Business-to-Consumer

Business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic commerce enterprises are information-driven entities that have some of the most extreme information technology solution requirements found in the commercial business world. From the moment B2C e-commerce Web sites go online, they must provide the functionality, capacity, and continuous availability required for the potentially millions of users accessing Web site content. These extreme functionality, capacity, and availability requirements apply whether the enterprise is a new e-commerce start-up or the e-commerce presence of an existing brick-and-mortar business.

But, are the millions of e-commerce site users necessarily also site customers? Obviously not—site users can be anyone from casual visitors, to advertising click-throughs, to targeted prospects, to actual customers. Although traditional brick-and-mortar commerce enterprises typically have no easy way to record and analyze user behavior until they become customers (if even that), e-commerce enterprises can record and analyze all activities of all types of users, all of the time (see Figure 25.3)^[2]. The ability to record and analyze all site user behavior in minute detail gives e-commerce enterprises a significant edge over brick-and-mortar competitors who have little direct visibility to the behavior of anyone besides actual customers (see Figure 25.4)^[2].

Figure 25.3: Big differences in the types of electronically recordable user behavior.

Figure 25.4: E-commerce systems cover a wider range of user behavior.

The increased information processing requirements of the information-rich Web e-commerce environment place special requirements on the information architecture of a B2C e-commerce enterprise. These requirements and their corresponding solution are the subject of the rest of this part of the chapter.

E-Commerce Information System Architecture

Electronic commerce enterprises typically have five categories of business activity that are realized in up to a dozen potential business activity fulfillment mechanisms. The correspondence between the business activities and their fulfillment mechanisms is shown in Figure 25.5^[2]. A particular e-commerce enterprise may not have a full suite of the fulfillment mechanisms, depending on its business model and its maturity as a business. For example, not all electronic commerce enterprises have telephone call centers. At a minimum, they require only a Web-based customer service interface. But, a fully-functional e-commerce enterprise generally will have aspects of all the business activities and the fulfillment mechanisms.

Figure 25.5: The correspondence between the business activities and their fulfillment mechanisms map.

The twelve e-commerce business activity fulfillment mechanisms map into six information architecture system components, as shown in Figure 25.6^[2]. These e-commerce information architecture system components fall into four categories:

Figure 25.6: E-commerce business activity fulfillment mechanisms map.

External User Acquisition Systems: These systems lead a customer to an e-commerce enterprise, including all advertising media Web and otherwise, Web search engines, site tie-ins, and so on.

User Activity-Driven Frontend Systems: These systems include the Web content sites, the voice-based telephony call centers, and the adjunct support systems such as e-mail that provide the electronic presence of an e-commerce enterprise.

Backend Operational Systems: On the Web, order entry becomes a very broad category that includes much more than the ordering of products by customers. Order entry and fulfillment is the action-driven outcome of user analysis of site content, customers or otherwise. This can include product orders, information downloads, requests for more information, information tailoring requests (like My Yahoo), financial orders such as stock purchase, sale, or funds transfer, general order status requests, and so forth.

Backend Management-Oriented Systems: These include financial management and reporting systems as well as a clickstream/callstream user relationship management data warehouse containing a detailed history of user activity^[2].

E-Commerce Information System Architecture Stakeholders

The e-commerce information architecture components have associated cadres of interested stakeholders, which are described in Figure 25.7^[2]. The first set of stakeholders is the site’s user community, whose attention is garnered either by external acquisition systems, such as search engines, Web ads, e-mail, or other media advertising, or by the internal content of the site’s frontend Web servers and call centers. If the eyeball acquisition mechanisms or the site and call center fail to intrigue or at least be useful to users, they fail these very important stakeholders.

Figure 25.7: E-commerce information architecture component stakeholders: user-oriented value-chain view.

Note

Not all sites have call center systems, but all e-commerce sites have Web servers by definition.

The next set of stakeholders is the e-commerce enterprise’s operational personnel, who are responsible for the care and feeding of the frontend Web servers, call centers, and the operational tie-ins to external user acquisition media. In many cases, e-commerce operational personnel are solely focused on these frontend systems despite the obvious need for backend system functionality. For more enlightened e-commerce enterprises, operational personnel also have a stake in order entry/order fulfillment systems, which centrally fulfill site-oriented activities, which may include things like user registration, requests for information, downloads, product or service (stock/auction) orders, and so on. Web server site content may also be distributed centrally from such a system.

