E Commerce Information System Architecture Stakeholders

The e-commerce information architecture components have associated cadres of interested stakeholders. The first set of stakeholders is the site’s user community, whose attention is garnered either by external acquisition systems, such as search engines, Web ads, e-mail, or other media advertising, or by the internal content of the site’s frontend Web servers and call centers. If the eyeball acquisition mechanisms or the site and call center fail to intrigue or at least be useful to users, they fail these very important stakeholders.

The next set of stakeholders is the e-commerce enterprise’s operational personnel, who are responsible for the care and feeding of the frontend Web servers, call centers, and the operational tie-ins to external user acquisition media. In many cases, e-commerce operational personnel are solely focused on these frontend systems despite the obvious need for backend system functionality. For more enlightened e-commerce enterprises, operational personnel also have a stake in order entry/order fulfillment systems, which centrally fulfill site-oriented activities, which may include things like user registration, requests for information, downloads, product or service (stock/auction) orders, and so on. Web server site content may also be distributed centrally from such a system.

E-commerce executive management and stockholders have a stake in the success of all the systems of an enterprise, but they are acutely interested in a well-implemented enterprise financial management system. These systems enable up-to-the-moment financial management of the enterprise, directly linked to the actual revenue and cost streams associated with frontend and backend operational systems. Without such a system, management is essentially flying blind from a financial perspective, which is very dangerous and, unfortunately, a very common situation with young e-commerce enterprises. A properly implemented enterprise financial management system can also satisfy the financial reporting requirements set forth by the SEC and investment bankers, which are among the required prerequisites for successful initial public offerings.

Although enterprise financial management is a fundamental need, the clickstream/callstream data warehouse gives user relationship management stakeholders the tools they need to make the e-commerce enterprise grow and prosper over the long-term. The existence of an effective user relationship management clickstream/callstream data warehouse is one of the most important long-term success differentiators in the e-commerce business sphere. These systems record all the activity of prospects and customers, whether the contact mechanism is via the Web or a call center. Examples of captured Web clickstream information include items such as the referring site, which tests the effectiveness of external media user acquisition campaigns, the Web pages visited by the site user, the time spent there, and what the user might have bought. The call center user contact records what the user did in this contact environment, either by automated voice-activated telephone scripts or by contact with human call center personnel.

This automatically collected treasure trove of user behavior information theoretically gives the e-commerce enterprise a huge advantage over brick-and-mortar competitors, who cannot easily record customer and prospect behavior. Although Web server clickstream and call center log files provide the necessary source information, the resultant historical data warehouses can become extremely large, making them probably the most difficult e-commerce system to implement. But, once implemented, these systems affect all aspects of the enterprise and all stakeholders, including:

• User behavior analysis/trending

• Web site page performance

• Effectiveness of user acquisition strategies

• Effectiveness of special offers

• User-behavior-driven Web page presentation

• Presentation of Web ads according to user behavior

• Enrichment of user data with externally purchased psychodemographic profiles

• Individualized call center script control

• Overall business strategy insights