the system components and services that are excluded or not covered by the vendor´s PCI DSS assessment. Obtain proof of compliance documentation (such as the AOC and applicable sections from the ROC), including date of compliance assessment. Understand the vendor’s responsibilities for each
area of PCI DSS and your responsibility for particular PCI DSS requirements. Know exactly what you are responsible for in order to maintain PCI compliance
Security: Validate all internal and external security audits, processes and event plans to ensure world- class protection
Implementation services: Understand implementation timeline, cost and complexities
Upgrade and version management: Determine the timeline and potential resource investment around new code releases and version upgrades
Professional/support services: Evaluate the type of support that will be provided by the vendor to develop, operate, and optimize your commerce suite during implementation and on an ongoing basis
Design and marketing services: Confi rm whether or not design and marketing services will be offered in combination with the platform and technology services
Customization: Vet opportunities for customization at all levels from coding to customized business rules
Availability and scalability: Confi rm uptime, page load time, order load, product cache content, etc. to ensure you are choosing a solution that will exceed your business needs and keep you up and running at all times
Business user tools: Understand if the solution shares a common business user administration tool set for all functions within the platform
Data quality management and monitoring: Confi rm the type of reporting and monitoring tools offered for compliance, quality, integrity, and consistency checks (e.g., trend monitoring, aggregate reporting, bottleneck reporting, dashboards, data visualization, etc.)
Workfl ow and process management: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the workfl ow and process management tools that will be made available
Determine your criteriaSTEP 2
Use this checklist to ensure the solution you choose has all of the requirements and capabilities you need for both your current and future business plans.
Digital River Ecommerce Solution Buyers GuideDigital River Ecommerce Solution Buyers Guide
Consumer Marketing
Campaign management: Examine all aspects of the campaign management toolset to ensure functionality and features exist that will optimize your marketing programs
Promotions and discounts: Confi rm the promotion and discount capabilities that are included out of the box. Understand if the platform allows for standard, dynamic, touch-point, cross-touchpoint and personalized promotions supported, etc.
Personalization: Understand the level of sophistication within the personalization features
Content management and authoring: Determine whether or not the solution offers a web content management module or system, can provide integration of third party repositories if necessary and provides the content tools necessary for your products
Multisite and multi-brand management: Examine the platform’s ability to support the creation and management of multiple storefronts, partner / affi liate storefronts, and the capabilities and requirements surrounding this activity
Globalization and localization: Understand the level of localization provided for products, sites, and unstructured marketing content and copy, as well as, the levels of support provided around the internationalization of currencies, region-specifi c content, catalogs, products, shipping/freight confi gurations, taxes, time zones, payment services, localized text images, prices, and promotions
Customer Support
Inventory and customer data: Verify the level of data available in order to provide exceptional customer service. Understand if the solution allows for user-defi ned access to customer service screens covering shopper history, order details, payment status, notifi cation status and order progress information
Order modifi cation/cancellation: Evaluate all capabilities around order modifi cations, cancellations and product substitutions
Recurring orders: Understand whether or not the solution supports recurring / repeat orders, subscriptions and / or self- replenishment programs, and the level of capabilities around these offerings
Returns/exchanges: Validate the profi ciencies and parameters regarding returns and exchanges.
UX Web Delivery
Responsive web design: Confi rm all functionality around a fully responsive design and ensure storefront responsiveness for all desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile devices
Staging and preview: Determine if the solution allows for full content and design previewing, versioning, and deployment workfl ow that will make the editing of live products and store designs possible without disrupting sales. Understand whether or not these activities require independent deployment schedules or require code release to launchFinance
Tax calculation: Determine if the solution will handle tax and contains tax calculation
Digital River Ecommerce Solution Buyers GuideDigital River Ecommerce Solution Buyers Guide
Finance
Tax calculation: Determine if the solution will handle tax and contains tax calculation capabilities at the local jurisdiction level (e.g., city/county/state). Also understand whether or not the solution provides integration with third-party tools for tax calculation and supports specialized tax calculations like tax exemptions and tax holiday schedules
Revenue recognition: Ask if the solution can calculate and report deferred revenue and monthly revenue, as well as calculate and report billings and bookings
Payment processing: Verify whether or not the solution can act as the payment gateway for all payment methods provided globally and manage cash accounting per currency
Fraud management: Understand what fraud technology is in place. Will the partner offer pre-integrated fraud screening technology, international teams of fraud analysts and chargeback management services for complete fraud prevention?