E-commerce executive management and stockholders have a stake in the success of all the systems of an enterprise, but they are acutely interested in a well-implemented enterprise financial management system. These systems enable up-to-the-moment financial management of the enterprise, directly linked to the actual revenue and cost streams associated with frontend and backend operational systems. Without such a system, management is essentially flying blind from a financial perspective, which is very dangerous and, unfortunately, a very common situation with young e-commerce enterprises. A properly implemented enterprise financial management system can also satisfy the financial reporting requirements set forth by the SEC and investment bankers, which are among the required prerequisites for successful initial public offerings.

Although enterprise financial management is a fundamental need, the clickstream/callstream data warehouse gives user relationship management stakeholders the tools they need to make the e-commerce enterprise grow and prosper over the long-term. The existence of an effective user relationship management clickstream/callstream data warehouse is one of the most important long-term success differentiators in the e-commerce business sphere. These systems record all the activity of prospects and customers, whether the contact mechanism is via the Web or a call center. Examples of captured Web clickstream information include items such as the referring site, which tests the effectiveness of external media user acquisition campaigns, the Web pages visited by the site user, the time spent there, and what the user might have bought. The call center user contact records what the user did in this contact environment, either by automated voice-activated telephone scripts or by contact with human call center personnel.

This automatically collected treasure trove of user behavior information theoretically gives the e-commerce enterprise a huge advantage over brick-and-mortar competitors, who cannot easily record customer and prospect behavior. Although Web server clickstream and call center log files provide the necessary source information, the resultant historical data warehouses can become extremely large, making them probably the most difficult e-commerce system to implement. But, once implemented, these systems affect all aspects of the enterprise and all stakeholders, including:

• User behavior analysis/trending

• Web site page performance

• Effectiveness of user acquisition strategies

• Effectiveness of special offers

• User-behavior-driven Web page presentation

• Presentation of Web ads according to user behavior

• Enrichment of user data with externally purchased psychodemographic profiles

• Individualized call center script control

• Overall business strategy insights^[2]

A summary of the interests of the various e-commerce stakeholders is shown in Figure 25.8^[2].

Figure 25.8: Key interests of e-commerce stakeholders.

The Principal Problem with E-Commerce Information Systems

So, what is the principal problem with this complex e-commerce information architecture landscape? The lack of focus on backend e-commerce information systems, as shown in Figure 25.9^[2].

Figure 25.9: Properly implemented backend e-commerce systems ensure long-term success.

Many e-commerce start-ups are expert-heavy in frontend Web servers and business domain knowledge. This is good, but they often lack corresponding expertise in the details of the backend information systems that enable critical functions, such as order entry and fulfillment, financial management, and the analysis of user behavior on their Web sites. This lack of depth in a total e-commerce IT solution leads to the following fundamental business problems:

• The lack of a highly available and highly scalable operational infrastructure

• The lack of a clickstream/callstream data warehouse

• The alignment of information technology vendor and e-commerce enterprise business goals^[2]

The Lack of a Highly Available and Highly Scalable Operational Infrastructure

Many e-commerce enterprises fail to properly construct an inherently scalable, redundant, and reliable 24 x 7 x Forever Web enterprise system architecture. E-commerce enterprises must have speedy and highly available systems, including at least the Web server/call center frontend systems and the backend order-entry and fulfillment systems. If any of the required systems are not continuously available, nor able to gracefully handle unpredictable spikes in site activity, then the user sees this immediately and the site risks the extremely negative business impact of wandering eyeballs. Wandering eyeballs lead users to competing sites that are at most a few clicks away. These wayward forays by users can lead to a permanent loss of time spent at the site. This causes a reduction in lifetime user value that can range from a significant percentage for existing users, to a potential total loss of the lifetime user value of a sales prospect or visitor who may vow to never return again.

The Lack of a Clickstream/Callstream Data Warehouse

Many e-commerce enterprises fail to undertake the difficult design and implementation of a highly scalable clickstream/callstream data warehouse, which records the activities of all users of a particular Web site and its associated call centers. The knowledge derived from the analysis of the information in the clickstream/callstream data warehouse is the key to long-term competitive advantage of an e-commerce enterprise, making the implementation of an effective clickstream/callstream data warehouse an early priority in the life of an e-commerce enterprise.

