> What should the "best" e-commerce system contain?
first and foremost, an e-commerce system should be based on a very clear
understanding of how the organization in question uses communication as
part of its business. that's the basis of your system design, and the
thing which will lead you to other, more specific questions.
inventory tracking systems, shopping carts, CC handling, and all the rest
are components which go into a solution that works best for the specific
needs of the client. you can't spec the parts until you have an overall
design, though.
too many organizations go charging off after the buzzword toy of the month,
determined that they have to have it, but not having the slightest idea
what to do with it. meanwhile, other truly essential forms of
communication sit begging, hamstrung, and neglected.
having spent most of a year watching the inner workings of a fairly
good-sized corporation, i know whereof i speak. at this moment, i'm
slacking off from writing a piece of web-development software which is
supposed to be deployed to a hundred-odd business units. the PTB are
convinced this is Very Important Stuff. at the operations end, i think
there are probably five people in the field who will actually be able to
use the thing once i've got it.
meanwhile, our fellow list-member Anna Greene is trying to bill $15K worth
of commercial web work each month, and has to push it to my servers through
a 33.6 modem. i've told my veep she needs better equipment (repeatedly),
my veep has told Anna's publisher to spend some f*cking money on hardware
(repeatedly), yet El Pub has somehow decided that this is all just
optional.. but heaven help Anna if her monthly sales aren't up to
predictions.
i have another tech in Wisconsin, whose hardware budget comes out of the
sales department (for some reason), and who can't buy new servers because
the salesman shot the year's budget on a shiny new laptop. again, the
foundations of heaven shake if his numbers this month don't match the
dartboard from four weeks ago.
neither organization needs better secure transaction handling.. what they
need is a little quality time with a clue. any technology i supply to
either one is a distraction.. little more than a bright, new excuse not to
deal with the real, fundamental weaknesses in their understanding of what
they're doing.
> What should it cost?
no single answer is possible, for all the reasons above.
once you know the communications issues.. both between the organization and
its customers, and within the organization itself.. you can estimate the
scale of the solution you need. once you know the scale, you can start
looking for tools which do that job at that level. once you've picked a
set of candidates, you can decide which will give you the most bang for
your buck. then you can play all the juggling games where you do X a
little less well than might be desirable, to free up additional money for Y.
the one thing i can say, with absolute confidence, is that a good
solution.. not overwhelming, just functional and reliable.. will cost a lot
more than the customer thought going in. wish-lists are big, quality
costs money, there's never enough time, and training goes slowly.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 'net geek..
been there, done that, have network, will travel.
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
