IT 511 E - commerce Individual Assignment (Literature Survey) Survey on eCommerce Portal Development tools C. S.

BOPEGAMA MSC/IT/09/097 (108553K)

Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................2 WHAT IS AN ECOMMERCE PORTAL?.....................................................................2 E-COMMERCE TOOLS...............................................................................................3 2. TAXONOMIES..........................................................................................................4 2.1 BUSINESS TO BUSINESS ECOMMERCE PORTALS (B2B)..............................4 2.2 BUSINESS TO CONSUMER ECOMMERCE PORTALS (B2C)..........................4 3. DEVELOPING A E-COMMERCE PORTAL............................................................4 3.1. SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT TOOLS...........................................................4
3.1. Supply chain Management tools....................................................................................................................4

3.2. WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS (WCMS)............................................5 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS.....................................................................6 3.4 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT TOOLS (CRM)...........................7 4. CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................8 4. CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................8

Ecommerce Portal Development tools Abstract. This paper reviews the ecommerce portal development tools and categorizes tools as supply chain management, web content management, knowledge management, and customer relationship management. A description of each category and some real world tools of each category is offered. Pros and cons of these tools are listed respectively. Keywords: eCommerce portal, eCommerce, Web development tools 1. Introduction E-commerce is the application of new technologies; it is specially internet and web technologies. E-commerce helps individuals, businesses and other organizations to better conduct businesses. 1.1. What is an ecommerce portal? Portals are also websites. It is a site that people use as a launching point to enter the web. Portal always includes a web directory and search engine. These websites gives more large information and services from different other sources. Web portals connect websites and services and arranged about some common theme. But these differ widely in the areas of information or dealing acts. These areas are such as marketing sector, involvement sections, communication portals and extra attribute like studies, meetings, expertise directories. Portal means doorway to the Internet. Portals give us information from different sources and even from other internet users. Most portals include features such as shopping directories, free e-mail, chat rooms, file storage facility, games, white pages and yellow pages for lookup databases. E - Commerce portals facilitate businesses and people to buying and selling a products or services through the internet. Also offer the different type of features of a portal. Some examples of web portals are yahoo, AOL, MSN, Lycos, and AltaVista.

1.2. E-Commerce Tools Tools that use in online business help to increase efficiency, quality and success of business. High quality tools are such as, catalog display tools, shopping cart on website, an online payment system, survey tool. Catalog Display tools Magento is an open source ecommerce catalog display management tool. Magento helps to manage inventory qualities. Also can integrate catalogs with Google base. Facilitate for configure color, size etc. Shopping cart This is the place where consumer keep the reserve product in the location until complete the transaction of actual purchase. It is like a shopping cart in a supermarket. Can add or remove items from shopping cart before complete the transaction. Zen Cart is a powerful ecommerce solution for develop a cart for a website. Shopping cart is an easy way for B2B to happen. Shopping cart show the price of each item, list of items and quantity. After adding items to the shopping cart payment transaction make with credit card. Payment gateways help for doing these transactions.

Payment Gateways Payment Gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service. It is like a POS terminal in supermarket. Payment Gateways protect credit card details. Payment Gateway helps to doing transaction between a website and acquiring bank. Payment

gateway providers are such as Paypal, Verising, Mastercard, HSBC etc. That is Internet merchant account, PayPal account, Online stores 3rd party payment. Survey tool Survey is a method of reviewing new website visitors as well as current customers.it help to market research and improves product and service through e-commerce. 2. Taxonomies. Mainly there are two types of E - commerce portals. 2.1 Business to Business ecommerce portals (B2B) B2B is exchange of services and products between businesses. Companies use this portal for buying and selling to each other online. 2.2 Business to Consumer ecommerce portals (B2C) B2C is online selling of buying product or service from web retailer to web customer. B2C is a good marketing strategy for product promotion. It gives consumer to facility such as information of product, price, consumer reviews, pictures etc. 3. Developing a E-commerce portal Initially, it is necessary to determine hardware and software requirement such as number of visitors using and viewing webpage, no. of pages, etc. We can categorize tools that used for developing e-commerce portal such as, Supply chain management tools Web Content management tools Knowledge management tools Customer Relationship management tools 3.1. Supply chain Management tools When developing a web portal it is necessary to consider about supply chain management. Supply chain management process helps to working with suppliers to improve product and processes. Supply chain management tools use for planning and execution these processes.