The Alignment of Information Technology Vendor and E-Commerce Enterprise Business Goals

E-commerce enterprise employees have a natural tendency to try to become e-commerce knowledge and management superhumans, attempting to orchestrate a hodge-podge of information technology vendors, including hardware, software, and services, none of who have any real stake in the success of the overall solution. Often, a better approach is to carefully choose a single overall solution vendor, with contractually guaranteed responsibility over the multiple solution component suppliers. Such an arrangement orients the responsible vendor’s business interests and the success of the total e-commerce solution, with that of the e-commerce enterprise, creating natural, synergistic incentives for e-commerce enterprise success.

It is easy to lay blame and identify problems, but how does one construct a viable solution model that conquers these three fundamental e-commerce enterprise dilemmas? The next part of the chapter explores solutions to each of these important problems.

Problem One: A Highly Available and Highly Scalable E-Commerce Operational Infrastructure

Because e-commerce enterprises are information entities at their core, the problem of high availability becomes particularly acute. A highly available implementation of the information architecture of an e-commerce enterprise also needs to deliver high levels of performance, even in the face of failure, which places special performance design and implementation requirements on this highly available architecture.

Typical e-commerce enterprises take care of the first level of these requirements by sitting their Web servers at Web site-hosting service providers, such as Exodus, AboveNet, Frontier GlobalCenter, and others. These site-hosting service providers typically have multiple geographically separated, secure buildings that are sited on top of central-location Internet backbone connections for fast access. The e-commerce enterprise’s Web servers are placed at one or more of the Web-host service provider sites, creating fast, replicated Web server access for site users. In addition, the site-hosting service providers typically create a high availability environment for the hosted site servers, including such features as redundant Internet backbone connections, redundant uninterruptable power grids, nonwater-based fire suppression, and caged-system physical security measures. An architectural diagram of this type of environment is shown in Figure 25.10^[2].

Figure 25.10: Typical “highly available” e-commerce user site access solution.

Multiple replicated-content Web servers reside at these sites, providing a continuous Web presence for the e-commerce enterprise. Users enjoy fast and reliable access, and operational personnel can theoretically sleep at night.

But, not all of the critical e-commerce systems can be replicated as easily as the Web server frontends. Backend systems tend to be centralized by their very nature and this creates a new set of single-point-of-failure problems that go beyond the site and environmental redundancy provided by the site-hosting service provider.

For example, backend order entry, processing, and fulfillment systems are usually centralized. A customer who places an order from a particular Web server may later inquire about its status from another server, and all the order information needs to be stored in a centralized database so that this functionality can be delivered from any point of entry. But, the system that houses this centralized order database becomes a major single point of failure that requires a redundant architecture on top of that provided by the Web hosting service provider.

Any failure in the hardware or software of the centralized backend order system can stop an e-commerce site, and the types of “orders” can be anything from a purchase of physical goods, served-up advertisements, auction site bids, stock market buy and sell orders, to site content information. These centralized information systems must have a redundant, clustered, highly available implementation within a particular site-hosting environment, or they become a single point of failure.

In addition to a fully redundant site-hosting architecture, it is also necessary to replicate the host site systems between at least two geographically remote locations for protection against catastrophic host site disasters, such as widespread power failures, earthquakes, storms, terrorism, and war. The replicated, multisite strategy also enhances localized Internet site access performance, by shortening the pathway from the client to the nearest geographic server. In addition, the business model of many e-commerce enterprises causes the clickstream/callstream data warehouse to become so critical to operations that it, too, must be clustered and remotely replicated to ensure the viability of the enterprise.

Taking all of the preceding issues into consideration, a fully redundant, geographically replicated, high-availability e-commerce system architecture, including all frontend and backend systems, is shown in Figure 25.11^[2].

Figure 25.11: Fully redundant, geographically replicated Web site hosting architecture.

Problem Two: The Design and Implementation of an Effective Clickstream/Callstream Data Warehouse

It is a clich , but the Web changes everything about the design of a B2C commerce-oriented data warehouse. The wide scope of this change is best appreciated by reviewing the typical data warehouse schema of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, a simple example of which is shown in Figure 25.12^[2].

Figure 25.12: Traditional brick-and-mortar retail data warehouse.

