Social media networking and the mobile technology is a big boon for establishing, enlarging and reinforcing ecommerce relations. The visitors flocking to the social networking sites are increasing every day giving the businesses sufficient opportunities to launch active marketing strategies and riveting the customers’ attention. However the downside to this growing market is that if you are unable to provide your customers secure and innovative customer service experience your dream to rule the roost is going to end up in disappointment.
The ecommerce business thrives in the midst of intense interaction. Interactive marketing and advertising can make your ecommerce business soar to great heights. In order to be a hot favorite amongst the online customers you need to employ eCommerce solutions that deliver fast, cost-effective and reliable results. The solutions should provide a robust and scalable platform that facilitates delivery of digital content. They should ensure that the websites are optimized for generating user-specific content.
The ecommerce solutions should enable the use of web portals for travel, ticketing and event management purposes. They should provide robust and secure payment processing solutions. They should also provide the online auction engines facility through open source libraries. Providing location based shopping services for the mobile users is a bonus that supplies your business with profitable dividends.
Every business needs to keep experimenting to provide customers with innovative and customized services. It is also important to ensure that while implementing new ideas and strategies the costs are not affected and the risks are not aggravated. Thus you need specialized product engineering services that can help in meeting the demands of the dynamic market and provide the customers with a rich experience. The product engineering services that are implemented should deliver convincing results in product conceptualization, development, product localization, product customization and implementation, product migration and porting, and product extensions.
Quality assurance is a vital characteristic that needs to be followed religiously by every business to maintain a reliable and trustworthy relation with its customers. The QA services should provide a high priority platform for consultation, testing and certification. It should facilitate the selection and adaptation of various testing techniques and methodologies, provide timeframes and estimates, define the statistical metrics, analyze the use cases and create test cases, set up efficient test environments, execute the test cases, investigate for defects and produce results, analyze the test cycle results, collect the metrics and prepare the status reports. The prospect of leveraging your ecommerce business lies in your ability to provide customized services and a quality performance delivery.
Also read on - Advisory services, open source software development
Meeting the software needs of the leasing industry is no easy task, as every change in legal requirements, market forces and strategy gives rise to a number of challenges.
Finance companies are demanding innovative software products that are ahead of the market, such as solutions that enable users to change their business processes without time or financial constraints. Although these demands are part of a greater paradigm shift in the leasing industry, using workflow and Rules Engine can help software vendors meet some of these needs.
He we discusses how leasing software can be made flexible and adaptable to constantly changing market needs by using workflow and a Rules Engine in conjunction.
Leasing Process
Together, a Rules Engine and workflow can be used to automate the conditional workflow processes of the system, as well as the movement of items between different nodes. This setup can help in managing the life cycle of leasing deals. It can also isolate the bulk of the application code from changes in the life cycle of deals.
Approval Process
The approval process for leasing deals involves approval at various levels. The type and number of levels can vary from time to time and from customer to customer. A combination of Rules Engine and workflow can be used to define the approval process for the deals so that the sequence of approvals can be governed.
Leasing Documents
The importance of tracking documents cannot be undermined in leasing. Required documents for a lease may vary based on entities like vendor, equipment and approval level. In such cases, Rules Engine can be configured and used to specify the required and optional documents for various entities.
Escalation and Notifications
User actions in leasing software might trigger a notification or even lead to an escalation in certain cases. Workflow provides a convenient way of sending notifications to the users based on different actions.
Dynamic User Interface and Authorization
It is typical for applications to have different categories of users and thus a different user interface for each of them. For example, due to security reasons, some information may be hidden from one category of users and available to another. Such dynamic user interfaces can be dynamically configured through rules.
Pricing Calculations
In almost all financial applications (including leasing), it is common that calculations
(e.g., EMI calculations, subsidy calculations, tax calculations, etc.) may be different for different vendors, dealers and locales. Rules provide an easy mechanism to implement
such scenarios.
Also read on: Ecommerce solutions, Mobile application development, Product engineering services, Saas application development
Open source databases come with the advantage of being free, available for understanding, modification, and improvement as per needs.
