Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 1 04/02/99 Electronic Commerce Issues Overview John Tullis DePaul Instructor

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 2 EC Issues Issue areas SITE FEATURES INVENTORY PRICING CONTENT MANAGEMENT CUSTOMER SERVICE INTERNATIONALIZATION LEGAL ISSUES SYSTEM INFORMATION

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 3 EC Issues Site features Will purchasing agents be restricted in catalog viewing? Will B2B partners see their own logos and specific B2B personalization features when they access the site? How will pricing be handled considering business partner contractual arrangements? How will authorization/registration be handled? Are there PO limits? Are they enforced on a purchasing agent basis? How is this handled?

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 4 EC Issues Inventory How is the online inventory to be managed? Will there be a separate inventory for the online store? Is there an existing order fulfillment system with an associated inventory management system? If there is more than one inventory set, how will the sets be coordinated? If the online store has its own inventory set, how will the order points be established? Safety allowances? Is the anticipated sales order size known? What is the basis for anticipating sales order size? How will backordered items be handled? How will out of stock items be handled?

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 5 EC Issues Pricing What is the source of pricing for each item? How is item pricing to be maintained when the site is up and running? Will items be only priced on an individual basis, or will group pricing be applied? Will discounts be applied, and if so what types of discount methods will be applied to items? (Percentages, fixed amounts.) Will discounts apply only to individual items, or to orders as a whole, or both?

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 6 EC Issues Content Management How is the site "look and feel” to be maintained? Are there restrictions to updating the site due to the hosting organization? How is the catalog data to be maintained? How are the site programs to be maintained? Are there software limitations to updating the site pages? What is the strategy for maintaining old order information? When does it make sense to outsource the content management?

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 7 EC Issues Customer Service Is the customer service role to be performed internally or is this service to be outsourced? Do they have a number for business partner purchasing agents? Does the customer service organization have to speak multiple languages? How are the customer service representatives to be trained? What level of access to the system is permitted to the CSRs? How are returns handled?

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 8 EC Issues Internationalization Are orders shipped out of the country? Does the site handle one currency or several? Does the site handle one language or several? Is there a multinational organization that fulfills orders regionally? If so, do they intend to implement the online system by integrating with the regional order fulfillment systems? Does there need to be a multisite system? Are there export limitations on any of the products available in the online store?

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 9 EC Issues Legal Aspects Are there limitations provided by the hosting organization? Can the hosting organization cut off the site's access to the Web? What are the liabilities for marketing items that are legal in some jurisdictions and not others? Can prosecution result for selling items over the Web to people in a state or country where such items are banned? What disclaimers will be provided on the site? What policies will be posted on the site? What protections are there for intellectual property?

Copyrighted material John Tullis 12/16/2015 page 10 EC Issues System Information (Decision Support) Can purchasing agent actions be monitored and tracked? Customer services reps? Site administrators? Can the system be used to develop site visitor profile information? Can the site date be data mined? Is it integrated with other data stores existing in legacy systems? Personalization - would collaborative filtering be implemented ? Or rules based filtering? Why? When is each appropriate?