Although traditional brick-and-mortar retail data warehouses differ greatly in the details of their specific implementations, all have some version of four key dimensions: Time, Product, Geography, and Promotion, as well as a Sales Fact table containing sales transaction data. There is also no notion of a customer dimension in this old-style data warehouse. Until recently, it was so difficult to capture the identity of a specific customer and his associated market basket that this key analytical dimension, perhaps the most important of all the dimensions, was left out. Nevertheless, the information contained in this type of schema has changed the face of retailing, greatly improving inventory management, store layout, and mass-media advertising effectiveness.

By using newer IT customer identification techniques, such as loyalty cards or linkage to checking and credit card payment databases, forward-looking brick-and-mortar retailers have been able to add the Customer Dimension and associated market basket analytical capabilities to their data warehouses. This enhancement has driven the ongoing movement toward one-to-one customer relationship management (CRM).

Customer/market-basket analysis is a great advance, but there are two classes of potential customer activity that are not captured by loyalty cards or other brick-and-mortar information system tie-ins. Sales prospects are potential customers that do comparison shopping at different stores, catalogs, and assess various advertisements. They move in and out of a particular retailing environment without leaving a trace of their activity, unless, of course, they actually buy and become a customer. And casual visitors, just browsing your store, catalog, or advertisements are similarly anonymous. Web-based e-commerce is unique in that it can capture all the presales activity of prospecting potential customers as well as browsing visitors, greatly enhancing the enterprise’s overall market knowledge, and permitting much more sophisticated customer acquisition and retention strategies. As mentioned earlier, in an e-commerce environment, you lump visitors, prospects, targets, and customers into the general category of users. Let’s now start with the data warehouse schema of a forward-looking brick-and-mortar retailer and see how it changes in an electronic commerce environment.

The E-Commerce Data Warehouse Site Activity Fact Table Records Much More Than Just Sales Activity

The traditional brick-and-mortar Sales Fact Table becomes the User Activity Fact Table in the e-commerce environment. Although actual sales transaction information is all that is typically known in the brick-and-mortar world, e-commerce sites can record all site user activity, including that of prospecting buyers, targeted users, and casual visitors (see Figure 25.13^[2].

Figure 25.13: Forward-looking brick-and-mortar retail data warehouse.

On the Web, the presales activity of actual customers can be recorded in minute detail. Facts that can be recorded in a User Activity Fact Table include activity source, time spent on the activity, activity cost, and activity revenue. For example, an activity source might be a parent Web page URL, or the TCP/IP address of a site user coming into the site. Time spent is the elapsed time spent on a particular site Web page or frame. The site activity cost is the dollar cost to the enterprise for the activity on the page or frame, and the activity revenue is the revenue gained from the site activity, both of which can be any number greater than or equal to zero. Each of these site activity facts has a composite key from the associated e-commerce data warehouse dimension tables, which are explained next. The voluminous clickstream detail creates an explosion of fact table information that makes scalable data warehouse environments an absolute necessity.

E-Commerce Site Users Are More Than Customers

The leading-edge Customer Dimension from the brick-and-mortar world becomes the User Dimension in an e-commerce environment. External e-commerce site users are visitors that can be any one of customers, prospecting potential buyers, or casual visitors, and all their site activity is easily recorded by Web logging mechanisms.

Note

E-commerce site users do not necessarily have to be external to the enterprise.

If customer service and call center personnel use a Web-based system, then customer service call center site activity can be recorded in the same data warehouse schema that is used for external clickstream activity (see Figure 25.14)^[2]. This realization is an important breakthrough, because it links all user contact activity in a single data store, whether the method of contact is via the Web, the telephone, or e-mail. All electronic user activity is recorded, regardless of media, in the unified clickstream/callstream data warehouse. In addition, the knowledge gained from the full spectrum of user activity stored in this unified analytical model gives significant competitive market and customer knowledge advantages to e-commerce enterprises.

Figure 25.14: E-commerce site users are more than customers.

In the press and analyst reports, much is made about the difficulty of identifying a visitor to a Web site, because, at a minimum, all that is known about a visitor is his originating IP address and nothing else. Although this is a problem, it pales when compared to that of the traditional brick-and-mortar retailer who typically has no idea who visited a store (walked in and then out of his store), what they did while there, or which potential customers scanned and silently rejected expensive print or media ad campaigns or never read them at all (see Figure 25.15)^[2]. In contrast, the e-commerce entity can capture the details of all client visits and Web ad-induced click-throughs, and although they may not know the client’s exact identity, they at least know that he got to the site and what he did there. The analysis of his behavior is significant, even if his actual identity is unknown. This is a significant increase in customer/prospect/visitor knowledge, and it gives electronic enterprises a significant competitive advantage over brick-and-mortar competitors.

