IT Requirements for an E-Commerce Affiliate Marketing Business
IT Requirements for an E-Commerce Affiliate Marketing Business
Katalogs Plus is a new business planning to launch in the next year. The company mission is to build e-commerce mobile applications and websites that sell merchants products and services. Affiliate marketing product and service data feeds will be used to generate content. Customers will click on a product or service and will be connected to the merchant site to complete the purchase. The purchase completed and Katalog Plus receives a commission for the referral of the customer to the site. The higher volume of customer purchases driven to a site will lead to increase commission for Katalog Plus. Machine Learning and Data analytics, mobile applications location based services will be to assist in marketing new products and services to the user.
Global retail e-commerce sales are growing at a fast pace. E-commerce growth as described by Butt et al. (2016) is estimated to be $1.67 trillion in 2015, an increase of 25% from the year before. In 2019 retail purchases are expected to be $3.57 trillion or 12.8% of all retail purchases. Katalogs Plus, a new business will combine mobile device applications, e-commerce, affiliate marketing networking, machine learning, big data and data science technologies and strategic information technology platform which will provide a robust revenue stream for Katalogs Plus.
Laudon & Laudon (2015) describe mobile and e-commerce trends and how mobile device technology and electronic commerce on the Internet began to take off in the United States. Some of the examples are location-based services and entertainment downloads including e-books, movies, music and television shows. Tang (2016) refers to mobile applications as an App, which is the abbreviated name for a mobile application which is usually designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers, and other personal mobile devices. A majority of mobile apps are free, although increasingly these applications are yielding huge revenue. The proliferation of mobile app enterprises, along with that of smartphone usage, has dramatically changed traditional business models. Gartner, a research firm, estimates that global mobile application revenues reached twenty-six billion in 2013, up 44.4% from 2012's eighteen billion.
An e-commerce website is a location on the Internet that merchants sell items online and deliver them via postal mail once the order is confirmed. An example of a merchant site is Amazon.com which sells hundreds of thousands of items. A merchant can market and advertise products on the Internet in many ways. One way merchants can sell and promote products is through affiliate marketing networks. Edelman & Brandi (2015) affiliate marketing networks as advertising where merchants will only pay affiliates, or publishers only when a sale occurs. They go on to describe the standard rules to be an affiliate earns a commission only if three things happen. First, the user browses an affiliate's website; Second the user then clicks on the affiliates uniquely coded HTML link to the merchant's website and third, the user makes a purchase from the merchant. Once this occurs the affiliate marketer receives compensation, which is usually performance-based, which is purely performance based and the merchant pays perhaps a $5 or 10% advertising fee for each purchase. CJ Affiliate by Conversant and Rakuten Market are examples of affiliate marketing networks. These companies provide links and graphics to merchant sites, tracking performance and handling payments to the advertisers also referred to as affiliates. Affiliates can also use product feeds provided by the Merchant to the Affiliate marketing networks to build mobile applications and websites using the product feeds.
Katalogs Plus will be an e-commerce business. The company will build mobile applications, and these applications will have the same functionality of the Katalogs Plus websites. The rationale for starting the business is to create mobile applications and sites to assist the user in finding the best price, quickly shopping for items and services locally and on the internet.
The mobile applications and websites will take advantage of big data and machine learning techniques to collect and learn about each new user that downloads the application or signs up on the site. During signup on either platform, the user is encouraged to login or connect social network accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Linkedin, and Google. They will be invited to participate in a survey to collect further information about what they like and dislike. Adding links to social networks will assist in profiling each user and allow the user to share great deals with the mobile device application or website and post this on social media to friends and family. After account creation, a profile will be built based on the information shared at signup, the information collected is used to market and sell product and services of interest to users.
Having the user install the mobile application will give access to location-based information, if enabled and other data collected when the user agrees to install the application on a mobile device. The mobile device takes advantage of location-based services. When the user is looking for new items to purchase the application will provide prices from local merchants, or merchants on the Internet. The ability to set up price alerts for products and services is available to the users to get the best price when buying a new product or service.
Katalogs Plus will take advantage of strategic business partnerships and or use affiliate publishing to sell new products and services. By marketing and selling e-commerce products, from merchant partner websites we will be marketing and selling millions of products. The business will not stock any products but will refer customers to partner merchant sites and receive a commission for completing the purchase of the item or service. The site will sell advertising space to qualified businesses, partners, and other e-tailers and use Google Adsense to help monetize the mobile applications and websites when partner advertisements are not available for certain areas of the site or application. The company plans to collect the historical listing and removal of items and services provided by merchant partners to perform analytics. Collection and analysis of patterns for products will yield another revenue stream. Merchants will be able to glean insight into product selling cycles on the Internet from the data collected over time.
