HT_Deep Dive Comparative Analysis of e-Commerce Tools.pdf

DEEP DIVE

COMPARATIVE

ANALYSIS OF

E-COMMERCE TOOLS

Kumar Mallampalli Head – Emerging Solutions and IT Services

Hinduja Tech Limited

Deep Dive Comparative Analysis of E- Commerce Tools

Hinduja Tech Limited – Proprietary and Confidential Page1of 19

Table of Contents

1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2

2 The Challenges ........................................................................................................................................... 3

3 Solutions Options ........................................................................................................................................ 4

3.1 Open Source E-Commerce ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4

3.1.1 Magento ....................................................................................................................................................... 4

3.1.2 zencart: zen cart ™ ..................................................................................................................................... 6

3.1.3 virtuemart ..................................................................................................................................................... 7

3.1.4 KONAKART ................................................................................................................................................. 9

3.2 Commercial E-Commerce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10

3.2.1 hybris ......................................................................................................................................................... 10

3.2.2 microsoft commerce server ....................................................................................................................... 12

3.2.3 ATG ........................................................................................................................................................... 13

4 Recommendation ...................................................................................................................................... 14

5 Annexure ................................................................................................................................................... 15

5.1 Overall Product Comparison Chart ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15

5.2 Commercial E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16

5.3 Open Source E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 17

6 References ................................................................................................................................................ 18




1 Introduction

In today's saturated market where virtually everything can be found online, the balance of power has shifted

from the marketer to the well-connected and informed consumer. Brands across categories want to replace

their outdated e-commerce platforms and improve their online customer experience with Web 2.0 and

community capabilities. It has become imperative for brands to revamp their mundane e-commerce websites

and increase their online transactions. The objective of this white paper is to compare some of the leading e-

commerce platforms that are available in the market today under various parameters and suggest a holistic

approach that organizations can follow during their e-commerce implementation process.




2 The Challenges

As every other organization wants to increase its investment on e-commerce and significantly enhance its

direct trade, the key requirements for most organizations in implementing an end-to-end e-commerce include

the following:

Enhanced security while offering more products and flexibility in pricing

Integration with other systems and plug-ins

Search Engine Optimization

Intelligent web analytics

Customization to business requirements and local needs

Marketing integration for unified branding

Shorter time-to-implementation

Lower support cost for customer issues on products returns, rebates, coupon redemption and others




3 Solutions Options

3.1 Open Source E-Commerce

3.1.1 MAGENTO

Magento Enterprise provides businesses with unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and

functionality of their online store. Fully supported by the Magento team of experts, Magento Enterprise is

scalable and easily tailored to meet every merchant's unique technical and business requirements. To help

ensure success of their online channel, Magento Enterprise customers can leverage best-in-class marketing

and merchandising tools.

Magento Enterprise Screenshots

Shopping Cart Screen

Promotions Screen




Gift card Screen

Administration Screen

Dashboards

Payment Options

Key Strengths:

Marketing and promotions management – Marketing reminders, gift certificates etc

Secure – strong data encryption, user access based on roles and permissions

Rich merchandise suite

Dynamic customer information management

Search with Solr

Order editing and Google checkouts

Content staging and merging

Multi-lingual and Multi-currency support

Tax rate support in WEEE/DEEE format in EU

Country specific customization – Site registration, shipping destination address and billing address

with ability to specify pay per method

One click upgrades

Weakness:

Cart modification takes longer time

System requirements of Magento are quiet extensive – Requires at least PHP 5.2.0 extended with

mcrypt, PDO_MySQL and simple xml

Platform hosting involves significant cost

Coding style requires steep learning curve




Some of Magento Customers:

3.1.2 ZENCART: ZEN CART ™

Zencart: Zen Cart™ is a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The e-commerce web site

design program is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and

consultants that think e-commerce web design could be and should be done differently.

ZEN CART Screenshots

Product Catalog Screen

Dashboard




Product Features

Product Tools

Key Strengths:

Unlimited categories

Unlimited product options, gift certificates, discounts

Fully customizable and easily installable

Template system

Multi-lingual

Customer reporting tools

Permission system

Multiple currencies

Multi-tax

Multiple shipping and payment options

Multiple image per product

Built-in override protection system

Weakness:

Administration module requires extensive training

Add on non-compatibility

3.1.3 VIRTUEMART

VirtueMart is an Open Source e-commerce solution designed to be used with Joomla (But also works with

Mambo). Joomla and VirtueMart are written in PHP and made for easy to use in a PHP / MySQL environment.

VirtueMart Screenshots




Shop Home Page

Product Details

Shopping cart with PayPal

Admin: Edit Product

Key Strengths:

Stock level control for products and item

Ajax-powered product overview that allows to quickly add products to the cart

Manage different currencies, countries and states

Product Availability: Shows how fast a customer could expect a delivery

Weakness:

Lacks lot of essential shopping cart features such as stock control, shipping, payment to vouchers

and user group discounts etc.

Lack of many add-on modules




3.1.4 KONAKART

KonaKart is an affordable java based shopping cart software solution for online retailers.

Konakart Screenshots

Home Page

Shopping Cart

Login Screen

News Publishing

Key Strengths:

Rich shopping experience through fast indexed search, product filter and sorting, product review and

ratings display

Internationalization: Supports multi-currency and multi-language

Up-selling and cross-selling merchandise

Price, promotion and communication customizations based on customer groups

Supports recurrent billing in payment module

Google base integration and SEO

Sophisticated marketing functionalities for promotions and communications

Shipping module




Multi store with reward point support

Google analytics

Weakness:

Lack of support to gift certificates and loyalty programs

Upper limit exists for product displays and customer listing (Example: limited number of products are

allowed to list and for additional products to be listed, cost adds up)

Some of KonaKart customers:

3.2 Commercial E-Commerce

3.2.1 HYBRIS

Hybris provides a complete multichannel e-commerce software solution that integrates product content,

commerce operations, and the extended channel to help retailers, manufacturers, and other businesses

create a unified and seamless cross-channel experience for their customers — from online, to in-store, to

mobile and beyond.

