Podcast: Transforming Online Sales with Web 2.0
Guest: Errol Denger, IBM

Listen to the entire 8:49 podcast Download file

Agenda Questions: 1. How do you define Web 2.0 in an e-commerce context? 2. What new technologies are enabling and extending this trend? 3. How will Web 2.0 change online retailing? 4. It seems permeability to consumer opinions will ensure profitability. Again, what’s the latest technology enabling the trend? 5. Those sound like cool capabilities but will they really help online retailers generate more revenue and increase satisfaction? 6. How do you cost-effectively add the Rich New Internet application Interfaces without creating a spaghetti tangle of apps, increasing development or maintenance costs and ensuring real-world dependability and scalability? 7. Are there any WebSphere Commerce customers using these capabilities today? 8. So how is Web 2.0 being used by WebSphere Commerce? 9. Is this solution available? Time to read, but not to listen? Download a complete transcript of the podcast here. Download a free IBM White Paper: "Transforming the  Shopping ExperienceWith Web 2.0" Note: Errol Denger will respond to comments posted below.

Note: Mr. Denger will regularly respond to any comments posted below.


The Internet and Online Commerce are undergoing a fundamental transformation led by evolving user behavior and Web 2.0 technologies. Users are no longer passive browsers; they have become active participants in  powerful social communities that wield unprecedented power and influence.

"A recent survey ranked consumer content as the No. 1 buying aid to a purchasing decision," noted Errol Denger, IBM's Senior Strategist for WebSphere Commerce. "And what we are seeing is that products with a wide breadth of customer reviews have conversion rates that are anywhere between 20-50% higher than products without reviews."

Another survey indicated that 63% of online shoppers are more likely to purchase from a retail site with consumer-generated reviews.

At the same time, Rich Internet Application technologies such as AJAX, REST, and RSS provide both reusability and a richer and more responsive interaction via features like drag-and-drop support and dynamic interfaces that Denger described as "a more natural shopping experience that is closer to a physical store experience."

"A great example is if you're shopping for apparel. You can select what brands you're interested in, what fabrics you want as well as your price point rather than navigating through a complex product to narrow your decision criteria set down," Denger observed. "So these desktop-like interfaces also streamline processes such as checkout which can now be done in one page."

Putting the customer at the center of the experience will generate greater revenues and satisfaction. An added bonus, Denger notes, is that content and images contributed by the users both builds a bond with consumers and creates a new marketing tool to promote products to other users.

The challenge then, is to cost-effetively add the Rich New Internet Application Interfaces without creating a spaghetti tangle of apps, increasing development or maintenance costs, and ensuring real-world dependability and scalability.
 
"The good news is that the application of these Rich Internet Application technologies doestn't require rip-and-replace of your underlying commerce server; instead, what we're doing is putting a new front end on your existing commerce server," said Denger, who added the the RIA-based technologies can be incrementally deployed.

"You can, for example, introduce a Web 2.0 checkout and test-drive that piece of functionality independently of introducing new RIA-based technology such as checkboxes and the sliders," he noted
 
Denger also noted how a number of WebSphere Commerce customers have deployed out Web Commerce storefronts as well Web 2.0 capabilities

"Discovery.com, WestMarine and Home Depot are just a few customers who are using customer-driven reviews and content," Denger said. "The best example of a Web 2.0 interface is L.L. Bean,  who just won two MITX Awards for Best User Experience and Best Consumer Goods experience."

IBM's Web 2.0 Store Solution -- which will be generally available on April 30 -- will incorporate many new Web 2.0 technologies Denger detailed in the podcast.

"We're currently working with several retailers to test the solution in high-volume environments. This is a strategy of ours that ensures that our customers will benefit from the newest and most innovative technologies while having the peace of mind that these capabilities have been tested in live environments under peak loads. So they're not going to go down on Cyber Monday," Denger noted.

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For many more details, listen to the entire 8:29 podcast Download file


Executive Summary:

The role of the enterprise architect is changing as business clamor for as IT solutions that embody and empower business needs.

“Many organizations now have managed to break down the barriers and silos within and between their enterprises and get people working cross-functionally,” notes Allen Brown,president and CEO of The Open Group, a not-for-profit consortium that brings together firms based on open standards and global interoperability.

But, notes Brown, the data these people require is “buried in siloed applications that were constructed for very good reasons -- and will remain for a long time within the silos.” So the new breed of enterprise architect will “need to rise up above that and not just take a single-application view, but take more of a city planner view across the enterprise,” Brown added.

On a higher level, the Association is looking to elevate the profession along the lines of accountants and lawyers.

“We’re going to promote the employment of certified professionals, establish standards of ethics and codes of conduct and generally accepted architectural principals which are based on generally accepted accounting principles,” said Brown, who went on to detail the benefits for individuals and employees.