Business Structure and Competitive Strategy
Business Mission: Outline the high-level mission of the Company.
Business Competitive Forces Model: Discuss the competitive advantage of the business. Explain at a high level the technology and ideas that drive our company to be the market leader. Describe what will set us apart from the competitors.
Business Structure: Discuss the structure of the company from startup and planning for growth in the short term and also as the company matures into medium to large corporation.
Infrastructure and Information Systems
Overview of Information Systems: Overview of the companies Information Systems requirements which includes Infrastructure Plan, Enterprise Information Systems, and Business Unit Information Systems.
Infrastructure Plan: Infrastructure systems plan will outline on what type of platform the Company will operate. The Infrastructure Plan will describe information assurance and data security. Discuss the overview of the company data center plan. It could be cloud-based, an outsourced data center or private run data center. There could be a justification for hybrid or mixed-mode approach. Information assurance and security will be critical in any infrastructure planning and will be most important to address if a hybrid data center approach used.
Enterprise Information Systems: Enterprise Information systems are common systems shared across Business Units. Collaboration, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are examples of Enterprise Information Systems.
Business Unit Information Systems: There will be Business Units that require specific software to conduct daily business. An example would be the marketing, and advertising teams will need Social Media Management for many different sites. This Business Unit will also need to manage Pay Per Click Advertising campaigns and online advertising campaigns. These software products are Business Unit specific and will allow them to be efficient and profitable in getting work done.
Data Management and Knowledge
Enterprise Data Plan: Enterprise data plan will lay out an overview of the business data and knowledge plan. Transactions, Operational, Data Marts and Data Warehouse data stores along with knowledge or reporting and data processing tools.
Transactional Database Systems: Transactional systems are database systems that capture hour and daily data transactions for the enterprise. Examples might be inventory management systems or e-commerce transactions captured on a website.
Operational Data Store: Operations teams need to know the status of the business on a daily basis. Operation data store (ODS) will assist these team with a one to three-day roll-up of transaction data so that they can make informed decisions about the business in the short term.
Data Warehouses and Data Marts: Data warehouses are usually historical data about business over the long run. This might be since the inception of the company. Data marts are summarized database unique to a Business Unit. An example would be a data mart created for the Sales team to answer specific sales question on a regular basis.
Knowledge Gathering, Data Processing, and Tools: An example of Knowledge gathering tools would be Extract Transform Load (ETL) software, Reporting, machine learning, big data processing or other tools needed to get data in the correct format. Other tools that might be necessary is message queue software such as Apache Kafka that operate on a producer and consumer model getting data to the right data store(s) in the Enterprise Data Plan.
Internet Strategy
Advertising and Marketing: Outline how Advertising and Marketing will use the Internet for the purpose of attracting customers.
Customer Service: Use of the Internet to support customers via social media and email and communicate system issues, planned outages, new releases, and other information.
Business Development and Sales: Finding new merchant partners will be done via the internet. Also tracking leads and educating current and possible customers about the business products and services available. Keep them up to date with the product roadmap. Internet access will give partner's access to our Extranet.
Human Resources and Payroll: Internet-facing talent acquisition software is needed to attract new talent to the company. Also, payroll and benefit and training systems employees will need to access to keep the information up to date and provide company information. Intranets and VPN access will be needed by employees and other workers.
Information Systems: Information systems will need to be sure servers and client information passing from the Internet to the extranet and intranet and internal computers are secured, keeping out hackers and other bad actors.
IT Planning and Analysis
Project Office: The project office will handle and plan the Information Technology needs for the Business Units. Technology roadmaps will be built and maintained by the team for the business and business units.
Information Technology Teams: Information Technology Teams will need to assist in the planning and process of the company. Agile Methodology instead of traditional Project Management will be used to build teams to plan, analyze the process and find solutions for the Business Units. Some of the Information Technology teams involved are Business Analysis, Data Management, Information Security and Assurance, Systems Administration, Systems Engineering and Data Science and Analytics.
References
Butt, I., Tabassam, S., Chaudhry, N. G., & Nusair, K. (2016). Using technology acceptance model to study adoption of online shopping in an emerging economy. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 21(2), 1.
Edelman, B., & Brandi, W. (2015). Risk, information, and incentives in online affiliate marketing. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(1), 1–12. doi:10.1509/jmr.13.0472
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2015). Management information systems: Managing the digital firm, 14th edition. Pearson.
Tang, A. K. Y. (2016). Mobile app monetization: App business models in the digital era. International Journal of Innovation, Management and Technology, 7(5), 224–227. doi:10.18178/ijimt.2016.7.5.677