E-commerce solutions

Enterprise companies’ large size and organizational complexity are two common challenges that enterprises face when implementing e-commerce platforms. With the right approach and long-term planning, companies can anticipate and overcome roadblocks in their enterprise e-commerce platform implementations.

E-commerce challenges confronted by enterprises

• Organizational complexity: multiple stakeholders, KPIs, budgets, and rules
• Regional complexity: local laws, markets, practices, cultures
• IT complexity: a mix of new, old, in-house, acquired, 3rd party and other software

Mid-market companies already have high and constantly growing business complexity - close to enterprises – however, they don’t have enterprise-scale budgets. In terms of e-commerce, this means all projects should be highly results-focused, provide excellent ROI, and still deliver a reliable basis for further growth.

The main e-commerce challenges for mid-market companies

1. Lack of required in-depth expertise in e-commerce. Mid-market companies are in the midst of a human resources transformation when the universal specialists’ expertise is no longer sufficient to satisfy the business complexity, and the company still does not have the opportunity to hire people with the required in-depth business and technical e-commerce expertise.
2. Inflexible solutions do not allow you to change direction quickly and easily. Inflexible multi-tenant, closed-code solutions or software with monolithic architecture make it impossible to grow long term with the velocity needed to expand your business. Changes are becoming more expensive or impossible, and involve more risks, so each new improvement takes more time to deliver.
3. A predictable implementation budget is crucial. Having a predictable budget for e-commerce implementation projects is critical for mid-market companies. It is highly desirable to keep control over the progress of the implementation and the roadmap, and to regularly evaluate the value of desired features and spend money on the most valuable ones.

For any startup, there is a choice - to use an existing e-commerce platform, or design and develop an in-house solution.  It often seems that developing startup e-commerce platform in-house will fit your MVP better; however, using an existing solution may bring your MVP vision to life more quickly.

What are the top e-commerce platform challenges of startups?

1. Out-of-the box solutions don’t fit startups. Startups aim to break an existing business model based on either new technology or new business approaches. Since startups do new and creative things via e-commerce, they face a challenge: inflexible out-of-the-box solutions do not fit innovative models by design, and they are too expensive for an MVP. 
2. Licensing does not fit many startup business models. Traditional licensing is another challenge. Traditional licensing models are structured for conventional business models and practices, but not for companies with disruptive business models.
3. It is challenging to find qualified experts to build your MVP fast. The third critical problem is the lack of relevant e-commerce experience and expertise to deliver an MVP. Startup MVPs are about minimizing time and costs. It is essential to select the fastestway to MVP, which is not always obvious, and move forward as fast as possible. It is necessary to find a reliable e-commerce partner who will and can handle these risks: help to define the MVP scope accurately so that your business model will be implemented as cost-effectively as possible and delivered in a timely manner.

The Internet allows companies to increase their prospect pool. Loud online presence grants access to many more potential consumers and partners than traditional advertising models. According to statistics, over 90% of product researches on B2B level start with search engines. So, the Internet becomes an essential trade channel for B2B e-commerce examples.

A company would make great digital marketing efforts to evolve into a strong brand. There are many articles and training courses dedicated to online promotion and SEO. However, all efforts would be in vain, if a prospective partner leaves the page in a few minutes because the website itself is “inconvenient”. If a visitor is confused from the first minute of being on the website, all other benefits may fade from the view.

Business to business in e-commerce is an online business model with flexible enterprise software as a ground solution for purchasing, selling and promoting services, information, or products.

In B2B e-commerce examples, the e-commerce technology can become a critical success factor. The website must represent your business well, be user-friendly, and allow prospective buyers to get the information they are searching for. This raises a question about the right choice of business to business e-commerce software.

The term "cloud e-commerce" refers to outsourcing a remote network of servers hosted on the Internet to use application services, store and process data. Essentially, it is a cloud-based e-commerce versus software installed on a local server.

Cloud e-commerce solutions provide a wide range of benefits over traditional on-premise storage. Within the last ten years, the cloud has gained popularity due to reduced complexity and lower cost of maintenance. Nowadays, cloud e-commerce has become the most optimal solution model on the market.