Figure 25.15: Brick-and-mortar versus e-commerce: User Activity Facts.

Geography Gains Fine Detail on the Web

The traditional brick-and-mortar, physically-oriented geography dimension goes virtual in e-commerce, and the result is three new location-oriented dimensions. Please see Figure 25.16^[2].

Figure 25.16: Brick-and-mortar versus e-commerce: Geography.

Physical Geography

Physical geography is the physical location of the site user. The physical geography of a user may not necessarily be derived from a user’s IP address, but to the extent that it is known, it provides insight into geographic customer behavior patterns. For example, a global Web e-commerce enterprise can market summer items in July to users in the Northern hemisphere, while simultaneously marketing winter items to users in the Southern hemisphere where the seasons are reversed.

Web Geography

Web geography is the identity of the source site that got the user to the e-commerce site. This source is at least a TCP/IP address. But, source site information can be enriched with other identifying factors, including Internet Service Provider ID, portal site ID, search engine ID, advertising server provider ID, customer service toll-free number, and so on. The idea behind Web geography is to identify, as completely as possible, the mechanism used to enter the e-commerce enterprise. Identifying the location of these access origination sites is one of the keys to customer-acquisition campaign effectiveness, much like advertisements in geographical newspapers enhance sales in brick-and-mortar stores in a particular geography. Advertising efforts should be concentrated on these point-of-entry sites.

Site Geography

Site geography is a map of the pages within a Web site, including page and frame parent information. Site geography defines the path a user takes through the content of a Web site, and the analysis of these paths is crucial to a complete knowledge of user behavior and site effectiveness.

Time Goes Individual on the Web

Because e-commerce enterprises have users that can be located across the globe, the traditional Time Dimension splits into the financially oriented Fiscal Time Dimension and a physical geography-specific User Time Dimension, as shown in Figure 25.17^[2].

Figure 25.17: Brick-and-mortar versus e-commerce: Time.

Fiscal Time defines the fiscal year of the e-commerce enterprise, but User Time defines the user-oriented time of day characteristics such as morning, afternoon, evening, the season of the year, and so on. E-commerce seasonality is nonintuitive without the User Time dimension. For example, Northern hemisphere users can be in User Time summer, while Southern hemisphere users are simultaneously in the User Time winter season.

Content: Not Just Products on the Web

The traditional brick-and-mortar Product Dimension changes dramatically into the content and activity dimensions in an e-commerce environment. An e-commerce site’s business is defined by its content and that may include products for sale, but is rarely exclusively so. Examples of other e-commerce offerings include interest-group information, downloads, internal advertising, external advertising (click-throughs), customer service, and so on. All of this is described in the Content Dimension (see Figure 25.18)^[2].

Figure 25.18: Brick-and-mortar versus e-commerce: Content.

Coupled with content is the notion of Activity, which indicates what someone did in response to the content. Examples of activities include click-downs to related pages, click-throughs to external advertising, information downloads, purchases, service calls, help, and so forth. All of this is captured in the Activity Dimension.

Advertising Goes External on the Web

The traditional brick-and-mortar Promotion Dimension expands its focus beyond internally focused advertising and sales promotions to include externally focused promotions on the Web. Most e-commerce Web sites get revenue not only from sales, but also from external promotional tie-ins, some almost exclusively so. Although brick-and-mortar retailers advertise brand name merchandise for sale and often get compensated for those efforts to build an external brand, e-commerce enterprises can have external advertising relationships that extend far beyond those found in traditional commerce.

For example, electronic ad servers serve up advertisements that are targeted at a user’s behavior profile and, in return, the site receives click-through revenue based on user ad-click activity. The increased focus on external advertising revenue in e-commerce, and the different business goals of internal and external promotions, cause the single traditional promotion dimension to split into the Internal and External Promotion Dimensions (see Figure 25.19)^[2].

Figure 25.19: Brick-and-mortar versus e-commerce: Advertising.

Another distinguishing characteristic is that Web-based promotions are much more finely targetable than with traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. Also, customer-acquisition media, such as Internet interest sites and chat rooms, are more finely targeted with richer media than was previously possible. This means, for example, that a mountain climbing gear retailer may prosper on the Web, where it might have to be part of a sporting goods chain to survive in the brick-and-mortar world. This ability to more finely target a wider geography and, hence, larger interest group, is one of the key drivers behind the profusion of business-to-consumer electronic commerce enterprises.

