Which e-commerce system will fail THIS season?

Which e-commerce system will fail THIS season? 0

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Saturday November 17 2007, @10:00AM

Esther Schindler writes "Jingle jingle. Every year, there's some retailer whose e-commerce or supply chain fails. And it's a big deal, since the holiday shopping season can make or break their year. The IT challenge encompasses everything from server scalability to supply chain management to search engine optimization to database cajoling to business integration to... well, come to think of it, just about everything. Yet, "in the high-stakes season of holiday shopping, so much can—and has—gone wrong for retailers, airlines and others."

Online shopping is expected to top $33 billion this year, up 21 percent from $27 billion in 2006, according to a study from Forrester Research and Shop.org, a professional group for online retailers. Eleven percent of the 2,521 U.S. consumers surveyed said they would do at least 75 percent of their holiday shopping online.

CIO.com has a big package of articles examining "Black Friday" and its implications (complete with a red bow on top) full of seasonal IT joy, all rolled up in E-Commerce and Supply Chain Systems Gird for Black Friday. It includes several articles, including:

Online Shopping: How to Get the Impulse Purchase

The High-Stakes Search for Supply Chain Excellence During the Holiday Rush

How IT Failures Wreck Holidays for Many Companies

Business Intelligence: A Must for Winning the Holiday Shopping Wars

Retailers Want BI Benefits, But Struggle With Challenges

Despite all this—and at least ten years of industry experience in e-commerce sales—we all just know that someone will make yet another big mistake. I wonder who it'll be this year?"

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