Tuppas software is a powerful tool that gives power to innovate. It allows upgrading the present system for efficient communication with suppliers and customers while saving time. It integrate with existing electronic data interchange system and decrease data entry time. Tuppas just-in time system reordering facility decrease warehousing and depreciation expenses. OpenPro ERP software is another tool that use in supply chain Management. This software gives maximize control on planning and operations with customers. Also contains warehousing and shipping management capabilities. Since this is a real time, integrated system with financial and management information system.

3.2. Web Content management tools (WCMS)

Content management tools help to create, manage, update, delete, add and maintain contains of web portal. Users who have little knowledge about web programming languages can use these tools easily. Most of these systems use database for store page content Set of XSLT (Extensible Style sheet Language Transformation) files use for visitors to display website. This WCMS can use non-technical people also. .Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, PHPnuke are some examples of these tools. Advantages 1. Easy to use Technical and non-technical people involve for designed WCMS. Therefore non-technical users can easily use. 2. Low Cost These WCMS like Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress are can free download. Not necessary to recruit full time web developers. It lower the total cost. 3. Customization Web pages that have same theme can develop easily. Design can doing with less coding. Therefore designing from beginning to end is easy. 4. Control WCMS provide facility to control of large amount of text, graphics and media files. Administrators set up rules for management of workflow.

Disadvantages 1. Capacity (volume) Files are stored in HTML based systems. Capacities of these files are very high. So many files stored in system and it takes time and not easy to search, update right file. 2. Maintenance Many WCMS require maintenance cost for hardware, agreement renewal cost. 3. Implementation Cost WCMS require large scale implementation. This implementation requires hardware installations, training and develops employees. That cost also effect to organization profit. 4. Tool Mixing Generally web based applications URLS are generated with reference information and sometimes same parameters. Therefore WebPages are not stable. 5. Latency issues It is necessary up to date hardware infrastructure. Databases should not be corrupted. If these are not checked regularly latency issues occurred.

3.3.

Knowledge Management tools

Knowledge Management tools help organizations to increase decision making quality, staff agility, change facilities of market needs, information sharing among users, store knowledge for future users etc. Knowledgebase Manager Pro is a rich internet tool uses Ajax technology and Web 2.0 PHPKB Knowledge management software is another powerful tool provides advanced features for handle customer efficiently. Advantage of it is that it provides reasonable lifetime licenses. OpenKM is an open source electronic management system. It is a useful tool in knowledge management processing. Advantage of OpenKM is flexible

and less cost than other applications. It can use small as well as big organizations. Advantages of Knowledge Management tools improve customer care receive feedback information Decrease customer support cost customer can get information from web without staff involvement. Staff receives information faster and it helps to improve decision making process. Network and communication allow staff coordination and efficient work-in-progress, less training time.

3.4 Customer Relationship Management tools (CRM) CRM tool help to build relationship between customers and sales and marketing team. SalesNexus is an online CRM tool. Its important features are sales automation, email marketing, database customization, team collaboration, and contact with every customer via phone, chat and email. SourceTap CRM tool satisfy the needs of customer as well as organization. It includes customer service, marketing, management and sales force automation. Centric CRM is an enterprise-class Open source customer Relationship Management tool that helps to customer satisfaction as well as organization development. Important facilities include Sales, helpdesk, project management, communications, and document management modules. SellWin, Daffodil, Apache OFBiz are other Open source Software for CRM.

Advantage of CRM Receive automatic update Individual installation not required Anywhere, at any time can use Information store in host server. Therefore not need high storage capacity Automatically run backup system. No need to worry about backup system. Disadvantages of CRM Security CRM access through internet hence hackers can access organization LAN or WAN. Vulnerabilities operating system, web server, application server Limited facilities to customer limited control on the performance, stability and reliability.

4. Conclusion Portals are also websites. Portal always includes a web directory and search engine. Portal means doorway to the Internet. There are two types of ecommerce portals. Using ecommerce web development tools help to efficiently and effectively conduct businesses. There are different taxonomies presented.B2B & B2C are main taxonomies. Tools use for developing these portals is Supply chain management tools, Web Content management tools, Knowledge management tools, Customer Relationship management tools. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Marketing Management 11th edition Philip Kotler Electronic Commerce 3rd annual edition Gary P. Schneider http://java-source.net/open-source/erp-crm http://www.oscommerce.com/ http://www.magentocommerce.com http://www.openkm.com http://www.zen-cart.com