A Complete Clickstream/Callstream Data Warehouse Schema

The end result is the clickstream/callstream data warehouse schema shown in Figure 25.20^[2]. As you can see, the Web changes everything.

Figure 25.20: E-commerce clickstream/callstream data warehouse schema.

Problem Three: Alignment of Information Technology Vendor and E-Commerce Enterprise Business Goals

E-commerce solutions have grown up in a modern, open systems technology environment. Although open systems solutions have many advantages, they also can create fundamental business goal alignment problems between the information technology product vendors and e-commerce enterprise that can thwart effective e-commerce information technology solutions. As mentioned earlier, e-commerce enterprise employees have a natural, job performance-driven tendency to try to become e-commerce knowledge and management Supermen or Superwomen, attempting to orchestrate a hodge-podge of information technology vendors, including hardware, software, and services, none of who have any real stake in the success of e-commerce enterprise.

Although a low cost, best-of-breed e-commerce solution, integrated by in-house personnel may seem attractive, there are several pitfalls. Unfortunately, the individual suppliers of information technology have no real stake in the success of the total e-commerce solution. They care only about their piece of it, and their economic incentive is focused primarily on the initial sale, not on the long-term success of the e-commerce enterprise. The myriad of best-of-breed, point-product solution vendors creates the need for deep in-house integration expertise that is vulnerable to employee knowledge, mobility, and reorganization issues. Furthermore, long-term integration costs are borne solely by the e-commerce organization, and this can be an increasingly burdensome issue as time progresses, and the complexity of integration issues grow.

A natural reaction to these problems is to outsource at least a portion of the solution to a solution integrator. Although outsourcing creates an attractive short-term management solution to the problems of an IT-lead, best-of-breed e-commerce solution integration, the motivations of the outsourcer and the e-commerce enterprise are still not properly aligned. These problems surface in a number of subtle ways.

In an outsourced solution, the integration vendor is the primary provider of the solution, and they are likely the sole source of the intellectual capital for the solution. Because the contracting e-commerce enterprise is relieved of much of the responsibility for the creation of internal solution expertise, the resulting outsourced solution is limited by the knowledge, business relationships, and integration expertise of the integration vendor. These limitations can lead to long-term solution issues that cannot be easily solved by the contracting enterprise, because the expertise required to do so is nonexistent by definition—it was outsourced.

This is bad enough, but the motivations of the integration vendor are rarely aligned with e-commerce enterprise business success. Most integration contracts are based on internally focused time and materials pricing, which has nothing to do with e-commerce business success. Furthermore, there is an implicit “forever” term to outsourcing contracts, meaning that the e-commerce enterprise will pay for this external solution expertise forever, because they are abdicating the development of the same in-house solution capabilities. When coupled with the time and materials nature of integrator pricing, this can lead to an incentive for the outsourcer to never solve any fundamental business problems, because if they did, it would only reduce their revenue.

An additional worry is the practical inability to write umbrella outsourcing contracts that address all the potential information technology modifications required to support unanticipated changes in business conditions. In an Internet environment, the contract-induced inability to rapidly adjust to changing business conditions can be fatal to the enterprise.

Finally, these insidious issues associated with totally outsourced solutions lead to a middle ground. Although this situation is not without problems, it better aligns business goals of the e-commerce enterprise and integration solution vendor. In order to solve the implied “forever” solution term with the integration vendors, the outsourcing contract must be fixed-term and nonrenewable, and it must mandate sign-off criteria and specify knowledge transfer to responsible individuals in the e-commerce information technology organization. Although this type of arrangement can still lead to higher initial solution costs and a solution limited by the knowledge of the integrator, the business drivers behind the motivations of both parties are much more aligned to the success of the e-commerce enterprise. The integration vendor takes time-limited and performance-goal-specific responsibility for a successful solution, and the resultant knowledge transfer causes the contracting e-commerce information technology organization to learn the skills required for long-term stewardship of the solution.

^[2]Sequent, “Business to Consumer (B2C) Electronic Commerce Information Systems,” IBM NUMA-Q, 15450 S.W. Koll Parkway, Beaverton, Oregon 97006-6063 [DM Review, 240 Regency Court, Suite 201, Brookfield, WI 53045, United States], 2003.