“For the individuals, we’re enhancing their career opportunities and promoting their value to current and prospective employers and providing them with a portable qualification,” Brown pointed out.

When employees hire a certified architect, they will actually “know that they come with a certain level of skill and experience provided they’re members of the Association and therefore, you’re not teaching them from scratch,” noted Brown, who urged listeners to visit the http://www.opengroup.org Web site to develop their resumes with the aid of available online mentors.

To that end, The Open Group – long known for their popular IT certification programs -- are now creating a new Association of Open Group Enterprise Architects (AOGEA) to allow all levels of enterprise architects to enhance their professional skills and contacts.

The new architects must have “the expertise that spans business IT applications and data architecture; they’ve got to have a broad understanding of each,” Brown notes. “They don’t need to be deep technical experts, but they need to have a sufficient understanding of technology, but they also need an appreciation of the business side … and they’ve got to be capable of aligning IT with tangible business goals.

Over 2000 practitioners have already been certified in The Open Group’s TOGAF architect framework and architecture development method -- and Brown notes that one of the initial activities for certification involve adapting architecture development method to the specific requirements of an organization.

“The second and more recent certification program,” Brown noted, “is ITAF, which involves an extensive resume and a board review with three one-hour interviews with peers who are certified and understand and confirm that the person in question does have the skills and experiences capable of being an IT architect.”

For many more details, listen to the entire 8:29 podcast Download file

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Repeated bids to bridge the gap between the business and IT groups are driving the evolution of a new breed of exceptionally agile and in-demand Business Process Experts.

Their role is “to straddle a line of business and IT organizations, translating requirements from one into another and translating capabilities from IT back up into the lines of business,” says Mark Yolton, Vice President of SAP’s recently formed and rapidly growing Business Process Expert Community.

SAP launched the BPX in May of 2006 after a survey revealed a growing number of members of the SAP Developer Network (SDN) were showing an interest in business processes and methodologies and best practices.

“These people are interested in optimizing business processes and practices. They’re less involved in developing software and more involved in modeling business practices, standardizing those, and finding ways to differentiate their companies based on business practices and processes,” Yolton added.

Yolton sees the trend occurring in parallel with -- and partly as a result of -- service-oriented architectures.

“After modeling, they turn those models into software behavior, and that’s one of the advantages of service-oriented architecture is that those models and those best practices, which are reflected through software, can be reused.”

Yolton noted that the community’s early adopters wanted “more information on what kind of skills does a business process expert need, where would I get those skills, can I get them through training and where can I get experience so that I get some practice using those new skills.”

The site, located at http://bpx.sap.com defines the concept of the Business Process Expert, details a five-part process lifecycle and key analytics, and boasts the following features:

--Training courses, downloads and demonstrations from seminars and workshops.

-- Very active discussion forums with hundreds of threads and thousands of comments. “We find them so active that the median time is about 15 or 20 minutes before you get the first reply to your discussion forum question or comment,” Yolton notes.

-- Dozens of blogs, of which 60 percent are written by non-SAP employees -- and a very popular wiki.

Yolton noted that members earn points for participating and recommendation, but the reputation management can pay off in the real as well as virtual worlds. He went on to share case studies of system integrators who have gained recognition and increased work from their participation in the BPX.

“They start to introduce themselves and talk about their background to establish credibility. And this prospective customer will say, 'No need to go any further we already know everything about you; we’ve read about you in the blogs; we’ve read your discussion forums comments; we know you’re an expert on the topic.'"

And are the business and IT people there interacting?

“We’ve been very careful to position the BPX community next to the SDN community, so we have business process experts overlapping and collaborating with their IT colleagues and counterparts,” Yolton noted.

“And that’s important to us. We want those two things to be next to each other, because there’s this age-old problem of lines of business and IT organizations not always communicating and collaborating well with each other and it doesn’t optimize for either organizations or either group,” Yolton added.

On the corporate side, Yolton described how Whirlpool and IBM and Intel have also benefitted directly from activity in the community.

“SAP also recognizes that different industries influence the way processes work within a company,” Yolton noted. “Supply-chain management within the retail industry is very different from supply-chain management in the chemicals industry.”

BPX’s first vertical industry focus is on consumer products groups; supply-chain management is the first horizontal area, with human resources, financials and CRM could follow later in 2007.

Meanwhile, SAP’s education organization has defined three skill levels for a business process expert, from beginner to true expert.

“You can expect to see courses developed, additional relationships with outside universities and other organizations to build out the skills, education and certification path for a Business Process Expert community,” Yolton said.

For many more details, listen to the entire 14:29 podcast Download file

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