Merchant and seller of record: Determine if the partner is able to act as Merchant or Seller of Record on your company’s behalf
SOX compliance: Vet the product offer features/controls that ensure SOX compliance, such as segregation of duties, user authentication, role-based access model, privileged user management and a log of user actions
Operations
ERP integration and syndication: Understand how the platform will support a fl exible integration to major ERP providers specifi cally for OM/Order to Cash scenarios, what pre-built connectors to major ERP providers will be provided by either the vendor or partners (e.g. SAP), how the product supports real-time, scheduled and triggered syndication of order data to a third party ERP application; and product support with the ability to defi ne multiple syndication rules based on account, brand, division, channel, organization or catalog
Special order types: Confi rm whether or not the product can handle special order types like digital goods, online services, and subscription items, and if a single order/cart can contain both hard and virtual (soft) goods and mixed billing types (e.g., post pay subscriptions and prepay transactions)
Administration tools: Verify whether or not the solution offers a robust set of administration tools for bulk edits, previewing, switching between languages and offers interfaces based on users, etc.
Enterprise inventory management: Determine if you will have access to an extensive inventory of visibility tools supporting both fi xed and shared inventory models, as well as limited edition capabilities that can manage fi nite levels of inventory, allowing you to sell down to zero without over committing inventory
Payment processing: Does the product support transactions in all global currencies? Understand which payment options will be supported (e.g. credit card, bank transfer, AliPay, Google Wallet)
Product price and sales management: Product pricing can be set in multiple currencies, made to be VAT/TAX inclusive/exclusive, and can be differentiated by locale. These standard list prices can be discounted through a number of different promotions, like: percent off, amount off or fi xed price, etc. allows for tiered pricing and/or volume discounts
Partner B2B
Partner management: Understand if the solution offers partner management tools that support partner profi les and locatio ns, inventory lookup, lead registration and management, commission payments to distributors, etc. Customer account management
Cross-sell/up sell: Confi rm that the platform supports subscription upgrades, downgrades, and transfers within the customer-facing subscription management pages. The merchandising toolset also supports cross-sells and up sells during the purchase process and on some of the post-purchase pages
Channel management: Does the product support a variety of different B2B business models, including support for distributors, resellers, partner networks, employees, retail stores, and direct B2C channels?
Customer account management: Understand whether or not the platform captures all information required to complete/fulfi ll a transaction (i.e. billing address, shipping address, and payment details). The platform can be customized to capture some additional “non-transactional” information, but there could be some limitations due to legal concerns (i.e. capture/storage of information not required to complete a transaction)
Take the time to evaluate more than one solution. A single side-by-side comparison can provide real context into which requirements and capabilities you truly want and need.
Identify a few specifi c capabilities you absolutely need your solution to offer:
1.
2.
3.
Examples of specifi c capabilities include:
• Tools for tracking and optimizing the customer’s journey as they traverse the platform, driving engagement and nurturing customer relationships to maximize revenue
• Self-service tools, including but not limited to: enhanced benchmark and index reporting, powerful subscription services, recurring billing capabilities and superior system performance
• Local payment methods to enhance global shopping experiences
Evaluate your optionsSTEP 3
1 Forrester Research Online Retail Forecast, 2013 to 2018 (US report)
2 Canadian Online Retail Forcast, 2013 to 2018 and Asia Pacifi c Online Retail
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