Hybris Screenshots

Cockpit

Appealing Content Management




Multi-channel Campaign

Product Merchandise

Key Strengths:

Strong product content management tools

Catalogue management

Enterprise integration

Globalization and internationalization capabilities

PIM powered commerce

Light weight technology stack

Fast and flexible

Multi brand site

Problem free administration ability

Integrates functions such as payment solutions, customer loyalty elements, search and navigation

options and full marketing tools

Customer-specific visuals, catalogues, products and prices and pre-configured order lists

Mapping a wide range of distribution models, companies, business processes, administrators, user

groups and user rights, therefore facilitating hierarchical purchasing and approvals processes

Procurement integration and quotation module

Weakness:

Scores low in security (for cloud based offerings)

Poor support and lack of regional customer management




Some of Hybris Customers:

3.2.2 MICROSOFT COMMERCE SERVER

Commerce Server 2009 is a new, production-ready, out-of-the-box, contemporary web site that allows

businesses to get their stores live and merchandise moving more quickly. New page templating features

mean organizations can change the look and feel of a site just by pointing and clicking.

Key Strengths:

Shopping cart management

Taxation

Personalization and templating options

Transaction management

Settlement and product visualization

Integration with SharePoint server 2010, FAST search and Biz Talk server

Customizable, live services for integrated B2C shopping experiences with web parts

Multi channel integrations with kiosks, mobile devices, POS systems, interactive TV and gaming

systems

Weakness:

Poor technical architecture

Requires additional product purchase to leverage web 2.0 services

Some of Commerce Server Customers:




3.2.3 ATG

ATG Commerce is a comprehensive, highly scalable e-commerce platform and application solution that

automates and personalizes the online buying experience to increase conversions and order value, and

ensure customer loyalty. It’s flexible, component-based e-commerce software architecture enables one to

easily implement best-in-class e-commerce sites.

Key Strengths:

Complete multi channel e-commerce suite with strong personalization

Shopping cart management

Product catalogue

Rich Internet Application (RIA) capabilities

Multi site, multi language and multi currency support

Search merchandise feature

Multiple deployment choice

Facebook and Twitter integrations

iPhone mobile store application

Online community for customer, partner and product support

Weakness:

High cost

Customer support outside north America is challenging

Some of ATG customers:




4 Recommendation

Companies should select e-commerce platforms that are adaptable to specific business needs, flexible

enough to accommodate various legacy systems and also scalable enough to meet new requirements or

technology upgrades. Considering the above mentioned must-have features, the three existing e-commerce

platforms that win over the rest with their comprehensive functionalities are - Hybris, Magento and ATG.

Hybris: If you are looking for a strong product content management and multi-national e-commerce site that

can be established in a shorter time frame at a lower cost, then Hybris would be the best bet. This product will

allow one to localize the product content, pricing and promotions with its multi-currency, language, tax,

regulations and other features. This product will also enable you to analyze customer profiles based on target

segment or personalized behaviour pattern. However, some of the reference accounts have reported trouble

in integration and implementation.

Magento: If you want to quickly ramp up your multi-channel strategy with customizations, to meet growing

online demand for a wide product range, then Magento is the right choice. One can create user-friendly e-

commerce websites using Magento and get around the site for adding things to cart, wish lists or improve

navigation. One can also integrate price, product and stock level information to the website. Magento allows

one to internationalize the product easily, send newsletters, include Google site integrations, RSS feeds and

also provides strong analytics support. However for future scalability, understanding of enterprise level

customization for business needs is required.

ATG: If you want to mainly focus on strong personalization, merchandizing, targeting and customer interaction

then ATG should be your choice of e-commerce platform. However, ATG is priced slightly higher. It is also not

easier to implement multi-language and multi-currency capabilities using ATG. It also doesn’t have exhaustive

product content management features.

MS Commerce Server: MS Commerce Server is also a good product, provided it is implemented as a part of

the overall Microsoft suite. Extensive knowledge of MS product ecosystem including BizTalk and SharePoint

are required for the implementation. Overall, it is a big challenge to implement MS Commerce Server as

compared to other products both in terms of price and technical features. Also strong in-house Microsoft

expertise is required for both implementation as well as the periodic maintenance of the website.

It is not possible to consider any particular e-commerce platform as the best. Because each e-commerce

platform has its own advantages and disadvantages. A platform which may serve very well for a particular

organization may not be suitable for another organization. Open source e-Commerce platforms might work

well for many companies as it does not involve any buying or implementation cost. But it may not be the right

choice for organizations that are seeking advanced features like consumer profiling, targeted marketing etc.

On the whole, organizations have to evaluate many factors such as price, implementation time, scalability,

technology integration etc. and choose an e-commerce platform that will not only meet their current but also

their future business needs.




5 Annexure

5.1 Overall Product Comparison Chart

Legend:

- Supported

- Partially Supported

- Not Supported




5.2 Commercial E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart




5.3 Open Source E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart




6 References

http://www.fry.com/assets/category_files/pdf/wave_b2c_ecommerce_platforms_q4_2010.pdf

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/enterprise-application/gartner-ecommerce-mq-

359306.pdf

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=214034&ref=g_sitelink

http://www.comentum.com/magento-vs-oscommerce-vs-zen-cart-comparison.html

HT_Deep Dive Comparative Analysis of e-Commerce Tools.pdf

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