Online Store

It is not only about being able to sell. Online store should also provide you parameters of business performance. From web-store to e-business platform, Net4India led the transition for one-of-its-kind boutique of handmade-paper products.

Background

Our Client is a well-established handmade paper boutique market in India as well as in United States. While traditional channel, markets the business on the domestic front, the international servicing is conducted through the Internet.

Initially, NIH had a web-store, which with growing business, exposed serious limitations in terms of functionality, flexibility and scalability. The iAD team at Net4India was engaged to conduct an assessment of the existing system. A preliminary audit revealed that the Client was being deprived of two main things:

Manageability - They were entirely dependent upon their solution provider for every single change update of their website, however minor they were.
Absence of MIS - The system could not provide the requisite data for analysis even at the basic level.

Finding the way out

In brief, what the Client was looking for not merely an online store but a full scale e-business platform with a storefront and backend operations management unit.

Net4India proposed the platform architecture keeping in mind two important issues.

Firstly, replicate the limited-scope web-store and transfer it from the existing solution provider to Net4India infrastructure with minimum downtime. This was perceived as an interim measure

Secondly, seamlessly integrate the interim site on to the e-business platform and enhance its capability.

Doing it right!

Net4India, as a strategy partner, works closely with their Client's business development team to understand the business process and form a near-term view for the purpose of scalability. The same was done in this case. Instead of implementing the entire concept at one go, it was decided to implement in phases. The first step was to engineering a base that can hold the expectations and requirements of the Client in the future and as well as the functional platform to move away from its current solution. The full swing implementation of the first phase - from initial design to service switch-on - was conducted in 25 days. Within the next two months, the entire business-platform was done, tested and made ready for commissioning. The outcome was the most happening E-marketplace for handmade papers products.

The final solution offered the Client incremental scalability option so as to allow flexibility of accommodating changes in the business functions. The solution incorporated J2EE architecture based on open standards running on the Macromedia (erstwhile Allaire) J-Run application server. The combined technical platform laid down the foundation of the robust, scalable, flexible large-scale enterprise applications.

Benefit stream
The need that triggers business transformation often seem simple, but while planning strategy (imbibing business logic), myriad of other requirements crop up. Same happened in this case, and the solution stood up to all of them. The most significant benefits that emanated were:

- Benchmarking business performance (with graphical exposition)
- Adding new revenue lines with scope to multiply the same
- Administering the entire shop-front through a consolidated control panel
- Integrating online sales to enterprise's internal departments in a seamless manner

Today, our Client has successfully graduated from running an E-marketplace to running its own 'Virtual Enterprise'