There are three ways of using an open source database - do-it-yourself, thirdparty, and outsourcing. The choice of an open source database depends on factors, such as the intended usage, duration of use, and the cost involved as the main factor. Often the best comparison is obtained by first-hand evaluation.
Players: The top three vendors in the database market are: Oracle, IBM (DB2 and Informix), & Microsoft (SQL Server). In the open source market, there are six important
players (on the basis of acceptance in the software community
at large):
1. MySQL - GNU (General Public License) as well as commercial
2. PostgreSQL - BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution)
license
3. Firebird - Initial Developer's Public License (IDPL)
4. Ingres - GNU General Public Licensev2
5. MaxDB (earlier known as SAP DB, it is being developed in alliance with MySQL especially for SAP environments) - GPL
6. HSQLDB - BSD license
Popularity
The popularity of an open source database seems like a trivial concern to the technical community, but the fact stands tall that a product’s success is based on other reasons in addition to the technical features. Some of these are:
a) Support available from community as well as tool vendors
b) Momentum of the product being released in and open source arena
These are the two most important business concerns for choosing an open source product. The former ensures integrity with various other technologies and the latter ensures that open source is not going to die or fade out easily.
The six open source databases that we selected fare differently on the popularity aspect.
• MySQL - most popular open source database boasting more than 8 million active installations. Starting since 95 (internally), the MySQL community is the largest and has frequent releases; version 4.1 came out in Apr-03, current version 5.0 in Aug-04, and the much-talked and awaited future release version 5.1 is out as beta since Nov-05.
• PostgreSQL - has hundreds of companies listed as Users. The community is as old as Aug-96. It is much-adored among technical jig wigs for its huge support of features.
EnterpriseDB is a product built over it. Last few releases have been version 7.4 in Nov-03, current version 8.0 in Jan-05, and the new release 8.1 in Nov-05.
• Firebird - about 0.1 million deployments as of Sep-05. This is a very old community since Sep-84 and has a huge fan following for the number of good and bad times it has been through. The versions out are version 1.0 in Mar-02, current v1.5 in Feb-04 and 2.0 alpha is out there.
• Ingres - about 5000 existing customers. After changing many hands, the product has been made available to open source since ‘04, though it has been in existence along with
PostgreSQL. The current release - r3 is out since Aug-04 and r4 is much-awaited for its support to materialized views.
• MaxDB - about 6000 customer installations. This has been specific to Mobile application development earlier known as SAPDB. Started since Oct-00. It was available in version 7.6 in Nov-05
• HSQLDB - 0.3 million downloads. The project is finding hard to get contributions and is slower than others. It is the youngest in the group, formed since 01. It released 6 versions since Apr-01. Platform Support also speaks about the popularity and acceptance. Regarding the OS, we have major players as Linux, UNIX, Apple, and Windows. Besides, we also have Novell with Netware and BSD.
Know more - ideation services, Product engineering team
Venture specialist Dave Beisel first coined the term “social commerce” to refer to the integration of e‐commerce with social networking. According to PR executive and blogger Steve Rubel, “Social commerce can take several forms, but in sum it means creating places where people can collaborate online, get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and Ideation services and then purchase them. It shrinks the research and purchasing cycle by creating a single destination powered by the power of many.”
Wikipedia describes social commerce (also known as social shopping) as a subset of e‐commerce solution in which the active participation of customers and their personal relationships are at the forefront. The main element of this new trend is customers’ involvement in the marketing of products being sold, e.g. their recommendations and comments through blogs and shopping lists. This phenomenon enables customers to interact with one another in order to make better buying decisions by capturing and structuring “word‐of‐mouth” around product recommendations and reviews.
