In preceding articles that I have written, the importance, structure, best use, and acquisition and ethical considerations for the tech stack have been unpacked. This provides the basis for the internal, enterprise management of this essential component of commerce. However, as Ferris Bueller pointed out, “Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.” Bear with me here, but that statement is also relevant to the marketplace.

E-commerce

E-commerce, a natural progression from digitisation to global, networked computing, can be purely or partially electronic. Business models range from entirely virtual to brick and mortar, with everything in between classified as “click and mortar.” E-commerce takes place in private markets, directly between suppliers and consumers, or in electronic markets via intranet and extranet. Supplier organisations carry the responsibility for the quality of their applications/user experience (UX), and ensure infrastructure and support services effectively deliver this.

Based on these broad brushstrokes, an enterprise information system that is found wanting, will lead to irrelevance for that business. To avoid this means respecting that the digital marketplace is fluid and that agility in what you control will help you respond to change. E-commerce can benefit organisations, consumers, and society, but it will need to continually overcome both technical and non-technical challenges into the future. E-commerce is here to stay, and facilitates the emergence of new business models, how revenue is generated, and value is created.

The influencer and the YouTuber are significant in the digital age. They tap into the traditional advertising model of persuasion with the adage that if cool people use your product, it must be good. Online shops have allowed savvy young entrepreneurs to retire in their 30’s, with clever use of digital space to display products, rather than costly, physical shop fronts. Of all the e-commerce pathways to revenue, drop-shipping shows vendors truly keeping their hands clean as they turn a buck.

A pathway that wasn’t available in years gone by, drop-shippers buy from manufacturers and sell to consumers at a higher price. They use the existing delivery channels of their suppliers, having already grabbed the customer’s top of mind awareness, saving customers time and a prolonged search. All should agree that this was a profitable result that came from looking around and not missing an opportunity.

The cloud

Cloud computing enables a distributed computing service and offers convenience, real-time, on-demand access, and Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) options. With skeleton hardware, users and organisations can utilise storage, applications, software, and services through a network, typically the internet. Clouds are categorised as public, private, hybrid and vertical and can house Internet as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Notable characteristics of cloud computing include:

  • Grid computing: computer resources spread over different geographical locations.

  • Utility computing: digital resources, infrastructure management and technical services are available to customers when they need them.

  • Cloud computing: making use of broad network access.

  • Computing resources: pooling resource for convenience, resulting, most notably, in improved collaboration.

The cloud can provide, among many others, seven major benefits: the productivity of individuals; improved avenues for collaboration; mining insights from data; decreased costs; increased scope of business opportunities; quicker response times to market changes; and opportunities to customise products and services. There are also five categories of concerns attached to the cloud: legacy IT systems; reliability; privacy; security; and criminal use of cloud computing.

The preceding information is an overarching description of two non-controllable factors that are a part of the digital world outside of your organisation. Your information system, which you do have control over, will be impacted and shaped by its interactions, utilisation, and responses to these and other external forces. So, getting back to Ferris, managing your tech stack requires respect, awareness, and agility based on the digital world on the other side of the demarcation point. The digital world moves pretty fast, if you stop and look around sometimes, you won’t miss it.

My articles can potentially be used as tools in helping to explain these vital considerations to non-technical stakeholders and decision makers. Next will be a general investigation of the nature of AI and socials, in the manner of the above text, the idea is to consider the space your IS and these tools share. Due to the unique nature and complexity of each member of the marketplace, specific, tailored solutions are not mapped out in these articles.

My hope is that you can use this knowledge as a lens through which you can consider your digital footprint and customise its operation for competitive advantage. Considering that all players in your market have information systems, small and simple steps to keep you aligned with best practice will be worthwhile.