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL COMMERCE ON ECOMMERCE
Social Networking sites are a key target for online advertising, as SNS users say peers and colleagues hold more influence over their purchases than any other source of information. Furthermore, Compete, Inc. reports that SNS users spend nearly 25% of their disposable income on online purchases. The recent boom in online advertising has also provided social networking sites a way to convert website traffic into dollars without charging members a subscription fee. The advent of Google's AdWords advertising program has been an especial boon, as it allows sites to place keyword based ads alongside content like users profiles. “Networking sites provide some of the most powerful word‐of‐mouth‐marketing opportunities there have ever been,” says Nancy Costopulos, Chief Marketing Officer at the American Marketing Association. “It's past the fad zone and into the reality zone.”
Another survey by AMA found that 47% of consumers said they would use social networks to discuss and find holiday gift ideas; 29% would buy products through those sites; 51% would look for discounts on social networks; 51% would download coupons; and 18% would read or write product reviews.
According to online marketing firm The ClickZ Network, “‘Brand Advocates’ spread opinions via word of mouth, as well as over social networks, instant messaging, chat, photo sites and blogging. Such advocates have at least a two‐to‐one rate of converting an actual friend or family member to buy the same exact product or brand they support, according to the report.” E‐Consultancy’s Social Commerce Report 2007 found that 67% of online retailers say that a social networking strategy is a medium‐to‐high priority for investment.
A recent study commissioned by social networking giant MySpace reported that business‐to‐consumer messaging could create considerable value when combined with consumer‐to‐consumer messaging. Following up on this study, MySpace recently introduced a hyper targeting program that allows advertisers to pick "enthusiast" audiences from ten categories of interests: music, movies, personal finance, gaming, consumer electronics, sports, travel, auto, fashion and fitness. Similarly, Facebook allows “endorsements” on its site and encourages members to subscribe to brands. Forrester Research observes, “As these ‘Fan‐Sumers’ share their affinities, brands can advertise using trusted social relationships.”
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Saas Application Development, Product engineering services
Outsourced Product Development Myths and Realities
Outsourcing software development has been in place for some time now, with companies having overcome the initial hiatus to embrace this new trend. Both small startups and fortune 500 companies have saved millions of dollars outsourcing their software needs offshore to locations like India, China and Russia and acquired a definitive edge over their competitors who chose to go without software or ramp up an information technology team in house. Whereas traditional software outsourcing has been by brick and mortar companies whose core competency was not in writing software, a new wave has recently arrived where even the Mobile application development companies are now looking out for coalitions or partners who can manage their product development offshore. This is in stark contrast to the normal principle of outsourcing where companies used to outsource tasks which were not a part of their core competency. One must say competitive globalization has arrived.
Choosing an offshore product development partner
Myth: When it comes to choosing a development partner, there is no difference between a one-off software development company and a company focused on Software Product Engineering Services
Reality: You couldn't have been farther from the truth. There is a world of difference between one-off software development and creating a software product. One-off software development is more of a 'Get it working somehow approach' while companies focused on software product engineering live by making strongly architected, portable, maintainable, secure, adaptable, highly configurable and installable software. For more details on the difference between traditional outsourcing and outsourced product engineering,
Project Management Ownership
Myth: Keeping project management onsite with just retaining the team with the outsourcing partner would lower the risk by reducing the number of unknowns.
Reality: Managing the project from onsite is a tricky affair. 70% of the projects can be run successfully by just keeping tab of the deadlines and the deliverables. For another 30%, specially, the pressure cooker ones, it is important to have a pulse of the team and to keep them motivated. This is difficult to achieve when the manager sits at a different location than the team. Moreover, if the manager is co-located with the team, he/she can resolve project/people issues better and keep a closer watch at the quality and the deadlines.
Protection of Intellectual Property
Myth: Our IP would be stolen if we outsource
Reality: Since product engineering is all the Saas application development vendors do for a living, they realize the importance of the partner's intellectual property and use legal and technological measures to ensure the same. Hence they take extreme steps to ensure that the most of the cases, these vendors have separate seating areas and sub nets to ensure safety of the partner's IP. All magnetic media taken in and out of the premises is accounted and the entire premises are under biometric access control. Employees of these vendors sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) with the partner and confidentially agreements with their employers.
Know more - Ecommerce solutions
